The Club Dumas

“Did your husband share your interest in this sort of thing?”

“Not in the slightest. He never read a single book. He just made all my wishes come true like the genie of the lamp.” Her amputated arm seemed to shudder for a moment in the empty sleeve of her cardigan. “An expensive book or a perfect pearl necklace, it was all the same to him.” She paused and smiled with gentle melancholy. “But he was an amusing man, capable of seducing his best friends’ wives. And he made excellent champagne cocktails.”

She was silent for a moment and looked around, as if her , husband had left a glass behind.

“I collected all this myself,” she added, waving at her li­brary, “one by one, down to the last book. I even chose The Nine Doors, after discovering it in the catalogue of a bankrupt former Petain supporter. All my husband did was sign the check.”

“Why are you so interested in the devil?”

“I saw him once. I was fifteen and saw him as clearly as I’m seeing you. He had a hard collar, a hat, and a walking stick. He was very handsome. He looked like John Barrymore as Baron Gaigern in Grand Hotel. So, like a fool, I fell in love.” She became thoughtful again, her only hand in her cardigan pocket, as if remembering something distant. “I suppose that’s why I was never really troubled by my husband’s infidelities.”

Corso looked around, as if there might be someone else in the room, then leaned over confidentially.

“Three centuries ago, you would have burned at the stake for telling me this.”

She made a guttural sound of amusement, stifling her laugh­ter, and almost stood on tiptoe to whisper in the same tone: “Three centuries ago, I wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone. But I know a lot of people who would gladly burn me at the stake.” She smiled again, showing her dimples. She was always smiling, Corso decided. But her bright, intelligent eyes re­mained alert, studying him. “Even now, in this day and age.”

She handed him The Nine Doors and watched him as he leafed through the book slowly, although he could barely con­tain his impatience to check if there were any differences in the nine engravings. Sighing to himself with relief, he found them intact. In fact, Mateu’s Bibliography was wrong: none of the three books had the final\ engraving missing. Book number three was in worse condition than Varo Borja’s, and Victor Fargas’s before it was thrown into the fire. The lower half had been exposed to damp and almost all the pages were stained. The binding also needed a thorough cleaning, but the book seemed complete.

“Would you like a drink?” asked the baroness. “I have tea and coffee.”

No potions or magic herbs, Corso thought with disappoint­ment. Not even a tisane.

“Coffee.”

It was a sunny day, and the sky over the nearby towers of Notre-Dame was blue. Corso went over to a window and parted the net curtains so he could see the book in better light. Two floors down, between the bare trees on the banks of the Seine, the girl was sitting on a stone bench in her duffel coat and reading a book. He knew it was The Three Musketeers, because he’d seen it on the table when they met at breakfast. Afterward he walked along the Rue de Rivoli, knowing that the girl was following fifteen or twenty paces behind. He deliberately ig­nored her, and she kept her distance. Now he saw her look up. She must have seen him clearly from down there, but she made no sign of recognition. Expressionless and still, she continued to watch him until he moved away from the window. When he looked out again, she had gone back to her book, her head bowed.

There was a secretary, a middle-aged woman with thick glasses moving among the tables and books, but Frieda Ungern brought the coffee herself, two cups on a silver tray, which she carried with ease. One glance from her told him not to offer help, and they sat down at the desk, the tray among all the books, plant pots, papers, and note cards.

“What gave you the idea of setting up this foundation?” “It was for tax purposes. Also, now people come here, and I can find collaborators....” She smiled sadly. “I’m the last of the witches, and I felt lonely.”

“You don’t look anything like a witch.” Corso made the appropriate face, an ingenuous, friendly rabbit. “I read your /sis.”

Holding her coffee cup in one hand, she raised the stump , of her other arm a little and at the same time tilted her head as if to rearrange her hair. Although incomplete, it was an unconsciously coquettish gesture, as old as the world itself and yet ageless.

“Did you like it?”

He looked her in the eyes as he raised his cup to his mouth. “Very much.”

“Not everyone did. Do you know what L’Osservatore Romano said? It regretted the demise of the Index of the Holy Office. And you’re right.” She indicated The Nine Doors that Corso had put by her on the table. “In the past I would have been burned at the stake, like the poor wretch who wrote the gospel according to Satan.”