UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY

by Eco, Umberto

  (8th September) Garibaldi has entered Naples without meeting any resistance. He's obviously getting rather cocky, because Nievo says he has asked Vittorio Emanuele to dismiss Cavour. Turin will now be needing my report, and I realize it must be as unfavorable as possible to Garibaldi. I will have to exaggerate the Masonic gold, portray Garibaldi as irresponsible, play up the Bronte massacre, refer to other crimes, embezzlement, extortion, corruption and general extravagance. I will use Musumeci's account to describe the behavior of the volunteers, carousing in the convents, deflowering maidens (perhaps nuns as well — there's no harm in laying on the color).

  I'll then produce a few orders requisitioning private property. A letter from an anonymous informer telling me about frequent dealings between Garibaldi and Mazzini via Crispi, and about their plans for establishing a republic, even in Piedmont. In other words, a good strong report to put Garibaldi into a tight corner. Not least because Musumeci gave me another good point to include: Garibaldi's men are for the most part a band of foreign mercenaries. These thousand men comprise adventurers from France, America, England, Hungary and Africa too, the dregs of every nation, and many were buccaneers with Garibaldi himself in the Americas. It's enough to hear the names of his lieutenants: Turr, Eber, Tukory, Teloky, Magyarody, Czudafy, Frigyesy (Musumeci spat out these names as best he could, and apart from Turr and Eber, I've never heard any mention of the others). Then there were Poles, Turks, Bavarians and a German called Wolff, commander of the German and Swiss deserters who had previously served the Bourbons. And the English government provided Garibaldi with Algerian and Indian battalions. Hardly Italian patriots! Out of a thousand, only half were Italians. Musumeci is no doubt exaggerating, because all around I hear Venetian, Lombard, Emilian and Tuscan accents, and I haven't seen a single Indian. But I don't think it will do any harm to play up this hodgepodge of races.

  * * *

  Garibaldi has entered Naples without meeting any resistance.

  * * *

  Of course I've also added a few references to the Jews working hand in glove with the Masons.

  I think the report should reach Turin as soon as possible, and it mustn't fall into the wrong hands. I've found a Piedmontese naval vessel about to return to the Kingdom of Piedmont, and it won't take much to forge an official document ordering the captain to land me at Genoa. My stay in Sicily ends here, and I'm sorry I won't see what is going on in Naples and beyond, but I wasn't here to enjoy myself, nor to write an epic. At the end of these travels I remember with pleasure only the pisci d'ovu, the babbaluci a picchipacchi (a way of cooking snails), and the cannoli . . . Ah, the cannoli! Nievo also promised to let me taste a certain swordfish a' sammurigghu, but there wasn't enough time, so all I can savor is the aroma of its name.

  8

  THE ERCOLE

  From the diary for 30th and 31st March and 1st April 1897 The Narrator is beginning to find this amoebean dialogue between Simonini and his intrusive abbé rather tiresome, but it would appear that on the 30th of March Simonini completed a partial reconstruction of the final events in Sicily, in which many lines have been blotted out and paragraphs crossed through with an X but still legible — and disturbing to read. On the 31st of March Abbé Dalla Piccola intervenes in the diary, as if to prise open tightly closed doors in Simonini's memory, revealing to him what he is desperately refusing to remember. And on the 1st of April, after a restless night in which he recalls having attacks of nausea, Simonini makes a further entry, apparently annoyed and seeking to correct what he considers to be the abbé's exaggerations and moralistic indignation. But the Narrator, being unsure, in short, who in the end is right, has allowed himself to describe these events as he feels they might best be reconstructed, and naturally accepts responsibility for his reconstruction.

  Simonini sent his report to Cavalier Bianco upon his return to Turin. A message came the following day calling him to a meeting that evening at the same place where he'd been taken by carriage the first time, where Bianco, Riccardi and Negri di Saint Front awaited him.

  "Avvocato Simonini," Bianco began, "I don't know whether the nature of our relationship now permits me to express my full feelings, but I have to say you're a fool."

  "Cavalier, how dare you?"

  "He's quite right," intervened Riccardi, "and he speaks for us all. And I might add, a dangerous fool. So much so that we have to consider whether it's wise to leave you wandering around Turin with such ideas in your head."

  "Excuse me, I may have got something wrong, but —"

  "You have, you have. You've got it all wrong. Don't you realize that in just a few days (even the fishwives know about it by now) General Cialdini and our troops will be entering the Papal States? And our army will probably be at the gates of Naples within a month. At that point we'll have prepared the ground for a popular plebiscite in which the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and its lands will be officially annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. If Garibaldi is the gentleman and realist we think he is, he will resist the demands of that hothead Mazzini. He'll accept the situation, bon gré mal gré, he'll hand over the conquered lands to the king, and he'll have done a splendid job as a patriot. Then we'll have to dismantle Garibaldi's army, which now numbers almost sixty thousand men — they're better not left roaming about as they please, so the volunteers will be accepted into the Savoy army and the others sent home with money in their pockets. All fine fellows, all heroes. And you want us, by releasing that damned report of yours to the newspapers and the general public, to say that these Garibaldini, who are about to become our own soldiers and officers, were a bunch of scoundrels, for the most part foreign, who pillaged their way through Sicily? You want us to say that Garibaldi is not the selfless hero to whom the whole of Italy should be grateful, but an adventurer who defeated a bogus enemy by buying them off? And that he plotted with Mazzini to the very end to make Italy a republic? And you want us to say that Nino Bixio went around Sicily executing liberals and massacring shepherds and peasants? You're mad!"

  "But gentlemen, you employed me —"

  "We did not employ you to slander Garibaldi and those fine Italians who fought with him, but to find documents that might show how the hero's republican entourage were misgoverning the occupied lands, so as to justify an intervention from Piedmont."

  "But gentlemen, you are well aware that La Farina —"

  "La Farina wrote private letters to Count Cavour, which he certainly hasn't been waving around. And then La Farina is La Farina — someone who bears a particular grudge against Crispi. And last of all, what's this nonsense about gold from the English Masons?"

  "Everyone's talking about it."

  "Everyone? We're not. And what are these Masons anyway? Are you a Mason?"

  "No, I'm not, but —"

  "So don't involve yourself in matters that are of no concern to you. Let the Masons stew in their own juice."

  Simonini evidently hadn't realized that the whole Savoy government were Freemasons — and with all the Jesuits he'd had around him as a child, perhaps he should have done so. But Riccardi had already moved on to the question of the Jews, asking by what twisted notion he had included them in his report.

  Simonini stammered, "The Jews are everywhere, and don't you think—"

  "It doesn't matter what we think or don't think," interrupted Saint Front. "The fact is that in a united Italy we also need the support of the Jewish community. What is more, it's pointless telling good Italian Catholics that Garibaldi's selfless heroes also included Jews. In short, with all these blunders of yours, we'd have every reason to send you off for a good long time to enjoy the air at one of our comfortable Alpine fortresses. But regrettably we still need you. It would seem that this Captain Nievo (or Colonel or whatever) is still down there with all his account books. We have no idea, in primis, whether he's been keeping them correctly and, in secundis, whether it is politically wise for these accounts to be disclosed. You tell us Nievo intends to hand them over to us, and that would be good, but if
he shows them to others before they reach us, then it would not. And so you will return to Sicily, once again as a correspondent for Professor Boggio reporting on the new and momentous events. You will attach yourself like a leech to Nievo and make sure the accounts disappear, vanish into thin air, go up in smoke, so there's no more talk of them. It is for you to decide how to do this, and you are authorized to use any means, provided of course they are lawful, nor should you expect further orders from us. Cavalier Bianco will give you a contact at the Bank of the Two Sicilies to assure the necessary funds."

  At this point Dalla Piccola's account is also fairly sketchy and incomplete, as if he too were having difficulty recalling what his counterpart was constrained to forget.

  It seems, however, that having returned to Sicily at the end of September, Simonini remained there until March of the following year, trying unsuccessfully to get his hands on Nievo's accounts and receiving a fortnightly dispatch from Cavalier Bianco asking with a certain impatience how far he had progressed.

  Nievo was now dedicating body and soul to those confounded accounts, increasingly worried about malicious rumors, expending more and more energy investigating, examining, scrutinizing thousands of receipts so as to be sure of what he was recording. He had been given considerable authority, since Garibaldi was also anxious not to create scandal and gossip, and had arranged for him to have an office with four assistants and two guards at the entrance and on the stairways so that no one could, so to speak, enter its con- fines at night in search of the accounts.

  Indeed, Nievo had let it be known that he suspected someone might not be happy about what they contained. He feared the accounts might be stolen or tampered with and had therefore done his best to ensure they were impossible to find. And all Simonini could do was consolidate his friendship with the poet, with whom he was now on more informal terms, so as to understand what he planned to do with those wretched books.

  They spent many evenings together, in an autumnal Palermo that still languished in heat untempered by the sea breezes, sipping an occasional water and anisette, allowing the liqueur to diffuse gradually in the water like a cloud of smoke. Little by little, Nievo abandoned his military reserve and came to trust Simonini, perhaps because he liked him, perhaps because he felt himself to be a prisoner in the city and needed the company of someone else with whom he could daydream. He talked about a love he had left behind in Milan, an impossible love, because her husband was not only his cousin but also his best friend. Nothing could be done about it. Other loves had already driven him to hypochondria.

  "That's how I am, and how I'm condemned to remain. I will always be a moody, dark, somber, irritable individual. I'm now thirty and have always fought wars to distract me from a world I do not love. And so I've left a great novel at home, still in manuscript. I'd like to get it printed, but can't because I have these bloody accounts to look after. If I were ambitious, if I thirsted for pleasure . . . if I were at least bad . . . At least like Bixio. Never mind. I'm still a child, I live one day at a time, I love the excitement of rebellion, the air I breathe. I'll die for the sake of dying . . . And then it will all be over."

  Simonini did not try to console him. He considered him incurable.

  In early October there was the battle of Volturno, where Garibaldi fought off the Bourbon army's last offensive. During that same period, General Cialdini had defeated the papal army at Castelfidardo and invaded Abruzzo and Molise, formerly part of the Bourbon kingdom. At Palermo, Nievo was frustrated. He had heard that among his accusers in Piedmont were followers of La Farina, who was apparently speaking ill of anyone connected with the Redshirts.

  "It makes you want to give up," said Nievo, dejected, "but it's exactly at moments like this that we mustn't abandon the helm."

  On the 26th of October the great event took place: Garibaldi met Vittorio Emanuele at Teano. The general practically handed over southern Italy. For this, said Nievo, he should at least have been appointed a senator. And yet, at the beginning of November, Garibaldi lined up fourteen thousand men and three hundred horses at Caserta and waited for the king to come and review them, and the king never appeared.

  On the 7th of November, the king made his triumphal entry into Naples, but Garibaldi, a modern-day Cincinnatus, withdrew to the island of Caprera. "What a man," said Nievo. And he cried, as poets do (which greatly irritated Simonini).

  A few days later, Garibaldi's army was disbanded. Twenty thousand volunteers were accepted into the Savoy army, but so too were three thousand Bourbon officers.

  "That's fair, they're Italians too," said Nievo. "But it's a sad ending to our epic campaign. I'm not signing up. I'll take six months' pay, then goodbye. Six months to complete my job — I hope I'll manage it."

  It must have been a dreadful job. By the end of November he had barely completed the accounts to the end of July. At a rough guess, another three months were needed, perhaps more.

  When Vittorio Emanuele reached Palermo in December, Nievo told Simonini: "I'm the last Redshirt down here and I'm looked upon as a savage. What's more, I have to answer the slanders of La Farina's lot. Good Lord, if I knew it would end like this, instead of leaving Genoa for this prison I'd have drowned myself and been better off."

  Simonini had still not found a way of laying his hands on those wretched accounts. Then all of a sudden, in mid-December, Nievo announced he was returning to Milan for a short visit. Leaving the accounts in Palermo? Taking them with him? It was impossible to know.

  Nievo planned to be away for almost two months, and Simonini tried to make use of that bleak period by visiting the area around Palermo. (I'm no romantic, he thought, but what is Christmas in a snowless desert strewn with prickly pears?) He bought a mule, put on Father Bergamaschi's cassock and went from town to town listening to the gossip of curates and farmers, but also uncovering the secrets of Sicilian cooking.

  In secluded country inns he came across excellent rustic delicacies that cost little, including acqua cotta: all you had to do was put slices of bread in a tureen and dress them with plenty of olive oil and freshly ground pepper; then you boil chopped onions, peeled sliced tomatoes and wild mint in three quarters of a liter of water; after twenty minutes, pour this over the bread in the tureen and allow it to rest for a few minutes, then serve it hot.

  On the outskirts of Bagheria he found an inn with a few tables in a dark hall. In that pleasant shade, welcoming even during the winter months, a landlord of grubby appearance prepared wonderful offal dishes such as stuffed heart, pork brawn, sweetbreads and every type of tripe.

  There he met two characters, each quite different from the other. Only later, by a stroke of genius, was he able to bring them together as part of a single plan. But let us not rush ahead.

  The first seemed half mad. The landlord said he gave him food and lodging out of pity, though the man was actually able to perform many useful chores. Everyone called him Bronte, and in fact it seems he had escaped from the Bronte massacres. He was continually haunted by memories of the rebellion and after a few glasses of wine would bang his fist on the table and shout in thick dialect, which might roughly be translated as: "You masters beware, the hour of judgment is at hand! Fear not, citizens, be ready!" This was what his friend Nunzio Ciraldo Fraiunco, one of the four men later executed by Bixio, had shouted before the insurrection.

  Bronte wasn't particularly intelligent, but at least he had one fixed idea. He wanted to kill Nino Bixio.