The Club Dumas

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 magna imperfec-taque 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.”