The Club Dumas

“A person doesn’t always need proof.”

“That’s only in crime novels. All Sherlock Holmes or Poirot has to do is guess who the murderer is and how he committed the crime. He invents the rest and tells it as if he knew it was a fact. Then Watson or Hastings congratulates him admiringly and says, ‘Well done. That’s exactly how it happened.’ And the murderer confesses. The idiot.”

“I’d congratulate you.”

This time there was no irony in her voice. She was watching him intently, waiting for him to say or do something.

He shifted uneasily. “I know,” he said. The girl still held his gaze, as if she truly had nothing to hide. “But I wonder why.”

He was about to add, “This is real life, not a crime novel,” but didn’t. At this point in the story, the line between fantasy and reality appeared rather tenuous. The flesh-and-blood Corso, having an ID, a known place of residence, and a physical pres­ence, of which his aching bones—after the episode on the stone steps—were proof, was increasingly tempted to see himself as a real character in an imaginary world. But that wasn’t good. From there it was only a small step to believing he was an imaginary character who thinks he’s real in an imaginary world. Only a small step to going nuts. And he wondered whether someone, some twisted novelist or drunken writer of cheap screenplays, at that very moment saw him as an imagi­nary character in an imaginary world who thought he wasn’t real. That really would be too much.

These thoughts made his mouth unbearably dry. He stood in front of the girl, his hands in his pockets, his tongue like sandpaper. If I were imaginary, he thought with relief, my hair would stand on end, I’d exclaim “Woe is me!” and my face would be beaded with sweat. And I wouldn’t be this thirsty. I drink, therefore I am. So he went to the liquor cabinet, broke the seal, took a miniature bottle of gin, and drank it in two gulps. He was almost smiling when he stood up and shut the cabinet like someone closing a reliquary. Things gradually as­sumed their proper proportions.

The room was fairly dark. The dim light from the bathroom slanted across the bed where the girl was still lying. He looked at her bare feet, her legs, the T-shirt spattered with dry blood. Then his gaze lingered over her long, tanned, bare neck. The half-open mouth showing the tips of her white teeth in the gloom. Her eyes still watching him intently. He touched the key to his room inside his coat pocket. He ought to leave.

“Are you feeling better?”

She nodded. Corso looked at his watch, although he didn’t really care about the time. He didn’t remember having switched on the radio as they came into the room, but there was music playing somewhere. A melancholy song, in French. A waitress in a bar, in a port, in love with a sailor. “Right. I’ve got to go.”

The woman on the radio went on singing. The sailor, pre­dictably, had gone for good, and the girl in the bar gazed at his empty chair and the wet ring left by his glass on the table. Corso went to the bedside table to get his handkerchief and used the cleanest part to wipe his undamaged lens. Then he saw that the girl’s nose was bleeding. “It’s started again.”

A trickle of blood was running down to her mouth. She put her hand to her face and smiled stoically, looking at her blood­stained fingers.

“It doesn’t matter.” “You ought to see a doctor.”

She half closed her eyes and shook her head. She looked helpless in the dim light of the room, dark spots of blood stain­ing the pillow. Still holding his glasses, he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over to hold the handkerchief to her nose. As he did so, his shadow, outlined on the wall by the slanting light from the bathroom, seemed to hesitate a moment between light and darkness before disappearing into the corner. Then the girl did something strange, unexpected. She ig­nored the handkerchief he was offering her and stretched out her bloody hand to him. She touched his face and drew four red lines with her fingers, from his forehead to his chin. Instead of moving her hand away after this singular caress, she kept it there, damp and warm, while he felt drops of blood running down the four lines on his face. Her luminous irises reflected the light from the half-open door, and he shuddered, seeing in each the image of his lost shadow.