UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (55 page)

"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 breast. 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.

And in that instant I also realize I cannot let the witness to my murder leave this house. I remember the pistol that Bataille had given me, open the drawer where I had hidden it and point it at Boullan, who continues to stare at me, bewildered.

 

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

"I am sorry, Abbé," I tell him. "If you want to save yourself, help me dispose of this sweet body."

"Yes, yes," he says, as if in erotic ecstasy. The dead Diana, with her tongue hanging from her mouth and her blank stare, must seem as desirable to him, in his confusion, as the naked Diana who abused me for her pleasure.

But then, I am not entirely lucid either. As if in a dream, I wrap Diana in her cloak, give Boullan a lighted lamp, grasp the dead body by its feet and drag it along the passageway as far as your house, then down the staircase into the shop, and from there to the sewer, the corpse's head banging with a sinister thud on each step. Finally I line it up beside the remains of Dalla Piccola (the other one).

Boullan now seems to have lost his head. He laughs. "Perhaps it's better down here than in the world out there, where Guaita is waiting for me. May I stay here with Diana?"

"By all means, Abbé," I reply. "I could not wish for more."