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
