UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (24 page)

"To the fortress?" Simonini asked.

"Even keeping someone in a fortress could encourage rumors. We don't want to repeat the farce of the man in the iron mask. We're proposing a less theatrical solution. You close up shop here in Turin and disappear abroad. Go to Paris. Regarding initial expenses, half of our agreed remuneration should be sufficient. After all, you went too far, and that's as bad as only doing half the job. And since we cannot suppose you'll survive for long in Paris before getting into trouble, we'll refer you directly to our colleagues there. They may have something for you to do. You'll pass, shall we say, onto the payroll of another administration."

9

PARIS

2nd April 1897, late evening

Since I began this diary, I have not been out to a restaurant. This evening, to keep my spirits up, I decided to go to a place where anyone who met me would have been so drunk that, even if I didn't recognize them, they wouldn't recognize me. It is a nearby cabaret in rue des Anglais, Père Lunette, which takes its name from an enormous pair of pince-nez over the entrance — no one knows when or why they were put there.

Rather than providing food, the owners give you bits of cheese to gnaw, almost for free, to make you feel thirsty. Otherwise you drink and sing — or rather, the "artistes" sing: Fifil'Absinthe, Armand le Gueulard and Gaston Trois-Pattes. The first room is a corridor, half taken up by a long zinc counter, with the landlord, the landlady and a child who sleeps amid the swearing and laughter of the customers. In front of the counter, along the wall, there is a rough bench where patrons can sit once they have taken a glass. On a shelf behind the counter is the finest collection of gut-rotting concoctions to be found in all Paris. But the real customers go to the room at the end, with two tables around which drunkards sleep on each other's shoulders. The walls have been decorated by customers, for the most part with obscene drawings.

This evening I sat next to a woman intently drinking her umpteenth absinthe. I thought I recognized her. She had worked as an artist for illustrated magazines but was gradually letting herself go, perhaps because she was consumptive and knew she hadn't long to live. She now offered to do customers' portraits in return for a glass, but her hand trembled. If she's lucky, she'll end up falling into the Bièvre one night, before the consumption takes her.

We exchanged a few words (I've been so holed up the past ten days that I found comfort even in conversation with a woman), and each time I offered her a glass of absinthe I could hardly avoid having one myself.

And that is why, as I write, my vision is blurred and my head befuddled — ideal conditions for remembering little, and badly.

All I know is that I was naturally apprehensive when I arrived in Paris (after all, I was going into exile), but the city won me over, and I decided I would spend the rest of my life here.

I didn't know how long my money would have to last, so I rented a room in a hotel in the Bièvre district. Fortunately I could afford one to myself — a room in those places often had as many as fifteen straw mattresses and sometimes no window. It was furnished with secondhand odds and ends, and the bedding was verminous. There was a zinc bath for washing, a bucket for urine, not even a chair . . . and soap and towels were out of the question. A notice on the wall required the key to be leftin the keyhole on the outside, apparently so the police would not have to waste time on their frequent raids, when they would grab sleepers by the hair, peering closely at them by the light of a lantern, flinging back those they didn't recognize and dragging downstairs those they'd come looking for, after giving a good thrashing to anyone who tried to put up any kind of resistance.

As for eating, I found a tavern in rue du Petit Pont where you could have a meal for a song. All the meat was bad, having been thrown away by the butchers at Les Halles — the fat had turned green and the lean meat black . . . it was salvaged from the bins at dawn, cleaned up, covered with salt and pepper and steeped in vinegar, then hung for forty-eight hours in the open air at the far end of the courtyard, by which time it was ready for the customer. Dysentery guaranteed, price affordable.

After the life I'd been leading in Turin and the plentiful meals in Palermo, I would have been dead in a few weeks if it weren't for the fact that I soon collected my first wages (as I shall shortly recount) from the people to whom Cavalier Bianco had sent me. I could now afford to eat at Noblot, in rue de la Huchette. You entered a large room overlooking an old courtyard, bringing your own bread with you. Close to the entrance was a cash desk managed by the landlady and her three daughters, where they kept a tab for the more expensive dishes — roast beef, cheese, jams, or stewed pear with two walnuts. Customers, such as artisans, penniless artists and copy clerks, who ordered at least half a liter of wine were allowed behind the cash desk.

Beyond was a kitchen, where on an enormous stove simmered mutton ragout, rabbit or beef, puréed peas or lentils. There was no table service: you had to find a plate and cutlery and line up in front of the cook. Diners then pushed and shoved, full plate in hand, to find a place at the enormous
table d'hôte.
Two sous for broth, four sous for beef, ten centimes for the bread you'd brought with you — the whole meal would cost forty centimes. It all seemed excellent, and indeed I noticed that plenty of respectable people went there for the pleasure of slumming.

But long before I could afford to go to Noblot, I didn't mind those first few weeks of hell: I made useful acquaintances and was able to get to know a world in which I would later have to learn to swim like a fish in water. And listening to the talk in the alleyways, I found out about other streets in other parts of Paris, such as rue de Lappe, entirely dedicated to ironmongery for artisans and their families, or of a less reputable kind, such as instruments for picklocks or skeleton keys, or retractable daggers to be concealed up the sleeve of a jacket.

I stayed in my room as little as possible and only allowed myself the pleasures available to penniless Parisians. So I walked the boulevards. I hadn't realized how much larger Paris was than Turin. I was enthralled by the sight of so many people of all classes walking beside me. Few of them had any particular errand to perform, and most were there to look at each other. Respectable Parisian women dressed with great taste, and if they didn't draw my attention, their hairstyles did. Unfortunately there were also, shall we say, those less respectable women who were ingenious in inventing ways of dressing up to gain the attention of our sex.

These were the prostitutes, though not of the vulgar sort I was later to encounter in the
brasseries à femmes
. They were strictly for wealthy gentlemen, as was apparent from the devilish techniques they used to seduce their victims. An informant of mine explained that at one time only
grisettes
were seen on the boulevards. These were young women of no particular intelligence, of easy virtue but undemanding, who asked their lovers for neither clothes nor jewelry, knowing the lovers were even poorer than they were. Then, as a breed, they vanished just like the pug. Later, the
lorette
, or
biche
or
cocotte
, appeared. These were no more amusing or cultured than the
grisette
but were eager for cashmere and frills. By the time I arrived in Paris, the
lorette
had been replaced by the courtesan — rich lovers, diamonds, carriages. It was rare by then for a courtesan to walk the boulevards. These
dames aux camélias
had decided as a matter of principle to reveal neither heart nor tenderness nor gratitude, and to exploit the impotent souls who paid just to display them in their box at the Opéra. What a repulsive sex.

Meanwhile, I went to meet Clément Fabre de Lagrange. My former contacts in Turin had directed me to an office in an apparently derelict building, in a street that professional discretion prevents me from naming, even on a sheet of paper that no one is ever going to read. I believe that Lagrange was involved with the Political Division of the Direction Générale de la Sûreté Publique, but I never knew whether he was at the top or the bottom of the pyramid. He didn't seem answerable to anyone else, and I would be unable, even under torture, to say anything about that political intelligence machine. I wasn't sure, in fact, whether Lagrange really had an office in the building. I wrote to that address informing him that I had a letter of introduction from Cavalier Bianco, and two days later received a card arranging a meeting in place Notre Dame. I would recognize him by a red carnation in his buttonhole. Lagrange thereafter always met me in the most un likely places — a cabaret, a church, a public garden, and never in the same place twice.

 

I was enthralled by the sight of so many people of all classes walking beside me.

Lagrange needed a particular document at the time, and I produced it for him. He was immediately impressed, and from that day I worked for him as an
indicateur
, as it is commonly described around here, receiving 300 francs a month plus 130 for expenses, with a few occasional bonuses and money on top for producing documents. The empire spends a great deal on its informers, certainly more than the Kingdom of Piedmont, and I've heard it said that out of a police budget of 7 million francs a year, 2 million are set aside for political intelligence. But others say the total budget is 14 million, which includes the cost of crowds to applaud as the emperor passes, of groups sent out to keep watch on Mazzini's supporters, as well as agitators and actual spies.

I used to make at least 5,000 francs a year with Lagrange, and through him I was introduced to private clients, so I was soon able to set up my present office (under the cover of dealing in
brocantage
). With forged wills and the sale of consecrated hosts, my business brought me another 5,000 francs, and with 10,000 francs a year I was what could be described in Paris as a comfortably-offbourgeois. These earnings were obviously never secure, and my dream was to make 10,000 francs, not as earned but as unearned income. Given a 3 percent return on state bonds (the safest), I would have to accumulate 300,000 francs in capital. Such a sum might have been possible for a courtesan, but not for an unknown notary.

While awaiting some stroke of fortune, I could nevertheless transform myself from spectator to active participant in the pleasures of Paris. I have never been interested in the theater, in those horrible tragedies declaimed in alexandrines, and museum rooms depress me. But Paris offered me something much better — restaurants.

The first place I wanted to indulge myself was Le Grand Véfour, in the arcades of the Palais-Royal. Though it was extremely expensive, I had heard it praised even in Turin, and Victor Hugo apparently used to go there to eat breast of mutton with haricot beans. The other place that had immediately seduced me was the Café Anglais, on the corner of rue de Gramont and boulevard des Italiens. It had once been a restaurant for coachmen and servants and now served
le tout Paris at its tables. There I discovered pommes Anna, écrevisses bordelaises, mousses de volaille, mauviettes en cerises, petites timbales à la Pompadour, cimier de chevreuil, fonds d'artichauts à la jardinière
and champagne sorbets. The mere mention of these names makes me feel that life is worth living.

Apart from the restaurants, I was fascinated by the
passages
. I adored passage Jouffroy, perhaps because it held three of Paris's best restaurants: the Dîner de Paris, the Dîner du Rocher and the Dîner Jouffroy. It seems, even today, that the whole of Paris gathers there, especially on Saturdays, in the glass-covered arcade where you are continually jostled by world-weary gentlemen and ladies who are too heavily scented for my taste.

Perhaps I was more intrigued by passage des Panoramas. The crowd you saw there was more working class, bourgeois and provincial, people who looked longingly at antiques they could never afford and young girls who had just come out of the factories. If you really must ogle petticoats, the women in passage Jouffroy are better dressed (if that's what you like), but here, wandering up and down watching the factory girls, are the
suiveurs
, middle-aged men who conceal their gaze behind green-tinted glasses. I doubt that all the girls really are factory workers; that they are simply dressed, in tulle bonnets and pinafores, means nothing. Look carefully at their fingertips. Girls without cuts, scratches or small burns lead a more leisurely life, thanks to the
suiveurs
whom they manage to enchant.

It is not the factory girls I gaze at in the arcade, but the suiveurs. (Who said that a philosopher is someone who watches the audience and not the stage at the
café chantant?
) They may one day become my clients, or useful in another way. I follow some of them home, to see them being greeted, say, by a fat wife and half a dozen brats. I make a note of their addresses. You never know. I could easily ruin them with an anonymous letter. One day, perhaps, if the need arises.