UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (28 page)

Though pleased with what had happened to Ninuzzo, he felt rather sorry for Gaviali. He was, after all, a good sort who had placed his trust in him. But anyone involved in conspiracies has to accept the risks, and must trust no one.

And it was a shame about Lacroix, who after all had done no wrong. But his widow would get a good pension out of it.

12

A NIGHT IN PRAGUE

4th April 1897

All that remained was for me to approach Guédon, the man Joly had spoken about. The bookshop in rue de Beaune was run by a wizened old maid, Mademoiselle Beuque, always dressed in an immense black woolen skirt, with a bonnet, like that of Little Red Riding Hood, which half covered her face —and a good thing too.

I immediately came across Guédon, a skeptic who looked mockingly upon the world around him. I like unbelievers. Guédon immediately responded favorably to Joly's plea, saying he would send him food and a little money. Then he joked about the friend he was about to help. Why write a book and run the risk of prison when those who read books were already republicans by nature, and those who supported the dictator were illiterate peasants who'd been granted universal suffrage by the grace of God?

The Fourierists? They're good people, but how can you believe in a prophet who declares that in a new world oranges would be grown in Warsaw, seas would become lemonade, men would grow tails and incest and homosexuality would be recognized as the most natural human impulses?

"So why do you mix with them?" I asked.

"Because they're still the only honest people standing up against Napoleon's infamous dictatorship," he replied.

"You see that fine lady over there? She is Juliette Lamessine, one of the most influential women in Countess d'Agoult's salon, and with her husband's money she's trying to establish her own salon in rue de Rivoli. She's charming, intelligent, a writer of considerable talent. An invitation to her house would be something indeed."

Guédon pointed out another tall, handsome, imposing figure. "That's Toussenel, the celebrated author of
L'Esprit des bêtes
. He's a socialist, a staunch republican and madly in love with Juliette, who won't deign to look at him. But he has the most brilliant mind here."

Toussenel spoke to me about capitalism, which he said was poisoning modern society.

"And who are the capitalists? The Jews, the rulers of our time. The revolution last century cut off the head of Louis Capet. This century's revolution ought to cut off the head of Moses. I shall write a book about it. Who are the Jews? They're all those who suck the blood out of the defenseless, the people. They're Protestants, Freemasons. And, of course, the people of Judah."

"But Protestants are not Jews," I ventured.

"Jew and Protestant are the same," Toussenel said. "The English Methodists, the German Pietists, the Swiss and the Dutch all learn to read the will of God from the same book as the Jews — the Bible, a story of incest and massacres and barbarous wars, where the only way to win is through treachery and deception, where kings have men murdered so they can take their wives, where women who call themselves saints enter the beds of enemy generals and cut off their heads. Cromwell had the head of his king cut off while quoting the Bible. Malthus, who denied the children of the poor the right to life, was steeped in the Bible. It's a race that spends its time recalling its slavery, and is always ready to yield to the cult of the Golden Calf, ignoring every sign of divine wrath. The battle against the Jews ought to be the main purpose of every socialist worthy of the name. I am not talking about communists — their founder is a Jew. The problem is exposing the conspiracy of money. Why does an apple in a Paris restaurant cost a hundred times more than in Normandy? There are unscrupulous races who live on the flesh of others, merchant races like the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians. And today it's the English and the Jews."

"So for you the Englishman and the Jew are the same?"

"Almost. You ought to read what a leading English politician has written in his novel
Coningsby — a
certain Disraeli, a Sephardic Jew who converted to Christianity. He had the temerity to write that the Jews were going to take over the world."

The following day, Toussenel brought me a book by Disraeli where he had underlined whole passages. "You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the Jews do not greatly participate. The first Jesuits were Jews. That mysterious Russian diplomacy which so alarms western Europe, who is running it? The Jews! Who is taking over almost all of the professorial chairs of Germany?

"Note that Disraeli is not a
mouchard
who is denouncing his own people. On the contrary, he is praising their virtues. He writes quite shamelessly that the Russian minister of finance, Count Cancrin, is the son of a Lithuanian Jew, in the same way that the Spanish minister Mendizábal is the son of a convert from Aragon. Soult, an imperial marshal in Paris, is the son of a French Jew, and Massena was also a Jew whose original name was Manesseh . . . And there again, that mighty revolution being plotted at this very moment in Germany, who is behind it? The Jews. Look at Karl Marx and his communists."

I wasn't sure if Toussenel was right, but his philippics indicated how the more revolutionary circles were thinking, and it gave me several ideas . . . I was doubtful that documents against the Jesuits would be saleable. Perhaps to the Freemasons, but I still had no point of contact with their world. Writings against the Freemasons might have been of interest to the Jesuits, but I didn't yet feel able to produce any. Against Napoleon? Certainly not to sell them to the government. And the republicans were a good potential market, but after Sue and Joly, there was little more to be said. Against the republicans? Here again, it seemed as if the government had all it needed. And if I offered Lagrange information on the Fourierists, he would have laughed — who knows how many of his informers had already visited that bookshop in rue de Beaune?

Who was left? The Jews, for heaven's sake! Deep down, I thought it was only my grandfather who had been so obsessed, but after listening to Toussenel I realized there was an anti-Jewish market not just among all the descendants of Abbé Barruel (and there were quite a few of them), but also among revolutionaries, republicans and socialists. The Jews were the enemy of the altar, but also of the ordinary people, whose blood they sucked. And they were also the enemy of the throne, depending on who governed. I had to work on the Jews.

I realized that the task would not be easy. Some in church circles might be impressed by a recycling of Barruel's material, with the Jews in league with the Freemasons and the Templars to bring about the French Revolution, but it would be of no interest to a socialist like Toussenel. I needed to say something more specific about the connection between Jews and the accumulation of capital and a conspiracy with the British.

I began to regret that I had never wanted to meet a Jew in my life. I realized there was so much I didn't know about the object of my repugnance, which was becoming more and more suffused with resentment.

I was grappling with these thoughts when Lagrange presented me with an opportunity. Lagrange, as I have noted, was always arranging meetings in improbable places, and this time it was to be at PèreLachaise. This was a good idea. Here, after all, we could be mistaken for relatives searching for the grave of a dear departed, or for romantics revisiting the past. On this occasion we were standing reverently beside the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse, a place of pilgrimage for artists, philosophers and lovers, appearing like ghosts among ghosts.

"Simonini," Lagrange said, "I want to arrange for you to meet Colonel Dimitri — that's the only name he's known by in our circles. He works in the Third Department of the imperial Russian chancellery. If you were to go to St. Petersburg and ask for the Third Department, everyone would look at you blankly, as officially it doesn't exist. Its agents are appointed to keep an eye on revolutionary groups — the problem there is much worse than it is here. They have to watch for those taking the place of the Decembrists, for the anarchists, and now for the discontented so-called emancipated peasants. Tsar Alexander abolished serfdom several years ago, and there are now around twenty million free peasants who are supposed to pay rent to their old masters for plots of land too small to give them a living, and large numbers of them are invading the cities in search of work."

"What does this Colonel Dimitri want of me?"

"He's collecting documents on the Jewish problem, which are, shall we say, compromising. There are many more Jews in Russia than here, and in the villages they pose a threat to the Russian peasants, since they can read, write and above all count. That's not to mention the cities, where many of them are thought to belong to subversive sects. My Russian colleagues have two tasks: first, to see whether and where the Jews pose a real danger, and second, to direct the peasants' discontent against them. But Dimitri will explain everything. It's no concern of ours. Our government is on good terms with the Jewish financiers in France and has no interest in stirring up resentment against them. All we want is to be of service to the Russians. In our job, Simonini, it's a question of 'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours,' and we're only too pleased to offer you to Colonel Dimitri — though officially, of course, you're nothing to do with us. I forgot to mention: before Dimitri arrives, you might wish to know about the Alliance Israélite Universelle, established about six years ago in Paris. Its members are doctors, journalists, lawyers, businessmen, the cream of Parisian Jewish society — all, shall we say, of liberal persuasion, and certainly more republican than Bonapartist. Their aim is apparently to help victims of persecution from every religion and country in the name of the Rights of Man. Until proved otherwise, they are citizens of the utmost integrity, but it is hard for our informers to infiltrate them, because Jews know and recognize each other, sniffing each other's bottoms like dogs. But I'll put you in touch with someone who has managed to gain the trust of some Alliance members. His name is Jakob Brafmann, a Jew who converted to the Orthodox Christian faith and became professor of Hebrew at the theological seminary in Minsk. He's in Paris for a short stay, working for Colonel Dimitri and his Third Department. Since Brafmann was thought to be a member of the same religion, it was easy for him to make contact with the Alliance Israélite. He'll be able to tell you something about them."

"Excuse me, Monsieur de Lagrange. If this Brafmann is Colonel Dimitri's informer, he will already have told Dimitri all he knows. There's no point in my going to tell him all over again."

"Don't be naive, Simonini. Of course there's a point. If you give Dimitri the same information that he's heard from Brafmann, he'll regard you as someone whose news is reliable, since it confirms what he already knows."

Brafmann. From my grandfather's stories I expected to meet someone with the profile of a vulture, with fleshy lips, the lower lip heavily protruding like a Negro's, deep-set watery eyes, eyelids less open than those of other races, wavy or curly hair, ears sticking out . . . Instead, the man I met had a monkish appearance, a fine gray beard and thick bushy eyebrows with those Mephistophelean tufts at each corner that I had seen among Russians and Poles. Religious conversion evidently transforms not just the soul but also facial appearances.

He had a particular liking for good food, though he displayed the voraciousness of a provincial who wants to try everything but has no idea how to create a proper menu. We had lunch at Rocher de Cancale in rue Montorgueil, which used to serve the finest oysters in Paris. The place had closed twenty years earlier and then been reopened under new ownership; it wasn't what it used to be, but it still had oysters, and for a Russian Jew it was good enough. Brafmann began with a few dozen
belons
, then ordered a
bisque d'écrevisses.

"For such a thriving race to survive over forty centuries," Brafmann told me, "it had to establish a single government in every country where it was living — a state within a state — which it has maintained ever since, even when its people have been scattered for thousands of years. I have found documents that prove the existence of this state, this law: the Kahal."

"And what is it?" I asked.

"The institution dates back to the time of Moses. After the Exodus, it no longer operated openly but was confined to the synagogues.I have found documents for the Kahal in Minsk from 1794 to 1830. It's all written down. Every detail is recorded."

 

The man I met had a monkish appearance, a fine gray beard and thick bushy eyebrows with those Mephistophelean tufts at each corner.

He unrolled various scrolls covered with symbols I couldn't understand.

"Every Jewish community is governed by a Kahal and subject to an autonomous tribunal, the Beit Din. These documents are from one Kahal, but they're just the same as those for every Kahal. They tell us how members of a community must obey only their own court and not that of their host state, how festivals are to be observed, how animals must be specially killed and prepared (the impure and corrupt parts sold to the Christians), how every Jew can obtain a Christian from the Kahal whom he can exploit through usury until he has taken all his property, and no other Jew has rights over that same Christian. The lack of mercy toward the lower classes, the exploitation of the poor man by the rich man, are not crimes, according to the Kahal, but virtues when practiced by a son of Israel. Some say that Jews are poor, especially in Russia. This is true. Large numbers of Jews are the victims of a secret government run by rich Jews. I'm not against the Jews— I was, after all, born a Jew — but against the
Jewish ideal
that wants to replace Christianity. I love the Jews . . . may Jesus, whom they assassinated, be my witness . . ."