The Club Dumas

The girl was waiting in the departure lounge. Corso, still dazed and in no condition to tie up loose ends (there were loose ends all over the place), was surprised to see that she had been extremely efficient and managed to get them two plane tickets without any difficulty. “I just inherited some money” was her answer when, seeing that she had paid for both, he made an ironic remark about the limited funds she supposedly had. Af­terward, during the two-hour flight from Lisbon to Paris, she refused to answer any of his questions. All in good time, she repeated, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, as if sneaking a glance, before she became absorbed in the trails of condensation left by the plane in the cold air. Then she fell asleep, or pretended to, resting her head on his shoulder. Corso could tell from her breathing that she was awake. It was a convenient way of avoiding questions that she wasn’t prepared, or allowed, to answer.

Anyone else in his situation would have insisted on answers, would have shaken her out of her pretense. But Corso was a well-trained, patient wolf, with the instincts and reflexes of a hunter. After all, the girl was his only real lead in this unreal, novelistic, ridiculous situation. In addition, at this point in the script he had fully assumed the role of reader-protagonist that someone, whoever was tying the knots on the back of the rug, on the underside of the plot, seemed to be offering him with a wink that could be either contemptuous or conspiratorial, he couldn’t tell which.

“Somebody’s setting me up,” Corso said out loud, nine thou­sand meters above the Bay of Biscay. He looked at the girl, but she didn’t move. Annoyed by her silence, he moved his shoul­der away. Her head lolled for a moment. Then she sighed and made herself comfortable again, this time leaning against the window.

“Of course they are,” she said at last, sleepily, scornfully, her eyes still closed. “Any idiot could see that.”

“What happened to Fargas?”

“You saw yourself,” she said after a moment. “He drowned.”

“Who did it?”

She turned her head slowly, from side to side, then looked out of the window. She slid her hand, slender, tan, with short unpainted nails, slowly across the armrest. She stopped at the edge, as if her fingers had come up against an invisible object.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Corso grimaced. He looked as if he was about to laugh, but instead showed his teeth.

“It does to me. It matters a lot.”

The girl shrugged. They weren’t concerned about the same things, she seemed to imply. They didn’t have the same pri­orities.

Corso persisted. “What’s your part in all this?”

“I already told you. To take care of you.”

She turned and looked at him as directly as she had been evasive a moment ago. She slid her hand over the armrest again, as if to bridge the distance between her and him. She was altogether too near, so Corso moved away instinctively, embarrassed, uneasy. In the pit of his stomach, in Nikon’s wake, obscure, disturbing things stirred. The emptiness and pain were returning. In the girl’s eyes, silent eyes and without memory, he could see the reflection of ghosts from the past, he could feel them brush his skin.

“Who sent you?”

She lowered her lashes over her luminous eyes, and it was as if she had turned a page. There was nothing there anymore. The girl wrinkled her nose, irritated.

“You’re boring me, Corso.”

She turned to the window and looked at the view. The great expanse of blue flecked with tiny white threads was split in the distance by a yellow and ochre line. Land ho. France. Next stop, Paris. Or next chapter. To be continued in next week’s issue. Ending, sword raised, a cliffhanger typical of all romantic serials. He thought of the Quinta da Soledade, the water trick­ling from the fountain, Fargas’s body among the water lilies and dead leaves in the pond. He flushed and shifted uncom­fortably in his seat. With good reason, he felt like a man on the run. Absurd. Rather than fleeing by choice, he was being forced to.

He looked at the girl and tried to size up his situation with the necessary objectivity. Maybe he wasn’t running away but toward something instead. Or maybe the mystery he was trying to escape was hidden in his own suitcase. “The Anjou Wine.” The Nine Doors. Irene Adler. The flight attendant, with a trained, fatuous smile, said something as she passed. Corso looked at her without seeing her, absorbed in his own thoughts. If only he knew whether the end of the story was already written, or whether he himself was writing it as he went along, chapter by chapter.