The Club Dumas

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "I've brought the book," Corso said, showing Borja The Nine Doors.

  Borja nodded vaguely and took the book, barely glancing at it. He had his head slightly turned to the side, as if listening for a sound behind him, inside the house. After a moment he noticed Corso again and blinked, surprised that he was still there.

  "You've given me the book. What else do you want?"

  "To be paid for the job."

  Borja stared at him uncomprehendingly. It was obvious that his thoughts were miles away. At last he shrugged, as if to say that it had nothing to do with him. He went back into the house, leaving it up to Corso whether to shut the door, stay where he was, or leave the way he'd come.

  Corso followed him through another door into a room off the corridor and vestibule. The shutters were closed so no light could enter, and the furniture had been pushed to the far end, leaving the black marble floor empty. Some of the glass bookcases were open. The room was lit by dozens of candles that had almost burned down. Wax was dripping everywhere: on the mantelpiece above the empty fireplace, on the floor, on the furniture and objects in the room. The candles gave off a tremulous, reddish light that danced at the least draft or movement. The room smelled like a church, or a crypt.

  Still taking no notice of Corso, Borja stopped in the middle of the room. There, at his feet, a circle approximately three feet in diameter was marked out in chalk, containing a square divided into nine boxes. The circle was surrounded by Roman numerals and strange objects: a piece of string, a water clock, a rusty knife, a dragon-shaped silver bracelet, a gold ring, a metal brazier full of burning charcoal, a glass vial, a small mound of earth, a stone. But Corso winced when he saw the other things strewn on the floor. Many of the books he'd admired, books lined up on shelves a few days earlier, now lay ruined, dirty, with pages torn out. The pages were covered with drawings and underlinings and full of strange marks. Candles burned on top of several of the books, and thick drops of wax dripped onto their covers or open pages Some candles, guttering, had signed the paper. Among this wreckage Corso recognized the engravings from the copies of The Nine Doors belonging to Victor Fargas and Baroness Ungern They were mixed up with the others on the floor and also covered with wax drips and mysterious annotations.

  He bent to look more closely at the remains, not quite able to believe the magnitude of the disaster. One engraving from The Nine Doors, number VI, the man hanging by his right foot instead of his left, had been half burned away by the flickering flame of a candle. Two copies of engraving VII, one with a white chessboard and the other with a black one, lay beside a 1512 Theatrum diabolicum torn from its binding. Another engraving, I, protruded from the pages of a De imperfectaque opera by Valerio Lorena, an extremely rare incunabulum that Borja had shown Corso not long ago, barely allowing him to touch it. It was now on the floor, battered and torn.

  "Don't touch anything," he heard Varo Borja say. Borja was standing before the circle, leafing through his copy of The Nine Doors, engrossed. He seemed to see not the pages themselves but something beyond them, something inside the square and circle on the floor, or even farther away: in the depths of the earth.

  Corso looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. He stood up slowly. As he did so, the flames around him flickered.

  "It makes no difference if I touch anything," he said, gesturing at the books and papers that lay scattered over the floor. "After what you've done."

  "You don't know anything, Corso. You think you do, but you don't. You're ignorant and very stupid. The kind who believes chaos is random and ignores the existence of a hidden order."

  "Don't talk rubbish. You've destroyed everything, and you had no right to. Nobody has."

  "You're wrong. In the first place they're my books. And what's more important, their purpose is to be used. They had practical rather than artistic or aesthetic value. As one travels along the path, one must make sure that no one else can follow. These books have now served their purpose."

  "Madman. You deceived me from the start."

  Borja didn't seem to be listening. He stood motionless, holding the remaining copy of The Nine Doors, scrutinizing engraving I.

  "Deceived?" He kept his eyes fixed on the book as he spoke, which underlined his contempt for Corso. "You do yourself too much honor. I hired you without telling you my reasons or my intentions. A servant does not participate in the decisions of whoever is paying him. You were to steal the items I wanted and at the same time incur the technical consequences of certain unavoidable actions. I should imagine that as we speak, the police in both Portugal and France are closing in on you."

  "What about you?"

  "I'm far removed from all of that, and quite safe. In a little while nothing will matter."

  Then, to Corso's horror, he tore the page with the engraving from The Nine Doors.

  "What are you doing?"

  Varo Borja was calmly tearing out more pages.

  "I'm burning my boats, my bridges behind me. And moving into terra incognita." One by one, he tore the engravings from the book, until he had all nine. He looked at them closely. "It's a pity you can't follow me where I'm going. As the fourth engraving states, fate is not the same for all."

  "Where do you believe you're going?"

  Borja dropped the mutilated book on the floor with the others. He was looking at the nine engravings and at the circle, checking strange correspondences between them.

  "To meet someone" was his enigmatic answer. "To search for the stone that the Great Architect rejected, the philosopher's stone, the basis of the philosophical work. The stone of power. The devil likes metamorphoses, Corso. From Faust's black dog to the false angel of light who tried to break down Saint Anthony's resistance. But most of all, stupidity bores him, and he hates monotony.... If I had the time and inclination, I'd invite you to take a look at some of the books at your feet. Several of them mention an ancient tradition: the advent of the Antichrist will occur in the Iberian peninsula, in a city with three superimposed cultures, on the banks of a river as deep as an ax cut, the Tagus."

  "Is that what you're trying to do?"

  "It's what I'm about to achieve. Brother Torchia showed me the way: Tenebris Lux."

  He was bending over the circle on the floor, laying some of the engravings on it and removing others, which he threw away from him, crumpled or torn. The candles illuminated his face from below, making him look ghostly, with deep shadows for eyes.

  "I hope it all fits together," he muttered. His mouth was a line of shadow. "The ancient masters of the black art who taught the printer Torchia the most terrible and valuable mysteries knew the path leading to the kingdom of night. 'It is the animal with its tail in its mouth that encircles the place.' Do you understand? The ourobouros of the Greek alchemists: the serpent on the frontispiece, the magic circle, the source of wisdom. The circle in which everything is written."

  "I want my money."

  "Have you never been curious about these things?" Borja went on, not hearing, peering out from shadowed eyes. "To investigate, for instance, the devil-serpent-dragon constant which has reappeared suspiciously in all the texts on the subject since antiquity."

  He picked up a glass object next to the circle, a goblet with handles in the shape of two linked serpents, and he raised it to his mouth and took a few sips. It held a dark liquid, Corso noticed, almost black, like very strong tea.

  "Serpens aut draco qui caudam devoravit." Varo Borja smiled into empty space, wiping his mouth. The drink left a dark smear on the back of his hand and his left cheek. "They guard the treasures: the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, the apples of the Hesperides, the golden fleece..." As he talked, he looked absent, insane, a man describing a dream from the inside. "They're the serpents or dragons that the ancient Egyptians painted in a circle, with their tail in their mouth to indicate that they came from a single thing and were self-sufficient. Sleepless guardians, proud and wise. Hermetic dragons that kill the unworthy and allow themselves to be se
duced only by one who has fought according to the rules Guardians of the lost word the magic formula that opens eyes and makes one the equal of God "

  Corso stuck out his jaw. He was standing, still and thin in his coat. The shadows of the candles danced between his half-closed eyelids and made his unshaven cheeks look sunken. He had his hands in his pockets, one touching the pack with its remaining cigarette, the other around the closed switchblade, next to his flask of gin.

  "I said, give me my money. I want to get out of here."

  There was a threat in his voice, but Corso couldn't tell if Borja had heard it. He saw him come to unwillingly, slowly.

  "Money?" Borja regarded him with renewed contempt. "What are you talking about, Corso? Don't you understand what's about to happen? You have before you the mystery that men throughout the centuries have dreamed of. Do you know now many have been burned, tortured, and torn to pieces just for a glimpse of what you are about to witness? You can't come with me, of course. You will just stay still and watch. But even the most vile mercenary can share in his master's triumph."

  "Pay me. Then you can go to the devil."

  Borja didn't even look at him. He was moving around the circle and touching some of the objects that had been laid next to the numbers.

  "How appropriate that you should send me to the devil. So typical of your down-to-earth style. I'd even honor you with a smile if I wasn't so busy. Although your remark was ignorant and imprecise: it will be the devil who comes to me." He paused and turned his head, as if he could already hear distant footsteps. "And I feel him coming."

  He muttered, his speech interspersed with strange guttural exclamations, or with words that at times seemed addressed to Corso and at times to a third dark presence near them, in the shadows.

  "'You will go through eight doors before the dragon....' Do you see? Eight doors come before the beast who guards the word, number nine, possessing the final secret.... The dragon sleeps with its eye open, and it is the Mirror of Knowledge. Eight engravings plus one. Or one plus eight. Which coincides with the number that Saint John of Patmos attributed to the Beast: 666."

  Corso saw him kneel and write out numbers in chalk on the marble floor:

  Then Borja stood, triumphant. For a moment the candles lit up his eyes. He must have swallowed some kind of drug with the dark liquid. His pupils were so dilated that almost none of the iris was visible, and the whites had taken on a reddish tinge from the light in the room.

  "Nine engravings, or nine doors." Shadow once again covered his face like a mask. "They can't be opened by just anyone.... 'Each door has two keys.' Each engraving provides a number, a magic element, and a key word, if it's all studied in the light of reason, the cabbala, the occult, the true philosophy.... Of Latin and its combination with Greek and Hebrew." He showed Corso a piece of paper covered with signs and strange links. "You can take a look, if you like. You'll never understand it."

  Aleph Eis I ONMA Air

  Beth Duo II CIS Earth

  Gimel Treis III EM Water

  Daleth Tessares IIII EM Gold

  He Pente V OEXE String

  Vau Es VI CIS Silver

  Zayin Epta VII CIS Stone

  Cheth Octo VIII EM Iron

  Teth Ennea VIIII ODED Fire

  There were beads of sweat on his forehead and around his mouth, as if the flame of the candles were also burning inside his body. He began to walk around the circle slowly and carefully. He stopped a couple of times and bent over to adjust the position of an object: the rusty knife, the silver bracelet.

  "You will place the elements on the serpent's skin," he recited without looking at Corso. He was following the circle with his finger but not quite touching it. "The nine elements are to be placed around it 'in the direction of the rising sun': from right to left."

  Corso took a step toward him. "Once more. Give me my money."

  Borja took no notice. He had his back to Corso and was pointing at the square drawn inside the circle.

  "'The serpent will swallow the seal of Saturn....' The seal of Saturn is the most ancient and simple of the magic squares: the first nine numbers placed inside nine boxes, set out so that each row, whether down, across, or diagonally, adds up to the same number."

  He bent and wrote nine numbers inside the box in chalk:

  Corso took another step. As he did so he trod on a piece of paper covered with numbers:

  A candle went out with a hiss, having burned down on the charred frontispiece of De occulta philosophia by Cornelius Agripa. Borja's attention was still on the circle and the square. He stared at them intently, his arms folded on his chest, his head bowed. He looked like a player before a strange board, pondering his next move.

  "There's one thing," he said, now no longer addressing Corso but talking to himself. Hearing his own voice apparently helped him to think. "Something that the ancients didn't foresee, at least not expressly ... Added together in any direction, from up to down, down to up, left to right, or right to left, you get fifteen. But applying the codes of the cabbalists, fifteen also becomes a one and a five, which, added together, make six.... Six surrounds each side of the magical square with the serpent, the dragon, or the Beast, whatever you want to call it."

  Corso didn't have to work it out for himself. It was on another piece of paper on the floor:

  Borja knelt before the circle, his head bowed. The sweat on his face gleamed in the candlelight. He was holding another piece of paper and reading out the strange words written on it.

  '"You will open the seal nine times,' says Torchia's text. That means the key words obtained must be placed in the box that corresponds to its number. In that way we get the following sequence."

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  ONMAD CIS EM EM OEXE CIS CIS EM ODED

  "Written on the serpent, or the dragon." He rubbed out the numbers in the boxes and inserted the corresponding words in their place. "This is how it looks, to God's shame."

  "It has all been carried out," muttered Borja as he wrote the final letters. His hand was trembling, and a drop of sweat slid from his forehead down his nose and onto the chalk-covered floor. "According to Torchia's text, it is sufficient for 'the mirror to reflect the path' to pronounce the lost word that brings light from the darkness.... These phrases are in Latin. They mean nothing on their own. But inside they contain the exact essence of the Verbum dimissum, the formula that makes Satan, our forebear, our mirror, and our accomplice, appear."

  He was kneeling in the center of the circle now, surrounded by all the signs, objects, and words written in the square. His hands were shaking so violently that he clasped them together, clawlike, his fingers covered with chalk, ink, and wax. Proud and sure of himself, he started to laugh under his breath, a mad chuckle. But Corso was sure Borja wasn't insane. He looked around, aware that he was running out of time, and started to cross the distance between him and the book dealer. But he couldn't make up his mind to cross the line and stand with him inside the circle.

  Borja looked at him malevolently, guessing his fear.

  "Come, Corso. Don't you want to read it with me? Are you scared, or have you forgotten your Latin?" Light and shadow alternated with increasing speed on his face, as if the room were starting to spin. But the room was still. "Don't you want to know what these words contain? On the back of that engraving that pokes from between the pages of the Valerio Lorena you'll find the translation in Spanish. Place them before the mirror, as the masters of the art ordered. At least then you will know what Fargas and Baroness Ungern died for."

  Corso looked at the book, an incunabulum with a very old and worn parchment binding. Then he bent over cautiously, as if the pages contained a dangerous trap, and pulled out the engraving from between them. It was engraving I of book number three, Baroness Ungern's copy, with three towers instead of four. On the reverse Varo Borja had written nine words:

  OGERTNE EM ISA

  OREBIL EM ISA

  OREDNOC EM ISA

  "Courage, Cors
o," said the book dealer, his voice sour and disagreeable. "You have nothing to lose.... Hold the words to the mirror."

  There was, indeed, a mirror close at hand on the floor, amid the melted wax from the guttering candles. It was silver, old, and stained, with a baroque worked handle. It lay faceup, and Corso's image appeared in it, tiny and distorted, as if at the end of a long tunnel of trembling red light. The image and its double, the hero and his infinite weariness, Bonaparte chained in agony to his rock on Saint Helena. Nothing to lose, Borja had said. A cold, desolate world, where the solitary skeletons of Waterloo grenadiers stood guard along dark, forgotten paths. He saw himself before the final door, holding the key like the hermit in engraving II, the letter Teth coiled around his shoulder like a serpent.

  He stepped on the mirror and crushed it with his heel, slowly, without violence. The mirror shattered with a cracking sound. The fragments now multiplied Corso's image in countless tunnels of shadow at the end of which countless replicas of himself stood motionless, too small and indistinct to concern him.

  "Black is the school of the night," he heard Borja say. Borja was still kneeling at the center of the circle, his back to Corso, leaving him to his fate. Corso leaned over one of the candles and held a corner of engraving I, with the nine inverted words on the reverse, to the flame. He watched the castle towers, the horse, the horseman turned to the viewer advising silence, burn between his fingers. At last he dropped what was left of it, which turned to ash a second later and floated on the hot air of the candles lit around the room. Then he entered the circle and moved toward Borja.