The Prague Cemetery

by Umberto Eco

  "And who tells you, my daughter," he said, "that the one who subjects you to these tortures is your lord Lucifer? Do you not think, in contempt and punishment for your Palladian faith, your enemy is the Enemy par excellence, that aeon whom the Christians call Jesus Christ, or one of his supposed saints?"

  "But Father," said Diana, confused, "if I am Palladian, it is because I do not recognize any power in Christ the Tyrant, to such an extent that one day I refused to stab the host because I thought it mad to recognize a real presence in what was only a lump of flour."

  "There you are wrong, my child. See what Christians do, who recognize the sovereignty of their Christ, yet despite this they do not deny the existence of the devil; indeed, they fear his enticements, his enmity, his seductions. And we must do likewise. If we believe in the power of our lord Lucifer, it is because we believe that his enemy Adonai has a spiritual existence, even in the guise of Christ, and manifests himself through his iniquity. And therefore you must stoop to trample upon the image of your enemy in the only way that a faithful Luciferian is permitted to do."

  "Which is?"

  "The black mass. You will not obtain the benevolence of Lucifer our lord except by celebrating your rejection of the Christian God through the black mass."

  Diana seemed to be convinced, and Boullan asked my permission to take her to a gathering of Satanist devotees, in his attempt to persuade her that Satanism and Luciferianism and Palladism had the same purposes and the same purifying function.

  I did not like to allow Diana out of the house, but I had to give her some space to breathe.

  I find Abbé Boullan in intimate conversation with Diana, saying, "You enjoyed yesterday?"

  What happened yesterday?

  The abbé continues: "Well, tomorrow evening I have to celebrate another solemn Mass in a deconsecrated church at Passy. A marvelous evening, it is the 21st of March, the spring equinox, a date full of occult significance. But if you agree to come, I will have to prepare you spiritually, now, alone, in confession."

  I left, and Boullan remained with her for more than an hour. When he finally called for me again, he said that Diana would be going to the church at Passy the following day, but would like me to accompany her.

  "Yes, Father," Diana said to me with eyes unusually sparkling and cheeks flushed. "Please do."

  I should have refused, but I was curious and did not want Boullan to think me a prig.

  I tremble as I write. My hand runs across the page almost by itself. I'm not recalling but reliving it, as if describing something that is happening at this very instant.

  It was the evening of the 21st of March. You, Captain, began your diary on the 24th of March, recounting how I had lost my memory on the morning of the 22nd. If something terrible happened, it must have been on the evening of the 21st.

  I am trying to piece it together but find it difficult. I have a fever, I fear; my forehead is burning.

  Having picked up Diana at Auteuil, I give an address to the fiacre driver, who looks at me out of the corner of his eye as if he mistrusts a customer like me, despite my ecclesiastical dress, but when offered a generous tip he sets off without saying anything. We travel farther and farther from the center of town, along roads that become darker and darker, until we turn into a lane flanked by abandoned houses which ends abruptly at the almost derelict façade of an old chapel.

  We get out, and the coachman seems anxious, to such an extent that when, having paid the fare, I search my pockets for a few extra francs, he shouts, "It doesn't matter, Father, thanks all the same!" and forgoes the tip in order to be off as soon as possible.

  "It's cold, I'm frightened," says Diana, pressing against me. I pull back, but at the same time, though I cannot see her arm, I feel it under the clothes she is wearing, and I realize she is dressed strangely: she wears a hooded cloak, covering her from head to foot, so in the darkness she might be mistaken for a monk, or one of those characters appearing in monastery crypts in those gothic novels that were much in vogue at the beginning of this century. I had never seen it before, though, then again, it had never crossed my mind to examine the trunk with all the things she had brought with her from Doctor Du Maurier's house.

  The small door of the chapel is half open. We enter a single nave, illuminated by an array of candles that burn on the altar and by many lighted tripods that form a circle around a small apse. The altar is covered with a dark pall, like those used for funerals. Above, in place of the cruci- fix or other image, is a statue of the devil in the form of a he-goat, with a large phallus protruding by at least thirty centimeters. The candles are not white or ivory but black. At the center of the altar, in a tabernacle, are three skulls.

  "Abbé Boullan told me about them," Diana whispers to me. "They are the relics of the three Magi, the real ones, Theobens, Menser and Saïr. They received a warning when they saw a falling star burn out, and turned away from Palestine so as not to be witnesses to the birth of Christ."

  In front of the altar, arranged in a semicircle, is a row of youngsters, boys to the right and girls to the left. Both groups are so unripe in age that little difference is to be noted between the two sexes, and that charming amphitheater would seem populated by sweet androgynes, whose differences are all the more concealed by the fact that all wear a crown of dried roses on their heads, except that the boys are naked, and can be distinguished for their member, which they flaunt and show to each other, while the girls are covered with short tunics of almost trans- parent fabric, which caress their small breasts and the unripe curves of their hips, without hiding anything. They are all very beautiful, even if their faces express more malice than innocence, but this certainly increases their charm — and I have to confess (a curious situation in which I, a member of the clergy, confess to you, Captain!) that while I feel, not terror, but at least fear in front of a woman who is now mature, it is difficult for me to resist the seduction of a prepubescent creature.

  Those unusual acolytes hold resinous branches to the tripods, lighting them, and with them they charge the thuribles, from which a dense smoke and an enervating aroma of exotic spices are unleashed. Others among those naked, gracile children are distributing small cups, and one is also offered to me. "Drink, Monsieur Abbé," says a youth with brazen gaze. "It is to help you enter the spirit of the ritual."

  I drink it and now see and hear everything as if in a mist.

  Here Boullan enters. He is wearing a white chlamys, and over it a red chasuble embroidered with an upside-down crucifix. At the intersection of the two arms of the cross is the image of a black he-goat, rearing up on its hind legs, horns spread. At the first movement the abbé makes, as if by chance or negligence but in fact out of brazen depravity, the chlamys opens to reveal a phallus of notable proportions that I would never have imagined on that flaccid individual, and already erect, due to some drug taken earlier. His thighs are bound by two dark yet transparent stockings, like those worn by Celeste Mogador when she danced the cancan at Bal Mabille (now reproduced in Charivari and other weekly publications, and there, alas, for priests and abbés to see, whether they wish to or not).

  The celebrant has turned his back to the congregation and begins his Mass in Latin while the androgynes give the responses:

  "In nomine Astaroth et Asmodei et Beelzébuth. Introibo ad altare Satanae."

  "Qui laetificat cupiditatem nostram."

  "Lucifer omnipotens, emitte tenebram tuam et afflige inimicos nostros."

  "Ostende nobis, Domine Satana, potentiam tuam, et exaudi luxuriam meam."

  "Et blasphemia mea ad te veniat."

  Then Boullan takes a cross from his robe, places it beneath his feet and tramples on it several times: "O Cross, I crush thee in memory of and in vengeance for the ancient Masters of the Temple. I crush thee because thou were an instrument of false sanctification of the false god Jesus Christ."

  At this moment, Diana, without warning, and as if struck by an illumination (but certainly following the instructions
that Boullan had given her yesterday in confession), crosses the nave between the two groups of devotees and goes straight to the foot of the altar. Turning toward the faithful (or unfaithful, as it were) with a hieratic gesture, she suddenly removes her hood and cloak, appearing stark-naked. I cannot describe it, Captain Simonini, but it is as if I see her now, unveiled as Isis, her face covered only by a slender black mask.

  I am overcome as if by a spasm, seeing a woman for the first time in all the unbearable violence of her body stripped bare. Her tawny golden hair that she keeps chastely in a bun is let free, and falls immodestly to caress buttocks of wickedly perfect roundness. The haughty thin neck of this pagan statue rises like a column above shoulders of marble whiteness, while her breasts (and I see the naked bosoms of a woman for the first time) stand out arrogantly and satanically proud. Between them, the only un fleshly remnant, the locket that Diana is never without.

  Diana turns and climbs the three steps up to the altar with lubricious ease, then, helped by the celebrant, she lies upon it. Her head rests on a black velvet cushion fringed with silver, her hair flows over the edge of the altar, her belly is slightly arched, her legs splayed to show the auburn fleece hiding the entrance to her womanly cavern while her body shines eerily in the reddish glow of the candles. Dear God, I don't know how to describe what I am seeing. It is as if my natural horror of female flesh and the fear it moves within me are melting away to leave just enough space for one new feeling, as if a hitherto un sampled elixir is running through my veins . . .

  Boullan has placed a small ivory phallus on Diana's breast, and on her belly an embroidered cloth on which he has laid a chalice made of dark stone.

  From the chalice he takes a host, not one of those already consecrated ones that you trade in, Captain Simonini, but a wafer that Boullan, still a fully fledged priest of the Holy Roman Church, though probably now excommunicated, is about to consecrate on Diana's belly.

  And he says: "Suscipe, Domine Satana, hanc hostiam, quam ego indignus famulus tuus offero tibi. Amen."

  Then he takes the host and, after lowering it twice toward the ground, raising it twice heavenward and turning it once to the right and to the left, shows it to the congregation, saying: "From the south I invoke the benevolence of Satan, from the east the benevolence of Lucifer, from the north the benevolence of Belial, from the west the benevolence of Leviathan. Open wide the gates of hell, and may the Sentries of the Bottomless Pit, invoked by these names, come unto me. Our Father, who art in hell, accursed be thy name, thy kingdom be annihilated, thy will be scorned, on earth as it is in hell! May the Name of the Beast be praised!"

  And the chorus of youngsters, loudly: "Six six six!"

  The Number of the Beast!

  Boullan now cries out: "May Lucifer be glorified, whose Name is Doom. O master of sin, of unnatural loves, of incestuous blessings, of divine sodomy, Satan, it is you whom we adore! And you O Jesus, I compel to become flesh in this host, so that we can renew your suffering and torment you once again with the nails that crucified you and pierce you with the lance of Longinus!"

  "Six six six," the youths repeat.

  Boullan raises the host and pronounces: "In the beginning was the flesh, and the flesh was with Lucifer, and the flesh was Lucifer. The same was in the beginning with Lucifer: all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was. And the flesh was made word and dwelt among us in the darkness, and we beheld the obscure splendor of Lucifer's only begotten daughter, filled with screams and fury and desire."

  He slides the host along Diana's belly, then plunges it into her vagina. As he removes it, he raises it toward the nave, crying out loudly: "Take and eat!"

  Two of the androgynes prostrate themselves in front of him, raise his chlamys and together kiss his erect member. Then the whole group of adolescents fall at his feet and, while the boys begin to masturbate, the girls pull off each other's veils and roll over each other, letting out voluptuous cries. The air is filled with other, more unbearably violent scents, and all those watching, first with lustful sighs, then gasps of rapture, gradually strip naked and begin to copulate, one with the other, with no distinction as to sex or age, and through the vapors I see a hag, over seventy, her skin heavily wrinkled, her breasts reduced to two lettuce leaves, her legs skeletal, rolling across the floor as an adolescent voraciously kisses what was once her vulva.

  I am shaking all over. I look around to see how I might escape from that den of iniquity. The space in which I crouch is so full of poisonous vapor that it is as though I am caught in a thick cloud. What I drank at the beginning has surely drugged me. I can no longer think straight, and see everything as if through a reddish cloud. And it is through this cloud that I catch sight of Diana, still naked, without her mask, descending from the altar. The demented throng, though continuing their carnal mayhem, help clear a way for her to pass. She comes toward me.

  Gripped by the fear of being reduced to the same state as that frenzied mass, I draw back but end up against a pillar. Diana arrives panting over me. Oh God! My pen shakes, my mind is failing, crying as I am (now as then) with disgust, unable to scream because she has filled my mouth with something not mine. I feel myself rolling on the ground — the vapors are drugging me. That body trying to merge with mine arouses a deathlike excitement within me. I am touching that alien flesh (with my hands, as if I wanted it!), possessed as if I were a hysteric at the Salpêtrière. I penetrate a gash in her with the insane curiosity of a surgeon, I beg that sorceress to leave me, I bite her to defend myself, and she cries out for me to do it again. I throw my head back, thinking of Doctor Tissot. I know that such abandonment will cause my whole body to waste away, will bring an ashen pallor to my dying face, clouded vision and disturbed dreams, husky voice, pains in my eyeballs, the invasion of pestilent red marks upon my face, the vomiting of calciferous materials, palpitations — and fi- nally, with syphilis, blindness.

  And though I can no longer see, I feel the most excruciating and indescribable and unbearable sensation of my life, as if all the blood from throughout my veins were suddenly gushing out from a tear in each of my taut limbs, from my nose, from my ears, from my fingertips, from my anus, help, help, I think I know now what death is, from which every living being recoils, even when he seeks it through an unnatural instinct to multiply his own seed.

  I can no longer write, I no longer recall, I am reliving, the experience is unbearable, I wish I could forget it all again . . .

  As if reviving from a state of unconsciousness, I find Boullan beside me holding Diana by the hand, her cloak covering her once again. Boullan tells me there is a carriage at the door: "You had better take Diana home, she looks exhausted." She is trembling and mumbles unintelligible words.

  Boullan is unusually obliging, and at first I think he wants to be forgiven for something — after all, it was he who had dragged me into this disgusting business. But when I tell him he can go and that I will look after Diana, he insists on coming with us, reminding me that he too lives at Auteuil. He seems jealous. To annoy him I say I'm not going to Auteuil but somewhere else, that I am taking Diana to a trusted friend.

  He turns pale, as if I were carrying offa trophy that belongs to him.

  "Never mind," he says, "I'll come as well. Diana needs help.

  " Having climbed into the fiacre, I give my rue Maître-Albert address without thinking, as if I had decided that Diana should no longer live at Auteuil. Boullan looks blankly at me, but remains silent, and climbs in, clutching Diana's hand.

  We say nothing during the journey. I let them into my apartment. I lay Diana on the bed, grasp her wrist and speak to her, for the first time after all that has happened between us.

  "Why, why?" I shout.

  Boullan tries to intervene, but I push him violently against the wall, causing him to slide to the floor. Only then do I realize how weak and sickly that demon is. In comparison, I am a Hercules.

  Diana struggles free, her cloak falling open at her b
reast. I cannot bear to see her flesh again, I try to cover her up, my hand is caught in the chain of her medallion. In the brief exchange it breaks, the medallion remains in my hand, Diana tries to take it back, I move away to the back of the room and open the small locket.

  Inside is a golden outline depicting, without doubt, Moses' Tablets of the Law and some Hebrew writing.

  "What does it mean?" I ask, approaching Diana on the bed, her eyes staring blankly. What do these symbols behind your mother's portrait mean?

  "My mother," she murmurs vacantly, "my mother was a Jew . . . she believed in Adonai . . ."

  So that's it. Not only have I had intercourse with a woman of the devil's stock, but with a Jewess. The line of descent among them, I know, passes on the mother's side, and if, by this intercourse, my seed had fertilized that impure belly, I would be giving life to a Jew.

  "You cannot do this to me," I shout, and hurl myself at the prostitute, grasping her by the neck. She struggles, I increase my grip, Boullan has regained consciousness and throws himself on me. Once again I push him back, with a kick in the groin, and watch him collapse into a corner of the room. I throw myself on Diana once again (oh, truly have I lost my wits!), and her eyes seem gradually to come out of their sockets, her tongue hangs swollen from her mouth, I hear a last breath, then her body slumps lifeless.

  I pull myself together. I think about the enormity of what I have done. Boullan is groaning in a corner, almost emasculated. I try to recover my senses and laugh: whatever happens, at least I won't be father to a Jew.

  I tell myself I have to hide the woman's body downstairs in the sewer — it is becoming more accommodating than your Prague cemetery, Captain. But it is dark, I need to take a lamp with me, I have to go the whole length of the passageway as far as your house, go down into the shop and from there into the sewer. I need the help of Boullan, who is picking himself up from the floor and staring at me with the eyes of a madman.