The Flanders Panel

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "I imagine that a detailed explanation would take us all night and the ensuing discussion several weeks. I can only speak now of what I saw revealed on the chessboard, and that was a split personality: evil, César, in all its blackness. Your feminine side, do you remember? You asked me once for an analysis: someone hemmed in and oppressed by his surroundings, defiant in the face of authority, hostile and homosexual impulses. All of that was embodied beneath the black dress of Beatrice of Burgundy, in other words, the queen of chess. And in opposition to that, as different as day from night, was your love for Julia. Your other side which is just as painful to you: the masculine side, with certain modifications; the aesthetic side embodied in your chivalrous attitudes; what you wanted to be and were not. Roger de Arras embodied not in the knight but in the elegant white bishop. What do you think?"

  César was pale and motionless, for the first time in her life, Julia saw him paralysed by surprise. Then, after a few moments that seemed an eternity, filled only by the ticking of a wall clock marking the passing of that silence, César finally managed a faint smile, at one corner of his bloodless lips. But it was mechanical, a way of confronting the implacable dissection of his personality that Muñoz had cast into his face, like someone throwing down a gauntlet.

  "Tell me about the bishop," he said in a hoarse voice.

  "Since you ask me to, I will." Muñoz's eyes were lit now by the decisive brilliance of his moves. He was repaying his opponent for all the doubts and uncertainties the latter had put him through at the board; it was his professional revenge. And when she realised this, Julia knew that at some point in the game Muñoz must have thought he was going to lose. "The bishop, with its deep, diagonal movement," he said, "is the chess piece that best embodies homosexuality. Yes, you gave yourself another magnificent part as the bishop protecting the helpless white queen, the bishop who, in the end, in a moment of sublime resolution planned right at the start, deals a mortal blow to his own obscure condition and offers up to his adored white queen a masterly and terrifying lesson. I saw all that only gradually, as I slowly put my ideas together. But you didn't play chess. At first that prevented my suspicions from centring on you. And even when I was almost certain, that was what disconcerted me. The game plan was too perfect for a normal player, and inconceivable even in a keen amateur. In fact, that still troubles me."

  "There's an explanation for everything," replied César. "But I didn't mean to interrupt you, my dear. Go on."

  "There's not much more to say. At least not here, tonight. Álvaro Ortega was killed by someone he perhaps knew, but I wasn't completely sure about that. However, Menchu Roch would never have opened the door to a stranger, especially in the circumstances described by Max. In the café the other night, you said there were almost no suspects left, and you were right. I tried to approach it analytically, in successive stages. Lola Belmonte wasn't my opponent; I knew that as soon as I met her. Nor was her husband. As for Don Manuel Belmonte, his odd musical paradoxes gave me plenty of food for thought ... But the suspect was someone unbalanced. His chess-playing side, if I may put it like that, was not up to it. Besides, he was an invalid, which ruled out the violent actions perpetrated against Álvaro and Menchu. A possible combination of uncle and niece, bearing in mind the blonde woman in the raincoat, didn't stand up to detailed analysis either: why would they steal something that was theirs already? As for Montegrifo, I made some enquiries, and I know that he has no links with chess whatsoever. Besides, Menchu would never have opened the door to him either that morning."

  "So that left only me."

  "As you know, when one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

  "Of course I remember, my dear. And I congratulate you. I'm glad to see that I did not misjudge you."

  "That's why you chose me, isn't it? You knew that I would win the game. You wanted to be beaten."

  With an obliging little smile, César indicated that it was now a matter of no importance.

  "I did indeed expect to be beaten. I called on your good offices because Julia needed a guide in her descent into hell ... Because this time I had to concentrate on playing the role of the Devil. She needed a companion. So I gave her one."

  Julia's eyes flashed when she heard that. Her voice sounded metallic.

  "You weren't playing at being the Devil, but at being God. Dealing out good and evil, life and death."

  "It was your game, Julia."

  "You're lying. It was yours. I was just a pretext."

  César gave her a reproving look.

  "You haven't understood anything, my dear. But that doesn't matter any more. Look in any mirror; perhaps you'll agree with me then."

  "You can keep your mirrors, César."

  He was genuinely hurt, like a dog or a child unjustly treated. The dumb reproach, overflowing with absurd loyalty, gradually faded from his eyes, and all that remained was an absorbed, almost tearful gaze, staring into space. Slowly he moved his head and looked again at Muñoz.

  "You haven't yet told me," he said, and he seemed to have difficulty recovering the tone he had used before when talking to Muñoz, "how you set the trap that finally made your inductive theories fit the facts. Why have you come to see me with Julia tonight, and not yesterday, for example?"

  "Because yesterday you hadn't declined for the second time to take the white queen. Also because until this afternoon I hadn't found what I was looking for: a bound volume of chess magazines for the fourth quarter of 1945. There's a photograph of the finalists in a junior chess tournament in it, and you're there, César, your name and surname are on the following page. What surprises me is that you weren't a winner. It also puzzles me that after that there's no mention of you as a chess player. You never played in public again."

  "There's something I don't understand," said Julia. "Or, to be exact, there's something else, apart from all the many things I don't understand in all this madness. I've known you for as long as I can remember, César. I grew up with you, and I thought I knew every corner of your life. But you never once mentioned chess. Never. Why?"

  "That's a long story."

  "We've got time," said Muñoz.

  It was the last game in the tournament, with only a few pieces left on the board. Opposite the platform on which the finalists were playing, a few spectators were following the moves as a judge wrote on a panel on the wall, between a portrait of General Franco and a calendar–the date was 12 October 1945 - above the table on which stood the gleaming silver cup intended for the winner.

  The young boy in the grey jacket fiddled nervously with the knot of his tie and looked despairingly at the black pieces on the board. The last few moves of his opponent's methodical, implacable game had manoeuvred him relentlessly into a corner. It wasn't that White had a brilliant game plan, it was simply a question of slow progress starting with a solid initial defence–the King's Indian defence–and getting the upper hand purely and simply by waiting patiently and exploiting his opponent's mistakes. An unimaginative game that risked nothing had, for precisely that reason, sabotaged every attempt at an attack on his king by Black, whose forces were now scattered, incapable of helping each other, or even of providing obstacles to the advance of the two white pawns, which, taking turns to move, were about to be promoted.

  The eyes of the boy in the grey jacket were dull with weariness and shame. The knowledge that his game was superior, more daring and brilliant than that of his opponent, could not console him for his inevitable defeat. His fifteen-year-old's imagination, extravagant and fiery, the extreme sensitivity of his spirit and the lucidity of his thought, even the almost physical pleasure he felt when he moved the varnished wooden chessmen elegantly across the board, creating on the black and white squares a delicate network that he considered to be of almost perfect beauty and harmony, all seemed sterile now, sullied by the crude satisfaction and disdain evident on his opponent's face: a sallow-skinned lout with small eyes and coarse features whose only
strategy had been to wait prudently, like a spider in the centre of his web, a strategy of unspeakable cowardice.

  So this too was chess, thought the boy playing Black. In the final analysis, it was the humiliation of undeserved defeat, with the prize going to those who risk nothing. That was what he felt at that moment, seated for a game that was not merely a foolish set of moves, but a mirror of life itself, of flesh and blood, life and death, heroism and sacrifice. Like the proud knights of France at Crecy, undone in the midst of empty victory by the Welsh archers of the King of England, he had seen the attacks made by his knights and bishops, moves that were daring and deep, like the splendid, glittering blows of a sword, one crash after the other, like heroic but futile waves, against the phlegmatic immobility of his opponent. And that hated piece, the white king, on the other side of his insurmountable barrier of plebeian pawns, observed from a safe distance, with as much scorn as that reflected on the face of the White player, the discomfort and impotence of the solitary black king, incapable of helping his remaining faithful pawns, who were engaged in a hopeless battle, an agonising free-for-all.

  On that pitiless battleground of cold black and white squares there was no room for honour in defeat. Defeat wiped out everything, destroying not only the loser but also his imagination, his dreams, his self-esteem. The boy in the grey jacket leaned his elbow on the table, cradled his forehead in the palm of his hand and closed his eyes, listening as the sound of clashing weapons died slowly away in the valley flooded with shadows. Never again, he said to himself. Just as the Gauls conquered by Rome refused ever to speak of their defeat, he too, for the rest of his life, would refuse to remember his, and sterility of victory. He would never again play chess. And, with luck, he would be able to wipe it from his memory, just as the names of dead Pharaohs were removed from all the monuments.

  Opponent, judge and spectators were awaiting his next move with ill-disguised irritation, for the game had gone on for far too long. The boy took one last look at his besieged king and, with a sad feeling of shared solitude, decided that all that remained for him to do was to commit one last merciful act and give him a worthy death at his own hand, thus avoiding the humiliation of being boxed in like a fugitive dog. He reached out his hand and, in a gesture of infinite tenderness, slowly upended the defeated king and laid him lovingly down on the empty square.

  XV

  Queen Ending

  What I did originated a lot of sin,

  as well as passion, dissension, vain words –

  not to mention lies – in myself,

  in my antagonist or in both. Chess drove me

  to neglect my duties to God and to men.

  The Harleyan Myscellany

  WHEN CÉSAR'S LOW VOICE STOPPED, he gave an absent smile and slowly turned his eyes from some indeterminate spot in the room to the ivory chess set on the table. Then he shrugged, as if to say, "Well, no one gets to choose his own past."

  "You never told me about that," Julia said, and the sound of her voice seemed an absurd intrusion.

  César paused before replying. The light from the parchment lampshade lit only half his face, leaving the other half in shadow. The effect accentuated the lines around his eyes and mouth, emphasised his aristocratic profile, his fine nose and chin, like the effigy on an antique medal.

  "I could hardly tell you about something that didn't exist," he murmured softly, and his eyes, or perhaps just the dull gleam of his eyes in the penumbra, rested on Julia's. "For forty years I applied myself carefully to the task of believing that to be the case." There was a mocking edge to his voice now, no doubt directed at himself. "I never played chess again, not even alone. Never."

  Julia shook her head, finding it all very hard to believe.

  "You're sick."

  He gave a short, humourless laugh.

  "You disappoint me, Princess. I hoped that you at least would not resort to clichés." He looked thoughtfully at his ivory cigarette holder. "I assure you I'm completely sane. How else could I have constructed with such meticulous detail this whole beautiful story?"

  "Beautiful?" She looked at him in stupefaction. "We're talking about Álvaro and about Menchu ... Beautiful story?" She shuddered with horror and disgust. "For God's sake! What the hell are you talking about?"

  César held her gaze, unmoved, and then turned to Muñoz as if for support.

  "There are ... aesthetic aspects," he said, "there are some extraordinarily original factors that can't be dismissed in such a superficial way. The chessboard isn't just black and white. There are higher planes, from which you can view events. Objective planes." He gave them a look of sudden and apparently sincere pain. "I thought you'd both realised that."

  "I know what you mean," remarked Muñoz. He had not moved from his position, and his hands were still in the pockets of his crumpled raincoat. At one corner of his mouth, the vague smile had appeared again, indefinable and distant.

  "You do, do you?" exclaimed Julia. "What do you know about it?"

  She clenched her fists indignantly, holding in the breath that echoed in her ears like that of an animal at the end of a long run. But Muñoz did not react, and Julia noticed that César gave him a quiet look of gratitude.

  "I was right to choose you," he said. "And I'm glad I did."

  Muñoz didn't respond. He simply glanced around at the paintings, the furniture, the objects in the room and nodded slowly, as if he were drawing mysterious conclusions. After a few moments he indicated Julia with a lift of his chin.

  "I think she deserves to know the whole story."

  "So do you, my dear," added César.

  "Yes, I do. Although I'm here only in the role of witness."

  There was no note of censure or menace in his words. It was as if the chess player were maintaining some absurd neutrality. An impossible neutrality, thought Julia, because, sooner or later, there will come a point when words will run out and we'll have to make a decision. However, numbed by a sense of unreality she couldn't shake off, she felt that that moment still seemed far off.

  "Let's begin, then," she said, and when she heard herself speak, she found with unexpected relief that she was regaining her lost composure. She gave César a hard look. "Tell us about Álvaro."

  César nodded.

  "Yes, Álvaro," he repeated in a low voice. "But first I should mention the painting." A look of sudden annoyance crossed his face, as if he'd neglected some point of elementary courtesy. "I haven't asked if you'd like a drink or anything ... Unforgivable of me. Would you like something?"

  No one replied. César went over to the old oak chest he used as a drinks cabinet.

  "The first time I saw that painting was when I was in your apartment, Julia. Do you remember? They'd delivered it a few hours before, and you were like a child with a new toy. For almost an hour I watched while you studied it in minute detail, explaining to me the techniques you thought you'd use to make it, and I quote, the most beautiful piece of work you'd ever done." As he spoke, César selected a narrow tumbler of expensive cut glass and filled it with ice, gin and lemon juice. "I was surprised to see you so happy, and the truth is, Princess, I was happy too." He turned round with the glass in his hand and, after a cautious taste, seemed satisfied with it. "But what I didn't tell you then ... Well, even now it's hard to put into words. You were delighted with the beauty of the image, the balance of the composition, the colour and the light. I was too, but for different reasons. That chessboard, the players and the pieces, the lady reading by the window, aroused a dormant echo of my old passion. Believing it to be completely forgotten, I felt it return like a bolt from the blue. I was simultaneously feverish and terrified, as if I'd felt the breath of madness on my cheek."

  César fell silent, and the half of his mouth lit by the lamp curved into a wickedly intimate smile, as if he now found special pleasure in savouring that memory.

  "It wasn't just a matter of chess," he continued, "but a deep, personal sense of the game as a link between life and death, b
etween reality and dream. And while you, Julia, were talking about pigments and varnishes, I was barely listening, surprised by the tremor of pleasure and exquisite anguish running through my body as I sat next to you on the sofa and looked not at what Pieter Van Huys had painted on that Flemish panel but at what that man, that genius, had in mind while he was painting."

  "And you decided that you had to have it."

  César looked at Julia with an expression of ironic reproof.

  "Don't oversimplify things, Princess." He took a brief sip of his drink and smiled at her as if begging her indulgence. "What I decided, very suddenly, was that it was absolutely vital that I give full rein to my passion. It's not for nothing that one lives as long as I have. Doubtless that's why I understood at once, not the message, which, as we discovered later, was in code, but the certain truth that the painting contained some fascinating and terrible enigma. Think of it: perhaps the enigma would, at last, prove me right."

  "Right?"

  "Yes. The world is not as simple as people would have us believe. The outlines are vague; it's the details that count. Nothing is black and white; evil can be a disguise for good or beauty and vice versa, without one thing necessarily excluding the other. A human being can both love and betray the object of that love without diminishing the reality of his or her feelings. You can be father, brother, son and lover all at the same time; victim and executioner ... You can choose your own examples. Life is an uncertain adventure in a diffuse landscape, whose borders are continually shifting, where all frontiers are artificial, where at any moment everything can either end only to begin again or finish suddenly, for ever and ever, like an unexpected blow from an axe. Where the only absolute, coherent, indisputable and definitive reality is death. Where we are only a tiny lightning flash between two eternal nights, and where, Princess, we have very little time."