The Club Dumas

“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.