The Dumas Club

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “Well, find out. Investigate The Nine Doors as if were a crime. Follow trails, check each page, each engraving, the paper, the binding.... Work your way backward and find out where my copy comes from. Then do the same with the other two, in Sintra and in Paris.”

  “It would help if I knew how you learned that yours was a forgery.”

  “I can’t tell you. Trust my intuition.”

  “Your intuition is going to cost you a lot of money.”

  “All you have to do is spend it.”

  He pulled the check from his pocket and gave it to Corso, who turned it over in his fingers, undecided.

  “Why are you paying me in advance? You never did that before.”

  “You’ll have a lot of expenses to cover. This is so you can get started.” He handed him a thick bound file. “Everything I know about the book is in there. You may find it useful.”

  Corso was still looking at the check. “This is too much for an advance.”

  “You may encounter certain complications....”

  “You don’t say.” As he said this, he heard Borja clear his throat. They were getting to the crux of the matter at last.

  “If you find out that the three copies are forgeries or are incomplete,” Borja said, “then you’ll have done your job and we’ll settle up.” He paused briefly and ran his hand over his tanned pate. He smiled awkwardly at Corso. “But one of the books may turn out to be authentic. In which case, you’ll have more money at your disposal. Because I’ll want it by whatever means, and without regard for expense.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Do I look as if I’m joking, Corso?”

  “It’s against the law.”

  “You’ve done illegal things before.”

  “Not this kind of thing.”

  “Nobody’s ever paid you what I’ll pay you.”

  “How can I be sure of that?”

  “I’m letting you take the book with you. You’ll need the original for your work. Isn’t that enough of a guarantee?”

  The jarring sound again, warning him. Corso was still holding The Nine Doors. He put the check between the pages like a bookmark and blew some imaginary dust off the book before returning it to Borja.

  “Before, you said that with money you could pay people to do anything. Now you can test that out yourself. Go and see the owners of the books and do the dirty work yourself.”

  He turned and walked toward the door, wondering how many steps he’d take before the book dealer said anything. Three.

  “This business isn’t for men of words,” said Borja. “It’s for men of action.”

  His tone had changed. Gone was the arrogant composure and the disdain for the mercenary he was hiring. On the wall, an engraving of an angel by Diirer gently beat its wings behind the glass of a picture frame, while Corso’s shoes turned on the black marble floor. Next to his cabinets full of books and the barred window with the cathedral in the background, next to everything that his money could buy, Varo Borja stood blinking, disconcerted. His expression was still arrogant; he even tapped the book cover with disdain. But Lucas Corso had learned to recognize defeat in a man’s eyes. And fear.

  His heart was beating with calm satisfaction as, without a word, he retraced his steps. As he approached Borja, he took the check poking out from between the pages of The Nine Doors. He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket. Then he took the file and the book.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  He realized that he’d thrown the dice. That he’d moved to the first square in a dangerous game of Snakes and Ladders and that it was too late to turn back. But he felt like playing. He went down the stairs followed by the echo of his own dry laughter. Varo Borja was wrong. There were things money couldn’t buy.

  THE STAIRS FROM THE main entrance led to an interior courtyard that had a well and two Venetian marble lions fenced off from the street by railings. An unpleasant dankness rose from the Tagus, and Corso stopped beneath the Moorish arch at the entrance to turn up his collar. He walked along the silent, narrow, cobbled streets until he came to a small square. There was a bar with metal tables, and chestnut trees with bare branches beneath the bell tower of a church. He took a seat in a patch of tepid sun on the terrace and tried to warm his stiff limbs. Two glasses of neat gin helped things along. Only then did he open the file on The Nine Doors and look through it properly for the first time.

  There was a forty-two-page typed report giving the book’s historical background, both for the supposed original version, the Delomelanicon, or Invocation of Darkness, and for Torchia’s version, Book of the Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows, printed in Venice in 1666. There were various appendices providing a bibliography, photocopies of citations in classical texts, and information about the other two known copies—their owners, any restoration work, purchase dates, present locations. There was also a transcription of the records of Aristide Torchia’s trial, with the account of an eyewitness, one Gennaro Galeazzo, describing the unfortunate printer’s last moments:

  He mounted the scaffold without agreeing to be reconciled with God and maintained an obstinate silence. When the fire was lit, smoke began to suffocate him. He opened his eyes wide and uttered a terrible cry, commending himself to the Father. Many of those present crossed themselves, for in death he requested God’s mercy. Others say that he shouted at the ground, in other words toward the depths of the earth.

  A car drove past on the other side of the square and turned down one of the corner streets leading to the cathedral. The engine paused for a moment beyond the corner, as if the driver had stopped before continuing down the street. Corso paid little attention, engrossed as he was in the book. The first page was the title page and the second was blank. The third, which began with a handsome capital N, contained a cryptic introduction, which read:

  Nos p.tens L.f.r, juv.te Stn. Blz.b, Lvtn, Elm, atq Astrot. allq, hdie hcuerns ace.t pet fo.de.is c.m t qui no.st; et h.ic poLicem amrem mid. flo.em virg.nu.rn de.us man. hon v.lup et op. for.icab tr.d.o,.os.ta int. nos ma.et eb.iet Lli c.ra er. No.is of.ret se.el in ano sag. sig. s.b ped. cocuLab sa Ecle et no.s r.gat isius er.t; p.ct v.v.t an v.q fe.ix in t.a horn, et ven D:

  Fa.t in inf int co.s daem,

  Satanas. Belzebub, Lcfr, Elimi, Leviathan, Astaroth

  Siq pos mag. diab. et daem. prLcp dom.

  After the introduction, whose “authorship” was obvious, came the text. Corso read the first lines:

  D.mine mag.que L.fr, te D.um m. etpr ag.sco. et polc.or t ser.ire. a.ob.re quamd p. wre; et rn.io aLrum d, et js.ch.st et a.s sn.ts tq.e s.ctas e. ec.les. apstl. et rom. et om i sc.am. et o.nia ips. sxramen. et o.nes .ado et r.g. q.ibfid. pos.nt intrcd. p.o me; et t.bi po.lceor q. fac. qu.tqu,t mlum pot., et atra, ad mala p. omn, Et ab.rncio chrsm. et b.ptm et omn...

  He looked up at the church portico. The arches were carved with images of the Last Judgment worn by the elements. Beneath them, dividing the door in two, a niche sheltered an angry-looking Pantocrator. His raised right hand suggested punishment rather than mercy. In his left hand he held an open book, and Corso could not help drawing parallels. He looked around at the church tower and the surrounding buildings. The facades still bore bishops’ coats of arms, and he reflected that this square too had once witnessed the bonfires of the Inquisition. After all, this was Toledo. A crucible for underground cults, initiation rites, false converts. And heretics.

  He drank some more gin before going back to the book. The text, in an abbreviated Latin code, took up another hundred and fifty-seven pages, the final page being blank. Nine contained the famous engravings inspired, according to legend, by Lucifer himself. Each print had a Latin, Hebrew, and Greek numeral at the top, including a Latin phrase in the same abbreviated code. Corso ordered a third gin and went over them. They looked like the figures of the tarot, or old, medieval engravings: the king and the beggar, the hermit, the hangman, death, the executioner. In the last engraving a beautiful woman was riding a dragon. Too beautif
ul, he thought, for the religious morality of the time.

  He found an identical illustration on a photocopy of a page from Mateu’s Universal Bibliography. But it wasn’t the same. Corso was holding the Terral-Coy copy, whereas the engraving on the photocopy came, as recorded by the scholarly Mateu in 1929, from another one of the books:

  Torchia (Aristide). De Umbrarum Regni Novem Portis. Venetiae, apud Aristidem Torchiam. MDCLXVI. Folio. 160 pages incl. title page. 9 full-page woodcuts. Of exceptional rarity. Only 3 known copies. Fargas Library, Sintra, Port (see illustration). Coy Library, Madrid, Sp. (engraving 9 missing). Morel Library, Paris, Fr.

  Engraving 9 missing. Corso checked and saw that this was wrong. Engraving 9 was there in the copy he held, the copy formerly from the Coy, later the Terral-Coy Library, and now the property of Varo Borja. It must have been a printing error, or a mistake by Mateu himself. In 1929, when the Universal Bibliography was published, printing techniques and distribution methods weren’t as efficient. Many scholars mentioned books that they only knew of through third parties. Maybe the engraving was missing from one of the other copies. Corso made a note in the margin of the photocopy. He needed to check it.

  He found an identical illustration on a photocopy of a page from Mateu’s Universal Bibliography.

  A clock somewhere struck three, and pigeons flew up from the tower and roofs. Corso shuddered gently, as if slowly coming to. He felt in his pocket and took out some money. He put it on the table and stood up. The gin made him feel pleasantly detached, blurring external sounds and images. He put the book and file in his canvas bag, slung it over his shoulder, then stood for a few seconds looking at the angry Pantocrator in the portico. He wasn’t in a hurry and wanted to clear his head, so he decided to walk to the train station.

  When he reached the cathedral, he took a shortcut through the cloisters. He passed the closed souvenir kiosk and stood for a moment looking at the empty scaffolding over the murals undergoing restoration. The place was deserted, and his steps echoed beneath the vault. He thought he heard something behind him. A priest late to confession.

  He came out through an iron gate into a dark, narrow street, where passing cars had taken chunks out of the walls. As he turned to the right, a car came from somewhere to the left. There was a traffic sign, a triangle warning that the street narrowed, and when Corso came to it, the car accelerated unexpectedly. He could hear it behind him, coming too fast, he thought as he turned to look, but he only had time to half-turn, just enough to see a dark shape bearing down on him. His reflexes were dulled by the gin, but by chance his attention was still on the traffic sign. Instinct pushing him toward it, he sought the narrow area of protection between the metal post and the wall. He slid into the small gap like a bullfighter hiding behind the barrier from the bull. The car managed to strike only his hand as it passed him. The blow was sharp, and the pain made his knees buckle. Falling onto the cobbles, he saw the car disappear down the street with a screech of tires.

  Corso walked on to the station, rubbing his bruised hand. But now he turned every so often to look behind him, and his bag, with The Nine Doors inside, was burning his shoulder. For three seconds he’d caught a fleeting glimpse, but it had been enough: this time the man was driving a black Mercedes, not a Jaguar. The one who’d nearly run Corso down was dark, had a mustache, and a scar on his face. The man from Maka-rova’s bar. The same man he’d seen in a chauffeur’s uniform, reading a newspaper outside Liana Taillefer’s house.

  IV. THE MAN WITH THE SCAR

  Iknow not where he comes from.

  But I know where he is going: he is going to Hell.

  —A. Dumas, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

  Night was falling when Corso got home. Inside his coat pocket his bruised hand throbbed painfully. He went to the bathroom, picked up his crumpled pajamas and a towel from the floor, and held the hand under a stream of cold water for five minutes. Then he opened a couple of cans and ate, standing in the kitchen.

  It had been a strange and dangerous day. As he thought about it, he felt confused, though he was less worried than curious. For some time, he had treated the unexpected with the detached fatalism of one who waits for life to make the next move. His detachment, his neutrality, meant that he could never be the prime mover. Until that morning in the narrow street in Toledo, his role had been merely to carry out orders. Other people were the victims. Every time he lied or made a deal with someone, he stayed objective. He formed no relationships with the persons or things involved—they were simply tools of the trade. He remained on the side, a mercenary with no cause other than financial gain. The indifferent third man. Perhaps this attitude had always made him feel safe, just as,when he took off his glasses, people and objects became blurred, indistinct; he could ignore them by removing their sharp outline. Now, though, the pain from his injured hand, the sense of imminent danger, of violence aimed directly at him and him alone, implied frightening changes in his world. Lucas Corso, who had acted as victimizer so many times, wasn’t used to being a victim. And he found it highly disconcerting.

  In addition to the pain in his hand, his muscles were rigid with tension and his mouth was dry. He opened a bottle of Bols and searched for aspirin in his canvas bag. He always carried a good supply, together with books, pencils, pens, half-filled notepads, a Swiss Army knife, a passport, money, a bulging address book, and books belonging to him and to others. He could, at any time, disappear without a trace like a snail into its shell. With his bag he could make himself at home wherever chance, or his clients, led him—airports, train stations, dusty European libraries, hotel rooms that merged in his memory into a single room with fluid dimensions, where he would wake with a start, disoriented and confused in the darkness, searching for the light switch only to stumble upon the phone. Blank moments torn from his life and his consciousness. He was never very sure of himself, or of anything, for the first thirty seconds after he opened his eyes, his body waking before his mind or his memory.

  He sat at his computer and put his notepads and several reference books on the desk to his left. On his right he put The Nine Doors and Varo Borja’s folder. Then he leaned back in the chair, letting his cigarette burn down in his hand for five minutes, bringing it to his lips only once or twice. During that time all he did was sip the rest of his gin and stare at the blank computer screen and the pentacle on the book’s cover. At last he seemed to wake up. He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and, adjusting his crooked glasses, set to work. Varo Borja’s file agreed with Crozet’s Encyclopedia of Printers and Rare and Curious Books:

  TORCHIA, Aristide (1620-1667). Venetian printer, engraver, and bookbinder. Printer’s mark: a snake and a tree split by lightning. Trained as an apprentice in Leyden (Holland), at the workshop of the Elzevirs. On his return to Venice he completed a series of works on philosophical and esoteric themes in small formats (12mo, 16mo), which were highly esteemed. Notable among these are The Secrets of Wisdom by Nicholas Tamisso (3 vols, 12mo, Venice 1650), Key to Captive Thoughts (1 vol, 132x75mm, Venice 1653), The Three Books of the Art by Paolo d’Este (6 vols, 8vo, Venice 1658), Curious Explanation of Mysteries and Hieroglyphs (1 vol, 8vo, Venice 1659), a reprint of The Lost Word by Bernardo Trevisano (1 vol, 8vo, Venice 1661), and Book of The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows (1 vol, folio, Venice 1666). Because of the printing of the latter, he fell into the hands of the Inquisition. His workshop was destroyed together with all the printed and yet to be printed texts it contained, Torchia was put to death. Condemned for magic and witchcraft, he was burned at the stake on 17 February 1667.

  Corso looked away from the computer and examined the first page of the book that had cost the Venetian printer his life. The title was DE UMBRARUM REGNI NOVEM PORTIS. Beneath it came the printer’s mark, the device that acted as the printer’s signature, which might be anything from a simple monogram to an elaborate illustration. In Aristide Torchia’s case, as mentioned in Crozet, the mark was a tree with one branch snapped off by lightning
and a snake coiled around the trunk, devouring its own tail. The picture was accompanied by the motto SIC LUCEAT LUX: Thus shines the Light. At the foot of the page were the location, name, and date: Venetiae, apud Aristidem Torchiam. Printed in Venice, at the establishment of Aristide Torchia. Underneath, separated by a decoration: MDCLXVI Cum superiorum privilegio veniaque. By authority and permission of the superiors. Corso entered into the computer:

  Copy has no bookplates or handwritten notes. Complete according to catalogue for Terral-Coy collection auction (Claymore, Madrid). Error in Mateu (states 8, not 9, engravings in this copy). Folio. 299x215mm 2 blank flyleaves, 160 pages and 9 full-page prints, numbered I to VIIII. Pages: 1 title page with printer’s mark. 157 pages of text. Last one blank, no colophon. Full-page engravings on recto page. Verso blank.

  He examined the illustrations one by one. According to Borja, legend attributed the original drawings to the hand of Lucifer himself. Each print was accompanied by a Roman ordinal, its Hebrew and Greek equivalent, and a Latin phrase in abbreviated code. He entered:

  I. NEM. PERV.T.QUI N.N LEG. CERT.RIT: A horseman rides toward a walled city. He has a finger to his lips, advising caution or silence.

  II. CLAUS. PAT.T: A hermit in front of a locked door, holding 2 keys. A lantern on the ground. He is accompanied by a dog. At his side a sign resembling the Hebrew letter Teth.

  III. VERB. D.SUM C.S.T ARCAN.: A vagabond, or pilgrim, heads toward a bridge over a river. At both ends of the bridge, gate towers with closed doors bar the way. An archer on a cloud aims at the path leading to the bridge.