“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. 32-3?
III. 48-49
UII. 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 s
omething 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.
VIII. POSTUMA NECAT
“Is anybody there?” “No.”
“Too bad. He must be dead.”
—M. Leblanc, ARSENE LUPIN
Lucas Corso knew better than anyone that one of the main problems of his profession was that bibliographies were compiled by scholars who never actually saw the books cited; scholars relied instead on secondhand accounts and information recorded by others. An error or incomplete description could circulate for generations without being noticed. Then by chance it came to light. This was the case with The Nine Doors. Apart from its obligatory mention in the canonical bibliographies, even the most precise references had included only summary descriptions of the nine engravings, without minor details. In the case of the book’s second illustration, all the known texts referred to an old man who looked like a sage or a hermit, standing before a door and holding two keys. But nobody had ever bothered to specify in which hand he held the keys. Now Corso had the answer: in the engraving in book number one, the left, and in book number two, the right.
He still had to find out what number three was like. But this wasn’t possible yet. Corso stayed at the Quinta da Soledade until dark. He worked solidly in the light of the candelabra, taking copious notes, checking both books over and over again. He examined each engraving until he had confirmed his theory. More proof emerged. At last he sat looking at his booty in the form of notes on a sheet of paper, tables and diagrams with strange links between them. Five of the engravings were not identical in both books. In addition to the old man holding the key in different hands in engraving II, the labyrinth in IIII had an exit in one of the books but not in the other. In illustration V of book one, Death brandished an hourglass with the sand in the lower half, while in book two the sand was in the upper half. As for the chessboard in number VII, in Varo Borja’s copy the squares were all white while in Fargas’s copy they were black. And in engraving VIII, the executioner poised to behead the young woman in one of the books became an avenging angel in the other through the addition of a halo.
There were more differences. Close examination through the magnifying glass yielded unexpected results. The printer’s marks hidden in the woodcuts contained another subtle clue. A.T., Aristide Torchia, was named as the sculptor in the engraving of the old man, but as the inventor only in the same engraving in book number two, while, as the Ceniza brothers had pointed out, the signature in book number one was L.F. The same difference occurred in four more illustrations. This could mean that all the woodcuts were carved by the printer himself but that the original drawings for his engravings were created by somebody else. So it wasn’t a matter of a forgery dating from the same era as the books or of apocryphal reprint-ings. It was the printer, Torchia himself, “by authority and permission of the superiors,” who had altered his own, work in accordance with a preestablished plan. He had signed the engravings he changed to make sure it was clear that L.F. had created the others. Only one copy remains, he told his executioners. Whereas in fact he had left three copies, and a key that might possibly turn them into a single one. The rest of his secret he took with him to the grave.
Corso resorted to an ancient collating system: the comparative tables used by Umberto Eco in his study of the Hanau. Having set out in order on paper the illustrations that contained differences, he obtained the following table:
I
II
III
nil
V
VI
VII
VIII
vim
One
left
no
sand
white
no
hand
exit
down
board
halo
Two
right
exit
sand
black
halo
hand
up
board
As for the engraver’s marks, the variations in the signatures A.T. (the printer, Torchia) and L.F. (unknown? Lucifer?) that corresponded to sculptor or inventor were set out as follows:
I
II
III
IIII
V
VI
VII
VIII
vim
One
AT(S)
AT(S)
AT(S)
AT(s)
AT(S)
AT(S)
AT(S)
AT(s)
AT(S)
AT(i)
LF(i)
AT(i)
AT(i)
iXO
AT(i)
AT(i)
AT(i)
AT(i)
Two
AT(S)
AT(S)
AT(s)
AT(S)
AT(s)
AT(S)
AT(s)
AT(s)
AT(S)
AT(i)
AT(i)
AT(i)
LF(i)
AT(i)
AT(i)
LF(i)
LF(i)
AT(i)
A strange code. But Corso at last had something definite. He now knew that there was a key of some sort. He stood up slowly, as if afraid that all the links would vanish before his eyes. But he was calm, like a hunter who is sure that he will catch his prey at the end, however confusing the trail.
Hand. Exit. Sand. Board. Halo.
He glanced out the window. Beyond the dirty panes, silhouetting a branch, a remnant of reddish light refused to disappear into the night.
Books one and two. Differences in illustrations 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8.
He had to go to Paris. Book number three was there, together with the possible solution to the mystery. But he was now preoccupied with another matter, something he had to deal with urgently. Varo Borja had been categorical. Now that Corso was sure he wouldn’t be able to obtain book number two by conventional methods, he had to devise a plan to acquire it by means that were not conventional. With the minimum risk to Fargas, and to Corso himself, of course. Something gentle and discreet. He took out his diary from his coat pocket and searched for the phone number he needed. It was the perfect job for Amilcar Pinto.
One of the candles had burned down and went out with a small spiral of smoke. Corso could hear the violin being played somewhere in the house. He laughed dryly again, and the flames of the candelabra made shadows dance on his face as he leaned over to light a cigarette. He straightened and listened. The music was a lament that floated through the dark empty rooms with their remnants of dusty, worm-eaten furniture, painted ceilings, stained walls covered with spiderwebs and shadows; with their echoes of footsteps and voices extinguished long ago. And outside, above the rusty railings, the two statues, one with its eyes open in the darkness, the other covered b
y a mask of ivy, listened motionless, as time stood still, to the music that Victor Fargas played on his violin to summon the ghosts of his lost books. ‘
CORSO RETURNED To THE village on foot, his hands in his coat pockets and his collar turned up. It took him twenty minutes on the deserted road. There was no moon, and he walked into large patches of darkness beneath the black canopy of trees. The almost total silence was broken only by the sound of his shoes crunching on the gravel at the side of the road, and by the channels of water coursing down the hill between rockrose and ivy, invisible in the darkness.
A car came from behind and overtook him. Corso saw his own shadow, saw its enlarged, ghostly outline glide undulating across the nearby tree trunks and farther dense woods. Only when he was again enveloped in shadow did he breathe out and feel his tense muscles relax. He wasn’t one who expected ghosts around every corner. Instead he viewed things, however extraordinary they were, with the southern fatalism of an old soldier, a fatalism no doubt inherited from his great-greatgrandfather Corso. However much you spurred your horse in the opposite direction, the inevitable was always lurking at the gate of the nearest Samarkand, picking its nails with a Venetian dagger or Scottish bayonet. Even so, since the incident in the street in Toledo, Corso felt understandably apprehensive every time he heard a car behind him.
Maybe because of this, when the lights of another car pulled up beside him, Corso turned sharply and moved his canvas bag to his other shoulder. He found his bunch of keys inside his coat pocket. It was not much of a weapon, but with it he could poke out the eye of an attacker. But there seemed no reason to worry. He saw a large, dark shape, like that of an old berlin carriage, and inside, lit by the faint glow from the dashboard, the profile of a man. His voice was friendly, well educated.