UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (29 page)

Brafmann had found his second wind and ordered
aspic de filets mignons de perdreaux
. But he returned almost immediately to his scrolls, which he handled lovingly. "And as you see, they're all genuine. That is proved by the age of the paper, by the uniformity of the scribe's handwriting when he drew up the various documents and by the identical signatures from different dates."

Brafmann had already translated the documents into French and German. He had been told by Lagrange that I could produce authentic documents, and asked me to make him a French version that would appear to date from the same period as the originals. He also needed these documents in other languages, to show the Russian secret service how the model of the Kahal was being followed in various European countries, and particularly by the Parisian Alliance Israélite.

I asked how it was possible, from documents produced by a remote eastern European community, to demonstrate the existence of a global Kahal. Brafmann replied that I need not worry about that. These documents would be useful as supporting evidence, proving that what he had to say was no mere invention, and in any event his book would be sufficiently persuasive in its condemnation of the true Kahal, that great octopus whose tentacles extended across the whole civilized world.

His expression hardened, and he assumed almost that eagle-like appearance that would have given him away as a Jew, which, after all, he still was.

"The fundamental feelings animating the Talmudic spirit are an overweening ambition to dominate the world, an insatiable lust to possess all the riches of those who are not Jewish and a grudge against Christians and against Jesus Christ. Until such time as Israel is converted to Jesus, those countries which offer a home to such people will always be regarded by them, to quote the Talmud, as an open lake where every Jew can fish freely."

Exhausted by this tirade of accusations, Brafmann ordered a dish of
escalopes de poularde au velouté
, but it was not to his taste and so he changed it for
filets de poularde piqués aux truffes.
Then he took a silver pocket watch from his waistcoat. "Oh dear, it's late," he said. "French cuisine is exquisite, but the service is slow. I have an urgent meeting and must go. Let me know, Captain Simonini, whether you can find the right kind of paper and inks."

Brafmann had just concluded the meal with a vanilla soufflé. I was expecting that a Jew, although converted, would leave me to pay the bill. On the contrary, with a lordly gesture Brafmann insisted that he should pay for our snack, as he casually described it. No doubt the Russian secret service allowed him princely expenses.

I returned feeling puzzled. A document produced fifty years ago in Minsk, with detailed instructions about whom to invite or not invite to a religious festival, hardly demonstrates that such rules also apply to the actions of great bankers in Paris or Berlin. What is more, one must never, never, never work with genuine or half-genuine documents! If they already exist, someone can always search them out to prove they are incorrect . . . If a document is to be convincing, it must be created
ex novo
. And where possible, the original must not be seen but only talked about, without reference to any precise source, as happened with the Three Kings, whom only Matthew mentions in a couple of verses, not saying what they were called, or how many they were, or that they were kings, and all the rest is tradition. Yet people think of them as being just as real as Joseph and Mary, and I know their bodies are venerated somewhere or other. Revelations have to be out of the ordinary, shocking and fantastical. Only then do they become credible and arouse indignation. Is a peasant in a vineyard in Champagne going to care whether Jews make their fellow Jews do this or that at their daughter's marriage ceremony? Does this prove that the Jews are trying to pick the Champagne peasants' pockets?

And then I realized I already had the document I needed, or at least a convincing framework — much better than Gounod's Faust, which Parisians had been raving about for the past few years. All I had to do was find the right contents. I was, of course, thinking of the Masonic gathering on Thunder Mountain, of Joseph Balsamo's plan and the Jesuits' night in the Prague cemetery.

Where should the Jewish plan for the conquest of the world start? Obviously from their possession of its gold, as Toussenel had suggested. Conquest of the world, to frighten monarchies and governments; possession of its gold, to satisfy the socialists, anarchists and revolutionaries; destruction of healthy Christian principles, to worry pope, bishops and other clergy. And introduce a bit of that Bonapartist cynicism Joly had used so well, and the Jesuitical hypocrisy that both Joly and I had taken from Eugène Sue.

I went back to the library, but this time I was in Paris, where I could find much more than in Turin, and here I found more pictures of the Prague cemetery. It has been there since the Middle Ages. The burial ground could not be extended beyond the permitted area, and so more graves were added over the centuries, one on top of the other, until there were perhaps a hundred thousand bodies, and the number of gravestones grew, until one was almost touching the next, covered

by fronds of elder and without any portraits to decorate them, since the Jews have a terror of images. In their fascination with the site, engravers had perhaps exaggerated their depiction of the stones, which mushroomed from the ground like moorland shrubs bent back by the winds — the space seemed like the gaping mouth of a gap-toothed old witch. But thanks to some of the more imaginative engravers who had portrayed it in moonlight, I immediately saw how I could make use of that unearthly atmosphere, placing — among the stones that looked like paving slabs upended by some subterranean tumult — the bent, cloaked and hooded figures of rabbis, with their graying and goatish beards, intently conspiring, inclined like the gravestones against which they were leaning, so they formed a forest of wizened ghosts in the night. And at the center stood the tomb of Rabbi Loew, who in the sixteenth century had created the Golem, a monstrous creature who was supposed to avenge all Jews.

Better than Dumas, and better than the Jesuits.

My document, of course, had to appear in the form of an oral testimony by a witness to that terrible night — a witness forced on pain of death to remain anonymous. He must have been able to enter the cemetery at night, dressed as a rabbi, before the ceremony had begun, hiding behind the heap of stones that formed Rabbi Loew's tomb. On the stroke of midnight — as if the distant bell of a Christian church had blasphemously summoned the Jewish gathering — twelve figures wrapped in dark cloaks would arrive, and a voice, seeming to rise from the depths of a tomb, would welcome them as Roshei Botei Avos, the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel, and each of them would answer, "Greetings to you, O son of the damned."

This is the scene. Just as on Thunder Mountain, the voice that summoned them asks: "One hundred years have passed since our last assembly. Whence do you come and whom do you represent?" And the voices answer in turn: Rabbi Judah from Amsterdam, Rabbi Benjamin from Toledo, Rabbi Levi from Worms, Rabbi Manasse from Pest, Rabbi Gad from Kraków, Rabbi Simeon from Rome, Rabbi Sebulon from Lisbon, Rabbi Reuben from Paris, Rabbi Dan from Constantinople, Rabbi Asser from London, Rabbi Isascher from Berlin, Rabbi Naphtali from Prague. Then the voice of the thirteenth member of the gathering calls each of them to declare the wealth of his community, and calculates the wealth of the Rothschilds and the other great Jewish bankers around the world. In this way, he arrives at the figure of six hundred francs for each of the three and a half million Jews living in Europe — in other words, two billion francs. "It is still not enough to destroy two hundred and sixty-five million Christians," says the thirteenth voice, "but it is enough to make a start."

I still had to decide what they would say, but I had mapped out the conclusion. The thirteenth voice invoked the spirit of Rabbi Loew; a bluish light shone from his tomb, becoming harsher and more dazzling; each of the assembled twelve threw a stone upon the grave and the light gradually faded. The twelve began to melt away in different directions, swallowed up (as they say) by the darkness, and the cemetery returned to its spectral, lifeless melancholy.

So, Dumas, Sue, Joly and Toussenel. The only thing missing, apart from the mastery of Father Barruel, my spiritual guide in the whole plan, was the point of view of a fervent Catholic. Lagrange, at that very time, while urging me to hasten my contact with the Alliance Israélite, had spoken of Gougenot des Mousseaux. I knew something about him. He was a Catholic monarchist journalist, who had been interested in magic, satanic practices, secret societies and Freemasonry.

"So far as we know," said Lagrange, "he's about to finish a book on the Jews and the Judaization of Christian nations, if you follow my meaning. You may find it helpful to meet him, to gather any information you need for our Russian friends. And it would be useful for us to know more about what he's up to — we wouldn't wish any harm to come to the fine relations among our government, the Church and the Jewish financial world. You could describe yourself as an expert on Jewish affairs who admires his work. There is someone who could introduce you, a cleric, Abbé Dalla Piccola, who has performed quite a few services for us."

"But I don't know a word of Hebrew," I said.

"Who says Gougenot does? To hate someone, you don't have to speak his language."

And now (suddenly!) I remember my first meeting with Abbé Dalla Piccola. I see him as if he were standing here in front of me. And in seeing him, I realize that he is not my double, in fact he is nothing like me, because he looks at least sixty and is almost hunchbacked, squint-eyed and has protruding teeth (Abbé Quasimodo, I thought, seeing him now). What is more, he had a German accent. I remember Dalla Piccola whispering to me that it would be a good idea to keep an eye on not just the Jews but also the Freemasons, since they are all part of the same conspiracy. I felt it would be better not to open up two fronts at the same time, but from the abbé's various comments I realized the Jesuits were interested in information on the Masonic sects, as the Church was preparing a very violent attack on the Masonic plague.

"In any event," Dalla Piccola had said, "when the time comes to make contact with such groups, let me know. I'm a brother in a Paris lodge and well connected in such circles."

"You, a priest?" I had said.

Dalla Piccola had smiled. "If you only knew how many priests are Masons . . ."

I had, in the meantime, arranged an interview with Chevalier Gougenot des Mousseaux. He was about seventy, already weak in spirit, sure of the few ideas he had, and interested only in proving the existence of the devil and in magicians, sorcerers, spiritualists, hypnotists, Jews, idolatrous priests and "electricians," who believed in some kind of vital force.

He spoke in torrents, and began at the very beginning. I listened patiently to the old man's ideas about Moses, the Pharisees, the Grand Sanhedrin and the Talmud. As he spoke, Gougenot offered me an excellent cognac, inadvertently leaving the bottle on a small table in front of him, and I listened patiently.

He told me the proportion of women of ill repute was higher among Jews than among Christians (and don't we know it, I thought, from the Gospels, where Jesus meets fallen women wherever he goes), and went on to demonstrate how in Talmudic teaching there is no mention of neighbors, nor any suggestion of duties toward them, which explains and justifies in its own way the ruthlessness of Jews in ruining families, seducing young girls and putting widows and old people on the streets after bleeding them of all their money. The number of criminals, as well as prostitutes, was also higher among Jews than Christians. "Did you know," said Gougenot, "that eleven out of twelve cases of thef tbrought before the courts in Leipzig were committed by Jews? In fact," he added with a malicious smile, "on Calvary there were two criminals for a single just man. And generally speaking, the crimes committed by Jews are the more heinous, such as deception, forgery, usury, fraudulent bankruptcy, smuggling, producing counterfeit money, extortion, commercial fraud . . . I need hardly continue."

After almost an hour of details about usury, he reached the more lurid part, on infanticide and cannibalism, before ending, almost by way of contrast to such dark practices, with the description of a matter that was clear and visible in the light of day: the harmful effects of Jewish finance on the public economy, and the weakness of French governments in combating and punishing it.

Most interesting of all, though hardly of any use to me, was when Gougenot recalled the intellectual superiority of the Jews over Christians, almost as if he too were Jewish, quoting those assertions by Disraeli which I had heard from Toussenel. And here it was clear that socialists, Fourierists and Catholic monarchists shared the same view of Judaism and seemed to reject the popular view of the runtish, sickly Jew. It is true that Jews had weak, fragile constitutions, never having trained their bodies or practiced military arts (unlike, say, the Greeks, who valued physical competition), but they lived long, were remarkably fertile (an effect of their insatiable sexual appetite) and were immune from many illnesses that afflicted the rest of humanity, thus making them more dangerous as invaders of the world.

"Explain to me," said Gougenot, "why the Jews are almost always spared from cholera epidemics, even when they live in the most dank and insalubrious parts of the city. Referring to the plague in 1346, a historian of that period said that for some mysterious reason the Jews had not been stricken in any country; Frascator tells us the Jews alone were saved from the typhoid epidemic of 1505; Daguer shows how the Jews were the only survivors of the dysentery epidemic in Nijmegen in 1736; Wawruch proves that the tapeworm is not found in the Jewish population in Germany. What do you say? How is it possible, if these are the filthiest people in the world, who marry only among members of their own race? It's against all the laws of nature. Is it their diet, whose rules remain obscure? Or is it circumcision? What secret makes them stronger than us even when they seem weaker? Such a treacherous and powerful enemy, I say, has to be destroyed by whatever means. You realize when they arrived in the Promised Land there were only six hundred thousand men. If you count four people for each adult male, that makes a total population of two and a half million. By the time of Solomon they had one million three hundred thousand soldiers, and therefore five million people, and that's double. And today? It's hard to calculate how many there are, spread throughout every continent, but the more prudent estimates talk of ten million. And they're growing, growing . . ."