The Club Dumas

“A dirty trick,” said Corso, not specifying whether he meant Dumas or me.

I raised a finger, ready to state my case. “A legitimate de­vice,” I objected, “inspired by the shrewdness and genius of the greatest novelist who ever lived. And yet...” I smiled bitterly. “Sainte-Beuve respected him but didn’t accept him as a man of letters. His friend, Victor Hugo, praised his capacity for dra­matic action, but nothing more. Prolific, long-winded, they said. With little style. They accused him of not delving into the anxieties of human beings, of lacking subtlety.... Lacking sub­tlety!” I touched the volumes of The Three Musketeers lined up on the shelf. “I agree with our good father Stevenson— there is no paean to friendship as long, eventful, or beautiful. In Twenty Years After, when the protagonists reappear, they are distanced at first. They are now men of mature years, selfish, with all the pettiness that life imposes. They even belong to opposing camps. Aramis and d’Artagnan lie and dissemble, Porthos fears being asked for money.... When they agree to meet at the Place Royale, they come armed and almost fight. And in England, when Athos’s imprudence puts them all in danger, d’Artagnan refuses to shake his hand. In The Vicomte de Bragelonne, with the mystery of the iron mask, Aramis and Porthos stand against their old comrades. This happens because they’re alive, because they’re human, full of contradictions. But always, at the moment of truth, friendship wins out. A great thing, friendship! Do you have friends, Corso?”

“That’s a good question.”

“For me, Porthos in the cave at Locmaria has always em­bodied friendship: the giant struggling beneath a rock to save his friends ... Do you remember his last words?”

“It’s too heavy?”

“Exactly!”

I confess I felt almost moved. Like the young man in a cloud of pipe smoke described by Captain Marlow, Corso was one of us. But he was also a bitter, stubborn man determined not to feel.

“You’re Liana Taillefer’s lover,” he said.

“Yes,” I admitted, reluctantly leaving thoughts of good Porthos aside. “Isn’t she a splendid woman? With her own par­ticular obsessions... Beautiful and loyal, like Milady in the novel. It’s strange. There are characters in literature who have a life of their own, familiar to millions of people who haven’t even read the books in which they appear. In English literature there are three: Sherlock Holmes, Romeo, and Robinson Crusoe. In Spanish, two: Don Quixote and Don Juan. And in French literature there is one: d’Artagnan. But you see that I...”

“Let’s not go off on a tangent again, Balkan.”

“I’m not. I was about to add the name of Milady to d’Artagnan’s. An extraordinary woman. Like Liana, in her own way. Her husband never measured up to her.”

“Do you mean Athos?”

“No, I mean poor old Enrique Taillefer.”

“Was that why you murdered him?”

My amazement must have looked sincere. It was sincere. “Enrique murdered? Don’t be ridiculous. He hanged himself. He committed suicide. I should imagine that, with his way of looking at the world, he thought it a heroic gesture. Very regrettable.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Suit yourself. But his death was the starting point for this entire story and, indirectly, the reason you are here.”

“Explain it to me then. Nice and slowly.”

He had certainly earned it. As I said earlier, Corso was one of us, although he didn’t know it. And anyway—I looked at the clock—it was almost twelve.

“Do you have ‘The Anjou Wine’ with you?”

He looked at me alertly, trying to guess my intentions. Then I saw him give in. Reluctantly, he took the folder from under his coat, then hid it again.

“Excellent,” I said. “And now follow me.”

He must have been expecting a secret passage leading from the library, some sort of diabolical trap. I saw him put his hand in his pocket for the knife.

“You won’t be needing that,” I assured him.

He didn’t look convinced but said nothing. I held the can­delabrum high, and we walked down the Louis XIII —style cor­ridor. A magnificent tapestry hung on one of the walls: Ulysses, bow in hand, recently returned to Ithaca, Penelope and the dog rejoicing, the suitors drinking wine in the background, unaware of what awaits them.

“This is an ancient castle, full of history,” I said. “It has been plundered by the English, by the Huguenots, by revolu­tionaries. Even the Germans set up a command post here dur­ing the war. It was very dilapidated when the present owner —a British millionaire, a charming man and a gentleman— acquired it. He restored and furnished it with extraordinary good taste. He even agreed to open it to the public.”

“So what are you doing here outside of visiting hours?”

As I passed a leaded window, I glanced out. The storm was dying down at last, the glow of lightning fading beyond the Loire, to the north.

“An exception is made once a year,” I explained. “After all, Meung is a special place. A novel like The Three Musketeers doesn’t open just anywhere.”

The wooden floors creaked beneath our feet. A suit of armor, genuine sixteenth-century, stood in a bend in the corridor. The light from the candelabrum was reflected in the smooth, pol­ished surfaces of the cuirass. Corso glanced at it as he walked past, as if there might be someone hidden inside.

“I’ll tell you a story. It began ten years ago,” I said, “at an auction in Paris, of a lot of uncatalogued documents. I was writing a book on the nineteenth-century popular novel in France, and the dusty packages fell into my hands quite by chance. When I went through them, I saw they were from the old archives of Le Siecle. Almost all consisted of printing proofs of little value, but one package of blue and white sheets at­tracted my attention. It was the original text, handwritten by Dumas and Maquet, of The Three Musketeers. All sixty-seven chapters, just as they were sent to the printer. Someone, possibly Baudry, the editor of the newspaper, had kept them after com­posing the galley proofs and then forgot all about them....”

I slowed and stopped in the middle of the corridor. Corso was very still, and the light from the candelabrum I held lit up his face from below, making shadows dance in his eye sock­ets. He listened intently to my story, seemed to be unaware of anything else. Solving the mystery that had brought him was the only thing that mattered to him. But he still kept his hand on the knife in his pocket.

“My discovery,” I went on, pretending not to notice, “was of extraordinary importance. We knew of a few fragments of the original draft from Dumas and Maquet’s notes and papers, but we were unaware of the existence of the complete manu­script. At first I thought to make my finding public, in the form of an annotated facsimile edition. But then I encountered a serious moral dilemma.”

The light and shadow on Corso’s face moved, and a dark line crossed his mouth. He was smiling. “I don’t believe it. A moral dilemma, after all this.”

I moved the candelabrum to make invisible the skeptical smile on his face, unsuccessfully.

“I’m quite serious,” I protested as we moved on. “On ex­amining the manuscript, I concluded that the real creator of the story was Auguste Maquet. He had done all the research and outlined the story in broad strokes. Dumas, with his enor­mous talent, his genius, had then brought the raw material to life and turned it into a masterpiece. Although obvious to me, this might not have been so obvious to detractors of the author and his work.” I gestured with my free hand, as if to sweep them all aside. “I had no intention of throwing stones at my hero. Particularly now, in these times of mediocrity and lack of imagination... Times in which people no longer admire mar­vels, as theater audiences and the readers of serials used to. They hissed at the villains and cheered on the heroes with no inhibitions.” I shook my head sadly. “That applause unfortu­nately can no longer be heard. It’s become the exclusive domain of innocents and children.”

Corso was listening with an insolent, mocking expression. He might have agreed with me, but he was the grudge-bearing type and refused to allow my explanation to grant me any sort of moral alibi.

“In short,” he said, “you decided to destroy the manuscript.”

I smiled smugly. He was trying to be too clever.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I decided to do something better: to make a dream come true.”