The Black Madonna

by Peter Millar

  ‘This place will be full once the corrida is over,’ the old man said, ‘but for now, the next forty minutes or so, it is quiet. We can talk. But first, let us sit down, make ourselves comfortable and get something to drink, yes?’

  There was a row of Formica-topped tables along the wall opposite the bar counter, each equipped with little metal containers that dispensed the thin disposable napkins people wiped their fingers on after the tapas before discarding them on the sawdust-strewn floor. It looked like they expected serious business. The display of food had made Marcus just slightly peckish, despite the blood and gore they had just witnessed, but he could see Nazreem’s mind was on other things.

  This elderly bullfighting fan introduced himself simply as Julio. He was ‘a close associate’ of the abbot of the monastery in Guadalupe.

  ‘We need to speak to the abbot. We were recommended to him from Sister Galina, from Altötting, in Bavaria, Germany.’

  The man was nodding gently. ‘So I understand. So I understand. May I see it?’

  Nazreem was nonplussed, as was Marcus. ‘See what?’ he asked.

  ‘Your letter of recommendation. You have one, I suppose?’

  Nazreem shook her head, uncertainly. ‘No. She just … she just gave us the contact information. She said if we left a telephone message at that number someone would get in touch with us. We were led to believe,’ she went on with just a trace of hesitation, ‘that that was sufficient.’

  The old man drew a finger across his dry lips and said: ‘Of course, of course. And here I am; here you are. It is just that normally … normally either people bring with them a letter of introduction or some direct contact is made in advance. In these days of telephones and email, it is not so difficult. Even at the monastery they have computers now.’

  Marcus and Nazreem exchanged glances. How much to tell someone they knew so little about? ‘Sister Galina sent her best wishes, but she is … indisposed,’ said Marcus cautiously. The last thing they wanted was to be seen to be concealing things from people who were supposed to be their allies, but maybe the full truth – or rather what little they knew of it – would be better kept for the abbot himself.

  ‘Ah, indisposed?’ the old man said. ‘Really?’ and he abruptly turned his head to a waiter who had arrived and was hovering next to the table, looking at his watch as if he expected people to start flowing in from the bullring any minute.

  ‘What would you like?’ the old man asked: ‘Coffee, tea perhaps – I am afraid tea is not very good here – or perhaps a glass of red wine, tinto, a Rioja?’

  ‘Coffee would be fine,’ said Nazreem, in a hurry to get such irrelevant details out of the way. Marcus asked for two espressos. The man passed on their order in rapid fire Spanish to the waiter.

  ‘I have never been to Altötting, but they have an interesting Madonna, I believe,’ he said suddenly, the question of their references apparently dropped for the moment.

  ‘Not as interesting as that in Guadalupe, though,’ said Marcus, with an intonation that invited the old man to elaborate. The sooner they got onto the subject they were here for, the better.

  Instead, he said simply: ‘Ah, no, perhaps not. Perhaps not, indeed.’

  There was an awkward silence broken only by the arrival of the waiter with their drinks, setting two tiny coffee cups on the table alongside a generous glass of red wine. The man lifted it with both hands as if it were a communion goblet he was about to offer them. Marcus wondered if it might be a habit.

  ‘You … are a frequent visitor to Guadalupe?’ Nazreem began, hesitantly, unsure how to treat this man who was an intermediary to an unknown quantity.

  ‘No,’ he replied, as if it were an odd question. ‘I live there and have done for some twenty years. And I consider it an honour and a blessing. But it is a small place, quite remote and not very grand. Except of course for the monastery.’

  ‘And you know the abbot?’

  ‘You may rest assured I have the very best connections with everyone at the monastery.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. It’s just that we were a bit puzzled. Why we met here, I mean. In Madrid. At a bullfight.’

  ‘I often come to Madrid, on little errands, for the monastery too. And I must confess to being an aficionado of the corrida. It seemed convenient. I thought you might enjoy it but alas …’ he gestured towards Marcus, who shook his head to indicate it wasn’t a problem.

  ‘I also – you will not consider it rude – sometimes like to check out people who want an interview with the abbot in Guadalupe. Monastic life is busier than many people think and there are so many time-wasters … I do not mean you of course … but these days everyone seems to think they can go straight to the top.’

  The café was beginning to fill up now with a few early leavers from the corrida. The last suerte was not always the climax of the evening and leaving early was a way to beat the traffic, although Marcus hoped some of those wandering in now were not intending to drive. One tall man with skin burned the colour of old leather, clearly a regular in the cheap seats, was swaying down the bar unsteadily eyeing the display of tapas. As he passed them he suddenly lurched backward to end up almost sitting on their table, flung out an arm to steady himself and connected with Marcus’s coffee cup splashing the hot dark liquid over his cotton chinos.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Marcus erupted, jumping to his feet and shaking the material to stop it burning his leg. The drunk reeled back against the bar, hands raised to his face as if in anticipation of a blow and muttering, ‘Perdone, Perdone.’

  ‘It’s all right, it’s okay. Never mind,’ began Marcus, patting down the stain with a plentiful supply of paper napkins from the table dispenser, thankful that he had only ordered an espresso. ‘There’s no harm done. It’s okay. Okay.’

  ‘Aha, Eenglish,’ the drunk said, reeling upright, suddenly beaming, then looking extremely sorry for himself. ‘I love Eenglish, so sorry,’ he said. But already Marcus’s squirrel brain had retrieved the irrepressible image of Manuel the stupid Spanish waiter in the old television sitcom Fawlty Towers and he was trying hard to keep a stupid smile off his own face. The old man at the table was frowning in puzzlement while Nazreem sat there tutting to herself.

  ‘Is okay, señor, please. Liverpool. Manchester United. Very good. Please, drink brandy. From me.’ And he was already signalling to the waiter on the other side of the bar.

  ‘No really,’ insisted Marcus, thinking that maybe this was the time to tell the man he wasn’t English anyhow, but he imagined in his present state he could probably dredge up a long-lost love for South Africa too. Already the man was turning back round from the bar with two glasses of brandy – thankfully not large ones – and pushing one into his hand.

  ‘No, really. Thank you. It’s okay.’

  The bleary cheery apologetic smile was immediately replaced by a huge drop-lipped tragic face of a sad circus clown. ‘Pleeeese, señor, I am sorry. Please, forgive. We drink. Okay?’ And he chinked glasses with Marcus and stood there expectantly like a small boy waiting to be told he can go out to play after all. Marcus looked around him. The barman made a mock drinking motion and winked; it was clearly some sort of custom. The elderly Julio shook his head as if in mild despair. Nazreem said: ‘Just drink with him and be done. Then sit down again. We need to talk.’

  Marcus shrugged and knocked back the brandy in one. The spirit burned as it rushed down but it was surprisingly smooth. His drunk new friend had obviously not skimped. The man emptied his likewise and beamed, ‘Carlos Tersero. El mejor. Muy bien.’ Marcus simply nodded, shook hands and said, ‘Gracias, adiós,’ testing the limits of his Spanish and at the same time making sure that the interruption was at an end. ‘Gracias. Sorry. Okay?’ the drunk said in reply.

  ‘Okay,’ said Marcus and sat down again at the table to a weary sigh from Nazreem. To his relief, the drunk stumbled off, probably in search of a refill or one of his drinking cronies among the handful of men coming through the door with bu
llfight programmes in their hands.

  The old man from Guadalupe gestured with his hands. ‘I am sorry too,’ he said. ‘These things happen.’

  ‘Forget about it,’ said Marcus.

  ‘When can we meet with the abbot?’ said Nazreem.

  The old man sighed and closed his eyes a second. ‘I think it will be possible. Yes, there should not be a problem.’

  ‘So when? And how do we get there?’

  In fact she had already consulted the map and worked out it was at most a couple of hours’ drive although they would have to rent a car, public transport connections were not good.

  He looked at his watch, then took a long draught of his wine, emptying the glass, and leaned forward steepling his fingers together on the table. Not for the first time, Marcus wondered if he might be a retired priest. Then, glancing at both of them in turn but letting his eyes rest on Nazreem, he said:

  ‘Perhaps it is best if you come with me. I am driving back there in any case tomorrow.’

  Nazreem turned briefly to Marcus with a genuine smile and he said: ‘Yes, that would be absolutely excellent. Thank you very much.’ She nodded her head enthusiastically in agreement.

  ‘Well then, that settles it. I have business in the morning. So let us meet around noon. It is annoying to travel in the heat of the day but unless we do we will not be there until late in the evening. How well do you know Madrid?’

  Nazreem and Marcus shook their heads. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let us say the Plaza de Cibeles, by the fountain in the middle. I can park not far away and it is easy to find. Also very beautiful to look at if I am delayed. But I trust I will not be. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Marcus.

  ‘Well, then, if you will excuse me …’ The old man stood up and began fishing in his pocket for a few euro coins, but Marcus put a hand out. ‘No, no, that’s fine. Really. We’ll settle up.’

  He nodded graciously and turned to leave them. ‘Until tomorrow then. Hasta mañana.’

  ‘Mañana,’ said Marcus, getting up with him and holding out his hand but the old man was already heading for the door, fighting against an increasing one-way flow of hungry and thirsty customers pushing in.

  Nazreem looked up at him quizzically as he sat down again next to her. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘You’ve got a funny look on your face.’

  ‘I was just thinking,’ he said. ‘That it’s one of those Spanish expressions that has crossed into English. Mañana. But when we use it, it means something that’s never going to happen.’

  The sky behind the great arena of Las Ventas was blood red in the last gasp of the Madrid sun. People swarmed towards the bars or into the metro, while cabs hooted and parped on the Alcalá as the traffic once again built up to a standstill. All except for one cab. With one passenger. The cream Mercedes that had sat on its own on the edge of the dusty triangle away from the busy rank, its ‘for hire’ sign resolutely turned off. The passenger had emerged from the Torero Bravo only minutes ago and walked straight towards his waiting ride with an assured self-confidence, and none of the drunken swagger he had exhibited so recently. He climbed into the front passenger seat wordlessly and both he and the driver watched as the stooped elderly man who had left the bar just before him headed for the entrance to the metro.

  The man in the passenger seat turned to the driver and said: ‘Five minutes.’

  Marcus thought he had not seen Nazreem look so relaxed since she walked through the arrivals door at Heathrow. Once again it seemed she was seeing something in people that he was missing. He hoped for her sake it was intuition and not over-optimism. There had been something in old Julio’s manner that he had found less than 100 per cent convincing, quite apart from his enthusiasm for bullfighting.

  He tried to signal to the waiter for the bill, but the bar was too full now to attract the man’s attention easily. Apart from anything else he was feeling slightly groggy. He knew the brandy had been a mistake. He looked around the bar, at the backs of people knocking back spirits, small glasses of red wine, cold beers and wolfing down anchovies or slivers of the dark red ham, but could happily see no sign of the drunk. He had no desire to resume their conversation. He decided to pay a quick visit to the lavatory before leaving and catch the waiter’s eye en route to ask for their bill.

  Nazreem nodded her approval and watched him push his way through the throng, treading gingerly on a floor by now covered with discarded tapas papers, this being a traditional bar where the custom was to discard them on the floor for the waiters to sweep up when business quietened down a bit. She thought he looked slightly unsteady, but it was probably just an attempt to avoid standing on a greasy napkin or a piece of dropped tripe.

  It was only a full ten minutes later, when she had paid the bill and he had still not returned that she began to get annoyed. It wasn’t possible surely that he had bumped into the drunk again and been cajoled into another brandy at the bar. It seemed highly unlikely but she had never quite got a grip on Western men’s drinking habits and she knew from experience that they could get out of hand. After another five minutes, however, she decided to see where on earth he had got to. The bar was already starting to thin out as the bullfight crowd filtered away, having slaked their thirst and sated their early evening hunger, deciding the traffic had abated enough to think about going home for dinner.

  A couple of large men at the bar smiled ingratiatingly at her as she passed, appreciative of such a classic dark-eyed beauty. She ignored their attention as she squeezed between them and a table to the little corridor at the back of the bar marked ‘Servicios’. There was a door at the end and two on the left, the second of which was labelled ‘Caballeros’ with a picture of a matador’s tricorn hat. One of the men who had smiled at her at the bar excused himself as he passed her and pushed open the door. Nazreem called, ‘Marcus,’ as discreetly as she could under the circumstances, but there was no immediate reply.

  She looked around her. Of the drunk from earlier there was no sign. In fact, by now there were barely a dozen or more customers in the bar, dedicated drinkers mostly, the vast array of tapas had been decimated. Behind the counter the barman was rearranging what was left and repositioning it behind the glass. The waiter who had served them had taken his broom and was sweeping the debris on the floor towards the street door. She tried calling Marcus again, twice and a little louder this time, as the door to the Gents’ opened and the big man who had just gone in came out again. He smiled at her once more as he squeezed past but it was a strange, questioning smile and she noticed that as he resumed his place at the bar he nudged his companion and made a twisting motion with one finger pointed at his head: ‘Loca?’ A crazy woman.

  ‘Marcus!’ she called again, rapping hard on the door this time. There was clearly something wrong. Maybe he was being sick. She regretted having encouraged him to drink that brandy. ‘Are you all right? Talk to me.’

  ‘Señora,’ the barman called to her. She looked back briefly in irritation and began banging on the door again. The man who had just exited the lavatory got off his seat and came towards her, the smile on his face now replaced by a dark frown. Instinctively she backed away, but the man kept coming, holding out his hands on either side as if to block her escape.

  ‘Marcus!’ she cried, louder than before, hammering on the door and lifting her hand to defend herself against the Spaniard if he came closer. The man held his two hands up, but at the same time backed off and said something to her softly at first. Then when he saw he was not getting through he tried again, more loudly, this time in broken English:

  ‘Lady. No there. Is no one there.’

  It wasn’t a question. Nazreem suddenly understood, and looked first at him, then at the door, then back at him in horror. She felt suddenly short of breath as she summoned up all her courage and did something that as a Muslim woman she could never have imagined herself doing: she pushed open the door to the men’s lavatory and rushed in.

  To her relief �
�� and horror, all at once – there really was no one inside. Streams of flushing water gushed down the white porcelain of the single urinal in front of her. On her left the door to a single empty toilet stall gaped open. Marcus Frey had simply vanished.

  38

  Marcus opened his eyes and instantly wished he hadn’t. His head ached and even the low light felt like hot needles puncturing his retinas. He closed them again and realised there was nothing awaiting him but nightmares, waking or asleep. And sleep was no longer an option.

  Slowly, like a man surfacing after a shipwreck, afraid of seeing only an icy, corpse-littered ocean, he let the outside world seep into his consciousness. Gradually his brain started trying to put back the pieces even if his fractured memory was not yet capable of reassembling them in the right order: the spectacle in the ring, the celebration of slaughter, the old man’s strange pseudo-philosophical ramblings, then the tapas bar, and his unanticipated offer to take them with him to the monastery. And what else?

  The drunk of course, knocking into him. And buying him the brandy. Carlos III – Carlos Tercero – his brain remembered, obdurately, because the way the man had pronounced it – Carlos Tersero – something odd about that, his brain seemed to recall though he had no idea what. It must have been one hell of a brandy if it had got him that drunk. No, impossible. He remembered heading for the loo, swaying slightly as he moved through the crowds at the bar, and then staring at the porcelain, feeling distinctly ill, having to reach out and grab the top of the urinal to stop himself falling into it. And then? Then there had been men, other men, one on either side. Catching him as he fell. Helping hands?

  Like hell! That was what had been wrong with Carlos Tersero – one of the few things he did know about Spanish was that classic Castilian had a lisp – Carlos Terthero was what they said in Madrid.

  The last thing that he could recall was guttural accents, the feeling of being dragged into fresh air and then a car door slamming. Something had happened that his mind didn’t want to acknowledge – he had been kidnapped. His eyes sprang open, all of his senses suddenly awake. Where the hell was he?