The Club Dumas

had everything under control. Then he put it all away deep inside him, next to his heart.

he WOKE AT DAYBREAK. The girl was sleeping pressed against him. For some time he didn’t move in order not to wake her. He made himself stop thinking about what had hap­pened or might happen. He closed his eyes and drifted, enjoying the peace of the moment. He could feel her breath on his skin. Irene Adler, 223B Baker Street. The devil in love. The outline in the mist confronting Rochefort. The blue duffel coat falling slowly, unfolding, onto the quayside. And Corso’s shadow in her eyes. She slept, relaxed and tranquil, aware of nothing. He couldn’t link the images in his mind logically. At that moment, logic had no appeal. He felt lazy and content. He put his hand between her warm thighs and kept it there, very still. Her naked body, at least, was real.

Later, he got out of bed carefully and went to the bathroom. In the mirror he saw that he still had traces of dried blood on his face, and also, as the result of his encounter with Rochefort and the stone steps, a bluish bruise on his left shoulder, and another across a couple of ribs, which hurt when he pressed it. He had a quick wash and went to look for a cigarette. As he was searching in his coat, he found the note Gruber had handed him.

He cursed under his breath for having forgotten it, but there was nothing he could do about that now. So he opened the envelope and went back to the light in the bathroom to read the note. It was brief and its contents— two names, a number, and an address—made him smile malevolently. He glanced at himself again in the mirror. His hair was matted, and he needed a shave. He put on his glasses as if arming himself, a mean wolf off to hunt. He picked up his clothes and canvas bag quietly, and gave the sleeping girl a last glance. Maybe it was going to be a beautiful day after all. Buckingham and Milady were about to choke on their breakfast.

the hotel crillon was too expensive for Flavio La Ponte. Enrique Taillefer’s widow must have been paying the bill. Corso reflected on this as he paid his taxi on the Place Concorde and crossed the marble lobby to the stairs and room 206. There was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and no sound when he rapped loudly three times. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then tempered. The Brotherhood of Nantucket Harpooners was about to be dissolved. Corso didn’t know if he was sorry or not. He and La Ponte had once imagined an alternative version of Moby-Dick. Ishmael writes the story, places the manuscript in the caulked coffin, and drowns with the rest of the crew of the Peguod Queequeg is the only survivor, the wild harpooner with no intellectual pretensions. In time he learns to read. One day he reads his friend’s novel and discovers that Ishmael’s account and his own memories of what happened are completely dif­ferent. So he writes his own version of the story. Call me Queequeg the story begins, and he titles it A Whale. From the harpooner’s point of view, Ishmael was a pedantic scholar who blew things out of proportion. Moby Dick wasn’t to blame, he was a whale like any other. It was all a matter of an incom­petent captain wanting to settle a personal score instead of filling barrels with oil. “What does it matter who tore his leg off?” writes Queequeg. Corso could remember the scene around the table in Makarova’s bar. Makarova, with her masculine, Nordic reserve, listening carefully as La Ponte explained the use of the caulking on the carpenter’s coffin while Zizi looked on jealously from the other side of the bar. In those days, if Corso dialed his own number, Nikon would answer—he always pictured her emerging from the darkroom, her hands wet with fixative. That’s what happened the night they rewrote Moby-Dick. They all ended up at Corso’s place, emptied more bottles, and watched a John Huston movie on the VCR. They drank a toast to old Melville when the Rachel, searching the seas for her lost sons, at last finds another orphan.

That’s how it was. But now, standing outside room 206, Corso couldn’t feel the anger of one about to confront another with his treachery. Maybe because, deep down, he believed that in politics, business, and sex, betrayal was only a question of timing. Ruling out politics, he didn’t know whether his friend was in Paris for business or sex. Maybe it was both, because even Corso, in his cynicism, couldn’t imagine La Ponte getting into trouble for money alone. He remembered Liana Taillefer during their brief skirmish at his apartment, beautiful and sen­sual, wide hips, smooth pale skin, a wholesome Kim Novak playing the femme fatale. He arched an eyebrow— friendship consisted of that kind of detail—he could well understand La Ponte’s motives. Maybe this was why, when La Ponte opened the door, he found no hostility in Corso’s expression. He was barefoot and in pajamas. He just had time to open his mouth before Corso gave him a punch that sent him staggering across the room.

In other circumstances Corso might have relished the scene. A luxury suite with a view of the obelisk in the Place Concorde, a thick pile carpet, and a huge bathroom. La Ponte on the floor, rubbing his jaw, trying to focus after the punch. A huge bed, with two breakfast trays. And Liana Taillefer sitting, blond and stunned, holding a half-eaten piece of toast, one voluminous white breast peeping out of the plunging neckline of her silk nightdress. With a nipple two inches wide, Corso noted dispas­sionately as he shut the door behind him. Better late than never.

“Good morning,” he said.

He walked to the bed. Liana Taillefer, motionless, still hold­ing her toast, stared as he sat next to her. Putting the canvas bag on the floor and glancing at the breakfast tray, he poured himself a cup of coffee. For half a minute nobody said a word. At last Corso took a sip and smiled at Liana Taillefer.

“I seem to remember that the last time we met, I was some­what abrupt....” The stubble on his chin emphasized his fea­tures. His smile was as sharp as a razor blade.

She didn’t answer. She put the toast on the tray and covered her generous figure with her nightgown. In her stare there was no fear, arrogance, or rancor. She seemed almost indifferent. After the scene at his apartment, Corso would have expected hatred in her eyes. “They’ll kill you for this,” etc.... And they nearly had. But Liana Taillefer’s steely blue eyes had the same expression as a puddle of icy water, and this worried Corso more than an explosion of fury. He pictured her looking impassively at her husband’s corpse hanging from the light fixture in his room. He remembered the photograph of the poor bastard in his leather apron holding a plate, about to dismember a roast suckling pig. This was some serial they’d all written for him. “Bastard,” muttered La Ponte from the floor, still dazed but managing to focus on Corso at last. He started to get up, hang­ing on to the furniture. Corso watched him with interest. “You don’t seem pleased to see me, Flavio.”

“Pleased?” La Ponte was rubbing his beard and looking at the palm of his hand from time to time, as if worried that he would find a tooth there. “You’ve gone nuts. Completely nuts.”

“Not yet. But you’ve been trying to drive me there, you and your henchmen.” He pointed at Liana Taillefer. “Including the grieving widow.”

La Ponte moved closer, but kept a cautious distance. “Would you mind explaining what on earth you’re talking about?”

Corso raised his hand and began counting on fingers.

“I’m talking about the Dumas manuscript and The Nine Doors. About Victor Fargas drowned in Sintra. About Rochefort, who’s my shadow. He attacked me a week ago in Toledo, and last night here in Paris.” He pointed at Liana Taillefer again. “And about Milady. And about you, whatever your part is in all this.”

La Ponte, watching Corso count, blinked five times, once for each finger. He rubbed his beard again, this time not from pain but with confusion. He started to say something but thought better of it. When at last he made up his mind to speak, he addressed Liana Taillefer.

“What have we got to do with all this?”

She shrugged contemptuously. She wasn’t interested in ex­planations, wasn’t going to cooperate. Still reclining against the pillows, with the breakfast tray beside her, she was tearing apart one of the pieces of toast with her red polished nails. Her only other movement was her breathing, which made her am­ple bosom move up and down inside her plunging nightgown. She stared at Corso like a cardplayer waiting for an opponent to show his hand, as unmoved as a sirloin steak.

La Ponte scratched his bald spot. He wasn’t too dignified, standing in the middle of the room in crumpled striped paja­mas, his cheek swollen from the punch. He looked at Corso, at Liana Taillefer, and back again. “I’d like an explanation,” he said.

“That’s a coincidence. An explanation is what I came here to get from you.”

With another anxious glance at Liana Taillefer, La Ponte gestured toward the bathroom. “Let’s go in there.” He was trying to sound dignified, but his swollen cheek made his speech slurred. “You and me.”

She remained inscrutable, calm, looking at them with the bored expression of someone watching a quiz show on TV. Corso thought to himself that he’d have to do¹ something about her, but at the moment he couldn’t think what. He picked up his canvas bag and went into the bathroom with La Ponte. La Ponte shut the door behind them.

“Can you tell me why you hit me?”