The Fencing Master (26 page)

Don Jaime finished his coffee and turned his back on his memories. He remained for a long time without moving, with no other thought disturbing the peace that reigned inside him. Then he put the cup down, went over to the sideboard, and opened a drawer, taking from it a long, flat case. He undid the clasps and removed a heavy object wrapped in a cloth. He unwrapped the cloth to reveal a Lefaucheux revolver with a wooden handle and a capacity for five large-caliber cartridges. Although he had had that weapon, a present from a client, for five years, he had never wanted to use it. His code of honor was opposed in principle to the use of firearms, which he considered the resort of cowards who wanted to be able to kill from a safe distance. But on this occasion, circumstances allowed him to set aside certain scruples.

He placed the revolver on the table and started loading it, inserting a cartridge into each chamber of the cylinder. Having done that, he weighed the weapon in the palm of his hand for a moment, then put it down again. He looked around him, his hands on his hips, before moving an armchair so that it faced the door. He brought over a table and placed on it the oil lamp together with a box of matches. After another glance to see that everything was where it should be, he extinguished all the gaslights in the house one by one, apart from the light burning in the small hallway between the front door and the studio; he merely turned that down, so it gave off only a pale, bluish light that left the hall in half shadow and the studio in darkness. Then he unsheathed his sword-stick, picked up the revolver, and set both on the table opposite his chair. He stood there for a moment in the shadows, studying the effect, and seemed satisfied. Then he went to the hall and unbolted the door.

He was whistling to himself as he went into the kitchen to refill the pot with coffee and collect a clean cup. He took those over to the chair and put them on the table, next to the oil lamp, the matches, the revolver, and the sword-stick. Then he lit the oil lamp, with the wick turned very low, filled a cup with coffee, and, raising it to his lips, settled down to wait. He did not know how many of them there would be; but he was sure that, from now on, his nights were going to be very long.

His eyes were closing. His head nodded, and he felt a pain in his neck. He blinked, confused. In the dim light of the oil lamp, he reached for the coffeepot and poured a little more into his cup. He took his watch from his pocket; it was a quarter past two in the morning. The coffee was cold, but he drank it down in one swallow, making a face. There was absolute silence around him, and he thought that perhaps they would not come. On the table, the revolver and the bare blade of the sword gleamed in the soft glow of the oil lamp.

T
HE
sound of a passing carriage reached him through the open window, and he listened attentively for a while. He held his breath, intent on the slightest noise that might indicate danger, and he remained like that until the noise had moved off down the street, fading into the distance.

On another occasion, he seemed to hear a creak on the stairs, and he sat for a long time with his eyes fixed on the bluish penumbra in the hallway, while his right hand stroked the butt of the gun.

A
MOUSE
came and went above him. He looked up at the ceiling, listening to the muted pattering as the little animal moved about the rafters. He had been trying to hunt it down for several days, and had left a couple of traps in the kitchen at the hole near the fireplace. From that hole the mouse usually emerged to make its night raids on the larder. It was obviously a very astute mouse, because the cheese next to the spring was always gnawed, but the trap was never sprung. Don Jaime was obviously up against a mouse of some talent, which made the difference between hunting and being hunted. Listening to the mouse scamper here and there in the roof space, the fencing master was glad that he had not yet been able to trap him. The minuscule company the creature afforded him relieved the solitude of his long wait.

H
IS
mind, in that state of light, alert sleep, filled with strange images. Three times he thought he saw something moving in the hallway and sat up with a start, and three times he leaned back again in the chair, realizing that his senses were deceiving him. Nearby, the clock of San Ginés struck the quarter hours, and the bell tolled three times.

T
HIS
time there was no doubt. There was a noise on the stairs, a quiet rustling. He leaned forward slowly, concentrating every ounce of his being on listening. Something was moving cautiously on the other side of the door. Holding his breath, his throat tight with tension, he put out the oil lamp. The only light now was the weak glow in the hallway. Without getting to his feet, he picked up the revolver in his right hand and cocked it, muffling the sound of the hammer between his legs. With his elbows resting on the table, he aimed it at the door. He was no marksman, but at that distance it would be difficult to miss. And there were five bullets in the chamber.

He was surprised to hear a gentle knock at the door. It was odd, he thought, for a murderer to ask permission to enter his victim's house. He remained still and silent in the darkness, waiting. Perhaps they wanted to find out if he was asleep.

The knock came again, a bit louder this time, although still far from energetic. It was clear that the mysterious visitor did not want to wake the neighbors. Don Jaime was beginning to feel unsettled. He had expected them to force their way in, not come knocking at his door at three in the morning. Besides, he had left the door unbolted; all they had to do was turn the handle to open it. He waited, holding the air in his lungs, the revolver firm in his hand, his index finger on the trigger. Whoever it was, was bound to come in.

There was a metallic creak. Someone was turning the handle. He heard a slight squeak as the door swung on its hinges. Don Jaime gently expelled the air from his lungs, took another deep breath, and again held it. His index finger began to squeeze the trigger. He would wait until the first figure was framed in the middle of the hallway, and then he would shoot.

"Don Jaime?"

The voice came in a questioning whisper. A glacial cold burst forth in the very center of Don Jaime's heart and spread to his veins, freezing his limbs. He felt the grip of his fingers loosening; the revolver fell to the table. He raised a hand to his forehead as he got to his feet, stiff as a corpse. Because the slightly hoarse voice, with just a hint of a foreign accent, that came from the hall reached him from the mists of the Beyond. It was none other than the voice of Adela de Otero.

A
FEMALE
silhouette appeared in the blue penumbra and stopped on the threshold to the living room. He heard a slight rustle of skirts, and then the voice said again, "Don Jaime?"

He held out a hand, feeling for the matches. He struck one, and the tiny flame created a sinister play of light and shadow on his tense features. His fingers were trembling as he lit the oil lamp and lifted it up to illumine the apparition that had just placed death in his soul.

She was standing at the door in a black dress, her hands folded. She was wearing a black straw hat with matching ribbons, and her hair was gathered, as usual, at the nape of her neck. She seemed shy and uncertain, like a disobedient child come to ask forgiveness for arriving home late.

"I think I owe you an explanation, maestro."

Don Jaime swallowed hard as he set the oil lamp on the table. Through his mind passed the image of a mutilated woman lying on a marble slab in the morgue, and it seemed to him that Adela de Otero did indeed owe him an explanation.

Twice he opened his mouth to speak, but the words refused to come. He remained there, leaning on the edge of the table, watching the young woman approach until the circle of light was breast-high.

"I've come alone, Don Jaime. Will you hear what I have to say?"

Don Jaime's voice was a dull whisper. "I will."

She moved softly, and the light from the oil lamp reached her chin, her mouth, the small scar at the corner of her mouth. "It's a long story."

"Who was the dead woman?"

There was a silence. The mouth and the chin withdrew from the circle of light. "Be patient, Don Jaime. All in good time." She was speaking in a very soft, sweet voice, with that slight hoarseness that once stirred such conflicting feelings in the fencing master. "We have all the time in the world."

Don Jaime Astarloa swallowed again. He was afraid he might wake up from one moment to the next, close his eyes for an instant, and when he opened them again, find that Adela de Otero was not there. That she had never been there.

One of her hands moved slowly in the light, her fingers outstretched, as if to indicate that she had nothing to hide. "In order for you to understand what I've come to tell you, Don Jaime, I must go back a long way—about ten years." Her voice was neutral now, distant. Don Jaime could not see her eyes, but he could imagine the absent look in them, fixed on some point in the infinite. Or perhaps, he thought later, she was watching, studying his face to see the reflection there of the feelings aroused by what she said.

"At that time, a certain young woman was living a beautiful love story, a tale of eternal love." She fell silent for a moment, as if evaluating the words. "Eternal love," she repeated. "To simplify, I won't go into details that you might consider to be in bad taste. I'll just say that the beautiful love story ended six months later in a foreign land, one winter evening, in tears and in the most complete solitude, on the banks of a river from which a mist was rising. Those gray waters fascinated the woman. They fascinated her so much that she thought she might find in them what the poets call the sweet peace of oblivion. As you see the first part of my story sounds like a rather vulgar novel."

Adela de Otero paused and gave a mirthless contralto laugh. Don Jaime had not moved an inch and continued listening in silence.

"And just then," she went on, "just when the young woman was prepared to pass through her personal wall of mist, another man appeared in her life." She stopped for a moment; her voice had grown almost imperceptibly softer, and this was the only time she tempered the coldness of her narrative. "A man who, asking nothing in exchange and driven only by pity, took care of the woman lost on the banks of that gray river, healed her wounds, and gave her back her smile. He became for her the father she had never known, the brother she had never had, the husband she would never have. He was a man who, stretching his nobility to the limits, never attempted to impose on her any of the rights that might have been due to him as a husband. Do you understand what I'm saying, Don Jaime?"

Don Jaime still could not see her eyes, but he knew that she was looking at him hard. "I'm beginning to."

"I doubt that you can understand it completely," she said in such a low voice that Don Jaime guessed at rather than heard her words. There was a long silence, so long that he began to fear that she might not continue with her story, but after a moment, she spoke again. "For two years, that man devoted himself to creating a new woman, very different from the trembling young girl gazing into the river. And he still asked nothing in return."

"He was an altruist."

"Perhaps not, Don Jaime, perhaps not." She seemed to falter, as if thinking about the matter. "I imagine there was something more. In fact, his attitude was not entirely unselfish. Possibly he felt satisfaction at creating something of his own. The pride that came from a kind of possession that was never exercised but that was there nonetheless. 'You are the most beautiful thing I ever created,' he said once. Perhaps he was right, because he spared no effort in the task, no effort, no money, no patience. There were lovely clothes, dancing masters, riding, music ... fencing. Yes, Don Jaime. By some strange quirk of nature, the young woman was very gifted at fencing. One day, because of his work, the man was obliged to return to his country. He took the young woman by the shoulders, led her to a mirror, and made her look at herself for a long time. 'You are beautiful and you are free,' he said. 'Take a good look at yourself. That is my reward.' He was married, he had a family and obligations, but he was ready to continue watching over his creation even so Before leaving, he made her a present of a house where she could live in a suitable maimer And from a distance her benefactor continued to keep a careful watch so that she should lack for nothing And thus seven years passed "

She stopped talking for a moment and then repeated "seven years" in a low voice. When she did so, she moved slightly, and the circle of light rose up her body and reached her violet eyes,
which glinted in the flickering light. The scar at the corner of her mouth still marked it with that indelible, enigmatic smile.

"You, Don Jaime, already know who that man was."

He blinked, surprised, and was about to express his confusion out loud. A sudden intuition counseled him, however, to refrain from making any comment, lest he cut the thread of her confidences.

"On the day they said goodbye," she continued after a moment, "all the young woman could do was express to her benefactor the immensity of the debt she owed him in these words: 'If you ever need me, call me, even if I must go down into hell itself.' I'm sure, maestro, that if you had chanced to know that young woman's courage, you would not have found such words out of place on a woman's lips."

"I would have been surprised if she had said anything else," said Don Jaime. She smiled again and nodded slightly, as if she had just been paid a compliment. Don Jaime touched his own forehead; it was cold as marble. The pieces were beginning slowly and painfully to fit together.

"And so the day came," he added, "when he asked you to go down into hell."

She looked at him, surprised. She raised her hands and put them together again slowly, offering him silent applause. "Well put, Don Jaime. Well put."

"I merely repeat your words."

"It is still well put." Her voice was heavy with irony. "To go down into hell. That is precisely what he asked her to do."