The Flanders Panel

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  César stood on the right and, with his silvery hair and silk dressing gown, he looked like an elegant figure in a turn-of-the-century comedy: calm and distinguished, conscious that he owned the two-hundred-year-old carpet on which Muñoz was standing. Julia watched him draw from a pocket a pack of gold-tipped cigarettes and fit one into his ivory holder. The scene would be engraved for ever on her memory: the backdrop of darkly gleaming antiques, the slender classical figures painted on the ceiling; and, standing face to face, the ageing dantly, elegant and ambivalent in appearance^ and the thin, shabby man in the crumpled raincoat, looking at each other in silence, as if waiting for someone, possibly the prompter hidden behind one of the pieces of period furniture, to give the cue to begin the final act.

  From the moment Julia had noticed something familiar about the face of the young man staring into the photographer's camera with all the seriousness of his fifteen or sixteen years, she had guessed that the final act would be more or less like this and how it would end. She looked at her two favourite characters as she sat on César's comfortable sofa and let her thoughts drift lazily. She would never have got such a perfect seat in a theatre. Then a memory came back to her, a recent memory. She'd already had a glance at the script. It had been only a few hours before, in Room 12 of the Prado: the painting by Brueghel, beating drums providing a background to the annihilating breath of the inevitable, sweeping away as it passed the last blade of grass on earth, and everything subsumed into one last, gigantic pirouette, into the sound of a loud belly laugh from some drunken god recovering from an Olympian hangover somewhere behind the blackened hills, the smoking ruins and the glow of the fires. Pieter Van Huys, that other Fleming, the old master of the court of Ostenburg, had explained it all too, in his own way, perhaps with more delicacy and subtlety, more hermetic and sinuous than the brutal Brueghel, but with the same aim. In the end all paintings were paintings of the same painting, just as all mirrors gave the reflection of the same reflection, and all deaths were the death of the same Death:

  Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

  Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays...

  She murmured these words to herself, looking at César and at Muñoz. Everything was ready. They could begin. The yellow light from the English lamp created a cone of brightness that wrapped itself about the two main characters. César inclined his head a little and lit his cigarette. As if that were the signal for the dialogue to start, Muñoz nodded slightly and spoke:

  "I hope you have a chessboard to hand, César."

  Not the most brilliant of openings, thought Julia, nor even the most appropriate. An imaginative scriptwriter would doubtless have come up with some better words to place in Muñoz's mouth. But, she thought disconsolately, the writer of the tragicomedy was, after all, as mediocre as the world he'd created.

  "I don't think a chessboard will be necessary," replied César, and with that the dialogue improved. Not because of the words, but because of the tone, which was perfect, particularly that hint of boredom César gave to the phrase. It was a tone typical of him, one he might use were he observing a distant scene from a garden chair, a wrought-iron one painted white, with a very dry martini in one hand. César had his decadent poses down to a fine art, as he did his homosexuality, his perversity, and Julia, who had loved him for that too, could appreciate the value of that rigorous, precise attitude, so perfect in every detail. And the most fascinating thing was that he had been deceiving her for twenty years. Although, to be fair, the person responsible for the deceit was not him, but her. Nothing had changed in César. Now he was feeling no remorse or disquiet for what he'd done. She knew this with absolute certainty. He appeared to be as distinguished and correct as he had when Julia heard from his lips beautiful stories about lovers and warriors, about Long John Silver, Wendy, Lagardere, Sir Kenneth, the Knight of the Couchant Leopard. Yet he was the one who had dumped Álvaro under the shower, rammed a bottle of gin between Menchu's legs. Julia savoured her own bitterness. If he is himself, she thought, and it's clear that he is, then the one who has changed is me. That's why I see him differently tonight, with altered eyes: I see a blackguard, a fraud and a murderer. And yet I'm still here, hanging on his every word, fascinated. In a few seconds, instead of telling me a tale of adventures in the Caribbean, he's going to tell me that he did it all for me or some such thing. And I'll listen to him, as I always have, because this is better than all César's other stories. It surpasses them all in imagination and horror.

  She removed her arm from the back of the sofa and leaned forwards a little, not wanting to miss the slightest detail of the scene. That movement seemed the signal to resume the dialogue. Muñoz, his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, looked at César.

  "Just clarify something for me," he said. "After the black bishop takes the white pawn on a6, White decides to move his king from d4 to e5, discovering the check of the white queen on the black king. What should Black do next?"

  César's eyes seemed to be smiling independently of his impassive features.

  "I don't know," he replied after a moment. "You're the master, my dear. You should know."

  Muñoz made one of his vague gestures, as if brushing aside the tide César had bestowed on him.

  "I insist," he said slowly, dragging out the words, "on knowing the authorised version."

  César's lips became infected by the smile that until then had been restricted to his eyes.

  "In that case, I would protect the black king by placing the bishop on c4." He looked at Muñoz with courteous solicitude. "Does that seem right to you?"

  "Then I'll take that bishop," Muñoz said, almost rudely, "with my white bishop on d3. And then you'll have me in check with your knight on d7."

  "I'll do no such thing, my friend." César held his gaze unflinchingly. "I don't know what you're talking about. And this is no time to play charades."

  Muñoz frowned and looked stubborn.

  "You'll have me in check on d7," he insisted. "Stop play-acting and concentrate on the board."

  "Why should I?"

  "Because you have very few escape routes now. I avoid that check by moving the white king to d6."

  César sighed when he heard this, and his blue eyes rested on Julia. In the dim light, they seemed extraordinarily pale, almost colourless. After placing his cigarette holder between his teeth, he nodded twice, with a slight look of regret on his face.

  "Then, I'm sorry to say"–and he did indeed seem put out–"I would have to take the second white knight, the one on bl." He looked at Muñoz contritely. "A pity, don't you think?"

  "Yes. Especially from the knight's point of view." Muñoz bit his lower lip. "And would you take it with the rook or with the queen?"

  "With the queen, naturally." César seemed offended. "There are certain rules..." He left the phrase hanging in the air with a gesture of his right hand. A fine, pale hand, on the back of which could be seen the bluish ridges of his veins, a hand that Julia now knew was capable of killing, perhaps initiating the lethal blow with the same elegant gesture.

  Then, for the first time since they'd arrived, Muñoz smiled, that vague, distant smile that never meant anything, that was a response to his strange mathematical reflections rather than to the surrounding reality.

  "In your place I would have played queen to c2, but that's of no importance now," he said in a low voice. "What I'd like to know is how you were thinking of killing me."

  "Don't talk nonsense," replied César, and he seemed genuinely shocked. Then, as if appealing to Muñoz's sense of politeness, he made a gesture in the direction of the sofa where Julia was sitting, though without looking at her. "There's a young lady present..."

  "At this point," remarked Muñoz, the smile still there at one corner of his mouth, "the young lady is, I imagine, as curious as I am. But you didn't answer my question. Were you thinking of resorting again to the tactic of a blow to the throat or the back of the neck or were you saving a more classical ending for m
e? I mean poison, a dagger or something like that ... How would you put it?" He glanced up at the paintings on the ceiling, seeking some appropriate phrase. "Ah, yes, something 'Venetian'."

  "I would have said 'Florentine'," César corrected him, punctilious as always, although not without a certain admiration. "I had no idea you had a sense of irony about such matters."

  "I don't," replied Muñoz. "Not at all." He looked at Julia and pointed at César. "There he is: the man who enjoys the trust of both king and queen. If you want to fictionalise the thing, he's the plotting bishop, the treacherous Grand Vizier who conspires in the shadows because he is, in fact, the Black Queen in disguise."

  "It would make a marvellous soap opera," remarked César mockingly, clapping his hands in slow, silent applause. "But you haven't told me what White would do after losing the knight. Frankly, my dear, I can't wait to find out."

  "Bishop to d3, check. And Black loses the game."

  "That easy, eh? You frighten me, my friend."

  "Yes, that easy."

  César considered this while he removed what remained of his cigarette from the holder and placed it in an ashtray, having first delicately removed the ash.

  "Interesting," he said and slowly, so as not to alarm Muñoz unnecessarily, went over to the English card table next to the sofa. After turning the small silver key in the lock of a chest veneered in lemonwood, he took out the dark, yellowing pieces of a very old ivory chess set that Julia had never seen before.

  "Interesting," he repeated. His slender fingers with their manicured nails arranged the pieces on the board. "The situation, then, would be like this."

  "Exactly," said Muñoz, who was looking at the board from a distance. "The white bishop, when it withdraws from c4 to d3, allows a double check: white queen on black king and the bishop itself on the black queen. The king has no alternative but to flee from a4 to b3 and to abandon the black queen to her fate. The white queen will provide another check on c4, forcing the enemy king to retreat, before the white bishop finishes off the queen."

  "The black rook will take that bishop."

  "Yes, but that's not important. Without the queen, Black is finished. What's more, once that piece disappears from the board the game loses its raison d'être."

  "You may be right."

  "I am right. The game, or what's left of it, is decided by the white pawn on d5, which, after taking the black pawn on c6, will advance, with no one to stop it, until it is promoted. That will happen within six or, at most, nine moves." Muñoz put a hand into one of his pockets and drew out a piece of paper covered with pencilled jottings. "These, for example."

  Pd5 × Pc6 Ktd7 - f6

  Qc4 - e6 Pa5 - a4

  Qe6 × Ktf6 Pa4 - a3

  Pc3 - c4+ Kb2 - cl

  Qf6 - c3+ Kcl - dl

  Qc3 × Pa3 Rbl - cl

  Qa3 - b3+ Kdl × Pd2

  Pc6 - c7 Pb6 - b5

  Pc7 - c8... (Black resigns)

  César picked up the piece of paper and very calmly studied the chessboard, his empty cigarette holder clamped between his teeth. His smile was that of a man accepting a defeat that was already written in the stars. One after another he moved the pieces until they represented the final situation:

  "You're right. There's no way out," he said at last. "Black loses."

  Muñoz's eyes shifted from the board to César.

  "Taking the second knight," he murmured in an objective tone, "was a mistake."

  César shrugged, still smiling.

  "After a certain point Black had no choice. You could say that Black was also a prisoner of his mobility, of his natural dynamic. That knight rounded off the game." For a moment Julia caught in César's eyes a flash of pride. "In fact, it was almost perfect."

  "Not in chess terms," said Muñoz dryly.

  "Chess? My dear friend"–César made a disdainful gesture in the direction of the chess pieces—"I was referring to something more than a simple chessboard." His blue eyes grew dark, as if a hidden world were peering out from beneath their surface. "I was referring to life itself, to those other sixty-four squares of black nights and white days of which the poet speaks. Or perhaps it's the other way round, perhaps it should be white nights and black days. It depends on which side of the player we choose to place the image ... on where, since we're talking in symbolic terms, we place the mirror."

  Julia felt that his words were addressed to her.

  "How did you know it was César?" she asked Muñoz, and César seemed startled. Something suddenly changed in his attitude, as if Julia, by giving voice to and sharing Muñoz's accusation, had broken a vow of silence. His initial reserve disappeared at once, and his smile became a bitter, mocking grimace.

  "Yes," he said to Muñoz, and that was his first formal admission of guilt, "tell her how you knew it was me."

  Muñoz turned his head a little towards Julia.

  "Your friend made a couple of mistakes." He hesitated for a second over the exact sense of his words and then glanced towards César, possibly in apology. "Although I'm wrong to call them 'mistakes', because he always knew exactly what he was doing and what the risks were. Paradoxically, you made him give himself away."

  "I did? But I hadn't the slightest idea until..."

  César shook his head, almost sweetly, Julia thought, frightened of her feelings.

  "Our friend Muñoz is speaking figuratively, Princess."

  "Please, don't call me Princess." Julia didn't recognise her own voice. It sounded strangely hard. "Not tonight."

  César looked at her for a few moments before nodding his assent.

  "All right." He seemed to find it difficult to pick up the thread. "What Muñoz is trying to explain is that your presence in the game provided him with a contrast by which to observe the intentions of his opponent. Our friend is a good chess player, but he's turned out to be a much better sleuth than I expected. Not like that imbecile Feijoo, who sees a cigarette end lying in an ashtray and deduces, at most, that someone's been smoking." He looked at Muñoz. "It was bishop to pawn instead of queen to pawn d5 that put you on the alert, wasn't it?"

  "Yes. Or at least it was one of the things that made me suspicious. On his fourth move, Black passed up a chance to take the white queen, which would have decided the game in his favour. At first I thought he was just playing cat and mouse, or that Julia was so necessary to the game that she couldn't be taken or murdered until later. But when our enemy, you, chose bishop to pawn instead of queen to pawn d5, a move that would inevitably have meant an exchange of queens, I realised that the mystery player had never had any intention of taking the white queen, that he was even prepared to lose the game rather than take that step. And the link between that move and the spray can left on Julia's car in the Rastro, that presumptuous 'I could kill you but I won't', was so obvious that I no longer had any doubts: the threats to the white queen were all a bluff." He looked at Julia. "Because, throughout this whole episode, you were never in any real danger."

  César nodded as if what was being considered were not his actions but those of a third party about whose fate he cared nothing.

  "You also realised," he said, "that the enemy was not the king but the black queen."

  Muñoz shrugged.

  "That wasn't difficult. The connection with the murders was obvious: only those pieces taken by the black queen symbolised real murders. I applied myself to studying the moves of that one piece and I drew some interesting conclusions. For example, her protective role as regards Black's play in general, which extended even to the white queen, her main enemy, and which she nevertheless respected as if the latter were sacred. The proximity of the white knight, myself, the two pieces on adjacent squares, almost like good neighbours, yet the black queen chose not to use her poisonous sting on him until later, when there would be no alternative." He was looking at César with opaque eyes. "At least I have the consolation of knowing that you would have killed me without hatred, even with a certain finesse and fellow feeling, with an apology
on your lips, asking for my understanding. That you were driven purely by the demands of the game."

  César made a theatrical, eighteenth-century gesture with his hand and bowed his head, grateful for the apparent precision of Muñoz's analysis.

  "You're absolutely right," he said. "But tell me, how did you know you were the knight and not the bishop?"

  "Thanks to a series of clues, some minor and others more important. The decisive one was the symbolic role of the bishop, which, as I mentioned before, is the piece that enjoys the trust of both king and queen. You, César, played an extraordinary role in all this: white bishop disguised as black queen, acting on both sides of the board. And that very condition is what brought about your downfall, in a game which, curiously enough, you started precisely for that reason, to be beaten. And you received the coup de grace from your own hand: the white bishop takes the black queen, Julia's antiquarian friend betrays the identity of the invisible player with his own game, like the scorpion stinging itself with its own tail. I can assure you that it's the first time in my life I've ever witnessed a suicide on the chessboard carried out to such perfection."

  "Brilliant," said César, and Julia couldn't tell if he was referring to Muñoz's analysis or to his own game. "But tell me something. In your judgment, how would you interpret that identification of mine with both the black queen and the white bishop?"