The Club Dumas

“Maybe.”

Impossible. That was another Corso returning home, uneasy, the Grande Armee about to melt in the snow. The fire of Moscow crackling in his wake. He couldn’t leave like that, so he stopped and turned around. As he did so, he smiled like a

hungry wolf.

“Irene Adler,” he repeated, trying to remember. “Study in

Scarlet?”

“No,” she answered. “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Now she was smiling too, and her gaze shone emerald green in the dim cor­ridor. “The Woman, my dear Watson.”

Corso slapped his forehead as if he’d just remembered.

“Elementary,” he said. And he was sure they’d meet again.

HE SPENT LESS THAN fifty minutes in Lisbon. Just enough time to get from Santa Apolonia Station to Rossio Station. An hour and a half later he stepped onto the platform in Sintra, beneath a sky full of low clouds that blurred the tops of the melancholy gray towers of the castle of Da Pena farther up the hill. There was no taxi in sight, so he walked to the small hotel that was opposite the National Palace with its two large chim­neys. It was ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning, and the es­planade was empty of tourists and coaches. He had no trouble getting a room. It looked out onto the uneven landscape, where the roofs and towers of old houses peered above the thick green­ery, their ruined gardens suffocating in ivy.

After a shower and a coffee he asked for the Quinta da Soledade, and the hotel receptionist told him the way, up the road. There weren’t any taxis on the esplanade either, although there were a couple of horse-drawn carriages. Corso negotiated a price, and a few minutes later he was passing under the lacy baroque stonework of Regaleira Tower. The sound of the horse’s hooves echoed from the dark walls, the drains and fountains running with water, the ivy-covered walls, railings, and tree trunks, the stone steps carpeted with moss, and the ancient tiles on the abandoned manor houses.

The Quinta da Soledade was a rectangular, eighteenth-century house, with four chimneys and an ochre plaster facade covered with water trails and stains. Corso got out of the car­riage and stood looking at the place for a moment before open­ing the iron gate. Two mossy, gray-green stone statues on granite columns stood at either end of the wall. One was a bust of a woman. The other seemed to be identical, but the features were hidden by the ivy climbing up it, enfolding and merging with the sculpted face.

As he walked toward the house, dead leaves crackled beneath his steps. The path was lined with marble statues, almost all of them lying broken next to their empty pedestals. The garden was completely wild. Vegetation had taken over, climbing up benches and into alcoves. The wrought iron left rusty trails on the moss-covered stone. To his left, in a pond full of aquatic plants, a fountain with cracked tiles sheltered a chubby angel with empty eyes and mutilated hands. It slept with its head resting on a book, and a thread of water trickled from its

mouth. Everything seemed suffused with infinite sadness, and Corso couldn’t help being affected. Quinta da Soledade, he re­peated. House of Solitude. The name suited it.

He went up the stone steps leading to the door and looked up. Beneath the gray sky no time was indicated on the Roman numerals of the ancient sundial on the wall. Above it ran the legend: OMNES VULNERANT, POSTUMA NECAT.

They all wound, he read. The last one kills.

“YOU’VE ARRIVED JUST IN time,” said Fargas, “for the ceremony.”

Corso held out his hand, slightly disconcerted. Victor Fargas was as tall and thin as an El Greco figure. He seemed to move around inside his loose, thick woolen sweater and baggy trousers like a tortoise in its shell. His mustache was trimmed with geometrical precision, and his old-fashioned, worn-out shoes gleamed. Corso noticed this much at first glance, before his attention was drawn to the huge, empty house, its bare walls, the paintings on the ceiling that were falling into shreds, eaten by mildew.

Fargas examined his visitor closely. “I assume you’ll accept a brandy,” he said at last. He set off down the corridor, limping slightly, without bothering to check whether Corso was follow­ing or not. They passed other rooms, which were empty or contained the remains of broken furniture thrown in a corner. Naked, dusty lightbulbs hung from the ceilings.

The only rooms that seemed to be in use were two inter­connecting reception rooms. There was a sliding door between them with coats of arms etched into the glass. It was open, revealing more bare walls, their ancient wallpaper marked by long-gone pictures, and furniture, rusty nails, and fixtures for nonexistent lamps. Above this gloomy scene was a ceiling painted to resemble a vault of clouds with the sacrifice of Isaac in the center. The cracked figure of the old patriarch held a dagger, about to strike a blond young man. His hand was re­strained by an angel with huge wings. Beneath the trompe 1’oeil sky, dusty French windows, some of the panes replaced with cardboard, led to the terrace and, beyond that, to the garden. “Home sweet home,” said Fargas.

His irony was unconvincing. He seemed to have made the remark too often and was no longer sure of its effect. He spoke Spanish with a heavy, distinguished Portuguese accent. And he moved very slowly, perhaps because of his bad leg, like someone who has all the time in the world.

“Brandy,” he said again, as if he didn’t quite remember how they’d reached that point.

Corso nodded vaguely, but Fargas didn’t notice. At one end of the vast room was an enormous fireplace with logs piled up in it. There were a pair of unmatched armchairs, a table and sideboard, an oil lamp, two big candlesticks, a violin in its case, and little else. But on the floor, lined up neatly on old, faded, threadbare rugs, as far away as possible from the windows and the leaden light coming through them, lay a great many books; five hundred or more, Corso estimated, maybe even a thousand. Many codices and incunabula among them. Wonderful old books bound in leather or parchment. Ancient tomes,with studs in the covers, folios, Elzevirs, their bindings decorated with gof­fering, bosses, rosettes, locks, their spines and front edges cov­ered with gilding and calligraphy done by medieval mon’ks in the scriptoria of their monasteries. He also noticed a dozen or so rusty mousetraps in various corners.

Fargas, who had been searching through the sideboard, turned around with a glass and a bottle of Remy Martin. He held it up to the light to look at the contents.

“Nectar of the gods,” he said triumphantly. “Or the devil.” He smiled only with his mouth, twisting his mustache like an old-fashioned movie star. His eyes remained fixed and expres­sionless, with bags beneath them as if from chronic insomnia. Corso noticed his delicate hands—a sign of good breeding—as he took the glass of brandy. The glass vibrated gently as Corso raised it to his lips.

“Nice glass,” he said to make conversation.

Fargas agreed, and made a gesture halfway between resig­nation and self-mockery, suggesting a different reading of it all: the glass, the tiny amount of brandy in the bottle, the bare house, his own presence. An elegant, pale, worn ghost.

“I have only one more left,” he confided in a calm, neutral tone. “That’s why I take care of them.”

Corso nodded. He glanced at the bare walls and again at the books.

“This must have been a beautiful house,” he said. Fargas shrugged. “Yes, it was. But old families are like civ­ ilizations. One day they just wither and die.” He looked around without seeing. All the missing objects seemed to be reflected in his eyes. “At first one resorts to the barbarians to guard the limes of the Danube, but it makes the barbarians rich and they end up as one’s creditors.... Then one day they rebel and in­ vade, looting everything.” He suddenly peered at his visitor suspiciously. “I hope you understand what I mean.”

Corso nodded, smiling his best conspiratorial smile. “Per­fectly,” he said. “Hobnail boots crushing Saxony porcelain. Isn’t that it? Servants in evening dress. Working-class parvenus who wipe their arses on illuminated manuscripts.”

Fargas nodded approvingly. He was smiling. He limped over to the sideboard in search of the other glass. “I’ll have a brandy too,” he said.

They drank a toast in silence, looking at each other like two members of a secret fraternity who have just exchanged sign and countersign. Then, moving closer to the books, Fargas ges­tured at them with the hand holding the glass, as if Corso had just passed his initiation test and Fargas was inviting him to pass through an invisible barrier.

“There they are. Eight hundred and thirty-four volumes. Less than half of them are worth anything.” He drank some more and ran his finger over his damp mustache, looking around. “It’s a shame that you didn’t know them in