The Dumas Club: The Ninth Gate

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Suit yourself. But his death was the starting point for this entire story and, indirectly, the reason you are here.”

  “Explain it to me then. Nice and slowly.”

  He had certainly earned it. As I said earlier, Corso was one of us, although he didn’t know it. And anyway—I looked at the clock—it was almost twelve.

  “Do you have ‘The Anjou Wine’ with you?”

  He looked at me alertly, trying to guess my intentions. Then I saw him give in. Reluctantly, he took the folder from under his coat, then hid it again.

  “Excellent,” I said. “And now follow me.”

  He must have been expecting a secret passage leading from the library, some sort of diabolical trap. I saw him put his hand in his pocket for the knife.

  “You won’t be needing that,” I assured him.

  He didn’t look convinced but said nothing. I held the candelabrum high, and we walked down the Louis XIII—style corridor. A magnificent tapestry hung on one of the walls: Ulysses, bow in hand, recently returned to Ithaca, Penelope and the dog rejoicing, the suitors drinking wine in the background, unaware of what awaits them.

  “This is an ancient castle, full of history,” I said. “It has been plundered by the English, by the Huguenots, by revolutionaries. Even the Germans set up a command post here during the war. It was very dilapidated when the present owner —a British millionaire, a charming man and a gentleman— acquired it. He restored and furnished it with extraordinary good taste. He even agreed to open it to the public.”

  “So what are you doing here outside of visiting hours?”

  As I passed a leaded window, I glanced out. The storm was dying down at last, the glow of lightning fading beyond the Loire, to the north.

  “An exception is made once a year,” I explained. “After all, Meung is a special place. A novel like The Three Musketeers doesn’t open just anywhere.”

  The wooden floors creaked beneath our feet. A suit of armor, genuine sixteenth-century, stood in a bend in the corridor. The light from the candelabrum was reflected in the smooth, polished surfaces of the cuirass. Corso glanced at it as he walked past, as if there might be someone hidden inside.

  “I’ll tell you a story. It began ten years ago,” I said, “at an auction in Paris, of a lot of uncatalogued documents. I was writing a book on the nineteenth-century popular novel in France, and the dusty packages fell into my hands quite by chance. When I went through them, I saw they were from the old archives of Le Siecle. Almost all consisted of printing proofs of little value, but one package of blue and white sheets attracted my attention. It was the original text, handwritten by Dumas and Maquet, of The Three Musketeers. All sixty-seven chapters, just as they were sent to the printer. Someone, possibly Baudry, the editor of the newspaper, had kept them after composing the galley proofs and then forgot all about them....”

  I slowed and stopped in the middle of the corridor. Corso was very still, and the light from the candelabrum I held lit up his face from below, making shadows dance in his eye sockets. He listened intently to my story, seemed to be unaware of anything else. Solving the mystery that had brought him was the only thing that mattered to him. But he still kept his hand on the knife in his pocket.

  “My discovery,” I went on, pretending not to notice, “was of extraordinary importance. We knew of a few fragments of the original draft from Dumas and Maquet’s notes and papers, but we were unaware of the existence of the complete manuscript. At first I thought to make my finding public, in the form of an annotated facsimile edition. But then I encountered a serious moral dilemma.”

  The light and shadow on Corso’s face moved, and a dark line crossed his mouth. He was smiling. “I don’t believe it. A moral dilemma, after all this.”

  I moved the candelabrum to make invisible the skeptical smile on his face, unsuccessfully.

  “I’m quite serious,” I protested as we moved on. “On examining the manuscript, I concluded that the real creator of the story was Auguste Maquet. He had done all the research and outlined the story in broad strokes. Dumas, with his enormous talent, his genius, had then brought the raw material to life and turned it into a masterpiece. Although obvious to me, this might not have been so obvious to detractors of the author and his work.” I gestured with my free hand, as if to sweep them all aside. “I had no intention of throwing stones at my hero. Particularly now, in these times of mediocrity and lack of imagination... Times in which people no longer admire marvels, as theater audiences and the readers of serials used to. They hissed at the villains and cheered on the heroes with no inhibitions.” I shook my head sadly. “That applause unfortunately can no longer be heard. It’s become the exclusive domain of innocents and children.”

  Corso was listening with an insolent, mocking expression. He might have agreed with me, but he was the grudge-bearing type and refused to allow my explanation to grant me any sort of moral alibi.

  “In short,” he said, “you decided to destroy the manuscript.”

  I smiled smugly. He was trying to be too clever.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I decided to do something better: to make a dream come true.”

  We had stopped in front of the closed door to the reception room. Through it the muffled sound of music and voices could be heard. I put the candelabrum down on a console table while Corso watched me, again suspicious. He was probably wondering what new trick was hidden there. He didn’t understand, I realized, that we really had reached the solution to the mystery.

  “Please allow me to introduce you,” I said, opening the door, “to the members of the Club Dumas.”

  ALMOST EVERYONE WAS THERE. Through the French windows opening onto the castle terrace, late arrivals entered a room full of people, cigarette smoke, and the murmur of conversation above a background of gentle music. On the central table covered with a white linen cloth, there was a cold buffet: bottles of Anjou wine, sausages and hams from Amiens, oysters from La Rochelle, boxes of Montecristo cigars. Groups of guests, about fifty men and women, were drinking and conversing in several languages. Among them were well-known faces from the press, cinema, and television. I saw Corso touch his glasses.

  “Surprised?” I asked, looking to see his reaction.

  He nodded, disconcerted, surly. Several guests came to greet me, so I shook hands, exchanged amenities and jokes. The atmosphere was cordial. Corso looked like someone who had fallen out of bed and woken up. Highly amused, I introduced him to some of the guests and watched with perverse satisfaction as he greeted them, confused and unsure of the terrain he was crossing. His customary composure was in shreds, and this was my small revenge. After all, it was he who first came to me with “The Anjou Wine” under his arm, determined to complicate things.

  “Allow me to introduce Mr. Corso.... Bruno Lostia, an antique dealer from Milan. Permit me. This is Thomas Harvey, of Harvey’s Jewelers: New York, London; Paris, Rome. And Count von Schlossberg, owner of the most famous collection of paintings in Europe. As you can see, we have a little of everything here: a Venezuelan Nobel laureate, an Argentine ex-president, the crown prince of Morocco ... Did you know that his father is an avid reader of Alexandre Dumas? Look who’s arrived. You know him, don’t you? Professor of semiotics in Bologna... The blond lady talking to him is Petra Neustadt, the most influential literary critic in Central Europe. In the group next to the duchess of Alba there’s the financier Rudolf Villefoz and the English writer Harold Burgess. Amaya Euskal, of the Alpha Press group, with the most powerful publisher in the USA, Johan Cross, of O&O Papers, New York. And I assume you remember Achille Replinger, the book dealer from Paris.”

  This was the last straw. I savored Corso’s shaken expression, almost pitying him. Replinger was holding an empty glass and smiling pleasantly beneath his musketeer’s mustache, just as he had smiled when he identified the Dumas manuscript at his shop on the Rue Bonaparte. He greeted me with a huge bear hug and then warmly patted Corso on the
back before going off in search of another drink, puffing away like a jovial, rosy-cheeked Porthos.

  “Damn this,” muttered Corso, drawing me aside. “What’s going on here?”

  “I told you it’s a long story.”

  “Well, finish telling it, will you?”

  We had moved close to the table. I poured us a couple of glasses of wine, but he shook his head. “Gin,” he muttered. “Don’t you have any gin?”

  I indicated the liquor cabinet at the other end of the room. We walked over to it, stopping three or four times on the way to exchange more greetings: a well-known film director, a Lebanese millionaire, a Spanish minister of the interior... Corso grabbed a bottle of Beefeater and filled a glass to the brim, swallowing half of it in one gulp. He shuddered, and his eyes shone behind his glasses (one lens broken, the other intact). He held the bottle to his chest, as if afraid to lose it.

  “You were going to tell me,” he said.

  I suggested we go out on the terrace beyond the French windows, where we could talk without interruption. Corso filled his glass again before following me. The storm had died down. Stars shone above us.

  “I’m all ears,” he announced after another large gulp.

  I leaned on the balustrade still damp from the rain and took a sip from my glass of Anjou wine.

  “Owning the manuscript of The Three Musketeers gave me the idea,” I said. “Why not form a literary society, a sort of club for devoted admirers of the novels of Alexandre Dumas and the classic adventure serial? Through my work I already had contact with several ideal candidates for membership....” I gestured toward the brightly lit salon. In the tall French windows the guests could be seen coming and going, chatting animatedly. It was proof of my success, and I didn’t conceal my authorial pride. “A society dedicated to studying novels of that kind, rediscovering writers and forgotten works, promoting their republication and sale under an imprint with which you may be familiar: Dumas & Co.”

  “I know it,” said Corso. “They’re based in Paris and have just published the entire works of Ponson du Terrail. Last year it was Fantomas. I didn’t know you had a part in it.”

  I smiled. “That’s the rule: no names, no starring roles... As you can see, the matter is scholarly and slightly childish at the same time. A nostalgic literary game that rediscovers long-lost novels and returns us to our innocence, to how we used to be. As we mature, we admire Flaubert or prefer Stendhal, or Faulkner, Lampedusa, Garcia Marquez, Durrell, Kafka. We become different from each other, opponents even. But we all share a conspiratorial wink when we talk about certain magical authors and books. Those that made us discover literature without weighing us down with dogma or teaching us rules. This is our true common heritage: stories faithful not to what people see but to what people dream.”

  I let the words hang and paused, awaiting their effect. But Corso just raised his glass to look at it against the light. His homeland was in there.

  “That was before,” he answered. “Now neither children nor young people nor anyone has a spiritual heritage. They all watch TV.”

  I shook my head. I had written something on this very subject for the literary supplement of the ABC newspaper a couple of weeks before. “I don’t agree. Even then they’re treading, unknowingly, in old footsteps. Films on television, for instance, maintain the link. Those old movies. Even Indiana Jones is the direct descendant of all that.”

  Corso grimaced in the direction of the French windows. “It’s possible. But you were telling me about these people. I’d like to know how you ... recruited them.”

  “It’s no secret,” I answered. “I’ve been running this select society, the Club Dumas, for ten years now. It holds its annual meeting here in Meung. As you can see, the members arrive punctually from all corners of the globe. Every last one of them is a reader—”

  “Of serials? Don’t make me laugh.”

  “I don’t have the slightest intention of making you laugh, Corso. Why are you looking at me like that? You know yourself that a novel, or a film made for pure consumption, can turn into an exquisite work, from The Pickwick Papers to Casablanca and Goldfinger. Audiences turn to these archetype-packed stories to enjoy, whether consciously or unconsciously, the device of repeated plots with small variations. Dispositio rather than elocutio... That’s why the serial, even the most trite television serial, can become a cult both for a naive audience and for a more sophisticated one. There are people who find excitement in Sherlock Holmes’s risking his life, while others go for the pipe, the magnifying glass, and the ‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ which, by the way, Conan Doyle never actually wrote. The plot devices, the variations and repetition, are so ancient that they’re mentioned in Aristotle’s Poetics. And what is a television serial if not an updated version of a classic tragedy, a great romantic drama, or a Dumas novel? That’s why an intelligent reader can obtain great enjoyment from all this, an exception to the rule. For exceptions to the rule are based on rules.”

  I thought Corso would be interested in what I was saying, but he shook his head, a gladiator refusing to accept the challenge offered by his opponent.

  “Cut the literature lecture and get back to your Club Dumas, will you?” he said impatiently. “To that loose chapter that’s been floating around ... Where’s the rest?”

  “In there,” I answered, looking at the salon. “I based the organization of the society on the sixty-seven chapters of the manuscript—a maximum of sixty-seven members, each having a chapter as a registered share. Allocation is strictly based on a list of applicants, and changes in membership require the approval of the executive board, which I chair. Each applicant is discussed in depth before his admission is approved.”

  “How are shares transferred?”

  “On no account are the shares transferred. If a member dies or wishes to leave the society, his chapter must be returned. The board then allocates it to another applicant. A member may never freely dispose of it.”

  “Is that what Enrique Taillefer tried to do?”

  “In a way. He was an ideal applicant, and a model member of the Club Dumas until he broke the rules.”

  Corso finished his gin. He put the glass down on the mossy balustrade and said nothing for a moment, staring intently at the lights of the reception room. He shook his head.

  “That’s no reason to murder someone,” he said quietly, as if to himself. “I can’t believe that all these people...” He looked at me stubbornly. “They’re all well known, respectable. They’d never get mixed up in something like this.”

  I suppressed my impatience. “You’re blowing things out of all proportion.... Enrique and I were friends for some time. We shared a fascination for this kind of fiction, although his taste in literature wasn’t on a level with his enthusiasm. The fact is, his success as a publisher of bestselling cookbooks meant he could spend time and money on his hobby. And to be fair, if anybody deserved to be a member of the club, it was Enrique. That’s why I recommended his admission. As I said, we shared, if not in our tastes, at least in our enthusiasm.”

  “You shared more than that, I seem to remember.”

  Corso’s sarcastic smile had returned, and I found it highly irritating. “I could tell you that that’s none of your business,” I retorted. “But I want to explain. Liana has always been very special, as well as very beautiful. She was a precocious reader. Do you know that at sixteen she had a fleur-de-lis tattooed on her hip? Not on the shoulder, like her idol, Milady de Winter, so that her family and the nuns at her boarding school wouldn’t find out. What do you think of that?”

  “Very moving.”

  “You don’t seem very moved. But I assure you she’s an admirable person. The fact is that, well... we became intimate. You’ll recall that earlier I mentioned the heritage that is the lost paradise of childhood. Well Liana’s heritage is The Three Musketeers. She was fascinated by the world depicted in its pages. She decided to marry Enrique after meeting him by chance at a party where they
spent the evening exchanging quotes from the novel. He was already a very wealthy publisher.”

  “It was love at first sight,” said Corso.

  “I don’t know why you say it like that. They married for the most sincere reasons. The thing is that, in the long run, even for someone as good-natured as his wife, Enrique could be tiresome.... We were good friends, and I often visited them. Liana...” I put my glass on the balustrade next to his empty one. “Anyway. You can imagine the rest.” “Yes, I can. Very clearly.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that. She became an excellent collaborator. So much so that, four years ago, I sponsored her entry to the society. She owns chapter 37, ‘Milady’s Secret.’ She chose it herself.”

  “Why did you set her on me?”

  “Let’s take this one step at a time. Not long ago, Enrique became a problem. Instead of limiting himself to the very profitable business of cookbooks, he decided to write a serial. But the novel was awful. That is a fact. Absolutely awful, believe me. He brazenly plagiarized all the plots of the genre. It was called—”

  “The Dead Man’s Hand.”

  “Exactly. Even the title wasn’t his. And what’s worse, unbelievably, he wanted Dumas & Co. to publish it. I refused, of course. His monstrous creation would never have been approved by the board. Anyway, Enrique had more than enough money to publish it himself, and I told him so.”

  “I assume he took it badly. I saw his library.”

  “Badly? That is something of an understatement. The argument took place in his study. I can still picture him, small and chubby, standing very straight, on tiptoe, staring at me with wild eyes. He looked as if he might burst a blood vessel. All very unpleasant. He said he’d decided to devote his whole life to writing. And who was I to judge it. That was up to posterity. I was a biased critic, an insufferable pedant, and on top of everything I was playing around with his wife. This absolutely stunned me—I didn’t realize he knew. But apparently Liana talks in her sleep, and between cursing d’Artagnan and his friends (whom, by the way, she hates as if she had known them personally) she’d revealed the whole affair to her husband.... You can imagine my predicament.”