The Flanders Panel

And Julia told him, omitting nothing, not even the hidden inscription, a fact that Cesar acknowledged with a slight lift of his eyebrows. They were sitting by the stained-glass window, and Cesar was leaning slightly towards her, his right leg crossed over his left, one hand, on which gleamed a valuable topaz set in gold, draped nonchalantly over the Patek Philippe watch he wore on his other wrist. It was that distinguished pose of his, by no means calculated (although it may once have been), that so effortlessly captivated the troubled young men in search of exquisite sensations, the painters, sculptors, fledgling artists whom Cesar took under his wing with a devotion and constancy which, it must be said, lasted much longer than his sentimental relationships.

“Life is short and beauty transient, Princess.” Whenever Cesar adopted his confidential tone, dropping his voice almost to a whisper, the words were always touched with a wry melancholy. “And it would be wrong to possess it for ever. The beauty lies in teaching a young sparrow to fly, because implicit in his freedom is your relinquishment of him. Do you see the subtle point I’m making with this parable?”

As she’d openly acknowledged once before when Cesar, half-flattered and half-amused, had accused her of making a jealous scene, Julia felt inexplicably irritated by all those little sparrows fluttering around Cesar, and only her affection for him and her rational awareness that he had even‘ right to lead his own kind of life, prevented her giving voice to it. As Menchu used to say, with her usual lack of tact: “What you’ve got, dear, is an Electra complex dressed up as an Oedipus complex, or vice versa…” Menchu’s parables, unlike Cesar’s, tended to be all too explicit.

When Julia had finished recounting the story of the painting, Cesar remained silent, pondering what she’d said. He didn’t seem surprised – in matters of art, especially at his age, very little surprised him – but the mocking gleam in his eyes had given way to a flicker of interest.

“Fascinating,” he said at last, and Julia knew at once that she would be able to count on him. Ever since she was a child that word had been an incitement to complicity and adventure on the trail of some secret: the pirate treasure hidden in the drawer of the Isabelline bureau – which he sold to the Museo Romantico – and the story he invented about the portrait of the lady in the lace dress, attributed to Ingres, whose lover, an officer in the hussars, died at Waterloo, calling out her name as the cavalry charged. With Cesar holding her hand, Julia had lived through a hundred such adventures in a hundred different lives, and, invariably, in each of them what she’d learned from him was to value beauty, self-denial and tenderness, as well as the delicate and intense pleasure to be gained from the contemplation of a work of art, from the translucent surface of a piece of porcelain to the humble reflection of a ray of sunlight on a wall broken up by a pure crystal into its whole exquisite spectrum of colours.

“The first thing I need to do,” Cesar was saying, “is to have a good look at the painting. I can be at your apartment tomorrow evening, at about half past seven.”

“Fine,” she said, eyeing him cautiously. “It’s just possible that Alvaro will be there too.”

If Cesar was surprised, he didn’t say so. He merely made a cruel face with pursed lips.

“How delightful. I haven’t seen the swine for ages, so I’d be thrilled to have an opportunity to send a few poisoned darts his way, wrapped up, of course, in delicate periphrases.”

“Please, Cesar.”

“Don’t worry, my dear, I’ll be kind… given the circumstances. My hand may wound, but no blood will be spilled on your Persian carpet… which, incidentally, could do with a good cleaning.”

She looked at him tenderly, and put her hands over his.

“I love you, Cesar.”

“I know. It’s only natural. Almost everyone does.”

“Why do you hate Alvaro so much?”

It was a stupid question, and he gave her a look of mild censure.

“Because he made you suffer,” he replied gravely. “I would, with your permission, pluck out his eyes and feed diem to the dogs along the dusty roads of Thebes. All very classical. You could be the chorus. I can see you now, looking divine, raising your bare arms up to Olympus, where the gods would be snoring, drunk as lords.”

“Marry me, Cesar. Right now.”

Cesar took one of her hands and kissed it, brushed it with his lips.

“When you grow up, Princess.”

“But I have.”

“No, you haven’t. Not yet. But when you have, Your Highness, I will dare to tell you that I loved you. And that the gods, when they woke, did not take everything from me. Only my kingdom.” He seemed to ponder that before adding, “Which, after all, is a mere bagatelle.”

It was a very private dialogue, full of memories, of shared references, as old as their friendship. They sat in silence, accompanied by the ticking of the ancient clocks that continued to measure out the passage of time while they awaited a buyer.