UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY

by Eco, Umberto

  * * *

  "Please listen, I think I understand—"

  "There's little to understand. I could have thrown this paper into the bin and told you to go to the devil, but I'm stubborn and vindictive. I warn you, I'll make sure your friends in the secret service know who you are and how much they can trust your information. And why have I come to tell you in advance? Not out of loyalty — someone like you has no right to such a thing — but if the service decides you are worth a dagger in your back, you'll know who suggested it. There's no point killing someone out of revenge unless he knows you're the person who's having him killed, don't you think?"

  It was all quite clear. That villain Goedsche (and Lagrange had told me he published feuilletons under the name of Retcliffe) had never taken my document to Stieber. He realized the story fitted into the novel he was about to finish, and it appealed to his anti-Jewish frenzy, so he took a true story (or at least he must have thought it was) and made it into a piece of fiction — his own fiction. Lagrange had warned me that the rogue was already a well-known forger of documents, and the fact that I had so naively fallen victim to a forger enraged me.

  But my rage was matched by fear. When Dalla Piccola spoke of being stabbed in the back, he may have been talking metaphorically, but Lagrange had been quite clear. In the secret service, when someone gets in the way, he's dispensed with. Just imagine an informer who is publicly exposed as untrustworthy because he sells fictitious rubbish as secret intelligence and, what is more, has made the service look foolish in the eyes of the Society of Jesus. Who wants to have him around? A quick knifing and he'll end up floating in the Seine.

  This is what Abbé Dalla Piccola was promising me, and it was pointless trying to tell him the truth — there was no reason he should believe me. He didn't know that I had shown my document to Goedsche before the scoundrel had finished writing his book; all he knew was that I had given it to him (Dalla Piccola) after Goedsche's book had appeared.

  There seemed no way out.

  Apart from stopping Dalla Piccola from talking.

  I acted almost out of instinct. I have a heavy wrought-iron candlestick on my desk. I grabbed hold of it and pushed Dalla Piccola against the wall. He looked at me, eyes wide open, and murmured, "You don't want to kill me . . ."

  "I'm sorry, yes," I replied.

  And I really was sorry, but it was a question of making a virtue of necessity. I struck the blow. The abbé fell, blood streaming through his protruding teeth. I looked at the body and felt not the slightest guilt. He had brought it upon himself.

  Now all I had to do was get rid of that troublesome corpse.

  When I bought the shop and upstairs apartment, the proprietor had shown me a trap door in the cellar floor.

  "You'll find there are a few steps," he had said, "and at first you won't have the courage to go down them because the stink will make you want to faint. But sometimes you'll have to. You're a foreigner so you may not know the whole story. At one time people threw all their filth into the streets, and a law was passed that you had to shout 'Look out, water!' before you tossed your business out of the window. But that was too much trouble — you emptied your chamber pot, and it was just too bad for anyone below. Then open gutters were built along the streets, and eventually these were covered over, and the sewers were created. Baron Haussmann has now, at last, built good sewers for Paris, but they serve mostly for draining away the rainwater, and (when the pipes under your lavatory are not blocked up) the excrement flows away by itself, into a pit that is emptied at night and the filth hauled off to large dumps. There is now discussion about whether, at last, to adopt a system of tout-à-l'égout, where the major sewers would drain not only water but every other kind of rubbish. For this reason a decree, made ten years ago, requires owners to connect their houses to the sewer by a tunnel at least one meter thirty wide. That's what you'll find down there, except that (I need hardly say) it's narrower and lower than the law requires. These laws are laid down for the main boulevards, not for a dead-end passageway that is of no importance to anyone. And no one will ever come around checking whether you're actually taking your rubbish down there as you ought to be. When you can't face the idea of squelching through all that filth, just throw your rubbish down the steps, and you can be sure that when it rains some of the water will flow as far as here and carry the rubbish away. Then again, this route into the sewers could have its advantages. As it turns out, every decade or so there's a revolution or a riot in Paris, and an underground escape route isn't such a bad thing. Like every Parisian, you'll have read that novel Les Misérables, which came out recently, where our hero escapes through the sewers with an injured friend over his shoulder, so you'll understand what I mean."

  As an avid reader of feuilletons, I was familiar with Hugo's story. I certainly had no wish to repeat the experience, not least because I had no idea how his character managed to get so far down there. Perhaps the underground drains in other parts of Paris are higher and broader, but the one under impasse Maubert must have been a few centuries old. It was already hard enough carrying Dalla Piccola's body downstairs to the shop and then to the cellar — fortunately the little dwarf was quite bent and thin so was fairly easy to handle. But to get him down the steps from the trap door, I had to roll him. Then I went down and, with my head lowered, dragged him for a few meters to make sure he wouldn't putrefy right beneath my house. With one hand I pulled him along by the ankles and with the other I held a lamp — unfortunately I didn't have a third hand to hold my nose.

  This was the first time I'd had to dispose of the body of someone I'd killed. With Nievo and Ninuzzo the matter was sorted out without my having to worry (though with Ninuzzo I should have been more careful, at least that first time in Sicily). I realized that the most irritating aspect of a murder is hiding the body, and it must be for this reason that priests tell us not to kill, except of course in battle, where the bodies are left for the vultures.

  I dragged my deceased abbé for ten meters or so, and it is not a pleasant experience having to drag a priest through excrement (not just my own but of goodness knows whose before me), and worse, having to describe all this to the victim himself — my God, what am I writing? But finally, after squelching through a great deal of effluent, I could see a distant blade of light, indicating a manhole cover in the street at the entrance to the alleyway.

  I had originally planned to drag the corpse as far as the main drain and leave it to the mercy of its more plentiful waters. But afterward I thought, These waters may carry the body who knows where, perhaps into the Seine, and someone may manage to identify it. Quite right, because now, as I write, I discover that in the great rubbish dumps below Clichy there have recently been found, over a period of six months, 4,000 dogs, 5 calves, 20 sheep, 7 goats, 7 pigs, 80 hens, 69 cats, 950 rabbits, a monkey and a boa constrictor. The figures do not mention priests, but I could have contributed to making them even more grotesque. By leaving my deceased in that place, there was a good chance he wouldn't move.

  Between the wall and the actual channel — which was much older than Baron Haussmann's — there was a narrow walkway, and that was where I left the corpse. I calculated that it would decompose fairly quickly in that miasma and humidity, leaving no more than an unidentifiable heap of bones. And, too, bearing in mind the nature of the alleyway, it seemed unlikely that this place would merit any maintenance, or that anyone would venture that far. Even if human remains were found there, it would still have to be proved where they'd come from: anyone climbing down through the manhole cover from the street could have brought them there.

  I went back to my office and opened Goedsche's novel at the place where Dalla Piccola had left a bookmark. My German was rather rusty but I managed to follow the story, though not in detail. It was certainly my rabbis' gathering in the Prague cemetery, except that Goedsche (evidently someone with a theatrical imagination) had expanded my description of the cemetery at night and introduced a banker, Rosenberg, who was t
he first to arrive there, accompanied by a Polish rabbi wearing a skullcap and with ringlets around his temples, and in order to enter he had to whisper to the custodian a kabbalistic sevensyllable word.

  The next to arrive was the person who had been my informant in the original, introduced by one Lasali, who promised to let him watch a gathering that occurred every hundred years. They had disguised themselves with false beards and broad-brimmed hats, and the story continued more or less as I had told it, including my ending, with the bluish light that rose from the tomb and the outlines of the rabbis walking away, swallowed up into the night.

  The blackguard had used my succinct report to conjure up scenes of great melodrama. He was prepared to do anything to scrape together a few thalers. What is the world coming to?

  Exactly what the Jews want it to come to.

  It's time for bed. I have deviated from my habit of gastronomic moderation and have been drinking not wine but intemperate quantities of calvados (and intemperance is making my head spin— I fear I am becoming repetitious). It seems I wake up as Abbé Dalla Piccola only when I plunge into a deep dreamless sleep. But now I'd like to see how I can possibly wake up again in the shoes of a dead man, whose death I had caused and witnessed.

  15

  DALLA PICCOLA REDIVIVUS

  6th April 1897, at dawn

  Captain Simonini, I don't know whether it was during your (immoderate or intemperate) slumber that I woke up and was able to read your diary. At the first light of dawn.

  After reading it I thought perhaps, for some mysterious reason, you were lying (nor is it difficult to conclude from your life, as you have so frankly related it, that you do sometimes lie). If there is anyone who should know for sure that you didn't kill me, it would be I myself. I wanted to investigate. I removed my clerical garb and, almost naked, went down to the cellar and opened the trap door. At the entrance to that foulsmelling passageway that you so well describe, I was taken aback by the stench. I asked myself what it was I wanted to find out: whether there were still a few bones from the body you say you left down there over twenty-five years ago. And did I have to go down into that filth to discover those bones weren't mine? If you'll allow me, I already know. Therefore I accept what you say — you did kill an Abbé Dalla Piccola.

  So who am I? Not the Dalla Piccola you killed (who in any event didn't look like me). But how can there be two Abbé Dalla Piccolas?

  The truth is perhaps I'm mad. I dare not leave the house. Yet I have to go out to buy food, since my cassock prevents me from visiting taverns. I do not have a fine kitchen like you — though, to be honest, I am no less of a glutton.

  I am gripped by an irresistible urge to kill myself, but I know it's the devil tempting me.

  And then, why kill myself if you have already done it for me? It would be a waste of time.

  7th April

  Dear Abbé, enough of this.

  I have no recollection of what I did yesterday and found your note this morning. Stop tormenting me. You don't remember either? So do as I do — contemplate your navel and then start writing. Allow your hand to think for you. Why is it I who has to recall everything, and you who remember only the few things I wanted to forget?

  At this moment I am beset by other memories. I had just killed Dalla Piccola when I received a note from Lagrange. This time he wanted to meet me at place de Fürstenberg, at midnight, when the place is fairly ghostly. I had, as God-fearing people would say, a guilty conscience, as I had killed a man, and feared (irrationally) that Lagrange already knew. But he obviously had something else to talk about.

  "Captain Simonini," he said, "we need you to keep an eye on a curious character, a priest . . . how can I put it . . . a satanist."

  "Where do I find him, in hell?"

  "I'm not joking. He's a certain Abbé Boullan, who years ago came to know a certain Adèle Chevalier, a lay sister in the convent of Saint- Thomas-de-Villeneuve at Soissons. Strange rumors began to circulate about her. It was said she had been cured of blindness and had made prophecies. The convent began to fill up with followers, her superiors became worried, the bishop moved her away from Soissons, and all of a sudden our Adèle chooses Boullan as her spiritual guide, and no doubt they're well matched. So they decide to establish a society for the reparation of souls — in other words, dedicating themselves to Our Lord not only through prayer but through various forms of physical atonement, to make good for the wrongs done by sinners against him."

  "No harm in that, I'd have thought."

  "Except that they start preaching that you have to commit sin in order to free yourself from it, that humanity was debased by the double adultery of Adam with Lilith, and Eve with Samael (don't ask me who these people are — in my church I was taught only about Adam and Eve), and that you have to do certain things that are not yet entirely clear. But the abbé, the young lady and many of their followers were apparently involving themselves in gatherings that were, shall we say, indecorous, where each was abusing the other. It was also rumored that the good abbé had discreetly disposed of the fruit of his illegitimate liaisons with Adèle. All things, you might say, that are of interest to the prefect of police rather than us, except that some time ago a number of respectable women joined the throng, the wives of high officials, even of a government minister, and Boullan managed to wheedle large sums of money out of these pious ladies. At this point the whole business became a state matter, and we had to take it over ourselves. The two of them were arrested and sentenced to three years' imprisonment for fraud and indecent behavior, and were released at the end of '64. Then we lost track of the abbé and thought he might have turned over a new leaf. But he recently reappeared in Paris, having finally been absolved by the Holy Inquisition after numerous acts of penitence, and is back proclaiming his beliefs that people can redress the sins of others through the cultivation of their own, and if everybody starts thinking like that, the whole business would no longer be religious, but political. You understand? The Church itself has started to worry once more, and the archbishop of Paris has recently banned Boullan from ecclesiastical duties — and about time, I'd say. Boullan's only response has been to make contact with another holy man of heretical leanings, a certain Vintras. Here in this small dossier you'll find all there is to know about him, or at least all that we know. Keep an eye on him and find out what he's up to."

  "As I'm not a pious lady in search of a confessor to take advantage of her, how do I approach him?"

  "No idea. Dress up as a priest, perhaps. I gather you've managed to pass yourself off as one of Garibaldi's generals, or something like that."

  That's what has just come back to mind. But, my dear Abbé, it has nothing to do with you.

  16

  BOULLAN

  8th April

  Captain Simonini, during the night, after reading your indignant note, I decided to follow your example and have settled down to write almost automatically (though without staring at my navel), allowing my hand to record what my mind had forgotten. That Doctor Froïde of yours wasn't such a fool.

  Boullan . . . I can see myself walking with him in front of a church on the edge of Paris. Or was it at Sèvres? I remember him saying to me: "Reparation for the sins committed against Our Lord means taking responsibility for them. Sin can be a mystical burden, and the heavier the better, so we can relieve that load of iniquities the devil exacts from humanity, and we can unburden our weaker brothers who are incapable of exorcising the evil forces to which they are enslaved. Have you ever seen papier tuemouches, which was recently invented in Germany? Confectioners use it. They cover a piece of tape with treacle and hang it in the window above their cakes. Flies are attracted to the treacle, are caught in the sticky substance on the tape and die of asphyxiation, or are drowned when the tape, crawling with insects, is thrown into the gutter. Well, the faithful reparator must be like this flypaper: he must attract every ignominy upon himself and then become the purifying crucible."

  I see him in a church wh
ere, before the altar, he has to "purify" a dev otee, a woman possessed, who squirms on the ground uttering disgusting blasphemies and naming demons: Abigor, Abracas, Adramelech, Haborym, Melchom, Stolas, Zaebos . . .

  Boullan is wearing purple vestments with a red surplice. He stands above her and pronounces what seems to be the formula for an exorcism, but (if I heard correctly) saying the opposite: "Crux sacra non sit mihi lux, sed draco sit mihi dux, veni Satanas, veni!" He bends down over the penitent and spits into her mouth three times, then lifts his vestments, urinates in a chalice and offers it to the poor woman. Then he takes a substance of evident fecal origin from a bowl (with his hands!) and, having exposed the possessed woman's chest, smears it over her breasts.

  The woman thrashes about on the ground, gasping and letting out groans, which gradually subside until she falls into an almost hypnotic sleep.

  Boullan goes into the sacristy, where he cursorily washes his hands. Then he goes out with me to the forecourt, sighing as if he has performed a difficult duty. "Consummatum est," he says.

  I remember telling him that I had come on behalf of someone who wished to remain anonymous and who wanted to practice a ritual where consecrated hosts were required.

  Boullan smiled contemptuously. "A black mass? But if a priest is taking part, he consecrates the hosts there and then, and the whole thing would be valid even if he's been defrocked."

  I explained: "I don't think the person I'm referring to is looking for a priest to officiate over a black mass. You may know it is the practice in certain lodges to stab the host to seal an oath."

  "I see. I've heard there's a bric-a-brac dealer somewhere near place Maubert who also sells hosts. You could try him."