«And how did you learn these things from the Jews?»
«I was just over twenty and a young officer in the Savoy army when Napoleon invaded the Kingdom of Piedmont. We were defeated at Millesimo, and Piedmont was annexed to France. It was a victory for the godless Bonapartists, who began hunting down us officers of the king to string us up by the neck. And word spread that it was better not to go around any longer in uniform, nor even to be seen.
My father was in trade, and had had dealings with a Jewish moneylender who owed him a favor. So through his good offices I lodged for several weeks (at a high price, of course) in a small room in the ghetto, which at that time was right next to where we lived, between via San Filippo and via delle Rosine, until the dust had settled and I could leave the city and go to stay with relatives in Florence. I was hardly pleased to be mixed up with that kind of people, but it was the only place where no one dreamed of setting foot—the Jews could not leave there, and decent people kept well away.»
My grandfather then put his hands to his eyes, as if to blot out an unbearable image. «And so, waiting for the storm to pass, I lived in those filthy back streets, where sometimes as many as eight people lived in a single room, with cooking stove, bed and slop bucket, worn down with anemia, their skin waxy, imperceptibly blue like Sèvres china, always seeking out the darkest corners, illuminated only by the light of a candle. Not a drop of blood, yellowish hue, hair the color of gelatin, their beards of an indefinable redness and, when black, seeming the color of a faded frock coat…
I could not bear the stink of my lodgings and wandered around the five courtyards. I remember them well—Cortile Grande, Cortile dei Preti, Cortile della Vite, Cortile della Taverna and Cortile della Terrazza, linked together by fearsome covered passageways, the Portici Oscuri. Now you find Jews even in piazza Carlina—in fact, you find them everywhere, because the Savoyards are getting soft—but at that time they were crammed one on top of the other in those sunless lanes, and had it not been for fear of the Bonapartists, I would never have stomached it amid that greasy, filthy crowd.»
My grandfather paused, moistening his lips with a handkerchief, as if to remove a nasty taste from his mouth. «And thanks to them I was saved. What humiliation. But if we Christians despised them, they certainly weren’t kind to us—indeed they hated us, in the same way they hate us today. And so I started telling them I was born in Livorno of a Jewish family, that as a child I was brought up by relatives who unfortunately baptized me, but that I remained a Jew at heart. These confidences didn’t seem to impress them very much, since, they explained, many of them were in the same situation as me and they no longer took much notice of such things. But my words had won me the trust of an old man who lived in Cortile della Terrazza next to an oven used for baking unleavened bread.»
Here my grandfather became more animated as he recounted that meeting and, with rolling eyes and hand gestures, imitated the Jew he was describing. It seems this Mordechai was from Syria, and had been involved in a sad episode in Damascus. An Arab boy disappeared in the city, and no one thought of the Jews at first because it was said that Jews killed only Christian children for their rituals. But then the remains of a youngster were found in a ditch—the body must have been cut into a thousand pieces and pounded in a mortar. The marks of the crime were so similar to those attributed to the Jews that the police began to think that, with Passover approaching, the Jews must have needed Christian blood to make their bread and, finding no Christian boy, had taken the Arab, baptized him and then slain him.
«You know,» my grandfather explained, «that a baptism is always valid, whoever performs it, provided that the person who baptizes means to do it according to the precepts of the Holy Roman Church. This is something the perfidious Jews know all too well, and they have no shame in saying, ‘I baptize you as would a Christian, in whose idolatry I do not believe, but which he performs fully believing it.’ So the poor little martyr had, at least, the good fortune to end up in heaven, though thanks only to the devil.»
Mordechai was immediately suspected. To make him talk, they tied his wrists behind his back, put weights on his feet, and a dozen times they lifted him up with a pulley and let him fall to the ground. They put sulfur under his nose and then dropped him into icy water, and when he lifted his head they pushed him under until he confessed. In short, to put an end to it, it was said the poor man gave the names of five of his brethren who had nothing to do with it. These five were sentenced to death and he was set free, with dislocated limbs. By now he had lost his wits, and some kind soul loaded him on a merchant ship departing for Genoa, otherwise the other Jews would have stoned him to death.
Indeed, it was said that on the ship he had been lured by a Barnabite priest into being baptized and had accepted so he could find help when he landed in the Kingdom of Piedmont, though he remained faithful at heart to the religion of his fathers. He would therefore have been what the Christians call a Marrano, except that once he’d arrived at Turin he sought refuge in the ghetto and denied ever having been converted; many thought he was a false Jew who remained true to his new Christian faith—so, you might say, he was a Marrano twice over. But as no one could prove all the rumors that came from abroad, out of pity for the insane he was kept alive by the meager charity of all, and confined to a hole where not even an occupant of the ghetto would have dared to live.
Whatever he might have done in Damascus, my grandfather claimed that the old man hadn’t really gone mad. He was simply filled with an unquenchable hatred toward Christians, and in that windowless hovel, his trembling hand clenching my grandfather by the wrist, his glistening eyes staring at him in the darkness, he declared that from then on he had dedicated his life to revenge. He told him how their Talmud preached hatred of the Christian race, and how in order to corrupt the Christians, they, the Jews, had invented Freemasonry, of which he had become one of their nameless superiors, and that he commanded lodges from Naples to London, but he had to remain hidden, living in secret, segregated from the world, so as not to get knifed by the Jesuits, who were hunting for him everywhere.
He looked around as he spoke, as if some Jesuit armed with a dagger might appear from a dark corner. Then he would blow his nose loudly, sometimes lamenting his sad condition, sometimes giving a sly, vengeful smile, enjoying the fact that the whole world was unaware of his terrible power. He unctuously fondled my grandfather’s hand and continued to let his imagination wander. And he told him that, if Simonini so wished, their sect would welcome him with open arms, and he would have him admitted into the most secret of the Masonic lodges.
And he revealed to my grandfather that both Mani, the prophet of the Manichean sect, and the infamous Old Man of the Mountain, who drugged his Assassins before sending them off to murder Christian princes, were Jewish by race.
He told him that the Freemasons and the Illuminati had been founded by two Jews, and that Jews had founded all the anti-Christian sects, which were now so numerous around the world as to include many millions of people, men and women of every position, class and status, including many men of the Church and even several cardinals, and before long they were not unhopeful of having a pope on their side (and, as my grandfather would later say, as soon as a dubious character like Pius IX had risen to the Throne of Saint Peter, the idea no longer seemed quite so improbable); and he told me that the Jews themselves often pretended to be Christians so as to deceive the Christians more effectively, traveling about from one country to another with false baptism certificates purchased from corrupt curates; and that with money and deception they hoped to gain civil recognition from every government, as they were already doing in many countries; and that once
