Corso glanced at the canvas bag at the sleeping girl's feet. The defeat was painful, of course, like a knife wound in his memory. He knew he'd played according to the rules—legitime certaverit—but had gone in the wrong direction. At the very moment of victory, however partial and incomplete it was, all pleasure at winning had been snatched from him. The victory had been imaginary. It was like defeating imaginary ghosts, or punching the wind, or shouting at silence. Maybe that's why Corso was now staring suspiciously at the city suspended in the mist, waiting, before entering it, to make sure that its foundations were firmly rooted in the ground.
He could hear the girl's gentle, rhythmic breathing at his shoulder. He stared at her bare neck between the folds of the duffel coat. He moved his hand until he could feel the heat of her warm flesh throbbing in his fingers. As always, her skin smelled of youth and fever. In his imagination and in his memory he could easily follow the long, curving lines of her slender body, down to her bare feet by her sneakers and the bag. Irene Adler. He still didn't know what to call her. But he could remember her naked body in the shadows, the curve of her hips traced by the light, her parted lips. Impossibly beautiful and silent, absorbed in her own youth and at the same time as serene as tranquil waters, with the wisdom of ages. And in the luminous eyes watching him intently from the shadows, the reflection, the dark image of Corso himself amid all the light snatched from the sky.
She was watching him now, her emerald green eyes framed by long lashes. She had woken and was moving sleepily, rubbing against him. Then she sat up, alert. She looked at him.
"Hello, Corso." Her duffel coat slid to her feet. Her white T-shirt clung to her perfect torso, as supple as a beautiful young animal's. "What are we doing here?"
"Waiting." He gestured at the town, which seemed to be floating in the mist from the river. "For it to become real."
She looked, not understanding at first. Then she smiled slowly.
"Maybe it never will," she said.
"Then we'll stay here. It's not such a bad place, up here, with the strange, unreal world at our feet." He turned to the girl. "I'll give you everything, if you prostrate yourself and adore me. Isn't that the kind of offer you're going to make me?"
The girl's smile was full of tenderness. She bowed her head, thoughtful, then looked up and held Corso's gaze.
"No, I'm poor," she said.
"I know." It was true. Corso didn't have to read it in the clarity of her eyes. "Your luggage, and the train compartment ... It's strange. I always thought you all had unlimited wealth, out there, at the end of the rainbow." His smile was as sharp as the knife he still had in his pocket. "Peter Schlemiel's bag of gold."
"Well, you're wrong." Now she was pursing her lips obstinately. "I'm all I have."
This was true too, and Corso had known it from the start. She had never lied. Both innocent and wise, she was faithful and in love, chasing after a shadow.
"I see." He made a gesture in the air, as if wielding an imaginary pen. "Aren't you going to give me a document to sign?"
"A document?"
"Yes. It used to be called a pact. Now it would be a contract with lots of small print, wouldn't it? 'In the event of litigation, the parties are to submit to the jurisdiction of the courts of...' That's a funny thing. I wonder which court covers this."
"Don't be silly."
"Why did you choose me?"
"I'm free," she sighed sadly, as if she'd paid the price for her right to say it. "I can choose. Anyone can."
Corso searched in his coat for his crumpled pack of cigarettes. There was only one left. He took it out and stared, undecided whether to put it in his mouth or not. He put it back in the pack. Maybe he'd need a smoke later. He was sure he would.
"You knew from the beginning," he said, "that there were two completely unrelated stories. That's why you never cared about the Dumas strand. Milady, Rochefort, Richelieu—they were nothing but film extras to you. Now I understand why you were so passive. You must have been horribly bored. You just flicked the pages of your Musketeers, watching me make all the wrong moves...."
She was looking through the windshield at the town veiled in blue mist. She started to raise her hand but let it drop, as if what she was about to say was pointless. "All I could do was go with you," she answered. "Everyone has to walk certain paths alone. Haven't you heard of free will?" She smiled sadly. "Some of us have paid a very high price for it."
"But you didn't always stay on the sidelines. That night, by the Seine ... Why did you help me against Rochefort?"
She touched the canvas bag with her bare foot. "He was after the Dumas manuscript. But The Nine Doors was in there too. I just wanted to avoid any stupid interference." She shrugged. "And I didn't want him to hit you."
"What about Sintra? You warned me about the Fargas business."
"Of course. The book was tied up with it."
"And then the key to the meeting in Meung..."
"I didn't know about it. I just worked it out from the novel."
Corso made a face. "I thought you were all omniscient."
"Well, you were wrong." Now she was annoyed. "And I don't know why you keep talking to me as if I were one of many. I've been alone for a long time."
Centuries, Corso was sure. Centuries of solitude. He didn't doubt that. He had embraced her naked body, drowned in the clarity of her eyes, been inside her, tasted her skin, felt the gentle throbbing of her neck against his lips. He'd heard her moan quietly, like a frightened child or like a lonely fallen angel in search of warmth. He'd watched her sleep with her fists clenched, tormented by nightmares of gleaming, blond archangels, implacable in their armor, as dogmatic as the God who made them march in time.
Now, thanks to her, although too late, he understood Nikon and her ghosts and the desperate way she clung to life. Nikon's fear, her black-and-white photographs, her vain attempt to exorcise memories transmitted through the genes that survived Auschwitz, the number tattooed on her father's skin, the Black Order that had been as old as the spirit and the curse of man. Because God and the devil could be one and the same thing, and everybody understood it in his own way.
But just as with Nikon, Corso was cruel. Love was too heavy a burden for him, and he didn't have Porthos's noble heart. "Was that your mission?" he asked the girl. "Protecting The Nine Doors? I don't think you'll get a medal for it."
"That's unfair, Corso."
Almost the same words. Once again, Nikon left to drift, small and fragile. Who did she cling to now, to escape her nightmares?
He looked at the girl. Maybe Nikon's memory was his penance. But he was no longer prepared to accept it with resignation. He glimpsed his face in the rearview mirror: it was contracted into a lost, bitter expression.
"Is it? We lost two of the three books. And what about the pointless deaths of Fargas and the baroness?" They mattered little to him, but he was bitter. "You could have prevented them."
She shook her head, very serious, her eyes fixed on his. "Some things can't be avoided, Corso. Some castles have to burn, and some men must hang. There are dogs destined to tear each other to pieces, virtuous people destined to be beheaded, doors destined to be opened for others to enter." She frowned and bowed her head. "My mission, as you call it, was to make sure you reached the end of the journey safely."
"Well, it's been a long journey, only to end back at the starting point." Corso indicated the town suspended in the mist. "And now I have to go down there."
"You don't have to. Nobody's forcing you. You could just forget about it and leave."
"Without finding out the answer?"
"Without undergoing the test. You have the answer within you."
"That's a pretty sentence. Put it on my headstone when I'm burning in hell."
She gave him a gentle, friendly tap on the knee. "Don't be an idiot, Corso. Things are as one wants them to be more often than people think. Even the devil can adopt different guises. Or qualities."
"Remorse, for inst
ance."
"Yes. But also knowledge and beauty." She again looked anxiously at the town. "Or power and wealth."
"But the end result is the same: damnation." He repeated his gesture of signing an imaginary contract. "You have to pay with the innocence of your soul."
She sighed again. "You paid long ago, Corso. You're still paying. It's a strange habit, postponing it all till the end. Like the final act of a tragedy ... Everyone drags his own damnation with him from the beginning. As for the devil, he is no more than God's pain; the wrath of a dictator caught in his own trap. The story told by the winners."
"When did it happen?"
"A longer time ago than you can conceive. It was very hard. I fought for a hundred days and a hundred nights without hope or refuge." An almost imperceptible smile played on her lips. "That's the only thing I'm proud of—having fought to the end. I retreated but didn't turn my back, surrounded by others also fallen from on high. I was hoarse with shouting out my fury, my fear and exhaustion. After the battle, I walked across a plain as desolate and lonely as eternity is cold.... I still sometimes come across a trace of the battle, or an old comrade who passes by without daring to look up."
"Why me, then? Why didn't you look for someone on the side of the winners? I win battles only on a scale of five thousand to one."
The girl turned to look into the distance. The sun was rising, and the first horizontal ray of light cut the morning air with a fine, reddish line that directly intersected her gaze. When she looked back at Corso, he felt vertigo as he peered into all the light reflected in her green eyes.
"Because lucidity never wins. And seducing an idiot has never been worth the trouble."
Then she leaned over and kissed him very slowly, with infinite tenderness. As if she had had to wait an eternity to do so.
THE MIST SLOWLY BEGAN to clear. It was as if the town, suspended in midair, had decided to sink its foundations back into the earth. The dawn shone on the gray-and-ochre mass of the Alcazar palace, the cathedral bell tower, and the stone bridge with its pillars in the dark waters of the river, resembling a sinister hand stretched between the two banks.
Corso started the engine. He let the car slide gently down the deserted road. As they descended, the light of the rising sun was left behind, held above them. The town gradually moved closer, and they slowly entered the world of cold hues and immense solitude that persisted in the remnants of blue mist.
He hesitated before he crossed the bridge, stopping the car beneath the stone arch that led onto it; hands on the steering wheel, head slightly bowed, and chin jutting out—the profile of an alert hunter. He took off his glasses and cleaned them, though they didn't need it. He took his time, looking intently at the bridge, which without his glasses was a vague path with disturbingly imprecise outlines. He didn't look at the girl but knew that she was watching him. He put on his glasses, adjusting them on the bridge of his nose, and the landscape recovered its sharp lines but was no more reassuring for that. The far bank looked dark. The current flowing between the pillars resembled the black waters of time, of Lethe In the last patches of the night that refused to die his sense of danger was tangible acute like a steel needle Corso could feel the pulse beating in his wrist when he grasped the stick shift You can still turn back he told himself In that way none of what happened has ever happened and none of what will take place will ever take place As for the practical value of Nunc scio, "Now I know," coined by God or by the devil that was highly dubious He frowned They were nothing but words He knew that in a few minutes he would be on the other side of the bridge and river. Verbum dimissum custodial arcanum. He gazed up at the sky, looking for an archer with or without arrows in his quiver, before putting the car into gear and slowly moving on.
IT WAS COLD OUTSIDE the car, so he turned up his collar. He could feel the girl's intent gaze upon him as he crossed the street without looking back, holding The Nine Doors under his arm. She hadn't offered to go with him, and for some obscure reason he knew that it was better this way. The house occupied almost an entire block, and its gray stone bulk presided over a narrow square, among medieval buildings whose closed windows and doors made them look like motionless film extras, blind and mute. The gray facade had four gargoyles on the eaves: a billy goat, a crocodile, a gorgon, and a serpent. There was a star of David on the Moorish arch above the wrought-lron gate that led to the interior courtyard with two Venetian marble lions and a well. It was all familiar to Corso, but he had never been so apprehensive on entering the house. He remembered an old quotation: "Perhaps men who have been caressed by many women cross the valley of shadows with less remorse, or less fear...." It went something like that. Maybe he hadn't been caressed enough, because his mouth was dry, and he would have sold his soul for half a bottle of Bols. And The Nine Doors felt as if it contained nine lead plates instead of prints.
He pushed open the gate, but the silence remained unbroken. Not even his shoes caused the slightest echo as he crossed the courtyard, its paving stones worn down by ancient footsteps and centuries of ram. An archway led to the steep, narrow staircase. At the top he could see the dark, heavy door decorated with thick nails. It was closed: the last door. For an instant Corso winked sarcastically at empty space, to himself, baring his teeth. He was both involuntary author and butt of his own joke, or of his own error. An error carefully planned by an unscrupulous hand, and full of serpentine, illusory invitations to participate that had led him to certain conclusions, only for them to be refuted. In the end he'd had his conclusions confirmed by the text itself, as if it had been a damned novel, which it wasn't. Or what if it was? The fact is, the last thing he saw in the polished metal plate nailed to the door was his own, very real face. A distorted image that combined the name on the plate with his own shape, the light behind him in the archway over the stairs that led down to the courtyard and the street. His last stop on a strange journey to the other side of the shadows.
He rang. Once, twice, three times. No answer. The brass button was dead; there had been no sound inside when he pressed it. In his pocket he felt the crumpled pack containing his last cigarette. Again he decided against lighting it. He rang the bell a fourth time. And a fifth. He clenched his fist and knocked hard, twice. Then the door opened. Not with a sinister creak, but smoothly, on greased hinges. And without any dramatic effects, quite casually, Varo Borja stood in the doorway.
"Hello, Corso."
Borja didn't seem surprised to see him. There were beads of sweat all over his bald head, and he was unshaven. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his vest undone. He looked tired, with dark rings under his eyes from a sleepless night. But his eyes shone feverishly. He didn't ask what Corso was doing there at such an hour, and he seemed barely to notice the book under Corso's arm. He stood there without moving, as if he had just been interrupted during some meticulous job, or dream, and just wanted to get back to it.
Here was the man responsible. Corso knew it, seeing his own stupidity materialize before him. Of course. Varo Borja—millionaire, international book dealer, famous collector, and methodical murderer. With an almost scientific curiosity, Corso scrutinized the face before him. He tried now to isolate the features, the clues that should have alerted him so much earlier. Signs overlooked; angles of madness, horror, or shadow in those familiar, vulgar features. But he couldn't see anything. Only a feverish, distant expression devoid of curiosity or passion, lost in images far removed from the man now at his door. Though Corso was holding the cursed book. It had been he, Varo Borja, in the shadow of that same book, following Corso's footsteps like an evil snake, who had killed Victor Fargas and Baroness Ungern. Not only to reunite the twenty-seven engravings and combine the nine correct ones but also to cover all traces and make sure that nobody else would solve the riddle set by Torchia, the printer. For the entire plot, Corso had been a tool to confirm a theory that proved correct—that the real book was distributed over three copies. He was also the victim of any repercussions involving the police. Now
, paying twisted homage to his own instincts, Corso remembered how he felt looking up at the paintings on the ceiling of the Quinta da Soledade. Abraham's sacrifice with no alternative victim: he was the scapegoat. And Borja, of course was the dealer who went to see Victor Fargas to purchase one of his treasures every six months. That day, while Corso was visiting Fargas, Borja was in Sintra finalizing the details of his plan, waiting for confirmation of his theory that all three copies were needed to solve Torchia's riddle. Fargas's half-written receipt was intended for him That's why Corso hadn't been able to get hold of Borja when he phoned his house in Toledo Then later that same evening before going to his final appointment with Fargas Borja had called Corso at the hotel, pretending he was making an international call. Corso had not only confirmed Borja's suspicions about the book but also given him the key to the mystery, thus condemning Fargas and the baroness. With bitter certainty Corso could see the pieces of the puzzle falling into place. When you set aside all the false clues that pointed to the Club Dumas, Varo Borja was the key to every inexplicable event in that other, diabolic, strand of the plot. It was enough to make you laugh out loud. If the whole damn business had been at all funny, that is.
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