The Dumas Club: The Ninth Gate

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Replinger looked at him with gratitude. “You’re in the profession. It’s obvious.”

  “Yes,” Corso grimaced. “The oldest profession.” Replinger’s laugh ended in another asthmatic wheeze. Corso took advantage of the pause to turn the conversation to Maquet again.

  “Tell me how they did it,” he said.

  “Their technique was complicated.” Replinger gestured at the chairs and table, as if the scene had taken place there. “Dumas drew up a plan for each novel and discussed it with his collaborator, who then did the research and made an outline of the story, or a first draft. These were the white pages. Then Dumas would rewrite it on the blue paper. He worked in his shirtsleeves, and only in the morning or at night, hardly ever in the afternoon. He didn’t drink coffee or spirits while writing, only selt/er water. Also he rarely smoked. He wrote page after page under pressure from his publishers, who were always demanding more. Maquet sent him the material in bulk by post, and Dumas would complain about the delays.” Replinger took a sheet from the folder and put it on the table in front of Corso. “Here’s proof, in one of the notes they exchanged during the writing of Queen Margot. As you can see, Dumas was complaining. “All is going perfectly, despite the six or seven pages of politics we’ll have to endure so as to revive interest.... If we’re not going faster, dear friend, it is your fault. I’ve been hard at work since nine o’clock yesterday.” He paused to take a breath and pointed at “The Anjou Wine.” “These four pages in Maquet’s handwriting with annotations by Dumas were probably received by Dumas only moments before Le Siecle went to press. So he had to make do with rewriting a few of them and hurriedly correcting some of the other pages on the original itself.”

  He put the papers back in their folders and returned them to the filing cabinet, under D. Corso had time to cast a final glance at Dumas’s note demanding more pages from his collaborator. In addition to the handwriting, which was similar in every way, the paper was identical—blue with faint squaring —to that of “The Anjou Wine” manuscript. One folio was cut in two—the bottom more uneven than the others. Maybe all the pages had been part of the same ream lying on the novelist’s desk.

  “Who really wrote The Three Musketeers?”

  Replinger, busy shutting the filing cabinet, took some time to answer.

  “I can’t give you a definitive answer. Maquet was a resourceful man, he was well versed in history, he had read a lot... but he didn’t have the master’s touch.”

  “They fell out with each other in the end, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. A pity. Did you know they traveled to Spain together at the time of Isabel II’s wedding? Dumas even published a serial, From Madrid to Cadiz, in the form of letters. As for Maquet, he later went to court to demand that he be declared the author of eighteen of Dumas’s novels, but the judges ruled that his work had been only preparatory. Today he is considered a mediocre writer who used Dumas’s fame to make money. Although there are some who believe that he was exploited— the great man’s ghostwriter....”

  “What do you think?”

  Replinger glanced furtively at Dumas’s portrait above the door.

  “I’ve already told you that I’m not an expert like my friend Mr. Balkan, just a trader, a bookseller.” He seemed to reflect, weighing where his professional opinion ended and his personal taste began. “But I’d like to draw your attention to something. In France between 1870 and 1894, three million books and eight million serials were sold with the name of Alexandre Dumas on the title page. Novels written before, during, and after his collaboration with Maquet. I think that has some significance.”

  “Fame in his lifetime, at least,” said Corso.

  “Definitely. For half a century he was the voice of Europe. Boats were sent over from the Americas for the sole purpose of bringing back consignments of his novels. They were read just as much in Cairo, Moscow, Istanbul, and Chandernagor as in France.... Dumas lived life to the full, enjoying all his pleasures and his fame. He lived and had a good time, stood on the barricades, fought in duels, was taken to court, chartered boats, paid pensions out of his own pocket, loved, ate, drank, earned ten million and squandered twenty, and died gently in his sleep, like a child.” Replinger pointed at the corrections to Maquet’s pages. “It could be called many things: talent, genius.... But whatever it was, he didn’t improvise, or steal from others.” He thumped his chest like Porthos. “It’s something you have in here. No other writer has known such glory in his lifetime. Dumas rose from nothing to have it all. As if he’d made a pact with God.”

  “Yes,” said Corso. “Or with the devil.”

  HE CROSSED THE ROAD to the other bookshop. Outside, under an awning, stacks of books were piled up on trestle tables. The girl was still there, rummaging among the books and bunches of old pictures and postcards. She was standing against the light. The sun was on her shoulders, turning the hair on the back of her head and her temples golden. She didn’t stop what she was doing when he arrived.

  “Which one would you choose?” she asked. She was hesitating between a sepia postcard of Tristan and Isolde embracing and another of Daumier’s The Picture Hunter. Undecided, she held them out in front of her.

  “Take both,” suggested Corso. In the corner of his eye he caught sight of a man who had stopped at the stall and was about to reach for a thick bundle of cards held together by a rubber band. Corso, with the reflex of a hunter, grabbed the packet. The man left, muttering. Corso looked through the cards and chose several with a Napoleonic theme: Empress Marie Louise, the Bonaparte family, the death of the Emperor, and his final victory—a Polish lancer and two hussars on horseback in front of the cathedral at Reims, during the French campaign of 1814, waving flags snatched from the enemy. After hesitating a moment, he added one of Marshall Ney in dress uniform and another of an elderly Wellington, posing for posterity. Lucky old devil.

  The girl’s long tanned hands moved deftly through the cards and yellowed printed paper. She chose a few more postcards: Robespierre, Saint-Just, and an elegant portrait of Richelieu in his cardinal’s habit and wearing the insignia of the Order of the Holy Spirit.

  “How appropriate,” remarked Corso acidly.

  She didn’t answer. She moved on toward a pile of books, and the sun slid across her shoulders, enveloping Corso in a golden haze. Dazzled, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the girl was showing him a thick volume in quarto.

  “What do you think?”

  He glanced at it: The Three Musketeers, with the original illustrations by Leloir, bound in cloth and leather, in good condition. Looking at her, he saw that she had a lopsided smile and was waiting, watching him intently.

  “Nice edition,” was all he said. “Are you intending to read it?”

  “Of course. Don’t tell me the ending.”

  Corso laughed halfheartedly.

  “As if I could tell you the ending,” he said, sorting the bundles of cards.

  “I HAVE A PRESENT for you,” said the girl.

  They were walking along the Left Bank, past the stalls of the bouquinistes with their prints hanging in plastic and cellophane covers and their secondhand books lined up along the parapet. A bateau-mouche was heading slowly upriver, straining under the weight of what Corso estimated to be five thousand Japanese and as many Sony camcorders. Across the street, behind exclusive shopwindows covered with Visa and American Express stickers, snooty antique dealers scanned the horizon for a Kuwaiti, a black marketeer, or an African minister of state to whom they might sell Eugenic Grandet’s Sevres porcelain bidet. Their sales patter delivered in the most proper accent, of course.

  “I don’t like presents,” muttered Corso sullenly. “Some guys once accepted a wooden horse. Handcrafted by the Achaeans, it said on the label. The fools.”

  “Weren’t there any dissenters?”

  “One, with his sons. But some beasts came out of the sea and made a lovely sculpture of them. Hellenistic, I seem to remember. Rhodes school. In those days
, the gods took sides.” “They always have.” The girl was staring at the muddy river as if it were carrying away her memories. Corso saw her smile thoughtfully, absently. “I never knew an impartial god. Or devil.” She turned to him suddenly—her earlier thoughts seemed to have been washed downstream. “Do you believe in the devil, Corso?”

  He looked at her intently, but the river had also washed away the images that filled her eyes seconds before. All he could see there now was liquid green, and light.

  “I believe in stupidity and ignorance.” He smiled wearily at the girl. “And I think that the best cut of all is the one you get here. See?” He pointed at his groin. “In the femoral artery. While you’re in somebody’s arms.”

  “What are you so afraid of, Corso? That I’ll put my arms around you? That the sky’ll fall on you?”

  “I’m afraid of wooden horses, cheap gin, and pretty girls. Especially when they give me presents. And when they go by the name of the woman who defeated Sherlock Holmes.”

  They continued walking and were now on the wooden planks of the Pont des Arts. The girl stopped and leaned on the metal rail, by a street artist selling tiny watercolors.

  “I like this bridge,” she said. “No cars. Only lovers and old ladies in hats. People with nothing to do. This bridge has absolutely no common sense.”

  Corso said nothing. He was watching the barges, masts down, pass between the pillars that supported the iron structure. Nikon’s steps had once echoed alongside his on that bridge. He remembered that she too stopped at a stall that sold watercolors. Maybe it was the same one. She wrinkled her nose, because v her light meter couldn’t deal with the dazzling sunshine that came slanting across the spire and towers of Notre-Dame. They bought foie gras and a bottle of Burgundy. Later they had it for dinner in their hotel room, sitting on their bed watching one of those wordy discussions on TV with huge studio audiences that the French like so much. Earlier, on the bridge, Nikon had taken a photograph of him without his knowing. She confessed this, her mouth full of bread and foie gras, her lips moistened with Burgundy, as she stroked his side with her bare foot. I know you hate it, Lucas Corso, but you’ll just have to put up with it. I got you in profile on the bridge watching the barges pass underneath, you almost look handsome this time, you bastard. Nikon was Ashkenazi, with large eyes. Her father had been number 77,843 in Treblinka, saved by the bell in the last round. Whenever Israeli soldiers appeared on TV, invading places in huge tanks, she jumped off the bed, naked, and kissed the screen, her eyes wet with tears, whispering “Sha-lom, shalom” in a caressing tone. The same tone she used when she called Corso by his first name, until the day she stopped. Nikon. He never got to see the photograph of him leaning on the Pont des Arts, watching the barges pass under the arches. In profile, almost looking handsome, you bastard.

  When he looked up, Nikon had gone. Another woman was by his side. Tall, with tanned skin, a short boyish haircut, and eyes the color of freshly washed grapes, almost colorless. For a second he blinked, confused, until everything fell back into place. The present cut cleanly, like a scalpel. Corso, in profile, in black and white (Nikon always worked in black and white), fluttered down into the river and was swept downstream with the dead leaves and the rubbish discharged by the barges and the drains. Now, the woman who wasn’t Nikon was holding a small, leather-bound book. She was holding it out to him.

  “I hope you like it.”

  The Devil in Love, by Jacques Cazotte, the 1878 edition. When he opened it, Corso recognized the prints from the first edition in a facsimile appendix: Alvaro in the magic circle before the devil, who asks, “Che vuoi?”; Biondetta untangling her hair with her fingers; the handsome boy sitting at the harpsichord ... He chose a page at random:

  ... man emerged from a handful of earth and water. Why should a woman not be made of dew, earthly vapors, and rays of light, of the condensed residues of a rainbow? Where does the possible lie? And where the impossible?

  He closed the book and looked up. His eyes met the smiling eyes of the girl. Below, in the water, the sun sparkled in the wake of a boat, and lights moved over her skin like the reflections from the facets of a diamond.

  “Residues of a rainbow,” quoted Corso. “What do you know of any of that?”

  She ran her hand through her hair and turned her face to the sun, closing her eyes against the glare. Everything about her was light: the reflection of the river, the brightness of the morning, the two green slits between her dark eyelashes.

  “I know what I was told a long time ago. The rainbow is the bridge between heaven and earth. It will shatter at the end of the world, once the devil has crossed it on horseback.”

  “Not bad. Did your grandmother tell you that?”

  She shook her head. She looked at Corso again, absorbed and serious.

  “I heard it told to a friend, Bileto.” As she said the name, she stopped a moment and frowned tenderly, like a little girl revealing a secret. “He likes horses and wine, and he’s the most optimistic person I know. He’s still hoping to get back to heaven.”

  THEY CROSSED TO THE other side of the bridge. Strangely, Corso felt that the gargoyles of Notre-Dame were watching him from a distance. They were forgeries, of course, like so many other things. They and their infernal grimaces, horns, and goatee beards hadn’t been there when honest master builders had looked up, sweaty and proud, and drunk a glass of eau-de-vie. Or when Quasimodo brooded in the bell towers

  over his unrequited love for the gypsy Esmeralda. But ever since Charles Laughton, as the hideous hunchback who resembled them, and Gina Lollobrigida in the remake—Technicolor, as Nikon would have specified—were executed in their shadow, it was impossible to think of Notre-Dame without the sinister neomedieval sentinels. Corso imagined the bird’s-eye view: the Pont Neuf, and beyond it, narrow and dark in the luminous morning, the Pont des Arts over the gray-green band of river, with two tiny figures moving imperceptibly toward the right bank. Bridges and rainbows with black Caronte barges gliding slowly beneath the pillars and vaults of stone. The world is full of banks and rivers running between them, of men and women crossing bridges and fords, unaware of the consequences, not looking back or beneath their feet, and with no loose change for the boatman.

  They emerged opposite the Louvre and stopped at a traffic light before crossing. Corso shifted the strap of his canvas bag on his shoulder and glanced absently to right and left. The traffic was heavy, and he happened to notice one of the passing cars. He froze, turned to stone like a gargoyle on the cathedral. “What’s the matter?” asked the girl when the lights turned green and she saw that Corso wasn’t moving. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  He had. Not one but two. They were in the back of a taxi already moving off in the distance, engaged in animated conversation, and they hadn’t noticed Corso. The woman was blond and very attractive. He recognized her immediately despite her hat and the veil covering her eyes. Liana Taillefer. Next to her, an arm around her shoulders, showing his best side and stroking his curly beard vainly, was Flavio La Ponte.

  X. NUMBER THREE

  They suspected that he had no heart.

  —R. Sabatini, SCARAMOUCHE

  Corso had a rare knack: he could make a loyal ally of a stranger instantly, in return for a tip or even a smile. As we’ve seen, there was something about him—his half-calculated clumsiness, his customary, friendly rabbit expression, his air of absentminded helplessness which was nothing of the sort—that won people over. This happened to some of us. And it happened to Gruber, the concierge of the Louvre Concorde, with whom Corso had had dealings for fifteen years. Gruber was dry and imperturbable, with a crew cut and a permanent poker player’s expression around the mouth. During the retreat of 1944, when he was sixteen years old and a Croat volunteer in the Horst Wessel Eighteenth Panzergrena-dier division, a Russian bullet hit him in the spine. It left him with an Iron Cross Second Class and three fused vertebrae for life. This was why he was so stiff and upright behind the recepti
on desk, as if he were wearing a steel corset. “I need a favor, Gruber.” “Yes, sir.”

  He almost clicked his heels as he stood to attention. The impeccable burgundy jacket with the gold keys on the lapels gave the old exile a military air, very much to the taste of the Central Europeans who stayed at the hotel. After the fall of Communism and the fragmenting of the Slav hordes, they arrived in Paris to glance at the Champs-Elysees out of the corners of their eyes and dream of a Fourth Reich.

  “La Ponte, Flavio. Nationality Spanish. Also Herrero, Liana, though she may be going by the name of Taillefer or de Taillefer. I want to know if they’re at a hotel in the city.”

  He wrote the names on a card and handed it to Gruber, together with five hundred francs. Corso always gave tips or bribes with a shrug, as if to say, “I’ll do the same for you sometime.” It made it such a friendly-conspiratorial exchange, it was difficult to tell who was doing whom a favor. Gruber, who murmured a polite “Merci m’sieu”to Spaniards on package tours, to Italians in loud ties, and to Americans with airline bags and baseball caps for a miserable ten-franc tip, took Corso’s banknote without a word or even a nod. He just slipped it in his pocket with an elegant, semicircular movement of the hand and a croupier’s impassive gravity, reserved for the few, like Corso, who still knew how to play the game. Gruber had learned the job in the days when a guest had only to raise an eyebrow for hotel employees to come running. The dear old Europe of international hotels was now reduced to a few cognoscenti.

  “Are the lady and gentleman staying together?”

  “I don’t know.” Corso frowned. He pictured La Ponte emerging from the bathroom in an embroidered dressing gown and Taillefer’s widow lying on the bed in a silk nightgown. “I’d like to know that too.”