The Seventh Function of Language

Eco: “Maybe he did, in fin dei conti? Maybe there is an unpublished version of Essays in General Linguistics in which this function is detailed?”

10:08.

Bayard thinks out loud: “And Barthes found himself in possession of this document?”

Simon: “And someone killed him to steal it?”

Bayard: “Not only for that. To prevent him from using it.”

Eco: “If the seventh function exists and it really is a kind of performative function, it would lose a large part of its power were it known by everyone. Knowledge of a manipulative mechanism doesn’t necessarily protect us from it—look at advertising, public relations: most people know how they work, what methods they use—but, all the same, it does weaken it…”

Bayard: “And whoever stole it wants it for his own exclusive use.”

Bianca: “Well, one thing’s for sure: Antonioni didn’t steal it.”

Simon realizes that he has been staring at the black bag forgotten under the seat for the past five minutes. It looks enormous. He has the impression that it has tripled in volume. It must weigh ninety pounds now. Either that or he’s still really high.

Eco: “If someone wanted to appropriate the seventh function for himself alone, he would have to ensure that no copies existed.”

Bayard: “There was a copy at Barthes’s apartment…”

Simon: “And Hamed was a walking copy; he carried it around inside him.” He has the impression that the gold-colored buckle on the bag is an eye, staring at him as if he were Cain in the tomb.

Eco: “But it’s also probable that the thief himself would make a copy and hide it somewhere.”

Bianca: “If this document is really so valuable, he can’t take the risk of losing it…”

Simon: “And he has to take the risk of making a copy and entrusting it to someone…” He thinks he sees a curl of smoke float out of the bag.

Eco: “My friends, I’m going to have to leave you! My train leaves in five minutes.”

Bayard looks at the clock. It is 10:12 a.m. “I thought your train was at eleven?”

“Yes, but in the end I decided to take the one before. This way, I’ll be in Milano earlier!”

Bayard asks: “Where can we find this Austin?”

Eco: “He’s dead. Ma, he had a student who has continued to work on all those questions of the performative, the illocutionary, the perlocutionary, and so on … He’s an American philosopher, his name is John Searle.”

Bayard: “And where can we find this John Searle?”

Eco: “Ma … in America!”

10:14. The great semiologist goes off to catch his train.

Bayard looks at the departures board.

10:17. Umberto Eco’s train leaves Bologna Central. Bayard lights a cigarette.

10:18. Bayard tells Simon that they are going to catch the eleven o’clock train to Milan, from where they must fly to Paris. Simon and Bianca say goodbye. Bayard goes to buy the tickets.

10:19. Simon and Bianca smooch in the middle of the crowded waiting room. The kiss goes on for a while and, like boys often do, Simon keeps his eyes open while he kisses Bianca. A woman’s voice announces the arrival of the Ancona-Basel train.

10:21. While he is kissing Bianca, Simon glimpses a young blonde. She is maybe thirty feet away. She turns around and smiles at him. He jumps.

It’s Anastasia.

Simon thinks the grass must really have been powerful stuff or maybe he’s just tired, but no: that figure, that smile, that hair … it really is Anastasia. The nurse from the hospital in Paris, here, in Bologna. Before Simon can emerge from his stupor and call her name, she walks out of the station. He says to Bianca, “Wait here for me!” and he runs after the nurse, just to be sure.

Thankfully, Bianca does not obey him but follows him instead. This is what will save her life.

10:23. Anastasia has already crossed the traffic circle outside the station but she stops and turns around again, as if she is waiting for Simon.

10:24. At the station exit, Simon looks around for her and spots her at the edge of the old town’s ring road, so he walks quickly across the flower beds in the middle of the traffic circle. Bianca follows him, about ten feet behind.

10:25. The train station explodes.

10:25 a.m.

Simon is thrown to the ground. His head hits the grass. The rumble of an earthquake spreads above him in a series of waves. Lying in the grass, breathless, covered in dust, stung by a dense rain of debris, deafened by the noise of the explosion, disoriented, Simon experiences the collapse of the building behind him as in a dream where you are falling endlessly or when you are drunk and the earth sways beneath your feet. It seems that the flower bed is a flying saucer whirling all over the place. When the background finally starts to slow down, he tries to come back down to earth. He looks around for Anastasia, but his field of vision is obstructed by an advertising billboard (for Fanta) and he can’t move his head. But his hearing gradually returns and he hears voices screaming in Italian and, in the distance, the first sirens.