“Very moving,” he said. “All those old soldiers searching for the sea.”
She blinked, as if now, with her face in the light, she didn’t understand what he was saying. There was no longer a shadow, on the bed. The fragments of the book were merely pieces of charred paper. All he had to do was open the window, and a gust of air would blow them all over the room.
She smiled. Irene Adler, 223B Baker Street. The cafe in Madrid, the train, that morning in Sintra... The battle lost, the retreat of the defeated legions: she was very young to remember such things. She smiled like a little girl both mischievous and innocent, and there were traces of fatigue under her eyes. She was sleepy and warm.
Corso swallowed. A part of him went up to her and pulled her T-shirt up over her tanned skin, undid her jeans, and lay her on the bed, among the remains of the book that could summon the forces of darkness. And sank into her warm flesh, settling scores with God and Lucifer, with the inexorable flow of time, with his own ghosts, with life and death. But the rest of him just lit a cigarette and breathed out smoke in silence. She stared at him for a long time, waiting for something, a gesture, a word. Then she said good night and went to the door. But in the doorway, she turned and slowly raised her hand, palm inward, index and middle fingers joined and pointing upward. Her smile was both tender and conspiratorial, ingenuous and knowing. Like a lost angel pointing nostalgically at heaven.
BARONESS FRIEDA UNGERN HAD two sweet little dimples when she smiled. She looked as if she had smiled continuously for the past seventy years, and it had left a permanently benevolent expression around her eyes and mouth. Corso, a precocious reader, had known since childhood that there are many different types of witch: wicked stepmothers, bad fairies, beautiful, evil queens, and even nasty old witches with warts on their noses. But despite all he’d heard about the septuagenarian baroness, he didn’t know to which category she belonged. She might have been one of those elderly ladies who live, as if cushioned by a dream, outside real life, where no unpleasantness ever intrudes upon their existence, but the depth of her quick, intelligent, suspicious eyes canceled that first impression. So did the right sleeve of her cardigan hanging empty, her arm amputated above the elbow. Otherwise she was small and plump and looked like a French teacher at a boarding school for young ladies. In the days when “young ladies” still existed, that is. Or so Corso thought as he looked at her gray hair tied into a bun on the nape of her neck and at her rather masculine shoes worn with white ankle socks.
“Mr. Corso. Pleased to meet you.”
She held out her only hand—small, like the rest of her— with unusual energy and showed her dimples. She had a slight accent, more German than French. A certain Von Ungern, Corso remembered reading somewhere, had become notorious in Manchuria or Mongolia in the early twenties. A warlord of sorts, he had made a last stand against the Red Army at the head of a ragged army of White Russians, Cossacks, Chinese, deserters, and bandits. With armored trains, looting, killing, that sort of thing, concluding with a firing squad at dawn. Maybe he was a relation.
“He was my husband’s great-uncle. His family was Russian and emigrated to France with a fair amount of money before the revolution.” There was neither nostalgia nor pride in her tone. It had all happened in the past, to other people, to another family, she seemed to say. Strangers who disappeared before she even existed. “I was born in Germany. My family lost everything under the Nazis. I was married here in France after the war.” She carefully removed a dead leaf from a plant by the window and smiled slightly. “I never could stand my in-laws’ obsession with the past: their nostalgia for St. Petersburg, the Tsar’s birthday. It was like a wake.”
Corso looked at the desk covered with books, the packed shelves. He calculated that there must have been a thousand volumes in that room alone. The most rare and valuable ones seemed to be there, from modern editions to ancient, leather-bound tomes.
“And what about all this?”
“That’s different. It’s material for research, not for worship. I use it to do my work.”
Times are bad, thought Corso, when witches, or whatever they are, talk about their in-laws and exchange their cauldron for a library, filing cabinets, and a place on the bestseller list.
Through the open door he could see more books in the other rooms and in the corridor. Books and plants. There were pots of them all over the place: the windowsills, the floor, the wooden shelves. It was a large, expensive apartment with a view of the river and, in another time, of the bonfires of the Inquisition. There were several reading tables occupied by young people who looked like students, and all the walls were covered with books. Ancient, gilded bindings shone from between the plants. The Ungern Foundation contained the largest collection in Europe of books on the occult. Corso glanced at the titles closest to him. Daemonolatriae Libri by Nicholas Remy. Compendium Maleficarum by Francesco Maria Guazzo. De Daemonialitate et Incubus et Sucubus by Ludovico Sinistrari. In addition to having one of the best catalogues of demonology, and a foundation named after her late husband the baron, Baroness Ungern enjoyed a solid reputation as a writer of books on magic and witchcraft. Her last book, Isis, the Naked Virgin, had been on the bestseller list for three years. The Vatican boosted sales by publicly condemning the work, which drew worrying parallels between a pagan deity and the mother of Christ. There were eight reprints in France, twelve in Spain, and seventeen in Catholic Italy.
“What are you working on at the moment?”
“It’s called The Devil, History and Legend. An irreverent biography. It’ll be ready by the beginning of next year.”
Corso stopped at a row of books. His attention had been drawn by the Disquisitionum Magicarum by Martin del Rio, the three volumes of the Lovaina first edition, 1599—1600: a classic on demonic magic.
“Where did you get hold of this?”
Frieda Ungern must have been considering how much information to provide, because she took a moment to answer.
“At an auction in Madrid in ‘89. I had a great deal of trouble preventing your compatriot, Varo Borja, from acquiring it.” She sighed, as if still recovering from the effort. “And money. I would never have managed it without help from Paco Montegrifo. Do you know him? A delightful man.”
Corso smiled crookedly. Not only did he know Montegrifo, the head of the Spanish branch of Claymore’s Auctioneers, he had worked with him on several unorthodox and highly profitable deals. Such as the sale, to a certain Swiss collector, of a Cosmography by Ptolemy, a Gothic manuscript dating from 1456, which had mysteriously disappeared from the University of Salamanca not long before. Montegrifo found himself in possession of the book and used Corso as an intermediary. The entire operation had been clean and discreet, and included a visit to the Ceniza brothers’ workshop, where a compromising stamp had been removed. Corso delivered the book himself to Lausanne. All included in his thirty percent commission.
“Yes, I know him.” He stroked the spines of the several volumes of the Disquisitionum Magicarum and wondered what Montegrifo charged the baroness for rigging the auction in her favor. “As for the Martin del Rio, I’ve only seen a copy once before, in the collection of the Jesuits in Bilbao.... Bound in a single piece of leather. But it’s the same edition.”
As he spoke, he moved his hand along the row of books, touching some. There were many interesting volumes, with quality bindings in vellum, shagreen, parchment. Many others were in mediocre or poor condition, and looked much used. Nearly all had markers in them, strips of white card covered with small, spiky handwriting in pencil. Material for her research. He stopped in front of a book that looked familiar: black, no title, five raised bands on the spine. Book number three.
“How long have you had this?”
Now, Corso was a man of steady nerves. Especially at this stage in the story. But he’d spent the night sorting through the ashes of number two and couldn’t prevent the baroness from noticing something peculiar in his tone of voice. He saw that she was looking a
t him suspiciously despite the friendly dimples in her youthful old face.
“The Nine Doors? I’m not sure. A long time.” Her only hand moved quickly and deftly. She took the book from the shelf effortlessly and, supporting the spine in her palm, opened it at the first page, decorated with several bookplates, some very old. The last one was an arabesque design with the name Von Ungern and the date written in ink. Seeing it, she nodded nostalgically. “A present from my husband. I married very young. He was twice my age. He bought the book in 1949.”
That was the problem with modern-day witches, thought Corso: they didn’t have any secrets. Everything was out in the open, you could read all about them in any Who’s Who or gossip column. Baronesses or not, they’d become predictable, vulgar. Torquemada would have been bored to death by it all.
“Did your husband share your interest in this sort of thing?”
“Not in the slightest. He never read a single book. He just made all my wishes come true like the genie of the lamp.” Her amputated arm seemed to shudder for a moment in the empty sleeve of her cardigan. “An expensive book or a perfect pearl necklace, it was all the same to him.” She paused and smiled with gentle melancholy. “But he was an amusing man, capable of seducing his best friends’ wives. And he made excellent champagne cocktails.”
She was silent for a moment and looked around, as if her , husband had left a glass behind.
“I collected all this myself,” she added, waving at her library, “one by one, down to the last book. I even chose The Nine Doors, after discovering it in the catalogue of a bankrupt former Petain supporter. All my husband did was sign the check.”
“Why are you so interested in the devil?”
“I saw him once. I was fifteen and saw him as clearly as I’m seeing you. He had a hard collar, a hat, and a walking stick. He was very handsome. He looked like John Barrymore as Baron Gaigern in Grand Hotel. So, like a fool, I fell in love.” She became thoughtful again, her only hand in her cardigan pocket, as if remembering something distant. “I suppose that’s why I was never really troubled by my husband’s infidelities.”
Corso looked around, as if there might be someone else in the room, then leaned over confidentially.
“Three centuries ago, you would have burned at the stake for telling me this.”
She made a guttural sound of amusement, stifling her laughter, and almost stood on tiptoe to whisper in the same tone: “Three centuries ago, I wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone. But I know a lot of people who would gladly burn me at the stake.” She smiled again, showing her dimples. She was always smiling, Corso decided. But her bright, intelligent eyes remained alert, studying him. “Even now, in this day and age.”
She handed him The Nine Doors and watched him as he leafed through the book slowly, although he could barely contain his impatience to check if there were any differences in the nine engravings. Sighing to himself with relief, he found them intact. In fact, Mateu’s Bibliography was wrong: none of the three books had the final engraving missing. Book number three was in worse condition than Varo Borja’s, and Victor Fargas’s before it was thrown into the fire. The lower half had been exposed to damp and almost all the pages were stained. The binding also needed a thorough cleaning, but the book seemed complete.
“Would you like a drink?” asked the baroness. “I have tea and coffee.”
No potions or magic herbs, Corso thought with disappointment. Not even a tisane.
“Coffee.”
It was a sunny day, and the sky over the nearby towers of Notre-Dame was blue. Corso went over to a window and parted the net curtains so he could see the book in better light. Two floors down, between the bare trees on the banks of the Seine, the girl was sitting on a stone bench in her duffel coat and reading a book. He knew it was The Three Musketeers, because he’d seen it on the table when they met at breakfast. Afterward he walked along the Rue de Rivoli, knowing that the girl was following fifteen or twenty paces behind. He deliberately ignored her, and she kept her distance. Now he saw her look up. She must have seen him clearly from down there, but she made no sign of recognition. Expressionless and still, she continued to watch him until he moved away from the window. When he looked out again, she had gone back to her book, her head bowed.
There was a secretary, a middle-aged woman with thick glasses moving among the tables and books, but Frieda Ungern brought the coffee herself, two cups on a silver tray, which she carried with ease. One glance from her told him not to offer help, and they sat down at the desk, the tray among all the books, plant pots, papers, and note cards.
“What gave you the idea of setting up this foundation?” “It was for tax purposes. Also, now people come here, and I can find collaborators....” She smiled sadly. “I’m the last of the witches, and I felt lonely.”
“You don’t look anything like a witch.” Corso made the appropriate face, an ingenuous, friendly rabbit. “I read your /sis.”
Holding her coffee cup in one hand, she raised the stump , of her other arm a little and at the same time tilted her head as if to rearrange her hair. Although incomplete, it was an unconsciously coquettish gesture, as old as the world itself and yet ageless.
“Did you like it?”
He looked her in the eyes as he raised his cup to his mouth. “Very much.”
“Not everyone did. Do you know what L’Osservatore Romano said? It regretted the demise of the Index of the Holy Office. And you’re right.” She indicated The Nine Doors that Corso had put by her on the table. “In the past I would have been burned at the stake, like the poor wretch who wrote the gospel according to Satan.”
“Do you really believe in the devil, Baroness?”
“Don’t call me Baroness. It’s ridiculous.”
“What would you like me to call you?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Ungern. Or Frieda.”
“Do you believe in the devil, Mrs. Ungern?”
“Sufficiently to dedicate my life, my collection, this foundation, many years of work, and the five hundred pages of my new book all to him.” She looked at Corso with interest. He had taken off his glasses to clean them. His helpless smile completed the effect. “What about you?”
“Everybody’s asking me that lately.”
“Of course. You’ve been going around asking questions about a book that has to be read with a certain kind of faith.”
“My faith is limited,” Corso said, risking a hint of sincerity. This kind of frankness often proved profitable. “Really, I work for money.”
The dimples appeared again. She must have been very pretty half a century ago, he thought. With both arms intact, casting spells or whatever they were, slender and mischievous. She still had something of that.
“Pity,” remarked Frieda Ungern. “Others, who worked for nothing, had blind faith in the book’s protagonist. Albertus Magnus, Raymund Lully, Roger Bacon, none of them ever disputed the devil’s existence, only his nature.”
Corso adjusted his glasses and gave a hint of a skeptical smile.
“Things were different a long time ago.”
“You don’t have to go that far back. ‘The devil does exist, not only as a symbol of evil but as a physical reality.’“ How do you like that? It was written by a pope, Paul VI. In 1974.”
“He was a professional,” said Corso equably. “He must have had his reasons.”
“In fact all he was doing was confirming a point of doctrine: the existence of the devil was established by the fourth Council of Letran. In 1215...” She paused and looked at him doubtfully. “Are you interested in erudite facts? I can be unbearably scholarly if I try.” The dimples appeared. “I always wanted to be at the top of the class. The smart aleck.”
“I’m sure you were. Did you win all the prizes?” “Of course. And the other girls hated me.” They both laughed. Corso sensed that Frieda Ungern was now on his side. So he took two cigarettes from his coat pocket and offered her one. She refused, glancing at him apprehensively. Corso ign
ored this and lit his cigarette.
“Two centuries later,” continued the baroness as Corso bent over the lighted match, “Innocent VIII’s papal bull Sumnis Desiderantes Affectibus confirmed that Western Europe was plagued by demons and witches. So two Dominican monks, Kramer and Sprenger, drew up the Malleus Malleficarum, a manual for inquisitors.”
Corso raised his index finger. “Lyon, 1519. An octavo in the Gothic style, with no author’s name. At least not the copy I know.”
“Not bad.” She looked at him, surprised. “Mine is a later one.” She pointed at a shelf. “It’s over there. “Published in 1668, also in Lyon. But the very first edition dated from 1486....” She shuddered, half closing her eyes. “Kramer and Sprenger were fanatical and stupid. Their Malleus was a load of nonsense. It might even seem funny, if thousands of poor wretches hadn’t been tortured and burned in its name.” “Like Aristide Torchia.”
“Yes, like him. Although he wasn’t remotely innocent.” “What do you know about him?”
The baroness shook her head, drank the last of her coffee, and shook her head again. “The Torchias were a Venetian family of well-to-do merchants who imported vat paper from Spain and France. As a young man Aristide traveled to Holland and was an apprentice of the Elzevirs, who had corresponded with his father. He stayed there for a time and then went to Prague.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, there you are. Prague was Europe’s capital of magic and the occult, just as Toledo had been four centuries earlier... Can you see the links? Torchia chose to live in Saint Mary of the Snows, the district of magic, near Jungmannove Square, where there is a statue of Jan Hus. Do you remember Hus at the stake?”
“ ‘From my ashes a swan will rise that you will not be able to burn.’“
“Exactly. You’re easy to talk to. I expect you know that. It must help you in your work.” The baroness involuntarily inhaled some of Corso’s cigarette smoke. She wrinkled her nose, but he remained unperturbed. “Now, where were we? Ah yes. Prague, act two. Torchia moves to a house in the Jewish quarter nearby, next to the synagogue. A district where the windows are lit up every night and the cabbalists are searching for the magic formula of the Golem. After a while he moves again, this time to the district of Mala Strana....” She smiled at him conspiratorially. “What does all this sound like to you?”
The Dumas Club: The Ninth Gate Page 21
