The Club Dumas

After he hung up, he stood thinking for a moment in the darkness of the corridor. Maybe that’s exactly what they were expecting him to do: rush downstairs after Rochefort, sword in hand, taking the bait. The girl’s call might even have been part of the plan. Or maybe—and this was really getting convoluted—it had been a warning about the plan, if there was one. That’s if she was playing fair-^Corso was too experienced to put his hand in the fire for anybody.

Bad times, he said to himself again. Absurd times. After so many books, films, and TV shows, after reading on so many different possible levels, it was difficult to tell if you were seeing the original or a copy; difficult to know whether the image was real, inverted, or both, in a hall of mirrors; difficult to know the authors’ intentions. It was as easy to fall short of the truth as to overshoot it with one’s interpretations. Here was one more reason to feel envious of his great-grandfather with the gren­adier’s mustache and with the smell of gunpowder floating over the muddy fields of Flanders. In those days a flag was still a flag, the Emperor was the Emperor, a rose was a rose was a rose. But now at least, here in Paris, something was clear to Corso: even as a second-level reader he was prepared to play the game only up to a certain point. He no longer had the youth, the innocence, or the desire to go and fight at a place chosen by his opponents, three duels arranged in ten minutes, in the grounds of the Carmelite convent or wherever the hell it might be. When the time came to say hello, he’d make sure he approached Rochefort with everything in his favor, if pos­sible from behind, with a steel bar in his hand. He owed it to him since that narrow street in Toledo, not forgetting the in­terest accrued in Sintra. Corso would settle his debts calmly. Biding his time.

 XI. THE BANKS OF THE SEINE

This mystery is considered insoluble for the very same

reasons that should lead one to consider it soluble.

—E. A. Poe, THE  MURDERS  IN  THE  RUE  MORGUE

The code is simple,” said

Frieda Ungern, “consisting of abbreviations similar to those used in ancient Latin manuscripts. This may be because Aristide Torchia took the major part of the text word for word from another manuscript, possibly the legendary Delomelanicon. In the first engraving, the meaning is obvious to anyone slightly familiar with esoteric language: NEM. PERV.T QUI N.N LEG. CERT.RIT is obviously NEMO PERVENIT QUI NON LEGITIME CERTAVERIT.”

“Only he who has fought according to the rules will suc­ceed.”

They were on their third cup of coffee, and it was obvious, at least on a formal level, that Corso had been adopted. He saw the baroness nod, gratified.

“Very good. Can you interpret any part of this engraving?”

“No,” Corso lied calmly. He had just noticed that in the baroness’s copy there were three, not four, towers in the walled city toward which the horseman rode. “Except for the charac­ter’s gesture, which seems eloquent.”

“And so it is: he is turned to any follower, with a finger to his lips, advising silence.... It’s the tacere of the philosophers of the occult. In the background the city walls surround the towers, the secret. Notice that the door is closed. It must be opened.”

Tense and alert, Corso turned more pages until he came to the second engraving, the hermit in front of another door, hold­ing the key in his right hand. The legend read CLAUS. PAT.T. “CLAUSAE PATENT,” the baroness deciphered. “They open that which is closed. The closed doors ... The hermit symbolizes knowledge, study, wisdom. And look, at his side there’s the same black dog that, according to legend, accompanied Agrippa. The faithful dog. From Plutarch to Bram Stoker and his Dracula, not forgetting Goethe’s Faust, the black dog is the animal the devil most often chooses to embody him. As for the lantern, it belongs to the philosopher Diogenes who so despised worldly powers. All he requested of powerful Alexander was that he should not overshadow him, that he move because he was standing in front of the sun, the light.” “And this letter Teth?”

“I’m not sure.” She tapped the engraving lightly. “The her­mit in the tarot, very similar to this one, is sometimes accom­panied by a serpent, or by the stick that symbolizes it. In occult philosophy, the serpent and the dragon are the guardians of the wonderful enclosure, garden, or fleece, and they sleep with their eyes open. They are the Mirror of the Art.”