The Club Dumas

“Do you really believe in the devil, Baroness?”

“Don’t call me Baroness. It’s ridiculous.”

“What would you like me to call you?”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Ungern. Or Frieda.”

“Do you believe in the devil, Mrs. Ungern?”

“Sufficiently to dedicate my life, my collection, this foun­dation, many years of work, and the five hundred pages of my new book all to him.” She looked at Corso with interest. He had taken off his glasses to clean them. His helpless smile com­pleted the effect. “What about you?”

“Everybody’s asking me that lately.”

“Of course. You’ve been going around asking questions about a book that has to be read with a certain kind of faith.”

“My faith is limited,” Corso said, risking a hint of sincerity. This kind of frankness often proved profitable. “Really, I work for money.”

The dimples appeared again. She must have been very pretty half a century ago, he thought. With both arms intact, casting spells or whatever they were, slender and mischievous. She still had something of that.

“Pity,” remarked Frieda Ungern. “Others, who worked for nothing, had blind faith in the book’s protagonist. Albertus Magnus, Raymund Lully, Roger Bacon, none of them ever dis­puted the devil’s existence, only his nature.”

Corso adjusted his glasses and gave a hint of a skeptical smile.

“Things were different a long time ago.”

“You don’t have to go that far back. ‘The devil does exist, not only as a symbol of evil but as a physical reality.’“ How do you like that? It was written by a pope, Paul VI. In 1974.”

“He was a professional,” said Corso equably. “He must have had his reasons.”

“In fact all he was doing was confirming a point of doctrine: the existence of the devil was established by the fourth Council of Letran. In 1215...” She paused and looked at him doubt­fully. “Are you interested in erudite facts? I can be unbearably scholarly if I try.” The dimples appeared. “I always wanted to be at the top of the class. The smart aleck.”

“I’m sure you were. Did you win all the prizes?” “Of course. And the other girls hated me.” They both laughed. Corso sensed that Frieda Ungern was now on his side. So he took two cigarettes from his coat pocket and offered her one. She refused, glancing at him apprehen­sively. Corso ignored this and lit his cigarette.

“Two centuries later,” continued the baroness as Corso bent over the lighted match, “Innocent VIII’s papal bull Sumnis Desiderantes Affectibus confirmed that Western Europe was plagued by demons and witches. So two Dominican monks, Kramer and Sprenger, drew up the Malleus Malleficarum, a manual for inquisitors.”

Corso raised his index finger. “Lyon, 1519. An octavo in the Gothic style, with no author’s name. At least not the copy I know.”

“Not bad.” She looked at him, surprised. “Mine is a later one.” She pointed at a shelf. “It’s over there. “Published in 1668, also in Lyon. But the very first edition dated from 1486....” She shuddered, half closing her eyes. “Kramer and Sprenger were fanatical and stupid. Their Malleus was a load of non­sense. It might even seem funny, if thousands of poor wretches hadn’t been tortured and burned in its name.” “Like Aristide Torchia.”

“Yes, like him. Although he wasn’t remotely innocent.” “What do you know about him?”

The baroness shook her head, drank the last of her coffee, and shook her head again. “The Torchias were a Venetian fam­ily of well-to-do merchants who imported vat paper from Spain and France. As a young man Aristide traveled to Holland and was an apprentice of the Elzevirs, who had corresponded with his father. He stayed there for a time and then went to Prague.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, there you are. Prague was Europe’s capital of magic and the occult, just as Toledo had been four centuries earlier... Can you see the links? Torchia chose to live in Saint Mary of the Snows, the district of magic, near Jungmannove Square, where there is a statue of Jan Hus. Do you remember Hus at the stake?”

“ ‘From my ashes a swan will rise that you will not be able to burn.’“

“Exactly. You’re easy to talk to. I expect you know that. It must help you in your work.” The baroness involuntarily in­haled some of Corso’s cigarette smoke. She wrinkled her nose, but he remained unperturbed. “Now, where were we? Ah yes. Prague, act two. Torchia moves to a house in the Jewish quarter nearby, next to the synagogue. A district where the windows are lit up every night and the cabbalists are searching for the magic formula of the Golem. After a while he moves again, this time to the district of Mala Strana....” She smiled at him conspiratorially. “What does all this sound like to you?”