The Club Dumas

almost everyone was there. Through the French windows opening onto the castle terrace, late arrivals entered a room full of people, cigarette smoke, and the murmur of con­versation above a background of gentle music. On the central table covered with a white linen cloth, there was a cold buffet: bottles of Anjou wine, sausages and hams from Amiens, oysters from La Rochelle, boxes of Montecristo cigars. Groups of guests, about fifty men and women, were drinking and conversing in several languages. Among them were well-known faces from the press, cinema, and television. I saw Corso touch his glasses.

“Surprised?” I asked, looking to see his reaction.

He nodded, disconcerted, surly. Several guests came to greet me, so I shook hands, exchanged amenities and jokes. The at­mosphere was cordial. Corso looked like someone who had fallen out of bed and woken up. Highly amused, I introduced him to some of the guests and watched with perverse satisfac­tion as he greeted them, confused and unsure of the terrain he was crossing. His customary composure was in shreds, and this was my small revenge. After all, it was he who first came to me with “The Anjou Wine” under his arm, determined to com­plicate things.

“Allow me to introduce Mr. Corso.... Bruno Lostia, an an­tique dealer from Milan. Permit me. This is Thomas Harvey, of Harvey’s Jewelers: New York, London; Paris, Rome. And Count von Schlossberg, owner of the most famous collection of paintings in Europe. As you can see, we have a little of every­thing here: a Venezuelan Nobel laureate, an Argentine ex-president, the crown prince of Morocco ... Did you know that his father is an avid reader of Alexandre Dumas? Look who’s arrived. You know him, don’t you? Professor of semiotics in Bologna... The blond lady talking to him is Petra Neustadt, the most influential literary critic in Central Europe. In the group next to the duchess of Alba there’s the financier Rudolf Villefoz and the English writer Harold Burgess. Amaya Euskal, of the Alpha Press group, with the most powerful publisher in the USA, Johan Cross, of O&O Papers, New York. And I assume you remember Achille Replinger, the book dealer from Paris.”

This was the last straw. I savored Corso’s shaken expression, almost pitying him. Replinger was holding an empty glass and smiling pleasantly beneath his musketeer’s mustache, just as he had smiled when he identified the Dumas manuscript at his shop on the Rue Bonaparte. He greeted me with a huge bear hug and then warmly patted Corso on the back before going off in search of another drink, puffing away like a jovial, rosy-cheeked Porthos.

“Damn this,” muttered Corso, drawing me aside. “What’s going on here?”

“I told you it’s a long story.”

“Well, finish telling it, will you?”

We had moved close to the table. I poured us a couple of glasses of wine, but he shook his head. “Gin,” he muttered. “Don’t you have any gin?”

I indicated the liquor cabinet at the other end of the room. We walked over to it, stopping three or four times on the way to exchange more greetings: a well-known film director, a Leb­anese millionaire, a Spanish minister of the interior... Corso grabbed a bottle of Beefeater and filled a glass to the brim, swallowing half of it in one gulp. He shuddered, and his eyes shone behind his glasses (one lens broken, the other intact). He held the bottle to his chest, as if afraid to lose it.

“You were going to tell me,” he said.

I suggested we go out on the terrace beyond the French windows, where we could talk without interruption. Corso filled his glass again before following me. The storm had died down. Stars shone above us.

“I’m all ears,” he announced after another large gulp.

I leaned on the balustrade still damp from the rain and took a sip from my glass of Anjou wine.

“Owning the manuscript of The Three Musketeers gave me the idea,” I said. “Why not form a literary society, a sort of club for devoted admirers of the novels of Alexandre Dumas and the classic adventure serial? Through my work I already had contact with several ideal candidates for membership....” I gestured toward the brightly lit salon. In the tall French win­dows the guests could be seen coming and going, chatting an­imatedly. It was proof of my success, and I didn’t conceal my authorial pride. “A society dedicated to studying novels of that kind, rediscovering writers and forgotten works, promoting their republication and sale under an imprint with which you may be familiar: Dumas & Co.”

“I know it,” said Corso. “They’re based in Paris and have just published the entire works of Ponson du Terrail. Last year it was Fantomas. I didn’t know you had a part in it.”