The Club Dumas

He pushed the folder toward me, turning it around so I could read its contents. The text was in French, written on one side of the page only. There were two types of paper, both discolored by age: one white, the other pale blue with light squares. The handwriting on each was different—on the white pages it was smaller and more spiky. The handwriting of the blue paper, in black ink, also appeared on the white pages but as annotations only. There were fifteen pages in all, eleven of them blue.

“Interesting.” I looked up at Corso. He was watching me, his calm gaze moving from the folder to me, then back again. “Where did you find it?”

He scratched an eyebrow, no doubt calculating whether he needed to provide such details in exchange for the information he wanted. The result was a third facial expression, this time an innocent rabbit. Corso was a professional.

“Around. Through a client of a client.”

“I see.”

He paused briefly, cautious. Caution is a sign of prudence and reserve, but also of shrewdness. And we both knew it.

“Of course,” he added, “I’ll give you names if you request them.”

I answered that it wouldn’t be necessary, which seemed to reassure him. He adjusted his glasses before asking my opinion of the manuscript. Not answering immediately, I turned to the first page. The title was written in capital letters, in thicker Strokes: LE VIN D’ANJOU.

I read aloud the first few lines: “Apres de nouvelles presque desesperees du roi, le bruit de sa convalescence commengait a se repandre dans le camp....” I couldn’t help smiling.

Corso indicated his approval, inviting me to comment.

“Without the slightest doubt,” I said, “this is by Alexandre Dumas pere. ‘The Anjou Wine’: chapter forty-something, I seem to remember, of The Three Musketeers.”

“Forty-two,” confirmed Corso. “Chapter forty-two.”

“Is it authentic? Dumas’s original manuscript?”

“That’s why I’m here. I want you to tell me.”

I shrugged slightly, reluctant to assume such a responsibility.

“Why me?”

It was a stupid question, the kind that only serves to gain time. It must have seemed like false modesty, because he sup­pressed a look of impatience.

“You’re an expert,” he retorted, somewhat dryly. “As well as being Spain’s most influential literary critic, you know all there is to know about the nineteenth-century popular novel.”

“You’re forgetting Stendhal.”

“Not at all. I read your translation of The Charterhouse of Parma.”

“Indeed. I am honored.”

“Don’t be. I preferred Consuelo Berges’s version.”

We both smiled. I continued to find him likable, and I was beginning to form an idea of his style.

“Do you know any of my books?” I asked.

“Some. Lupin, Raffles, Rocambole, Holmes, for instance. And your studies of Valle-Inclan, Baroja, and Galdos. Also Dumas: the Shadow of a Giant And your essay on The Count of Monte Cristo.”

“Have you read all those?”

“No. I work with books, but that doesn’t mean I have to read them.”

He was lying. Or at least exaggerating. The man was con­scientious: before coming to see me, he’d looked at everything about me he could lay his hands on. He was one of those compulsive readers who have devoured anything in print from a most tender age—although it was highly unlikely that Corso’s childhood ever merited the term “tender.”

“I understand,” I answered, just to say something.

He frowned for a moment, wondering whether he’d forgot­ten anything. He took off his glasses, breathed on the lenses, and set about cleaning them with a very crumpled handker­chief, which he pulled from one of the bottomless pockets of his coat. However fragile the oversized coat made him appear, with his rodentlike incisors and calm expression Corso was as solid as a concrete block. His features were sharp and precise, full of angles. They framed alert eyes always ready to express an innocence dangerous for anyone who was taken in by it. At times, particularly when still, he seemed slower and clumsier than he really was. He looked vulnerable and defenseless: bar­men gave him an extra drink on the house, men offered him cigarettes, and women wanted to adopt him on the spot. Later, when you realized what had happened, it was too late to catch him. He was running off in the distance, having scored another victory.

Corso gestured with his glasses at the manuscript. “To return to Dumas. Surely a man who’s written five hundred pages about him ought to sense something familiar when faced with one of his original manuscripts.”

With the reverence of a priest handling holy vestments I put a hand on the pages protected by plastic.

“I fear I’m going to disappoint you, but I don’t sense any­thing.”