The Club Dumas

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-iron 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 rain. 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.