What the hell, she said to herself, after all, she had once killed pirates. If the murderer was there, it was a good opportunity, perhaps the only one, to meet him face to face. She, being a sensible duck, was watching out of the corner of her eye; meanwhile in her right hand she held eighteen ounces of chrome metal, mother-of-pearl and lead which, when fired at a short distance, could easily reverse the roles in this unusual hunting trip.
Flaring her nostrils as if trying to sniff out the direction danger might come from, she gritted her teeth and called up in her aid all the rage contained in her memories of Álvaro and Menchu, and the decision not to be just a frightened pawn on a chessboard, but someone quite capable, given the opportunity, of demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If he, whoever he was, wanted to find her, then he would, be it in Room 12 or in hell.
She went through the inner door, which, as expected, was unlocked. The security guard must have been far away, for the silence was absolute. She walked down an aisle of disquieting shadows cast by marble statues, who watched her pass with blank, motionless eyes, and continued through the room containing medieval retables, of which, amongst the dark shadows they made on the walls, she could make out only the occasional dull gleam of the gilt and gold leaf backgrounds. To the left, at the end of that long aisle, she saw the small staircase that led to the rooms containing early Flemish paintings, amongst them Room 12.
She paused on the first step, peering with extreme caution into the dark. The ceiling was lower there, and the security light allowed a better view of the details. In the blue penumbra, the colours of the paintings had turned to monochrome. She could make out Van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross, almost unrecognisable in the shadows. In the unreal darkness it took on an air of sinister grandeur, revealing only its palest colours, the figure of Christ and the face of his mother, fainting, her fallen arm parallel with the dead arm of her son.
There was no one there, apart from the people in the paintings, and most of them, hidden in the dark, seemed locked in a long sleep. Distrusting the apparent calm, troubled by the presence of so many images created by the hands of men who had all died hundreds of years ago, images that seemed to be watching her from their old frames on the walls, Julia reached the door leading into Room 12. Her throat was dry but she could not swallow. She glanced over her shoulder again but could see nothing suspicious. Conscious of the knot of tension in her jaw muscles, she took a deep breath before going into the room as she'd seen people in films do: grasping the gun in both hands, pointing into the shadows, her finger on the trigger.
There was no one there, and Julia felt an immense, intoxicating sense of relief. The first thing she saw, its colours muted by the shadows, was the dazzling nightmare of Bosch's The Garden of Delights, which took up most of one wall. She leaned against the opposite wall, her breath blurring the glass protecting Dürer's self-portrait. With the back of her hand she wiped away the sweat from her forehead before going over to the wall at the far end of the room. As she walked, the shapes and the lighter tones of Brueghel's painting began to emerge. That painting had always held a peculiar fascination for her. The tragic tone that informed every brush stroke, the eloquence of the innumerable figures shaken by the mortal, inexorable breath, the many scenes that made up the macabre whole, had for many years stirred her imagination. The feeble blue light from the ceiling illuminated the skeletons bursting in hordes from the bowels of the earth, in a vengeful, all-destroying wind; the distant fires silhouetting the black ruins on the horizon; the wheels of Tantalus in the distance, spinning atop their poles, next to the skeleton who stands with sword raised, about to bring it down on the neck of the blindfolded prisoner kneeling in prayer; in the foreground, the king surprised in the middle of the feast, the lovers oblivious even at the final hour, the smiling skeleton beating the drums of Judgment Day; and the knight who, trembling with terror, still has courage enough to make one last gesture of valour and rebellion, and unsheathes his sword, ready to fight for his life in one last hopeless battle.
The card was there, stuck in the frame just above the gilt plate on which, Julia knew, were the four sinister words that form the title of the painting: The Triumph of Death.
When she reached the street, it was pouring with rain. The light from the Isabelline street lamps lit up the curtains of water that burst in torrents out of the darkness and beat on the paving stones. The puddles were spattered by fat drops of rain, splintering the reflections of the city into a furious coming and going of lights and shadows.
Julia lifted her face to the rain and let it run freely over her hair and face. Her cheekbones and lips grew taut in the cold and her wet hair clung to her face. She buttoned her raincoat at the neck and walked between the hedges and stone benches indifferent to the rain and the dampness invading her shoes. The images in the Brueghel painting were still engraved on her retina; the terrifying medieval tragedy still danced before her eyes. And in it, amongst the men and women submerged by the avalanche of avenging skeletons exploding out of the earth, she could clearly see the characters from the other picture: Roger de Arras, Ferdinand Altenhoffen, Beatrice of Burgundy. In the middle distance, she could even see the lowered head and resigned face of old Pieter Van Huys. Everything came together in that one definitive scene, where, regardless of how the dice fell, the last dice thrown on the card table of the Earth, beauty and ugliness, love and hatred, good and evil, hard work and profligacy would all meet their end. Julia had also seen herself in the mirror, which reproduced with pitiless clarity the breaking of the Seventh Seal of the Apocalypse. She was the young woman with her back to the scene, absorbed in her daydreams, mesmerised by the music played on a lute by a grinning skeleton. In that sombre landscape there was no room now for pirates and hidden treasure, all the Wendys were being dragged away, kicking and screaming, by the legion of skeletons; Cinderella and Snow White, their eyes wide with terror, could smell the sulphur, and the little tin soldier, Roger de Arras, like St George without his dragon, stood with his sword half out of its sheath, unable to help them now. He had enough to do lunging vainly into the void, a mere point of honour, before joining hands, like everyone else, with the fleshless hands of Death, who was drawing them all in to join his macabre dance.
The headlights of a car lit up a telephone booth. Julia scrabbled for some coins in her bag, moving as if in a dream. Mechanically, her drenched hair dripping into the earpiece, she dialled the numbers of César and Muñoz without getting a reply. She leaned her head against the glass and placed between her lips, numb with cold, a damp cigarette. Standing with her eyes closed, she let the smoke curl about her until the tip began to burn the skin between her fingers and she dropped it. As the rain beat down monotonously, she knew, with a disconsolate feeling of infinite tiredness, that this was only a fragile truce, which could not protect her from the cold, the lights and the shadows.
She had no idea how long she stood there. At one point she put the coins in the telephone again and dialled a number, Muñoz's this time. When she heard his voice, she seemed to come slowly to her senses, as if returning from a long journey, a journey through time and herself. With a serenity that grew as she spoke, she explained what had happened. Muñoz asked what the card said, and she told him: B × P, bishop takes pawn. There was silence at the other end of the line. Then Muñoz, in a strange voice she'd never heard before, asked where she was. When she told him, he said she was not to move; he'd be there as soon as possible.
Fifteen minutes later, a taxi drew up by the telephone booth, and Muñoz opened the door and told her to get in. Julia ran out into the rain and dived into the car. As the taxi drove off, Muñoz removed her soaked raincoat and placed his own around her shoulders.
"What's going on?" she asked, shivering.
"You'll find out soon enough."
"What does bishop takes pawn mean?"
The fleeting lights outside slid across Muñoz's frowning face.
"It means," he said, "that the black queen is
about to take another piece."
Julia blinked, stunned by this news. She grasped Muñoz's hand with her two frozen hands and looked at him in alarm.
"We must warn César."
"We've still got time," replied Muñoz.
"Where are we going?"
"To Penjamo. One j two aitches."
It was still raining heavily when the taxi pulled up outside the chess club. Muñoz opened the door without letting go of Julia's hand.
"Come on," he said.
She followed him meekly up the steps to the hall. There were still a few players at the tables, but Cifuentes, the director, was nowhere in sight. Muñoz led her straight to the library. There, amongst trophies and diplomas, were glass-fronted shelves lined with a few hundred books. Letting go of Julia's hand, he slid open one of the glass doors and took down a fat leatherbound volume. On the spine, in gold letters darkened by use and time, a puzzled Julia read: Chess Weekly. Fourth quarter. The year was illegible.
Muñoz put the book on the table and turned the yellowing pages of cheap paper. Chess problems, analyses of games, information about tournaments, old photographs of smiling winners in white shirt, tie and suits and haircuts of the period. He stopped at a double-page spread of photographs.
"Look at them carefully," he told Julia.
She bent over the photos. They were of poor quality and all showed groups of chess players posed for the camera. Some held cups or certificates. She read the headline: SECOND JOSÉ RAÚL CAPABLANCA NATIONAL TROPHY.
"I don't understand," she murmured.
Muñoz pointed at one of the photos. In the group of boys, two were holding small trophies; the other four were staring solemnly at the camera. At the bottom of the photo were the words: FINALISTS IN THE JUNIOR LEAGUE.
"Do you recognise anyone?" asked Muñoz.
Julia studied the faces one by one. Only a face on the far right seemed faintly familiar. It belonged to a boy of fifteen or sixteen. His hair was brushed back and he was wearing a jacket and tie and a black armband on his left arm. He was looking at the camera with calm, intelligent eyes, in which she thought she could see a glint of defiance. Then she recognised him. When she pointed at him with her finger, her hand was shaking, and when she looked up at Muñoz, he nodded.
"Yes," he said, "that's our invisible player."
XIV
Drawing-room Conversation
"I found it only because I was looking for it."
"What? You mean you were expecting to find it?"
"I thought it not unlikely."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
THE LIGHT ON THE STAIRS wasn't working, and they went up in the dark, Muñoz first, guiding himself with his hand on the banister. When they reached the landing, they stood in silence, listening. They heard no sound inside, but there was a line of light beneath the door. Julia couldn't see her companion's face in the darkness, but she knew Muñoz was looking at her.
"There's no going back now," she said in response to his unasked question. The only reply she got was Muñoz's calm breathing. She felt for the bell and pressed it once. Inside, its noise faded to a distant echo.
It was a while before they heard the slow approach of footsteps. The steps paused for a moment, then continued, moving still more slowly and getting nearer, until they stopped completely. The lock turned for what seemed an age and then at last the door opened, casting a momentarily dazzling rectangle of light on them. Julia looked at the familiar figure silhouetted against the soft light, thinking that this was one victory she did not want.
He stepped aside to let them pass, appearing unperturbed by their unexpected visit. The only outward sign was a somewhat disconcerted smile Julia glimpsed as he closed the door behind them. On the heavy walnut-and-bronze Edwardian coatstand, a raincoat, hat and umbrella were still dripping.
He led them down a long corridor with a high, exquisitely coffered ceiling and walls adorned with nineteenth-century landscape paintings from Seville. He went on ahead of them, turning round every so often with the attentiveness of a good host. In vain, Julia sought some hint of that other personality she now knew lay hidden in him, like a ghost that had always floated between them and whose presence she would never again be able to ignore. Despite the light of reason seeping into the corners of her doubts, despite the facts that fitted together now like the smooth-edged pieces of a jigsaw and projected onto the images in The Game of Chess the outlines, in light and shade, of the other tragedies that were now superimposed on the one symbolised in the Flemish painting–despite all that and her sharp awareness of the pain which, little by little, was replacing her initial stupor, Julia was incapable of hating the man walking ahead of them, half-turning with solicitous courtesy, elegant even in private, in a blue silk dressing gown over well-cut trousers, a scarf knotted in the open neck of his shirt, his hair, slightly wavy at the back of the neck and at the temples, immaculate, his eyebrows arched in the expression of indifference proper to an ageing dantly but which, in Julia's presence, had always been softened by the sad, sweet, tender smile that hovered now at the corners of his pale, thin lips.
None of them said anything until they reached the large drawing room with its high ceiling decorated with classical scenes. Julia's favourite, until that night, had always been the scene depicting Hector in a shining helmet bidding farewell to Andromache and her son. The room, whose walls were covered with tapestries and paintings, contained César's most prized possessions, those which he had chosen to keep for himself, no matter what price was offered for them. Julia knew them all as if they were her own: the silk-upholstered Empire sofa, on which Muñoz, his face set in an expression of stony seriousness, his hands in his raincoat pockets, hesitated to sit even though César urged him to do so; the bronze statuette of a fencing master signed by Steiner, its swordsman erect and handsome, his proud chin lifted, dominating the room from his pedestal on the late eighteenth-century Dutch writing desk at which, for as long as Julia could remember, César had always written his letters; the Regency corner cabinet containing a beautiful collection of chased silver that he himself polished once a month; the Lord's Anointed ones, his favourite paintings: a Young woman attributed to Lorenzo Lotto, a very beautiful Annunciation by Juan de Soreda, a sinewy Mars by Luca Giordano, a melancholy Eventide by Thomas Gainsborough; the collection of English porcelain; the carpets, tapestries and fans. These were pieces whose individual histories César had carefully compiled, collating every last fact about style, provenance and genealogy, to form a private collection so personal, so closely bound by his own aesthetic taste and character that he seemed to be part of the essence of each and every one.
Muñoz had remained standing, affecting a calm, silent exterior, although something about him, perhaps the way his feet were positioned on the edge of the carpet or the way his elbows stuck out above the hands thrust into his pockets, indicated that he was on the alert, ready to confront the unexpected. For his part, César was looking at him with dispassionate, courteous interest, only now and then turning to look at Julia, as if, because she was at home there, it was up to Muñoz, the only stranger in the house, to explain his reasons for turning up so late at night. Julia, who knew César as well as she knew herself–she made an instant mental correction: whom until that night she had thought she knew as well as herself—had seen, the moment César opened the door, that he understood their visit implied something more than just a call on their third comrade in the adventure. Beneath his attitude of friendly forbearance, she recognised, in the way he smiled and in the innocent expression in his clear blue eyes, cautious expectation and a touch of amusement. It was the same look with which, when he'd held her on his knees, he would wait for her to say the magic words, the answers to the childish riddles she loved him to set her: It looks like gold, it is not silver ... Or : What is it that goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening? ... And, the best of all: The distinguished lover knows the name of the lady and the colour of her dress ...<
br />
And yet on this strange night, in the diffuse light cast through the parchment shade of the English lamp with a base in the form of a book press, which lent strange foreshortenings and shadows to other objects, César paid little attention to her. It was not that he was avoiding her eyes, for when he looked at her he held her gaze, frankly and directly, albeit only briefly, as if between them there were no secrets, as if everything between the two of them would already have been given an answer, precise, convincing, logical and definitive, perhaps the answer to all the questions she had asked throughout her life. But, for the first time, Julia did not feel like listening. Her curiosity had been fully satisfied when she had stood before Brueghel the Elder's Triumph of Death. She didn't need anyone now, not even him. And this had happened before Muñoz opened an old volume on chess and pointed out to her one of the photographs. Her presence here tonight, in César's home, was motivated strictly by curiosity, aesthetic curiosity, César would have said. Her duty was to be present, simultaneously protagonist and chorus, actor and audience for the most fascinating of classical tragedies. They were all there: Oedipus, Orestes, Medea and her other old friends. After all, the performance was in her honour.
Yet it was unreal. Julia sat on the sofa, crossed her legs and placed one arm along the back. The two men stood in front of her, and so formed a composition very similar to that in the vanished painting. Muñoz, on the left, stood on the edge of an ancient Pakistani carpet, whose faded threads accentuated its beautiful reds and ochres. The chess player–now they were both chess players, thought Julia with perverse satisfaction–had not removed his raincoat. He was looking at César, his head a little to one side, with that Holmesian expression that lent him a peculiar dignity. But he was not looking at César with the smugness of a victor. There was no animosity, nor even, given the circumstances, justifiable apprehension, only tension in his eyes and the twitching muscles in his jaw. That, in Julia's judgment, was due to the fact that Muñoz was now studying the real appearance of the enemy after working for so long only with his ideal appearance. He was doubtless going over old mistakes, reconstructing moves, judging intentions. It was the stubborn, absent expression of one who, having won a game by a series of brilliant moves, is concerned only to work out how the hell his opponent had managed to snatch away one pawn from some irrelevant and forgotten square.
The Flanders Panel Page 28