The Seville Communion

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "You're a disaster," said Celestino Peregil. "You're making me look really bad."

  Don Ibrahim frowned at the embers of his cigar, which were about to drop on to his white waistcoat. He pulled nervously on the ends of his singed moustache while Peregil let rip. Beside him, El Potro del Mantelete stared intently at his left hand, still bandaged, resting on the table. La Nina Punales seemed to be the only one indifferent to their common shame, her vacant eyes fixed on a yellowed poster on the wall - LINARES BULLRING, 1947, GITANILLO DE TRIANA, DOMINGUIN AND MANOLETE. Her long, emaciated brown hands had nails as red as her lips and coral earrings, and her silver bracelets jangled every time she filled her glass. She'd drunk half the bottle herself.

  "It was really stupid of me to give you this job," said Peregil. He was furious, felt sick, and his tie was crooked. His face looked greasy, and his elaborate comb-over hairdo was in disarray. Just an hour ago, Gavira had hauled him over the coals. Results, imbecile. I pay you to get results, and for a week you've just been messing around. I gave you six million for this job, and we haven't got anywhere. Now, on top of that, there's this journalist, Bonafé, sticking his nose in things. Oh, and by the way, Peregil, when we get a moment, you can tell me what your business is with that creep. You can explain it to me really slowly, because I think there's something I don't know about. Now, you have till Wednesday. Understand? Wednesday. Because on Thursday I want no one in that church, not even God. Otherwise you're going to be shitting out the six million, bit by bit. You're a cretin, Peregil, a complete cretin."

  "Dealing with priests brings bad luck," said Don Ibrahim.

  Peregil, glaring at him, said, "You're the ones who bring bad luck."

  "The business with the petrol," remarked La Niiia, "was a warning from God. The flames of hell." She was reading the poster for Manolete's last bullfight. Don Ibrahim looked tenderly at her Gypsy profile and smudged makeup, and once again felt the weight of responsibility. El Potro was waiting like a faithful dog. PeregiPs comment that they brought bad luck had probably only just sunk in. Don Ibrahim gave El Potro a reassuring look. "A warning from God," he said, echoing La Nina, out of respect and from lack of anything better to say.

  uOthu.n

  "Does that mean you're backing out?" asked Peregil. "Nobody's backing out," Don Ibrahim said with dignity, placing his hand on his chest. As he did so, ash dropped on to his paunch. "Nobody," repeated El Potro.

  "So what are you going to do?" asked Peregil. "We're running out of time. There must be no Mass in that church this Thursday."

  The former bogus lawyer raised a hand. "Let us weigh and consider," he said. "Though we may, for reasons of conscience, have decided not to strike at a sacred building, there's nothing to prevent or impede us from dealing with the human element." He drew on his cigar and watched a ring of Cuban smoke float away. "I refer to the priest."

  "Which of the three?"

  "The parish priest." Don Ibrahim smiled confidently. "According to intelligence gathered by La Nina around the neighbourhood and among the parishioners, the assistant priest is leaving tomorrow - Tuesday - so the parish priest will be alone." His sad, red eyes, lacking lashes since the petrol incident, rested on Pencho Gavira's henchman. "Do you follow, my friend?"

  "Yes," said Peregil, shifting in his chair. "But I'm not sure where this is leading."

  "You don't want a Mass there on Thursday, right?"

  "Right."

  "No priest, no Mass."

  "Yes. But the other day you told me your conscience didn't allow you to break the old guy's legs. And while we're on the subject, I'm sick of your conscience."

  Don Ibrahim looked round and lowered his voice cautiously. "We don't have to go that far. Imagine that this priest, this venerable minister of the Lord, disappears for two or three days without suffering any physical damage."

  A faintly hopeful smile broke on the henchman's face. "Could you see to that?"

  "Of course." Don Ibrahim drew on his cigar. "A clean operation. No blood, no broken bones. But it'll cost you a little more."

  "How much more?" asked Peregil, suspicious.

  "Oh, not much." Don Ibrahim shot a glance at his companions and hazarded a sum. "Half a million each for accommodation and food."

  Four and a half million was nothing at this point, so Peregil agreed. His financial situation was dire, but if this worked, Gavira wouldn't quibble at the extra sum.

  "What have you got in mind?" asked Peregil.

  Don Ibrahim looked out of the window at the narrow white arch of the Callejon de la Inquisicion, reluctant to give details. Feeling very hot despite the chilled wine, he picked up La Nina's fan and fanned himself. "There's a place on the river," he said. "The boat where El Potro lives. We could keep the priest there till Friday, if you like."

  Peregil glanced at El Potro's vacant face and arched his eyebrows. "Will it work?"

  Don Ibrahim nodded, gravely. "It'll work."

  Like all men desperate to be reassured, Peregil calmed down. He took out a packet of American cigarettes and lit one. "Sure you won't harm the priest?" he asked. "What if he puts up a fight?"

  "Please." Don Ibrahim glanced anxiously at La Nina and placed his hand on El Potro's shoulder. "An elderly priest. A man of God."

  Peregil nodded. They had to make sure to keep an eye on the priest from Rome, and, er, the lady, he reminded them. And photographs. Above all, they mustn't forget the photographs. "It's not a bad plan," added Peregil. "How did you get the idea?"

  Stroking what was left of his moustache, Don Ibrahim smiled, looking both gratified and modest. "From a film they showed on TV last night: The Prisoner of Zenda."

  "I think I've seen it," said Peregil, readjusting his hair to hide his bald patch. He signalled for the waiter to bring a second bottle. "Is that the one where the guy is put in prison by his friends, then he finds treasure and gets his revenge?"

  Don Ibrahim shook his head as the waiter poured the fino. "No," he said. "That's The Count of Monte Cristo. The one I mean is where the evil brother kidnaps the king, so he can be king himself. But then Stewart Granger comes along and saves him."

  "Well, isn't that something." Peregil nodded, pleased. "It's a real education watching TV."

  It wasn't only in his personality that Honorato Bonafé possessed certain pig-like qualities. By the time he reached the portico, sweat poured down his pink double chin, soaking his collar. He mopped his face with his handkerchief as he took in the ex-votos hanging on the wall, the pews piled up to one side of the nave, and the scaffolding.

  It was late afternoon in Santa Cruz. The light filtering through the damaged windows was gold and red, bathing the chipped and dusty carvings in a strange haze. Two angels stared into space, and the shadowy figures of the dukes of El Nuevo Extremo, kneeling in prayer, seemed alive.

  Bonafé walked forward uncertainly, looking round at the vault, the pulpit and the confessional, whose door was open. There was no one there or in the vestry. He went up to the gate of the crypt and looked down the steps into the darkness. He turned to the altar. The figure of the Virgin was there in her niche, surrounded by scaffolding. Bonafé stood looking at her for a moment and then, with the determined air of one who has planned his move, he climbed the ladder to the figure, some five metres above the ground. The reddish light from the windows illuminated the foreshortened baroque carving, the heart pierced with daggers, the eyes of our Lady of Sorrows raised to heaven. And on her cheeks, blue mantle and crown of stars gleamed Captain Xaloc's pearls.

  Bonafé took out his handkerchief, again mopped the sweat on his brow and neck, and dusted the pearls. He peered at them closely. He took a small penknife from his pocket. He gently scraped one of the pearls set into the mantle and stared at it thoughtfully. Then he carefully prised it out. It was about the size of a chickpea. He held it in his palm for a moment, then put it in his jacket pocket with a satisfied smile.

  In the deserted nave, the evening light filtered in past the torsoless Christ on the dama
ged window, reddening the drops of sweat on Bonafé's flabby face. He mopped it yet again with his handkerchief. At that moment he heard a gentle rustle behind him and felt the scaffolding move very slightly.

  XI

  Carlota Bruner's Trunk

  All the wisdom in the world is in the eyes of those wax dolls.

  Valery Larbaud, Poems

  The English clock struck ten as they were finishing dessert, and Cruz Bruner suggested they take their coffee out into the cool courtyard. Quart gave the duchess his arm and they left the summer dining room, where they had dined among marble busts brought, together with the mosaic laid in the main courtyard, four centuries ago from the ruins of Italica. In the surrounding gallery with its coffered mudejar ceiling, ancestors in white ruffs and dark clothes stared gravely from their frames as Quart and the duchess passed. Leaning on his arm, the old lady, in a black silk dress with small white flowers at her neck and wrists, pointed them out: an admiral, a general, a governor of the Low Countries, a viceroy of the West Indies. As they passed the lamps from Cordoba, the slim shadow of the priest was visible beside the small, stooping shadow of the duchess, between the arches of the gallery. And behind them, in a black ankle-length dress and sandals and carrying a cushion for her mother, walked Macarena Bruner, smiling.

  Quart sat between the two women, beside the tiled fountain. The courtyard, full of flowers, smelled of jasmine. Macarena dismissed the maid, after the maid put down the tray, and she served the coffee herself on the marquetry table. Black for Quart, with milk for her. Coca-Cola - not too cold - for her mother.

  "It's my drug, as you know," said the old lady. "My doctors don't allow me coffee."

  "My mother sleeps very little," Macarena told Quart, "if she goes to bed early, she wakes up at three or four in the morning. This keeps her awake. We all tell her it can't be good for her, but she takes no notice."

  "Why should I?" asked Cruz Bruner. "This drink is the only thing from the USA I like." "You like Gris, mother."

  "That's true," conceded the old lady between sips. "But she's from California: she's almost Spanish."

  Macarena aimed to Quart. "The duchess thinks that in California the landowners still wear charro outfits covered with silver buttons, Brother Junipero's still preaching, and Zorro's still riding around fighting for the poor."

  "You mean they aren't?" asked Quart, amused. Cruz Bruner nodded energetically. "That's how it should be," she said. "After all, Macarena, your great-great-great-grandfather Fernando was governor of California before they took it from us."

  She spoke with all the assurance of her lineage - as if California had been snatched directly from her or her family. There was something singular in the mixture of familiarity and courteous if somewhat haughty tolerance with which the duchess addressed people. Quart looked at her wrinkled hands and face covered with liver spots, at her withered skin and the pale line of lipstick on her lips, at her white hair, pearl necklace and fan decorated by Romero de Torres. There were few women like her left. He had met some - lonely old ladies dragging their lost youth and nostalgia around the C6te d'Azur, matrons of the ancient Italian nobility, shrivelled central-European relics with Austro-Hungarian surnames, devout Spanish ladies. Cruz Bruner was one of the last. Their sons and daughters were either penniless layabouts, fodder for the tabloids, or else they worked from nine to five in offices and banks, or ran wineries, shops, and fashionable nightclubs, dealing with the financiers and politicians on whom their livelihoods depended. They studied in America, visited New York rather than Paris or Venice, couldn't speak French, and married divorces, or models, or parvenus. Cruz Bruner had spoken of this with a mocking smile during dinner. Like a whale or a seal, she said, I belong to an endangered species - the aristocracy.

  "Some worlds don't end with an earthquake or a great crash," the old lady now said, looking doubtfully at Quart, wondering if he understood. "They expire quietly, with a discreet sigh." She adjusted the cushion behind her back and for a few moments listened to the crickets in the garden. A soft glow in the sky announced the moon's arrival. "Quietly," she repeated.

  Quart looked at Macarena, who had her back to the light from the gallery, half her face in shadow. Her hair had slipped over her shoulder. Her legs were crossed, and her bare feet in sandals showed below her black dress. The ivory necklace gleamed at her neck. "Not Our Lady of the Tears," he said. "Her departure from this world is anything but quiet."

  Macarena said nothing.

  "Not all worlds disappear willingly," the old duchess whispered.

  "You have no grandchildren," said Quart. He tried to sound neutral, casual, yet it came out sounding provocative, even rude.

  "True. I don't," replied Cruz Bruner, and she turned to her daughter.

  Macarena sat forward then, and in the moonlight Quart saw her anger. "It's none of your business," she said at last, evenly, to him.

  "Maybe it's none of my business either," said the duchess, coming to her guest's aid. "But it's a pity."

  "Why?" Macarena asked sharply. She addressed her mother but was looking at Quart. "Sometimes it's better not to leave anything behind." She pushed her hair back, exasperated. "Soldiers who go to war leaving nothing behind are lucky. They have no one to worry or suffer over."

  "Like some priests," said Quart, his eyes fixed on her.

  "Perhaps." Macarena laughed. It was bitter; nothing like her usual, open laugh. "It must be wonderful to have no responsibilities, to be so selfish. To choose a cause that you love or that suits you, as Gris has done. Or as you have. Instead of inheriting a cause or having one imposed upon you."

  Cruz Bruner wrapped her fingers round her fan. "Nobody forced you to get involved with the church, my dear," she said. "Or to turn it into a personal battle."

  "Please. You know better than anyone that sometimes a person has no choice. That if you open a trunk, you may have to pay for it . . . Some lives are ruled by ghosts."

  The duchess snapped open her fan. "You heard her, Father. Who said romantic heroines have disappeared?" She fanned herself, looking absently at Quart's injured knuckles. "But only the young are troubled by ghosts. True, ghosts multiply over time, but they bother you less: the pain turns to melancholy. Mine just float about gently now." She gestured at the mudejar arches of the courtyard, the tiled fountain and the rising moon. "They don't cause me sadness any more." She looked at her daughter. "Only you do. A little."

  The old lady tilted her head to one side, just as Macarena did, and Quart suddenly recognised her daughter's features in her face. He had a glimpse of what the beautiful woman beside him would look like in thirty or forty years. Everything comes to pass, thought Quart. And everything ends.

  "For a time my daughter's marriage gave me hope," Cruz Bruner went on. "It consoled me, for sooner or later I would be leaving her. Octavio Machuca and I agreed that Pencho was ideal: clever, handsome, with a great future ... He seemed very much in love with Macarena, and I'm sure he still is, despite all that's happened." She pursed her almost non-existent lips. "Suddenly everything changed. My daughter left the marital home and came back to live with me."

  Quart finished his coffee and put his cup on the table. He felt he was continually brushing against the truth but not quite grasping it. "I don't dare ask why," he said.

  "You don't." The duchess fanned herself, looking at him teasingly. "Nor do I. At any other time, I would have considered it a great misfortune, but I don't know what's best any more . . . I'm the last-but-one of my line, I'm almost three-quarters of a century old, and I have a gallery full of portraits of ancestors whom no one fears, respects or even remembers."

  The moon was now centred in the rectangle of sky above their heads. Cruz Bruner asked for the lamps to be turned off. The light became silvery blue with accents of white - the patterns on the tiles, the chairs, and the mosaic on the floor standing out as clearly as if it were day.

  "It's like crossing a line," she said. "The world looks different from the other side."


  "And what's on the other side?" he asked.

  The old lady looked at him with mock surprise. "That's a worrying question coming from a priest. Women of my generation always thought priests had the answer to everything. When I asked my old confessor how to deal with my husband's infidelities, he always told me to accept them, to pray and to offer my anguish to Jesus. According to him, Raphael's private life and my salvation were entirely separate matters. One had nothing to do with the other."

  Quart wondered what advice Father Ferro had given Macarena about her marriage.

  "As we approach the line," continued Cruz Bruner, "we feel a certain dispassionate curiosity. A tender tolerance towards those who will get here sooner or later, but don't know it."

  "Such as your daughter?"

  The old lady thought a moment. "For example," she agreed. She peered at Quart, interested. "Or you. You won't always be a handsome priest who attracts his female parishioners."

  Quart ignored her last remark. The truth still seemed just out of reach. "And what's Father Ferro's view from the other side?" he asked.

  The old lady shrugged. The conversation was starting to bore her. "You'll have to ask him. I don't think Don Priamo is either tender or tolerant. But he's an honest priest, and I believe in priests. I believe in the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, and I hope to save my soul for eternity." She tapped her chin with her closed fan. "I even believe in priests like you who don't conduct Mass or anything; or priests who wear jeans and trainers, like Father Oscar . . In the lost world I come from, a priest meant something." She smiled at her daughter. "Macarena is very fond of Don Priamo, and I believe in Macarena too. I like to see her fight her personal batdes, even though I don't always understand them. They are batdes that would have been impossible when I was her age."

  It was the second time in two days that someone had proclaimed Father Ferro's honesty. But that contradicted the report about Cillas de Anso. Quart glanced at his watch. "Is Father Ferro up in the observatory?" he asked.

  "It's too early," answered Cruz Bruner. "He usually arrives a bit later, around eleven. Would you like to wait?"