The Club Dumas

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "Does it work?"

  "No. It's a forgery."

  "Have you tried it yourself?"

  Frieda Ungern looked shocked.

  "Can you see me at my age, standing in a magic circle, invoking Beelzebub? Please. However much he looked like John Barrymore fifty years ago, a beau ages too. Can you imagine the disappointment at my age? I prefer to be faithful to the memories of my youth."

  Corso looked at her in mock surprise. "But surely you and the devil ... Your readers take you for a committed witch."

  "Well, they're mistaken. What I look for in the devil is money, not emotion." She looked at the window. "I spent my husband's fortune building up this collection, so I have to live off my royalties."

  "Which are considerable, I'm sure. You're the queen of the bookshops."

  "But life is expensive, Mr. Corso. Very expensive, especially when one has to make deals with people like our friend Mr. Montegrifo to get the rare books one wants. Satan serves as a good source of income nowadays, but that's all. I'm seventy years old. I don't have time for gratuitous, silly fantasies, spinsters' dreams.... Do you understand?"

  It was Corso's turn to smile. "Perfectly."

  "When I say that this book is a forgery," continued the baroness, "it's because I've studied it in depth. There's something in it that doesn't work. There are gaps in it, blanks. I mean this figuratively, because my copy is in fact complete. It belonged to Madame de Montespan, Louis XIV's mistress. She was a high priestess of Satanism and managed to have the ritual of the Black Mass included in the palace routine. There is a letter from Madame de Montespan to Madame De Peyrolles, her friend and confidante, in which she complains of the inefficacy of a book which, she states, 'has all that which the sages specify, and yet there is something incorrect in it, a play on words which never falls into the correct sequence.'"

  "Who else owned it?"

  "The Count of Saint Germain, who sold it to Cazotte."

  "Jacques Cazotte?"

  "Yes. The author of The Devil in Love, who was guillotined in 1792. Do you know the book?"

  Corso nodded cautiously. The links were so obvious that they were impossible.

  "I read it once."

  Somewhere in the apartment a phone rang, and the secretary's steps could be heard along the corridor. The ringing stopped.

  "As for The Nine Doors," the baroness continued, "the trail went cold here in Paris, at the time of the Terror after the revolution. There are a couple of subsequent references, but they're very vague. Gérard de Nerval mentions it in passing in one of his articles, assuring us that he saw it at a friend's house."

  Corso blinked imperceptibly behind his glasses. "Dumas was a friend of his," he said, alert.

  "Yes. But Nerval doesn't say at whose house. The fact is, nobody saw the book again until the Pétain collaborator's collection was auctioned, which is when I got hold of it...."

  Corso was no longer listening. According to the legend, Gérard de Nerval hanged himself with the cord from a bodice, Madame de Montespan's. Or was it Madame de Maintenon's? Whoever it belonged to, Corso couldn't help drawing worrying parallels with the cord from Enrique Taillefer's dressing gown.

  The secretary came to the door, interrupting his thoughts. Somebody wanted Corso on the telephone. He excused himself and walked past the tables of readers out into the corridor, full of yet more books and plants. On a walnut corner table there was an antique metal phone with the receiver off the hook.

  "Hello."

  "Corso? It's Irene Adler."

  "So I gather." He looked behind him down the empty corridor. The secretary had disappeared. "I was surprised you weren't still keeping a lookout. Where are you calling from?"

  "The bar on the corner. There's a man watching the house. That's why I came here."

  For a moment Corso just breathed slowly. Then he bit off a hangnail. It was bound to happen sooner or later, he thought with twisted resignation. The man was part of the landscape, or the furniture. Then, although he knew it was pointless, he said:

  "Describe him."

  "Dark, with a mustache and a big scar on his face." The girl's voice was calm, without any trace of emotion or awareness of danger. "He's sitting in a gray BMW across the street."

  "Has he seen you?"

  "I don't know. But I can see him. He's been there an hour. He got out of the car twice: first to look at the names at the door, and then to buy a newspaper."

  Corso spat the hangnail out of his mouth and sucked his thumb, ft smarted. "Listen. I don't know what the man's up to. I don't even know if the two of you are part of the same setup. But I don't like him being near you. Not at all. So go back to the hotel."

  "Don't be an idiot, Corso. I'll go where I have to." She added, "Regards to Treville," and hung up.

  Corso made a gesture halfway between exasperation and sarcasm, because he was thinking the same thing and didn't like the coincidence. He stood for a moment looking at the receiver before hanging up. Of course, she was reading The Three Musketeers. She'd even had the book open when he saw her from the window. In chapter 3, having just arrived in Paris, and during an audience with Monsieur de Treville, commander of the king's musketeers d'Artagnan sees Rochefort from the window. He runs after him, bumps into Athos's shoulder, Porthos's shoulder belt, and Aramis's handkerchief. Regards to Treville. It was a clever joke, if it was spontaneous. But Corso didn't find it at all funny.

  After he hung up, he stood thinking for a moment in the darkness of the corridor. Maybe that's exactly what they were expecting him to do: rush downstairs after Rochefort, sword in hand, taking the bait. The girl's call might even have been part of the plan. Or maybe—and this was really getting convoluted—it had been a warning about the plan, if there was one. That's if she was playing fair—Corso was too experienced to put his hand in the fire for anybody.

  Bad times, he said to himself again. Absurd times. After so many books, films, and TV shows, after reading on so many different possible levels, it was difficult to tell if you were seeing the original or a copy; difficult to know whether the image was real, inverted, or both, in a hall of mirrors; difficult to know the authors' intentions. It was as easy to fall short of the truth as to overshoot it with one's interpretations. Here was one more reason to feel envious of his great-grandfather with the grenadier's mustache and with the smell of gunpowder floating over the muddy fields of Flanders. In those days a flag was still a flag, the Emperor was the Emperor, a rose was a rose was a rose. But now at least, here in Paris, something was clear to Corso: even as a second-level reader he was prepared to play the game only up to a certain point. He no longer had the youth, the innocence, or the desire to go and fight at a place chosen by his opponents, three duels arranged in ten minutes, in the grounds of the Carmelite convent or wherever the hell it might be. When the time came to say hello, he'd make sure he approached Rochefort with everything in his favor, if possible from behind, with a steel bar in his hand. He owed it to him since that narrow street in Toledo, not forgetting the interest accrued in Sintra. Corso would settle his debts calmly. Biding his time.

  XI. THE BANKS OF THE SEINE

  This mystery is considered insoluble for the very same

  reasons that should lead one to consider it soluble.

  —E. A. Poe, THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE

  The code is simple," said Frieda Ungern, "consisting of abbreviations similar to those used in ancient Latin manuscripts. This may be because Aristide Torchia took the major part of the text word for word from another manuscript, possibly the legendary Delomelanicon. In the first engraving, the meaning is obvious to anyone slightly familiar with esoteric language: NEM. PERV.T QUI N.N LEG. CERT.RIT is obviously NEMO PERVENIT QUI NON LEGITIME CERTAVERIT."

  "Only he who has fought according to the rules will succeed."

  They were on their third cup of coffee, and it was obvious, at least on a formal level, that Corso had been adopted. He saw the baroness nod, gratified.

  "Very good. Can
you interpret any part of this engraving?"

  "No," Corso lied calmly. He had just noticed that in the baroness's copy there were three, not four, towers in the walled city toward which the horseman rode. "Except for the character's gesture, which seems eloquent."

  "And so it is: he is turned to any follower, with a finger to his lips, advising silence.... It's the tacere of the philosophers of the occult. In the background the city walls surround the towers, the secret. Notice that the door is closed. It must be opened."

  Tense and alert, Corso turned more pages until he came to the second engraving, the hermit in front of another door, holding the key in his right hand. The legend read CLAUS. PAT.T.

  "CLAUSAE PATENT," the baroness deciphered. "They open that which is closed. The closed doors ... The hermit symbolizes knowledge, study, wisdom. And look, at his side there's the same black dog that, according to legend, accompanied Agrippa. The faithful dog. From Plutarch to Bram Stoker and his Dracula, not forgetting Goethe's Faust, the black dog is the animal the devil most often chooses to embody him. As for the lantern, it belongs to the philosopher Diogenes who so despised worldly powers. All he requested of powerful Alexander was that he should not overshadow him, that he move because he was standing in front of the the light "

  "And this letter Teth?"

  "I'm not sure." She tapped the engraving lightly. "The hermit in the tarot, very similar to this one, is sometimes accompanied by a serpent, or by the stick that symbolizes it. In occult philosophy, the serpent and the dragon are the guardians of the wonderful enclosure, garden, or fleece, and they sleep with their eyes open. They are the Mirror of the Art."

  "Ars diavoli," said Corso casually, and the baroness half smiled, nodding mysteriously. But he knew, from Fulcanelli and other ancient texts, that the term "Mirror of the Art" came not from demonology but from alchemy. He wondered how much charlatanism lay beneath the baroness's display of erudition. He sighed to himself. He felt like a gold prospector standing up to his waist in the river, sieve in hand. After all, he thought, she had to find something to fill her five-hundred-page bestsellers.

  But Frieda Ungern had moved on to the third engraving.

  "The motto is VERB. D.SUM C.S.T. ARCAN. This stands for VERBUM DIMISSUM CUSTODIAT ARCANUM. It can be translated as 'The lost word keeps the secret.' And the engraving is significant: a bridge, the union between the light and the dark banks. From classical mythology to Snakes and Ladders, its meaning is clear. Like the rainbow, it links earth with heaven or hell.... To cross this one, of course, one has to open the fortified gates."

  "What about the archer hiding in the clouds?"

  This time his voice shook as he asked the question. In books one and two, the quiver hanging from the archer's shoulder was empty. In book three, it contained an arrow. Frieda Ungern was resting her finger on it.

  "The bow is the weapon of Apollo and Diana, the light of the supreme power. The wrath of the god, or God. It's the enemy lying in wait for anyone crossing the bridge." She leaned forward and said quietly and confidentially, "Here it represents a terrible warning. It's not advisable to trifle with this sort of thing."

  Corso nodded and moved on to the fourth engraving. He could sense the fog lifting in his mind. Doors opening with a sinister creak. Now he was looking at the joker and his stone labyrinth, with the caption: FOR. N.N OMN. A.QUE. Frieda Ungern translated is as FORTUNA NON OMNIBUS AEQUE: Fate is not the same for all.

  "The character is similar to the madman in the tarot," she explained. "God's madman in Islam. And, of course, he's also holding a stick or symbolic serpent.... He's the medieval fool, the joker in a pack of cards, the jester. He symbolizes destiny, chance, the end of everything, the expected or unexpected conclusion. Look at the dice. In the Middle Ages, jokers were privileged beings. They were permitted to do things forbidden to others. Their purpose was to remind their masters that they were mortal, that their end was as inevitable as other men's."

  "Here he's stating the opposite," objected Corso. "Fate is not the same for all."

  "Of course. He who rebels, exercises his freedom, and takes the risk can earn a different fate. That's what this book is about, hence the joker, paradigm of freedom. The only truly free man, and also the most wise. In occult philosophy the joker is identified with the mercury of the alchemists. Emissary of the gods, he guides souls through the kingdom of shadows...."

  "The labyrinth."

  "Yes. There it is." She pointed at the engraving. "And, as you can see, the entry door is closed."

  So is the exit, thought Corso with an involuntary shudder. He turned to the next engraving.

  "This legend is simpler," he said. "FR.ST.A. It's the only one I dare take a guess at. I'd say there's a u and an r missing: FRUSTRA. Which means 'in vain'"

  "Very good. That's exactly what it says, and the picture matches the caption. The miser is counting his gold pieces, unaware of Death, who holds two clear symbols: an hourglass and a pitchfork."

  "Why a pitchfork and not a scythe?"

  "Because Death reaps, but the devil harvests."

  They stopped at the sixth engraving, the man hanging from the battlements by his foot. Frieda Ungern pretended to yawn with boredom, as if it was too obvious.

  "DIT.SCO M.R stands for DITESCO MORI, I am enriched by death, a sentence the devil can utter with his head held high. Don't you think?"

  "I suppose so. It's his trade, after all." Corso ran a finger over the engraving. "What does the hanged man symbolize?"

  "Firstly, arcanum twelve in the tarot. But there are other possible interpretations. I believe it symbolizes change through sacrifice.... Are you familiar with the saga of Odin?

  Wounded, I hung from a scaffold

  swept by the winds,

  for nine long nights....

  You can make the following associations," continued the baroness. "Lucifer, champion of freedom, suffers from love of mankind. And he provides mankind with knowledge through sacrifice, thus damning himself."

  "What can you tell me about the seventh engraving?"

  "DIS.S P.TI.R MAG. doesn't seem very clear at first. But my guess is that it's a traditional saying, one much liked by occult philosophers: DISCIPULUS POTIOR MAGISTRO."

  "The disciple surpasses the master?"

  "More or less. The king and the beggar play chess on a strange board where all the squares are the same color, while the black dog and the white dog, Good and Evil, viciously tear each other to pieces. The moon, representing both darkness and the mother, can be seen through the window. Think of the mythical belief that, after death, souls take refuge on the moon. You read my Isis, didn't you? Black is the symbolic color of darkness, Cimmerian shadows, sable in heraldry, earth, night, death The black of Isis corresponds with the color of the Virgin who is robed in blue and dwells on the moon When we die we return to her to the darkness from which we came That darkness is ambiguous as it is both protective and threatening The dogs and the moon can be interpreted another way The goddess of the hunt Artemis the Roman Diana was known to take revenge on those who tell in love with her or tried to take advantage of her teminimty.... I assume you know the story."

  Corso, who was thinking about Irene Adler, nodded slowly. "Yes. She would let her dogs loose on such men after turning them into stags." He swallowed in spite of himself. The two dogs in the engraving, locked in mortal combat, now seemed ominous. Himself and Rochefort? "So they'd be torn to pieces."

  The baroness glanced at him, expressionless. It was Corso who was providing the context, not she.

  "The basic meaning of the eighth engraving," she continued, "is not difficult to grasp. VIC. I.T VIR. stands for a rather nice motto, VICTA IACET VIRTUS. Which means: Virtue lies defeated. The damsel about to have her throat slit, by the handsome young man in armor carrying the sword, represents virtue. Meanwhile, the wheel of fortune or fate turns inexorably in the background, moving slowly but always making a complete turn. The three figures on it symbolize the three stages which, in the Middl
e Ages, were referred to as regno (I reign), regnavi (I reigned), and regnabo (I will reign)."

  "There's one more engraving."

  "Yes. The last one, and also the most significant picture. N.NC SCO TEN.BR. LUX without doubt stands for NUNC SCIO TENEBRIS LUX: Now I know that from darkness comes light. What we have here is in fact a scene from Saint John's Apocalypse. The final seal has been broken, the secret city is in flames. The time of the Whore of Babylon has come and, having pronounced the terrible name or the number of the Beast, she rides, triumphant, on the dragon with seven heads."

  "Doesn't seem very profitable," said Corso, "going to all that trouble only to find this horror."

  "That's not what it's about. All the allegories are kinds of compositions in code, rebuses. Just as on a puzzle page the word 'in' followed by the pictures of a fan and a tree make up the word 'infantry,' these engravings and their captions combined with the book's text enable one to determine a sequence, a ritual. The formula that provides the magic word. The verbum dimissum or whatever it might be."

  "And then the devil will put in an appearance."

  "In theory."

  "In what language is this spell? Latin, Hebrew, or Greek?"

  "I don't know."

  "And where's the fault Madame de Montespan mentions?"

  "As I said, I don't know that either. All I've been able to establish is that the celebrant must construct a magic territory in which to place the words obtained, having arranged them in sequence. I don't know that sequence, but the text on pages 158 and 159 of The Nine Doors may give an indication. Look."

  She showed him the text in abbreviated Latin. A card covered with the her small, spiky handwriting marked the page.

  "Have you managed to work out what it says?" asked Corso.

  "Yes. At least, I think so." She handed him the card. "There you are."