The Club Dumas

“I don’t read much,” he said, “but Porthos, wasn’t he one of those... Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d’Artagnan.” He was count­ing with his thumb on the fingers of the same hand. He stopped, looking thoughtful. “Funny. I’ve always wondered why they were called the three musketeers when there were really four of them.”

  I.   “THE ANJOU WINE’

The reader must be prepared to witness the most sinister scenes.

—E. Sue, THE   MYSTERIES  OF  PARIS

My name is Boris Balkan and I once translated The Charterhouse of Parma. Apart from that, I’ve edited a few books on the nineteenth-century popular novel, my reviews and articles appear in supplements and jour­nals throughout Europe, and I organize summer-school courses on contemporary writers. Nothing spectacular, I’m afraid. Par­ticularly these days, when suicide disguises itself as homicide, novels are written by Roger Ackroyd’s doctor, and far too many people insist on publishing two hundred pages on the fascinat­ing emotions they experience when they look in the mirror.

But let’s stick to the story.

I first met Lucas Corso when he came to see me; he was carrying “The Anjou Wine” under his arm. Corso was a mer­cenary of the book world, hunting down books for other people. That meant talking fast and getting his hands dirty. He needed good reflexes, patience, and a lot of luck—and a prodigious memory to recall the exact dusty corner of an old man’s shop where a book now worth a fortune lay forgotten. His clientele was small and select: a couple of dozen book dealers in Milan, Paris, London, Barcelona, and Lausanne, the kind that sell

through catalogues, make only safe investments, and never handle more than fifty or so titles at any one time. High-class dealers in early printed books, for whom thousands of dollars depend on whether something is parchment or vellum or three centimeters wider in the margin. Jackals on the scent of the Gutenberg Bible, antique-fair sharks, auction-room leeches, they would sell their grandmothers for a first edition. But they receive their clients in rooms with leather sofas, views of the Duomo or Lake Constance, and they never get their hands— or their consciences—dirty. That’s what men like Corso are for.

He took his canvas bag off his shoulder and put it on the floor by his scuffed oxfords. He stared at the framed portrait of Rafael Sabatini that stands on my desk next to the fountain pen I use for correcting articles and proofs. I was pleased, be­cause most visitors paid Sabatini little attention, taking him for an aged relative. I waited for Corso’s reaction. He was half smiling as he sat down—a youthful expression, like that of a cartoon rabbit in a dead-end street. The kind of look that wins over the audience straightaway. In time I found out he could also smile like a cruel, hungry wolf, and that he chose his smiles to suit the circumstances. But that was much later. Now he seemed trustworthy, so I decided to risk a password.

“He was born with the gift of laughter” I quoted, point­ing at the portrait. “... and with a feeling that the world was mad...”

Corso nodded slowly and deliberately. I felt a friendly com­plicity with him, which, in spite of all that happened later, I still feel. From a hidden packet he brought out an unfiltered cigarette that was as crumpled as his old overcoat and corduroy trousers. He turned it over in his fingers, watching me through steel-rimmed glasses set crookedly on his nose under an untidy fringe of slightly graying hair. As if holding a hidden gun, he kept his other hand in one of his pockets, a pocket huge and deformed by books, catalogues, papers, and, as I also found out later, a hip flask full of Bols gin.

“... and this was his entire inheritance.” He completed the quotation effortlessly, then settled himself in the armchair and smiled again. “But to be honest, I prefer Captain Blood.”

With a stern expression I lifted my fountain pen. “You’re mistaken. Scaramouche is to Sabatini what The Three Muske­teers is to Dumas.” I bowed briefly to the portrait. “ ‘He was born with the gift of laughter....’ In the entire history of the adventure serial no two opening lines can compare.”

“That may be true,” Corso conceded after a moment’s re­flection. Then he laid the manuscript on the table, in a protec­tive folder with plastic pockets, one for each page. “It’s a coincidence you should mention Dumas.”