UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (4 page)

I went down to the street, turned the corner, trying not to stop in front of the brasserie, where the raucous voices of its fallen women could be heard from early morning.

Place Maubert is no longer the court of miracles it was when I arrived here thirty-five years ago. Then it teemed with sellers of recycled tobacco, the coarser variety obtained from cigar stubs and pipe ash, and the finer variety from cigarette butts — coarse tobacco at one franc twenty centimes a pound, fine at between one franc fifty and one franc sixty (though the industry had hardly ever been profitable, and once they'd drunk away most of their profits in some wine cellar, none of those industrious recyclers had anywhere to sleep the night). It teemed with pimps who, having lazed about until at least two in the afternoon, spent the rest of the day smoking, propped against a wall like respectable pensioners, then going into action at dusk, like shepherd dogs. It teemed with thieves reduced to stealing from each other because no decent person (except for the occasional idler up from the countryside) would have dared to cross the square, and I would have been easy prey if it were not for my military step and the way I twirled my stick. And, in any event, the pickpockets of the area knew me, and now and then one of them would greet me, addressing me as Captain. Apart from that, they thought I belonged in some way to their underworld, and dog does not eat dog. It teemed with prostitutes whose beauty had faded — for those who were still attractive would have been working in the
brasseries à femmes — a
nd they therefore had no choice but to offer themselves to rag-and-bone men, petty thieves and foulsmelling secondhand-tobacco sellers. On seeing a respectably dressed gentleman with a well-brushed top hat, they might dare to sidle up to you or take you by the arm, coming so close that you could smell their terrible cheap perfume mixed with sweat, and this would have been too appalling an experience (I had no wish to dream of them at night), so when I saw one of them approaching I would whirl my stick full circle, as if to form an inaccessible area of protection around me, and they understood at once, since they were used to being ordered about and knew how to respect a stick.

Last of all, place Maubert teemed with police spies who were there to recruit their
mouchards
, or informers, or to gather valuable information about villainies that were being hatched and which someone was whispering too loudly to someone else, imagining his voice would be lost in the general din. They were immediately recognizable by their exaggeratedly sinister manner. No true villain looks like a villain, but they do.

Nowadays, tramways pass through the square and it no longer feels like home, though there are still some useful people around if you know how to spot them, leaning in a corner, at the entrance to Café Maître-Albert or in one of the adjacent passageways. All in all, Paris isn't what it used to be, ever since that pencil sharpener, the Eiffel Tower, has been sticking up in the distance, visible from every angle.

Enough. I'm no sentimentalist, and there are plenty of other places where I can find what I need. Yesterday morning I wanted meat and cheese, and place Maubert still served my purpose.

Having bought the cheese, I passed the usual butcher and saw he was open.

"Open on Tuesday? How come?" I asked as I went in.

"Today is Wednesday, Captain," he answered with a laugh. I felt confused, and apologized, saying that you lose your memory with age. I was still a young lad, he said, and it's easy for anyone to lose track of what day it is when you get up in a hurry. I chose my meat and paid without asking for a discount (the only way of gaining respect from tradesmen).

I returned home, still wondering what day it was. I removed my mustache and beard, as I do when I am by myself, and went into the bedroom. Only then was I struck by something that seemed out of place. A piece of clothing was hanging from a hook by the chest of drawers, a cassock that undoubtedly belonged to a priest. Moving closer, I saw on top of the chest a light brown, almost blondish wig.

I was wondering what third-rate actor I might have taken in over the past few days when I realized that I too had been in disguise, since the mustache and beard I'd been wearing were not my own. Was I someone, then, who dressed alternately as a respectable gentleman and as a priest? But how had I blotted out all recollection of this second part of me? Or maybe for some reason (perhaps to avoid an arrest warrant) I had disguised myself in mustache and beard and at the same time had given hospitality to a person dressed as an abbé? And if this fake abbé (a true abbé would not have worn a wig) had been staying with me, where did he sleep, considering there was only one bed in the house? Or perhaps he wasn't living here and, for some reason, had taken shelter here the day before, then rid himself of his disguise to go God knows where to do God knows what?

My mind was a blank. It was as if I knew there was something I ought to recall but couldn't— I mean, something that was part of someone else's recollections. Talking about someone else's recollections is, I believe, the right expression. At that moment I felt I was another person who was watching, from the outside — someone watching Simonini, who, all of a sudden, did not know exactly who he was.

Calm down, I told myself, let's think. For someone who forges documents under the pretext of selling bric-a-brac, and who has chosen to live in one of the less desirable districts of Paris, it was not improbable that I had given protection to a person caught up in some shady machinations. But not to remember to whom I had given protection didn't seem normal.

I looked around, and suddenly my own house seemed strange, as if it were someone else's house, as if perhaps it held other secrets. Leaving the kitchen, to the right was the bedroom, to the left the living room with its usual furniture. I opened the drawers of the writing desk containing the tools of my trade — pens, bottles of various inks, sheets of paper from different periods, white or yellowing. On the shelves, in addition to books, there were boxes holding my papers and an old walnut tabernacle. I was trying to recall what purpose this served when I heard the doorbell ring. I went downstairs to turn away any unwelcome visitor, and saw an old woman whom I seemed to recognize. "Tissot sent me," she said, and so I had to let her in. Goodness knows why I chose that password.

She came in and unwrapped a cloth she was clutching to her chest, showing me twenty hosts.

"Abbé Dalla Piccola told me you'd be interested."

"Certainly," I replied, puzzled by my own response, and asked how much.

"Ten francs each," said the old woman.

"You're mad," I said, out of a tradesman's instinct.

"It's you who are mad — you and your black masses. You think it's easy going into twenty churches in three days to take communion, trying to keep my mouth dry, kneeling with my head in my hands, trying to get the hosts out of my mouth without wetting them, putting them into a purse I carry in my breast, and without the curate or anyone else noticing? Not to mention the sacrilege, and the hell that awaits me. So if you please, two hundred francs, or I'll go to Abbé Boullan."

"Abbé Boullan's dead. Evidently you haven't been getting hosts for some time," I replied almost automatically. Then, confused, I decided to follow my instinct without much further thought.

"Never mind, I'll take them," I said, and paid her. I realized I had to place the consecrated wafers in the tabernacle, awaiting the arrival of some regular customer. A job like any other.

In short, everything seemed normal, familiar. And yet I sensed there was something sinister happening around me which I couldn't identify.

I went back up to my office and noticed a door at the far end, covered by a curtain. I opened it, knowing that I would enter a corridor so dark I would need a lamp to walk along it. The corridor was like a store for theatrical props, or the back room of a junk dealer in the Temple Quarter. Hanging from the walls were clothes of all kinds — for a farmer, coal merchant, deliveryman, beggar, a soldier's jacket and trousers — and beside each costume the headgear to complete it. On a dozen stands, carefully arranged along a wooden shelf, were as many wigs. At the far end was a
coiffeuse
, similar to one in an actor's dressing room, covered with jars of whitener and rouge, black and dark blue pencils, hare's feet, powder puffs, brushes, hairbrushes.

At a certain point the corridor turned a corner, and at the far end was another door leading into a room that was more brightly lit than mine, since it overlooked a street that was not the narrow impasse Maubert. In fact, looking out from one of the windows, I could see rue Maître-Albert below.

There was a stairway leading from the room down to the street, but nothing else. It was a one-room apartment, somewhere between an office and a bedroom, with plain dark furniture, a table, a prie-dieu and a bed. There was a small kitchen by the entrance and, on the stairway, a lavatory with a washbasin.

It was obviously the pied-à-terre of a clergyman with whom I must have been acquainted, since our apartments were connected. And though it all seemed familiar, I felt I was visiting the room for the first time.

I approached the table and saw a bundle of letters in their envelopes, all addressed to the same person: the Most Reverend, or the Very Reverend, Abbé Dalla Piccola. Next to the envelopes were several handwritten sheets of paper, penned in a fine, graceful, almost feminine hand, very different from mine. Drafts of letters of no particular importance, expressing thanks for a gift, confirming an appointment. The sheet on top of these was written carelessly, as if the writer were making notes of points for further consideration. I read it with some difficulty:

Everything seems unreal. It is as though someone is watching me. Write it down to make sure it's true.

Today is the 22nd of March.

Where is my cassock, my wig?

What happened last night? My mind is confused.

I couldn't remember where that door at the end of the room led.

I found a corridor (never seen?) full of clothes, wigs, creams and greasepaint as used by actors.

A good cassock was hanging from a peg, and on a shelf I found not only a good wig but also fake eyebrows. With a foundation of ocher, a little rouge on both cheeks, I have returned to how I think I am, pallid and slightly feverish in appearance. Ascetic. This is me. But who am I?

I know I am Abbé Dalla Piccola. Or rather, the person everyone knows as Abbé Dalla Piccola. But clearly I am not, given that I have to dress up to look like him.

Where does that corridor lead? I'm frightened to go as far as the end.

Reread the above notes. If what is written is written, then it has actually happened. Believe in what is written.

Has someone drugged me? Boullan? He's perfectly capable of it. Or the Jesuits? Or the Freemasons? What have I to do with them?

The Jews! That's who it must have been.

I don't feel safe here. Someone could have broken in during the night, stolen my clothes and, worse still, rummaged through my papers. Perhaps someone's wandering around Paris making people think he is Abbé Dalla Piccola.

I must hide at Auteuil. Maybe Diana will know. Who is Diana?

Abbé Dalla Piccola's notes stopped here, and it was strange he hadn't taken with him a document as confidential as this — a clear indication of his state of anxiety. And all I could find out about him ended here.

I returned to the apartment in impasse Maubert and sat at my desk. In what way did Abbé Dalla Piccola's life cross with mine?

Naturally I was unable to avoid making the most obvious conjecture: that Abbé Dalla Piccola and I were the same person. If that were so, it would explain everything — the two connecting apartments, how I had returned dressed as Dalla Piccola to the apartment of Simonini and how I had left the cassock and wig there and then fallen asleep. Except for one small detail: if Simonini was Dalla Piccola, why did I know nothing at all about Dalla Piccola? And why didn't I feel I was Dalla Piccola, who knew nothing at all about Simonini? (In fact, to find out about Dalla Piccola's thoughts and feelings I had to read of them in his notes.) And if I had been Dalla Piccola as well, I should have been at Auteuil, in the house about which he seemed to know everything and about which I (Simonini) knew nothing. And who was Diana?

Unless I was sometimes Simonini who had forgotten Dalla Piccola, and sometimes Dalla Piccola who had forgotten Simonini. That would be nothing new. Who was the person who told me about cases of double personality? Isn't this what happens to Diana? But who is Diana?

I decided to retrace my steps. I knew that I kept an appointment book, which is where I found the following notes:

21st March, Mass

22nd March, Taxil

23rd March, Guillot for Bonnefoy will

24th March, to Drumont?

I have no idea why I had to go to Mass on the 21st. I don't think I'm a believer. A believer believes in something. Do I believe in something? I don't think so. Therefore I'm not a believer. This is logical. Besides, sometimes you go to Mass for all sorts of reasons, and faith has nothing to do with it.

What I felt more sure of was that the day, which I thought was Tuesday, was in fact Wednesday, the 23rd of March, and that Guillot did in fact come for me to draw up the Bonnefoy will. It was the 23rd and I thought it was the 22nd. So what happened on the 22nd? And who or what was Taxil?

The idea of having to see that fellow Drumont on Thursday was now out of the question. Not knowing who I was, how could I meet someone? I had to hide until I had worked it all out. Drumont . . . I thought I knew who he was, yet if I tried to think about him, it was as if my mind was clouded by wine.

Let's consider other possibilities, I told myself. First, Dalla Piccola is someone else, who for whatever mysterious reasons often comes to my apartment, which is linked to his by a more or less secret corridor. On the evening of the 21st of March he returned to my place in impasse Maubert, left his coat (why?), then went to sleep in his own apartment, where he woke the following morning, having lost his memory. And I woke two mornings later, also having lost my memory. In that case, what could I have done on Tuesday the 22nd if I had woken on the morning of the 23rd with no memory? And why did Dalla Piccola have to undress here, then, with no cassock, go to his place — and at what time? I was struck with dread at the thought that he had passed the first part of the night in my bed . . . My God, it's true that women fill me with horror, but with a priest it would be much worse. I am celibate but not a pervert . . .