The Club Dumas

Waterloo. The bones of his great-great-grandfather, the old grenadier, could rest in peace. He pictured him in any one of the blue formations on the board along the brown line of the Brussels road. His face blackened, his mustache singed by the explosions of gunpowder, the old grenadier advanced, hoarse and feverish from three days of fighting with his bayonet. He had the same absent expression Corso imagined that all men in all wars had. Exhausted, he raised his bearskin cap, riddled with holes, on the end of his rifle, with his comrades. Long live the emperor. Bonaparte’s solitary, squat, cancerous ghost was avenged. May he rest in peace. Hip, hip, hurray.

He poured himself another glass of Bols and, facing the saber hanging on the wall, drank a toast to the faithful ghost of Grenadier Jean-Pax Corso, 1770—1851, Legion of Honor, knight of the Order of Saint Helena, staunch Bonapartist to the end of his days, and French Consul in the Mediterranean town where his great-great-grandson was born a century later. The taste of gin in his mouth, Corso recited under his breath the only inheritance left him by his great-great-grandfather, trans­mitted across the century by the line of Corsos that would die with him:

And the Emperor, at the head of

his impatient army,

will ride amidst the clamour.

And armed, I will leave this land,

and once more follow

the Emperor to war.

He was laughing to himself as he picked up the phone and dialed La Ponte’s number. In the quiet of the room you could hear the record spinning on the turntable. Books on the walls; through the dark window, rain-soaked roofs. The view wasn’t great, except on winter afternoons when the sunset, filtering through the blasts of centrally heated air and pollution from the street, turned red and ochre, like a thick curtain catching fire. His desk, computer, and the board with the battle of Waterloo sat facing the view, at the window against which the rain was falling that night. There were no mementos, pictures, or photos on the wall. Only the saber of the Old Guard in its brass and leather sheath. Visitors were surprised to find no signs here of his personal life, none of the ties to the past that people instinctively preserve, other than his books and the saber. Just as there were objects missing from his house, so the world Lucas Corso came from was long since dead and gone. None of the somber faces that sometimes appeared in his memory would have recognized him had they come back to life. And maybe it was better that way. It was as if he had never owned any­thing, or left anything behind. As if he had always been com­pletely self-contained, needing nothing but the clothes on his back, an erudite, urban itinerant carrying all his worldly pos­sessions in his pockets. And yet the few people he allowed to see him on such crimson evenings, as he sat at his window, dazzled by the sunset, his eyes bleary with gin, say that his expression—that of a clumsy, helpless rabbit—seemed sincere.

La Ponte’s sleepy voice answered.

“I’ve just crushed Wellington,” announced Corso.

After a nonplussed silence, La Ponte said that he was very happy for him. Perfidious Albion—steak-and-kidney pie and gas meters in dingy hotel rooms. Kipling. Balaclava, Trafalgar, the Falklands, and all that. And he’d like to remind Corso— the line went silent while La Ponte fumbled for his watch— that it was three in the morning. Then he mumbled something incoherent, the only intelligible words being “damn you” and “bastard,” in that order.

Corso chuckled as he hung up. Once he had called La Ponte collect from an auction in Buenos Aires, just to tell him a joke about a whore who was so ugly she died a virgin. Ha, ha, very funny. And I’ll make you swallow the phone bill when you get back, you idiot. Then there was the time, years earlier, when he woke up in Nikon’s arms. The first thing he did was phone La Ponte and tell him he’d met a beautiful woman and it was very much like being in love. Any time he wanted to, Corso could shut his eyes and see Nikon waking slowly, her hair flow­ing over the pillow. He described her to La Ponte over the phone, feeling a strange emotion, an inexplicable, unfamiliar tenderness while he spoke, and she listened, watching him si­lently. And he knew that at the other end of the line—I’m happy for you, Corso, it was about time, I’m really happy for you, my friend—La Ponte was sincerely sharing in his awak­ening, his triumph, his happiness. That morning, he loved La Ponte as much as he loved her. Or maybe it was the other way around.