UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY by Umberto Eco
The affair still divides the French and (from what I've read here and there) the rest of the world. Will they retry the case? Meanwhile, Dreyfus languishes in Cayenne. Serves him right.
I went to see Father Bergamaschi and found him tired and much aged. Hardly surprising — if I am sixty-eight, he must be eighty-five.
"Simonino," he said, "I want to say goodbye. I'm returning to Italy, to end my days in one of our houses. I've worked enough for the glory of Our Lord. And you? You're not going to get yourself into any more trouble? I live in fear of trouble. How simple it all used to be in your grandfather's day — the Carbonari on one side, we on the other. Everyone knew who and where their enemies were. It's not like that any longer."
He is losing his mind. I gave him a fraternal embrace and left.
Yesterday evening I was passing in front of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. Sitting right by the main door was a human wreck, a blind cul-de-jatte, his bald head covered with livid scars. He played a strained melody on a pennywhistle that he held to one of his nostrils, while the other produced a dull hissing sound, as his mouth opened to take in breath, like someone who was drowning.
* * *
I went to see Father Bergamaschi and found him tired and much aged.
* * *
I don't know why, but it frightened me. As if life were a terrible thing.
I cannot sleep. I have restless dreams in which Diana appears, pale and disheveled.
Often, rising at daybreak, I go out and watch the collectors of cigar stubs. They have always fascinated me. In the early morning I see them going about with their stinking sacks tied with a string to their waists and a stick with a metal spike that they use to harpoon the stub, even from under a table. It's amusing to watch them being thrown out of the open-air cafés by the waiters, who sometimes spray them with a soda-water siphon.
Many collectors spend the night along the Seine embankment, and they can be seen in the morning, sitting on the quais, separating the tobacco, still moist with saliva, from the ash, or washing their shirts stained with liquid tobacco and waiting for them to dry in the sun while they continue their work. The bolder ones collect not just cigar butts but also cigarettes, where separating the damp paper from the tobacco is an even more disgusting task.
You also see them swarming around place Maubert and thereabouts, selling their wares and, as soon as they have earned a few cents, disappearing into a tavern to drink toxic alcohol.
I watch other people's lives as a way of passing the time. I live the life of a pensioner, or a veteran.
It is strange, but I feel a certain nostalgia about the Jews. I miss them. Since my childhood I have constructed my Prague cemetery, stone by stone (you might say), and now it seems that Golovinsky has stolen it from me. Who knows what they are doing with it in Moscow? Perhaps they're putting my Protocols together into a dry bureaucratic document devoid of its original setting. No one will want to read it. I'll have wasted my life producing a testimony for no purpose. Or per- haps this is how my rabbis' ideas (they were always my rabbis) will spread throughout the world and will accompany the final solution.
I read somewhere that there is a cemetery for Portuguese Jews at the far corner of an old courtyard in avenue de Flandre. A townhouse was built there at the end of the seventeenth century and belonged to someone called Camot, who allowed Jews, mostly Germans, to bury their dead there at a cost of fifty francs for adults and twenty for children. The house later passed to a man named Matard, an animal skinner who began burying the remains of his flayed horses and oxen next to the Jews, and the Jews protested. The Portuguese Jews bought an adjoining piece of land for their burials, and Jews from countries to the north found another place at Montrouge.
It closed early this century, but you can still visit. There are about twenty gravestones, some with Hebrew writing and others in French. I saw a strange one that read: "God Almighty has called me in the twenty-third year of my life. I prefer my situation to slavery. Here lies the blessed Samuel Fernandez Patto, died 28 Prairial of the second year of the one and only French Republic." Precisely. Republicans, atheists and Jews.
The place is desolate, but it helped me imagine the Prague cemetery, which I have seen only in illustrations. I was a good narrator, I should have been an artist: from a few details I created a magical place, the sinister moonlit center of the universal conspiracy. Why did I let my creation slip out of my hands? I could have done so much else with it.
Rachkovsky has returned. He said he still needed me. I was annoyed. "You're not keeping to the agreement," I said. "I thought our score was settled. I gave you material never before seen, and you have kept quiet about the sewer. Indeed, it is I who am still owed something. You don't imagine such valuable material was free."
"It is you who's not keeping to the agreement," the Russian said. "The documents paid for my silence. Now you want money as well. Fine then, I won't argue, the money will pay for the documents. So you still owe me something for my silence over the sewer. But I don't think we should start haggling, Simonini. It is not worth your while. I told you it's essential for France that the bordereau is regarded as genuine. But not for Russia. I could easily hand you over to the press. You'd spend the rest of your life in the law courts. Ah, I forgot. Just to get things clear about your past, I spoke to Father Bergamaschi and to Monsieur Hébuterne. They told me you'd introduced them to an Abbé Dalla Piccola, who had been involved in the Taxil affair. I tried to find him. It seems he's vanished into thin air, along with everyone else who had been living in a house in Auteuil — except for Taxil himself, who's wandering around Paris. He too is trying to find this missing clergyman. I could implicate you in his murder."
"There's no body."
"There are four of them downstairs. Whoever put four bodies into a sewer could well have disposed of another one somewhere else."
I was in the hands of that wretch. "Very well," I said, "what do you want?"
"There's one passage in the material you gave Golovinsky that I found fascinating: the plan to use the metropolitan railway to wreak havoc in the great cities. But for the argument to be believed, we need a few bombs to actually go offdown there."
"Where? London? There's no metropolitan railway here yet."
"They've started digging. There are excavations already along the Seine. You don't have to blow up the whole of Paris. All I need is for two or three support beams to collapse, and if it demolishes a piece of the road, so much the better. A small explosion, but something that looks like a threat — and a confirmation."
"I understand. But where do I come in?"
"You have already worked with explosives, and I understand you know a few handy experts. You have to look at things the right way. I'm sure everything will go offwithout incident — these first excavations are not guarded at night. But let us suppose, for some unfortunate reason, that the bomber is discovered. If he's a Frenchman, he risks a few years in prison, but if he's a Russian, it would start offa Franco-Russian war. It cannot be one of my men."
I was about to become angry. I couldn't be involved in something as crazy as this. I'm a man of peace, a man of a certain age. Then I stopped myself. What had been causing that emptiness I had been feeling for weeks, other than a sense of no longer being a protagonist?
By accepting this assignment I would be back in the front line. I would be helping to bring credit to my Prague cemetery, making it more probable and therefore more real than it had ever been. Once again, alone, I was defeating an entire race.
"I have to talk to the right person," I replied. "I'll let you know in a few days."
I went to search out Gaviali. He still works as a rag-and-bone man, but thanks to my help, his papers are in order and he has some money set aside. Unfortunately, though, in less than five years he has aged badly— Cayenne leaves its mark. His hands shake and he struggles to lifthis glass, which I generously fill several times. He has difficulty moving around, can hardly bend down, and I wonder how he manages to collec
He greets my proposal with enthusiasm: "It's no longer like it used to be, when you couldn't use some explosives because they didn't give you the time to get away. Now everything's done with a good time bomb."
"How does it work?"
"Simple. You take any kind of alarm clock and set it to the time you want. When it reaches that hour, the alarm goes off, and instead of activating the bell, if you connect it properly, it activates a detonator. The detonator sets off the charge, and bang. By then, you're ten miles away."
The following day he came to see me, bringing a gadget of terrifying simplicity. How could that tiny jumble of wires and that alarm clock, the size of a parish priest's turnip, possibly cause an explosion? And yet it does, Gaviali proudly assured me.
Two days later I went to explore the excavations, and with an air of idle curiosity I asked the workmen various questions. I found one point where you could easily climb down from the road to the level immediately below, to the entrance of a tunnel supported by beams. I don't need to know where the tunnel leads, or even whether it goes anywhere. All I'd have to do is place the bomb at the entrance, and that would be that.
I had to be blunt with Gaviali: "I have great respect for your expertise, but your hands shake and your legs can barely support you. You'd never manage to get down to the tunnel, and who knows what you'd end up doing with those wires you tell me about."
His eyes became tearful. "It's true, I'm finished."
"Who could do the job for you?"
"I don't know anyone. All my companions, don't forget, are still in Cayenne. You sent them there. The responsibility for that is yours. You want to explode the bomb? You'll have to do it yourself."
"Nonsense, I'm not an expert."
"You don't have to be an expert once you've been taught by an expert. Just look at these things I've put on the table. This is all you need to make a good time bomb. Any kind of alarm clock, like this, provided you understand the mechanism inside that sets the alarm offat the right time. Then a battery that, when activated by the alarm, activates the detonator. I'm old-fashioned, so I would use a Daniell cell. In this type of battery, unlike the voltaic battery, the elements inside are mainly liquid. Half of a small container is filled with copper sulfate and the other half with zinc sulfate. A small copper plate is put into the copper solution and a zinc plate into the zinc. The ends of the two plates form the two poles of the battery. You understand?"
"So far, yes."
* * *
I don't need to know where the tunnel leads, or even whether it goes anywhere. All I'd have to do is place the bomb at the entrance, and that would be that.
* * *
"Good. The only problem is that with a Daniell cell you have to be very careful in moving it, but until it's connected to the detonator and to the explosive, whatever happens, there's no problem. When it's connected up it'll be on a flat surface, I hope — otherwise the operator's an idiot. For the detonator, any kind of small charge is sufficient. Finally we come to the charge itself. In the old days, you remember, I used to recommend black gunpowder. But ten years ago they invented ballistite — ten percent camphor and equal parts nitroglycerine and collodion. There was a problem at first with the camphor, which easily evaporates, making the product unstable. But after the Italians began producing it at Avigliana, it seems to be reliable. Or I could decide to use cordite, invented by the English, where fifty percent of the camphor has been replaced by Vaseline, and for the rest they've taken fifty-eight percent nitroglycerine and thirty-seven guncotton, dissolved in acetone, then extruded it so it looks like thick spaghetti. I'll decide what's best, but there's not much difference. So the first thing to do is set the hands of the clock to the correct time, then connect the clock to the battery, and this to the detonator, and the detonator to the charge, then activate the alarm. Remember, never reverse the order of the operations — if you connect first, then activate the alarm, and then turn the hands of the clock . . . bang! You understand? Then you go home, or to the theater, or to a restaurant — the bomb goes off by itself. Understand, Captain?"
"I understand."
"I wouldn't go so far as saying that a child could do it, but one of Garibaldi's old captains surely can. You have a firm hand and a clear eye. Just carry out those small operations as I've told you. All you have to do is follow the right order."
I agreed. If I succeed, it will knock years offme, and I'll come back ready to trample underfoot all the Mordechais of this world. And that whore in the Turin ghetto. Gagnu, eh? I'll take care of you.
I need to get rid of the smell of Diana in heat, which has been following me through the summer nights for a year and a half. I realize the whole purpose of my life has been to bring down that accursed race. Rachkovsky is right: hatred alone warms the heart.
I must complete my task in full regalia. I have put on my dress coat and the beard I wore for evenings at Juliette Adam's. Almost by chance, I discovered at the bottom of a cupboard a small supply of the Parke & Davis cocaine I had obtained for Doctor Froïde. Who knows how it came to be there? I've never tried it before, but if the doctor is right, it ought to give me a boost. I've also had three small shots of cognac. And I'm feeling as strong as a lion.
Gaviali wants to come with me, but I'm not going to let him — he's too slow, he'd get in my way.
I understand perfectly well how it all works. This bomb is going to cause one hell of a stir.
Gaviali's giving me the final instructions: "Watch out here, watch out there."
For heaven's sake, I'm not yet a decrepit old fool.
USELESS LEARNED EXPLANATIONS
HISTORICAL
The only fictitious character in this story is the protagonist, Simone Simonini. His grandfather, Captain Simonini, is not invented, even if he is known to history only as the mysterious writer of a letter to Abbé Barruel.
All the others (except for a few incidental minor characters such as Notaio Rebaudengo and Ninuzzo) actually existed, and said and did what they are described as saying and doing in this novel. That is true not only of those characters who appear under their real names (and, though many might find this improbable, even a character like Léo Taxil actually existed), but also of figures who appear under a fictitious name, where for narrative economy I have made a single (invented) character say and do what was in fact said and done by two (historically real) characters.
But on reflection, even Simone Simonini, although in effect a collage, a character to whom events have been attributed that were actually done by others, did in some sense exist. Indeed, to be frank, he is still among us.
THE STORY AND PLOT
The Narrator is aware that, in the fairly chaotic plot sequence of the diaries reproduced here (moving back and forth, using what cineastes call flashbacks), the reader might have difficulty in following the linear progression of events, from Simonini's birth to the end of his diaries. It is the fatal imbalance between story and plot, or even worse, as the Russian formalists (all Jewish) used to say, between fabula and sjužet. The Narrator, to be honest, has often found it difficult finding his own way around, but feels a competent reader need not become lost in the detail and should enjoy the story just the same. However, for the benefit of the overly meticulous reader, or one who is not so quick on the uptake, here is a table that sets out the relationship between the two levels (common, in truth, to every, what they used to call "well-made," novel).
First edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which
appeared in The Great Within the Small by Sergei Nilus
LATER EVENTS
1905 The Great Within the Small, by Sergei Nilus, appears in Russia, with the following introduction: "A personal friend, now dead, gave me a manuscript that, with unusual perfection and clarity, describes the course and development of a sinister world conspiracy . . . This document came into my hands around four years ago along with the absolute guarantee that it is the genuine translation of (original) documents stolen by
1921 The Times of London finds similarities between the Protocols and Joly's book and denounces the Protocols as false, but it continues to be published as genuine.
1925 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (I, 11): "How much the whole existence of this people is based on a permanent falsehood is apparent in the famous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Every week the Frankfurter Zeitung whines that they are based on a forgery: and here lies the best proof that they are genuine . . . When this book becomes the common heritage of all people, the Jewish peril can then be considered as stamped out."
1939 In L'Apocalypse de notre temps, Henri Rollin writes: "[The Protocols] can be regarded as the most widely circulated work in the world after the Bible."
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS