The Club Dumas

term “tender.”

“I understand,” I answered, just to say something.

He frowned for a moment, wondering whether he’d forgot­ten anything. He took off his glasses, breathed on the lenses, and set about cleaning them with a very crumpled handker­chief, which he pulled from one of the bottomless pockets of his coat. However fragile the oversized coat made him appear, with his rodentlike incisors and calm expression Corso was as solid as a concrete block. His features were sharp and precise, full of angles. They framed alert eyes always ready to express an innocence dangerous for anyone who was taken in by it. At times, particularly when still, he seemed slower and clumsier than he really was. He looked vulnerable and defenseless: bar­men gave him an extra drink on the house, men offered him cigarettes, and women wanted to adopt him on the spot. Later, when you realized what had happened, it was too late to catch him. He was running off in the distance, having scored another victory.

Corso gestured with his glasses at the manuscript. “To return to Dumas. Surely a man who’s written five hundred pages about him ought to sense something familiar when faced with one of his original manuscripts.”

With the reverence of a priest handling holy vestments I put a hand on the pages protected by plastic.

“I fear I’m going to disappoint you, but I don’t sense any­thing.”

We both laughed, Corso in a peculiar way, almost under his breath, like someone who is not sure whether he and his companion are laughing at the same thing. An oblique, distant laugh, with a hint of insolence, the kind of laugh that lingers in the air after it stops. Even after its owner has been gone for a while.

“Let’s take this a step at a time,” I went on. “Does the manuscript belong to you?”

“I’ve already told you that it doesn’t. A client of mine has just acquired it, and he finds it strange that no one should have heard of this complete, original chapter of The Three Muske­teers until now.... He wants it authenticated by an expert, so that’s what I’m working on.”

“I’m surprised at your dealing with such a minor matter.” This was true. I’d heard of Corso before this meeting. “I mean, after all, nowadays Dumas ...”

I let the sentence hang and smiled with the appropriate expression of bitter complicity. But Corso didn’t take up my invitation and stayed on the defensive. “The client’s a friend of mine,” he said evenly. “It’s a personal favor.”

“I see, but I’m not sure that I can be of any help to you. I have seen some of the original manuscripts, and this one could be authentic. However, certifying it is another matter. For that you’d need a good graphologist... I know an excellent one in Paris, Achille Replinger. He owns a shop that specializes in autographs and historical documents, near Saint Germain des Pres. He’s an expert on nineteenth-century French writers, a charming man and a good friend of mine.” I pointed to one of the frames on the wall. “He sold me that Balzac letter many years ago. For a very high price.”

I took out my datebook and copied the address for Corso on a card. He put the card in an old worn wallet full of notes and papers. Then he brought out a notepad and pencil from one of his coat pockets. The pencil had a chewed eraser at one end, like a schoolboy’s pencil.

“Could I ask you a few questions?” he said.

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you know of any complete handwritten chapter of The Three Musketeers?”

I shook my head and replaced the cap on my Mont Blanc.

“No. The novel came out in installments in Le Siecle be­tween March and July 1844 ... Once the text was typeset by a compositor, the original manuscript was discarded. A few frag­ments remained, however. You can see them in an appendix to the 1968 Garnier edition.”

“Four months isn’t very long.” Corso chewed the end of his pencil thoughtfully. “Dumas wrote quickly.”

“They all did in those days. Stendhal wrote The Charter­house of Parma in seven weeks. And in any case Dumas used collaborators, ghostwriters. The one for The Three Musketeers was called Auguste Maquet. They worked together on the se­quel, Twenty Years After, and on The Vicomte de Bragelonne, which completes the cycle. And on The Count of Monte Cristo and a few other novels. You have read those, I suppose.”

“Of course. Everybody has.”

“Everybody in the old days, you mean.” I leafed respectfully through the manuscript. “The times are long gone when Dumas’s name increased print runs and made publishers rich. Almost all his novels came out in installments that ended with ‘to be continued....’ The readers would be on tenterhooks until the next episode. But of course you know all that.”

“Don’t worry. Go on.”

“What more can I tell you? In the classic serial, the recipe for success is simple: the hero and heroine have qualities or features that make the reader identify with them. If that hap­pens nowadays in TV soaps, imagine the effect in those days, when there was no television or radio, on a middle class hungry for surprise and entertainment, and undiscriminating when it came to formal quality or taste.... Dumas was a genius, and he understood this. Like an alchemist in his laboratory, he added a dash of this, a dash of that, and with his talent com­bined it all to create a drug that had many addicts.” I tapped my chest, not without pride. “That has them still.”

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 cliches,” 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