UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY by Eco Umberto

Author:Eco, Umberto [Eco, Umberto]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2011-11-07T23:00:00+00:00

It's time for bed. I have deviated from my habit of gastronomic moderation and have been drinking not wine but intemperate quantities of calvados (and intemperance is making my head spin— I fear I am becoming repetitious). It seems I wake up as Abbé Dalla Piccola only when I plunge into a deep dreamless sleep. But now I'd like to see how I can possibly wake up again in the shoes of a dead man, whose death I had caused and witnessed.

15

DALLA PICCOLA REDIVIVUS

6th April 1897, at dawn

Captain Simonini, I don't know whether it was during your (immoderate or intemperate) slumber that I woke up and was able to read your diary. At the first light of dawn.

After reading it I thought perhaps, for some mysterious reason, you were lying (nor is it difficult to conclude from your life, as you have so frankly related it, that you do sometimes lie). If there is anyone who should know for sure that you didn't kill me, it would be I myself. I wanted to investigate. I removed my clerical garb and, almost naked, went down to the cellar and opened the trap door. At the entrance to that foulsmelling passageway that you so well describe, I was taken aback by the stench. I asked myself what it was I wanted to find out: whether there were still a few bones from the body you say you left down there over twenty-five years ago. And did I have to go down into that filth to discover those bones weren't mine? If you'll allow me, I already know. Therefore I accept what you say — you did kill an Abbé Dalla Piccola.

So who am I? Not the Dalla Piccola you killed (who in any event didn't look like me). But how can there be two Abbé Dalla Piccolas?

The truth is perhaps I'm mad. I dare not leave the house. Yet I have to go out to buy food, since my cassock prevents me from visiting taverns. I do not have a fine kitchen like you — though, to be honest, I am no less of a glutton.

I am gripped by an irresistible urge to kill myself, but I know it's the devil tempting me.

And then, why kill myself if you have already done it for me? It would be a waste of time.

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