UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (6 page)

"A relative left her with me for treatment two years ago, and then died. The payments obviously stopped, but what could I do, turn the patient out onto the street? I know little of her past. It seems, according to what she has told me, that during her adolescence, every five or six days she would feel pain in her temples after some excitement, and then collapse as if asleep. What she calls sleep is, in fact, an attack of hysteria; when she wakes up, or calms down, she is quite different from what she was before. In other words, she has entered what Doctor Azam described as the
second state
. In the state that we shall call normal, Diana behaves as the disciple of a Masonic sect . . . Don't misunderstand me, I too belong to the Grand Orient, by which I mean the Freemasonry of respectable people, but perhaps you know that there exist various 'obediences' in the Templar tradition with peculiar propensities for the occult sciences, and some of them — which are, fortunately, very much on the fringe — incline toward satanic rites. In what must, alas, be defined as her
normal state
, Diana considers herself to be a disciple of Lucifer or something of that kind. She makes licentious remarks, talks about lewd incidents, tries to seduce members of the male nursing staffand even me. I am sorry to be so indelicate, especially as Diana is, one might say, a charming woman. In my view, in this state she suffers the effects of traumas inflicted upon her during her adolescence, and tries to escape those memories by entering periodically into her second state. In this state Diana appears as a mild, innocent creature; she is a good Christian, asks for her prayer book and to be allowed to go to Mass. But the strange aspect, which also happened with Félida, is that Diana, in her second state, when she is the virtuous Diana, clearly remembers how she was in her normal state, and is distressed, and asks how she could have been so bad, and punishes herself with a hair shirt, to such a point that she calls the second state her
rational state
, and refers to her normal state as a period when she was prey to hallucinations. In her normal state, however, Diana remembers nothing of what she does in her second state. The two conditions alternate at unpredictable intervals, and sometimes she remains in one or the other state for several days. I would agree with Doctor Azam when it comes to
perfect somnambulism.
It is not just somnambulists, in fact, but also those who take drugs — hashish, belladonna, opium — or abuse alcohol, who do things they cannot remember when they wake up again."

 

"Charcot has chosen the path of hypnotism, which until recently was an occupation for charlatans like Mesmer."

I don't know why the account of Diana's illness intrigued me so much, but I remember saying to Du Maurier: "I will mention it to an acquaintance of mine who deals with sad cases such as this, and knows where an orphan girl might be best looked after. I will send Abbé Dalla Piccola to you; he has much influence among charitable institutions."

At least I knew the name Dalla Piccola when I spoke with Du Maurier. But why was I so concerned about this woman Diana?

I have been writing for hours, my thumb is aching, and I have eaten at my desk, spreading pâté and butter on bread, with a few glasses of Château Latour to stimulate the memory.

I would have liked to reward myself with, I don't know, perhaps a visit to Brébant-Vachette, but until I have understood who I am, I can't be seen around. Sooner or later, though, I'll have to venture into place Maubert to bring back something else to eat.

Let us think no more about it for the moment, and return to our writing.

During those years (I think it was '85 or '86) I became acquainted with that man at Magny whom I still call the Austrian (or German) doctor. His name now comes back to me — he was called Froïde (I think that's how it's written), a doctor around thirty years old who most certainly came to Magny only because he couldn't afford better, and was doing an apprenticeship with Charcot. He sat alone at a nearby table, and at first we limited ourselves to polite nods. I judged him to be gloomy by nature, ill at ease, timidly eager for someone to confide in, to unburden his anxieties. On two or three occasions he had found a pretext for exchanging a few words, but I had always remained aloof.

Even though the name Froïde did not have the same ring as Steiner or Rosenberg, I nevertheless knew that all Jews who live and make money in Paris have German names, and, my suspicions having been raised by his hooked nose, one day I asked Du Maurier, who made a vague gesture, adding, "I'm not sure, but in any event I prefer to keep my distance — Jew and German are a mix I don't much like."

"Is he not Austrian?" I asked.

"It's the same, is it not? Same language, same way of thinking. I haven't forgotten the Prussians who marched along the ChampsÉlysées."

"I am told that medicine is among the professions most often followed by Jews, as much as usury. It's a good thing never to be in need of money, and never to fall ill."

"But there are Christian doctors too," Du Maurier replied with an icy smile.

I had made a faux pas.

There are Paris intellectuals who, before expressing their distaste for Jews, concede that some of their best friends are Jews. Hypocrisy. I have no Jewish friends (God forbid). All my life I've avoided Jews. Perhaps I have instinctively avoided them, because the Jew (like the German) can be identified by his smell (as Victor Hugo put it,
fetor judaica
). This and other signs help them to recognize each other, as pederasts do. My grandfather used to say that their smell is due to the excessive use of garlic and onion, and perhaps mutton and goose, coated with sticky sugars that make them splenetic. But it must also be the race itself — their infected blood, their feeble loins. They are all communists — look at Marx and Lassalle. In this respect, my Jesuits were right for once.

I've also managed to avoid Jews because I keep an eye on names. Austrian Jews, as they grew rich, bought fancy names, of flowers, precious stones or noble metals, becoming Silbermann or Goldstein. The poorer ones acquired names such as Grünspan (verdigris). In France and Italy, they disguised themselves by adopting the names of cities or places such as Ravenna, Modena, Picard and Flamand, or they were inspired by the revolutionary calendar (Froment, Avoine, Laurier)—quite rightly, seeing that their fathers had been the hidden authors of the regicide. But you also have to be careful about first names, which sometimes conceal Jewish names — Maurice comes from Moses, Isidore from Isaac, Édouard from Aaron, Jacques from Jacob and Alphonse from Adam.

Is Sigmund a Jewish name? Instinctively I had decided to keep a distance from the mountebank, but one day Froïde knocked over the saltcellar as he went to pick it up. Certain rules of courtesy have to be respected between neighboring tables, and I offered him mine, observing that in some countries knocking over the salt was considered bad luck, and he laughed, saying that he was not superstitious. From that day on we began to exchange a few words. He apologized for his French, which he described as patchy, but which was easy to understand. They are nomadic by habit and have to cope with all languages. I said politely, "It's just a matter of getting used to the sound," and he smiled at me with gratitude. Slimy.

As a Jew Froïde was also deceitful. I had always heard it said that those of his race must eat only special food, cooked in a particular way, and for this reason they always live in ghettos, whereas Froïde tucked into all that Magny had to offer, and was not averse to a glass of beer with his meal.

One evening it seemed he wanted to let himself go. He had already ordered two beers and, after dessert, while he was smoking nervously, he asked for a third. And then, as he was talking and waving his hands, he knocked the salt over for the second time.

"It's not that I'm clumsy," he apologized, "but I am rather anxious. It's been three days since I last received a letter from my fiancée. I don't expect her to write as I do, almost every day, but this silence worries me. She is in delicate health; it upsets me terribly not to be with her. And I need her approval for whatever I do. I would like to hear what she thinks about my dinner with Charcot. Because you know, Monsieur Simonini, I was invited to dinner at the great man's house a few evenings ago. It doesn't happen to every young visiting doctor, and a foreigner at that."

There, I thought, the little Semite parvenu, working his way into respectable families to advance in his career. And did his concern about his fiancée not betray the sensual and lascivious nature of the Jew, always thinking about sex? You think about her at night, don't you? And maybe you touch yourself fantasizing about her — you too should read Tissot. But I let him go on.

"The guests were men of quality: Daudet's son, Doctor Strauss, Pasteur's assistant, Professor Beck from the Institute and the great Italian painter Emilio Toffano. An evening that cost me fourteen francs — a fine black Hamburg cravat, white gloves, a new shirt and a dress coat for the first time in my life. And for the first time in my life I had my beard trimmed, in the French style. As for my shyness, a little cocaine helps to loosen the tongue."

"Cocaine? Is it not a poison?"

"Everything is poisonous if taken in excessive doses, even wine. But I have been studying this remarkable substance for two years. Cocaine, you see, is an alkaloid taken from a plant that is chewed by the natives of South America to resist the Andean altitudes. Unlike opium and alcohol, it provokes mental states of excitement without producing negative effects. It is excellent for relieving pain, principally in ophthalmology, or for the cure of asthma, useful in treating alcoholism and drug addiction, perfect against seasickness and valuable in treating diabetes; it suppresses hunger, drowsiness and fatigue like magic, is a good substitute for tobacco, cures dyspepsia, flatulence, liver attacks, stomach cramps, hypochondria, spinal irritation, hay fever, is a valuable restorative in consumption and cures migraine; in cases of serious tooth decay, insert a wad of cotton soaked in a four percent solution into the cavity and the pain subsides immediately. And above all it is marvelous for depressives — in restoring their confidence, raising their spirits, making them more active and optimistic."

The doctor was by now on his fourth glass and had clearly reached a state of gloomy intoxication. He leaned forward as if to make a confession.

"Cocaine, as I always say to my beloved Martha, is excellent for someone like me, who doesn't consider himself particularly attractive, who in his youth had never been young and now at thirty is unable to grow up. There was a time when I was full of ambition and desperate to learn, and day after day I felt discouraged by the fact that Mother Nature had not, in one of her moments of compassion, stamped me with that mark of genius which she grants to people every now and then."

All of a sudden he stopped, with the air of one who realizes he has laid bare his soul. Whining little Jew, I thought. And I decided to embarrass him.

"Is cocaine not said to be an aphrodisiac as well?" I asked.

Froïde blushed. "It also has that virtue, so I understand . . . But I have no experience in that respect. As a man, I am not inclined to such itches. And as a doctor, sex is not a matter that much interests me. Although sex is beginning to be much discussed at the Salpêtrière. Charcot discovered that one of his patients, a certain Augustine, during an advanced phase of her hysterical manifestations, revealed that her earliest trauma had been sexual violence inflicted in early childhood. Naturally I don't deny that among the traumas provoking hysteria there may also be phenomena linked to sex, that is quite clear. But I think it is simply too much to reduce everything to sex. Perhaps, though, it is my bourgeois prudery that distances me from these problems."

No, I thought, it isn't your prudery; it's because like all the circumcised men of your race you're obsessed by sex but try to forget it. I'd just like to see, when you put your smutty hands on that Martha of yours, if you don't produce a long line of little Jews and don't make her consumptive from the exertion.

Froïde meanwhile continued: "My problem, unfortunately, is another. I have finished my supply of cocaine and am plunging into melancholy. Doctors in ancient times would have said that I have an excess of black bile. I used to be able to find the compound at Merck & Gehe, but they have had to stop making it, as they can find only poorquality raw material now. The fresh leaves can be processed only in America, and the best producer is Parke & Davis of Detroit, a more soluble variety, pure white in color and with an aromatic odor. I had a modest supply, but here in Paris I don't know whom to ask."

Music to the ears of one who is well informed on all the secrets of place Maubert and its neighborhood. I knew certain people to whom it was enough to mention not just cocaine, but a diamond, a stuffed lion or a carboy of vitriol, and the following day they would deliver it to you, so long as you didn't ask where they'd found it. For me cocaine is a poison, and I thought, I don't mind contributing to the poisoning of a Jew. So I told Doctor Froïde that within a few days I would obtain a good supply of his alkaloid. Froïde, of course, didn't imagine my ways were anything less than irreproachable. "You know," I told him, "we antiquarians get to meet all kinds of people."