The Club Dumas

“Sound business sense. In essence it was a marketing opera­tion: they were trying to attract somebody else’s customers.... Could you tell me what you know about Pandora’s boxes and such like. Including pacts with the devil.”

“The art of locking devils inside bottles or books is very ancient.  Gervase  of Tilbury  in the thirteenth  century and Gerson in the fourteenth both mentioned it. As for pacts with the devil, the tradition goes back even further: from the Book of Enoch to Saint Jeronimus, through the cabbala and the Church Fathers. Not forgetting Bishop Theophilus, who was actually a ‘lover of knowledge,’ the historical Faust, and Roger Bacon. Or Pope Sylvester II, of whom it was said that he robbed the Saracens of a book that ‘contained all one needs to know.’ “ “So it was a question of obtaining knowledge.” “Of course. Nobody would take so much trouble, wandering to the very edge of the abyss, just to kill time. Scholarly de-monology identifies Lucifer with knowledge. In Genesis, the   -devil in the form of a serpent succeeds in getting man to stop being  a  simpleton  and  gain  awareness,  free  will,  lucidity, knowledge, with all the pain and uncertainty that they entail.” The conversation of the evening before was too fresh so, inevitably, Corso thought of the girl. He picked up The Nine Doors and with the excuse of looking at it again in better light, he went to the window. She was no longer there. Surprised, he looked up and down the street, along the embankment and the stone benches under the trees, but couldn’t see her. He was puzzled but didn’t have time to think about it. Frieda Ungern was speaking again.

“Do you like guessing games? Puzzles with hidden keys? In a way the book you’re holding is exactly that. Like any intel­ligent being, the devil likes games, riddles. Obstacle courses where the weak and incapable fall by the wayside and only superior spirits—the initiates—win.” Corso moved closer to the desk and put down the book, open at the frontispiece. The serpent with the tail in its mouth wound around the tree. “He who sees nothing but a serpent in the figure devouring its tail deserves to go no further.”

“What is this book for?” asked Corso.

The baroness put a finger to her lips like the knight in the first engraving. She was smiling.

“Saint John of Patmos says that in the reign of the Second Beast, before the final, decisive battle of Armageddon, ‘only he who has the mark, the name of the Beast or the number of his name, will be able to buy and sell.’ Waiting for the hour to come, Luke (4:13) tells us at the end of his story about temp­tation that the devil, repudiated three times, ‘has withdrawn until the appropriate time.’ But the devil left several paths for the impatient, including the way to reach him, to make a pact with him.”

“To sell him one’s soul.”

Frieda Ungern giggled confidentially. Miss Marple with her cronies, engaged in gossip about the devil. You’ll never guess the latest about Satan. This, that, and the other. I don’t know where to start, Peggy my dear.

“The devil learned his lesson,” she said. “He was young and naive, and he made mistakes. Souls escaped at the last minute through the false door, saving themselves for the sake of love, God’s mercy, and other specious promises. So he ended up in­cluding a nonnegotiable clause for the handing over of body and soul once the deadline had expired ‘without reserve of any right to redemption, or future recourse to God’s mercy.’ The clause is in fact to be found in this book.”

“What a lousy world,” said Corso. “Even Lucifer has to re­sort to the small print.”

“You must understand. Nowadays people will swindle you out of anything. Even their soul. His clients slip away and don’t comply with their contractual obligations. The devil’s fed up and he has every reason to be.”

“What else is in the book? What do the nine engravings mean?”

“In principle they’re puzzles that have to be solved. Used in conjunction with the text, they confer power. And provide the formula for constructing the magic name to make Satan appear.”

“Does it work?” “No. It’s a forgery.” “Have you tried it yourself?” Frieda Ungern looked shocked.

“Can you see me at my age, standing in a magic circle, invoking Beelzebub? Please. However much he looked like John Barrymore fifty years ago, a beau ages too. Can you imagine the disappointment at my age? I prefer to be faithful to the memories of my youth.”

Corso looked at her in mock surprise. “But surely you and the devil... Your readers take you for a committed witch.”

“Well, they’re mistaken. What I look for in the devil is money, not emotion.” She looked at the window. “I spent my, husband’s fortune building up this collection, so I have to live off my royalties.”

“Which are considerable, I’m sure. You’re the queen of the

bookshops.”