UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (49 page)

Another regular topic was the nomadic nature of the Jews.

"The Jew is a nomad, but to escape from something, not to explore new lands," observed Drumont. "The Aryan travels, he discovers America and unknown places; the Semite waits for the Aryans to discover new lands and then goes and exploits them. And look at folktales. The Jews don't have enough imagination to think up a good story, but their Semitic brothers, the Arabs, told the stories of
The Thousand and One Nights,
in which someone discovers a pot of gold, a cavern with thieves' diamonds, a bottle containing a kind genie — and all are gifts from heaven. And in the Aryan tales, the quest for the Holy Grail, for instance, everything has to be achieved through combat and sacrifice."

"Despite all this," said one of Drumont's friends, "the Jews have managed to overcome all adversity."

"Naturally," said Drumont, foaming with resentment. "It's impossible to destroy them. When any other race of people migrates to another place, it cannot resist the change of climate and different food, and it becomes weak. Yet when the Jews move about, they become stronger, like insects."

"They're like the Gypsies, who never get sick. Even if they feed on dead animals. Perhaps cannibalism helps them, which is why they kidnap children."

"I'm not sure, though, that cannibalism lengthens life. Look at the Negroes in Africa: they're cannibals and yet they die like flies in their villages."

"Then how do you explain the immunity of the Jew? He has an average lifespan of fifty-three years, while for Christians it's thirty-seven. They appear more resistant to disease than Christians, through a phenomenon that's been noted since the Middle Ages. They seem to have within them a permanent pestilence that protects them from ordinary plague."

Simonini pointed out that these arguments had already been dealt with by Gougenot, but Drumont and his coterie were less concerned about the originality of ideas than about their truth.

"All right," said Drumont, "they are more resistant than we are to physical illness, but they are more susceptible to mental illness. Constant involvement in commercial dealings, speculation and scheming affects their nervous system. In Italy there is one lunatic for every three hundred and forty-eight Jews, and one for every seven hundred and seventy-eight Catholics. Charcot has carried out some interesting studies on Russian Jews — we have information about them because they're poor, whereas French Jews are rich and pay a great deal of money to hide their sick patients in Doctor Blanche's clinic. You know that Sarah Bernhardt keeps a white coffin in her bedroom?"

"They're producing children twice as fast as we are. They now number more than four million throughout the world."

"It was written in the Book of Exodus: 'And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and became mighty and filled the earth.'"

"And now they are here. And here they've been, even when we had no suspicion they were here. Who was Marat? His true name was Mara, a Sephardic family driven out of Spain who turned Protestant to hide their Jewish origins. Marat: ravaged by leprosy, died in filth, mentally ill, affected by persecution mania, then a homicidal maniac, a typical Jew who avenges himself on Christians by sending as many as he can to the guillotine. Look at his picture in the Carnavalet Museum and you'll immediately see the crazed neuropath, like Robespierre and other Jacobins, and that asymmetry in the two halves of the face which is indicative of an unbalanced mind."

"The Revolution, as we know, was caused to a large extent by the Jews. But Napoleon, with his hatred of the pope and his Masonic alliances, was he a Semite?"

"So it would seem. Even Disraeli said he was. The Balearic Islands and Corsica provided shelter for the Jews driven from Spain, who then became Marranos and took the names of the lords they served, such as Orsini and Bonaparte."

In every group of people there's the
gaffeur,
the one who asks the wrong question at the wrong moment. And that was how the insidious question emerged: "And Jesus, then? He was a Jew. Yet he dies young, has no interest in money and thinks only about the kingdom of heaven."

The reply came from Jacques de Biez: "Gentlemen, the idea that Christ was Jewish is a legend created by people who were Jews themselves, like Saint Paul and the four evangelists. Jesus was in fact of the Celtic race, like we French, who were only much later conquered by the Romans. And before being emasculated by the Romans, the Celts were a population of conquerors. Have you heard of the Galatians, who reached as far as Greece? Galilee is thus named for the Gauls who had colonized it. Then again, the legend of a virgin who gave birth to a son is a Celtic and a Druidic myth. Just look at all the portraits we have of Jesus — he was fairhaired and blue-eyed. And he spoke against the customs, superstitions and vices of the Jews. And unlike what the Jews expected from the messiah, he said that his kingdom was not of this earth. And while the Jews were monotheists, Christ launched the idea of the Trinity, inspired by Celtic polytheism. That's why they killed him. Caiaphas, who condemned him, was a Jew . . . Judas, who betrayed him, was a Jew . . . Peter, who denied him, was a Jew . . ."

The same year that Drumont founded
La Libre Parole,
he had the good fortune, or intuition, to ride the Panama scandal.

"It's quite simple," he explained to Simonini before launching his campaign. "Ferdinand de Lesseps, the very same man who opened the Suez Canal, is appointed to open up the Isthmus of Panama. Six hundred million francs had to be raised, and Lesseps creates a joint-stock company. Work begins in 1881, hampered by countless problems. Lesseps needs more money and launches a public subscription. But he uses part of the money received to corrupt journalists and conceal the difficulties that were gradually emerging, such as the fact that by '87 barely half the isthmus had been dug and one thousand four hundred million francs had already been spent. Lesseps seeks the help of Eiffel, the Jew who built that ugly tower, then continues to collect funds and uses them to corrupt the press as well as various ministries. The canal company went bankrupt four years later, and eighty-five thousand decent Frenchmen who had invested in the company lost all their money."

"That's well known."

"Yes, but we can now show that the people who were aiding and abetting Lesseps were Jewish financiers, including Baron Jacques de Reinach — a baron of Prussian title! Tomorrow's
La Libre Parole
will cause quite a stir."

And quite a stir it certainly caused, creating a scandal involving journalists and government officials as well as former ministers. Reinach committed suicide, several important figures went to prison, Lesseps managed to avoid imprisonment by reason of age, Eiffel got out by the skin of his teeth. Drumont triumphed as the scourge of malfeasance, and above all had produced solid arguments in his campaign against the Jews.

Before he could approach Drumont, however, it seems that Simonini was summoned by Hébuterne to his usual spot in the nave of Notre Dame.

"Captain Simonini," he said, "some years ago I appointed you to incite Taxil into a campaign against the Masons, one that would prove to be such a circus that it would rebound against the more vulgar opponents of Freemasonry. The man who guaranteed on your behalf that the enterprise would be kept under control was Abbé Dalla Piccola, to whom I entrusted a considerable amount of money. But it now seems this Taxil is going too far. And since it was you who sent the abbé to me, you must put pressure on him, and on Taxil."

At this point in his diary, Simonini admits to himself that his mind is a blank: he seems to remember that Abbé Dalla Piccola had to look after Taxil, but cannot recall appointing him to do any particular task. He remembers saying to Hébuterne only that he would deal with the matter. Then he told him that his present interest was in the Jews and that he was about to get in touch with Drumont and his friends. He was surprised to note how favorably disposed Hébuterne was toward that group. Had he not emphasized repeatedly, Simonini asked him, that the government didn't want to be mixed up in anti-Jewish campaigns?

"Things change, Captain," Hébuterne replied. "Until recently, you see, the Jews were either poor folk who lived in a ghetto, as they still do in Russia and in Rome, or they were great bankers, as here in France. The poor Jews were moneylenders or practiced medicine, but those who made their fortune financed the court and grew rich on loans to the king, supplying money for his wars. In this way they always sided with power and didn't get mixed up in politics. And being interested in finance, they didn't get involved in industry. Then something happened that we were slow in noticing. After the Revolution, countries needed sums of money much larger than the Jews could supply, so they gradually lost their monopoly position over credit. Meanwhile, little by little — and only now do we realize this — the Revolution had brought equality to all citizens, at least here in France. And the Jews, except for those poor folk in the ghettos, joined the bourgeoisie — not only the capitalist upper bourgeoisie but also the petite bourgeoisie, that of the professions, the state authorities and the army. Do you know how many Jewish officers there are today? More than you'd ever imagine. And it's not just the army: the Jews are gradually working their way into the anarchist and communist underworld. Once upon a time, all good revolutionaries were anti-Jewish, because they were anti-capitalist, and the Jews were always allies of the government in power, but today it's fashionable to be a Jew
d'opposition.
And what was that man Marx, of whom our revolutionaries so often talk? He was a penniless bourgeois who lived off his aristocratic wife. And we cannot forget, for example, that all higher education is in their hands, from secondary school to the École des Hautes Études, and all the Paris theaters are in their hands, and most of the newspapers — look at the
Journal des Débats,
the official paper of the
haute banque."

Simonini still didn't understand what it was Hébuterne wanted, now that the Jewish bourgeoisie were becoming a nuisance. When he asked, Hébuterne replied with a vague gesture.

"I don't know. We simply have to keep an eye on the situation. The problem is whether we can trust this new class of Jews. Let's be clear: I am not interested in those fantasies about a Jewish plot to take over the world. Bourgeois Jews no longer identify with their original community and are often ashamed of it. At the same time they are citizens who cannot be trusted — they have been properly French for only a short while and could betray us tomorrow, perhaps in league with bourgeois Prussian Jews. Most of the spies during the Prussian invasion were Alsace Jews."

As they were about to say goodbye, Hébuterne added: "Incidentally, back in Lagrange's time you had dealings with a certain Gaviali. It was you who had him arrested."

"Yes, he was head of the bombers at rue de la Huchette. They're all in Cayenne or thereabouts, if I remember correctly."

"Except for Gaviali, who escaped recently. He's been spotted in Paris."

"Is it possible to escape from Devil's Island?"

"It's possible to escape from anywhere if you're tough enough."

"Why don't you arrest him?"

"Because a good bomb maker might be useful right now. We've managed to track him down. He's working as a rag-and-bone man in Clignancourt. Why not go and find him?"

Rag-and-bone men weren't hard to track down in Paris. They were spread across the whole city, but their main enclave had traditionally been between rue Mouffetard and rue Saint-Médard. They (or at least those described by Hébuterne) lived close to the city gate at Clignancourt, in a colony of shacks with brushwood roofs, and it was a mystery how sunflowers could grow there, in that putrid atmosphere, in the warmer weather.

Nearby, at one time, had been a restaurant
aux pieds humides,
so named because the customers had to wait their turn in the street. Once inside, they paid one sou and plunged an enormous fork into a cauldron and fished out whatever they could — a piece of meat if they were lucky, or a carrot —before being sent out again.

Rag-and-bone men had their own
hôtels garnis.
The rooms were not much — a bed, a table, two odd chairs. On the wall, some holy pictures or engravings from old novels salvaged from the refuse. A piece of mirror, essential for the Sunday wash and brush-up. Here the rag-and-bone man would sort out his finds: bones, china, glass, old ribbons, scraps of silk. The day began at six in the morning, and if the city sergeants (or
flics,
as everyone now called them) found anyone still at work after seven in the evening, they would be fined.

Simonini went looking for Gaviali. And finally, at a
bibine
that sold not only cheap wine but also an absinthe that was said to be lethal (as if the ordinary stuff wasn't bad enough), a figure was pointed out to him. Simonini wasn't wearing his beard, since he remembered he hadn't been wearing one when he knew Gaviali. Although twenty years had passed, he thought he could still be recognized. It was Gaviali who was unrecognizable.

His face was pale and wrinkled, and he had a long beard. Around his scrawny neck a yellowish cravat resembling a piece of rope hung from a greasy collar. On his head was a tattered cap; he wore a greenish frock coat over a crumpled waistcoat; his splattered shoes looked as if they hadn't been cleaned for years, and a layer of mud plastered his laces to the leather. But Gaviali's appearance would hardly have been noticeable among these rag-and bone men, since no one else was dressed any better.

Simonini introduced himself, expecting a cordial response. Instead, Gaviali looked at him with a piercing gaze.

"You have the gall, Captain, to stand there in front of me!" he said. And seeing Simonini's look of bewilderment, he continued: "Do you think I'm quite so stupid? That day when the police arrived and fired on us, I saw perfectly well how you gave the coup de grâce to that wretch you'd sent to us as your agent. All of us survivors ended up on the same boat sailing for Cayenne, and you weren't there. It was easy to put two and two together. Fifteen years lazing about in Cayenne gives you time to think: you planned our conspiracy so you could then expose it. It must be a profitable business."