UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY

by Eco, Umberto

  I can still picture the scene, as if I were looking at a daguerreotype.

  I immediately had the feeling that Taxil was not so much interested in the seventy-five thousand francs and the promise of future rights (even though the money on the table brought a twinkle to his eye) as in the idea of doing a complete about-face and, from hardened anticlerical, becoming a fervent Catholic. He relished the idea of shocking others and reading the news about himself in the newspapers. Much better than inventing a Roman city at the bottom of Lake Geneva.

  He laughed heartily, and was already planning his forthcoming books, including ideas for the illustrations.

  "Yes," he said, "I can already see a whole book, more fantastic than a novel, on the mysteries of Freemasonry. A winged Baphomet on the cover and a severed head to suggest the satanic rites of the Templars . . . By God (excuse the expression, Monsieur Abbé), it will be the news of the day. And despite what those evil books of mine have said, to be a Catholic, and a believer, and on good terms with the clergy, would bring me such respectability, even among my family and neighbors, who often look at me as if it were I who had crucified Our Lord Jesus. But who do you say could help me?"

  "I'll introduce you to an oracle, a creature who, when hypnotized, has incredible stories to tell about Palladian rituals." The oracle must have been Diana Vaughan. It seemed I knew all about her. I remember going one morning to Vincennes, as if I already knew Doctor Du Maurier's address. His clinic is a house of modest dimensions, with a small but attractive garden. Various patients are seated in apparent tranquillity, enjoying the sun and blankly ignoring each other.

  I introduced myself to Du Maurier, reminding him that you had spoken about me. I vaguely mentioned a society of charitable ladies who cared for mentally disturbed young women, and he seemed much relieved.

  "I must warn you," he said, "that today Diana is in what I term her normal state. Captain Simonini will have told you the story. In this state we have the depraved Diana, so to speak, who believes she is a disciple of a mysterious Masonic sect. So as not to alarm her, I'll introduce you as a brother Mason . . . wishing no disrespect to a member of the clergy."

  He took me to a room that was simply furnished with a wardrobe and bed and where, on an armchair covered in white cloth, sat a woman with regular, delicate features, soft auburn hair gathered on top of her head, a haughty gaze and a small, shapely mouth. Her lips immediately curled with scorn: "Does Doctor Du Maurier wish to thrust me into the maternal arms of the Church?" she asked.

  "No, Diana," Du Maurier said. "Despite the cassock, he's one of our brethren."

  "Which obedience?" Diana immediately asked.

  I evaded her question. "I am not permitted to say," I murmured cautiously. "Perhaps you know why."

  Diana's reaction seemed fitting. "I understand," she said. "The Grand Master of Charleston sent you. I am glad you can give him my version of events. The meeting took place in rue de la Croix Nivert, at Les Coeurs Unis Indivisibles lodge, which I am sure you know. I was due to be initiated as a Mistress Templar, and I presented myself in all possible humility to worship the only worthy god, Lucifer, and to abominate the evil god, Adonai, god the father of the Catholics. I approached the altar of Baphomet, believe me, full of ardor, where Sophia Sapho was waiting for me. She began to question me about the Palladian dogmas, and I replied, once again with humility: ' 'To execrate Jesus, curse Adonai, venerate Lucifer.' Is this not how the Grand Master wanted it?" In asking this, Diana took hold of my hands.

  "Certainly it is," I replied cautiously.

  "And I pronounced the ritual oration: 'Come, come, O great Lucifer, O great one, vilified by priests and kings!' And I trembled with emotion when the whole assembly, each person raising a dagger, shouted 'Nekam Adonai, Nekam!' But just as I was stepping up to the altar, Sophia Sapho gave me a paten of the kind I had seen only in the windows of shops selling religious objects, and while I was wondering what that horrible paraphernalia from the Roman cult was doing there, the Grand Mistress explained to me that, since Jesus had betrayed the true god, had signed on the Tabor an evil pact with Adonai and had subverted the order of things by transforming the bread into his own body, it was our duty to stab that blasphemous host with which priests repeat each day the betrayal of Jesus. Tell me, Monsieur, does the Grand Master wish this act to form part of an initiation?"

  "It is not for me to say," I said. "Perhaps it is better you tell me what you did."

  "I refused, of course. To stab the host means believing that it really is the body of Christ, whereas a Palladian must refuse to believe this lie. Stabbing the host is a Catholic ritual for Catholic believers!"

  "I believe you are right. I will pass on your justification to the Grand Master."

  "Thank you, brother," said Diana, and she kissed my hands. Then, almost unthinkingly, she unbuttoned the upper part of her blouse, revealing a marble-white shoulder, and looked at me with an inviting gaze. But suddenly she fell back into the chair, as if struck by a convulsive attack. Doctor Du Maurier called a nurse, and together they carried the girl to the bed. "When she has a crisis of this kind," the doctor said, "she generally passes from one state to the other. She hasn't yet lost consciousness — there's just a contracture of the jaw and tongue. All that's required is light ovarian compression . . ."

  After a short while her lower jaw dropped, flexing to the left, the mouth distorted, remaining open so her tongue could be seen at the back, curled into a semicircle, with the tip invisible, as if the patient were about to swallow it. Then the tongue relaxed, suddenly stretched out so that part of it emerged from her mouth, and moved rapidly in and out several times, as if from the mouth of a snake. Finally the tongue and jaw returned to their natural state, and the patient spoke a few words: "My tongue . . . my mouth's sore . . . there's a spider in my ear . . ."

  After a brief pause, there was another contracture of the patient's jaw and tongue. She was once again calmed with ovarian compression, but shortly afterward her breathing became labored, she uttered a few disjointed phrases, her stare became fixed, the pupils directed upward, and her whole body grew rigid. Her arms contracted and made a rotating movement, her wrists came together behind her back, her lower limbs stretched outward . . .

  "Equinovarus feet," commented Du Maurier. "The epileptoid stage. It's quite normal. You'll see it followed by a clown-like phase."

  Her face gradually tightened, her mouth opened and closed, and large white bubbles frothed out. The patient was now moaning and howling "Ah! Ah!," her facial muscles gripped by spasms, her eyelids flickering up and down, and her body curved into an arc as though she were an acrobat, supporting herself on just the back of her head and her feet.

  This terrible circus scene of a disjointed puppet who seemed weightless continued for several seconds, then the patient collapsed on the bed and assumed an attitude that Du Maurier described as "passionate," at first almost threatening, as if she were trying to fight off an aggressor, then almost childish, as if she were winking at someone. Immediately afterward she adopted the lewd expression of a seductress luring her prey with the obscene movements of her tongue, then assumed a pose of amorous entreaty, eyes moist, arms held out, hands together, lips protruding as if to invite a kiss. Finally, peering up so high that only the whites of her eyes could be seen, she fell into an erotic swoon. "Oh, my good lord," she said hoarsely. "O beloved serpent, sacred asp . . . I am your Cleopatra . . . Here on my breasts . . . I will feed you . . . O my love, enter, the whole of you, within me . . ."

  "Diana sees a sacred serpent which penetrates her. Others see the Sacred Heart which merges with them. For a hysteric," said Du Maurier, "seeing a phallic form or a dominating masculine image is sometimes almost equivalent to seeing the man who raped her as a child. Perhaps you have seen engravings of Bernini's Saint Teresa: you'd see no difference between her and this unfortunate girl. A mystic is a hysteric who has met her confessor before her doctor."

  * * *

  Her body curved into
an arc as though she were an acrobat,

  supporting herself on just the back of her head and her feet.

  * * *

  Diana was meanwhile stretched out in the form of a crucifix and had entered a new state, in which she began to utter strange threats to somebody and was announcing terrifying revelations while rolling violently on the bed.

  "Let us leave her to rest," said Du Maurier. "When she reawakens, she'll have entered her second state and will be upset about the horrible things she'll remember having said to you. You must tell your charitable ladies not to be frightened if crises such as this occur. All they have to do is hold her firmly and place a handkerchief in her mouth so she doesn't bite her tongue. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to feed her a few drops of the tincture that I will give you."

  Then he added: "The fact is this creature has to be kept segregated. And I cannot keep her here. This is not a prison, it is a sanatorium. People walk about, and it is useful, indeed essential, for their treatment that they talk to each other and get the idea of living a normal, happy life. My patients are not mad. They are simply people whose nerves are shattered. Diana's attacks mustn't be allowed to affect other patients, and the intimate stories she tells during her 'bad' state, whether true or false, unsettle everyone. I hope your charitable ladies are able to keep her isolated."

  The impression I gained from the meeting was that the doctor was anxious to rid himself of Diana. He was asking for her to be kept practically imprisoned, and was concerned about her having contact with others. Moreover, he seemed worried that someone might take what she said seriously, and therefore was safeguarding himself by immediately suggesting it was the delirium of a madwoman.

  I had rented the house at Auteuil a few days before. It was nothing special, but reasonably comfortable. You entered the typical drawing room of a bourgeois family, with a mahogany divan upholstered in old Utrecht velvet, red damask curtains, a mantel clock on the fireplace between two vases of flowers under glass domes, a console table beneath a mirror and a well-polished tiled floor. Off it was a bedroom, which I had prepared for Diana. The walls were hung with a pearl-gray moiré fabric, and the floor had a thick carpet with large red rosettes; the curtains around the bed and the windows were of the same cloth, woven with broad stripes of violet to break up the monotony. Over the bed hung a chromolithograph depicting two pastoral lovers, and on a console table stood a pendulum clock inlaid with small artificial gemstones, on either side of which two cherubs held a bunch of lilies arranged to form a candelabrum.

  Upstairs were another two bedrooms. One was set aside for an old woman who was half deaf and partial to the bottle, who had the merit of not coming from the local area and was willing to do anything to earn some money. I don't remember who recommended her, but she seemed the ideal person to look after Diana when no one else was there, and to calm her down when she had one of her attacks.

  It occurs to me, as I write, that the old lady must have received no news of me for a month. Perhaps I left her enough money to get by, but for how long? I should go to Auteuil immediately, but I realize I cannot remember the address. Where in Auteuil? I can hardly wander the whole area knocking at every door to ask whether there's a Palladian hysteric with a split personality living there.

  Taxil publicly announced his conversion in April, and his first book, Les frères trois-points, was already out by November, with sensational revelations about Freemasonry. I took him to see Diana at about that time. I didn't conceal her double state, and had to explain to him that she was useful to us not in her state as a God-fearing maiden, but as an unrepentant Palladian.

  I had carefully studied the girl over the previous months, and had kept her changes of condition under control, sedating her with Doctor Du Maurier's tincture. But I realized it was stressful waiting for her unpredictable crises. A way had to be found of changing Diana's condition on command —this, after all, is what Doctor Charcot seems to do with his hysterics.

  I didn't have Charcot's magnetic power, so I went to the library to search out some more traditional treatises, such as De la cause du sommeil lucide by the old (and authentic) Abbé Faria. Following the indications in that book and several others, I decided to clamp the girl's knees between my own, take her thumbs between my two fingers and stare into her eyes, then, after at least five minutes, withdraw my hands, place them on her shoulders, move them down her arms to her fingertips five or six times, then rest them on her head, bringing them down over her face, five or six centimeters apart, as far as the hollow of her stomach, with my other fingers under her ribs, and finally to let them continue down her body as far as her knees or to the tips of her toes.

  From the point of view of decency, this was too forward for the "good" Diana, and at first it seemed she was about to scream, as if (God forgive me) I were assaulting her virginity, but it was so effective that she calmed down almost immediately, became drowsy for a few minutes and reawakened in the first state. It was easier to make her return to the second state because the "bad" Diana showed considerable pleasure in being touched, and tried to prolong my manipulation, accompanying it with unseemly movements of her body and stifled groans. Fortunately, before long, she was no longer able to avoid its hypnotic effect, and once again she became drowsy, otherwise I would have had difficulty both in prolonging contact, which disturbed me, and in controlling her repulsive lust.

  I believe that anyone of the male sex would consider Diana a creature of singular charm, at least so far as I can judge, being one who, by disposition and vocation, has remained well away from the miseries of sex; and Taxil was clearly a man of vivacious appetites.

  Doctor Du Maurier, when handing his patient over to me, had also given me a trunk full of fairly elegant clothes that Diana had brought with her when she arrived for treatment — an indication that she came from a relatively prosperous family. And with evident coquettishness, on the day I told her she would be receiving a visit from Taxil, she carefully dressed up. Although she appeared vacant in both states, she was most attentive to these small feminine details.

  Taxil was immediately fascinated ("Fine woman," he muttered to me, smacking his lips), and later, when he tried to imitate my hypnotic procedures, he tended to prolong his groping even after the patient had clearly fallen asleep, so I had to intervene with a mild "I think that's enough for now."

  I suspected that if I had left him alone with Diana while she was in her primary state, he would have indulged in other liberties, and she would have allowed him. I therefore made sure that our conversations with the girl always took place when the three of us were present. Indeed, sometimes there were four. Because to stimulate the memories and energies of Diana the Satanist and Luciferian (and her Luciferine humors), I thought it appropriate that she should meet Abbé Boullan.

  Abbé Boullan. After being interdicted by the archbishop of Paris, Boullan moved to Lyon to join the Church of Carmel, founded by Vintras, a visionary who officiated wearing a large white robe embroidered with a red upturned cross, and a diadem with an Indian phallic symbol. Vintras levitated when he prayed, sending his followers into ecstasy. During his liturgies the host oozed blood, and there were rumors of homosexual practices, of the ordination of priestesses of love, of redemption through free expression of the senses — in other words, all those things to which Boullan was much inclined. So when Vintras died, he was named his successor.

  Boullan came to Paris at least once a month. Having the chance to study a creature like Diana from the demonological point of view seemed too good to be true (so as to exorcise her more effectively, he claimed, though I already knew how he went about his exorcising). He was over sixty, but still a vigorous man, with a gaze I can only describe as magnetic.

  Boullan listened to what Diana had to say — which Taxil religiously noted down — but he seemed intent on other purposes, and sometimes, out of our hearing, whispered words of incitement or advice to the girl. Nonetheless, he was useful to us. The Masonic mysteries to be exposed included
the stabbing of the sacred hosts and various forms of black mass, on which Boullan was an authority. Taxil took notes on various demonic rites, and as his books gradually appeared, he concentrated more and more on those liturgies which his Masons practiced whenever they had the chance.

  * * *

  Vintras levitated when he prayed, sending his followers into ecstasy.

  * * *

  After publishing several books, one after the other, Taxil had almost exhausted what little he knew about Freemasonry. Fresh ideas came to him only from the "bad" Diana who appeared under hypnosis. With eyes wide open, she described scenes she might have witnessed, or might have heard spoken about in America, or might simply have imagined. They were stories that left us spellbound, and I have to say that though I am (I think) a man of experience, I was scandalized. For example, one day she began talking about the initiation of her enemy, Sophie Walder, otherwise known as Sophia Sapho. I wasn't sure whether she was aware of the incestuous character of the whole scene. She clearly didn't describe it with any tone of disapproval but rather with the excitement of someone who had been privileged to witness it.