The Club Dumas

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  La Ponte was also worried about the Dumas chapter. He'd received two telephone calls, from a man and a woman who didn't identify themselves, asking about "The Anjou Wine." Which was strange, because La Ponte hadn't mentioned the chapter to anyone and wasn't intending to until he had Corso's report. Corso told him of his conversation with Liana Taillefer and that he had revealed to her the identity of the new owner.

  "She knew you because you used to go and see her late husband. Oh, and by the way," he remembered, "she wants a copy of the receipt."

  La Ponte laughed at the other end of the line. There was no damn receipt. Taillefer had sold it to him, and that was that. But if the lovely widow wanted to discuss the matter, he added, laughing lewdly, he'd be delighted. Corso mentioned the possibility that before he died Taillefer might have told someone about the manuscript. La Ponte didn't think so; Taillefer had been very insistent that the matter be kept secret until he himself gave a sign. In the end, he never gave a sign, unless hanging himself from the light fixture was one.

  "It's as good a sign as any," said Corso.

  La Ponte agreed, chuckling cynically. Then he asked about Corso's visit to Liana Taillefer. After a couple more lecherous comments, La Ponte said good-bye. Corso hadn't mentioned the incident in Toledo. They agreed to meet the following day.

  After he hung up, Corso went back to The Nine Doors. But his mind was on other things. He was drawn back to the Dumas manuscript. Finally he went and got the folder with the white and blue pages. He rubbed his painful hand and called up the Dumas directory. The computer screen began to flicker. He stopped at a file called Bio:

  Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, Alexandre. Born 24.7.1802. Died 5.12.1870. Son of Thomas Alexandre Dumas, general of the Republic. Author of 257 volumes of novels, memoirs, and stories. 25 volumes of plays. Mulatto on his fathers side. His black blood gave him certain exotic features. Appearance: tall, powerful neck, curly hair, fleshy lips, long legs, physically strong. Character: bon vivant, fickle, overpowering, liar, unreliable, popular. He had 27 known mistresses, 2 legitimate children and 4 illegitimate. He made several fortunes and squandered them on parties, travel, expensive wines, and flowers. He lost all the money earned from his writing by extravagant spending on mistresses, friends, and hangers-on who besieged his castle home at Montecristo. When he fled Pans, it was to escape his creditors, not for political reasons, like his friend Victor Hugo. Friends: Hugo, Lamartine, Michelet, Gerard de Nerval, Nodier, George Sand, Berlioz, Théofile Gautier, Alfred de Vigny, and others. Enemies: Balzac, Badère, and others.

  None of this really got him anywhere. He felt he was stumbling around in the dark, surrounded by countless false or useless clues. And yet there had to be a link somewhere. With his good hand he typed Dumas.nov:

  Novels by Alexandre Dumas that appeared in installments: 1831: Historical scenes (Revue des Deux Mondes). 1834: Jacques I and Jacques II (Journal des Enfants). 1835: Elizabeth of Bavaria (Dumont). 1836: Murat (La Presse). 1837: Pascal Bruno (La Presse), Story of a Tenor (Gazette Musicale). 1838: Count Horatio (La Presse), Nero's Night (La Presse), The Arms Hall (Dumont), Captain Paul (Le Siècle). 1839: Jacques Ortis (Dumont), The Life and Adventures of John Davys (Revue de Paris), Captain Panphile (Dumont). 1840: The Fencing Master (Revue de Paris) 1841: Le Chevalier d'Harmental (Le Siècle). 1843: Sylvandire (La Presse) The Wedding Dress (La Mode) Albine (Revue de Paris) Ascanio (Le Siècle) Fernande (Revue de Paris) Arnaury (La Presse) 1844: The Three Musketeers (Le Siècle) Gabriel Lambert (La Chronique) The Regent's Daughter (Le Commerce) The Corsican Brothers (Démocratie Pacifique) The Count of Monte Cristo (Journal des Débats) Countess Bertha (Hetzel) Story of a Nutcracker (Hetzel) Queen Margot (La Presse) 1845: Nanon (La Patrie) Twenty Years After (Le Siecle) Le Chevalier de la Maison Rouge (Démocratie Pacifique)' The Lady of Monsoreau (Le Constitutionnel) Madame de Conde (La Patrie) 1846: The Viscountess of Cambes (La Patrie) The Half-Brothers (Le Commerce), Joseph Balsam (La Presse), Pessac Abbey (La Patrie). 1847: The Forty-Five (Le Constitutionnel), Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (Le Siècle). 1848: The Queen's Necklace (La Presse). 1849: The Weddings of Father Olifus (Le Constitutionnel). 1850: God's Will (Evénement), The Black Tulip (Le Siècle), The Dove (Le Siècle), Angel Pitou (La Presse). 1851: Olympe de Clèves (Le Siècle). 1852: God and the Devil (Le Pays), The Comtesse de Charny (Cadot), Isaac Laquedem (Le Constitutionnel). 1853: The Shepherd of Ashbourn (Le Pays), Catherine Blum (Le Pays). 1854: The Life and Adventures of Catherine-Charlotte (Le Mousquetaire), The Brigand (Le Mousquetaire), The Mohicans of Paris (Le Mousquetaire), Captain Richard (Le Siècle), The Page of the Duke of Savoy (Le Constituionnel). 1856: The Companions of Jehu (Journal pour Tous). 1857: The Last Saxon King (Le Monte-Cristo), The Wolf Leader (Le Siècle), The Wild Duck Shooter (Cadot), Black (Le Constitutionnel). 1858: The She-Wolves of Machecoul (Journal Pour Tous), Memoirs of a Policeman (Le Siècle), The Palace of Ice (Le Monte-Cristo). 1859: The Frigate (Le Monte-Cristo), Ammalat-Beg (Moniteur Universel), Story of a Dungeon and a Little House (Revue Européenne), A Love Story (Le Monte-Cristo). 1860: Memoirs of Horatio (Le Siècle), Father La Ruine (Le Siècle), The Marchioness of Escoman (Le Constitutionnel), The Doctor of Java (Le Siècle), Jane (Le Siècle). 1861 : A Night in Florence (Levy-Hetzel). 1862: The Volunteer of 92 (Le Monte-Cristo). 1863: The Saint Felice (La Presse). 1864: The Two Dianas (Levy), Ivanhoe (Pub. du Siècle). 1865: Memoirs of a Favorite (Avenir National), The Count of Moret (Les Nouvelles). 1866: A Case of Conscience (Le Soleil), Parisians and Provincials (La Presse), The Count of Mazarra (Le Mousquetaire). 1867: The Whites and the Blues (Le Mousquetaire), The Prussian Terror (La Situation). 1869: Hector de Sainte-Hermine (Moniteur Universel), The Mysterious Physician (Le Siècle), The Marquis's Daughter (Le Siècle).

  He smiled, wondering how much the late Enrique Taillefer would have paid to obtain all those titles. His glasses were misted, so he took them off and carefully cleaned the lenses. The lines on the computer were now blurred, as were other strange images he couldn't identify. With his glasses back on, the words on the screen became sharp again, but the images were still floating around, indistinct, in his mind, and without a key to give them any meaning. And yet Corso felt he was on the right path. The screen began to flicker again:

  Baudry, editor of Le Siecle. Publishes The Three Musketeers between the 14th of March and the 11th of July 1844.

  He took a look at the other files. According to his information, Dumas had had fifty-two collaborators at different periods of his literary life. Relations with a large number of them had ended stormily. But Corso was only interested in one of the names:

  Maquet, Auguste-Jules. 1813–1886. Collaborated with Alexandre Dumas on several plays and 19 novels, including the most famous ones (The Count of Monte Cristo, Le Chevalier de la Maison Rouge, The Black Tulip, The Queen's Necklace) and, in particular, the cycle of The Musketeers. His collaboration with Dumas made him famous and wealthy. While Dumas died penniless, Maquet died a rich man at his castle in Saint-Mesme. None of his own works written without Dumas survives.

  He looked at his biographical notes. There were some paragraphs taken from Dumas's Memoirs:

  We were the inventors, Hugo, Balzac, Soulie, De Mussel, and myself, of popular literature. We managed for better or worse, to make a reputation for ourselves with that kind of writing, even though it was popular....

  My imagination, confronted with reality, resembles a man who, visiting the ruins of an old building, must walk over the rubble, follow the passageways, bend down to go through doorways, so as to reconstruct an approximate picture of the original building when it was full of life, when joy filed it with laughter and song, or when it echoed with sobs of sorrow.

  Exasperated, Corso looked away from the screen. He was losing the feeling, it was disappearing into the corners of his memory before he could identify it. He stood up and paced the dark room. Then he angled his lamp at a pile of books on the floor, against the wall. He picked up two thick volumes: a modern edition of the Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas père. H
e went back to his desk and began to leaf through them until three photographs caught his eye. In one of them, his African blood clearly visible in his curly hair and mulatto looks, Dumas sat smiling at Isabelle Constant, who, Corso gathered from the caption, was fifteen when she became the novelist's mistress. The second photograph showed an older Dumas, posing with his daughter Marie. Here, at the height of his fame, the father of the adventure serial sat, good-natured and placid, before the photographer. The third photograph, Corso decided, was definitely the most amusing and significant. Dumas aged sixty-five, gray-haired but still tall and strong, his frock coat open to reveal a contented paunch, was embracing Adah Menken, one of his last mistresses. According to the text, "after the seances and sessions of black magic of which she was such a devotee, she liked to be photographed, scantily clad, with the great men in her life." In the photograph, La Menken's legs, arms, and neck were all bare, which was scandalous for the time. The young woman, paying more attention to the camera than to the object of her embrace, was leaning her head on the old man's powerful right shoulder. As for him, his face showed the signs of a long life of dissipation, pleasure, and parties. His smile, between the bloated cheeks of a bon viveur, was satisfied, ironic. His expression for the photographer was teasing, crafty, seeking complicity. The fat old man with the shameless, passionate young girl who showed him off like a rare trophy: he, whose characters and stones had made so many women dream. It was as if old Dumas was asking for understanding, having given in to the girl's capricious wish to be photographed. After all, she was young and pretty, her skin soft and her mouth passionate, this girl that life had kept for him on the last lap of his journey, only three years before his death. The old devil.

  Dumas was embracing Adah Menken, one of his last mistresses.

  Corso shut the book and yawned. His watch, an old chronometer that he often forgot to wind up, had stopped at a quarter past midnight. He went and opened the window and breathed in the cold night air. The street was still deserted.

  It was all very strange, he thought as he went back to his desk and turned off the computer. His eyes came to rest on the folder with the manuscript. He opened it mechanically and took another look at the fifteen pages covered with two different types of handwriting, eleven of the pages blue, four of them white. Après de nouvelles presque désespérées du rot ... Upon almost desperate news from the king ... In the pile of books on the floor he found a huge red tome, a facsimile edition—J. C. Lattes, 1988—containing the entire cycle of The Musketeers and Monte Cristo in the Le Vasseur edition with engravings, published shortly after Dumas's death. He found the chapter "The Anjou Wine" on [>] and started to read, comparing it with the original manuscript. Except for a small error here and there, the texts were identical. In the book, the chapter was illustrated with two drawings by Maurice Leloir, engraved by Huyot. King Louis XIII arriving at the siege of La Rochelle with ten thousand men, four horsemen at the head of his escort, holding their muskets, wearing the wide-brimmed hat and jacket of de Treville's company. Three of them are without doubt Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. A moment later they will be meeting their friend d'Artagnan, still a simple cadet in Monsieur des Essarts's company of guards. The Gascon still doesn't know that the bottles of Anjou wine, a gift from his mortal enemy Milady, Richelieu's agent, are poisoned. She wants to avenge the insult done to her by d'Artagnan. He has passed himself off as the Comte de Wardes, slipped into her bed, and enjoyed a night of love that should have been the count's. To make matters worse, d'Artagnan has by chance discovered Milady's terrible secret, the fleur-de-lis on her shoulder, the shameful mark branded on her by the executioner's iron. With such preliminaries, and given Milady's disposition, the contents of the second illustration are easy to guess: as d'Artagnan and his companions watch in astonishment, the manservant Fourreau expires in terrible agony after drinking the wine intended for his master. Sensitive to the magic of a text he hadn't read in twenty years, Corso came to the passage where the musketeers and d'Artagnan are speaking about Milady:

  "Well," said d'Artagnan to Athos. "So you see, dear friend. It is a fight to the death."

  Athos nodded "Yes, yes," he said. "I know. But do you think it's really her?"

  "I am sure of it."

  "Nevertheless, I confess I still have doubts."

  "And the fleur-de-lis on her shoulder?"

  "She is an Englishwoman who must have committed some crime in France, and who has been marked for her crime."

  "Athos, that woman is your wife, I tell you," repeated d'Artagnan, "Do you not recall that both marks are identical?"

  "Nevertheless I would have sworn that the woman was dead, I hanged her very well."

  This time it was d'Artagnan who shook his head.

  "Well? What are we to do?" said the young man.

  "We certainly can't go on like this, with a sword hanging eternally over our heads," said Athos. "We must find a way out of this situation,"

  "But how?"

  "Listen, try to have a meeting with her and explain everything. Tell her: 'Peace or war! My word as a gentleman that I will never say or do anything against you. For your part, give me your solemn word to do nothing against me. Otherwise I will go to the Chancellor, the King, the executioner, I will incite the Court against you, I will denounce you as a marked woman, I will have you put on trial, and should you be acquitted, then upon my word as a gentleman, I will kill you myself, in any corner, as I would a rabid dog.'"

  "I am delighted with this plan," said d'Artagnan.

  Memories brought other memories in their wake. Corso tried to hold a fleeting, familiar image that had crossed his mind. He managed to capture it just before it faded, and once again it was the man in the black suit, the chauffeur of the Jaguar outside Liana Taillefer's house, at the wheel of the Mercedes in Toledo.... The man with the scar. And it was Milady who had stirred that memory.

  He thought it over, disconcerted. And suddenly the image became perfectly sharp. Milady, of course. Milady de Winter as d'Artagnan first sees her at the window of her carriage in the opening chapter of the novel, outside the inn at Meung. Milady in conversation with a stranger. Corso quickly turned the pages, searching for the passage. He found it easily:

  A man of forty to forty-five years of age, with black, piercing eyes, a pale complexion, a strongly pronounced nose, and a perfectly trimmed, black mustache...

  Rochefort. The Cardinal's sinister agent and d'Artagnan's enemy, who has him beaten in the first chapter, steals the letter of recommendation to Monsieur de Treville and is indirectly responsible for the Gascon's almost lighting duels with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.... Following this somersault of his memory, Corso scratched his head, puzzled by the unusual association of ideas and characters. What link was there between Milady's companion and the driver who tried to run him down in Toledo? Then there was the scar. The paragraph didn't mention a scar, but he remembered clearly that Rochefort always had a mark on his face. He turned more pages until he found the confirmation of this in chapter 3, where d'Artagnan is recounting his adventure to Treville:

  "Tell me," he replied, "did this gentleman have a faint scar on his temple?"

  "Yes, the sort of mark that might have been made by a bullet grazing it...."

  A faint scar on his temple. There was his confirmation, but as Corso remembered it, Rochefort's scar was bigger, and not on his temple but on his cheek, like that of the chauffeur dressed in black. Corso went over it all until at last he let out a laugh. The picture was now complete, and in full color: Lana Turner in The Three Musketeers, at her carriage window, beside a suitably sinister Rochefort, not pale as in Dumas's novel, but dark, with a plumed hat and a long scar—it was definite this time—cutting his right cheek from top to bottom. He remembered it as a film not a novel and his exasperation at this both amused and irritated him Goddamn Hollywood.

  Film scenes aside, he had at last managed to find some order to all of this, a common, if secret, thread, a tune composed of disparate, mysterious note
s. Through the vague uneasiness that Corso had experienced since his visit to Taillefer's widow, he could now glimpse outlines, faces, an atmosphere and characters, halfway between reality and fiction, and all linked in strange, as yet unclear ways. Dumas and a seventeenth-century book. The devil and The Three Musketeers. Milady and the bonfires of the Inquisition Although it was all more absurd than definite more like a novel than real life.

  He turned out the light and went to bed. But it took him some time to fall asleep, because one image wouldn't leave his mind. It floated in the darkness before his open eyes. A distant landscape, that of his reading as a boy, filled with shadows which reappeared now twenty years later, materialized as ghosts that were so close, he could almost feel them. The scar. Rochefort. The man from Meung. His Eminence's mercenary.