The Club Dumas Read online

  Corso was taking notes. Precise, unscrupulous, and deadly as a black mamba was how one of his acquaintances described him later when Corso's name came up in conversation. He had a singular way of facing people, peering through his crooked glasses and slowly nodding in agreement, with a reasonable, well-meaning, but doubtful expression, like a whore tolerantly listening to a romantic sonnet. As if he was giving you a chance to correct yourself before it was too late.

  After a moment he stopped and looked up. "But your work doesn't only deal with the popular novel. You're a well-known literary critic of other, more..." He hesitated, searching for a word. "More serious works. Dumas himself described his novels as easy literature. Sounds rather patronizing toward his readers."

  This device was typical of him. It was one of his trademarks, like Rocambole's leaving a playing card instead of a calling card. Corso would say something casually, as if he himself had no opinion on the matter, slyly goading you to react. If you put forward arguments and justifications when you are annoyed, you give out more information to your opponent. I was no fool and knew what Corso was doing, but even so, or maybe because of it, I felt irritated.

  "Don't talk in clichés," I said. "The serial genre produced a lot of disposable stuff, but Dumas was way above all that. In literature, time is like a shipwreck in which God looks after His own. I challenge you to name any fictional heroes who have survived in as good health as d'Artagnan and his friends. Sherlock Holmes is a possible exception. Yes, The Three Musketeers was a swashbuckling novel full of melodrama and all the sins of the genre. But it's also a distinguished example of the serial, and of a standard well above the norm. A tale of friendship and adventure that has stayed fresh even though tastes have changed and there is an now an idiotic tendency to despise action in novels. It would seem that since Joyce we have had to make do with Molly Bloom and give up Nausicaa on the beach after the shipwreck.... Have you read my essay 'Friday, or the Ship's Compass'? Give me Homer's Ulysses any day."

  I sharpened my tone at that point, waiting for Corso's reaction. He smiled slightly and remained silent, but, remembering his expression when I had quoted from Scaramouche, I felt sure I was on the right track.

  "I know what you're referring to," he said at last. "Your views are well known and controversial, Mr. Balkan."

  "My views are well known because I've seen to that. And as for patronizing his readers, as you claimed a moment ago, perhaps you didn't know that the author of The Three Musketeers fought in the streets during the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. And he supplied arms, paying for them out of his own pocket, to Garibaldi. Don't forget that Dumas's father was a well-known republican general.... The man was full of love for the people and liberty."

  "Although his respect for the truth was only relative."

  "That's not important. Do you know how he answered those who accused him of raping History? 'True, I have raped History, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.'"

  I put my pen down and went to the glass cabinets full of books. They covered the walls of my study. I opened one and took out a volume bound in dark leather.

  "Like all great writers of fables," I went on, "Dumas was a liar. Countess Dash, who knew him well, says in her memoirs that any apocryphal anecdote he told was received as the historical truth. Take Cardinal Richelieu: he was the greatest man of his time, but once the treacherous Dumas had finished with him, the image left to us was that of a sinister villain...." I turned to Corso, holding the book. "Do you know this? It was written by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, a musketeer who lived in the late seventeenth century. They're the memoirs of the real d'Artagnan, Charles de Batz-Castelmore, Comte d'Artagnan. He was a Gascon, born in 1615, and was indeed a musketeer. Although he lived in Mazarin's time, not Richelieu's. He died in 1673 during the siege of Maastricht, when, like his fictional namesake, he was about to be awarded the marshal's staff.... So you see, Dumas's raping did indeed produce beautiful offspring. An obscure flesh-and-blood Gascon, forgotten by History, transformed into a legendary giant by the novelist's genius."

  Corso sat and listened. When I handed him the book, he leafed through it carefully, with great interest. He turned the pages slowly, barely brushing them with his fingertips, only touching the very edge. From time to time he paused over a name or a chapter heading. Behind Ins spectacles his eyes worked sure and fast. He stopped once to write in his notebook: "Memoires de M. d'Artagnan, G. de Courtilz, 1704, P. Rouge, 4 volumes in 12mo, 4th edition." Then he shut the notebook and looked up at me.

  "You said it: he was a trickster."

  "Yes," I agreed, sitting down again. "But a genius. While some would simply have plagiarized, he created a fictional world that still endures today... 'Man does not steal, he conquers,' he often said. 'Every province he seizes becomes an annex of his empire: he imposes laws, peoples it with themes and characters, casting his shadow over it.' What else is literary creation? For Dumas, the history of France was a rich source of material. His was an extraordinary trick: he'd leave the frame alone but alter the picture, mercilessly plundering the treasure that was offered to him. He turned central characters into minor ones, humble secondary characters became protagonists, and he wrote pages about events that took up only two lines in the historical chronicles. The pact of friendship between d'Artagnan and his companions never existed, one of the reasons being that half of them didn't even know each other. Nor was there a Comte de la Fere. Or, rather, there were several of them, though none called Athos. But Athos did exist. He was Armand de Sillegue, Lord of Athos, and he was killed in a duel before d'Artagnan ever joined the king's musketeers. Aramis was Henri d'Aramitz, a squire and lay priest in the seneschalship of Oloron, who enrolled in the musketeers under his uncle's command in 1640. He ended his days on his estate, with a wife and four children. As for Porthos..."

  "Don't tell me there was a Porthos too."

  "Yes. His name was Isaac de Portau and he must have known Aramis, because he joined the musketeers just three years after him, in 1643. According to the chronicles, he died prematurely, from a disease, at war, or in a duel like Athos."

  Corso drummed his fingers on d'Artagnan's Memoirs and shook his head, smiling. "Any minute now you'll tell me there was a Milady."

  "Correct. But her name wasn't Anne de Breuil, and she wasn't the Duchess de Winter. Nor did she have a fleur-de-lis tattooed on her shoulder. But she was one of Richelieu's secret agents. Her name was the Countess of Carlisle and she stole two diamond tags from the Duke of Buckingham ... Don't look at me like that. It's all in La Rochefoucauld's memoirs. And La Rochefoucauld was a very reliable man."

  Corso was staring at me intently. He wasn't the type to be easily surprised, particularly when it came to books, but he seemed impressed. Later, when I came to know him better, I wondered whether his admiration was sincere or just another of his professional wiles. Now that it's all over, I think I know: I was one more source of information, and Corso was trying to get as much out of me as possible.

  "This is all very interesting," he said.

  "If you go to Paris, Replinger can tell you much more than I can." I looked at the manuscript on the table. "Though I'm not sure it's worth the price of a trip ... What would this chapter fetch on the market?"

  He started chewing his pencil again and looked doubtful. "Not much. I'm really after something else."

  I gave a sad conspiratorial smile. Among my few possessions I have an Ibarra edition of Don Quixote and a Volkswagen. Of course the car cost more than the book.

  "I know what you mean," I said warmly.

  Corso made a resigned gesture. He bared his rodent teeth in a bitter smile. "Unless the Japanese get fed up with Van Gogh and Picasso," he suggested, "and start investing in rare books."

  I shuddered. "God help us if that ever happens."

  "Speak for yourself." He looked at me sardonically through his crooked glasses. "I plan to make a fortune."

  He put his notebook away and stood up, the strap of his canvas b
ag over his shoulder. I couldn't help wondering about his falsely placid appearance, with his steel-rimmed glasses sitting unsteadily on his nose. I found out later that he lived alone, surrounded by books, both his own and other people's, and that as well as being a hired hunter of books he was an expert on Napoleon's battles. He could set out on a board, from memory, the exact positions of troops on the eve of Waterloo. A detail from his family, slightly strange, and I found out about it only much later. I have to admit that from this description Corso doesn't sound very appealing. And yet, if I keep to the strict accuracy with which I am narrating this story, I must add that his awkward appearance, the very clumsiness that seemed—and I don't know how he managed it—vulnerable and caustic, ingenuous and aggressive at the same time, made him both attractive to women and sympathetic to men. But the positive feeling was quickly dispelled, as when you touch your pocket and realize that your wallet has just been stolen.

  Corso picked up his manuscript, and I saw him to the door. He shook my hand in the hallway, where portraits of Stendhal, Conrad, and Valle-Inclan looked out severely at an atrocious print that the building's residents' association had decided to hang on the landing a few months earlier, much against my wishes.

  Only then did I dare ask him: "I confess I'm intrigued as to where you found it."

  He hesitated before answering, weighing the pros and cons. I had received him in a friendly manner, so he was in my debt. Also he might need my help again.

  "Maybe you know him," he answered at last. "My client bought the manuscript from a certain Taillefer."

  I allowed myself a look of moderate surprise. "Enrique Taillefer? The publisher?"

  He was gazing absently around the hallway. At last he nodded. "The same."

  We both fell silent. Corso shrugged, and I knew why. The reason could be found in the pages of any newspaper: Enrique Taillefer had been dead a week. He had been found hanged in his house, the cord of his silk robe around his neck, his feet dangling in empty space over an open book and a porcelain vase smashed to pieces.

  Some time later, when it was all over, Corso agreed to tell me the rest of the story. So I can now give a fairly accurate picture of a chain of events that I didn't witness, events that led to the fatal denouement and the solution to the mystery surrounding the Club Dumas. Thanks to what Corso told me I can now tell you, like Doctor Watson, that the following scene took place in Makarova's bar an hour after our meeting:

  Flavio La Ponte came in shaking off the rain, leaned on the bar next to Corso, and ordered a beer while he caught his breath. Then he looked back at the street, aggressive but triumphant, as if he had just come through sniper fire. It was raining with biblical force.

  "The firm of Armengol & Sons, Antiquarian Books and Bibliographical Curiosities, intends to sue you," he said. He had a ring of froth on his curly blond beard, around his mouth. "Their solicitor just telephoned."

  "What are they accusing me of?" asked Corso.

  "Cheating a little old lady and plundering her library. They swear the deal was theirs."

  "Well, they should have got up early, as I did."

  "That's what I said, but they're still furious. When they went to pick up the books, the Persiles and the Royal Charter of Castille had disappeared. And you gave a valuation for the rest that was more than expected. So now the owner won't sell. She wants double what they're prepared to pay." He drank some beer and winked conspiratorially. "That neat maneuver is known as nailing a library."

  "I know what it's called." Corso smiled malevolently. "And Armengol & Sons know it too."

  "You're being unnecessarily cruel," said La Ponte impartially. "But what they're most sore about is the Royal Charter. They say that your taking it was a low blow."

  "How could I leave it there? Latin glossary by Diaz de Montalvo, no typographical details but printed in Seville by Alonso Del Puerto, possibly 1482..." He adjusted his glasses and looked at his friend. "What do you think?"

  "Sounds good to me. But they're a bit jumpy."

  "They should take a Valium."

  It was early evening. There was very little room at the bar, and they were pressed shoulder to shoulder, surrounded by cigarette smoke and the murmur of conversation, trying not to get their elbows in the puddles of beer on the counter.

  "Apparently," continued La Ponte, "the Persiles is a first edition. The binding's signed by Trautz-Bauzonnet."

  Corso shook his head. "By Hardy. Morocco leather."

  "Even better. Anyway I swore I had nothing to do with it. You know I have an aversion to lawsuits."

  "But not to your thirty percent."

  La Ponte raised his hand with dignity. "Stop right there. Don't confuse business with pleasure, Corso. Our beautiful friendship is one thing, food for my children is quite another."

  "You don't have any children."

  La Ponte looked at him mischievously. "Give me time. I'm still young."

  He was short, good-looking, neat, and something of a dandy. His hair was thinning on top. He smoothed it down with his hand, checking to see how it looked in the bar's mirror. Then he cast a practiced eye around the room, checking out the ladies. He was always on the lookout, and always liked to use short sentences in conversation. His father, a very cultured bookseller, had taught him to write by dictating to him texts by Azorin. Hardly anyone reads Azorin anymore, but La Ponte still constructed his sentences like Azorin. With lots of full stops. It gave him a certain aplomb when it came to seducing female customers in the back room of his bookshop in the Calle Mayor, where he kept his erotic classics.

  "Anyway," he added, "I have some unfinished business with Armengol & Sons. Rather delicate, but I could make a quick profit."

  "You have business with me too," said Corso over his beer. "You're the only poor bookseller I work with. And you're going to be the one who sells those books."

  "All right, all right," said La Ponte equably. "You know I'm a practical man. A despicable pragmatist."

  "Yes."

  "Imagine this was a Western. As your friend, I'd take a bullet for you, but only in the shoulder."

  "At the very most," said Corso.

  "Anyway, it doesn't matter." La Ponte was looking around distractedly. "I already have a buyer for the Persiles"

  "Then get me another beer. An advance on your commission."

  They were old friends. They both loved frothy beer and, in its glazed earthenware bottle, Bols gin. But above all they loved antiquarian books and the auctions held in old Madrid auction rooms. They had met many years earlier, when Corso was rooting around in bookshops that specialized in Spanish authors. A client of his was looking for a bogus copy of Celestina that was supposed to predate the known 1499 edition. La Ponte didn't have the book and hadn't even heard of it, but he did have an edition of Julio Ollero's Dictionary of Rare and Improbable Books in which it was mentioned. They chatted about books and realized that they had a lot in common. La Ponte closed his shop, and they sealed their friendship by drinking all there was to drink in Makarova's bar while swapping anecdotes about Melville. La Ponte had been brought up on tales of the Pequod and the escapades of Azorin. "Call me Ishmael," he said as he drained his third Bols in one swallow. And Corso called him Ishmael, quoting from memory and in his honor the episode of the forging of Ahab's harpoon: "Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale's barbs then tempered."

  They duly drank a toast. By then La Ponte was no longer watching the girls coming in and out of the bar. He swore eternal friendship to Corso. Despite his militant cynicism and his occupation as a rapacious seller of old books, underneath he was a naive man. So he was unaware that his new friend with the crooked glasses was discreetly outflanking him: Corso had glanced over his shelves and spotted a few books he planned to make an offer for. But La Ponte, with his pale, curly beard, the gentle look of seaman Billy Budd with daydreams of a frustrated whale hunter, had awakened Corso's sympathy. La Ponte could even recite the names of all the crew of the Pequod: Ahab, S
tubb, Starbuck, Flask, Perth, Parsee, Queequeg, Tasthego, Daggoo ... Or the names of all the ships mentioned in Moby-Dick: the Goney, the Town-Ho, the Jeroboam, the Jungfrau, the Rose-bud, the Batchelor, the Delight, the Rachel... And, proof of proof, he even knew what ambergris was. They talked of books and whales. And so that night the Brotherhood of Nantucket Harpooneers was founded, with Flavio La Ponte as chairman, Lucas Corso as treasurer. They were the only two members and had Makarova's tolerant patronage. She gave them their last round on the house and ended up sharing another bottle of gin with them.

  "I'm going to Paris," said Corso, watching the reflection of a fat woman putting coin after coin in a slot machine. It seemed as if the silly little tune and the colors, fruits, and bells would keep her there for all eternity, hypnotized and motionless but for her hand pushing the buttons. "To see about your 'Anjou Wine.'"

  His friend wrinkled his nose and gave him a sideways glance. Paris meant more expense, complications. La Ponte was a stingy, small-time bookseller.

  "You know I can't afford it."

  Corso slowly emptied his glass. "Yes, you can." He took out a few coins and paid his round. "I'm going about something else."

  "Oh yes?" said La Ponte, intrigued.

  Makarova put two more beers on the counter. She was large, blond, in her forties, and had short hair and a ring in one ear, a souvenir of her time on a Russian trawler. She wore narrow trousers and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her shoulders. Her overdeveloped biceps weren't the only masculine thing about her. She always had a lighted cigarette smoldering in the corner of her mouth. With her Baltic look and her way of moving, she looked like a fitter from a ball-bearing factory in Leningrad.

  "I read that book," she told Corso, rolling her r's. As she spoke, ash from her cigarette dropped onto her damp shirt. "That tart Bovary. Poor little fool."