The conductor passed the door, ringing his bell. Half an hour till the restaurant car closed. Corso shut the book. He put on his jacket, slung the canvas bag over his shoulder, and left the compartment. At the end of the corridor, from the door, a cold draft blew through the passageway leading to the next sleeper. He felt the thundering beneath his feet as he crossed into the section of first-class carriages. He let a couple of passengers go by and then looked into the nearest compartment, which was only half full. The girl was there, by the door, wearing a sweater and jeans, her bare feet resting on the seat opposite. As Corso passed, she looked up from her book and their eyes met. He was about to nod briefly in her direction, but when she showed no sign of recognition, he stopped himself. She must have sensed something, because she looked at him with curiosity. But by then he was continuing down the corridor.
He ate his dinner, rocked by the swaying of the train, and had time for a coffee and a gin before they closed for the evening. The moon, in shades of raw silk, was rising. Telephone poles rushed past in the darkened plain, fleeting frames for a sequence of stills from a badly adjusted movie projector.
He was on his way back to his compartment when he saw the girl in the corridor of the first-class carriage. She had opened the window, and the cold night air was blowing against her face. As he came up to her, he turned sideways so he could get past. She turned toward him. “I know you,” she said.
Close up, her green eyes seemed even lighter, like liquid crystal, and luminous against her suntanned skin. It was only March, and with her hair parted like a boy’s, her tan made her look unusual, sporty, pleasantly ambiguous. She was tall, slim, and supple. And very young.
“Yes,” said Corso, pausing a moment. “A few days ago, at the cafe.”
She smiled. Another contrast, this time of white teeth against brown skin. Her mouth was big and well defined. A pretty girl, Flavio La Ponte would have said, stroking his curly beard.
“You were the one asking about d’Artagnan.” The cold air from the window blew her hair. She was still barefoot. Her white sneakers were on the floor by her empty seat. He instinctively glanced at the book lying there: The Adventures ofSherlock Holmes. A cheap paperback, he noticed. The Mexican edition, published by Porrua.
“You’ll catch cold,” he said.
Still smiling, the girl shook her head, but she turned the handle and shut the window. Corso, about to go on his way, paused to find a cigarette. He did it as he always did, taking one directly from his pocket and putting it in his mouth, when he realized she was watching him.
“Do you smoke?” he asked hesitantly, stopping his hand halfway.
“Sometimes.”
He put the cigarette in his mouth and took out another one. It was dark tobacco, without a filter, and as crushed as all the packs he usually carried with him. The girl took it. She looked to see the brand. Then she leaned over for Corso to light it, after his own, with the last match in the box.
“It’s strong,” she said, breathing out her first mouthful of smoke, but then made none of the fuss he expected. She held the cigarette in an unusual way, between forefinger and thumb, with the ember outward. “Are you in this carriage?” “No, in the next one.”
“You’re lucky to have a sleeper.” She tapped her jeans pocket, indicating a nonexistent wallet. “I wish I could. Luckily the compartment’s half empty.” “Are you a student?” “Sort of.”
The train thundered into a tunnel. The girl turned then, as if the darkness outside drew her attention. Tense and alert, she leaned against her own reflection in the window. She seemed to be expecting something in the noisy rush of air. Then, when the train emerged into the open and small lights again punctuated the night like brush strokes as the train passed, she smiled, distant.
“I like trains,” she said.
“Me too.”
The girl was still facing the window, touching it with the fingertips of one hand. “Imagine,” she said. She was smiling nostalgically, obviously remembering something. “Leaving Paris in the evening to wake up on the lagoon in Venice, en route to Istanbul...”
Corso made a face. How old could she be? Eighteen, twenty at most.
“Playing poker,” he suggested, “between Calais and Brindisi.”
She looked at him more attentively.
“Not bad.” She thought a moment. “How about a champagne breakfast between Vienna and Nice?”
“Interesting. Like spying on Basil Zaharoff.”
“Or getting drunk with Nijinsky.”
“Stealing Coco Chanel’s pearls.”
“Flirting with Paul Morand... Or Mr. Barnabooth.”
They both laughed, Corso under his breath, she openly, resting her forehead on the cold glass. Her laugh was loud, frank, and boyish, matching her hair and her luminous green eyes.
“Trains aren’t like that anymore,” he said.
“I know.”
The lights of a signal post passed like a flash of lightning. Then a dimly lit, deserted platform, with a sign made illegible by their speed. The moon was rising and now and then clarified the confused outline of trees and roofs. It seemed to be flying alongside the train in a mad, purposeless race.
“What’s your name?”
“Corso. And yours?”
“Irene Adler.”
He looked at her intently, and she held his gaze calmly.
“That’s not a proper name.”
“Neither is Corso.”
“You’re wrong. I am Corso. The man who runs.”
“You don’t look like a man who runs anywhere. You seem
the quiet type.”
He bowed his head slightly, looking at the girl’s bare feet on the floor of the corridor. He could tell she was staring at him, examining him. It made him feel uncomfortable. That was unusual. She was too young, he told himself. And too attractive. He automatically adjusted his crooked glasses and moved to go on his way.
“Have a good journey.”
“Thanks.”
He took a few steps, knowing that she was watching him.
“Maybe we’ll see each other around,” she said, behind him.
“Maybe.”
Impossible. That was another Corso returning home, uneasy, the Grande Armee about to melt in the snow. The fire of Moscow crackling in his wake. He couldn’t leave like that, so he stopped and turned around. As he did so, he smiled like a
hungry wolf.
“Irene Adler,” he repeated, trying to remember. “Study in
Scarlet?”
“No,” she answered. “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Now she was smiling too, and her gaze shone emerald green in the dim corridor. “The Woman, my dear Watson.”
Corso slapped his forehead as if he’d just remembered.
“Elementary,” he said. And he was sure they’d meet again.
HE SPENT LESS THAN fifty minutes in Lisbon. Just enough time to get from Santa Apolonia Station to Rossio Station. An hour and a half later he stepped onto the platform in Sintra, beneath a sky full of low clouds that blurred the tops of the melancholy gray towers of the castle of Da Pena farther up the hill. There was no taxi in sight, so he walked to the small hotel that was opposite the National Palace with its two large chimneys. It was ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning, and the esplanade was empty of tourists and coaches. He had no trouble getting a room. It looked out onto the uneven landscape, where the roofs and towers of old houses peered above the thick greenery, their ruined gardens suffocating in ivy.
After a shower and a coffee he asked for the Quinta da Soledade, and the hotel receptionist told him the way, up the road. There weren’t any taxis on the esplanade either, although there were a couple of horse-drawn carriages. Corso negotiated a price, and a few minutes later he was passing under the lacy baroque stonework of Regaleira Tower. The sound of the horse’s hooves echoed from the dark walls, the drains and fountains running with water, the ivy-covered walls, railings, and tree trunks, the stone steps carpeted with moss, and the a
ncient tiles on the abandoned manor houses.
The Quinta da Soledade was a rectangular, eighteenth-century house, with four chimneys and an ochre plaster facade covered with water trails and stains. Corso got out of the carriage and stood looking at the place for a moment before opening the iron gate. Two mossy, gray-green stone statues on granite columns stood at either end of the wall. One was a bust of a woman. The other seemed to be identical, but the features were hidden by the ivy climbing up it, enfolding and merging with the sculpted face.
As he walked toward the house, dead leaves crackled beneath his steps. The path was lined with marble statues, almost all of them lying broken next to their empty pedestals. The garden was completely wild. Vegetation had taken over, climbing up benches and into alcoves. The wrought iron left rusty trails on the moss-covered stone. To his left, in a pond full of aquatic plants, a fountain with cracked tiles sheltered a chubby angel with empty eyes and mutilated hands. It slept with its head resting on a book, and a thread of water trickled from its
mouth. Everything seemed suffused with infinite sadness, and Corso couldn’t help being affected. Quinta da Soledade, he repeated. House of Solitude. The name suited it.
He went up the stone steps leading to the door and looked up. Beneath the gray sky no time was indicated on the Roman numerals of the ancient sundial on the wall. Above it ran the legend: OMNES VULNERANT, POSTUMA NECAT.
They all wound, he read. The last one kills.
“YOU’VE ARRIVED JUST IN time,” said Fargas, “for the ceremony.”
Corso held out his hand, slightly disconcerted. Victor Fargas was as tall and thin as an El Greco figure. He seemed to move around inside his loose, thick woolen sweater and baggy trousers like a tortoise in its shell. His mustache was trimmed with geometrical precision, and his old-fashioned, worn-out shoes gleamed. Corso noticed this much at first glance, before his attention was drawn to the huge, empty house, its bare walls, the paintings on the ceiling that were falling into shreds, eaten by mildew.
Fargas examined his visitor closely. “I assume you’ll accept a brandy,” he said at last. He set off down the corridor, limping slightly, without bothering to check whether Corso was following or not. They passed other rooms, which were empty or contained the remains of broken furniture thrown in a corner. Naked, dusty lightbulbs hung from the ceilings.
The only rooms that seemed to be in use were two interconnecting reception rooms. There was a sliding door between them with coats of arms etched into the glass. It was open, revealing more bare walls, their ancient wallpaper marked by long-gone pictures, and furniture, rusty nails, and fixtures for nonexistent lamps. Above this gloomy scene was a ceiling painted to resemble a vault of clouds with the sacrifice of Isaac in the center. The cracked figure of the old patriarch held a dagger, about to strike a blond young man. His hand was restrained by an angel with huge wings. Beneath the trompe 1’oeil sky, dusty French windows, some of the panes replaced with cardboard, led to the terrace and, beyond that, to the garden. “Home sweet home,” said Fargas.
His irony was unconvincing. He seemed to have made the remark too often and was no longer sure of its effect. He spoke Spanish with a heavy, distinguished Portuguese accent. And he moved very slowly, perhaps because of his bad leg, like someone who has all the time in the world.
“Brandy,” he said again, as if he didn’t quite remember how they’d reached that point.
Corso nodded vaguely, but Fargas didn’t notice. At one end of the vast room was an enormous fireplace with logs piled up in it. There were a pair of unmatched armchairs, a table and sideboard, an oil lamp, two big candlesticks, a violin in its case, and little else. But on the floor, lined up neatly on old, faded, threadbare rugs, as far away as possible from the windows and the leaden light coming through them, lay a great many books; five hundred or more, Corso estimated, maybe even a thousand. Many codices and incunabula among them. Wonderful old books bound in leather or parchment. Ancient tomes,with studs in the covers, folios, Elzevirs, their bindings decorated with goffering, bosses, rosettes, locks, their spines and front edges covered with gilding and calligraphy done by medieval mon’ks in the scriptoria of their monasteries. He also noticed a dozen or so rusty mousetraps in various corners.
Fargas, who had been searching through the sideboard, turned around with a glass and a bottle of Remy Martin. He held it up to the light to look at the contents.
“Nectar of the gods,” he said triumphantly. “Or the devil.” He smiled only with his mouth, twisting his mustache like an old-fashioned movie star. His eyes remained fixed and expressionless, with bags beneath them as if from chronic insomnia. Corso noticed his delicate hands—a sign of good breeding—as he took the glass of brandy. The glass vibrated gently as Corso raised it to his lips.
“Nice glass,” he said to make conversation.
Fargas agreed, and made a gesture halfway between resignation and self-mockery, suggesting a different reading of it all: the glass, the tiny amount of brandy in the bottle, the bare house, his own presence. An elegant, pale, worn ghost.
“I have only one more left,” he confided in a calm, neutral tone. “That’s why I take care of them.”
Corso nodded. He glanced at the bare walls and again at the books.
“This must have been a beautiful house,” he said. Fargas shrugged. “Yes, it was. But old families are like civilizations. One day they just wither and die.” He looked around without seeing. All the missing objects seemed to be reflected in his eyes. “At first one resorts to the barbarians to guard the limes of the Danube, but it makes the barbarians rich and they end up as one’s creditors.... Then one day they rebel and invade, looting everything.” He suddenly peered at his visitor suspiciously. “I hope you understand what I mean.”
Corso nodded, smiling his best conspiratorial smile. “Perfectly,” he said. “Hobnail boots crushing Saxony porcelain. Isn’t that it? Servants in evening dress. Working-class parvenus who wipe their arses on illuminated manuscripts.”
Fargas nodded approvingly. He was smiling. He limped over to the sideboard in search of the other glass. “I’ll have a brandy too,” he said.
They drank a toast in silence, looking at each other like two members of a secret fraternity who have just exchanged sign and countersign. Then, moving closer to the books, Fargas gestured at them with the hand holding the glass, as if Corso had just passed his initiation test and Fargas was inviting him to pass through an invisible barrier.
“There they are. Eight hundred and thirty-four volumes. Less than half of them are worth anything.” He drank some more and ran his finger over his damp mustache, looking around. “It’s a shame that you didn’t know them in better days, lined up on their cedarwood shelves.... I managed to collect five thousand of them. These are the survivors.”
Corso put his canvas bag on the floor and went over to the books. His fingers itched instinctively. It was a magnificent sight. He adjusted his glasses and immediately saw a 1588 first-edition Vasari in quarto, and a sixteenth-century Tractatus by Berengario de Carpi bound in parchment.
“I would never have dreamed that the Fargas collection, listed in all the bibliographies, was kept like this. Piled on the floor against the wall, in an empty house ...”
“That’s life, my friend. But I have to say, in my defense, that they are all in immaculate condition. I clean them and make sure they’re aired. I check that insects or rodents don’t get at them, and that they’re protected against light, heat, and moisture. In fact I do nothing else all day.” “What happened to the rest?”
Fargas looked toward the window, asking himself the same question. He frowned. “You can imagine,” he answered, and he looked a very unhappy man when he turned back to Corso. “Apart from the house, a few pieces of furniture, and my father’s library, I inherited nothing but debts. Whenever I got any money, I invested it in books. When my savings dwindled, I got rid of everything else—pictures, furniture, china. I think you understand what it is to be a pas
sionate collector of books.’ But I’m pathologically obsessed. I suffered atrociously just at the thought of breaking up my collection.” “I’ve known people like that.”
“Really?” Fargas regarded him, interested. “I still doubt you can really imagine what it’s like. I used to get up at night and wander about like a lost soul looking at my books. I’d talk to them and stroke their spines, swearing I’d always take care of them.... But none of it was any use. One day I made my decision: to sacrifice most of the books and keep only the most cherished, valuable ones. Neither you nor anyone will ever understand how that felt, letting the vultures pick over my collection.”
“I can imagine,” said Corso, who wouldn’t have minded in the least joining in the feast.
“Can you? I don’t think so. Not in a million years. Separating them took me two months. Sixty-one days of agony, and an attack of fever that almost killed me. At last, people took them away, and I thought I would go mad. I remember it as if it were yesterday, although it was twelve years ago.” “And now?”
The Dumas Club: The Ninth Gate Page 13