The Flanders Panel (17 page)

“I’d love to, but I never say that until after coffee. Even if I may be thinking it,” he explained. “It’s a question of tactics.”

“Let’s talk about the Van Huys then.”

“Let’s.” He looked at her for a long time, and she saw that, although his lips were smiling, his brown eyes were not; they held a glint of extreme caution. “I’ve heard certain rumours - you know how it is. It’s a real gossip shop, this little world of ours, where everyone knows everyone else.” He sighed, as if he disapproved of the world he’d just described. “I understand you’ve discovered something in the painting. According to what I’ve heard, it’s something that could considerably increase its value.”

Julia kept an absolutely straight face, aware that she would have to do more than that to deceive Montegrifo.

“And who’s been telling you this nonsense?”

“A little bird.” The auctioneer stroked his right eyebrow thoughtfully. “But that’s the least of it. What matters is that your friend, Senorita Roch, intends to blackmail me in some way.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sure you don’t.” Montegrifo’s smile was undimmed. “Your friend wants to reduce Claymore’s percentage of the commission and increase hers.” He tried to look impartial. “The truth is that legally there’s nothing to stop her doing that, since ours is only a verbal agreement. She can easily break it and go to our competitors in search of a better Percentage.”

“I’m glad to see you’re so understanding about it.”

“Naturally I am. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be looking out for the interests of my own company.”

“I should hope not.”

“I won’t conceal from you the fact that I’ve already located the owner of the Van Huys; an elderly gentleman. Or, to be exact, I’ve been in touch with his niece and her husband. My intention, and I won’t conceal this from you either, was to get the family to dispense with your friend as intermediary and deal directly with me. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly. You’ve been trying to put one over on Menchu.”

“That’s one way of putting it, yes. I suppose you could call it that.” A shadow crossed his tanned forehead, giving a slightly pained expression to his features, the look of someone wrongly accused. “The unfortunate thing is that your friend, a very prudent woman, got the owner to sign an agreement, which invalidates any deal I might make. What do you think?”

“You have my deepest sympathy. Better luck next time.”

“Thank you.” Montegrifo lit another cigarette. “But it may be that all is not quite lost. You’re a close friend of Senorita Roch. Perhaps she could be persuaded to come to some amicable agreement. If we all work together, we could make a fortune out of that painting, from which you, your friend, Claymore’s and I would all profit. What do you think?”

“Very likely. But why tell me all this rather than talk to Menchu? It would have saved you a supper.”

Montegrifo composed his features into an expression of genuine hurt.

“I like you, and I don’t mean just as a restorer. I like you a lot, to be honest. You strike me as being a reasonable and intelligent woman, as well as being extremely attractive. I’d rather trust in your mediation than go directly to your friend, whom, I’m afraid, I consider a little frivolous.”

“In other words,” said Julia, “you want me to convince her.”

“If you could, it would be” - the auctioneer hesitated, carefully seeking the right word - “marvellous.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

“My company’s gratitude, of course. Now and in the future. As regards any immediate advantage, I won’t ask you how much you were hoping to earn for your work on the Van Huys, but I can guarantee you double that figure. As an advance on the two per cent of the final price
The Game of Chess
reaches at auction, of course. I’m also in a position to offer you a contract to head the restoration department at Claymore’s here in Madrid. How would you feel about that?”

“It’s very tempting. Are you really expecting to make that much on the painting?”

“There are already interested buyers in London and New York. With the right publicity, this could turn into the biggest event in the art world since Christie’s auctioned Tutankhamun’s treasures. Given the situation, as I’m sure you’ll understand, your friend’s wanting to go halves with us really is too much. All she’s done is find a restorer and offer us the picture. We do everything else.”

Julia considered what he’d said without the least show of surprise; what could and could not surprise her had changed a lot over the last few days. She looked at Montegrifo’s right hand, which lay on the tablecloth very close to hers, and she tried to calculate how far it had progressed in the last five minutes. Far enough to call an end to the supper.

“I’ll try,” she said, picking up her handbag. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”

Montegrifo stroked one eyebrow.

“Do try.” His brown eyes looked at her with liquid, velvety tenderness. “It will be to everyone’s advantage; I’m sure you’ll manage it.”

There wasn’t a trace of menace in his voice, only a tone of affectionate entreaty, so friendly, so perfect, it could almost have been sincere. He took Julia’s hand and planted a gentle kiss on it, barely brushing it with his lips.

“I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before,” he added in a low voice, “but you really are an extraordinarily beautiful woman.”

She asked him to drop her near Stephan’s and walked the rest of the way. After midnight the place opened its doors to a distinguished clientele whose level of distinction was regulated by the high prices and a rigorously applied admissions policy. Everyone who was anyone in the Madrid art world gathered there, from agents working for foreign auctioneers, who were just passing through on the lookout for a reredos or a private collection for sale, to gallery owners, researchers impresarios, specialist journalists and fashionable painters.

She left her coat in the cloakroom and, after saying hello to a few acquaintances, walked to the sofa at the far end where Cesar usually sat. And there he was, legs crossed, a glass in one hand, immersed in intimate conversation with a handsome, blond young man. Julia knew the special contempt Cesar felt for clubs popular exclusively with homosexuals. He considered it a simple matter of good taste not to frequent the claustrophobic, exhibitionist, often aggressive atmosphere of such places, where, as he would explain with a mocking look on his face, it was hard, my dear, not to feel like some old queen mincing around at a stud farm. Cesar was a lone hunter - ambiguity refined to its elegant essence - who was at ease in the world of heterosexuals, where he felt perfectly free to cultivate friendships and make conquests, usually of artistic young bloods whom he would guide towards a discovery of their true sensibility, which the divine young things did not,
a priori,
know. He enjoyed playing at being both Maecenas and Socrates to his exquisite boys. After suitable honeymoons that always had Venice, Marrakesh or Cairo as their backdrop, each affair would follow its natural and distinctive course. Cesar’s long and intense life had, Julia knew, been shaped by a succession of confusions, disappointments and betrayals, but also by fidelities which, in private moments, she’d heard him describe with great delicacy, in that ironic and somewhat distant tone in which, out of personal modesty, he tended to veil any expression of his intimate longings.

He smiled at her from afar. My favourite girl, his lips said, moving silently as, placing his glass on the table, he uncrossed his legs, stood, and held out his hands to her.

“How did the supper go, Princess? Ghastly, I imagine. Sabatini’s isn’t what it was.” He pursed his lips and there was a malicious gleam in his blue eyes. “All those executives and parvenu bankers with their credit cards and restaurant accounts chargeable to their companies will be the ruin of everything. By the way, have you met Sergio?”

Julia
had
met Sergio and, as always with Cesar’s friends, she sensed the confusion he felt in her presence, unable quite to grasp the real nature of the ties that bound the antiquarian and that calmly beautiful young woman. She could tell at a glance that the relationship was not serious, at least not that night and not on Sergio’s part. The young man, sensitive and intelligent, wasn’t jealous. They’d met on other occasions. Julia’s presence merely intimidated him.

“Montegrifo wanted to make me an offer.”

“How kind of him.” Cesar seemed to be considering the matter seriously as they all sat down. “But allow me, like old Cicero, to ask: C
ui bono?
For whose benefit?”

“His, I suppose. In fact, he wanted to bribe me.”

“Good for Montegrifo. And did you let yourself be bribed?” He touched Julia’s mouth with the tips of his fingers. “No, don’t tell me yet, my dear; allow me to savour that marvellous uncertainty just a little longer… I hope his offer was at least reasonable.”

“It wasn’t bad. He seemed to be including himself in it too.”

Cesar licked his lips with expectant glee.

“That’s just like him, wanting to kill two birds with one stone. He always was very practical.” Cesar half-turned towards his blond companion, as if warning him not to listen to such worldly improprieties. Then he looked back at Julia with mischievous expectation, almost trembling with anticipatory pleasure. “And what did you say?”

“That I would think about it.”

“Perfect. Never burn your boats. Do you hear that, Sergio, my dear? Never.”

The young man gave Julia a sideways glance and took a long sip of his champagne cocktail. Quite innocently, Julia imagined him naked, in the half-light of Cesar’s bedroom, beautiful and silent as a marble statue, his blond hair fallen over his face, with what Cesar termed, using a euphemism Julia believed he’d stolen from Cocteau, the golden sceptre, erect and ready to be tempered in the
antrum amoris
of his mature companion, or perhaps it would be the other way round, the mature man busy with the young man’s
antrum.
Julia had never taken her friendship with Cesar so far as to ask him for a detailed description of such matters, about which, nevertheless, she occasionally felt a slightly morbid curiosity. She looked quickly at Cesar. He was immaculate and elegant in his dark suit, white linen shirt and blue silk cravat with the red polka dots, the hair behind his ears and at the back of his neck slightly waved, and Julia asked herself again what the special charm of the man was, a man capable, even at fifty, of seducing young men like Sergio. It must be the ironic gleam in his blue eyes, the elegance distilled through generations of fine breeding and the easy assumption of world-weary wisdom, tolerant and infinite, to which he never gave complete expression — he rarely took himself entirely seriously — but which was nonetheless there in every word he uttered.

“You must see his latest painting,” Cesar was saying, and it took Julia a moment to realise he meant Sergio. “It’s really remarkable, my dear.” His hand hovered over the young man’s arm, almost but not quite touching it. “Light in its purest state, spilling out over the canvas. Absolutely beautiful.”

Julia smiled, accepting Cesar’s opinion as a cast-iron guarantee. Sergio, simultaneously touched and embarrassed, half-closed his blond-lashed eyes, like a cat receiving a caress.

“Of course,” Cesar went on, “talent isn’t enough in itself to make one’s way in the world. You do understand that, don’t you, young man? All the great art forms require a certain knowledge of the world, a deep experience of human relations. It’s quite another matter with abstract activities, in which talent is of the essence and experience merely a complement. By that I mean music, mathematics… chess.”

“Chess,” said Julia. They looked at each other, and Sergio’s eyes flicked anxiously from one to the other.

“Yes, chess.” Cesar leaned over to take a long drink from his glass. His pupils had shrunk, absorbed in the mystery they were contemplating. “Have you noticed how Munoz looks at
The Game of Chess?”

“Yes. He looks at it differently somehow.”

“Exactly. Differently from the way you, or indeed I, could look at it. Munoz sees things in the painting that other people don’t.”

Sergio, who was listening, frowned and deliberately brushed against Cesar’s shoulder; he appeared to be feeling left out. Cesar looked at him benevolently.

“We’re discussing things that are much too sinister for your ears, my dear.” He slid his index finger across Julia’s knuckles, lifted his hand slightly, as if hesitating over a choice between two desires, and placed that hand between Julia’s, but directed his words to the young man-“Guard your innocence, my friend. Develop your talent and don’t complicate your life.”

He blew Sergio a kiss just as Menchu, all mink coat and legs, made her entrance with Max and demanded news of Montegrifo.

“The bastard,” she said when Julia had finished telling her about it. “I’ll talk to Don Manuel tomorrow. We must fight back.”

Sergio drew back from the tide of words issuing from Menchu, who was rushing from Montegrifo to the Van Huys, from the Van Huys to assorted platitudes, and from a second to a third drink, which she held in an increasingly unsteady hand. Max was silently smoking by her side, with the poise of a dark, sleek stallion put out to stud. Wearing a distant smile, Cesar sipped his gin-and-lemon and dried his lips on the handkerchief from his top jacket pocket. From time to time he blinked, as if returning from some far-off place, and distractedly stroked Julia’s hand.

“There are two sorts of people in this business, darling,” Menchu was saying to Sergio, “those who paint and those who pocket the money. And they’re rarely the same ones.” She sighed loudly, touched by the boy’s youth. “And all you young, blond artists, sweetheart.” She gave Cesar a poisonous sideways glance. “So utterly delicious.”

Cesar felt obliged to make a reluctant return from his remote thoughts.

“Pay no heed, my young friend, to voices poisoning your golden spirit,” he said in a slow, lugubrious voice, as if he were offering Sergio condolences rather than advice. “This woman speaks with forked tongue, as do all women.” He looked at Julia, bent to kiss her hand, and swiftly recovered his composure. “Forgive me. As do
nearly
all women.”