UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY

by Eco, Umberto

  If there were only the two of us, something is not right. You would have been rummaging through my things at eight o'clock in the morning and I would have pursued you. Then I'd have gone rummaging through your things at eleven and you'd have followed me. But why does each of us remember the time and moment when he found the intruder in his house and not the time and moment when he entered the other's house?

  We could, of course, have forgotten, or have wanted to forget, or we could have kept quiet about it for some reason. But I, for example, am quite sure, in absolute honesty, that I have not kept quiet about anything. Then again, let's be honest, the idea that two different people would have the same desire at the same time to conceal a certain fact from the other seems rather fanciful, and not even Montépin would have dreamed up such a story.

  It is more likely that three people were involved. A mysterious Monsieur Mystère, who I thought was you, enters my apartment in the early morning. At eleven o'clock the same Monsieur Mystère, who you think is me, enters your place. Does it seem so incredible, with all the spies around?

  But this does not confirm that we are two different people. The same person can, as Simonini, remember Mystère visiting at eight, then lose his memory and, as Dalla Piccola, remember Mystère visiting at eleven.

  The whole story, therefore, doesn't really answer the problem of our identity. It has simply complicated the lives of both of us (or of that person who we both are) by involving a third person who is able to enter our apartments as and when he pleases.

  And what if, rather than three of us, there are four? Mystère 1 enters my place at eight and Mystère 2 enters your place at eleven. What relationship is there between Mystère 1 and Mystère 2?

  Then again, can we be entirely sure that the person who pursued your Mystère was you and not me? That's a fine question, you must admit.

  In any event, let me warn you. I have my swordstick. As soon as I see another figure in my house, I'll strike and won't check first who it is. It's unlikely to be me, and that I'd be killing myself. I might kill Monsieur Mystère (either 1 or 2). Or I might kill you. So beware.

  12th April, evening

  Your words, which I read on awakening from a long slumber, troubled me. And, as if in a dream, a picture came to mind of Doctor Bataille (but who was he?) at Auteuil, who, while rather drunk, gave me a small pistol, saying, "I'm frightened, we've gone too far, the Masons want us dead, you'd better be armed." I was afraid, more about the pistol than the threat, since I knew (how?) I could take care of the Masons. The following day I left the gun in a drawer here in the apartment in rue Maître-Albert.

  This afternoon you frightened me, so I went back to the drawer. I had a strange feeling, as if I were repeating something I had already done, but then I pulled myself together. Enough about dreams. Around six o'clock this evening I ventured cautiously toward your apartment, along the corridor where the costumes hang. I saw a dark figure coming toward me, a man who was bent forward, holding just a small candle. It might have been you, my God, but I lost my head. I shot him and he fell at my feet, motionless.

  He was dead, with a single shot to his heart. I had fired a gun for the first time in my life, and I hope the last. How appalling.

  I rummaged through his pockets. All he had were letters written in Russian. And then, looking at his face, I saw he had the high cheekbones and slightly slanting eyes of a Kalmyk, not to mention his blond, almost white hair. He was undoubtedly a Slav. What did he want from me?

  I couldn't let the corpse remain in the house. I carried it down to your cellar, opened the trap door leading to the sewer and this time found the courage to climb down the steps. Dragging the body with great difficulty, and at the risk of being suffocated by the miasma, I took it as far as the point where I thought I would find the bones of the other Dalla Piccola. Instead I had two surprises. First, that those vapors and that underground mold, by some miracle of chemistry, the supreme science of our time, had helped to preserve for decades what ought to have been my mortal remains, which had been reduced to a skeleton, but with some vestige of a substance similar to leather, so as to retain a form that was still human, though mummified. The second surprise was that beside the presumed Dalla Piccola I found two other bodies, one of a man in a cassock, the other of a half-naked woman, both in a state of decomposition, but one of whom seemed very familiar. Who were these corpses that put me in such turmoil and filled my mind with such unspeakable images? I do not know, nor do I wish to find out. But our two stories are much more complicated than they seem.

  Don't tell me now that something similar has happened to you. I cannot bear this game of double coincidence.

  12th April, night

  Dear Abbé,

  I don't go around killing people, at least not without cause. But I went down to have a look at the sewer, where I haven't been for years. Good Lord, there are indeed four corpses. One of them I left there a long time ago, another one you yourself took down this evening, but the other two?

  * * *

  He was dead, with a single shot to his heart.

  * * *

  Who is visiting my sewer and dumping bodies? The Russians? What do the Russians want from me — from you — from us?

  Oh, quelle histoire!

  21

  TAXIL

  From the diary for 13th April 1897

  Simonini was anxious to understand who had entered his house —and Dalla Piccola's. He thought back to the early years of the 1880s when he used to visit the salon of Juliette Adam (whom he had met as Madame Lamessine at the bookshop in rue de Beaune). There he had come to know Yuliana Dimitrievna Glinka, and through her met Rachkovsky. If someone had broken into his (or Dalla Piccola's) apartment, he had no doubt been sent by one of those two, who, he seemed to remember, were rivals hunting for the same treasure. But fifteen years or so had passed since then, during which so much had happened. How long had the Russians been following him?

  Or was it the Freemasons? He must have done something to upset them. Perhaps they were looking for compromising papers. Back at that time he had tried to make contact with the Freemasons to satisfy Osman Bey, as well as Father Bergamaschi, who was breathing down his neck because Rome was about to launch a fullscale attack on the Freemasons (and on the Jews, who were supporting them) and needed fresh material — they had so little that Civiltà Cattolica,the Jesuit journal, had been forced to republish his grandfather Simonini's letter to Barruel, though it had already been printed three years earlier in Le Contemporain.

  He thought back: at the time he had been unsure whether it was a good idea for him to join a lodge. He would be subject to certain rules of obedience, would have to attend meetings and could not refuse favors to brethren. All of this would have reduced his freedom of movement. What was more, he could not exclude the possibility of the lodge, before accepting him, investigating his life past and present, something he could not allow. Perhaps it would be better to blackmail some Mason and use him as an informer. A notary who had drawn up so many false wills (and for inheritances of considerable value) must surely have come across some Masonic dignitary or other.

  Then again, perhaps he didn't have to make outright threats of blackmail. Simonini had felt for some time that his move from mouchard to international spy had been profitable, but had not proved sufficient to satisfy his ambitions. Being a spy obliged him to live an almost hidden existence, but as he grew older he felt an increasing need for a more rewarding and respectable social life. This was how he saw his true vocation: not to be a spy but for everyone to think he was a spy, and one who played at different tables, so no one was ever sure for whom he was collecting information, and how much information he might have.

  Being thought of as a spy was very profitable, as everyone was trying to get what they believed to be priceless secrets from him, and they were prepared to spend a great deal for them. But because they did not want to be open about it, they used his business of lawyer as a pretext, paying his exorbitant bills wit
hout batting an eyelid and, indeed, not only paying excessively for trivial legal services but doing so without receiving any information. They simply thought they had paid their bribe and were waiting patiently for some news.

  The Narrator feels that Simonini was ahead of his time: in reality, with the spread of a free press and new ways of communication, with telegraph and radio now imminent, confidential information was becoming increasingly rare, and this could have led to difficulties for the secret agent. Better not to have any secrets, but to make people believe you have. It was like living on a private income or enjoying earnings from patent rights — you enjoy a life of leisure while others boast about having received amazing revelations from you, your fame increases, and the money rolls in without your lifting a finger.

  Whom could he contact? Who might fear being blackmailed without any actual blackmail taking place? The first name that leapt to mind was Taxil. He recalled having met Taxil when he had forged some letters (from whom? to whom?), and that Taxil had spoken with a certain self-importance about his membership in a lodge called Le Temple des Amis de l'Honneur Français. Was Taxil the right man? He didn't want to make a false move and sought advice from Hébuterne. His new contact, unlike Lagrange, never changed his meeting place: it was always a point at the rear of the central nave in Notre Dame.

  Simonini asked him what the secret service knew about Taxil. Hébuterne began to laugh. "It's usually we who ask you for information, not the other way around. But I'll see what help I can give. The name rings a bell, but it's nothing to do with the secret service. It's a police matter. I'll let you know in a few days."

  The report arrived by the end of the week and was most interesting. It stated that Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès, alias Léo Taxil, was born in Marseilles in 1854, had been taught by the Jesuits and, by the age of eighteen, as an obvious consequence, had begun working for anticlerical newspapers. In Marseilles he mixed with women of ill repute, including a prostitute later sentenced to twelve years hard labor for killing her landlady, and another subsequently arrested for attempting to murder her lover. The police may have been unkind in alleging other casual relationships, and this was strange, since it appeared that Taxil had also worked for them, providing information about his dealings in republican circles. But perhaps the police also found him an embarrassment, as he was once prosecuted for advertising what were described as Bonbons du Serrail, which were in effect aphrodisiac pills. In 1873, again in Marseilles, he sent letters to local newspapers, all with the false signatures of fishermen, warning that the coastal waters were infested with sharks, and creating considerable alarm. Later, when convicted for writing articles offending religion, he escaped to Geneva. There he circulated stories about the existence of a ruined Roman city submerged beneath Lake Geneva, attracting hordes of tourists. He was expelled from Switzerland for spreading false and misleading information and moved first to Montpellier and then to Paris, where he opened a Librairie Anticléricale in rue des Écoles. He had recently joined a Masonic lodge but was expelled soon after for unworthy conduct. It appeared that his anticlerical activity was no longer as profitable as it had been, and he was heavily in debt.

  Simonini now remembered all about Taxil. He had produced a series of books that, as well as being anticlerical, were distinctly antireligious, such as a Life of Jesus told through highly irreverent illustrations (for example, depicting relations between Mary and the dove of the Holy Spirit). He had written a scurrilous novel, The Jesuit Son,which proved that the author was a charlatan. It carried a dedication on the front page to Giuseppe Garibaldi ("whom I love like a father"). So far so good. But the title page promised an "Introduction" by Giuseppe Garibaldi. The title of the introduction was "Anticlerical Thoughts," which took the form of a furious tirade ("when I see a priest before me, and especially a Jesuit, the quintessential priest, I am struck by the whole baseness of his nature to the point that it makes me shudder and feel sick"), but there was no mention of the work it apparently introduced — and it was clear that Taxil had taken this text by Garibaldi from somewhere else and presented it as if it had been written for his book.

  Simonini did not wish to take any risks with someone like this. He decided to present himself as a notary by the name of Fournier, and dressed himself in a well-groomed wig of indeterminate color, tending toward auburn, with a part on one side. He added side whiskers of the same color to lengthen his face, which he lightened with a suitable cream. In the mirror, he tried to fix a slightly vacant smile, which would reveal two gold incisors, thanks to a minor masterpiece of dentistry that enabled him to cover his natural teeth. This small denture also distorted his speech and thus altered his voice.

  * * *

  He had produced a Life of Jesus told through highly

  irreverent illustrations (for example, depicting relations

  between Mary and the dove of the Holy Spirit).

  * * *

  He sent a petit bleu by pneumatic post to his man in rue des Écoles, inviting him to the Café Riche the following day. This was a good way of introducing himself, since many illustrious people had passed through that restaurant, and a parvenu inclined to bragging could hardly have resisted the delights of sole or woodcock à la Riche.

  Léo Taxil had a chubby, oily face ornamented with a fine mustache. He had a broad forehead and balding pate from which he was continually wiping sweat, an overly accentuated elegance, and he spoke loudly, with an insufferable Marseillais accent.

  He didn't know the exact reasons why this notary wished to talk to him, but gradually began to flatter himself that Maître Fournier was an acute observer of human nature, like many of those whom novelists of the time described as "philosophers," and was interested in his anticlerical arguments and his singular experiences. And he therefore entertained his host with stories about his juvenile pranks, talking while he ate: "When I spread the story about the sharks around Marseilles, all the resorts from Plage des Catalans as far as Prado were empty for weeks. The mayor said the sharks had definitely come from Corsica, following a ship that had been throwing the rotten remains of smoked meat into the sea. The municipal commission asked for a company of chassepotsto be sent out on a tugboat expedition, and a hundred of them actually arrived at General Espivent's headquarters! And the story about Lake Geneva? Journalists arrived from every part of Europe! Word got around that the underwater city had been built during the time of Caesar's De bello gallico,when the lake was so narrow that the River Rhone could cross it without their waters merging. The local boatmen did good business carrying tourists to the middle of the lake, and used to pour oil on the water so they could see better . . . A famous Polish archaeologist sent an article back home in which he described having seen a crossroads with an equestrian statue on the bed of the lake! Man's principal trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absence of universal gullibility?"

  Simonini asked for information about Le Temple des Amis de l'Honneur Français.

  "Is it difficult to join a lodge?"

  "All you need is to be well off and ready to pay the annual dues, which are steep. And to show you're willing to comply with the rules on mutual care between brothers. And as for morality, they talk a great deal about it, but even last year the speaker of the Grand College of Rites was the owner of a brothel in the Chaussée d'Antin, and one of the thirty-three most influential brethren in Paris is a spy, or rather the head of the secret service, which is the same thing —one Hébuterne."

  "But what do you have to do to be admitted?"

  "There are a number of rites — if only you knew! I have no idea whether they really believe in the Great Architect of the Universe they're always talking about, but they certainly take their ceremonies seriously. You'd never guess what I had to do to become an apprentice!"

  And here Taxil began to tell some hair-raising stories.

  Simonini wondered whether Taxil, a compulsive liar, might no
t have been inventing it all. Wasn't he revealing things that an adept should have jealously guarded? Hadn't he perhaps described the whole ritual in a rather ludicrous fashion? Taxil replied casually: "Ah, you know, I'm no longer bound by any duty. Those imbeciles have expelled me."

  He seemed to have had a hand in a new newspaper in Montpellier, Le Midi Républicain,which in its first issue had published letters of encouragement and solidarity from various important people, including Victor Hugo and Louis Blanc. Then, suddenly, all those supposed signatories had sent letters to other newspapers with Masonic leanings denying ever having given such support and complaining bitterly about the way their names had been used. This was followed by several Masonic trials, during which Taxil's defense consisted, first, in presenting the originals of those letters, and second, in attributing Hugo's behavior to the illustrious old man's senile decay — thus harming his first argument with an intolerable insult to a figure revered by both the nation and Freemasonry.

  Simonini now remembered the moment when, as Simonini, he had forged the two letters from Hugo and Blanc. Taxil had obviously forgotten the episode. He was so accustomed to lying, even to himself, that he was able to describe the letters with an apparent glint of honesty in his eyes, as if they had been genuine. And though he might have vaguely recalled a notary called Simonini, he wouldn't have connected him with Maître Fournier.

  What mattered was that Taxil professed a deep hatred of those who had once been fellow members of his lodge.

  Simonini immediately realized that, by encouraging Taxil's storytelling skills, he would be able to gather some toothsome material for Osman Bey. But another idea was forming in his fertile imagination, first as a mere impression, the seed of an intuition, and then as a plan that was complete in almost every detail.