UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY

by Eco, Umberto

Was it on that occasion the two of us first met?

  * * *

  "You may know it is the practice in certain lodges to stab the

  host to seal an oath."

  * * *

  17

  THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE

  9th April 1897

  I killed Dalla Piccola in September 1869. In October I received a note from Lagrange, calling me, this time, to a quai on the Seine.

  What tricks the mind can play. Perhaps I am forgetting facts of vital importance, but I remember the excitement I felt that evening when, on the Pont Royal, I was amazed to see a sudden bright light. I was in front of the site for the new offices of the Journal Officiel de l'Empire Français, which was lit by electricity at night to speed up the work. In the midst of a forest of beams and scaffolding, powerful rays shone down on a group of builders. Words cannot describe the magical effect of that great glow flaring out into the surrounding shadows.

  Electric light . . . During those years, some were stupid enough to feel excited about the future. A canal had been built in Egypt to join the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, so you no longer had to go around Africa to reach Asia (thus harming many honest shipping companies); a great exhibition was opened, and judging from its architecture, it was apparent that what Haussmann had done to ruin Paris was only the beginning; the Americans were completing a railway line that would cross their continent from east to west, and since Negro slaves had just been given their freedom, they could now invade the whole nation, swamping it with half bloods, worse than the Jews. Submarine boats had appeared in the American war between North and South, where sailors no longer died from drowning but from suffocation; our parents' fine cigars were being replaced by measly cartridges that burned down in a minute, destroying every pleasure for the smoker; and our soldiers were now eating rotten meat conserved in metal cans. The Americans were said to have invented a hermetically sealed cabin that lifted people to the upper floors of a building using some kind of water piston — and there was already news that some pistons had broken one Saturday evening and people were stuck inside the box for two nights without air, not to mention water or food, and they were found dead on the Monday.

  Nevertheless, everyone embraced the promise of an easier life. With one machine people could talk to each other over a distance; with another they could write mechanically, without a pen. Would there be any original documents left to counterfeit?

  People gazed in wonder at the windows of perfume sellers who celebrated the miraculous invigorating qualities of wild lettuce sap for the skin, a hair restorer containing quinine, Crème Pompadour with banana water, cocoa milk, rice powder with Parma violets, all devised to make lascivious women attractive, but now available even to seamstresses ready to become kept women, since many dressmaking firms were introducing sewing machines to take over their jobs.

  The only interesting invention in recent times has been a porcelain contraption that enables you to defecate while seated.

  Not even I, though, had realized that this apparent excitement would mark the end of the empire. At the Exposition Universelle, Alfred Krupp had shown a fifty-ton cannon, a size never before seen, with an explosive charge of a hundred pounds per shell. The emperor was so fascinated by it that he awarded Krupp the Légion d'honneur, but when Krupp sent him a catalogue of weapons he was prepared to sell to any European state, the French high command, who had their own preferred arms dealers, persuaded the emperor to decline the offer. The king of Prussia, on the other hand, was evidently buying.

  Napoleon was not able to reason as clearly as he used to: his kidney stones prevented him from eating and sleeping, not to mention riding a horse; he accepted the advice of the conservatives and his wife, who were convinced that the French army was the best in the world, whereas (as it later turned out) it had no more than a hundred thousand men against four hundred thousand Prussians; and Stieber had already sent reports to Berlin about the chassepots, which the French believed to be the last word in rifles, but had already become museum pieces. Moreover, Stieber was pleased to note, the French had failed to assemble an intelligence service equal to theirs.

  But let us get to the point. I met Lagrange at the agreed place.

  "Captain Simonini," he said, ignoring all formalities, "what do you know about Abbé Dalla Piccola?"

  "Nothing. Why?"

  "He's disappeared, and just when he was doing a small job for us. I believe you were the last person to see him: you asked me if you could speak to him, and I sent him. And then?"

  "And then I gave him the report I'd given to the Russians, so he could show it to certain ecclesiastical authorities." "Simonini, a month ago I received a note from the abbé, saying more or less: 'I have to see you as soon as possible. I've something interesting to tell you about your Simonini.' From the tone of his message, whatever he had to say about you couldn't have been very flattering. So what's been going on between you and the abbé?"

  "I don't know what he wanted to tell you. Perhaps he thought it improper for me to offer him a document that (he believed) I had produced for you. He obviously wasn't aware of our arrangement. He said nothing to me. I've seen no more of him, and in fact I was wondering what had happened to my proposal."

  Lagrange fixed me in the eye for a moment, then said, "We shall talk further about this," and he left.

  There was little more to talk about. Lagrange would be following my every move, and if he really had a clear suspicion, the famous stab in the back would be coming my way, even though I'd closed the abbé's mouth.

  I needed to take precautions. I went to an armorer in rue de Lappe and asked for a swordstick. He had one, but it was badly made. I then remembered having gone by the window of a cane seller in my favorite passage Jouffroy, and there I found a splendid example with an ivory handle in the form of a snake and an ebony shaft — elegant as well as sturdy. The handle is not particularly suitable for leaning on if you happen to have a bad leg, since, though slightly curved, it is more vertical than horizontal; but it works perfectly if the cane is used as a sword.

  The swordstick is a fine weapon even when confronted by someone with a pistol: you pretend to be frightened, move back and point the cane, preferably with your hand shaking. Your opponent starts laughing and takes hold of it to pull it away, but by doing so he helps you draw the sword, which is pointing toward him and deadly sharp, and while he is bewildered, wondering what he's holding in his hand, in a flash you wield the blade, slashing him almost effortlessly from the temple crosswise down to the chin, ideally cutting through a nostril, and even if you don't gouge an eye, the blood pouring from his forehead will block his vision. It's the surprise that counts, and at that point your opponent is finished.

  If he is an adversary of little importance, retrieve the shaft and make your departure, leaving him disfigured for the rest of his life. But if he's more dangerous, then after the first slash, following the movement of your arm, slice back with a horizontal thrust, and make a clean cut through his throat — that way he won't have to worry anymore about his scar.

  Not to mention the dignified and respectable appearance you make when you're walking with a cane of this kind — it's expensive but worth it, and in some cases expense should not be spared.

  Returning home one evening, I met Lagrange in front of the shop.

  I lightly waved my stick, but then realized the secret service would hardly have given someone like him the task of getting rid of someone like me, so I prepared for what he had to say.

  "A fine object," he said.

  "What?"

  "The swordstick. With a pommel of that kind, it couldn't be anything else. You're worried about someone?"

  "You tell me, Monsieur Lagrange."

  "You are worried about us, I know. You realize you've become a suspect. However, allow me to be brief. Before long there's going to be a war between France and Prussia, and our friend Stieber has filled Paris with his agents."

  "You know them?"

  "Not
all of them, and that is where you come in. Having offered Stieber your report on the Jews, he regards you as someone, shall we say, who can be bought . . . Well then, one of his men has arrived in Paris — that fellow Goedsche, whom I think you've already met. We believe he's looking for you. You'll become the Prussian spy in Paris."

  "Against my own country?"

  "Don't be a hypocrite. It's not your country. And if it worries you, you can do it for France. You'll be transmitting false intelligence provided by us to the Prussians."

  "That doesn't seem too hard."

  "On the contrary, it's highly dangerous. If you're discovered in Paris, we'll have to pretend we don't know you. Which means you'll be shot. And if the Prussians find out you're a double agent, they'll kill you, though by less lawful means. In this whole business you have, let's say, a fifty percent chance of saving your skin."

  "And if I don't accept?"

  "You'd have a one percent chance."

  "Why not zero?"

  "Because of your swordstick . . . But don't count on it too much."

  "I knew I had loyal friends in the service. Thank you for your consideration. Very well. I accept, and do so freely and patriotically."

  "You are a hero, Captain Simonini. Please await further orders."

  A week later, Goedsche appeared in my shop, looking more sweaty than usual. It was hard to resist the temptation to strangle him.

  "You know I regard you as a plagiarist and a counterfeiter," I said.

  "No more than you," said the German, with an unctuous smile."Did you imagine I wouldn't find out eventually that your story about the Prague cemetery is based on that book by Joly, who ended up in prison? I'd have found it for myself, without your help. You just made the task easier."

  "Do you realize, Herr Goedsche, that since you are a foreigner on French soil, all I have to do is mention your name to certain acquaintances and your life would not be worth one centime?"

  "Do you realize that yours would be worth no more if, once arrested, I were to mention your name? So let's declare peace. I am trying to sell that chapter of my book as fact to safe buyers. We shall go halves, seeing that we have to work together from now on."

  A few days after the beginning of the war, Goedsche took me to the roof of a house beside Notre Dame where an old man kept a number of dovecotes.

  "This is a good spot for releasing pigeons, since there are hundreds of them around the cathedral and no one notices. Each time you have useful information, write a message and the old man will send one of them off. Similarly, you must pass here each morning to find out whether there are any instructions for you. Simple, no?"

  "What sort of information do you want?"

  "We don't yet know what is of interest to us in Paris. For the moment we are keeping an eye on the areas at the front. But sooner or later, if we win, we'll be interested in Paris. And then we'll want news about troop movements, about the presence or absence of the imperial family, about morale among citizens — in other words, about everything and nothing. It's up to you to show initiative. We might need topographical maps, and no doubt you'll want to know how we manage to stick such maps around the neck of a pigeon. Come downstairs with me."

  On the lower floor there was a man in a photographic darkroom, and a room with a wall painted white and one of those machines that at fairs are called magic lanterns, which project pictures on walls or on large cotton sheets.

  "This fellow will take your message, however long it is, and how- ever many pages. He'll photograph it and reduce it on a sheet of collodion, which is sent off by pigeon. When the message arrives, the image is enlarged by projecting it on a wall. And the same will happen if you receive long messages. But it's no longer safe here for a Prussian— I'm leaving Paris tonight. We can keep in touch sending messages on the wings of a dove, like two lovers."

  The idea disgusted me, but I was stuck with him, damn it, and just because I'd killed a priest. Anyway, what about all those generals who kill thousands of men?

  Thus we found ourselves at war. Lagrange passed me the odd piece of news every now and then to send on to the enemy, but as Goedsche had said, the Prussians weren't particularly interested in Paris and were more concerned about finding out how many men the French had in Alsace, at Saint-Privat, at Beaumont, at Sedan.

  In the days before the siege, Parisians were still living gaily. In September it was decided to close all entertainment halls, out of solidarity with the plight of the soldiers in action as well as to allow firemen to be sent to the front, but barely a month later the Comédie-Française was given permission to put on performances for the families of dead soldiers, though on a reduced scale, without heating and with candles instead of gas lighting. After that, various productions were resumed at the Ambigu, the Porte Saint-Martin, the Châtelet and the Athénée.

  But September marked the beginning of difficult times with the tragedy at Sedan. As soon as Napoleon III had been taken prisoner by the enemy, the empire collapsed and the whole of France fell almost (almost, at that stage) into a state of revolution. The republic was proclaimed, but in the same republican ranks, as far as I could understand, there were two conflicting forces: one wanted to use the defeat as an opportunity for an out-and-out revolution, while the other was ready to sign for peace with the Prussians so as not to succumb to those reforms which, it was said, would have led to out-and-out communism.

  By mid-September the Prussians had reached the gates of Paris, had occupied the forts that should have protected the city, and were shelling it. Five months of terrible siege during which starvation was to become the chief enemy.

  * * *

  "When the message arrives, the image is

  enlarged by projecting it on a wall."

  * * *

  I understood little and cared less about the political intrigues and the marches in various parts of the city, and felt at such times it was better not to be seen around too much. But the question of food did concern me, and each day I kept up-to-date with the local shopkeepers about what we might expect. When I walked through public gardens like the Jardin du Luxembourg, it seemed at first as if the city had been overrun with livestock, as sheep and cows had been herded inside the city walls. But by October it was said that no more than twenty-five thousand oxen and a hundred thousand rams were left, which was not enough to feed a metropolis.

  Slowly households were reduced to frying goldfish, hippophagy was killing off every horse not under the protection of the army, a bushel of potatoes cost thirty francs, and Boissier the grocer was selling a box of lentils for twenty-five. Rabbits were nowhere to be seen, and butchers did not hesitate to display fine, plump cats and, later, dogs. All the exotic animals in the Jardin des Plantes were killed for meat, and on Christmas night, for those with money to spend, a sumptuous menu was on offer at Voisin, with elephant consommé, roast camel à l'anglaise, jugged kangaroo, bear chops au sauce poivrade, antelope terrine with truffles and cat garnished with baby mice, since not only had sparrows vanished from the rooftops but mice and rats were disappearing from the sewers.

  The camel was acceptable, and not too bad-tasting, but rats, no. Even in times of siege there were smugglers and black marketeers, and I well remember one (extremely expensive) meal, not in a great restaurant but in a gargote almost on the edge of the city, where along with a few privileged guests (not all belonging to the best of Parisian society, but at such times class differences are forgotten) I was able to taste pheasant and the freshest pâté de foie d'oie.

  In January, an armistice was signed with the Germans. It allowed them to symbolically occupy the capital in March, and I have to say, it was quite humiliating even for me to watch them parading along the Champs-Élysées in their spiked helmets. They established themselves to the northeast of the city, leaving the French government to control the southwestern side — in other words, the fortresses of Ivry, Montrouge, Vanves, Issy and others, including the heavily fortified stronghold of Mont-Valérien, from which the western pa
rt of the capital could be easily bombarded (as the Prussians had shown).

  The Prussians then left Paris, and the French government under Thiers was formed. But the National Guard, now getting hard to control, had already seized cannon purchased by public subscription and hidden them at Montmartre, and Thiers sent General Lecomte to recapture them. At first Lecomte ordered his men to shoot at the National Guard and into the crowd, but in the end his soldiers joined the rebels, and he was taken prisoner by his own men. Meanwhile someone, somewhere or other, had recognized another general, General Thomas, who was not well remembered from the repressions of 1848. What was more, he was in civilian dress, perhaps because he was going about his own business, but everyone began to claim he was spying on the rebels. He was led to where Lecomte was waiting, and both of them were shot.

  Thiers and the rest of the government withdrew to Versailles, and at the end of March the Paris Commune was proclaimed. Now it was the French government (at Versailles) that besieged and bombarded Paris from the Mont-Valérien fortress, while the Prussians let everyone get on with it. Indeed they were fairly indulgent in allowing people across their lines, so Paris had more food during its second siege than it did in the first: though starved by their fellow countrymen, they were being indirectly supplied by their enemies. And someone, comparing the Germans with the Thiers government, suggested that the kraut eaters were good Christians after all.

  While news was arriving of the French government's withdrawal to Versailles, I received a note from Goedsche telling me that the Prussians were no longer interested in what was going on in Paris and so the pigeon loft and photographic darkroom would be dismantled. But on the same day I received a visit from Lagrange, who appeared to have guessed what Goedsche had written.