The Flanders Panel (24 page)

“So, summing up,” Julia said, ticking the points off on her fingers, “our opponent is very probably a man and far less probably a woman, someone with plenty of self-confidence, aggressive and cruel by nature and a kind of sadistic voyeur. Is that right?”

“Yes, I think so. And he enjoys danger. That much is obvious from his rejection of the classic approach whereby Black is always relegated to a defensive role. What’s more he has a good intuitive sense of what his opponent’s moves might be. He’s able to put himself in someone else’s shoes.”

Cesar puckered his lips, gave a silent whistle of admiration and looked at Munoz with renewed respect. The latter now had a distant air, as if his thoughts had again drifted far away.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Julia.

Munoz took a while to answer.

“Nothing special. On a chessboard, the battle isn’t between two schools of chess, but between two philosophies, between two world-views.”

“White and Black, isn’t that it?” Cesar said, as if he were reciting lines from an old poem. “Good and evil, heaven and hell, and all those other delightful antitheses.”

“Possibly.”

Munoz shrugged. Julia looked at his broad forehead and at the dark shadows under his eyes. Burning in those weary eyes was the little light that so fascinated her and she wondered how long it would be before it flickered out again, as it had on other occasions. When that light was there, she felt a genuine desire to delve into his inner life, to know the taciturn man sitting opposite her.

“And what school do you belong to?”

He seemed surprised by the question. His hand moved towards his wine glass but stopped halfway and lay motionless on the tablecloth. His glass had remained untouched since the beginning of the meal.

“I don’t think I belong to any school,” he replied quietly. He gave the impression that talking about himself represented an intolerable violation of his sense of modesty. “I suppose I’m one of those who sees chess as a form of therapy. Sometimes I wonder what people like you, people who don’t play chess, do to escape from depression and madness. As I told you once before, there are people who play to win, like Alekhine, Lasker and Kasparov, like nearly all the grand masters. Like our invisible player, I suppose. Others, like Steinitz and Przepiorka, concentrate on demonstrating their theories and making brilliant moves.”

“And you?” asked Julia.

“Me? I’m neither aggressive nor a risk-taker.”

“Is that why you never win?”

“Inside, I believe that I can win, that if I decided to win, I wouldn’t lose a single game. But I’m my own worst enemy.” He touched the end of his nose, tilting his head slightly to one side. “I read something once: man was not born to solve the problem of the world, merely to discover where the problem lies. Perhaps that’s why I don’t attempt to solve anything. I immerse myself in the game for the game’s sake and sometimes when I look as if I were studying the board, I’m actually daydreaming. I’m pondering different moves, with different pieces, or I go six, seven or more moves ahead of the move my opponent is considering.”

“Chess in its purest state,” said Cesar, who seemed genuinely, albeit reluctantly, impressed.

“I don’t know about that,” Munoz said. “But the same thing happens to many other people I know. The games can last for hours, during which time, family, problems, work, all get left behind, pushed to one side. That’s common to everyone. What happens is that while some see it as a battle they have to win, others, like myself, see it as an arena rich in fantasy and spatial combinations, where victory and defeat are meaningless words.”

“But before, when you were talking to us about a battle between two philosophies, you were talking about the murderer, about our mystery player,” said Julia. “This time it seems that you
are
interested in winning. Is that right?”

Munoz’s gaze again drifted off to some indeterminate point in space.

“I suppose it is. Yes, this time I do want to win.”

“Why?”

“Instinct. I’m a chess player, a good one. Someone is trying to provoke me, and that forces me to pay close attention to the moves he makes. The truth is, I have no choice.”

Cesar smiled mockingly, lighting one of his special gold-filter cigarettes.

“Sing, O Muse,” he recited, in a tone of festive parody, “of the fury of our grieving Munoz, who, at last, has resolved to leave his tent. Our friend is finally going to war. Until now he has acted only as an outside observer, so I’m pleased at last to see him swear allegiance to the flag. A hero
malgre lui,
but a hero for all that. It’s just a shame,” a shadow crossed his smooth, pale brow, “that it’s such a devilishly subtle war.”

Munoz looked at Cesar with interest.

“It’s odd you should say that.”

“Why?”

“Because chess is, in fact, a substitute for war and for something else as well. I mean for patricide.” He looked at them uncertainly, as if asking them not to take his words too seriously. “Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It’s about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.”

An icy silence chilled the air around the table. Cesar was looking at Munoz’s now sealed lips, screwing up his eyes a little, as if troubled by the smoke from his cigarette. His look was one of frank admiration, as if Munoz had just opened a door that hinted at unfathomable mysteries contained within.

“Amazing,” he murmured.

Julia seemed equally mesmerised by Munoz. However mediocre and insignificant he might appear, this man with his large ears and his timid, rumpled air knew exactly what he was talking about. In the mysterious labyrinth, even the idea of which made men tremble with impotence and fear, Munoz was the only one who knew how to interpret the signs, the only one who possessed the keys that allowed him to come and go without being devoured by the Minotaur. And there, sitting before the remains of her barely touched lasagne, Julia knew with a mathematical, almost a chess player’s certainty that, in his way, this man was the strongest of the three of them. His judgment was not dimmed by prejudices about his opponent, the mystery player and potential murderer. He considered the enigma with the same egotistical, scientific coldness that Sherlock Holmes used to solve the problems set him by the sinister Professor Moriarty. Munoz would not play that game to the end out of a sense of justice; his motive was not ethical, but logical. He would do it simply because h: was a player whom chance had placed on this side of the chessboard, just as - and Julia shuddered at the thought -it could have placed him on the other side. Whether he played White or Black, she realised, was a matter of complete indifference to him. All that mattered to him was that, for the first time in his life, he was interested in playing a game to the end.

Her eyes met Cesar’s and she knew he was thinking the same thing. It was he who spoke first, in a low voice, as if fearing, as she did, to extinguish the light in Munoz’s eyes.

“Killing the king…” Cesar put the cigarette holder slowly to his lips and inhaled a precise amount of smoke. “That’s very interesting. I mean the Freudian interpretation of the game. I had no idea chess had anything to do with such unpleasant things.”

Munoz, his head slightly to one side, seemed absorbed in his own thoughts.

“It’s usually the father who teaches the child his first moves in the game. And the dream of any son who plays chess is to beat his father. To kill the king. Besides, it soon becomes evident in chess that the father, or the king, is the weakest piece on the board. He’s under continual attack, in constant need of protection, of such tactics as castling, and he can only move one square at a time. Paradoxically, the king is also indispensable. The king gives the game its name, since the word ‘chess’ derives from the Persian word
shah
meaning king, and is pretty much the same in most languages.”

“And the queen?” asked Julia.

“She’s the mother and the wife. In any attack on the king, she provides the most efficient defence. The queen is the piece with the best and most effective resources. And on either side of the king and the queen is the bishop: the one who blesses the union and helps in the fight. Not forgetting the Arab
faros,
the horse that crosses the enemy lines, the knight. In fact, the problem existed long before Van Huys painted his
Game of Chess;
men have been trying to solve it for fourteen hundred years.”

Munoz paused, and seemed about to say more, but instead of words, what appeared on his lips was that brief suggestion of a smile.

“Sometimes,” he said at last, as if it were an enormous effort to formulate his thoughts, “I wonder if chess is something man invented or if he merely discovered it. It’s as if it were something that has always been there, since the beginning of the universe. Like whole numbers.”

As if in a dream, Julia heard the sound of a seal being broken and, for the first time, she was properly aware of the situation: a vast chessboard embracing both past and present, Van Huys and herself, even Alvaro, Cesar, Montegrifo, the Belmontes, Menchu and Munoz. And she suddenly felt such intense fear that she had to make an almost physical effort not to express it out loud. The fear must have shown in her face because both Cesar and Munoz gave her a worried look.

“I’m all right,” she said, shaking her head as if that might help calm her thoughts. Then she took from her pocket the list of different levels that existed in the painting, according to Munoz’s first interpretation. “Have a look at this.”

Munoz studied the sheet of paper and passed it to Cesar without comment.

“What do you think?” asked Julia.

Cesar was hesitant.

“Most disturbing,” he said. “But perhaps we’re being too literary about it.” He glanced again at Julia’s diagram. “I can’t make up my mind whether we’re all racking our brains over something really profound or something absolutely trivial.”

Julia didn’t reply. She was staring at Munoz. He placed the piece of paper on the table, took a pen from his pocket and added something and passed it back to her.

“Now there’s another level,” he said in a worried voice. “You’re at least as involved as any of the others.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Julia.

“Level 6 is the one that contains all the others.” Munoz pointed to the list. “Whether you like it or not, you’re there in it too.”

“That means,” said Julia, looking at him with wide-open eyes, “that the person who may have murdered Alvaro, the same one who sent us that card, is playing some kind of mad chess game. A game in which not only I, but we, all of us, are pieces. Is that right?”

There was no sadness in Munoz’s face, only a sort of expectant curiosity, as if fascinating conclusions could be drawn from what she’d just said, conclusions he would be only too happy to comment on.

“I’m glad,” he replied at last, and the diffuse smile returned to his lips, “that you’ve both finally realised that.”

Menchu had made herself up with millimetric precision and had chosen her clothes to calculated effect: a short, very tight skirt and an extremely elegant black leather jacket over a cream sweater that emphasised her bosom to an extent that Julia instantly decried as “scandalous”. Perhaps foreseeing this, Julia had opted that afternoon for an informal look, choosing to wear moccasins, jeans, a suede bomber jacket and a silk scarf. As Cesar would have said, had he seen them parking Julia’s Fiat outside Claymore’s, they could easily have passed for mother and daughter.

Menchu’s perfume and the sound of her high heels preceded them into an office with walls of fine wood, a huge mahogany table, and ultramodern lamps and chairs, where Paco Montegrifo advanced to kiss the hand of each of them, smiling the trademark smile that displayed his perfect teeth, a flash of white against his bronzed skin. They sat in armchairs offering a splendid view of  the valuable Vlaminck that dominated the room; Montegrifo sat beneath the painting itself, on the other side of the table, with the modest air of someone who deeply regretted being unable to provide them with a better view, a Rembrandt, perhaps. At least that could have been the implication behind the intense look he gave Julia, once he’d cast an indifferent eye over Menchu’s ostentatiously crossed legs. Or perhaps a Leonardo.

He lost no time in getting down to business once his secretary had served coffee in china cups from the East India Company, coffee that Menchu sweetened with saccharin. Julia took hers black, bitter and very hot and drank it in small sips. By the time she’d lit a cigarette -Montegrifo leaning impotently across the vast table with his gold lighter - he’d already outlined the situation. And Julia had to admit that he could certainly not be accused of beating about the bush.

At first sight, the situation seemed crystal-clear: Claymore’s regretted that they were unable to accept Menchu’s conditions as regards equal shares in the profits from the Van Huys. Menchu should know that the owner of the painting, Don - Montegrifo calmly consulted his notes — Manuel Belmonte, with the agreement of his niece and her husband, had decided to cancel the agreement made with Dona Menchu Roch and transfer all rights in the Van Huys to Claymore and Co. All of this, he added, was set out in a document, authenticated by a notary public. Montegrifo gave Menchu a look of deep regret, accompanied by a worldly sigh.