The Club Dumas

OEXE

String

Vau

Es

VI

CIS

Silver

Zayin

Epta

VII

CIS

Stone

Cheth

Octo

VIII

EM

Iron

Teth

Ennea

VIIII

ODED

Fire

There were beads of sweat on his forehead and around his mouth, as if the flame of the candles were also burning inside his body. He began to walk around the circle slowly and care­fully. He stopped a couple of times and bent over to adjust the position of an object: the rusty knife, the silver bracelet.

“You will place the elements on the serpent’s skin,” he re­cited without looking at Corso. He was following the circle with his finger but not quite touching it. “The nine elements are to be placed around it ‘in the direction of the rising sun’: from right to left.”

Corso took a step toward him. “Once more. Give me my money.”

Borja took no notice. He had his back to Corso and was pointing at the square drawn inside the circle.

“ ‘The serpent will swallow the seal of Saturn....’ The seal of Saturn is the most ancient and simple of the magic squares: the first nine numbers placed inside nine boxes, set out so that each row, whether down, across, or diagonally, adds up to the same number.”

He bent and wrote nine numbers inside the box in chalk:

4

9

2

3

5

7

8

1

6

Corso took another step. As he did so he trod on a piece of paper covered with numbers:

4+9+2=15 3+5+7=15 8+1+6=15

4+3+8=15 9+5+1=15 2+7+6=15

4+5+6=15

2+5+8=15

A candle went out with a hiss, having burned down on the charred frontispiece of De occulta philosophia by Cornelius Agripa. Borja’s attention was still on the circle and the square. He stared at them intently, his arms folded on his chest, his head bowed. He looked like a player before a strange board, pondering his next move.

“There’s one thing,” he said, now no longer addressing Corso but talking to himself. Hearing his own voice apparently helped him to think. “Something that the ancients didn’t foresee, at

least not expressly ... Added together in any direction, from up to down, down to up, left to right, or right to left, you get fifteen. But applying the codes of the cabbalists, fifteen also becomes a one and a five, which, added together, make six.... Six surrounds each side of the magical square with the serpent, the dragon, or the Beast, whatever you want to call it.”

Corso didn’t have to work it out for himself. It was on an­other piece of paper on the floor:

 Borja knelt before the circle, his head bowed. The sweat on his face gleamed in the candlelight. He was holding another piece of paper and reading out the strange words written on it.

“ ‘You will open the seal nine times,’ says Torchia’s text. That means the key words obtained must be placed in the box that corresponds to its number. In that way we get the follow­ing sequence.”

1                            2          3          4          5          6          7          8          9

ONMAD              CIS      EM      EM      OEXE CIS      CIS      EM      ODED

“Written on the serpent, or the dragon.” He rubbed out the numbers in the boxes and inserted the corresponding words in their place. “This is how it looks, to God’s shame.”

EM

ODED

CIS

EM

OEXE

CIS

EM

ONMAD

CIS

“It has all been carried out,” muttered Borja as he wrote the final letters. His hand was trembling, and a drop of sweat slid from his forehead down his nose and onto the chalk-covered floor. “According to Torchia’s text, it is sufficient for ‘the mirror to reflect the path’ to pronounce the lost word that brings light from the darkness.... These phrases are in Latin. They mean nothing on their own. But inside they contain the exact essence of the Ferbum dimissum, the formula that makes Satan, our forebear, our mirror, and our accomplice, appear.”

He was kneeling in the center of the circle now, surrounded by all the signs, objects, and words written in the square. His hands were shaking so violently that he clasped them together, clawlike, his fingers covered with chalk, ink, and wax. Proud and sure of himself, he started to laugh under his breath, a mad chuckle. But Corso was sure Borja wasn’t insane. He looked around, aware that he was running out of time, and started to cross the distance between him and the book dealer. But he couldn’t make up his mind to cross the line and stand with him inside the circle.

Borja looked at him malevolently, guessing his fear.

“Come, Corso. Don’t you want to read it with me? Are you scared, or have you forgotten your Latin?” Light and shadow alternated with increasing speed on his face, as if the room were starting to spin. But the room was still. “Don’t you want to know what these words contain? On the back of that en­graving that pokes from between the pages of the Valeric

Lorena you’ll find the translation in Spanish. Place them before the mirror, as the masters of the art ordered. At least then you will know what Fargas and Baroness Ungern died for.”

Corso looked at the book, an incunabulum with a very old and worn parchment binding. Then he bent over cautiously, as if the pages contained a dangerous trap, and pulled out the engraving from between them. It was