UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (47 page)

These were not circles Simonini was used to. It must have been around this time that he had met Doctor Froïde at Magny (as he recalled in his diary of the 25th of March) and had smiled when the doctor described how he'd had to buy a dress coat and a fine black cravat to go to dinner at Charcot's house. Now Simonini had to buy a dress coat and cravat as well, and not only that but a new beard, from the best (and most discreet) wigmaker in Paris. Although his early studies had left him with a modicum of education, and during his years in Paris he had read a fair amount, he felt uneasy in the midst of the sparkling, informed, often learned conversation in which the salon's participants were always
à la page.
He preferred to remain silent, listened carefully to what was said and confined himself to describing distant military exploits during the expedition in Sicily — Garibaldi was still well looked upon in France.

Simonini was most surprised. He had expected to hear conversation that was not just republican — the least to be expected for that period — but strongly revolutionary. And yet Juliette Adam adored being surrounded by Russians of tsarist leanings and was an Anglophobe like her friend Toussenel. In her
Nouvelle Revue
she also published a figure like Léon Daudet, who was rightly regarded as a reactionary, to the same extent that his father, Alphonse, was considered to be a genuine democrat — though let it be said, to Madame Adam's credit, that both were admitted to her salon.

Nor was it clear what was the origin of the anti-Jewish debate that often animated the conversation. Did it stem from a socialist hatred of Jewish capitalism, of which Toussenel was an illustrious representative, or from the mystical anti-Semitism circulated by Yuliana Glinka, a woman closely linked to Russian occultism whose practices were reminiscent of the Brazilian Candomblé rituals into which she was initiated as a girl, when her father served in Brazil as a diplomat — and who, it was whispered, was an intimate friend of Madame Blavatsky, the great pythoness of Paris occultism at that time?

Juliette Adam's distrust of Jewry was no secret, and Simonini was present one evening during the reading of several pieces by the Russian writer Dostoyevsky, who had obviously made use of what that man Brafmann, whom Simonini had met, had revealed about the great Kahal.

"Dostoyevsky tells us, " Juliette was saying, "that to have lost their lands and their political independence, their laws and nearly their faith, so many times, and always to have survived, almost more united than before, these Jews — a people so dynamic, so extraordinarily strong and energetic — could not have resisted without a state over and above the existing states, a
status in statu,
which they have preserved, always and everywhere, despite the most terrible persecutions, isolating themselves, cutting themselves off from the people with whom they lived, without integrating with them, and observing one fundamental principle: 'Even when you are spread over the face of the earth, fear not, have faith that all that has been promised you will come to pass, and meanwhile live, loathe, unite, exploit, and wait, wait.'"

"This Dostoyevsky is a great master of rhetoric, " commented Toussenel. "See how he begins by professing an understanding, a sympathy, dare I say a respect, for the Jews: 'Am I too perhaps an enemy of the Jews? Might it be that I am an enemy of that unfortunate race? On the contrary, I say and I write that everything demanded by humanity and justice, everything required by humanity and Christian law, all of this must be done for the Jews. ' A fine start. But then he shows how this unfortunate race seeks to destroy the Christian world. Great move. Not new — perhaps you've not read Marx's
Communist Manifesto.
It begins with an incredible coup de théâtre, 'a spectre is haunting Europe, ' then offers us a bird's-eye view of the class struggle from ancient Rome to today. The pages dedicated to the bourgeoisie as a
revolutionary
class are breathtaking. Marx shows us this new, unstoppable power that is affecting the whole planet, as if it were God's creative breath at the beginning of Genesis. And at the end of this eulogy (which, I promise, is truly remarkable) the subterranean powers arrive on the scene, invoked by the bourgeois triumph: from the bowels of capitalism, its own gravediggers, the proletariat, emerge. They proclaim, loud and clear: 'Now we want to destroy you and take away all that belonged to you. ' Marvelous. And that's what Dostoyevsky does with the Jews — he justifies the conspiracy that has determined their survival throughout history, and denounces them as the enemy to be wiped out. Dostoyevsky is a true socialist."

"He isn't a socialist, " interrupted Yuliana Glinka with a smile. "He's a visionary, and so tells the truth. You see how he anticipates the most apparently reasonable objection, namely that even if there has been a state within the state over the centuries, it was the persecutions that led to its creation, and it would disappear if the Jew were given the same rights as those of the native populations. Wrong! warns Dostoyevsky. Even if the Jews were given the same rights as other citizens, they would never abandon the obstinate idea that a messiah will arrive who will subdue all nations with his sword. For this reason, the Jews prefer one activity alone, trading in gold and jewels. Once the messiah comes, they will feel no attachment to the land where they have lived, and can easily carry their belongings away with them, when — as Dostoyevsky so poetically puts it — the ray of dawn casts forth its glow and the chosen people will carry their cymbal, drum and pipe and their silver and their sacred objects to their ancient home."

"In France we have been too indulgent toward them, " concluded Toussenel. "They now run the stock exchanges and control credit. This is why socialism has to be anti-Semitic . . . It is no coincidence that the success of the Jews in France came exactly when the new principles of capitalism triumphed, brought in from across the English Channel."

"You simplify things too much, Monsieur Toussenel, " said Madame Glinka. "Among those in Russia who have been tainted by the revolutionary ideas of that Marx whom you praise, there are many Jews. They are everywhere."

She turned toward the windows of the drawing room, as if
they
were waiting for her with their daggers on the street corner. And Simonini, overcome once again by his childhood nightmares, imagined Mordechai coming up the staircase at night.

Simonini quickly identified Madame Glinka as a possible client. He would sit next to her, courting her discreetly, though with some effort. Simonini was not a good judge of feminine charms, but he had always noted that she had the face of a weasel and eyes too close to the bridge of her nose. Juliette Adam, on the other hand, though no longer as she had been when he had first known her twenty years earlier, was still a lady of fine bearing and majestic appearance.

He had little to say, and instead listened to Madame Glinka's fantasies, feigning interest as she told how at Würzburg she had had a vision of a Himalayan guru who initiated her into some kind of mystical revelation. She was someone, therefore, to whom he could offer anti-Jewish material in keeping with her esoteric inclinations, all the more since it was rumored that Yuliana Glinka was the niece of General Orzheyevsky, a figure of great importance in the Russian secret police. It was through him that she had been recruited by the Okhrana, the imperial secret service — and in that role she had links (it wasn't clear whether as employee, collaborator or rival) with Pyotr Rachkovsky, the new head of all foreign investigations.
Le Radical,
a left-wing newspaper, had voiced the suspicion that Glinka was earning her living by exposing Russian terrorists in exile — which meant she attended not only Salon Adam but other circles about which Simonini knew nothing.

 

"They now run the stock exchanges and control credit. This is
why socialism has to be anti-Semitic."

The scene in the Prague cemetery had to be adapted to Glinka's tastes, cutting out the long-winded passages on economic plans and emphasizing the more messianic aspects of the rabbinical speeches.

Taking a few ideas from Gougenot and other writings of the time, Simonini let the rabbis imagine the return of the sovereign chosen by God as king of Israel, appointed to wipe away all the iniquities of the Gentiles. And he added at least two pages of messianic phantasmagoria to the story of the cemetery, such as: "With all the power and terror of Satan, the triumphant reign of the King of Israel is drawing near to our degenerate world; the King born of the blood of Zion, the Antichrist, is drawing near to the throne of universal power." But, remembering that republican ideas struck fear into tsarist minds, he added that only a republican system with a popular vote would enable the Jews, once they had acquired a majority, to introduce laws to achieve their purposes. Only those Gentile fools, said the rabbis in the cemetery, believe there is greater freedom under a republic than under an autocracy. Yet the contrary is true: wise men govern in an autocracy, while a liberal regime is run by common people who are easily manipulated by Jewish agents. That the republic would be able to coexist with a
rex mundi
didn't seem to cause any concern: the case of Napoleon III was still there to demonstrate that republics can create emperors.

But Simonini, remembering his grandfather's stories, had the idea of embellishing the rabbis' speeches with a long description of how the secret world government had operated, and should operate. It was curious that Glinka hadn't realized that the arguments were the same as Dostoyevsky's — or perhaps she had, and so was delighted that an ancient text should confirm Dostoyevsky, thus proving itself to be authentic.

In the Prague cemetery it was therefore revealed that the Jewish kabbalists had been the inspiration behind the Crusades to restore Jerusalem's position as the center of the world, thanks also, it went without saying, to the Templars (and here Simonini knew he was delving into very rich terrain). What a shame, then, that the Arabs had driven the Crusaders into the sea and the Templars had met such a nasty end; otherwise the plan would have succeeded several centuries earlier.

In this regard, the rabbis at Prague remembered how humanism, the French Revolution and the American War of Independence had helped to undermine the principles of Christianity and respect for kings, preparing the way for the Jewish conquest of the world. To achieve this plan, the Jews had to construct a respectable façade for themselves, namely Freemasonry.

Simonini had ably recycled the old writings of Barruel, about which Glinka and her paymasters in Russia were evidently unaware. General Orzheyevsky, when he received Glinka's report, in fact thought it appropriate to use two extracts. The shorter of them corresponded more or less to the original scene in the Prague cemetery, and was published in various Russian magazines — Orzheyevsky forgetting (or deciding that the public had forgotten, or indeed was unaware) that a rabbi's speech, taken from Goedsche's book, had been in circulation more than ten years earlier in St. Petersburg and had subsequently appeared in
Antisemiten-Katechismus
by Theodor Fritsch; the other extract was published as a pamphlet with the title
Tayna yevreystva
(
The Secret of the Jews),
graced with a preface by Orzheyevsky himself, stating that the text, finally rediscovered, revealed for the first time the profound links between Masonry and Judaism, both harbingers of nihilism (an accusation taken extremely seriously in Russia at that time).

Orzheyevsky arranged for Simonini to receive a proper fee, and Glinka made the dreadful — and dreaded — gesture of offering her body in gratitude for that magnificent enterprise — a horror from which Simonini escaped by intimating, with hands trembling and plenty of virginal sighs, that his fate was not dissimilar to that of Octave de Malivert, about whom all of Stendhal's readers had been speculating for decades.

From that moment Glinka lost interest in Simonini, and he in her. One day, though, on entering Café de la Paix for a simple
déjeuner à la fourchette
(cutlets and grilled kidneys), Simonini noticed her sitting at a table with a portly, vulgar-looking man of bourgeois appearance with whom she was clearly having a heated argument. He stopped to greet her, and Glinka was obliged to introduce Monsieur Rachkovsky, who eyed him with great interest.

Simonini failed at the time to understand the reason for this interest. It was only later, when he heard his shop bell ring and saw it was Rachkovsky himself, that all became clear. He walked through the shop with a broad smile and authoritative self-assurance, climbed the staircase to the upper floor and entered the office, seating himself comfortably in an armchair beside the desk.

"Let us please talk business," he said.

Blond as a Russian, though graying, as might be expected for a man now over thirty, Rachkovsky had fleshy, sensual lips, a prominent nose, the eyebrows of a Slavic demon, a wild, feral smile and a mellifluous voice. He resembled a cheetah more than a lion, Simonini thought, and wondered what would be less worrying: to be summoned to meet Osman Bey at night on the Seine embankment or Rachkovsky early in the morning at the Russian embassy in rue de Grenelle. He decided in favor of Osman Bey.