The Fencing Master

by Arturo P; #xE9;rez-Reverte

  "I suppose because one day I chose that word and not another. Perhaps by chance, or because I liked the sound of it. Perhaps, in some way, I related it to the image of my father, for I was always proud of the way he died. A good death justifies anything, any life."

  "That idea of death," said Ayala, smiling, eager to prolong his conversation with the fencing master, "has a suspicious whiff of Catholicism about it. The good death as gateway to eternal salvation."

  "If you're hoping for salvation or whatever, it has very little merit in it. I was referring to the final battle on the threshold of eternal darkness, with oneself the only witness."

  "You're forgetting about God."

  "He doesn't interest me. God tolerates the intolerable; he is irresponsible and inconsistent. He is not a gentleman."

  The marquis looked at Don Jaime with real respect. "I have always maintained, maestro," he said, after a silence, "that nature organizes things in such a way that she makes cynics out of lucid men in order that they may live. You are the only proof I have of the wrongness of my theory. And perhaps that is what I like about you—even more than our fencing bouts. It reconciles me to certain things that I would have sworn existed only in books. You're my sleeping conscience."

  They both fell silent, listening to the sound of the fountain; the soft breeze again shook the branches of the willows. Then Don Jaime thought about Adela de Otero, gave a sideways glance at Luis de Ayala, and noticed inside himself a disagreeable murmur of remorse.

  INDIFFERENT to the political turmoil taking place in the capital that summer, Don Jaime kept punctually to the arrangements made with his clients, including the three hours a week devoted to Señora de Otero. There was nothing questionable about these sessions; the two kept strictly to the technical side of things, which was the reason for their relationship. Apart from these bouts, in which the young woman continued to fence with consummate skill, they spoke only briefly about inconsequential issues. The almost intimate conversation they had had on the afternoon of her second visit to his apartment was never repeated. In general, she merely asked Don Jaime precise questions about fencing, to which he replied with great pleasure and considerable relief. For his part, Don Jaime suppressed, with apparent ease, any interest he had in learning more about his client, and when he occasionally touched on the subject, she either ignored him or ingeniously sidestepped the question. The only thing he could ascertain was that she lived alone, that she had no close relatives, and that she was trying, for reasons whose secret she alone possessed, to remain on the periphery of the social life that, given her situation, one would have expected her to enjoy in Madrid. He knew that she possessed a considerable fortune yet had a third-floor rather than a secondfloor apartment on Calle Riaño, and that she had lived for some years abroad, possibly in Italy, or so he assumed from certain details and expressions he picked up during his conversations with the young woman. Otherwise, there was no way of knowing if she was single or a widow, although her style of living seemed more suited to the second hypothesis. Her easy manner, the skepticism evident in all her remarks about men, were not what one would expect in a young single woman. It was clear that she had loved and suffered. Don Jaime was old enough to recognize the aplomb that, even in youth, it is possible to achieve only by experiencing and surviving intense personal pain. In that respect, he was unsure whether or not it would be fair to describe her, in the vulgar terminology of the day, as an adventuress. Perhaps she was. She seemed so unusually independent that it was difficult to place her among the ranks of the more conventional women of the fencing master's acquaintance. Nevertheless, something told him that to label her an adventuress was to oversimplify.

  Despite Adela de Otero's reticence about herself, the relationship he had with her could, on the whole, be regarded as satisfying. The youth and personality of his female client, enhanced by her beauty, produced in Don Jaime a state of healthy animation that grew with each passing day. She treated him with a respect not exempt from strange coquetry. He enjoyed their skirmishing, so much so that, as time passed, he waited ever more eagerly for the moment when she would appear in the gallery, always with the same small traveling bag beneath her arm. He was now used to her leaving the door of the changing room ajar, and he would go in there as soon as she had left, to breathe in the sweet smell of rose water that hung in the air like a reminder of her presence. And there were moments, for example, when they looked too long into each other's eyes, when a violent bout of fencing brought them close to physical contact, in which only by dint of great self-discipline did he manage to conceal, beneath a layer of paternal courtesy, the unsettling effect this woman had on his mind.

  The day came when, during a bout, she lunged forward with such force that she hurled herself against Don Jaime's chest. He felt the weight of her body, warm and supple in his arms, and out of pure reflex grasped her around the waist, to help her recover her balance. She quickly drew herself up, but her face, covered by the metal mesh of the mask, remained turned for a moment toward his, so close that he could feel her breath and see her shining eyes on him. Back in the on-guard position, he was so affected by what had happened that the young woman hit him twice in the chest before he could even think about putting himself properly on defense. Happy to have successfully carried out two attacks, she moved back and forth on the piste, harrying him with lightning-quick thrusts, with improvised attacks and feints, bursting with joy, like a young girl giving herself heart and soul to a game she loved. His calm restored, Don Jaime observed her while he kept her at arm's length, tapping the young woman's foil, which clinked against his when she stopped for a moment and sagely studied her opponent's defense to find an opening into which she could lunge forward with speed and valor. He had never loved her so much as at that moment.

  Later, when she emerged from the changing room in her street clothes, she seemed shaken. She was pale and unsteady on her feet. She passed a hand across her forehead, dropped her hat on the floor, and had to use the wall for support. He went over to her, concerned.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I think so," she said faintly. "It's just the heat." She leaned on his proffered arm. Her head was bent, and her cheek almost brushed his shoulder.

  "It's the first sign of weakness I've ever seen in you, Doña Adela."

  A smile lit up the young woman's pale face. "Consider it a privilege, then," she said.

  He accompanied her back to the living room, enjoying the light pressure of her hand on his arm, until she withdrew it in order to sit down on the old, worn leather sofa.

  "You need a tonic. Perhaps a sip of brandy."

  "Don't bother. I feel much better now."

  Don Jaime insisted and walked over to a cupboard. He came back with a glass in his hand. "Please, drink a little of this. It's good for the blood."

  She sipped a little of the brandy and grimaced. He opened the shutters and the window to let in more air and then sat down opposite her, at a safe distance. They remained for a while in silence. On the pretext that he was concerned about her, Don Jaime looked at her more insistently than he would have dared in normal circumstances. He stroked the place on his arm where she had rested her hand; he could still feel the pressure of it there. "Take another sip. It seems to be doing you good."

  She nodded obediently. Then she gave him a grateful smile, resting the glass of cognac in her lap, though she had barely touched it. The color was beginning to return to her cheeks, and she indicated with a lift of her chin the objects filling the room.

  "You know," she said in a low, confiding voice, "your house is just like you. Everything is so lovingly preserved that it exudes comfort and a feeling of safety. Here you seem to be safe from everything, as if time had stopped. These walls contain..."

  "A whole life?"

  She pretended to applaud, pleased that he had completed the sentence correctly. "Your life," she replied seductively.

  Don Jaime got up and walked about the room, silently contemplating the object
s she meant: the old diploma from the Paris Academy, the coat of arms carved in wood with the motto TO ME, a pair of antique dueling pistols in a glass case, the framed insignia of a lieutenant of the Royal Guard on a background of green velvet ... He gently ran his hand over the spines of the books lined up on the oak shelves. Señora de Otero was watching him intently, with her lips half-open, trying to capture the distant music of the objects surrounding the fencing master.

  "It's a beautiful thing to refuse to forget," she said after a few moments.

  He made a helpless gesture, implying that no one can choose his memories. "I'm not sure that beautiful is the right word," he said, indicating the walls covered with books. "Sometimes I feel as if I were in a cemetery. It's a very similar feeling, all symbols and silence." He considered what he had just said and smiled sadly. "The silence of all the ghosts that you've left behind you. Like Aeneas fleeing Troy."

  "I know what you mean."

  "You do? Yes, perhaps. I'm beginning to think that you really do."

  "The ghosts of the people we could have been and weren't ... Isn't that what it is? The people we dreamed of being, until we were forced to wake from the dream." She was talking in a monotone, as if reciting from memory a lesson learned long ago. "The ghosts of those whom once we loved but never had, of those who loved us and whose hopes we destroyed out of malice, stupidity, or ignorance."

  "Yes, I see you understand perfectly."

  Her scar intensified the sarcasm of her smile. "And why shouldn't I? Or do you perhaps believe that only men have a Troy they left burning behind them?"

  He sat looking at her, not knowing what to say. She had closed her eyes, listening to voices that only she could hear. Then she blinked, as if waking from a dream, and her eyes met those of the fencing master.

  "Yet," she said, "there's no bitterness in you, Don Jaime, no rancor. I'd like to know where you get the strength to remain so intact, not falling on your knees and begging for mercy. You always have that look of the eternal foreigner about you, as if you were somehow absent. As if, in your determination to survive, you were storing up strength inside you, like a miser."

  He shrugged. "It's not me," he said in a low voice, almost shyly. "It's my fifty-six years of life, with all the good and ill there was in them. As for you..." He stopped, unsure.

  "As for me..." Her violet eyes had grown inexpressive, as if a veil covered them.

  Don Jaime shook his head innocently, like a child. "You're very young. You're at the beginning of everything."

  She raised her eyebrows and let out a mirthless laugh. "I don't even exist," she said.

  Don Jaime stared at her, confused. She leaned forward to put the glass on the table. As she did so, he saw her strong, beautiful neck, bare beneath the mass of jet-black hair caught up at the nape. The last rays of sun were falling on the window that framed a rectangle of reddish clouds. The reflection of one of the panes flickered on the wall and was gone.

  "It's odd," he murmured. "I always prided myself that, after a reasonable period of time spent crossing swords with a person, I somehow knew him. It's not difficult, just a question of exercising one's sense of touch. Everyone reveals who he is when he fences."

  "Maybe," she murmured in a dull voice, absently.

  He picked up a book at random; then, after holding it for a moment in his hands, he returned it to its place. "That isn't the case with you," he said. She seemed slowly to come back to herself; her eyes showed a flicker of interest.

  "I'm serious," he said. "With you, Doña Adela, all I have seen is your vigor, your aggression. Your movements are unhurried and sure, too agile for a woman, too graceful for a man. You give off a feeling of magnetism, of contained, disciplined energy, and sometimes a dark, inexplicable anger, about whom or what I don't know. Perhaps the answer lies beneath the ashes of that Troy you appear to know so well."

  She seemed to be thinking about his words. "Go on," she said.

  He shrugged. "There's not much more to say. As you see, I am capable of observing all this, but I can't get to what lies behind it. I'm just an old fencing master with no pretensions to being a philosopher or a moralist."

  "You're not doing badly for an old fencing master," remarked the young woman with a wry, indulgent smile. There was a kind of languid tremor beneath her smooth skin. Outside, the sky above the rooftops of Madrid was growing dark. A cat walked along the windowsill, sly and silent, glancing into the room that was beginning to fill with shadows, then continuing on its way.

  She moved, and there was a rustle of skirts. "At the wrong time," she said thoughtfully and mysteriously, "on the wrong day ... in the wrong city." She leaned forward slightly and gave a fleeting smile. "A pity," she added.

  Don Jaime looked at her, disoriented. Seeing his expression, the young woman gently opened her lips and then, with a gracious gesture, patted the space on the sofa by her side.

  "Come and sit here, maestro."

  From his place by the window, Don Jaime shook his head. The room was nearly dark, veiled in grays and shadows.

  "Did you ever love anyone?" she asked. Her features were beginning to disappear in the darkness.

  "Several people," he said in a melancholy voice.

  "Several?" The young woman seemed surprised. "Ah, I see. No, maestro, I mean have you ever loved?"

  In the west, the sky was rapidly growing dark. Don Jaime glanced at the unlit oil lamp. Adela de Otero did not seem troubled by the fading of the light.

  "Once, in Paris. A long time ago."

  "Was she beautiful?"

  "Yes. As beautiful as ... you. Besides, Paris made her even more beautiful: the Latin Quarter, the fitting rooms of elegant shops on the Rue St. Germain, the dances in La Chaumière and Montparnasse..."

  The memories came with a pang that made his stomach contract. He turned again to the lamp. "I think we should..."

  "Who left whom, Don Jaime?"

  He smiled sadly, conscious that she could no longer see his face. "It was rather more complicated than that. After four years, I forced her to choose. And she did."

  The young woman was now a motionless shadow. "Was she married?"

  "Yes, and you are a most intelligent young woman."

  "What happened then?"

  "I sold everything I had and came back to Spain. It was all a long time ago."

  In the street, with pole and stick, someone was lighting the lamps. The feeble glow of gaslight came in through the open window. She got up from the sofa and walked through the darkness to his side. She stood there, next to the window.

  "There's an English poet," she said in a low voice. "Lord Byron."

  Don Jaime waited in silence. He could feel the warmth emanating from the young body at his side, almost brushing his own. His throat was dry, tight with the fear that she might hear his heart beating. Her voice was quiet, like a caress:

  "The Devil speaks truth much oftener than he's deem'd, he hath an ignorant audience."

  She drew closer to him. The glow from the street lit up the lower part of her face, her chin and mouth. There was a profound silence that seemed to last an eternity. Only when that silence became unbearable did she speak again: "There's always a story to tell." She spoke in such a low voice that Don Jaime had to guess at her words. She was so close that he could almost feel on his skin the delicate smell of rose water. He realized that he was beginning to lose his head and sought desperately for something that would anchor him in reality. He reached out his hand to the lamp and lit it with a match. The smoking flame trembled in his hands.

  HE insisted on accompanying her to Calle Riaño. It was too late, he said, not daring to look her in the eye, to be out alone trying to find a carriage. So he put on a jacket, picked up his walking stick and top hat, and went down the stairs ahead of her. At the door he stopped and, after a brief hesitation that did not escape her, offered her his arm with all the icy courtesy he could muster. The young woman leaned on him and, as they walked along, turned now and then to glance a
t him with a look of concealed mockery. Don Jaime hired a calash whose driver was dozing, leaning against a lamppost, they got in, and Don Jaime gave the address. The carriage went down Calle Arenal, turning to the right when it reached the Palacio de Oriente. Don Jaime remained silent, his hands resting on the handle of his walking stick, vainly trying to keep his mind a blank. What might have happened did not happen, but he was not sure if he should congratulate himself or despise himself As for what Adela de Otero might be thinking at that moment he had absolutely no desire to know However one certainty floated in the air- that night at the end of a conversation that should have brought them closer something had been broken between them definitively and forever He did not know what but there was the unmistakable noise of pieces shattering to the ground about him The young woman would never forgive him for his cowardice—or for his resignation.

  They drove in silence, each occupying a corner of the red-upholstered seat. Sometimes, when they passed beneath a lamppost, a fragment of light spilled into the carriage, allowing Don Jaime to catch a glimpse of his companion's profile, absorbed in the contemplation of the shadows filling the streets. He would have liked to say something to relieve the unease tormenting him, but he feared that he would only make matters worse. The whole thing was utterly absurd.

  After a while, Señora de Otero turned to him. "I've been told, Don Jaime, that you have people of quality among your clientele. Is that right?"

  "It is."

  "People from the nobility too? I mean counts, dukes, and all that."

  Don Jaime was relieved to embark on a topic of conversation completely different from that which had taken place in his house a while before. She was doubtless conscious that things might have gone too far. Perhaps, sensing his awkwardness, she was trying to break the ice after that embarrassing situation in which she too had played some part.