The Club Dumas

IX. THE BOOKSELLER ON THE RUE BONAPARTE

Lucas Corso ordered a second gin and settled back comfortably in the wicker chair. It was pleasant in the sun. He was sitting on the terrace of the Café Atlas on the Rue de Buci, in a rectangle of light that framed the tables. It was one of those cold, luminous mornings when the left bank of the Seine crawls with people: disoriented Japanese, Anglo-Saxons in sneakers with metro tickets marking their place in a Hemingway novel, ladies with baskets full of lettuces and baguettes, and slender gallery owners who've had their noses fixed, all heading for a café during their lunch break. An attractive young woman was looking in the window of a luxury charcuterie, on the arm of a middle-aged, well-dressed man who might have been an antique dealer or scoundrel, or both. There was also a Harley Davidson with all its shiny chrome, a bad-tempered fox terrier tied up at the door of an expensive wine shop, a young man with braids playing the flute outside a boutique. And at the table next to Corso's, a couple of very elegant Africans kissing on the mouth in a leisurely way, as if they had all the time in the world and as if the arms race, AIDS, and the hole in the ozone layer were all insignificant on that sunny Parisian morning.

He saw her at the end of the Rue Mazarin, turning the corner toward the café where he waited. With her boyish looks, her duffel coat open over her jeans, her eyes like two points of light against her suntan, visible from a distance in the crowd, in the street overflowing with dazzling sunlight. Devilishly pretty, La Ponte would no doubt have said, clearing his throat and turning his best side—where his beard was a little thicker and curlier—to her. But Corso wasn't La Ponte, so he didn't say or think anything. He just gave a hostile glance at the waiter, who was putting a glass of gin on his table—"Pas d'Bols, m'sieu"—and handed him the exact amount on the bill—"Service compris, young man"—before looking back at the approaching girl. As far as love went, Nikon had left him a hole in the stomach the size of a clipful of bullets. That was enough love. Nor was Corso sure whether he had, now or ever, a good profile. And he was damned if he cared, anyway.

He took off his glasses and cleaned them with his handkerchief. The street was a series of vague outlines, of shapes with blurred faces. One stood out and became clearer as it drew nearer, although it never grew completely sharp: short hair, long legs, and white sneakers acquired definition as he focused on her with difficulty. She sat down in the empty chair.

"I found the shop. It's a couple of blocks away."

He put his glasses back on and looked at her without answering. They had traveled together from Lisbon, leaving Sintra for the airport posthaste, as old Dumas would have said. Twenty minutes before departure, Corso phoned Amilcar Pinto to tell him that Fargas's torment as a book collector was over and that the plan was canceled. Pinto would still be paid the sum agreed, for his trouble. Apart from being surprised—the call had woken him—Pinto reacted fairly well. All he said was, "I don't know what you're talking about, Corso, you and I didn't see each other last night in Sintra." But he promised he'd make some discreet inquiries into Fargas's death. After he heard about it officially, of course. For the time being, he knew nothing and didn't want to, and as for the autopsy, Corso should hope that the forensic report would give the cause of death as suicide. Just in case, Pinto would pass the description of the individual with the scar on to the relevant departments as a possible suspect. He'd keep in touch by phone. He urged Corso not to come back to Portugal for a while. "Oh, and one last thing," added Pinto as the departure of the Paris flight was being announced. Next time, before he thought of involving a friend in murder, Corso should think twice. Corso hurriedly protested his innocence as the phone swallowed his last escudo. Yeah, yeah, said Pinto, that's what they all say.

The girl was waiting in the departure lounge. Corso, still dazed and in no condition to tie up loose ends (there were loose ends all over the place), was surprised to see that she had been extremely efficient and managed to get them two plane tickets without any difficulty. "I just inherited some money" was her answer when, seeing that she had paid for both, he made an ironic remark about the limited funds she supposedly had. Afterward, during the two-hour flight from Lisbon to Paris, she refused to answer any of his questions. All in good time, she repeated, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, as if sneaking a glance, before she became absorbed in the trails of condensation left by the plane in the cold air. Then she fell asleep, or pretended to, resting her head on his shoulder. Corso could tell from her breathing that she was awake. It was a convenient way of avoiding questions that she wasn't prepared, or allowed, to answer.

Anyone else in his situation would have insisted on answers, would have shaken her out of her pretense. But Corso was a well-trained, patient wolf, with the instincts and reflexes of a hunter. After all, the girl was his only real lead in this unreal, novelistic, ridiculous situation. In addition, at this point in the script he had fully assumed the role of reader-protagonist that someone, whoever was tying the knots on the back of the rug, on the underside of the plot, seemed to be offering him with a wink that could be either contemptuous or conspiratorial, he couldn't tell which.

"Somebody's setting me up," Corso said out loud, nine thousand meters above the Bay of Biscay. He looked at the girl, but she didn't move. Annoyed by her silence, he moved his shoulder away. Her head lolled for a moment. Then she sighed and made herself comfortable again, this time leaning against the window.

"Of course they are," she said at last, sleepily, scornfully, her eyes still closed. "Any idiot could see that."

"What happened to Fargas?"

"You saw yourself," she said after a moment. "He drowned."

"Who did it?"

She turned her head slowly, from side to side, then looked out of the window. She slid her hand, slender, tan, with short unpamted nails, slowly across the armrest. She stopped at the edge, as if her fingers had come up against an invisible object.

"It doesn't matter."

Corso grimaced. He looked as if he was about to laugh, but instead showed his teeth.

"It does to me. It matters a lot."

The girl shrugged. They weren't concerned about the same things, she seemed to imply. They didn't have the same priorities.

Corso persisted. "What's your part in all this?"

"I already told you. To take care of you."

She turned and looked at him as directly as she had been evasive a moment ago. She slid her hand over the armrest again, as if to bridge the distance between her and him. She was altogether too near, so Corso moved away instinctively, embarrassed, uneasy. In the pit of his stomach, in Nikon's wake, obscure, disturbing things stirred. The emptiness and pain were returning. In the girl's eyes, silent eyes and without memory, he could see the reflection of ghosts from the past, he could feel them brush his skin.

"Who sent you?"

She lowered her lashes over her luminous eyes, and it was as if she had turned a page. There was nothing there anymore. The girl wrinkled her nose, irritated.

"You're boring me, Corso."

She turned to the window and looked at the view. The great expanse of blue flecked with tiny white threads was split in the distance by a yellow and ochre line. Land ho. France. Next stop, Paris. Or next chapter. To be continued in next week's issue. Ending, sword raised, a cliffhanger typical of all romantic serials. He thought of the Quinta da Soledade, the water trickling from the fountain, Fargas's body among the water lilies and dead leaves in the pond. He flushed and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. With good reason he felt like a man on the run. Absurd. Rather than fleeing by choice, he was being forced to.

He looked at the girl and tried to size up his situation with the necessary objectivity. Maybe he wasn't running away but toward something instead. Or maybe the mystery he was trying to escape was hidden in his own suitcase. "The Anjou Wine." The Nine Doors. Irene Adler. The flight attendant, with a trained, fatuous smile, said something as she passed. Corso looked at her without seeing her, absorbed in his own thoughts. If only he knew whether the end of the story was already written, or whether he himself was writing it as he went along, chapter by chapter.

He didn't say another word to the girl. When they arrived at Orly, he ignored her, although he was aware of her walking behind him along the airport concourses. At passport control, after showing his identity card, he turned around to see what kind of document she had, but all he saw was a passport bound in black leather without any markings. It must have been European, because she went through the gate for EC citizens. Outside, while Corso was climbing into a taxi, giving his usual address, the Louvre Concorde, she slipped into the seat beside him. They drove to the hotel in silence. She got out first and let him pay the fare. The driver didn't have any change, so Corso was slightly delayed. By the time he crossed the lobby, she had already checked in and was walking behind a porter who had her rucksack. She waved at Corso before she entered the elevator....

"It's a very nice shop. Replinger, Booksellers, it says. Autographs and historical documents. And it's open."

She gestured to the waiter that she didn't want to order and inclined her head toward Corso across the table, in the café on the Rue de Buci. Like a mirror her liquid eyes reflected the street, which itself was a reflection in the café window.

"We could go there now."

They had met again at breakfast, as Corso was reading the papers at one of the windows overlooking the Place du Palais Royal. She had said good morning and sat down at the table. Had devoured toast and croissants with a healthy appetite. Then looked at Corso, with a rim of milky coffee on her upper lip, like a little girl. "Where do we start?"

So now there they were, two blocks from Achille Replinger's bookshop. The girl had offered to go and find it while Corso drank his first gin of the day. He had a feeling it wouldn't be the last.

"We could go there now," she said again.

Corso still hesitated. He'd seen her tanned skin in his dreams. He was holding her hand, crossing a deserted plain at dusk. Columns of smoke rose on the horizon, volcanoes about to erupt. Occasionally they passed a soldier with a grave face, his armor covered with dust, who stared at them in silence, the man as distant and cold as the sullen Trojans of Hades. The plain was darkening on the horizon, and the columns of smoke grew thicker. The impassive, ghostly faces of the dead warriors contained a warning. Corso wanted to get away. He pulled the girl along by the hand, anxious not to leave her behind, but the air was becoming thick and hot, stifling, dark. Their flight ended in an interminable fall, an agony in slow motion. The darkness burned like an oven. The only link with the outside was his hand holding on to to hers in an effort to continue. The last thing he felt was her hand, its grip fading, finally turn to ash. And in front of him, in the darkness enveloping the burning plain and his mind, white marks, traces as fleeting as lightning, picked out the ghostly contour of a skull. It wasn't pleasant to recall. To remove the taste of ash from his mouth and erase these horrors, Corso finished his glass of gin and looked at the girl. She was watching him, a disciplined collaborator waiting quietly for instructions. Serene, she simply accepted her strange part in the story. Her loyal expression was inexplicable.

She stood up at the same time as he did. He put the canvas bag over his shoulder, and they made their way slowly toward the river. The girl, walking on the inside, occasionally stopped in front of a shopwindow, calling his attention to a picture, an engraving, a book. She looked at everything with wide eyes and intense curiosity and seemed nostalgic as she smiled thoughtfully, as if searching for traces of herself in those old things. As if, in some corner of her memory, she shared a common past with the few survivors washed up by the tide after each of history's inexorable shipwrecks.

There were two bookshops, one on either side of the street, facing each other. Achille Replinger's had a very old, elegant front of varnished wood, with a sign that said LIVRES ANCIENS, AUTOGRAPHES ET DOCUMENTS HISTORIQUES. Corso told the girl to wait outside, and she didn't object. As he went to the door, he looked in the window and saw her reflection over his shoulder. She was on the other side of the street, watching him.

A bell rang as he pushed the door open. There was an oak table, shelves full of old books, stands with folders of prints, and a dozen old wooden filing cabinets. These had letters in alphabetical order, carefully written in brass slots. On the wall was a framed autograph with the caption "Fragment of Tartuffe. Moliere." Also, three good prints: Victor Hugo, Flaubert, and Dumas in the center.

Achille Replinger was standing by the table. He was thickset and had a reddish complexion. Porthos with a bushy gray mustache and double chin overlapping the collar of his shirt, which was worn with a knitted tie. He was expensively but carelessly dressed. His jacket strained to contain his girth, and his flannel trousers were creased and sagging.

"Corso ... Lucas Corso," he said, holding Boris Balkan's letter of introduction in his thick, strong fingers and frowning. "Yes, he called me the other day. Something about Dumas."

Corso put his bag on the table and took out the folder with the fifteen manuscript pages of "The Anjou Wine." The bookseller spread them out in front of him, arching his brow.

"Interesting," he said softly. "Very interesting."

He wheezed as he spoke, breathing with difficulty like an asthmatic. He took his glasses from one of his jacket pockets and put them on after a brief glance at his visitor. He bent over the pages. When he looked up, he was smiling ecstatically.

"Extraordinary," he said. "I'll buy it from you here and now."

"It's not for sale."

Replinger seemed surprised. He pursed his lips, nearly pouting. "I thought..."

"I just need an expert opinion. You'll be paid for your time, of course."

Achille Replinger shook his head. He didn't care about the money. Confused, he stopped to look at Corso mistrustfully a couple of times over his glasses. He bent over the manuscript again.

"A pity," he said at last. He regarded Corso with curiosity, as if wondering how on earth such a thing had fallen into his hands. "How did you get hold of it?"

"I inherited it from an old aunt. Have you ever seen it before?"

Still suspicious, Replinger looked over Corso's shoulder, through the window at the street, as if someone out there might be able to give him some information about his visitor. Or maybe he was considering how to answer Corso's question. He pulled at his mustache, as if it were false and he were making sure it was still in place, and smiled evasively.

"Here in the quartier you can never be sure if you've seen something before.... This has always been a good area for people who deal in books and prints. People come here to buy and sell, and everything has passed several times through the same hands." He paused to catch his breath, then looked at Corso uneasily. "I don't think so.... No, I've never seen this manuscript before," he said. He looked out at the street again, flushed. "I'd be sure if I had."

"So it's authentic?" asked Corso.

"Well ... In fact, yes." Replinger wheezed as he stroked the blue pages. He seemed to be trying to stop himself from touching them. Finally he held one up between his thumb and forefinger. "Semirounded, medium-weight handwriting, no annotations or erasures ... Almost no punctuation marks, and unexpected capital letters. This is definitely Dumas at his peak, toward the middle of his life, when he wrote The Musketeers." He'd become more animated as he spoke. Now he fell silent and lifted a finger. Corso could see him smiling beneath his mustache. He seemed to have reached a decision. "Wait just one moment."

He went over to one of the filing cabinets marked D and took out some buff-colored folders.

"All this is by Alexandre Dumas père. The handwriting is identical."

There were about a dozen documents, some unsigned or else initialed A. D. Some had the full signature. Most were short notes to publishers, letters to friends, or invitations.

"This is one of his American autographs," explained Replinger. "Lincoln requested one, and Dumas sent him ten dollars and a hundred autographs. They were sold in Pittsburgh for charity." He showed Corso all the documents with restrained but obvious professional pride. "Look at this one. An invitation to dine with him on Montecristo, at the house he had built in Port-Marly. Sometimes he signed only his initials, and sometimes he used pseudonyms. But not all the autographs in circulation are authentic. At the newspaper The Musketeer, which he owned, there was a man called Viellot who could imitate his handwriting and signature. And during the last three years of his life, Dumas's hands trembled so much he had to dictate his work."

"Why blue paper?"

"He had it sent from Lille. It was made for him specially by a printer who was a great admirer. He almost always used this color, especially for the novels. Occasionally he used pale pink for his articles, or yellow for poetry. He used several different pens, depending on the kind of thing he was writing. And he couldn't stand blue ink."

Corso pointed to the four white pages of the manuscript, with notes and corrections. "What about these?"

Replinger frowned. "Maquet. His collaborator, Auguste Maquet. They are corrections made by Dumas to the original text." He stroked his mustache. Then he bent over and read aloud in a theatrical voice: "Horrifying! Horrifying!" murmured Athos, as Porthos shattered the bottles and Aramis gave somewhat belated orders to send for a confessor.... Replinger broke off with a sigh. He nodded, satisfied, and then showed Corso the page. "Look: all Maquet wrote was: And he expired before d'Artagnan's terrified companions. Dumas crossed out that line and added others above it, fleshing out the passage with more dialogue."

"What can you tell me about Maquet?"

Replmger shrugged his powerful shoulders, hesitating.

"Not a great deal." Once again he sounded evasive. "He was ten years younger than Dumas. A mutual friend, Gérard de Nerval, recommended him. Maquet wrote historical novels without success. He showed Dumas the original version of one, Buvat the Good, or the Conspiracy of Cellamare. Dumas turned the story into The Chevalier d'Harmental and had it published under his name. In return Maquet was paid twelve hundred francs."

"Can you tell from the handwriting and the style of writing when 'The Anjou Wine' was written?"

"Of course I can. It's similar to other documents from 1844, the year of The Three Musketeers.... These white and blue pages fit in with his way of working. Dumas and his associate would piece the story together. From Courtilz's D'Artagnan they took the names of their heroes, the journey to Paris, the intrigue with Milady, and the character of the innkeeper's wife—Dumas gave Madame Bonacieux the features of his mistress, Belle Krebsamer. Constance's kidnapping came from the Memoirs of De la Porte a man in the confidence of Anne of Austria. And they obtained the famous story of the diamond tags from La Rochefoucauld and from a book by Roederer, Political and Romantic Intrigues from the Court of France. At that time, in addition to The Three Musketeers, they were also writing Queen Margot and The Chevalier de la Maison Rouge."

Replinger paused again for breath. He was becoming more and more flushed and animated as he spoke. He mentioned the last few titles in a rush, stumbling a little over the words. He was afraid of boring Corso, but at the same time he wanted to give him all the information he could.

"There's an amusing anecdote about The Chevalier de la Maison Rouge," he went on when he'd caught his breath. "When the serial was announced with its original title, The Knight of Rougeville, Dumas received a letter of complaint from a marquis of the same name. This made him change the title, but soon afterward he received another letter. 'My dear Sir,' wrote the marquis. 'Please give your novel whatever title you wish. I am the last of my family and will blow my brains out in an hour.' And the Marquis de Rougeville did indeed commit suicide, over some woman."

He gasped for air. Large and pink-cheeked, he smiled apologetically and leaned one of his strong hands on the table next to the blue pages. He looked like an exhausted giant, thought Corso. Porthos in the cave at Locmaria.

"Boris Balkan didn't do you justice. You're an expert on Dumas. I'm not surprised you're friends."

"We respect each other. But I'm only doing my job." Replinger looked down, embarrassed. "I'm a conscientious Frenchman who works with annotated books and documents and handwritten dedications. Always by nineteenth-century French authors. I couldn't evaluate the things that come to me if I wasn't sure who wrote them and how. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly," answered Corso. "It's the difference between a professional and a vulgar salesman."

Replinger looked at him with gratitude. "You're in the profession. It's obvious."

"Yes," Corso grimaced. "The oldest profession."

Replinger's laugh ended in another asthmatic wheeze. Corso took advantage of the pause to turn the conversation to Maquet again.

"Tell me how they did it," he said.

"Their technique was complicated." Replinger gestured at the chairs and table, as if the scene had taken place there. "Dumas drew up a plan for each novel and discussed it with his collaborator, who then did the research and made an outline of the story, or a first draft. These were the white pages. Then Dumas would rewrite it on the blue paper. He worked in his shirtsleeves, and only in the morning or at night, hardly ever in the afternoon. He didn't drink coffee or spirits while writing, only seltzer water. Also he rarely smoked. He wrote page after page under pressure from his publishers, who were always demanding more. Maquet sent him the material in bulk by post, and Dumas would complain about the delays." Replinger took a sheet from the folder and put it on the table in front of Corso. "Here's proof, in one of the notes they exchanged during the writing of Queen Margot. As you can see Dumas was complaining. "All is going perfectly, despite the six or seven pages of politics we'll have to endure so as to revive interest... If we're not going faster, dear friend, it is your fault. I've been hard at work since nine o'clock yesterday." He paused to take a breath and pointed at "The Anjou Wine." "These four pages in Maquet's handwriting with annotations by Dumas were probably received by Dumas only moments before Le Siecle went to press. So he had to make do with rewriting a few of them and hurriedly correcting some of the other pages on the original itself."

He put the papers back in their folders and returned them to the filing cabinet, under D. Corso had time to cast a final glance at Dumas's note demanding more pages from his collaborator. In addition to the handwriting, which was similar in every way, the paper was identical—blue with faint squaring—to that of "The Anjou Wine" manuscript. One folio was cut in two—the bottom more uneven than the others. Maybe all the pages had been part of the same ream lying on the novelist's desk.

"Who really wrote The Three Musketeers?"

Replinger, busy shutting the filing cabinet, took some time to answer.

"I can't give you a definitive answer. Maquet was a resourceful man, he was well versed in history, he had read a lot ... but he didn't have the master's touch."

"They fell out with each other in the end, didn't they?"

"Yes. A pity. Did you know they traveled to Spain together at the time of Isabel II's wedding? Dumas even published a serial, From Madrid to Cadiz, in the form of letters. As for Maquet, he later went to court to demand that he be declared the author of eighteen of Dumas's novels, but the judges ruled that his work had been only preparatory. Today he is considered a mediocre writer who used Dumas's fame to make money. Although there are some who believe that he was exploited—the great man's ghostwriter...."

"What do you think?"

Replinger glanced furtively at Dumas's portrait above the door.

"I've already told you that I'm not an expert like my friend Mr. Balkan, just a trader, a bookseller." He seemed to reflect, weighing where his professional opinion ended and his personal taste began. "But I'd like to draw your attention to something. In France between 1870 and 1894, three million books and eight million serials were sold with the name of Alexandre Dumas on the title page. Novels written before, during, and after his collaboration with Maquet. I think that has some significance."

"Fame in his lifetime, at least," said Corso.

"Definitely. For half a century he was the voice of Europe. Boats were sent over from the Americas for the sole purpose of bringing back consignments of his novels. They were read just as much in Cairo, Moscow, Istanbul, and Chandernagor as in France.... Dumas lived life to the full, enjoying all his pleasures and his fame. He lived and had a good time, stood on the barricades, fought in duels, was taken to court, chartered boats, paid pensions out of his own pocket, loved, ate, drank, earned ten million and squandered twenty, and died gently in his sleep, like a child." Replinger pointed at the corrections to Maquet's pages. "It could be called many things: talent, genius.... But whatever it was, he didn't improvise, or steal from others." He thumped his chest like Porthos. "It's something you have in here. No other writer has known such glory in his lifetime. Dumas rose from nothing to have it all. As if he'd made a pact with God."

"Yes," said Corso. "Or with the devil."

HE CROSSED THE ROAD to the other bookshop. Outside, under an awning, stacks of books were piled up on trestle tables. The girl was still there, rummaging among the books and bunches of old pictures and postcards. She was standing against the light. The sun was on her shoulders, turning the hair on the back of her head and her temples golden. She didn't stop what she was doing when he arrived.

"Which one would you choose?" she asked. She was hesitating between a sepia postcard of Tristan and Isolde embracing and another of Daumier's The Picture Hunter. Undecided, she held them out in front of her.

"Take both," suggested Corso. In the corner of his eye he caught sight of a man who had stopped at the stall and was about to reach for a thick bundle of cards held together by a rubber band. Corso, with the reflex of a hunter, grabbed the packet. The man left, muttering. Corso looked through the cards and chose several with a Napoleonic theme: Empress Marie Louise, the Bonaparte family, the death of the Emperor, and his final victory—a Polish lancer and two hussars on horseback in front of the cathedral at Reims, during the French campaign of 1814, waving flags snatched from the enemy. After hesitating a moment, he added one of Marshall Ney in dress uniform and another of an elderly Wellington, posing for posterity. Lucky old devil.

The girl's long tanned hands moved deftly through the cards and yellowed printed paper. She chose a few more postcards: Robespierre, Saint-Just, and an elegant portrait of Richelieu in his cardinal's habit and wearing the insignia of the Order of the Holy Spirit.

"How appropriate," remarked Corso acidly.

She didn't answer. She moved on toward a pile of books, and the sun slid across her shoulders, enveloping Corso in a golden haze. Dazzled, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the girl was showing him a thick volume in quarto.

"What do you think?"

He glanced at it: The Three Musketeers, with the original illustrations by Leloir, bound in cloth and leather, in good condition. Looking at her, he saw that she had a lopsided smile and was waiting, watching him intently.

"Nice edition," was all he said. "Are you intending to read it?"

"Of course. Don't tell me the ending."

Corso laughed halfheartedly.

"As if I could tell you the ending," he said, sorting the bundles of cards.

"I HAVE A PRESENT for you," said the girl.

They were walking along the Left Bank, past the stalls of the bouquinistes with their prints hanging in plastic and cellophane covers and their secondhand books lined up along the parapet. A bateau-mouche was heading slowly upriver, straining under the weight of what Corso estimated to be five thousand Japanese and as many Sony camcorders. Across the street, behind exclusive shopwindows covered with Visa and American Express stickers, snooty antique dealers scanned the horizon for a Kuwaiti, a black marketeer, or an African minister of state to whom they might sell Eugénie Grandet's Sevres porcelain bidet. Their sales patter delivered in the most proper accent, of course.

"I don't like presents," muttered Corso sullenly. "Some guys once accepted a wooden horse. Handcrafted by the Achaeans, it said on the label. The fools."

"Weren't there any dissenters?"

"One, with his sons. But some beasts came out of the sea and made a lovely sculpture of them. Hellenistic, I seem to remember. Rhodes school. In those days, the gods took sides."

"They always have." The girl was staring at the muddy river as if it were carrying away her memories. Corso saw her smile thoughtfully, absently. "I never knew an impartial god. Or devil." She turned to him suddenly—her earlier thoughts seemed to have been washed downstream. "Do you believe in the devil, Corso?"

He looked at her intently, but the river had also washed away the images that filled her eyes seconds before. All he could see there now was liquid green, and light.

"I believe in stupidity and ignorance." He smiled wearily at the girl. "And I think that the best cut of all is the one you get here. See?" He pointed at his groin. "In the femoral artery. While you're in somebody's arms."

"What are you so afraid of, Corso? That I'll put my arms around you? That the sky'll fall on you?"

"I'm afraid of wooden horses, cheap gin, and pretty girls. Especially when they give me presents. And when they go by the name of the woman who defeated Sherlock Holmes."

They continued walking and were now on the wooden planks of the Pont des Arts. The girl stopped and leaned on the metal rail, by a street artist selling tiny watercolors.

"I like this bridge," she said. "No cars. Only lovers and old ladies in hats. People with nothing to do. This bridge has absolutely no common sense."

Corso said nothing. He was watching the barges, masts down, pass between the pillars that supported the iron structure. Nikon's steps had once echoed alongside his on that bridge. He remembered that she too stopped at a stall that sold watercolors. Maybe it was the same one. She wrinkled her nose, because her light meter couldn't deal with the dazzling sunshine that came slanting across the spire and towers of Notre-Dame. They bought foie gras and a bottle of Burgundy. Later they had it for dinner in their hotel room, sitting on their bed watching one of those wordy discussions on TV with huge studio audiences that the French like so much. Earlier, on the bridge, Nikon had taken a photograph of him without his knowing. She confessed this, her mouth full of bread and foie gras, her lips moistened with Burgundy, as she stroked his side with her bare foot. I know you hate it, Lucas Corso, but you'll just have to put up with it. I got you in profile on the bridge watching the barges pass underneath, you almost look handsome this time, you bastard. Nikon was Ashkenazi, with large eyes. Her father had been number 77,843 in Treblinka, saved by the bell in the last round. Whenever Israeli soldiers appeared on TV, invading places in huge tanks, she jumped off the bed, naked, and kissed the screen, her eyes wet with tears, whispering "Shalom, shalom" in a caressing tone. The same tone she used when she called Corso by his first name, until the day she stopped. Nikon. He never got to see the photograph of him leaning on the Pont des Arts, watching the barges pass under the arches. In profile, almost looking handsome, you bastard.

When he looked up, Nikon had gone. Another woman was by his side. Tall, with tanned skin, a short boyish haircut, and eyes the color of freshly washed grapes, almost colorless. For a second he blinked, confused, until everything fell back into place. The present cut cleanly, like a scalpel. Corso, in profile, in black and white (Nikon always worked in black and white), fluttered down into the river and was swept downstream with the dead leaves and the rubbish discharged by the barges and the drains. Now, the woman who wasn't Nikon was holding a small, leather-bound book. She was holding it out to him.

"I hope you like it."

The Devil in Love, by Jacques Cazotte, the 1878 edition. When he opened it, Corso recognized the prints from the first edition in a facsimile appendix: Alvaro in the magic circle before the devil, who asks, "Che vuoi?"; Biondetta untangling her hair with her fingers; the handsome boy sitting at the harpsichord ... He chose a page at random:

... man emerged from a handful of earth and water. Why should a woman not be made of dew, earthly vapors, and rays of light, of the condensed residues of a rainbow? Where does the possible lie? And where the impossible?

He closed the book and looked up. His eyes met the smiling eyes of the girl. Below, in the water, the sun sparkled in the wake of a boat, and lights moved over her skin like the reflections from the facets of a diamond.

"Residues of a rainbow," quoted Corso. "What do you know of any of that?"

She ran her hand through her hair and turned her face to the sun, closing her eyes against the glare. Everything about her was light: the reflection of the river, the brightness of the morning, the two green slits between her dark eyelashes.

"I know what I was told a long time ago. The rainbow is the bridge between heaven and earth. It will shatter at the end of the world, once the devil has crossed it on horseback."

"Not bad. Did your grandmother tell you that?"

She shook her head. She looked at Corso again, absorbed and serious.

"I heard it told to a friend, Bileto." As she said the name, she stopped a moment and frowned tenderly, like a little girl revealing a secret. "He likes horses and wine, and he's the most optimistic person I know. He's still hoping to get back to heaven."

THEY CROSSED TO THE other side of the bridge. Strangely, Corso felt that the gargoyles of Notre-Dame were watching him from a distance. They were forgeries, of course, like so many other things. They and their infernal grimaces, horns, and goatee beards hadn't been there when honest master builders had looked up, sweaty and proud, and drunk a glass of eau-de-vie. Or when Quasimodo brooded in the bell towers over his unrequited love for the gypsy Esmeralda. But ever since Charles Laughton, as the hideous hunchback who resembled them, and Gina Lollobrigida in the remake—Technicolor, as Nikon would have specified—were executed in their shadow, it was impossible to think of Notre-Dame without the sinister neomedieval sentinels. Corso imagined the bird's-eye view: the Pont Neuf, and beyond it, narrow and dark in the luminous morning, the Pont des Arts over the gray-green band of river, with two tiny figures moving imperceptibly toward the right bank. Bridges and rainbows with black Caronte barges gliding slowly beneath the pillars and vaults of stone. The world is full of banks and rivers running between them, of men and women crossing bridges and fords, unaware of the consequences not looking back or beneath their feet, and with no loose change for the boatman.

They emerged opposite the Louvre and stopped at a traffic light before crossing. Corso shifted the strap of his canvas bag on his shoulder and glanced absently to right and left. The traffic was heavy, and he happened to notice one of the passing cars. He froze, turned to stone like a gargoyle on the cathedral.

"What's the matter?" asked the girl when the lights turned green and she saw that Corso wasn't moving. "You look like you've seen a ghost!"

He had. Not one but two. They were in the back of a taxi already moving off in the distance, engaged in animated conversation, and they hadn't noticed Corso. The woman was blond and very attractive. He recognized her immediately despite her hat and the veil covering her eyes. Liana Taillefer. Next to her, an arm around her shoulders, showing his best side and stroking his curly beard vainly, was Flavio La Ponte.