UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY

by Eco, Umberto

  "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.

  Working for the Okhrana

  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 nih
ilism (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.

  "So, Captain Simonini," began Rachkovsky, "you may not know very much about what you in the West improperly call Okhrana, and the Russian emigrants disparagingly call Okhranka."

  "I've heard rumors about it."

  "No rumors. All as clear as daylight. It is the Ochrannye Otdelenija, which means Department for Public Security, the secret intelligence service, part of our Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was created after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 to protect the imperial family. But little by little it has had to deal with the threat of nihilist terrorism, and has also had to set up surveillance departments abroad where exiles and emigrants are flourishing. And this is why I am here, in the interest of my country. As clear as day. It is the terrorists who hide. You understand?"

  "I understand. But where do I come in?"

  "Let's take it step by step. If by chance you have any information on terrorist groups, you need hide nothing from me. I understand in your time you have reported to the French secret service about dangerous anti-Bonapartists. And the only people who can do that are their friends, or at least those who know them. I am not shy. I too in my time have had contact with Russian terrorists. It's all water under the bridge now, but that's how I climbed the ladder in the antiterrorist services, where those who are effi- cient are the ones who've worked their way through the ranks of subversive groups. You have to break the law before you can serve it properly. Here in France you have the example of your Vidocq, who became head of police only after serving time in jail. Beware of policemen who are too, how do you say, clean. They are prigs. But let's return to us. We have recently become aware that a number of Jewish intellectuals are working among the terrorists. I have been appointed by certain persons at the court of the tsar to try to show that the Jews are undermining the moral fiber of the Russian people and threatening their very survival. You may hear it said that I am regarded as a protégé of Witte, the minister, a well known liberal who would not agree with me on such matters. But you should never serve only your present master, remember that. Always be ready for the next one. However, I shall not waste time. I've seen what you have given Madame Glinka. Most of it is rubbish. You have, of course, chosen the occupation of junk dealer as a cover — someone, in other words, who sells used stuff for more than it costs new. But several years ago in Le Contemporain you published some interesting documents you had received from your grandfather, and I would be surprised if you didn't have more. I have heard it said you know a great deal about many things"—and here Simonini was reaping the benefits of being a spy in appearance more than reality. "Therefore I would like some reliable material from you. I know the difference between wheat and chaff. I will pay. But if the material is no good, I get annoyed. Is that clear?"

  "What exactly do you want?"

  "If I knew that, I wouldn't be paying you. There are people in my department who are very good at constructing a document, but I have to give them the contents. And I cannot tell the good Russian people that the Jews are waiting for the messiah, which is of no interest to either the peasant or the landowner. If they're waiting for the messiah, it must be explained in terms of their pockets."

  "Why are you after the Jews in particular?"

  "Because in Russia there are Jews. If I were living in Turkey, I would be after the Armenians."

  "So you want the Jews to be destroyed, as Osman Bey does . . . I assume you know him."

  "Osman Bey is a fanatic. He's also a Jew. Better to keep away from him. I don't want to destroy the Jews. I might even say the Jews are my best allies. I'm interested in the morale of the Russian people. It is my wish (and the wish of those I hope to please) that these people do not direct their discontent against the tsar. We therefore need an enemy. There's no point looking for an enemy among, I don't know, the Mongols or the Tatars, as despots have done in the past. For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep. Hence the Jews. Divine providence has given them to us, and so, by God, let us use them, and pray there's always some Jew to fear and to hate. We need an enemy to give people hope. Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and the bastards always talk about the purity of the race. National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that's abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature. You don't love someone for your whole life — that impossible hope is the source of adultery, matricide, betrayal of friends . . . But you can hate someone for your whole life, provided he's always there to keep your hatred alive. Hatred warms the heart."

  Drumont

  Simonini found the meeting unsettling. Rachkovsky appeared to be serious about what he was saying. Unless Simonini gave him some new material he would get "annoyed." It wasn't so much that he was short of material — indeed, he'd put together a considerable number of documents for his series of Protocols — but he felt that something more was needed — not just the stories about the Antichrist, which were fine for characters like Glinka, but something more relevant to current events. After all, he didn't want to sell his updated version of the Prague cemetery story for less than it was worth; on the contrary, he wanted to raise the price. And so he waited.

  He went to see Father Bergamaschi, who had been pursuing him for material against the Masons.

  "Look at this book," said the Jesuit. "La France juive by Édouard Drumont. Hundreds of pages. Here's someone who obviously knows more about it than you."

  Simonini flicked cursorily through the book. "These are the same things that old Gougenot wrote more than fifteen years ago!"

  "So? The book is selling like hotcakes. His readers clearly know nothing about Gougenot. And you imagine that your Russian client has read Drumont? You're the master of recycling, aren't you? Go and sniff about, find out what Drumont's companions are saying and doing."

  Making contact with Drumont was easy. At Salon Adam, Simonini had become well acquainted with
Alphonse Daudet, who had invited him to the soirées that were held, when it was not the turn of Salon Adam, at his house at Champrosay. Kindly received there by Julia Daudet, he met personalities such as the Goncourts, Pierre Loti, Émile Zola, Frédéric Mistral and Drumont himself, whose fame took off after the publication of La France juive. Over the next few years he took to meeting with Drumont, first at La Ligue Antisémitique, which he had founded, and then at the offices of his newspaper, La Libre Parole.

  Drumont had a leonine mane and a large black beard, bent nose and fiery eyes, and you could have described him (judging from the illustrations of the time) as a Jewish prophet. In effect, there was something messianic about his anti-Judaism, as if the Almighty had given him the specific task of destroying the chosen people. Simonini was fascinated by the virulence of Drumont's anti-Semitism. He hated the Jews, you might say, with love, with singlemindedness, with devotion — and with a fervor that sublimated all sexual desire. Drumont's anti-Semitism wasn't philosophical and political like Toussenel's, nor theological like Gougenot's. He was an erotic anti-Semite.

  It was enough to hear him talk during the long, leisurely editorial meetings.

  "I was more than willing to do the preface for that book by Abbé Desportes on the Jewish blood mystery. And they're not just medieval practices. Even today, those splendid Jewish baronesses who hold salons put the blood of Christian children into the sweetmeats they offer their guests."

  * * *

  He took to meeting with Drumont, first at La Ligue

  Antisémitique, which he had founded, and then at the offices

  of his newspaper, La Libre Parole.

  * * *