The Club Dumas

He poured himself a large glass of gin. He couldn’t rid him­self of Liana Taillefer’s expression once she realized she’d been tricked. Eyes as deadly as a dagger, a rictus of vengeful fury. And she meant it, she really had wanted to kill him. Once again the memories stirred, gradually filling his mind. This time, though, he needed no effort to relive them. The image was sharp, and he knew exactly where it came from. The facsimile edition of The Three Musketeers was on his desk. He opened it and searched for the scene. Page 129. There, among over­turned furniture, leaping from the bed, dagger in hand like a furious demon, Milady throws herself at d’Artagnan, who re­treats, terrified, in his shirt, keeping her at bay with the tip of his sword.

 VII. BOOK NUMBER ONE AND BOOK NUMBER TWO

The truth is that the devil is very cunning.

The truth is that he is not always as ugly as they say.

—J. Gazette, THE DEVIL IN LOVE

With only a few minutes to go before the departure of the express train to Lisbon, he saw the girl. Corso was on the platform, about to mount the steps to his carriage—companhia internacional de carruagems-CAMAS—when he bumped into her in a group of other passen­gers heading toward the first-class carriages. She was carrying, a small rucksack and wearing the same blue duffel coat, but he didn’t recognize her at first. He only felt that there was some­thing familiar about her green eyes, so light they seemed trans­parent, and her very short hair. He continued to watch her for a moment, until she disappeared two carriages farther down. The whistle blew. As he climbed onto the train and the guard shut the door behind him, Corso remembered the scene: the girl sitting at one end of the table at the gathering of Boris Balkan and his circle in the cafe.

He walked along the corridor to his compartment. The sta­tion lights streamed past with increasing speed outside the win­dows, and the train clattered rhythmically. Moving around the cramped compartment with difficulty, he hung up his coat and jacket before sitting down on the bunk, his canvas bag beside him. In it, together with The Nine Doors and the folder with the Dumas manuscript, was a book by Les Cases, the Memoirs of Saint Helena:

Friday,  14 July 1816.  The Emperor has been unwell all night...

He lit a cigarette. Occasionally, when lights from the win­dow strobed across his face, he would glance out before return­ing to the tale of Napoleon’s slow agony and the wiliness of his „ English jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe. He frowned as he read, and adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. From time to time he stopped and stared for a moment at his own reflection in the window, and he made a face. Even now, he felt indignant at the way the victors had condemned the fallen titan to a miserable end, having him cling to a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Strange, going over the historical events and his earlier feelings about them from his present, clearheaded perspective. How far away he seemed, that other Lucas Corso who rever­ently admired the Waterloo veteran’s saber; the boy absorbing the family myths with aggressive enthusiasm, the precocious Bonapartist and avid reader of books with engravings of the glorious campaigns, names that echoed like drumrolls for a charge: Wagram, Jena, Smolensk, Marengo... The boy wide-eyed with wonder had long ceased to exist; a hazy ghost of him sometimes appeared in Corso’s memory, between the pages of a book, in a smell or a sound, or through a dark window with the rain from another country beating against it, outside in the night.

The conductor passed the door, ringing his bell. Half an hour till the restaurant car closed. Corso shut the book. He put on his jacket, slung the canvas bag over his shoulder, and left the compartment. At the end of the corridor, from the door, a cold draft blew through the passageway leading to the next sleeper. He felt the thundering beneath his feet as he crossed into the section of first-class carriages. He let a couple of passengers go by and then looked into the nearest compartment, which was only half full. The girl was there, by the door, wearing a sweater and jeans, her bare feet resting on the seat opposite. As Corso passed, she looked up from her book and their eyes met. He was about to nod briefly in her direction, but when she showed no sign of recognition, he stopped himself. She must have sensed something, because she looked at him with curi­osity. But by then he was continuing down the corridor.