Only after I had read and reread the document did I fully understand that this was my mission. I had to sell my report to someone, but only if he paid its weight in gold would he believe it, and help in making it credible.
But it’s better for me to stop writing for the evening. This hatred (or just the memory of it) is twisting my mind. My hands are trembling. I must go and sleep, sleep, sleep.
13. Dalla Piccola Says He Is Not Dalla Piccola
5th April 1897
This morning I awoke in my own bed and dressed myself, adding that touch of makeup my character requires. Then I went to read your diary, where you say you met Abbé Dalla Piccola, and you describe him as certainly being older than me and, what is more, hunchbacked. I went to look at myself in the mirror of your room—in mine there is no mirror, as is appropriate for a priest—and, without wishing to indulge in vanity, I can only say that my features are regular, I am surely not squint-eyed, and my teeth do not protrude. And I have a fine French accent with, if anything, a bit of an Italian inflection.
So who then is the abbé with my name whom you met? And at this point, who am I?
14. Biarritz
5th April 1897, late morning
I awoke late and found your brief note on my diary. You’re an early riser. Good God, Monsieur Abbé—assuming, that is, you’ll read these lines in the next few days (or nights)—who then are you? Because I recall, at this very moment, having killed you back before the war! How can I be talking to a ghost?
Did I kill you? Why am I so sure of it now? Let us try to remember. But first I have to eat. Strange, yesterday the very thought of food disgusted me. Now I’ll devour anything I can find. If I were free to go out, I would see a doctor.
Having finished my report on the gathering in the Prague cemetery, I was ready to meet Colonel Dimitri. I remembered how much Brafmann enjoyed French food and invited Dimitri to the same place, Rocher de Cancale, but he didn’t seem interested in food and picked at what I had ordered. He had slightly slanted eyes, with small piercing pupils that made me think of the eyes of a weasel, though I admit I have never seen one (I hate weasels as much as I hate Jews). Dimitri, it seemed, had the peculiar virtue of making the person he was talking to feel uncomfortable.
He had read my report with care. «Very interesting,» he said. «How much?»
It was a pleasure to deal with people like him, and I named a figure that was perhaps excessive—fifty thousand francs—explaining how costly my informants had been.
«Too expensive,» said Dimitri. «Or should I say, too expensive for me. Let us try to divide the cost. We are on good terms with the Prussian secret service. They also have a problem with Jews. I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand francs in gold and authorize you to pass a copy of the document to the Prussians, who will give you the other half. I will inform them. They’ll want the original, of course—the same as you have given me—but from what Lagrange tells me you are perfectly capable of duplicating originals. The name of the person who will contact you is Stieber.»
That was all he said. He courteously refused a cognac, bowed formally, in the German rather than the Russian way, with his body straight and head bent at almost a right angle, and went. I was left to pay the bill.
I asked for a meeting with Lagrange, who had already spoken to me about Stieber, the chief of Prussian intelligence. He specialized in gathering material beyond the frontier, but was also able to infiltrate sects and movements who compromised the peace of the state. Ten years earlier he had played a valuable part in obtaining information on that man Marx, who had been causing concern to both the Germans and the English. It seems that Lagrange or his agent Krause, who worked under the assumed name of Fleury, had managed to get into Marx’s house in London disguised as a doctor, and made off with a list of names of all the supporters of the Communist League. It was quite a coup, Lagrange told me, and led to the arrest of many dangerous individuals. A useless precaution, I suggested; those communists must have been pretty stupid to be duped like that and wouldn’t have got very far. But Lagrange said you never know. Prevention is best—it’s better to punish first, before any crimes are committed.
I asked for a meeting with Lagrange …
«A good secret agent is lost when he has to deal with something that has already happened. Our job is to make it happen first. We’re spending a substantial amount of money organizing riots on the boulevards. It doesn’t take much: just a few dozen ex-convicts, with several plainclothes policemen. They’ll destroy a few restaurants and a couple of brothels while singing La Marseillaise, they’ll burn down a few kiosks, and then our uniformed police arrive and arrest everyone after a semblance of a fight.»
«And for what purpose?»
«To ensure that decent citizens are kept in a state of fear, and to convince everyone that tough measures are needed. If we had to put down real riots, organized by heaven knows who, we would not manage to deal with them quite so easily. But let’s return to Stieber. When he became chief of Prussian intelligence he traveled to villages around eastern Europe dressed as a wandering acrobat, noting down everything and creating a network of informers along the road on which the Prussian army would one day pass from Berlin to Prague. And he’s begun to do the same thing in France, in preparation for a war that will one day be inevitable.»
«Wouldn’t it be better, then, to steer clear of him?»
«No. We have to keep an eye on him. It’s better that those who work for him also work for us. In any event, you have to talk to him about a matter involving the Jews, which is of no interest to us. So by collaborating with him you won’t be doing any harm to our government.»
A week later I received a note from Stieber. He asked whether it would be very inconvenient for me to go to Munich to meet his contact, a certain Goedsche, to whom I had to deliver the report. In fact it was inconvenient, but I was far too interested in the other half of the payment.
I asked Lagrange whether he knew Goedsche. Goedsche was, he told me, a former postal clerk who had worked as an agitator for the Prussian secret service. After the uprisings of 1848, he forged letters to incriminate the leader of the democrats, from which it appeared that this leader intended to assassinate the king. There were evidently a few impartial judges left in Berlin, and someone was able to show the letters were false. Goedsche was implicated in the scandal and had to leave his job at the post office. But it had also damaged his credibility with the secret service, who forgive you for counterfeiting documents but not if you’re caught while doing it.
He reinvented himself under the name of Sir John Retcliffe, writing second-rate historical novels, and continued to work for Kreuzzeitung, an anti-Semitic newspaper. And the secret service still used him to disseminate news, whether true or false, about the Jews.
And this was the man who’d been put on my case, I thought. Lagrange was explaining that perhaps, if they were using him for this, it was because the Prussians weren’t particularly interested in my report and had appointed someone low down to have a look at it in order to clear their conscience, and then they’d get rid of me.
«No, that’s not true,» I said. «My report is important to the Germans. I’ve already been promised a considerable sum.»
«Who has promised it?» asked Lagrange. And he smiled when I replied that it was Dimitri. «They’re Russians, Simonini. Need I say more? What does a Russian have to lose if he promises you something on behalf of the Germans? But go to Munich all the same—we too are interested in finding out what they’re doing. And don’t forget that Goedsche is a devious rogue. Otherwise he wouldn’t be in this job.»
Lagrange was not exactly a gentleman, but perhaps there was a better kind of scoundrel, of which he was one. And as long as they pay me well I won’t complain.
I believe I have already described in this diary my impression of that enormous tavern in Munich, crowded with Bavarians seated elbow-to-elbow at long communal tables, gorging themselves on greasy sausages and drinking from beer jugs the size of vats, men and women together, the women more boisterous, rowdy and vulgar than the men—most definitely an inferior race. And after the journey, tiring in itself, I found having to spend even two days on Teutonic soil a great effort.
It was in just such a tavern
