The Club Dumas

cocktails.”

She was silent for a moment and looked around, as if her , husband had left a glass behind.

“I collected all this myself,” she added, waving at her li­brary, “one by one, down to the last book. I even chose The Nine Doors, after discovering it in the catalogue of a bankrupt former Petain supporter. All my husband did was sign the check.”

“Why are you so interested in the devil?”

“I saw him once. I was fifteen and saw him as clearly as I’m seeing you. He had a hard collar, a hat, and a walking stick. He was very handsome. He looked like John Barrymore as Baron Gaigern in Grand Hotel. So, like a fool, I fell in love.” She became thoughtful again, her only hand in her cardigan pocket, as if remembering something distant. “I suppose that’s why I was never really troubled by my husband’s infidelities.”

Corso looked around, as if there might be someone else in the room, then leaned over confidentially.

“Three centuries ago, you would have burned at the stake for telling me this.”

She made a guttural sound of amusement, stifling her laugh­ter, and almost stood on tiptoe to whisper in the same tone: “Three centuries ago, I wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone. But I know a lot of people who would gladly burn me at the stake.” She smiled again, showing her dimples. She was always smiling, Corso decided. But her bright, intelligent eyes re­mained alert, studying him. “Even now, in this day and age.”

She handed him The Nine Doors and watched him as he leafed through the book slowly, although he could barely con­tain his impatience to check if there were any differences in the nine engravings. Sighing to himself with relief, he found them intact. In fact, Mateu’s Bibliography was wrong: none of the three books had the final engraving missing. Book number three was in worse condition than Varo Borja’s, and Victor Fargas’s before it was thrown into the fire. The lower half had been exposed to damp and almost all the pages were stained. The binding also needed a thorough cleaning, but the book seemed complete.

“Would you like a drink?” asked the baroness. “I have tea and coffee.”

No potions or magic herbs, Corso thought with disappoint­ment. Not even a tisane.

“Coffee.”

It was a sunny day, and the sky over the nearby towers of Notre-Dame was blue. Corso went over to a window and parted the net curtains so he could see the book in better light. Two floors down, between the bare trees on the banks of the Seine, the girl was sitting on a stone bench in her duffel coat and reading a book. He knew it was The Three Musketeers, because he’d seen it on the table when they met at breakfast. Afterward he walked along the Rue de Rivoli, knowing that the girl was following fifteen or twenty paces behind. He deliberately ig­nored her, and she kept her distance. Now he saw her look up. She must have seen him clearly from down there, but she made no sign of recognition. Expressionless and still, she continued to watch him until he moved away from the window. When he looked out again, she had gone back to her book, her head bowed.

There was a secretary, a middle-aged woman with thick glasses moving among the tables and books, but Frieda Ungern brought the coffee herself, two cups on a silver tray, which she carried with ease. One glance from her told him not to offer help, and they sat down at the desk, the tray among all the books, plant pots, papers, and note cards.

“What gave you the idea of setting up this foundation?” “It was for tax purposes. Also, now people come here, and I can find collaborators....” She smiled sadly. “I’m the last of the witches, and I felt lonely.”

“You don’t look anything like a witch.” Corso made the appropriate face, an ingenuous, friendly rabbit. “I read your /sis.”

Holding her coffee cup in one hand, she raised the stump , of her other arm a little and at the same time tilted her head as if to rearrange her hair. Although incomplete, it was an unconsciously coquettish gesture, as old as the world itself and yet ageless.

“Did you like it?”

He looked her in the eyes as he raised his cup to his mouth. “Very much.”

“Not everyone did. Do you know what L’Osservatore Romano said? It regretted the demise of the Index of the Holy Office. And you’re right.” She indicated The Nine Doors that Corso had put by her on the table. “In the past I would have been burned at the stake, like the poor wretch who wrote the gospel according to Satan.”

“Do you really believe in the devil, Baroness?”

“Don’t call me Baroness. It’s ridiculous.”

“What would you like me to call you?”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Ungern. Or Frieda.”

“Do you believe in the devil, Mrs. Ungern?”

“Sufficiently to dedicate my life, my collection, this foun­dation, many years of work, and the five hundred pages of my new book all to him.” She looked at Corso with interest. He had taken off his glasses to clean them. His helpless smile com­pleted the effect. “What about you?”

“Everybody’s asking me that lately.”

“Of course. You’ve been going around asking questions about a book that has to be read with a certain kind of faith.”

“My faith is limited,” Corso said, risking a hint of sincerity. This kind of frankness often proved profitable. “Really, I work for money.”

The dimples appeared again. She must have been very pretty half a century ago, he thought. With both arms intact, casting spells or whatever they were, slender and mischievous. She still had something of that.

“Pity,” remarked Frieda Ungern. “Others, who worked for nothing, had blind faith in the book’s protagonist. Albertus Magnus, Raymund Lully, Roger Bacon, none of them ever dis­puted the devil’s existence, only his nature.”

Corso adjusted his glasses and gave a hint of a skeptical smile.

“Things were different a long time ago.”

“You don’t have to go that far back. ‘The devil does exist, not only as a symbol of evil but as a physical reality.’“ How do you like that? It was written by a pope, Paul VI. In 1974.”

“He was a professional,” said Corso equably. “He must have had his reasons.”

“In fact all he was doing was confirming a point of doctrine: the existence of the devil was established by the fourth Council of Letran. In 1215...” She paused and looked at him doubt­fully. “Are you interested in erudite facts? I can be unbearably scholarly if I try.” The dimples appeared. “I always wanted to be at the top of the class. The smart aleck.”

“I’m sure you were. Did you win all the prizes?” “Of course. And the other girls hated me.” They both laughed. Corso sensed that Frieda Ungern was now on his side. So he took two cigarettes from his coat pocket and offered her one. She refused, glancing at him apprehen­sively. Corso ignored this and lit his cigarette.

“Two centuries later,” continued the baroness as Corso bent over the lighted match, “Innocent VIII’s papal bull Sumnis Desiderantes Affectibus confirmed that Western Europe was plagued by demons and witches. So two Dominican monks, Kramer and Sprenger, drew up the Malleus Malleficarum, a manual for inquisitors.”

Corso raised his index finger. “Lyon, 1519. An octavo in the Gothic style, with no author’s name. At least not the copy I know.”

“Not bad.” She looked at him, surprised. “Mine is a later one.” She pointed at a shelf. “It’s over there. “Published in 1668, also in Lyon. But the very first edition dated from 1486....” She shuddered, half closing her eyes. “Kramer and Sprenger were fanatical and stupid. Their Malleus was a load of non­sense. It might even seem funny, if thousands of poor wretches hadn’t been tortured and burned in its name.” “Like Aristide Torchia.”

“Yes, like him. Although he wasn’t remotely innocent.” “What do you know about him?”

The baroness shook her head, drank the last of her coffee, and shook her head again. “The Torchias were a Venetian fam­ily of well-to-do merchants who imported vat paper from Spain and France. As a young man Aristide traveled to Holland and was an apprentice of the Elzevirs, who had corresponded with his father. He stayed there for a time and then went to Prague.”