The Club Dumas

He drank some more gin before going back to the book. The text, in an abbreviated Latin code, took up another hundred and fifty-seven pages, the final page being blank. Nine con­tained the famous engravings inspired, according to legend, by Lucifer himself. Each print had a Latin, Hebrew, and Greek numeral at the top, including a Latin phrase in the same ab­breviated code. Corso ordered a third gin and went over them. They looked like the figures of the tarot, or old, medieval en­gravings: the king and the beggar, the hermit, the hangman, death, the executioner. In the last engraving a beautiful woman was riding a dragon. Too beautiful, he thought, for the religious morality of the time.

He found an identical illustration on a photocopy of a page from Mateu’s Universal Bibliography. But it wasn’t the same. Corso was holding the Terral-Coy copy, whereas the engraving on the photocopy came, as recorded by the scholarly Mateu in 1929, from another one of the books:

Torchia (Aristide). De Umbrarum Regni Novem Portis. Venetiae, apud Aristidem Torchiam. MDCLXVI. Folio. 160 pages incl. title page. 9 full-page woodcuts. Of exceptional rar­ity. Only 3 known copies. Fargas Library, Sintra, Port (see illustration). Coy Library, Madrid, Sp. (engraving 9 missing). Morel Library, Paris, Fr.

Engraving 9 missing. Corso checked and saw that this was wrong. Engraving 9 was there in the copy he held, the copy formerly from the Coy, later the Terral-Coy Library, and now the property of Varo Borja. It must have been a printing error, or a mistake by Mateu himself. In 1929, when the Universal Bibliography was published, printing techniques and distribu­tion methods weren’t as efficient. Many scholars mentioned books that they only knew of through third parties. Maybe the engraving was missing from one of the other copies. Corso made a note in the margin of the photocopy. He needed to check it.

He found an identical illustration on a photocopy of a page from Mateu’s Universal Bibliography.

A clock somewhere struck three, and pigeons flew up from the tower and roofs. Corso shuddered gently, as if slowly coming to. He felt in his pocket and took out some money. He put it on the table and stood up. The gin made him feel pleasantly detached, blurring external sounds and images. He put the book and file in his canvas bag, slung it over his shoulder, then stood for a few seconds looking at the angry Pantocrator in the por­tico. He wasn’t in a hurry and wanted to clear his head, so he decided to walk to the train station.

When he reached the cathedral, he took a shortcut through the cloisters. He passed the closed souvenir kiosk and stood for a moment looking at the empty scaffolding over the murals undergoing restoration. The place was deserted, and his steps echoed beneath the vault. He thought he heard something be­hind him. A priest late to confession.

He came out through an iron gate into a dark, narrow street, where passing cars had taken chunks out of the walls. As he turned to the right, a car came from somewhere to the left. There was a traffic sign, a triangle warning that the street narrowed, and when Corso came to it, the car accelerated un­expectedly. He could hear it behind him, coming too fast, he thought as he turned to look, but he only had time to half-turn, just enough to see a dark shape bearing down on him. His reflexes were dulled by the gin, but by chance his attention was still on the traffic sign. Instinct pushing him toward it, he sought the narrow area of protection between the metal post and the wall. He slid into the small gap like a bullfighter hiding behind the barrier from the bull. The car managed to strike only his hand as it passed him. The blow was sharp, and the pain made his knees buckle. Falling onto the cobbles, he saw the car disappear down the street with a screech of tires.

Corso walked on to the station, rubbing his bruised hand. But now he turned every so often to look behind him, and his bag, with The Nine Doors inside, was burning his shoulder. For three seconds he’d caught a fleeting glimpse, but it had been enough: this time the man was driving a black Mercedes, not a Jaguar. The one who’d nearly run Corso down was dark, had a mustache, and a scar on his face. The man from Maka-rova’s bar. The same man he’d seen in a chauffeur’s uniform, reading a newspaper outside Liana Taillefer’s house.

 IV. THE MAN WITH THE SCAR

I know not where he comes from.

But I know where he is going: he is going to Hell.

—A. Dumas, THE  COUNT  OF  MONTE  CRISTO