The Club Dumas

more engraving.”

“Yes. The last one, and also the most significant picture. N.NC SC.O ten.br. LUX without doubt stands for NUNC SCIO TENEBRIS LUX: Now I know that from darkness comes light. What we have here is in fact a scene from Saint John’s Apocalypse. The final seal has been broken, the secret city is in flames. The time of the Whore of Babylon has come and, having pronounced the terrible name or the number of the Beast, she rides, triumphant, on the dragon with seven heads.”

“Doesn’t seem very profitable,” said Corso, “going to all that trouble only to find this horror.”

“That’s not what it’s about. All the allegories are kinds of compositions in code, rebuses. Just as on a puzzle page the word ‘in’ followed by the pictures of a fan and a tree make up the word ‘infantry,’ these engravings and their captions combined with the book’s text enable one to determine a sequence, a ritual. The formula that provides the magic word. The verbum dimissum or whatever it might be.”

“And then the devil will put in an appearance.”

“In theory.”

“In what language is this spell? Latin, Hebrew, or Greek?”

“I don’t know.”

“And where’s the fault Madame de Montespan mentions?”

“As I said, I don’t know that either. All I’ve been able to

establish is that the celebrant must construct a magic territory

in which to place the words obtained, having arranged them

in sequence. I don’t know that sequence, but the text on pages

158 and 159 of The Nine Doors may give an indication. Look.”

She showed him the text in abbreviated Latin. A card cov­ered with the her small, spiky handwriting marked the page.

“Have you managed to work out what it says?” asked Corso.

“Yes. At least, I think so.” She handed him the card. “There you are.”

Corso read:

It is the animal with the tail in its mouth that encircles the labyrinth

where you will go through eight doors before the dragon

which comes to the enigma of the word.

Each door has two keys:

one is air and the other matter,

 but both are the same thing.

You will place matter on the serpent’s skin

 in the direction of the rising sun,

and on its belly the seal of Saturn.

You will break the seal nine times,

and when the reflection in the mirror shows the way,

you will find the lost word

which brings light from the darkness.

“What do you think?” asked the baroness.

“It’s disturbing, I suppose. But I don’t understand a word. Do you?”

“As I said, not much.” She turned the pages of the book, preoccupied. “It provides a method, a formula. But there’s something in it that isn’t as it should be. And I ought to know what that is.”

Corso lit another cigarette but said nothing. He already knew the answer to the question: the hermit’s keys, the hour­glass, the exit from the labyrinth, the chessboard, the halo ... And other things. While Frieda Ungern was explaining the meaning of the pictures, he had discovered more differences, confirming his theory: each book differed from the other two.

The game of errors continued, and he urgently needed to get to work. But not with the baroness breathing down his neck.

“I’d like to take a good, long look at all of this,” he said.

“Of course. I have plenty of time. I’d like to see how you work.”

Corso cleared his throat, embarrassed. They’d reached the point he’d worried about: the unpleasantness. “I work better on my own.” It sounded false. Frieda Ungern frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” She glanced at Corso’s can­vas bag suspiciously. “Are you hinting that you want me to leave you alone?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” Corso tried to hold her gaze as long as possible. “What I’m doing is confidential.”

She blinked. Her frown became threatening, and Corso knew that everything could go out the window at any moment.

“You’re free to do as you like, of course.” Frieda Ungern’s tone could have frozen all the plants in the room. “But this is my book and my house.”

At that point anyone else would have apologized and beat a retreat, but not Corso. He remained seated, smoking, his eyes fixed on the baroness. At last, he smiled cautiously, like a rabbit playing blackjack about to ask for another card.

“I don’t think I’ve explained myself fully.” He smiled as he took a well-wrapped object from his canvas bag. “I just need to spend some time here with the book and my notes.” He gently tapped the bag as he held out the package with his other hand. “As you can see, I’ve brought all I need.”

The baroness undid the wrapping and looked at its contents in silence. It was a publication in German— Berlin, September 1943—a thick brochure entitled Iden, a monthly journal from Idus, a circle of devotees of magic and astrology which was very close to the leaders of Nazi Germany. Corso had put in a marker at a page that had a photograph. The photograph showed a young and very pretty Frieda Ungern smiling at the photog­rapher. She had a man on each arm (for she had both arms then). One of the men was in civilian clothes and the caption named him as the Fiirher’s personal astrologer. She was men­tioned as his assistant, the distinguished Miss Frieda Wender. The man on the left had steel-rimmed glasses, a timid expres­sion, and wore a black SS uniform. One didn’t need to read the caption to recognize Reichsfiihrer Heinrich Himmler.

When Frieda Ungern, nee Wender, looked up and her eyes met Corso’s, she no longer seemed a sweet little old lady. But it lasted only a moment. She nodded slowly and carefully tore out the page with the photo, ripping it into tiny pieces. And Corso reflected that witches and baronesses and little old ladies who worked surrounded by books and potted plants had their price, just like anyone else. Victa iacet Virtus. And he didn’t see why it should be any other way.

once he was alone, he took the folder from his bag and set to work. He sat at a table by the window, The Nine Doors open at the frontispiece. Before starting, he parted the net curtains and glanced out. A gray BMW was parked across the street. The tenacious Rochefort at his post. Corso couldn’t see the girl at the bar on the corner.

He turned his attention to the book: the type of paper, the pressure of the engravings, any flaws or misprints. Now he knew that the three copies were only outwardly identical: the same black leather binding’with no lettering, five raised bands, a pentacle on the cover, the same number of pages and location of the engravings... With great patience, page by page, he completed the comparative tables he’d begun with book num­ber one. On page 81, at the blank page on the reverse side of engraving number V, he found another of the baroness’s cards. It was a translation of a paragraph on the page.

You will accept the pact of alliance that I offer you, surren­dering myself to you. And you will promise me the love of women and the flower of maidens, the honor of nuns, the rank, pleasures, and riches of the powerful, princes, and ecclesiastics. I will fornicate every three days and the intoxication will be pleasing to me. Once a year I will pay homage to you in confirmation of this contract signed with my blood. I will tread upon the sacraments of the Church and I will address prayers to you. I will fear neither rope nor sword nor poison. I will pass among the plague-ridden and the lepers without sullying my flesh But above all I will possess the Knowledge for which my first parents renounced paradise. By virtue of this pact you will erase me from the book of life and enter me in the black book of death And beginning now I will live for twenty happy years on man’s earth But then I will go with you to your kingdom and curse God.

There was another note on the back of the card, relating to a paragraph deciphered on another page: