The Prague Cemetery Read online

  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 . . .

  Otherwise Dalla Piccola and I are the same person. Since I found the cassock in my bedroom, after the day of the Mass (the 21st) I would have been able to return to impasse Maubert dressed as Dalla Piccola (if I'd had to go to a Mass, it is more credible that I'd have gone as an abbé), before taking off the cassock and wig, then later going to sleep in the abbé's apartment (and forgetting that I had left the cassock at Simonini's). The morning after, Tuesday, the 22nd of March, waking up as Dalla Piccola, not only would I have found myself with no memory, but I wouldn't have been able to find the cassock at the foot of the bed. As Dalla Piccola, with no memory, I would have found a spare cassock in the corridor and would have had as much time as I needed to escape the same day to Auteuil, only to change my mind by the end of the day, steel myself and return to Paris later that evening, to the apartment at impasse Maubert, hanging the cassock on the hook in the bedroom, and waking up with no memory once again, but as Simonini, on the Wednesday, believing it was still Tuesday. Therefore, I reasoned, Dalla Piccola loses his memory on the 22nd of March and remains amnesiac the whole day, finding himself on the 23rd as an amnesiac Simonini. Nothing exceptional after what I had learned from — what's his name?—that doctor at the clinic in Vincennes.

  Except for one small problem. I reread my notes. If that was how things had happened, Simonini would have found in his bedroom, on the morning of the 23rd, not one cassock but two — the one he had left on the night of the 21st and the other he had left on the night of the 22nd. Yet there was only one.

  But no, what a fool I am. Dalla Piccola had returned from Auteuil to rue Maître-Albert on the evening of the 22nd, put down his cassock, then gone to the apartment in impasse Maubert and slept there, waking the following morning (the 23rd) as Simonini, to find only one cassock on the rack. It is true that, if events had taken that course, when I entered Dalla Piccola's apartment on the morning of the 23rd, I should have found the cassock that he'd left there on the evening of the 22nd, but he could have hung it back up in the corridor where he had found it. All I had to do was check.

  I went along the corridor, with lighted lamp, feeling a certain trepidation. If Dalla Piccola and I were not the same person, I told myself, I might have seen him appear at the other end of that passageway, he too perhaps carrying a lamp in front of him . . . Fortunately that didn't happen. And I found the cassock hanging at the far end of the corridor.

  And yet, and yet . . . if Dalla Piccola had returned from Auteuil and, on leaving the cassock, walked the whole length of the corridor to my apartment and happily gone to sleep in my bed, it was because at that point he knew who I was, and knew that he could sleep here just as well as in his own place, seeing that we were the same person. Dalla Piccola had therefore gone to bed knowing he was Simonini, whereas, the morning after, Simonini had woken not knowing he was Dalla Piccola. In other words, Dalla Piccola first loses his memory, then regains it, then goes to sleep and passes his loss of memory on to Simonini.

  Loss of memory . . . This phrase, meaning nonrecollection, opens a gap in the mist of time that I had quite forgotten. I remember talking about people with memory loss at Chez Magny, more than ten years ago, with Bourru and Burot, with Du Maurier and with the Austrian doctor.

  3

  CHEZ MAGNY

  25th March 1897, at dawn

  Chez Magny . . . As far as I can recall, it used to cost no more than ten francs a head at that restaurant in rue Contrescarpe-Dauphine, and the quality matched the price. I'm a lover of good food, I know, but you can't eat at Foyot every day. In years gone by, many used to go to Magny to catch a glimpse of famous writers like Gautier or Flaubert or, earlier still, that consumptive Polish pianist kept by a degenerate woman who went about in trousers. I looked in there one evening and left right away. Artists are insufferable, even from afar, always looking aro
und to see whether we have recognized them.

  Then the "great men" stopped going to Magny, and moved on to Brébant-Vachette, in boulevard Poissonnière, where you ate better and paid more, but evidently carmina dant panem — poetry does give you bread. And once Magny had been purged, so to speak, I started going occasionally, starting in the early '80s.

  I saw men of science there, including eminent chemists such as Berthelot and many doctors from the Salpêtrière. The hospital isn't exactly close by, but perhaps the clinicians find pleasure in taking a short walk in the Latin Quarter rather than eating at the filthy gargotes where the patients' families go. Since medical discussions invariably relate to the infirmities of others, and since at Magny, to compete with the noise, everyone talks loudly, a trained ear can usually pick up something interesting. Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.