UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (58 page)

In January of this year there was a trial behind closed doors, and Esterhazy was acquitted of all charges. Picquart was sentenced to sixty days' imprisonment. But the Dreyfusards are not giving up. A vulgar writer by the name of Zola has published an inflammatory article (
"J'accuse!"
), and a group of scribblers and supposed scientists have joined the campaign, demanding a review of the case. Who are these people — Proust, France, Sorel, Monet, Renard, Durkheim? Not the kind who frequent Salon Adam. Proust, I'm told, is a twenty-fiveyear-old pederast writer whose works are fortunately unpublished, and Monet is a dauber— I've seen one or two of his paintings, which look at the world through gummy eyes. What have a writer and a painter to do with the decisions of a military tribunal? Poor France, as Drumont would say. If only these "intellectuals"—as Clemenceau, that defender of lost causes, calls them — kept their minds on the few things they knew something about.

Zola was put on trial and, by good fortune, sentenced to a year's imprisonment. Justice still exists in France, says Drumont, who in May was elected as deputy for Algiers, ensuring that there will be a good anti-Semitic group in parliament, which will help to defend the claims of the anti-Dreyfusards.

Everything seemed to be going in the right direction. Picquart had been sentenced to eight months in prison in July, Zola had fled to London, and I thought that no one would now reopen the case. Then a Captain Cuignet appeared, and demonstrated that Panizzardi's letter accusing Dreyfus was a forgery. How could he make such a claim when I had done the job so perfectly? In any event, the high command took it seriously and, since the letter had been found and passed on by Major Henry, people began to talk about the "Henry forgery." When put under pressure in late August, Henry admitted everything. He was taken to the prison at Mont-Valérien and slit his throat with a razor the following day. As I said, never leave certain things in the hands of soldiers: What? Arrest a suspected traitor and allow him to keep his razor?

"Henry didn't commit suicide," claimed Drumont angrily. "He was forced into it. There are still too many Jews on the general staff. We shall open a public subscription to fund a campaign to clear Henry's name!"

Four or five days later, Esterhazy escaped to Belgium, and then to England. Almost an admission of guilt. I didn't understand why he hadn't defended himself by throwing the blame on me.

 

"There are still too many Jews on the general staff."

A few nights ago, while I was turning these matters over in my mind, I again heard noises in the house. The next morning I found not only the shop but also the cellar in disarray, and the trap door to the sewer was open.

Just as I was wondering whether I too should be making a run for it, like Esterhazy, Rachkovsky rang the bell at the shop door. Without troubling to come upstairs, he sat down in a chair that was for sale, had anyone ever wanted to buy it, and began immediately: "What would you say if I told the Sûreté that in the cellar there are four corpses, one of which happens to be a man of mine I've been searching for everywhere? I'm tired of waiting. I will give you two days to get the Protocols you've told me about and then I'll forget what I've seen down there. That seems a fair deal."

It didn't entirely surprise me that Rachkovsky knew about the sewer. Sooner or later I would have to give him something, so I tried to extract other benefits from the deal he was offering me. "Perhaps," I ventured, "you could help me resolve a problem I have with the military secret service."

He laughed. "You're worried they'll find out it was you who penned the
bordereau
?"

This man clearly knew everything. He put his hands together as if to collect his thoughts, and began to explain.

"You probably have no idea what's going on, and you're frightened that someone's going to blame you. Don't worry. It's important for the whole of France, for reasons of national security, that the
bordereau
is believed to be genuine."

"Why?"

"Because the French artillery is preparing its latest weapon, the 75-millimeter gun, and the Germans must continue to believe the French are still working on the 120-millimeter gun. The Germans had to find out that a spy was trying to sell them secrets about the 120-millimeter gun because they'd then believe this was the sensitive point. You, as a person of good sense, will see that the Germans should have said to themselves, 'Goodness gracious, if this
bordereau
were genuine, we ought to have known something about it before it was tossed into the wastebasket!' And so they should have seen through it. Instead, they fell into the trap. That's because no one in the secret service ever tells the whole story. Everyone thinks that the fellow at the next desk is a double agent, and probably each accused the other: 'What? Such an important piece of news had arrived and the military attaché didn't know about it, even though it was addressed to him? Or had he known about it and kept quiet?' Imagine the torrent of mutual suspicion — someone's head must have rolled for that. It was (and still is) vital for everyone to accept the
bordereau
as genuine. That was why Dreyfus had to be sent to Devil's Island as quickly as possible, to ensure that he wouldn't start defending himself, saying it was impossible that he'd spied on the 120-millimeter gun because, if anything, he'd have spied on the 75-millimeter gun. It seems, in fact, that someone gave him a pistol, offering him a chance to kill himself to avoid the humiliation that awaited him. In that way, all risk of a public trial would have been prevented. But Dreyfus was stubborn. He insisted on defending himself because he thought he was innocent. An officer should never think. What's more, I don't believe the wretch knew anything about the 75-millimeter gun. It's hardly likely that such things end up on the desk of a trainee. But it was always better to be cautious. Understand? If anyone knew the
bordereau
was your handiwork, the whole pack of cards would collapse and the Germans would realize that the 120-millimeter gun was a red herring — these Boche might be slow on the uptake, but they're not completely stupid. You'll tell me it's not just the Germans but also the French secret service who are in the hands of a group of bunglers. That's obvious. Otherwise these men would be working for the Okhrana, which is more efficient and, as you see, has informers in both camps."

"But Esterhazy?"

"That fine gentleman of ours is a double agent. He was pretending to spy on Sandherr for the German embassy but in the meantime was spying on the German embassy for Sandherr. He had worked hard in setting up the Dreyfus case, but Sandherr realized his days were numbered and the Germans were beginning to suspect him. Sandherr knew perfectly well he'd given you a sample of Esterhazy's handwriting. The object was to put the blame on Dreyfus, but if things had taken a turn for the worse, it was always possible to put the responsibility for the
bordereau
on Esterhazy. Esterhazy, of course, realized the trap he'd fallen into only when it was too late."

"So why, then, didn't he name me?"

"Because they'd have accused him of lying, and he'd have ended up in some fortress, or floating in a canal, whereas this way he can enjoy a life of leisure in London, on a good annuity, at the expense of the secret service. Whether they continue to say it's Dreyfus, or decide that the traitor is Esterhazy, the
bordereau
has to remain genuine. No one will ever put the blame on a forger like you. You're as safe as houses. I, on the other hand, will be causing you a great deal of bother over those corpses down there. So out with that information. You'll receive a visit tomorrow from a young man called Golovinsky, who works for me. You don't have to produce the original finished documents — they'll have to be in Russian, and he will deal with that. You have to provide him with new, genuine, convincing material, to flesh out that dossier of yours on the Prague cemetery, which by now is
lippis notum et tonsoribus
. What I mean is, it's fine for the revelations to originate from a meeting there, in the cemetery, but it mustn't be clear when the meeting took place, and the discussions must be relevant for today, not medieval fantasies."

I had some work to do.

I had almost two full days and nights to assemble the hundreds of notes and clippings I'd been gathering in the course of my visits to Drumont over more than a decade. I never imagined using them because they had all been published in
La Libre Parole
, but for the Russians it might be unfamiliar material. I had to make a choice. Golovinsky and Rachkovsky were certainly not interested in knowing whether or not the Jews were hopeless musicians or explorers. Of more interest, perhaps, was the suspicion that they were preparing the economic downfall of good people.

I checked everything I had already used for the rabbis' earlier speeches. The Jews planned to take over the railways, mines, forests, tax administration and landownership; to control the judiciary, the legal profession and education; to infiltrate philosophy, politics, science, art and above all medicine, since a doctor gets closer to families than to a priest. It was necessary for the Jews to undermine religion, spread free thought, stop the teaching of Christianity in schools, take over the alcohol trade, control the press. Heavens above, was there anything else they could still want?

There was nothing to prevent me from recycling all this material. Rachkovsky would have seen the version of the rabbis' speeches I had given to Glinka, which dealt entirely with arguments of a religious and apocalyptic nature. But I had to add something new to my previous versions.

I carefully considered all the issues that might catch the interest of an average reader. I wrote it all out in the calligraphic style of half a century ago, on paper that was appropriately yellowed. And there they were: the documents my grandfather had given me, written down at meetings of the Jews in that ghetto where he had lived as a young man, translated from the Protocols the rabbis had recorded after their meeting in the Prague cemetery.

When Golovinsky came to the shop the next day, I was astonished that Rachkovsky could have given such an important assignment to a flabby, shortsighted, badly dressed young peasant who looked as if he'd always been last in the class. Then, as we talked, I realized he was brighter than he seemed. He spoke very poor French with a heavy Russian accent, but he immediately asked how it was that rabbis in the Turin ghetto had written in French. I told him that all educated people in Piedmont spoke French at that time, and he accepted it. Later I wondered whether my rabbis in the cemetery would have spoken Hebrew or Yiddish, but since the documents were in French, the question was of no consequence.

"Notice, for example, on this page," I said, "how importance is given to the spread of ideas by atheist philosophers to demoralize the Gentiles. And listen here: 'We must cancel the concept of God from Christian minds, replacing it with arithmetical calculation and material needs.'"

I had assumed that everybody hates arithmetic. Remembering Drumont's complaints about obscene publications, I decided that, at least for the more orthodox reader, the idea of spreading easy, vapid entertainment for the masses would have seemed excellent for the conspiracy. "Listen to this," I said to Golovinsky. "'To prevent the population from discovering new kinds of political action, we will distract it with novel forms of amusement: athletic games, pastimes, hobbies of various kinds, taverns, and we will invite them to compete in artistic and sporting competitions . . . We will encourage the unrestrained love of luxury and will increase salaries, but this will bring no benefit to the worker, because we will at the same time increase the price of basic commodities on the pretext of an agricultural crisis. We will undermine the system of production by sowing the seeds of anarchy among workers and encouraging them to abuse alcohol. We will seek to direct public opinion toward any kind of fantastical theory that might seem progressive or liberal.'"