I forgot to mention: before Dimitri arrives, you might wish to know about the Alliance Israélite Universelle, established about six years ago in Paris. Its members are doctors, journalists, lawyers, businessmen, the cream of Parisian Jewish society—all, shall we say, of liberal persuasion, and certainly more republican than Bonapartist. Their aim is apparently to help victims of persecution from every religion and country in the name of the Rights of Man. Until proved otherwise, they are citizens of the utmost integrity, but it is hard for our informers to infiltrate them, because Jews know and recognize each other, sniffing each other’s bottoms like dogs.
But I’ll put you in touch with someone who has managed to gain the trust of some Alliance members. His name is Jakob Brafmann, a Jew who converted to the Orthodox Christian faith and became professor of Hebrew at the theological seminary in Minsk. He’s in Paris for a short stay, working for Colonel Dimitri and his Third Department. Since Brafmann was thought to be a member of the same religion, it was easy for him to make contact with the Alliance Israélite. He’ll be able to tell you something about them.»
«Excuse me, Monsieur de Lagrange. If this Brafmann is Colonel Dimitri’s informer, he will already have told Dimitri all he knows. There’s no point in my going to tell him all over again.»
«Don’t be naive, Simonini. Of course there’s a point. If you give Dimitri the same information that he’s heard from Brafmann, he’ll regard you as someone whose news is reliable, since it confirms what he already knows.»
Brafmann. From my grandfather’s stories I expected to meet someone with the profile of a vulture, with fleshy lips, the lower lip heavily protruding like a Negro’s, deep-set watery eyes, eyelids less open than those of other races, wavy or curly hair, ears sticking out…Instead, the man I met had a monkish appearance, a fine gray beard and thick bushy eyebrows with those Mephistophelean tufts at each corner that I had seen among Russians and Poles. Religious conversion evidently transforms not just the soul but also facial appearances.
The man I met had a monkish appearance, a fine gray beard and thick bushy eyebrows with those Mephistophelean tufts at each corner.
He had a particular liking for good food, though he displayed the voraciousness of a provincial who wants to try everything but has no idea how to create a proper menu. We had lunch at Rocher de Cancale in rue Montorgueil, which used to serve the finest oysters in Paris. The place had closed twenty years earlier and then been reopened under new ownership; it wasn’t what it used to be, but it still had oysters, and for a Russian Jew it was good enough. Brafmann began with a few dozen belons, then ordered a bisque d’écrevisses.
«For such a thriving race to survive over forty centuries,» Brafmann told me, «it had to establish a single government in every country where it was living—a state within a state—which it has maintained ever since, even when its people have been scattered for thousands of years. I have found documents that prove the existence of this state, this law: the Kahal.»
«And what is it?» I asked.
«The institution dates back to the time of Moses. After the Exodus, it no longer operated openly but was confined to the synagogues. I have found documents for the Kahal in Minsk from 1794 to 1830. It’s all written down. Every detail is recorded.»
He unrolled various scrolls covered with symbols I couldn’t understand.
«Every Jewish community is governed by a Kahal and subject to an autonomous tribunal, the Beit Din. These documents are from one Kahal, but they’re just the same as those for every Kahal. They tell us how members of a community must obey only their own court and not that of their host state, how festivals are to be observed, how animals must be specially killed and prepared (the impure and corrupt parts sold to the Christians), how every Jew can obtain a Christian from the Kahal whom he can exploit through usury until he has taken all his property, and no other Jew has rights over that same Christian.
The lack of mercy toward the lower classes, the exploitation of the poor man by the rich man, are not crimes, according to the Kahal, but virtues when practiced by a son of Israel. Some say that Jews are poor, especially in Russia. This is true. Large numbers of Jews are the victims of a secret government run by rich Jews. I’m not against the Jews—I was, after all, born a Jew—but against the Jewish ideal that wants to replace Christianity. I love the Jews…may Jesus, whom they assassinated, be my witness…»
Brafmann had found his second wind and ordered aspic de filets mignons de perdreaux. But he returned almost immediately to his scrolls, which he handled lovingly. «And as you see, they’re all genuine. That is proved by the age of the paper, by the uniformity of the scribe’s handwriting when he drew up the various documents and by the identical signatures from different dates.»
Brafmann had already translated the documents into French and German. He had been told by Lagrange that I could produce authentic documents, and asked me to make him a French version that would appear to date from the same period as the originals. He also needed these documents in other languages, to show the Russian secret service how the model of the Kahal was being followed in various European countries, and particularly by the Parisian Alliance Israélite.
I asked how it was possible, from documents produced by a remote eastern European community, to demonstrate the existence of a global Kahal. Brafmann replied that I need not worry about that. These documents would be useful as supporting evidence, proving that what he had to say was no mere invention, and in any event his book would be sufficiently persuasive in its condemnation of the true Kahal, that great octopus whose tentacles extended across the whole civilized world.
His expression hardened, and he assumed almost that eagle-like appearance that would have given him away as a Jew, which, after all, he still was.
«The fundamental feelings animating the Talmudic spirit are an overweening ambition to dominate the world, an insatiable lust to possess all the riches of those who are not Jewish and a grudge against Christians and against Jesus Christ. Until such time as Israel is converted to Jesus, those countries which offer a home to such people will always be regarded by them, to quote the Talmud, as an open lake where every Jew can fish freely.»
Exhausted by this tirade of accusations, Brafmann ordered a dish of escalopes de poularde au velouté, but it was not to his taste and so he changed it for filets de poularde piqués aux truffes. Then he took a silver pocket watch from his waistcoat. «Oh dear, it’s late,» he said. «French cuisine is exquisite, but the service is slow. I have an urgent meeting and must go. Let me know, Captain Simonini, whether you can find the right kind of paper and inks.»
Brafmann had just concluded the meal with a vanilla soufflé. I was expecting that a Jew, although converted, would leave me to pay the bill. On the contrary, with a lordly gesture Brafmann insisted that he should pay for our snack, as he casually described it. No doubt the Russian secret service allowed him princely expenses.
I returned feeling puzzled. A document produced fifty years ago in Minsk, with detailed instructions about whom to invite or not invite to a religious festival, hardly demonstrates that such rules also apply to the actions of great bankers in Paris or Berlin. What is more, one must never, never, never work with genuine or half-genuine documents! If they already exist, someone can always search them out to prove they are incorrect…If a document is to be convincing, it must be created ex novo. And where possible, the original must not be seen but only talked about, without reference to any precise source, as happened with the Three Kings, whom only Matthew mentions in a couple of verses, not saying what they were called, or how many they were, or that they were kings, and all the rest is tradition.
Yet people think of them as being just as real as Joseph and Mary, and I know their bodies are venerated somewhere or other. Revelations have to be out of the ordinary, shocking and fantastical. Only then do they become credible and arouse indignation. Is a peasant in a vineyard in Champagne going to care whether Jews make their fellow Jews do this or that at their daughter’s marriage ceremony? Does this prove that the Jews are trying to pick the Champagne peasants’ pockets?
And then I realized I already had the document I needed, or at least a convincing framework—much better than Gounod’s Faust, which Parisians had been raving about for the past few years. All I had to do was find the right contents. I was, of course, thinking of the Masonic gathering on Thunder Mountain, of Joseph Balsamo’s plan and the Jesuits’ night in
