The Club Dumas

“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 instance.”

“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.