The Oldest Confession

by Richard Condon

  Cayetano said, “This is a week of miracles, really. I ask everyone here. Who is the most improbable Spaniard you can think of who would announce that he was going to attend a bullfight?”

  The duchess did not hesitate for an instant. “My cousin, el doctor, Victoriano Muñoz, el Marqués de Villalba.” She drawled the name sounding precisely like Victoriano and they all thought that was pretty funny.

  “Your cousin?” Bourne blurted.

  “Oh, now, come, Jaime! He’s not that bad. He just hates bullfights and practically everything else attractive people like.”

  “I couldn’t tell you why I was so surprised,” Bourne told her.

  “Everyone is related to everyone, really, if you subscribe to that new Adam and Eve theory.”

  “It is a very decadent thing for the corrida, that Victoriano has decided to attend it,” Cayetano said.

  “I begin to get the idea that he is setting a precedent,” Eve said.

  “A precedent?” cried the duchess. “It is as though Winston Churchill took out Italian citizenship!” She turned to Cayetano, incredulous. “Did I hear you say that my cousin Victoriano Muñoz was going to a corrida?”

  “You grasp the general idea,” Cayetano told her patting her hand, then thinking better of the whole thing and kissing her hand. “He called me this morning and asked if I would kill in front of Tendido Two next week on my first bull because they were the only seats he could get and he has promised to take Mrs. Pickett and he is afraid she won’t last out more than one bull so he wants to make sure of that by making it as awful as possible, he said, with the kill right under her nose, so that she will faint or get sick and they can leave immediately.”

  “He’s certainly a clear thinker, my cousin. Who else do you know who could think his way out of a social trap like that?”

  “There is no guarantee that Mrs. Pickett will faint, you know,” Bourne said stoutly.

  “Oh, she’ll faint,” Cayetano said confidently. “To help him out I might just botch things with the first sword.”

  “I feel buzzed,” Eve said.

  “It is the martinis and the wine and the vodka,” the duchess said. “One is not to worry, my sweet.”

  “That is the stand I have decided to take,” Eve replied. “Please cause the glasses to be filled with this fine champagne as we have not yet run out of announcements.”

  The duchess stared at her with joy. Her chin dropped, her eyes popped under the influence of women’s telepathy. “No!”

  “No, what?” Bourne asked.

  “Please cause the glasses to be filled,” the duchess said, but as she said it Señor Torte had signaled waiters from fifteen yards away to get with it.

  Eve lifted her glass. “I hope you will consider that I am engraving these words for you as I go along. Mr. and Mrs. James Bourne take great pleasure in inviting you to the christening of their first child in approximately five months an announcement which is possible because the child’s mother is a tall woman who, up until the present time, is carrying it so well that it shows not more than a pocket watch would show in the evening clothes of Mr. Fred Astaire.”

  Bourne goggled at her. “What?” he exclaimed.

  The duchess filled in smoothly. “You must call him Cayetano. We in turn, to show our appreciation, will call our first-born Herbert Hoover Jiminez.”

  “Eve—My golly—Well, what wonderful news!” Bourne looked as if he had just finished a performance as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

  “Jaime!” Cayetano protested. “Enough of the little father faces! We have not yet drunk a toast!” He lifted his glass. “To the dear child of the dear Bournes,” he said and drank it down. The glasses were refilled.

  “To the sweet, sweet baby’s sweet, sweet mother!” cried the duchess, drinking it down. The glasses were refilled.

  “To the wedding of my friends and the birthday of my child,” Bourne boomed and drank it down. The glasses were refilled.

  “To The Pickett Troilus and the great deep swoon of Mrs. Pickett!” intoned Eve and drank it down. The glasses were refilled.

  “To all of us, each and every one of us, may we love and live forever!” sang the duchess and drank it down. Something in the style of S’Agaro was served and the luncheon got under way.

  Tuesday was a model spring day. Bourne and Eve were sipping coffee in the living room of their apartment with the terrace doors swung wide, Eve fully dressed, Bourne in pajamas and robe, when there was a knock on their door. Bourne scurried into the bedroom and Eve answered the knock. Jean Marie came in.

  “My God,” she said, “you look terrible.”

  “I feel terrible. Believe me, chérie, I feel one hundred per cent lousy all the way through. It is something I didn’t eat, no doubt. Big joke. Something I couldn’t keep on my stomach. Do you mind if I try once again with your coffee. I will try not to vomit on your cushions. But the coffee works sometimes. If I could get my hands and teeth on a good brioche I might survive at this time of day. Or a good anything at any time of day. Sweet Jesus, but the Spaniards are terrible cooks. Everyone is mystified why Americans continue to come to Paris when the prices are so high. I’ll tell you why Americans keep coming to Paris. Go eat some of this fantastically overcooked, underflavored Spanish food and you’ll know why. Look at this weather. The Spaniards are very strong on beautiful weather. If Americans stayed in France for more than one week they’d see some of the lousiest weather ever manufactured, but Spanish weather is superb. One would think it didn’t all come from the same place there is such a difference. Well, today is the last day of this madness. The last day. The goddam, bloody very last day. I could not have gone on for one more day. I swear to God and Jesus and the Virgin I could not have gone on. God alone knows whether I will be able to survive today. I don’t think I have the strength in my hand to hold the brush to pretend to finish that bloody trompe l’oeil. Imagine me being forced to take three entire weeks to finish three lousy Goyas. I could have illuminated a Gutenberg Bible, hand-painted some neckties for the Pope and knocked off four large Breughels in the extra time I’ve had. Of course, Jim was right. Because I’ve been mopping and daubing the guards are like my uncles now. That big one who swings in on the relief hitch must eat garlic rubbed with garlic. You cannot conceive of how that man smells. One more little pressure on me, the smell of garlic. Everything is crumbling under this pressure. My bowels, my joints, my sleep, everything, thank God, except my painting. I will never make a thief. The reason that the world is as honest as it is falls under the same heading. The wear and tear of a life of crime is simply too excessive. I’ll tell you one thing, if we can get that goddam trompe l’oeil out of the country I’m going to hang the goddam thing in my dining room. Jim said I could have it. Not that I need a souvenir of this goddam job. I’ll never forget this goddam job and that is for bloody, horrible goddam sure.”

  Bourne emerged from the bedroom, fully dressed, somewhere in Jean Marie’s mid-sentence.

  “Hi, kid. Where’s Eve?”

  “Eve?” He spun around comically, looking, but there was no sign of her. The door to the corridor opened at that instant and Eve entered with a covered plate. “I went down myself instead of calling room service,” she said. “Now you sit right down here and eat it.”

  “Eat what? I can’t eat anything. I can’t hold anything on my stomach.”

  “Two nice, fresh brioches. And I happen to have some marvelous confiture. The same brand exactly that Lalu always has for you. And fresh butter. Come along now.”

  Bourne’s face was pinched with anxiety as he read the note from Dr. Muñoz on the heavy, scented paper. He had not been able to reach Muñoz, or one of his servants, on the telephone or at the apartment for the past four days. The note, which had just arrived, had been delivered by hand to the concierge. It said that Muñoz had completed all arrangements for a magnificent diversion which would happen at four twenty to four twenty-nine and three-quarters, give or take a split second, and was written in such
a manner as to suggest that the marqués was enjoying a joke against Bourne’s outrageously precise time allowances. The note assured Bourne that the diversion would do more than set Madrid on its head, that it was the only possible choice of all possible diversions because it could not fail. The note said that the doctor had decided not to reveal what the diversion would be, that surprises were the spice and all that, and it sincerely hoped that Bourne would be found, by the note, in the best of health and spirits and that Dr. Muñoz would be with him, in spirit, throughout the day.

  Bourne picked up the telephone beside him and dialed Muñoz’ number impatiently once again. The phone sound rang and rang but no one answered. Bourne crashed the phone into its cradle and looked up at the wall clock. It was three twenty-five and time to leave. He opened the top drawer of the desk and took out a small, green, glass vial. He shook two white pills out of it upon the green desk blotter, recapped the vial, then poured a half glass of water from the vacuum bottle which shared the telephone table. He heard a sound at the door, looked up and found Eve standing there. She closed the door behind her and stared him down.

  “How come the pills for the easiest job you’ve ever done?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. He swallowed the pills with some water. “Time to go,” he said. He stood beside her. She wouldn’t look at him. He pinned her arms to her sides and kissed her. She didn’t respond.

  “I’ll be back here at five ten,” he said. “Please don’t worry.” He slid past her, opened the door and was gone.

  She walked to his desk and sat down. The ticking of the wall clock sounded very loud. She sat and stared at the green desk pad. At four o’clock she opened the top drawer of Bourne’s desk and took out the green, glass vial. She tossed two of the pills into her opposite hand and swallowed them without any water.

  In the Sala Goya, Jean Marie tried to give the impression of working steadily. He had come back from lunch at three thirty, but he had not been able to eat again. Lunch had started well enough. He had journeyed across the city to Calle Ternera because the restaurant called El Callejon was one of the few which cooked food even halfway appealing to him, but within ten minutes the nausea had returned and at last he had had to hasten deplorably to the facilities where he had retched until his stomach had felt scraped.

  Back in the Sala Goya he daubed and wiped but mostly stared at the great “Dos de Mayo.” Sweet Christ, the size of it, he kept observing until he could not think of anything but the size of it and what it must weigh until he began to convince himself that his own expert eye had detected a miscalculation in Bourne’s design of the mother frame. Sweet Jesus, how could a monster the size of that bloody Goya ever fit into this mignon of a frame he was swatting away at? Christ’s thorns, they would be tugging and pushing at the goddam thing without a chance of ever jamming it into the goddam mother frame. Mother frame! Sweet Son of Mary, if a mother ever carried a child this size she’d split open right down the middle. What would they do? They would be tugging and pushing and the guards would walk right into the room and find them. He felt a terrible and humiliating flash of embarrassment to imagine the expressions on the faces of his friends the guards when they discovered that he had betrayed their trust. He actually had to close his eyes as he thought of that. He forced himself to think other less embarrassing thoughts. Was he ever to see Lalu again? He thought of the silent peace in the galleries of the Louvre and of the Musée Delacroix and the ten and the twenty and the thirty of the other galleries of Paris he had copied in. So much repose in that life, so much assurance. It was like living a life in a chair sled moving along a gentle slope of virgin snow, well bundled up, moving down toward a small cottage alight with warmth and Lalu. Tiny Lalu, sweet Lalu.

  A guard almost caused his death by coming out of nowhere and touching his shoulder. Jean Marie thought he heard himself scream then he heard the guard apologize for jolting him while he was lost in a reverie of art. It is my fault, Jean Marie thought, I should have smelled the son-of-a-bitch. Sweet God, they had rubbed garlic into his hair today. The guard was anxious about Jean Marie because he was perspiring so; he was sure that Jean Marie was running a body fever. He urged that he leave and go home and purge himself. Jean Marie explained that it was merely a mild stomach upset, that it would pass, and that at the moment he was immersed in thinking a most difficult problem through, so that he could not possibly go home. This sent the guard away, awed and respectful.

  The white Mercedes moved along Lagasca slowly, the duchess seated in it, quite alone. She stayed on Lagasca until Padilla then turned right, balling along until Silvela then crossing into the Avenida de los Toreros. She made the long curve above the Plaza de Toros, then down to its level, driving in between the two parking lots, to the corner of the smaller lot, directly opposite the gateway to the Patio de Caballos. A small, one-armed Civil War veteran with a patent-leather visor on his cap held the space for her by sitting on it.

  She had driven along the only relatively clear route in the city. The feria was under way and it had been slow-moving. The streets swarmed with traffic and traffic police. The cars had moved a few feet at a time while the foot traffic seemed to move faster. She gave the custodian of her private parking space five pesetas. As she walked away from the car a fourteen-year-old gypsy girl carrying a four-month-old baby and dragging a three-year-old child, neither of them wearing shoes, came up out of the ground chanting the song which was the gypsies’ vocation, not to say profession, on fiesta days. The duchess was ready. She had a duro in her glove which she surrendered willingly.

  As she walked two small boys offered to sell her a brightly colored souvenir program which, they explained gravely, walking beside her as she walked, also contained the history of the entire corrida. She thanked them solemnly but refused the opportunity. Three ticket scalpers, one after another, offered her excellent seats in sombra, in sol and in sol y sombra. The excited crowds were everywhere and the sunlight was so thick as to make the world be seen as though through a bathysphere sunk in goldwasser.

  The noise was a splendid Spanish noise; a gay noise which also packed the authority of afición, and the preening self-esteem of many people all together who could afford to secure seats for the corrida during the Feria de San Isidro.

  As she walked briskly toward the main entrance, gradually slowed by the thickening crowd she could see the four mounted police sitting like sleepy monuments caught in a flood. Great-busted, matronly women standing over capacious baskets offered single cigarettes for sale, single pieces of candy, single pieces of chewing gum. Impassive, gnarled men guarded stone jugs which had the nozzle velocity of water pistols and cried out with great joy that they were willing to sell a drink to absolutely anyone for fifty centavos.

  At the front entrance, the great gateway, the carteles for the day were emblazoned on either side of the arch. She was moving slowly now, as part of the peanut-butter-thick crowd, so had plenty of time to read them as she moved forward. They were printed in red, yellow, blue, brown and white, carried a huge reproduction of a painting of Cayetano in a pase de pecho and said:

  PLAZA DE TOROS LAS VENTAS MADRID

  Grandiosos acontecimientos taurinos

  para el Feria de San Isidro

  el Maries 15 de Mayo de 1956

  Las maximas

  combinaciónes

  Gran Corrida de Toros

  Con superior permiso y si el tiempo

  no lo impide se picarán, banderillearán

  y seran muertos a estoque

  6 Hermosos Toros 6

  de la acreditada ganadería de Don Salvador Guardíola

  Espadas

  CAYETANO JIMINEZ

  CÉSAR GIRÓN

  GREGORIO SÁNCHEZ

  The duchess saw Victoriano Muñoz five people ahead of her in the crowd. She called out to him, but the noise of the crowd swept the sound away and she couldn’t get his attention. She craned her neck to try to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Pickett, but with no luck and when she looked a
gain for Victoriano he had disappeared into the bull holiday bustle of arms, legs and faces, of olive oil-crusted voices, of dwarfs and children and beautiful women, of the world’s richest and the world’s poorest pressed against photographers from Göteborg, distillers from Glasgow, secretaries from Winsted, Connecticut, and Arabs from the Riff. She was swept along into Tendido Eight. Three ushers rushed to seat her, causing a bottleneck on the stairs in the chute leading into the stands. She was settled with many murmurs of “mi duquesa” in a barrera seat behind the matador’s burladero.

  Bourne entered the Paseo del Prado entrance of the museum wondering how he could get his hands to stay dry. His mind ticked off each movement and placement which kept him abreast of his schedule. He had the look of a businessman about to go into a meeting in which he will hold most of the power and know how to maneuver the rest. He wasn’t nervous, but he couldn’t keep his hands dry, which was annoying. He wasn’t aware of his jaws being chomped together, grinding his teeth into a vise and depositing lumps at the corners of his face. He wasn’t aware that his sphincter muscles had tightened like a imp’s fist, or that his throat was dry enough to strike a store match on it, or of the military academy rigidity of his back. He wiped his hands with a handerchief for the third time within five minutes. His breathing was shallow as he entered the Sala Goya. An Arab in a burnoose and two Arabs in western clothes were standing in front of “The Second of May,” silent and studious. Bourne moved to Jean Marie’s extreme right to stand at the side of “The Maja Clothed” so that Jean Marie would notice him, which he did, with a terrifying start.

  The brilliant sun divided the bull ring into halves, impartially but decisively. On the stroke of four o’clock the bugle sounded the notes which summoned the two aguacils into the arena, riding schooled horses, dressed in the manner of sixteenth-century Spain. They galloped across the ring to doff their hats to the president, pretending to catch the keys to the toriles in their hats, as though the keys had been tossed down from the too-distant president’s box. They reined away in opposite directions from one another, one riding clockwise around the ring, the other counterclockwise to meet at the portal where the toreros had formed.