The Club Dumas

VII. BOOK NUMBER ONE AND BOOK NUMBER TWO

With only a few minutes to go before the departure of the express train to Lisbon, he saw the girl. Corso was on the platform, about to mount the steps to his carriage—COMPANHIA INTERNACIONAL DE CARRUAGEMSCAMAS—when he bumped into her in a group of other passengers heading toward the first-class carriages. She was carrying a small rucksack and wearing the same blue duffel coat, but he didn't recognize her at first. He only felt that there was something familiar about her green eyes, so light they seemed transparent, and her very short hair. He continued to watch her for a moment, until she disappeared two carriages farther down. The whistle blew. As he climbed onto the train and the guard shut the door behind him, Corso remembered the scene: the girl sitting at one end of the table at the gathering of Boris Balkan and his circle in the café.

He walked along the corridor to his compartment. The station lights streamed past with increasing speed outside the windows, and the tram clattered rhythmically. Moving around the cramped compartment with difficulty, he hung up his coat and jacket before sitting down on the bunk, his canvas bag beside him. In it, together with The Nine Doors and the folder with the Dumas manuscript, was a book by Les Cases, the Memoirs of Saint Helena:

Friday, 14 July 1816. The Emperor has been unwell all night...

He lit a cigarette. Occasionally, when lights from the window strobed across his face, he would glance out before returning to the tale of Napoleon's slow agony and the wiliness of his English jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe. He frowned as he read, and adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. From time to time he stopped and stared for a moment at his own reflection in the window, and he made a face. Even now, he felt indignant at the way the victors had condemned the fallen titan to a miserable end, having him cling to a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Strange, going over the historical events and his earlier feelings about them from his present clearheaded perspective. How far away he seemed, that other Lucas Corso who reverently admired the Waterloo veteran's saber; the boy absorbing the family myths with aggressive enthusiasm, the precocious Bonapartist and avid reader of books with engravings of the glorious campaigns, names that echoed like drumrolls for a charge: Wagram, Jena, Smolensk, Marengo... The boy wide eyed with wonder had long ceased to exist; a hazy ghost of him eye sometimes appeared in Corso's memory, between the pages of a book, in a smell or a sound, or through a dark window with the rain from another country beating against it, outside in the night.

The conductor passed the door, ringing his bell. Half an hour till the restaurant car closed. Corso shut the book. He put on his jacket, slung the canvas bag over his shoulder, and left the compartment. At the end of the corridor, from the door, a cold draft blew through the passageway leading to the next sleeper. He felt the thundering beneath his feet as he crossed into the section of first-class carriages. He let a couple of passengers go by and then looked into the nearest compartment, which was only half full. The girl was there, by the door, wearing a sweater and jeans, her bare feet resting on the seat opposite. As Corso passed, she looked up from her book and their eyes met. He was about to nod briefly in her direction, but when she showed no sign of recognition, he stopped himself. She must have sensed something, because she looked at him with curiosity. But by then he was continuing down the corridor.

He ate his dinner, rocked by the swaying of the train, and had time for a coffee and a gin before they closed for the evening. The moon, in shades of raw silk, was rising. Telephone poles rushed past in the darkened plain, fleeting frames for a sequence of stills from a badly adjusted movie projector.

He was on his way back to his compartment when he saw the girl in the corridor of the first-class carriage. She had opened the window, and the cold night air was blowing against her face. As he came up to her, he turned sideways so he could get past. She turned toward him.

"I know you," she said.

Close up, her green eyes seemed even lighter, like liquid crystal, and luminous against her suntanned skin. It was only March, and with her hair parted like a boy's, her tan made her look unusual, sporty, pleasantly ambiguous. She was tall, slim, and supple. And very young.

"Yes," said Corso, pausing a moment. "A few days ago, at the café."

She smiled. Another contrast, this time of white teeth against brown skin. Her mouth was big and well defined. A pretty girl, Flavio La Ponte would have said, stroking his curly beard.

"You were the one asking about d'Artagnan."

The cold air from the window blew her hair. She was still barefoot. Her white sneakers were on the floor by her empty seat. He instinctively glanced at the book lying there: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. A cheap paperback, he noticed. The Mexican edition, published by Porrua.

"You'll catch cold," he said.

Still smiling, the girl shook her head, but she turned the handle and shut the window. Corso, about to go on his way, paused to find a cigarette. He did it as he always did, taking one directly from his pocket and putting it in his mouth, when he realized she was watching him.

"Do you smoke?" he asked hesitantly, stopping his hand halfway.

"Sometimes."

He put the cigarette in his mouth and took out another one. It was dark tobacco, without a filter, and as crushed as all the packs he usually carried with him. The girl took it. She looked to see the brand. Then she leaned over for Corso to light it, after his own, with the last match in the box.

"It's strong," she said, breathing out her first mouthful of smoke, but then made none of the fuss he expected. She held the cigarette in an unusual way, between forefinger and thumb, with the ember outward. "Are you in this carriage?"

"No, in the next one."

"You're lucky to have a sleeper." She tapped her jeans pocket, indicating a nonexistent wallet. "I wish I could. Luckily the compartment's half empty."

"Are you a student?"

"Sort of."

The train thundered into a tunnel. The girl turned then, as if the darkness outside drew her attention. Tense and alert, she leaned against her own reflection in the window. She seemed to be expecting something in the noisy rush of air. Then, when the train emerged into the open and small lights again punctuated the night like brush strokes as the train passed, she smiled, distant.

"I like trains," she said.

"Me too."

The girl was still facing the window, touching it with the fingertips of one hand. "Imagine," she said. She was smiling nostalgically, obviously remembering something. "Leaving Paris in the evening to wake up on the lagoon in Venice, en route to Istanbul..."

Corso made a face. How old could she be? Eighteen, twenty at most.

"Playing poker," he suggested, "between Calais and Brindisi."

She looked at him more attentively.

"Not bad." She thought a moment. "How about a champagne breakfast between Vienna and Nice?"

"Interesting. Like spying on Basil Zaharoff."

"Or getting drunk with Nijinsky."

"Stealing Coco Chanel's pearls."

"Flirting with Paul Morand ... Or Mr. Barnabooth."

They both laughed, Corso under his breath, she openly, resting her forehead on the cold glass. Her laugh was loud, frank, and boyish, matching her hair and her luminous green eyes.

"Trains aren't like that anymore," he said.

"I know."

The lights of a signal post passed like a flash of lightning. Then a dimly lit, deserted platform, with a sign made illegible by their speed. The moon was rising and now and then clarified the confused outline of trees and roofs. It seemed to be flying alongside the tram in a mad, purposeless race.

"What's your name?"

"Corso. And yours?"

"Irene Adler."

He looked at her intently, and she held his gaze calmly.

"That's not a proper name."

"Neither is Corso."

"You're wrong. I am Corso. The man who runs."

"You don't look like a man who runs anywhere. You seem the quiet type."

He bowed his head slightly, looking at the girl's bare feet on the floor of the corridor. He could tell she was staring at him, examining him. It made him feel uncomfortable. That was unusual. She was too young, he told himself. And too attractive. He automatically adjusted his crooked glasses and moved to go on his way.

"Have a good journey."

"Thanks."

He took a few steps, knowing that she was watching him.

"Maybe we'll see each other around," she said, behind him.

"Maybe."

Impossible. That was another Corso returning home, uneasy, the Grande Armée about to melt in the snow. The fire of Moscow crackling in his wake. He couldn't leave like that, so he stopped and turned around. As he did so, he smiled like a hungry wolf.

"Irene Adler," he repeated, trying to remember. "Study in Scarlet?"

"No," she answered. "A Scandal in Bohemia." Now she was smiling too, and her gaze shone emerald green in the dim corridor. "The Woman, my dear Watson."

Corso slapped his forehead as if he'd just remembered.

"Elementary," he said. And he was sure they'd meet again.

HE SPENT LESS THAN fifty minutes in Lisbon. Just enough time to get from Santa Apolonia Station to Rossio Station. An hour and a half later he stepped onto the platform in Sintra, beneath a sky full of low clouds that blurred the tops of the melancholy gray towers of the castle of Da Pena farther up the hill. There was no taxi in sight, so he walked to the small hotel that was opposite the National Palace with its two large chimneys. It was ten o'clock on a Wednesday morning, and the esplanade was empty of tourists and coaches. He had no trouble getting a room. It looked out onto the uneven landscape, where the roofs and towers of old houses peered above the thick greenery, their ruined gardens suffocating in ivy.

After a shower and a coffee he asked for the Quinta da Soledade, and the hotel receptionist told him the way, up the road. There weren't any taxis on the esplanade either, although there were a couple of horse-drawn carriages. Corso negotiated a price, and a few minutes later he was passing under the lacy baroque stonework of Regaleira Tower. The sound of the horse's hooves echoed from the dark walls, the drains and fountains running with water, the ivy-covered walls, railings, and tree trunks, the stone steps carpeted with moss, and the ancient tiles on the abandoned manor houses.

The Quinta da Soledade was a rectangular, eighteenth-century house, with four chimneys and an ochre plaster facade covered with water trails and stains. Corso got out of the carriage and stood looking at the place for a moment before opening the iron gate. Two mossy, gray-green stone statues on granite columns stood at either end of the wall. One was a bust of a woman. The other seemed to be identical, but the features were hidden by the ivy climbing up it, enfolding and merging with the sculpted face.

As he walked toward the house, dead leaves crackled beneath his steps. The path was lined with marble statues, almost all of them lying broken next to their empty pedestals. The garden was completely wild. Vegetation had taken over, climbing up benches and into alcoves. The wrought iron left rusty trails on the moss-covered stone. To his left, in a pond full of aquatic plants, a fountain with cracked tiles sheltered a chubby angel with empty eyes and mutilated hands. It slept with its head resting on a book, and a thread of water trickled from its mouth. Everything seemed suffused with infinite sadness, and Corso couldn't help being affected. Quinta da Soledade, he repeated. House of Solitude. The name suited it.

He went up the stone steps leading to the door and looked up. Beneath the gray sky no time was indicated on the Roman numerals of the ancient sundial on the wall. Above it ran the legend: OMNES VULNERANT, POSTUMA NECAT.

They all wound, he read. The last one kills.

"YOU'VE ARRIVED JUST IN time," said Fargas, "for the ceremony."

Corso held out his hand, slightly disconcerted. Victor Fargas was as tall and thin as an El Greco figure. He seemed to move around inside his loose, thick woolen sweater and baggy trousers like a tortoise in its shell. His mustache was trimmed with geometrical precision, and his old-fashioned, worn-out shoes gleamed. Corso noticed this much at first glance, before his attention was drawn to the huge, empty house, its bare walls, the paintings on the ceiling that were falling into shreds, eaten by mildew.

Fargas examined his visitor closely. "I assume you'll accept a brandy," he said at last. He set off down the corridor, limping slightly, without bothering to check whether Corso was following or not. They passed other rooms, which were empty or contained the remains of broken furniture thrown in a corner. Naked, dusty lightbulbs hung from the ceilings.

The only rooms that seemed to be in use were two interconnecting reception rooms. There was a sliding door between them with coats of arms etched into the glass. It was open, revealing more bare walls, their ancient wallpaper marked by long-gone pictures, and furniture, rusty nails, and fixtures for nonexistent lamps. Above this gloomy scene was a ceiling painted to resemble a vault of clouds with the sacrifice of Isaac in the center. The cracked figure of the old patriarch held a dagger, about to strike a blond young man. His hand was restrained by an angel with huge wings. Beneath the trompe l'oeil sky, dusty French windows, some of the panes replaced with cardboard, led to the terrace and, beyond that, to the garden.

"Home sweet home," said Fargas.

His irony was unconvincing. He seemed to have made the remark too often and was no longer sure of its effect. He spoke Spanish with a heavy, distinguished Portuguese accent. And he moved very slowly, perhaps because of his bad leg, like someone who has all the time in the world.

"Brandy," he said again, as if he didn't quite remember how they'd reached that point.

Corso nodded vaguely, but Fargas didn't notice. At one end of the vast room was an enormous fireplace with logs piled up in it. There were a pair of unmatched armchairs, a table and sideboard, an oil lamp, two big candlesticks, a violin in its case, and little else. But on the floor, lined up neatly on old, faded, threadbare rugs, as far away as possible from the windows and the leaden light coming through them, lay a great many books; five hundred or more, Corso estimated, maybe even a thousand. Many codices and incunabula among them. Wonderful old books bound in leather or parchment. Ancient tomes with studs in the covers, folios, Elzevirs, their bindings decorated with goffering, bosses, rosettes, locks, their spines and front edges covered with gilding and calligraphy done by medieval monks in the scriptoria of their monasteries. He also noticed a dozen or so rusty mousetraps in various corners.

Fargas, who had been searching through the sideboard, turned around with a glass and a bottle of Remy Martin. He held it up to the light to look at the contents.

"Nectar of the gods," he said triumphantly. "Or the devil." He smiled only with his mouth, twisting his mustache like an old-fashioned movie star. His eyes remained fixed and expressionless, with bags beneath them as if from chronic insomnia. Corso noticed his delicate hands—a sign of good breeding—as he took the glass of brandy. The glass vibrated gently as Corso raised it to his lips.

"Nice glass," he said to make conversation.

Fargas agreed, and made a gesture halfway between resignation and self-mockery, suggesting a different reading of it all: the glass, the tiny amount of brandy in the bottle, the bare house, his own presence. An elegant, pale, worn ghost.

"I have only one more left," he confided in a calm, neutral tone. "That's why I take care of them."

Corso nodded. He glanced at the bare walls and again at the books.

"This must have been a beautiful house," he said.

Fargas shrugged. "Yes, it was. But old families are like civilizations. One day they just wither and die." He looked around without seeing. All the missing objects seemed to be reflected in his eyes. "At first one resorts to the barbarians to guard the limes of the Danube, but it makes the barbarians rich and they end up as one's creditors.... Then one day they rebel and invade, looting everything." He suddenly peered at his visitor suspiciously. "I hope you understand what I mean."

Corso nodded, smiling his best conspiratorial smile. "Perfectly," he said. "Hobnail boots crushing Saxony porcelain. Isn't that it? Servants in evening dress. Working-class parvenus who wipe their arses on illuminated manuscripts."

Fargas nodded approvingly. He was smiling. He limped over to the sideboard in search of the other glass. "I'll have a brandy too," he said.

They drank a toast in silence, looking at each other like two members of a secret fraternity who have just exchanged sign and countersign. Then, moving closer to the books, Fargas gestured at them with the hand holding the glass, as if Corso had just passed his initiation test and Fargas was inviting him to pass through an invisible barrier.

"There they are. Eight hundred and thirty-four volumes. Less than half of them are worth anything." He drank some more and ran his finger over his damp mustache, looking around. "It's a shame that you didn't know them in better days, lined up on their cedarwood shelves.... I managed to collect five thousand of them. These are the survivors."

Corso put his canvas bag on the floor and went over to the books. His fingers itched instinctively. It was a magnificent sight. He adjusted his glasses and immediately saw a 1588 first-edition Vasari in quarto, and a sixteenth-century Tractatus by Berengario de Carpi bound in parchment.

"I would never have dreamed that the Fargas collection, listed in all the bibliographies, was kept like this. Piled on the floor against the wall, in an empty house..."

"That's life, my friend. But I have to say, in my defense, that they are all in immaculate condition. I clean them and make sure they're aired. I check that insects or rodents don't get at them, and that they're protected against light, heat, and moisture. In fact I do nothing else all day."

"What happened to the rest?"

Fargas looked toward the window, asking himself the same question. He frowned. "You can imagine," he answered, and he looked a very unhappy man when he turned back to Corso. "Apart from the house, a few pieces of furniture, and my father's library, I inherited nothing but debts. Whenever I got any money, I invested it in books. When my savings dwindled, I got rid of everything else—pictures, furniture, china. I think you understand what it is to be a passionate collector of books. But I'm pathologically obsessed. I suffered atrociously just at the thought of breaking up my collection."

"I've known people like that."

"Really?" Fargas regarded him, interested. "I still doubt you can really imagine what it's like. I used to get up at night and wander about like a lost soul looking at my books. I'd talk to them and stroke their spines, swearing I'd always take care of them.... But none of it was any use. One day I made my decision: to sacrifice most of the books and keep only the most cherished, valuable ones. Neither you nor anyone will ever understand how that felt, letting the vultures pick over my collection."

"I can imagine," said Corso, who wouldn't have minded in the least joining in the feast.

"Can you? I don't think so. Not in a million years. Separating them took me two months. Sixty-one days of agony, and an attack of fever that almost killed me. At last, people took them away, and I thought I would go mad. I remember it as if it were yesterday, although it was twelve years ago."

"And now?"

Fargas held up the empty glass as if it were a symbol.

"For some time now I've had to resort to selling my books again. Not that I need very much. Once a week someone comes in to clean, and I get my food brought from the village. Almost all the money goes to pay the state taxes for the house."

He pronounced state as if he'd said vermin. Corso looked sympathetic, glancing again at the bare walls. "You could sell it."

"Yes," Fargas agreed indifferently. "There are things you can't understand."

Corso bent to pick up a folio bound in parchment and leafed through it with interest. De Symmetria by Dürer, Paris 1557, reprinting of the first Nuremberg edition in Latin. In good condition, with wide margins. Flavio La Ponte would have gone wild over it. Anybody would have gone wild over it.

"How often do you have to sell books?"

"Two or three a year is enough. After going over and over them, I choose one book to sell. That's the ceremony I was referring to when I answered the door. I have a buyer, a compatriot of yours. He comes here a couple of times a year."

"Do I know him?" asked Corso.

"I have no idea," answered Fargas, not supplying a name. "In fact I'm expecting him any day now. When you arrived, I was getting ready to choose a victim...." He made a guillotine movement with one of his slender hands, still smiling wearily. "The one that must die in order for the others to stay together."

Corso looked up at the ceiling, drawing the inevitable parallel. Abraham, a deep crack across his face, was making visible efforts to free the hand in which he held the knife. The angel was holding on to it firmly with one hand and severely reprimanding the patriarch with the other. Beneath the blade, his head resting on a stone, Isaac waited, resigned to his fate. He was blond with pink cheeks, like an ancient Greek youth who never said no. Beyond him a sheep was tangled up in brambles, and Corso mentally voted for the sheep to be spared.

"I suppose you have no other choice," he said, looking at Fargas.

"If there was one, I would have found it." Fargas smiled bitterly. "But the lion demands his share, and the sharks smell the bait. Unfortunately there aren't any people left like the Comte d'Artois, who was king of France. Do you know the story? The old Marquis de Paulmy, who owned sixty thousand books, went bankrupt. To escape his creditors he sold his collection to the Comte d'Artois. But the Count stipulated that the old man should keep them until his death. In that way Paulmy used the money to buy more books and extend the collection, even though it was no longer his...."

He had put his hands in his pockets and was limping up and down along the books, examining each one, like a shabby, gaunt Montgomery inspecting his troops at El Alamein.

"Sometimes I don't even touch them or open them." He stopped and leaned over to straighten a book in its row, on the old rug. "All I do is dust them and stare at them for hours. I know what lies inside each binding, down to the last detail. Look at this one: De revolutions celestium, Nicholas Copernicus. Second edition, Basle, 1566. A mere trifle, don't you think? Like the Vulgata Clementina to your right, between the six volumes of the Polyglot by your compatriot Cisneros, and the Nuremberg Cronicarum. And look at the strange folio over there: Praxis criminis persequendi by Simon de Colines, 1541. Or that monastic binding with four raised bands and bosses that you see there. Do you know what's inside? The Golden Legend by Jacobo de la Voragine, Basle, 1493, printed by Nicolas Kesler."

Corso leafed through The Golden Legend. It was a magnificent edition, also with very wide margins. He put it back carefully. Then he stood up, wiping his glasses with his handkerchief. It would have made the coolest of men break out in a sweat.

"You must be crazy. If you sold all this, you wouldn't have any money problems."

"I know." Fargas was leaning over to adjust the position of the book imperceptibly. "But if I sold them all, I'd have no reason to go on living. So I wouldn't care if I had money problems or not."

Corso pointed at a row of books in very bad condition. There were several incunabula and manuscripts. Judging from the bindings, none dated from later than the seventeenth century.

"You have a great many old editions of chivalric novels."

"Yes. Inherited from my father. His obsession was acquiring the ninety-five books of Don Quixote's collection, in particular those mentioned in the priest's expurgation. He also left me that strange Quixote that you see there, next to the first edition of Os Lusiadas. It's a 1789 Ibarra in four volumes. In addition to the corresponding illustrations, it is enriched with others printed in England in the first half of the eighteenth century, six wash drawings and a facsimile of Cervantes's birth certificate printed on vellum. To each his own obsessions. In the case of my father, a diplomat who lived for many years in Spain, it was Cervantes. In some people it's a mania. They won't accept restoration work, even if it's invisible, or they won't buy a book numbered over fifty.... My passion, as you must have noticed, was uncut books. I scoured auctions and bookshops, ruler in hand, and I went weak in the knees if I found one that was intact, that hadn't been plowed. Have you read Nodier's burlesque tale about the book collector? The same happened to me. I'd have happily shot any bookbinder who'd been too free with the guillotine. I was in ecstasy if I discovered an edition with margins two millimeters wider than those described in the canonical bibliographies."

"I would be too."

"Congratulations, then. Welcome to the brotherhood."

"Not so fast. My interest is financial rather than aesthetic in nature."

"Never mind. I like you. I believe that when it comes to books, conventional morality doesn't exist." He was at the other end of the room but bent his head toward Corso confidingly. "Do you know something? You Spaniards have a story about a bookseller in Barcelona who committed murder. Well, I too would be capable of killing for a book."

"I wouldn't recommend it. That's how it starts. Murder doesn't seem like a big deal, but then you end up lying, voting in elections, things like that."

"Even selling your own books."

"Even that."

Fargas shook his head sadly. He stood still a moment, frowning. Then he studied Corso closely for some time.

"Which brings us," he said at last, "to the business I was engaged in when you rang at the door.... Every time I have to address the problem, I feel like a priest renouncing his faith. Are you surprised that I should think of this as a sacrilege?"

"Not at all. I suppose that's exactly what it is."

Fargas wrung his hands in torment. He looked around at the bare room and the books on the floor, and back at Corso. His smile seemed false, painted on.

"Yes. Sacrilege can only be justified in faith. Only a believer can sense the terrible enormity of the deed. We'd feel no horror at profaning a religion to which we were indifferent. It would be like an atheist blaspheming. Absurd."

Corso agreed. "I know what you mean. It's Julian the Apostate crying, 'Thou hast conquered, O Galilean.'"

"I'm not familiar with that quotation."

"It may be apocryphal. One of the Marist brothers used to quote it when I was at school. He was warning us not to go off on a tangent. Julian ends up shot through with arrows on the battlefield, spitting blood at a heaven without God."

Fargas assented, as if it was all terribly close to him. There was something disturbing in the strange rictus of his mouth, in the fixed intensity of his eyes.

"That's how I feel now," he said. "I get up because I can't sleep. I stand here, resolved to commit another desecration." He moved so close to Corso as he spoke that Corso wanted to take a step back. "To sin against myself and against them ... I touch one book, then change my mind, choose another one but end up putting it back in its place.... I must sacrifice one so that the others can live, snap off a branch so that the tree..." He held up his right hand. "I would rather cut off one of my fingers."

As he made the gesture, his hand trembled. Corso nodded. He knew how to listen. It was part of the job. He could even understand. But he wasn't prepared to join in. This didn't concern him. As Varo Borja would have said, he was a mercenary, and he was paying a visit. What Fargas needed was a confessor, or a psychiatrist.

"Nobody would pay a penny for an old book collector's finger," Corso said lightly.

The joke was lost in the immense void that filled Fargas's eyes. He was looking through Corso. In his dilated pupils and absent gaze there were only books.

"So which should I choose?" Fargas went on. Corso took a cigarette from his coat pocket and offered it to the old man, but Fargas didn't notice. Absorbed, obsessed, he was listening only to himself, was aware of nothing but his tortured mind. "After much thought I have chosen two candidates." He took two books from the floor and put them on the table. "Tell me what you think."

Corso bent over the books. He opened one of them at a page with an engraving, a woodcut of three men and a woman working in a mine. It was a second edition of De re metallica by Georgius Agricola, in Latin, printed by Froben and Episcopius in Basle only five years after its first edition in 1556. He gave a grunt of approval as he lit his cigarette.

"As you can see, making a choice isn't easy." Fargas was following Corso's movements intently. Anxiously he watched him turn the pages, barely brushing them with his fingertips. "I sell one book each time. And not just any one. The sacrifice has to ensure that the rest are safe for another six months. It's my tribute to the Minotaur." He tapped his temple. "We all have one at the center of the labyrinth.... Our reason creates him, and he imposes his own horror."

"Why don't you sell several less valuable books at one time? Then you'd raise the money you need and still keep the rarer ones. Or your favorites."

"Place some over others?" Fargas shuddered. "I simply couldn't do it. They all have the same immortal soul. To me they all have the same rights. I have my favorites, of course. How could I not? But I never make distinctions by a gesture, a word that might raise them above their less favored companions. Rather the opposite. Remember that God chose his own son to be sacrificed. For the redemption of mankind. And Abraham..." He seemed to be referring to the painting on the ceiling, because he looked up and smiled sadly at the empty space, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Corso opened the second book, a folio with an Italian parchment binding from the 1700s. Inside was a magnificent Virgil. Giunta's Venetian edition, printed in 1544. This revived Fargas.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" He stepped in front of Corso and snatched it from him impatiently. "Look at the title page, at the architectural border. One hundred and thirteen woodcuts, all perfect except for page 345, which has a small, ancient restoration, almost imperceptible, in one of the bottom corners. As it happens, this is my favorite. Look: Aeneas in hell, next to the Sibyl. Have you ever seen anything like it? Look at these flames behind the triple wall, the cauldron of the damned, the bird devouring their entrails...." The old book collector's pulse was almost visible, throbbing in his wrists and temples. His voice became deeper as he held the book up to his eyes so he could read more clearly. His expression was radiant. "Moenia amnlata videt triplici circundata muro, quae rapidus flamnis ambit torrentibus amnis." He paused, ecstatic. "The engraver had a beautiful, violent, medieval view of Virgil's Hades."

"A magnificent book," confirmed Corso, dragging on his cigarette.

"It's more than that. Feel the paper. 'Esemplare buono e genuino con le figure assai ben impresse,' assure the old catalogues." After this feverish outburst, Fargas once more stared into empty space, absorbed, engrossed in the dark corners of his nightmare. "I think I'll sell this one."

Corso exhaled impatiently. "I don't understand. This is obviously one of your favorites. So is the Agricola. Your hands tremble as you touch them."

"My hands? What you mean is that my soul burns in the torments of hell. I thought I'd explained. The book to be sacrificed can never be one to which I am indifferent. What meaning would this painful act have otherwise? A sordid transaction determined by market forces, several cheap books instead of a single expensive one..." Scornful, he shook his head violently. He looked around grimly, searching for someone on whom to vent his anger. "These are the ones I love best. They shine above the rest for their beauty, for the love they have inspired. These are the ones I walk hand in hand with to the brink of the abyss.... Life may strip me of all I have. But it won't turn me into a miserable wretch."

He paced aimlessly about the room. The sad scene, his bad leg, his shabby clothes all added to his weary, fragile appearance.

"That's why I remain in this house," he went on. "The ghosts of my lost books roam within its walls." He stopped in front of the fireplace and looked at the pile of logs in the hearth. "Sometimes I feel they come back to demand that I make amends. So, to placate them, I take up the violin that you see there and I play for hours, wandering through the house in darkness, like one of the damned...." He turned to look at Corso, was silhouetted against the dirty window. "The wandering book collector." He walked slowly to the table and laid a hand on each book, as if he had delayed making his decision until that moment. Now he smiled inquiringly.

"Which one would you choose, if you were in my place?"

Corso fidgeted, uneasy. "Please, leave me out of this. I'm lucky enough not to be in your place."

"That's right. Very lucky. How clever of you to realize. A stupid man would envy me, I suppose. All this treasure in my house ... But you haven't told me which one to sell. Which son to sacrifice." His face suddenly became distorted with anguish, as if the pain were in his body too. "May his blood taint me and mine," he added in a very low, intense voice, "unto the seventh generation."

He returned the Agricola to its place on the rug and stroked the parchment of the Virgil, muttering, "His blood." His eyes were moist and his hands shook uncontrollably. "I think I'll sell this one," he said.

Fargas might not be out of his mind yet, but he soon would be. Corso looked at the bare walls, the marks left by pictures on the stained wallpaper. The highly unlikely seventh generation didn't give a damn about any of this. Like Lucas Corso's own, the Fargas line would end here. And find peace at last. Corso's cigarette smoke rose up to the decrepit painting on the ceiling, straight up, like the smoke from a sacrifice in the calm of dawn. He looked out the window, at the garden overrun with weeds, searching for a way out, like the lamb tangled in the brambles. But there was nothing but books. The angel let go of the hand that held up the knife and went away, weeping. And left Abraham alone, the poor fool.

Corso finished his cigarette and threw it into the fireplace. He was tired and cold. He had heard too many words within these bare walls. He was glad there were no mirrors for him to see the expression on his face. He looked at his watch without noticing the time. With a fortune sitting there on the old rugs and carpets, Victor Fargas had more than paid their price in suffering. For Corso it was now time to talk business.

"What about The Nine Doors?"

"What about it?"

"That's what brought me here. I assume you got my letter."

"Your letter? Yes, of course. I remember. It's just that with all of this ... Forgive me. The Nine Doors. Of course."

He looked around, bewildered, like a sleepwalker who has just been jolted awake. He suddenly seemed infinitely tired, after a long ordeal. He lifted a finger, requesting a minute to think, then limped over to a corner of the room. Some fifty books were lined up there on a faded French rug. Corso could just make out that the rug depicted Alexander's victory over Darius.

"Did you know," asked Fargas, pointing at the scene on the Gobelin, "that Alexander used his rival's treasure chest to store Homer's books?" He nodded, pleased, looking at the Macedonian's threadbare profile. "He was a fellow book collector. A good man."

Corso didn't give a damn about Alexander the Great's literary tastes. He knelt and read the titles printed on some of the spines and front edges. They were all ancient treatises on magic, alchemy, and demonology. Les trois livres de l'Art, Destructor omnium rerum, Disertazioni sopra le appanzioni de' spiriti e diavoli, De origine, moribus et rebus gestis Satanae ...

"What do you think?" asked Fargas. "Not bad."

The book collector laughed wearily. He got down on the rug beside Corso and went over the books mechanically, making sure that none of them had moved by a millimeter since he last checked them.

"Not bad at all. You're right. At least ten of them are extremely rare. I inherited all this part of the collection from my grandfather. He was a devotee of the hermetic arts and astrology, and he was a Mason. Look. This is a classic, the Infernal Dictionary by Collin de Plancy, a first edition dating from 1842. And this is the 1571 printing of the Compendi dei secreti, by Leonardo Fioravanti.... That strange duodecimo there is the second edition of the Book of Wonders!" He opened another book and showed Corso an engraving. "Look at Isis.... And do you know what this is?"

"Yes, of course. The Oedipus Aegiptiacus by Atanasius Kircher."

"Correct. The 1652 Rome edition." Fargas put the book back and picked up another one. Corso recognized the Venetian binding: the black leather with five raised bands and a pentacle but no title on the cover. "Here's the one you're looking for, De Umbrarum Regni Novem Portis. The nine doors of the kingdom of shadows."

Corso shivered in spite of himself. On the outside at least the book was identical to the one he had in his canvas bag. Fargas handed him the book, and Corso stood up as he leafed through it. They looked identical, or almost. The leather on the back of Fargas's copy was slightly worn, and there was an old mark left by a label that had been added and then removed. The rest was in the same immaculate condition as Varo Borja's copy, even engraving number VIIII, which was intact.

"It's complete and in good condition," said Fargas, correctly interpreting the look on Corso's face. "It's been out in the world for three and a half centuries, but when you open it, it looks as fresh as the day it came off the press. As if the printer made a pact with the devil."

"Maybe he did," said Corso.

"I wouldn't mind knowing the magic formula. My soul in exchange for keeping all this." The book collector made a sweeping gesture that took in the desolate room, the rows of books on the floor.

"You could try it," said Corso pointing at The Nine Doors. "They say the formula is in there."

"I never believed all that nonsense. Although maybe now would be a good time to start. Don't you think? You have a saying in Spain: If all is lost, we may as well jump in the river."

"Is the book in order? Have you noticed anything strange about it?"

"Nothing whatsoever. There are no pages missing. And the engravings are all there, nine of them, plus the title page. Just as it was when my grandfather bought it at the turn of the century. It matches the description in the catalogues, and it's identical to the other two copies, the Ungern in Paris and the Terral-Coy."

"It's no longer Terral-Coy. It's now in the Varo Borja collection in Toledo."

Corso saw that Fargas's expression had become suspicious, alert.

"Varo Borja, you say?" He was about to add something, but changed his mind. "His collection is remarkable. And very well known." He paced aimlessly, looking again at the books lined up on the rug. "Varo Borja...," he repeated thoughtfully. "A specialist in demonology, isn't he? A very rich book collector. He's been after that Nine Doors you've got there for years. He's always been prepared to pay any price.... I didn't know that he'd managed to find a copy. And you work for him."

"Occasionally," admitted Corso.

Fargas nodded a couple of times, looking puzzled. "Strange that he should send you. After all..."

He broke off and let his sentence hang. He was looking at Corso's bag. "You brought the book with you? Could I see it?"

They went up to the table and Corso laid his copy next to Fargas's. As he did so, he could hear the old man's agitated breathing. His face looked ecstatic again.

"Look at them closely," he whispered, as if afraid of waking something that slept between their pages. "They're perfect, beautiful. And identical. Two of the only three copies that escaped the flames, brought together for the first time since they were parted three hundred and fifty years ago...." His hands were trembling again. He rubbed his wrists to slow the blood coursing through them. "Look at the errata on page 72, and the split s here, in the fourth line of page 87.... The same paper, identical printing. Isn't it a wonder?"

"Yes." Corso cleared his throat. "I'd like to stay awhile. Have a thorough look at them."

Fargas gave him a piercing look. He seemed to hesitate.

"As you wish," he said at last. "But if you have the Terral-Coy copy, there's no doubt as to its authenticity." He looked at Corso with curiosity, trying to read his mind. "Varo Borja must know that."

"I suppose he must." Corso gave his best neutral smile. "But I'm getting paid to make sure." He kept smiling. They were coming to the difficult part. "By the way, speaking of money, I was told to make you an offer."

The book collector's curiosity turned to suspicion. "What kind of offer?"

"Financial. And substantial." Corso laid his hand on the second copy. "You could solve your money problems for some time."

"Would it be Varo Borja paying?"

"It could be."

Fargas stroked his chin. "He already has one of the books. Does he want all three of them?"

The man might have been a little insane, but he was no fool. Corso gestured vaguely, not wanting to commit himself. Perhaps. One of those things collectors get into their heads. But if Fargas sold the book, he would be able to keep the Virgil.

"You don't understand," said Fargas. But Corso understood only too well. He wasn't going to get anywhere with the old man.

"Forget it," he said. "It was just a thought."

"I don't sell at random. I choose the books. I thought I'd made that clear."

The veins on the back of his tensed hands were knotted. He was becoming irritated, so Corso spent the next few minutes in placatory mode. The offer was a secondary matter, a mere formality. What he really wanted, he said, was to make a comparative study of both books. At last, to his relief, Fargas nodded in agreement.

"I don't see any problem with that," he said, his mistrust receding. It was obvious that he liked Corso. If he hadn't, things would have gone quite differently. "Although I can't offer you many creature comforts here...."

He led him down a bare passage to another, smaller room, which had a dilapidated piano in one corner, a table with an old bronze candelabrum covered with wax drips, and a couple of rickety chairs.

"At least it's quiet here," said Fargas. "And all the window-panes are intact."

He snapped his fingers, as if he'd forgotten something. He disappeared for a moment and returned holding the rest of the bottle of brandy.

"So Varo Borja finally managed to get hold of it," he repeated. He smiled to himself, as if at some thought that obviously caused him great satisfaction. Then he put the bottle and glass on the floor, at a safe distance from the two copies of The Nine Doors. Like an attentive host he looked around to make sure that everything was in order, then said ironically, before leaving, "Make yourself at home."

Corso poured the rest of the brandy into the glass. He took out his notes and set to work. He had drawn three boxes on a sheet of paper. Each box contained a number and name:

Page after page, he jotted down any difference between book number one and book number two, however slight: a stain on a page, the ink slightly darker in one copy than in the other. When he came to the first engraving, NEM. PERVT.T QUI N.N LEG. CERT.RIT, the horseman advising the reader to keep silent, he took out a magnifying glass with a power of seven from his bag and examined both woodcuts, line by line. They were identical. He noticed that even the pressure of the engravings on the paper, like that of the typography, was the same. The lines and characters looked worn, broken, or crooked in exactly the same places in both copies. This meant that number one and number two had been printed one after the other, or almost, and on the same press. As the Ceniza brothers would have put it, Corso was looking at a pair of twins.

He went on making notes. An imperfection in line 6 of page 19 in book number two made him stop a moment, then he realized it was just an ink stain. He turned more pages. Both books had the same structure: two flyleaves and 160 pages stitched into twenty gatherings of eight. All nine illustrations in both books occupied a full page. They had been printed separately on the same type of paper, blank on the reverse, and inserted into the book during the binding process. They were positioned identically in both books:

I.

between pages 16 and 17

II.

32–33

III.

48–49

IIII.

64–65

V.

80–81

VI.

96–97

VII.

112–113

VIII.

128–129

VIIII.

144–145

Either Varo Borja was raving, or this was a very strange job Corso had been sent on. There was no way that they were forgeries. At the most, they might both have come from an edition that was apocryphal but still dated from the seventeenth century. Number one and number two were the embodiment of honesty on printed paper.

He drank the rest of the brandy and examined illustration II with his magnifying glass. CLAUS. PAT. T., the bearded hermit holding two keys, the closed door, a lantern on the ground. He had the illustrations side by side and suddenly felt rather silly. It was like playing Find the Difference. He grimaced. Life as a game. And books as a reflection of life.

Then he saw it. It happened suddenly, just as something that has seemed meaningless, when viewed from the correct angle, all at once appears ordered and precise. Corso breathed out, as if he were about to laugh, astounded. All that emerged was a dry sound, like a laugh of disbelief but without the humor. It wasn't possible. One didn't joke with that kind of thing. He shook his head, confused. This wasn't a cheap book of puzzles bought at a railroad station. These books were three and a half centuries old. Their printer had lost his life over them. They had been included among the books banned by the Inquisition. And they were listed in all the serious bibliographies. "Illustration II. Caption in Latin. Old man holding two keys and a lantern, standing in front of a closed door..." But nobody had compared two of the three known copies, not until now. It wasn't easy bringing them together. Or necessary. Old man holding two keys. That was enough.

Corso got up and went to the window. He stood there awhile, looking through the panes misted by his own breath. Varo Borja was right after all. Aristide Torchia must have been laughing to himself on his pyre at Campo dei Fiori, before the flames took away his sense of humor forever. As a posthumous joke it was brilliant.