UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (39 page)

"And so?"

"And so one day we'll have to try out the only reasonable solution, the final solution — the extermination of all Jews. Even children? Yes, even children. I know the idea might seem Herodian, but when the seed is bad it's not enough for the plant to be cut down — it has to be eradicated. If you don't want mosquitoes, you kill the larvae. Concentrating on the Alliance Israélite will just be a first step. The Alliance can only be destroyed through the complete elimination of the race."

At the end of that journey through the deserted streets of Paris, Osman Bey made a proposal.

"What you have offered me, Captain, is very little. You cannot expect me to give you important information on the Alliance, about which I will soon know everything. But I propose a pact: I am able to investigate the Jews of the Alliance, but not the Freemasons. Coming from mystical, Orthodox Russia, and without any particular acquaintances in this city's financial and intellectual circles, I cannot join the Freemasons. They take people like you, with watches in their waistcoat pockets. It shouldn't be difficult to find your way in among them. I'm told you claim to have been part of one of Garibaldi's campaigns — a Mason if ever there was one. So then, you tell me about the Masons and I'll tell you about the Alliance."

"A verbal agreement and no more?"

"Between gentlemen there's no need to put things in writing."

20

RUSSIANS?

12th April 1897, nine in the morning

Dear Abbé, we are definitely two different people. I have proof of it.

This morning, around eight o'clock, I awoke (in my own bed), went into my office, still in my nightshirt, and caught sight of a black figure slipping away downstairs. I immediately noticed that someone had interfered with my papers. I grabbed my swordstick, which was fortunately within easy reach, and went down to the shop. I saw a dark shadow like some bird of ill omen passing into the street. I pursued it and — either by pure misfortune or because the intruder had carefully planned his escape— I tripped over a stool that shouldn't have been there.

I rushed out limping into the passageway with my swordstick unsheathed, but alas, I could see no one. My visitor had gone. But it was you, I swear it. As a matter of fact, I returned to your apartment and saw that your bed was empty.

12th April, midday

Captain Simonini,

I am replying to your message having only just woken up (in my bed). I swear I could not have been in your apartment this morning, as I was asleep. But as I was awakening, around eleven o'clock, I was terrified by the sight of a man — surely you — disappearing along the corridor where the costumes hang. In my nightshirt I followed you as far as your apartment, saw you descend like a phantom into your junk shop and slip out through the door. I too tripped over a stool, and by the time I had reached impasse Maubert there was no trace of the figure. But I could swear it was you. Tell me whether I'm right, I beg of you.

12th April, early afternoon

Dear Abbé,

What is happening to me? I'm clearly ill. There are moments when I seem to go faint and then regain consciousness to find you have been writing in my diary. Are we the same person? Think a moment, in the name of good sense rather than logical reasoning. If our two encounters had both happened at the same time, it would be possible to imagine that one person was me and the other was you. But what each of us experienced happened at different times. Certainly, if I arrive home and see someone running off, I can be sure that person is not me; but the idea that he must be you is based on the belief, with very little basis to it, that this morning there were only the two of us in this house.

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 without 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.