The Club Dumas

“Like a pilgrimage. Or a field trip, as we’d say nowadays.” “That’s what I think,” the baroness agreed with satisfaction. Corso, now well and truly adopted, was moving quickly to the top of the class. “It must be more than coincidence that Aristide Torchia went to the three districts in which all the esoteric knowledge of the day was concentrated. And in a Prague whose streets still echoed with the steps of Agrippa and Paracelsus, where the last manuscripts of Chaldean magic and the Pythagorean keys, lost or dispersed after the murder of Metapontius, were to be found.” She leaned toward him and lowered her voice: Miss Marple about to confide in her best friend that she found cyanide in the tea cakes. “In that Prague, Mr. Corso, in those dark studies, there were men who practiced the carmina, the art of magic words, and necromancy, the art of communicating with the dead.” She paused, holding her breath, before whispering, “And goety ...” “The art of communicating with the devil.” “Yes.” She leaned back in her armchair, deliciously shocked by it all. She was in her element. Her eyes shone, and she was speaking quickly, as if she had much to say and too little time. “At that time, Torchia lived in a place where the pages and engravings that had survived wars, fires, and persecution were hidden.... The remains of the magic book that opens the doors to knowledge and power: the Delomelanicon, the word that summons the darkness.”

She said it in a conspiratorial, almost theatrical tone, but she was also smiling, as if she didn’t quite take it seriously herself, or was suggesting that Corso maintain a healthy distance.

“Once he had completed his apprenticeship, Torchia re­turned to Venice,” she went on. “Take note of this, because it’s important: in spite of the risks he would run in Italy, the printer left the relative safety of Prague to return to his hometown. There he published a series of compromising books that led to his being burned at the stake. Isn’t that strange?” “Seems as if he had a mission to accomplish.” “Yes. But given by whom?” The baroness opened The Nine Doors at the title page. “By authority and permission of the , superiors.  Makes  one think,  doesn’t it? It’s very likely that Torchia became a member of a secret brotherhood in Prague and   was   entrusted   with   spreading   a   message.   A   kind   of preaching.”

“You said it yourself earlier: the gospel according to Satan.” “Maybe. The fact is that Torchia published The Nine Doors at the worst time. Between 1550 and 1666, humanist Neoplatonism and the hermetic and cabbalist movements were losing the battle amid rumors of demonism. Men like Giordano Bruno and John Dee were burned at the stake or died per­secuted and destitute. With the triumph of the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition grew unhindered. Created to fight heresy, it specialized in witches, wizards, and sorcery to justify its shadowy existence. And here they were offered a printer who had dealings with the devil.... Torchia made things easy for them, it must be said. Listen.” She turned several pages of the book at random. “Pot mvere im.go.” She looked at Corso. “I’ve translated numerous passages. The code is quite simple. T will bring wax images to life,’ it says. ‘And unhinge the moon, and put flesh back on dead bodies.’ What do you think of that?” “Rather childish. It seems stupid to die for that.” “Maybe. One never knows. Do you like Shakespeare?” “Sometimes.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ “

“Hamlet was a very insecure man.”

“Not everyone is able, or deserves, to gain access to these occult things, Mr. Corso. As the old saying goes, one must know and keep silent.”

“But Torchia didn’t.”

“As you know, according to the cabbala, God has a terrible and secret name.”

“The tetragrammaton.”

“That’s right. The harmony and balance of the universe rests upon its four letters.... As the Archangel Gabriel warned Mohammed: ‘God is hidden by seventy thousand veils of light and darkness. And were those veils to be lifted, even I would be annihilated.’ But God isn’t the only one to have such a name. The devil has one too. A terrible, evil combination of letters that summons him when spoken ... and unleashes terrifying consequences.”

“That’s nothing new. It had a name long before Christianity and Judaism: Pandora’s box.”

She looked at him with satisfaction, as if awarding top marks.

“Very good, Mr. Corso. In fact, down through the centuries, we’ve always talked about the same things, but with different names. Isis and the Virgin Mary, Mitra and Jesus Christ, the twenty-fifth of December as Christmas or the festival of the winter solstice, the anniversary of the unconquered sun. Think of Saint Gregory. Even in the seventh century he was recom­mending that missionaries use the pagan festivals and adapt them to Christianity.”