The Club Dumas

was the man with the scar.

“Who’s Rochefort?”

“His name is Laszlo Nicolavic. He’s a character actor who specializes in villains. He played Rochefort in the series Andreas Frey made for British television a couple of years ago. He’s played Gonzaga in Lagardere, Levasseur in Captain Blood, La Tour d’Azyr in Scaramouche, Rupert de Hentzau in The Pris­oner of Zenda. He’s fascinated by the genre, and has applied to join the Club Dumas. Liana was quite taken with him and insisted he work with her.”

“Laszlo certainly took his part seriously.”

“I’m afraid he did. I suspect he’s trying to gain points so his admission is approved quickly. I also suspect that he serves as her occasional lover.” I smiled like a man of the world, hoping it was convincing. “Liana is young, beautiful, and passionate. Let’s say I stimulate her intellectual side and that Laszlo takes care of her impetuous nature’s more down-to-earth needs.”

“What else?”

“That’s almost all. Nicolavic, or Rochefort, took charge of getting the Dumas manuscript from you. That’s why he fol­lowed you from Madrid to Toledo and Sintra, while Liana headed for Paris, taking La Ponte with her as a backup in case their original plan failed and you didn’t see reason. You know the rest: you didn’t let them snatch the manuscript from you, Milady and Rochefort got slightly carried away, and that brought you here.” I paused, reflecting on the events. “Do you know something? I wonder whether instead of Laszlo Nicolavic I shouldn’t recommend you as a member of the club.”

He didn’t even ask whether I really meant it or was only being sarcastic. He removed his battered glasses and cleaned them mechanically, absorbed in his thoughts. “Is that all?” he said at last.

“Of course.” I pointed to the reception room. “There’s your proof.”

He put his glasses on and took a deep breath. I didn’t at all like the look on his face.

“What about the Delomelanicon? What about Richelieu’s connection with The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows?” He came closer, tapping me on the chest until I had to take a step back. “Do you take me for a fool? You’re not going to tell me that you knew nothing about the link between Dumas and that book, his pact with the devil and all the rest of it—Victor Fargas’s murder in Sintra and the fire at Baroness Ungern’s apartment in Paris. Did you give my name to the police yourself? And what about the book hidden in the three copies? Or the nine prints engraved by Lucifer, reprinted by Aristide Torchia on his return from Prague ‘by authority and permission of the superiors,’ and the whole damn business....”

He said it all in a torrent, his chin jutting aggressively, his eyes piercing into me. I took another step back, open-mouthed.

“You’ve gone mad!” I protested indignantly. “Can you tell me what you’re talking about?”

He took out a box of matches and lit his cigarette, cupping a hand around the flame. Through the glare reflected in his glasses, he kept his eyes fixed on me. Then he told me his version of events.

when he finished, we both stood in silence. We were leaning on the damp balustrade, next to each other, watching the lights of the reception room. Corso’s story had lasted for the duration of the cigarette, and he now stubbed it out on the ground.

“I suppose,” I said, “I should now confess, say, ‘Yes, it’s all true,’ and hold out my hands for you to handcuff them. Is that what you’re expecting?”

He hesitated. His recital of the story didn’t seem to have given him confidence in his conclusions.

“But there is a link,” he muttered.

I looked at his narrow shadow on the marble flagstones of the terrace floor, dark against the rectangles of light cast from the reception room and stretching beyond the steps into the darkness of the garden.

“I’m afraid,” I said, “that your imagination has been playing tricks on you.”

He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t imagine that Victor Fargas was drowned in the pond, or that Baroness Ungern was burned with her books. Those things happened. They were real. The two stories are mixed up.”

“You’ve just said it yourself—there are two stories. Maybe all that links them is your own intertextual reading.”

“Spare me the technical jargon. The Dumas chapter trig­gered everything.” He looked at me resentfully. “Your goddamn club and all your little games.”

“Don’t lay the blame on me. Games are perfectly valid. If this were a work of fiction and not a real story, you as the reader would be principally responsible.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“I’m not. From what you’ve just told me I deduce that, playing with facts and literary references, you constructed a theory and drew fantastic conclusions. But facts are objective, and you can’t overlay them with your personal ideas. The story of ‘The Anjou Wine’ and the story about this mysterious book, The Nine Doors, are completely unrelated.”

“You all led me to believe ...”

“We, and by we I mean Liana Taillefer, Laszlo Nicolavic, and myself, did nothing of the sort. It was you who filled in the blanks on your own, as if what happened were a novel based on trickery, with Lucas Corso the reader too clever for his own good. Nobody ever told you that things were actually as you thought. No, the responsibility is entirely yours, my friend. The real villain in the piece is your excessive intertex­tual reading and linking of literary references.”

“What else could I do? To take action, I needed some strat­egy, I couldn’t just sit there waiting. In any strategy, one builds a picture of one’s opponent, and the picture influences one’s next move.... Wellington did such-and-such, thinking that Napoleon was thinking of doing such-and-such. And Napo­leon ...”

“Napoleon made the mistake of confusing Blucher with Grouchy. Military strategy is as risky as literary strategy. Listen, Corso, there are no innocent readers anymore. Each overlays the text with his own perverse view. A reader is the total of all he’s read, in addition to all the films and television he’s seen. To the information supplied by the author he’ll always add his own. And that’s where the danger lies: an excess of references caused you to create the wrong opponent, or an imaginary opponent.”

“The information was false.”

“No. The information a book provides is an objective given. It may be presented by a malevolent author who wishes to mislead, but it is never false. It is the reader who makes a false reading.”

Corso seemed to be thinking carefully. He shifted to face the garden in darkness. “Then there must be another author,” he said quietly.

He stood motionless. After a time he took the folder with “The Anjou Wine” from under his coat and put it to one side, on the moss-covered stone.

“This story has two authors,” he insisted.

“That’s possible,” I said, taking the Dumas manuscript. “And maybe one is more malevolent than the other. My story was the serial. You’ll have to look for the crime novel elsewhere.”

 XVI. A DEVICE WORTHY OF A GOTHIC NOVEL

“Here is the vexing part of the matter,” said Porthos.

“In the old days one didn ‘t have to explain anything.

One just fought because one fought.”

—A. Dumas, the vicomte de bragelonne

Leaning his head back against the driver’s seat, Lucas Corso looked at the view. He had pulled off onto the shoulder at the final bend of the road before it dipped into the town. Surrounded by ancient walls, the old quarter floated in mist from the river, suspended in the air like a ghostly blue island. It was a hazy world without light or shadow. A cold, hesitant dawn over Castille, with the first glim­mer of light showing roofs, chimneys, and bell towers to the east.

He wanted to look at the time, but water had got into his watch during the storm in Meung. The glass was misted and the dial illegible. Corso saw his exhausted eyes in the rearview mirror. Meung-sur-Loire, on the eve of the first Monday in April. They were now far away, and it was Tuesday. It had been a long return journey, and all