The Club Dumas Read online

  THE STAIRS FROM THE main entrance led to an interior courtyard that had a well and two Venetian marble lions fenced off from the street by railings. An unpleasant dankness rose from the Tagus, and Corso stopped beneath the Moorish arch at the entrance to turn up his collar. He walked along the silent, narrow, cobbled streets until he came to a small square. There was a bar with metal tables, and chestnut trees with bare branches beneath the bell tower of a church. He took a seat in a patch of tepid sun on the terrace and tried to warm his stiff limbs. Two glasses of neat gin helped things along. Only then did he open the file on The Nine Doors and look through it properly for the first time.

  There was a forty-two-page typed report giving the book's historical background, both for the supposed original version, the Delomelanicon, or Invocation of Darkness, and for Torchia's version, Book of the Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows, printed in Venice in 1666. There were various appendices providing a bibliography, photocopies of citations in classical texts, and information about the other two known copies—their owners, any restoration work, purchase dates, present locations. There was also a transcription of the records of Aristide Torchia's trial, with the account of an eyewitness, one Gennaro Galeazzo, describing the unfortunate printer's last moments:

  He mounted the scaffold without agreeing to be reconciled with God and maintained an obstinate silence. When the fire was lit, smoke began to suffocate him He opened his eyes wide and uttered a terrible cry, commending himself to the Father. Many of those present crossed themselves, for in death he requested God's mercy. Others say that he shouted at the ground, in other words toward the depths of the earth.

  A car drove past on the other side of the square and turned down one of the corner streets leading to the cathedral. The engine paused for a moment beyond the corner, as if the driver had stopped before continuing down the street. Corso paid little attention, engrossed as he was in the book. The first page was the title page and the second was blank. The third, which began with a handsome capital N, contained a cryptic introduction, which read:

  Nos p.tens L.f.r, juv.te Stn. Blz.b, Lvtn, Elm, atq Ast.rot. ali.q, h.die ha.ems ace.t pct fo.de.is c.m t. qui no.st; et h.ic pol.icem am.rem mul. flo.em virg.num de.us mon, hon v.lup et op. for.icab tr.do,.os.ta int. nos ma.et eb.iet i.li c.ra er. No.is of.ret se.el in ano sag. sig. s.b ped. cocul.ab sa Ecl.e et no.s r.gat i.sius er.t; p.ct v.v.t an v.q fe.ix in t.a hom. et ven D:

  Fa.t in inf int co.s daem.

  Satanas, Belzebub, Lcfr, Elimi, Leviathan, Astaroth

  Siq pos mag. diab. et daem. pri.cp dom.

  After the introduction, whose "authorship" was obvious, came the text. Corso read the first lines:

  D.mine mag.que L.fr, te D.um m. et.pr ag.sco. et pol.c.or t ser.ire. a.ob.re quam.d p. vvre; et rn.io al.rum d et js.ch.st et a.s sn.ts tq.e s.ctas e. ec.les. apstl. et rom. et om. i sc.am. et o.nia ips. s.cramen. et o.nes .atio et r.g. q.ib fid. pos.nt int.rcd p.o me; et t.bi po.lceor q. fac. qu.tqu.t m.lum pot., et atra. ad mala p. omn. Et ab.rncio chrsm. et b.ptm et omn...

  He looked up at the church portico. The arches were carved with images of the Last Judgment worn by the elements. Beneath them, dividing the door in two, a niche sheltered an angry-looking Pantocrator. His raised right hand suggested punishment rather than mercy. In his left hand he held an open book, and Corso could not help drawing parallels. He looked around at the church tower and the surrounding buildings. The facades still bore bishops' coats of arms, and he refleeted that this square too had once witnessed the bonfires of the Inquisition. After all, this was Toledo. A crucible for underground cults, initiation rites, false converts. And heretics.

  He drank some more gin before going back to the book. The text, in an abbreviated Latin code, took up another hundred and fifty-seven pages, the final page being blank. Nine contained the famous engravings inspired, according to legend, by Lucifer himself. Each print had a Latin, Hebrew, and Greek numeral at the top, including a Latin phrase in the same abbreviated code. Corso ordered a third gin and went over them. They looked like the figures of the tarot, or old, medieval engravings: the king and the beggar, the hermit, the hangman, death, the executioner. In the last engraving a beautiful woman was riding a dragon. Too beautiful, he thought, for the religious morality of the time.

  He found an identical illustration on a photocopy of a page from Mateu's Universal Bibliography. But it wasn't the same. Corso was holding the Terral-Coy copy, whereas the engraving on the photocopy came, as recorded by the scholarly Mateu in 1929, from another one of the books:

  Torchia (Aristide). De Umbrarum Regni Novem Portis. Venetiae, apud Aristidem Torchiam. M.DC.LX.VI. Folio. 160 pages inch title [>] full page woodcuts. Of exceptional rarity. Only 5 known copies. Fargas Library, Sintra, Port, (see illustration). Coy Library, Madrid, Sp. (engraving 9 missing). Morel Library, Paris, Fr.

  Engraving 9 missing. Corso checked and saw that this was wrong. Engraving 9 was there in the copy he held, the copy formerly from the Coy, later the Terral-Coy Library, and now the property of Varo Borja. It must have been a printing error, or a mistake by Mateu himself. In 1929, when the Universal Bibliography was published, printing techniques and distribution methods weren't as efficient. Many scholars mentioned books that they only knew of through third parties. Maybe the engraving was missing from one of the other copies. Corso made a note in the margin of the photocopy. He needed to check it.

  He found an identical illustration on a photocopy of a page from Mateu's Universal Bibliography.

  A clock somewhere struck three, and pigeons flew up from the tower and roofs. Corso shuddered gently, as if slowly coming to. He felt in his pocket and took out some money. He put it on the table and stood up. The gin made him feel pleasantly detached, blurring external sounds and images. He put the book and file in his canvas bag, slung it over his shoulder, then stood for a few seconds looking at the angry Pantocrator in the portico. He wasn't in a hurry and wanted to clear his head, so he decided to walk to the train station.

  When he reached the cathedral, he took a shortcut through the cloisters. He passed the closed souvenir kiosk and stood for a moment looking at the empty scaffolding over the murals undergoing restoration. The place was deserted, and his steps echoed beneath the vault. He thought he heard something behind him. A priest late to confession.

  He came out through an iron gate into a dark, narrow street, where passing cars had taken chunks out of the walls. As he turned to the right, a car came from somewhere to the left. There was a traffic sign, a triangle warning that the street narrowed, and when Corso came to it, the car accelerated unexpectedly. He could hear it behind him, coming too fast, he thought as he turned to look, but he only had time to half-turn, just enough to see a dark shape bearing down on him. His reflexes were dulled by the gin, but by chance his attention was still on the traffic sign. Instinct pushing him toward it, he sought the narrow area of protection between the metal post and the wall. He slid into the small gap like a bullfighter hiding behind the barrier from the bull. The car managed to strike only his hand as it passed him. The blow was sharp, and the pain made his knees buckle. Falling onto the cobbles, he saw the car disappear down the street with a screech of tires.

  Corso walked on to the station, rubbing his bruised hand. But now he turned every so often to look behind him, and his bag, with The Nine Doors inside, was burning his shoulder. For three seconds he'd caught a fleeting glimpse, but it had been enough: this time the man was driving a black Mercedes, not a Jaguar. The one who'd nearly run Corso down was dark, had a mustache, and a scar on his face. The man from Makarova's bar. The same man he'd seen in a chauffeur's uniform, reading a newspaper outside Liana Taillefer's house.

  IV. THE MAN WITH THE SCAR

  I know not where he comes from

  But I know where he is going: he is going to Hell.

  —A. Dumas, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

  Night was falling when Corso got home. Inside his coat pocket his bruised hand throbbed painfully. He went to the
bathroom, picked up his crumpled pajamas and a towel from the floor, and held the hand under a stream of cold water for five minutes. Then he opened a couple of cans and ate, standing in the kitchen.

  It had been a strange and dangerous day. As he thought about it, he felt confused, though he was less worried than curious. For some time, he had treated the unexpected with the detached fatalism of one who waits for life to make the next move. His detachment, his neutrality, meant that he could never be the prime mover. Until that morning in the narrow street in Toledo, his role had been merely to carry out orders. Other people were the victims. Every time he lied or made a deal with someone, he stayed objective. He formed no relationships with the persons or things involved—they were simply tools of the trade. He remained on the side, a mercenary with no cause other than financial gain. The indifferent third man. Perhaps this attitude had always made him feel safe, just as, when he took off his glasses, people and objects became blurred, indistinct; he could ignore them by removing their sharp outline. Now, though, the pain from his injured hand, the sense of imminent danger, of violence aimed directly at him and him alone, implied frightening changes in his world. Lucas Corso, who had acted as victimizer so many times, wasn't used to being a victim. And he found it highly disconcerting.

  In addition to the pain in his hand, his muscles were rigid with tension and his mouth was dry. He opened a bottle of Bols and searched for aspirin in his canvas bag. He always carried a good supply, together with books, pencils, pens, half-filled notepads, a Swiss Army knife, a passport, money, a bulging address book, and books belonging to him and to others. He could, at any time, disappear without a trace like a snail into its shell. With his bag he could make himself at home wherever chance, or his clients, led him—airports, train stations, dusty European libraries, hotel rooms that merged in his memory into a single room with fluid dimensions where he would wake with a start disoriented and confused in the darkness searching for the light switch only to stumble upon the phone Blank moments torn from his life and his consciousness He was never very sure of himself or of anything for the first thirty seconds after he opened his eyes his body waking before his mind or his memory.

  He sat at his computer and put his notepads and several reference books on the desk to his left. On his right he put The Nine Doors and Varo Borja's folder. Then he leaned back in the chair, letting his cigarette burn down in his hand for five minutes, bringing it to his lips only once or twice. During that time all he did was sip the rest of his gin and stare at the blank computer screen and the pentacle on the book's cover. At last he seemed to wake up. He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and, adjusting his crooked glasses, set to work. Varo Borja's file agreed with Crozet's Encyclopedia of Printers and Rare and Curious Books:

  TORCHIA, Aristide (1620–1667). Venetian printer, engraver, and bookbinder. Printer's mark: a snake and a tree split by lightning. Trained as an apprentice in Leyden (Holland), at the workshop of the Elzevirs. On his return to Venice he completed a series of works on philosophical and esoteric themes in small formats (12mo, 16mo), which were highly esteemed Notable among these are The Secrets of Wisdom by Nicholas Tamisso (3 vols, 12mo, Venice 1650), Key to Captive Thoughts (1 vol, 132x75mm, Venice 1653), The Three Books of the Art by Paolo d'Este (6 vols, 8vo, Venice 1658), Curious Explanation of Mysteries and Hieroglyphs (1 vol, 8vo, Venice 1659), a reprint of The Lost Word by Bernardo Trevisano (1 vol, 8vo, Venice 1661), and Book of The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows (1 vol, folio, Venice 1666). Because of the printing of the latter, he fell into the hands of the Inquisition. His workshop was destroyed together with all the printed and yet to be printed texts it contained Torchia was put to death. Condemned for magic and witchcraft, he was burned at the stake on 17 February 1667.

  Corso looked away from the computer and examined the first page of the book that had cost the Venetian printer his life. The title was DE UMBRARUM REGNI NOVEM PORTIS. Beneath it came the printer's mark, the device that acted as the printer's signature, which might be anything from a simple monogram to an elaborate illustration. In Aristide Torchia's case, as mentioned in Crozet, the mark was a tree with one branch snapped off by lightning and a snake coiled around the trunk, devouring its own tail. The picture was accompanied by the motto SIC LUCEAT LUX: Thus shines the Light. At the foot of the page were the location, name, and date: Venetiae, apud Aristidem Torchiam. Printed in Venice, at the establishment of Aristide Torchia. Underneath, separated by a decoration: MDCLXVI Cum superiorum privilegio veniaque. By authority and permission of the superiors.

  Corso entered into the computer:

  Copy has no bookplates or handwritten notes. Complete according to catalogue for Terral-Coy collection auction (Claymore, Madrid). Error in Mateu (states 8, not 9, engravings in this copy). Folio. 299x215mm 2 blank flyleaves, 160 pages and 9 full-page prints, numbered I to Villi. Pages: 1 title page with printer's mark. 157 pages of text. Last one blank, no colophon Full-page engravings on recto page. Verso blank.

  He examined the illustrations one by one. According to Borja, legend attributed the original drawings to the hand of Lucifer himself. Each print was accompanied by a Roman ordinal, its Hebrew and Greek equivalent, and a Latin phrase in abbreviated code. He entered:

  I. NEM. PERV.T.QIJT N.N LEG. CERT.RIT: A horseman rides toward a walled city. He has a finger to his lips, advising caution or silence.

  II. GLAUS. PAT.T: A hermit in front of a locked door, holding 2 keys. A lantern on the ground. He is accompanied by a dog. At his side a sign resembling the Hebrew letter Teth.

  III. VERB. D.SUM C.S.T ARCAN.: A vagabond, or pilgrim, heads toward a bridge over a river. At both ends of the bridge, gate towers with closed doors bar the way. An archer on a cloud aims at the path leading to the bridge.

  IIII. (The Latin numeral appears in this form, not the more usual IV). FOR. N.N OMN. A.QUE: A jester stands in front of a stone labyrinth. The entrance is also closed. Three dice on the ground, showing the numbers 1, 2, and 3.

  V. FR.ST.A.: A miser, or merchant, is counting out a sack of gold pieces. Behind him, Death holds an hourglass in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.

  VI. DIT.SCO M.R.: A hangman, like the one in the tarot, hands tied behind his back, is hanging by his foot from the battlements of a castle, next to a closed postern. A hand in a gauntlet sticks out of a slot window holding a flaming sword.

  VII. DIS.S. P.TI.R MAG: A king and a beggar are playing chess on a board with only white squares. The moon can be seen through the window. Beneath a window next to a closed door, two dogs are fighting.

  VIII. VIG. I.T VIR.: Next to the wall of a city a woman kneels on the ground, offering up her bare neck to the executioner. In the background there is a wheel of fortune with three human figures: one at the top, one going up, and one going down.

  VIIII. (Also in this form, not the usual numeral IX). N.NC SCO TEN.EBR. LUX: A naked woman riding a seven-headed dragon. She holds an open book, and a half-moon hides her sex. On a hill in the background there is a castle in flames. The door is closed, as in the other engravings.

  He stopped typing, stretched his stiffened limbs, and yawned. The room was in darkness beyond the cone of light from his work lamp and his computer screen. Through the window came the pale glow of streetlights. He went to the window and looked out, not quite knowing what he expected to see. A car waiting at the curb, perhaps, its headlights off and a dark figure inside. But nothing attracted his attention except, for a moment, the siren of an ambulance fading among the dark masses of buildings. He looked at the clock on the nearby church tower: it was five minutes past midnight.

  He sat down again at the computer and the book. He examined the first illustration—the printer's mark on the title page, the snake with its tail in its mouth, which Aristide Torchia had chosen as the symbol of his work. SIC LUCEAT LUX. Snakes and devils, invocations and hidden meanings. He lifted his glass to drink a sarcastic toast to Torchia's memory. The man must have been very brave, or very stupid. You paid a
high price for that kind of thing in seventeenth-century Italy, even if it was printed cum superiorum privilegio veniaque.

  But then Corso stopped and cursed out loud, looking into the dark corners of the room, for not having noticed before. "With the privilege and license of the superiors." That wasn't possible.

  Without taking his eyes from the page, he sat back in his chair and lit another of his crushed cigarettes. Spirals of smoke rose in the lamplight, a translucent gray curtain behind which the lines of print rippled.

  Cum superiorum privilege vemaque didn't make sense. Or else it was brilliantly subtle. The reference to the imprimatur couldn't possibly mean a conventional authorization. The Catholic Church would never have allowed such a book in 1666, because its direct predecessor, the Delomelanicon, had been listed in the index of forbidden books for the previous hundred and fifty years. So Aristide Torchia wasn't referring to a permission to print granted by the Church censors. Nor to a civil authority, the government of the republic of Venice. He must have had other superiors.

  THE TELEPHONE INTERRUPTED HIS thought. It was Flavio La Ponte. He wanted to tell Corso how he'd found, in with some books (he'd had to buy the whole lot, that was the deal), a collection of European tram tickets, 5,775 of them to be exact. All palindromic numbers, sorted by country in shoe boxes. He wasn't joking. The collector had just died, and the family wanted to get rid of them. Maybe Corso knew someone who'd be interested. Naturally. La Ponte knew that the tireless, and pathological, activity of collecting 5,775 palindromic tickets was completely pointless. Who would buy such a stupid collection? Yes, the Transport Museum in London, that was a good idea. The English and their perversions ... Would Corso deal with the matter?