The Flanders Panel

“I see,” he said, and made a movement with his chin as if to indicate that he had understood, although Julia was unable to establish exactly what he had understood. He looked past her as if hoping that someone would approach, bringing a forgotten word. And then he did something that Julia would always remember with astonishment. Right there, in half a dozen phrases, uttered as dispassionately and coldly as if he were discussing some third party, he summarised his whole life for her, or that’s what Julia thought he did, without pauses or inflections and with the same precision he employed when commenting on moves in a chess game. And only when he’d finished and fallen silent did the vague smile return to his lips, in apparent gentle mockery of himself, of the man he had just described and for whom, deep down, he felt neither compassion nor disdain, only a kind of disillusioned, sympathetic solidarity.

Julia just stood there, not knowing what to say, asking herself how the devil a man of so few words had been capable of explaining everything about himself so clearly. She had learned of a child who used to play chess in his head, staring up at his bedroom ceiling, whenever his father punished him for neglecting his studies; and about women capable of dissecting, with the meticulous skill of a watchmaker, the inner mechanisms that drive a man; and of the solitude that came in the wake of failure and the absence of hope. Julia had no time to take it in, and at the end, which was almost the beginning, she wasn’t sure how much of it he’d actually told her and how much of it she’d imagined for herself, supposing that Munoz had done anything more than just bow his head and smile like a weary gladiator, indifferent about the direction, up or down, of the thumb that would decide his fate. When he stopped talking – if, that is, he ever really spoke – and the grey light of dawn lit half his face, Julia knew with total clarity just what that small area of sixty-four black and white squares meant to this man: a miniature battlefield on which was played out the mystery of life itself, of success and failure, of the terrible, hidden forces that rule the fates of men.

She understood this, as well as the meaning of that smile that never quite settled on his lips. She slowly bowed her head, while he looked up at the sky and remarked how cold it was. She offered her pack of cigarettes; he accepted, and that was the first and almost the last time she saw Munoz smoke. They walked on until they reached Julia’s building. At that point it seemed that Munoz would depart for good. He held out his hand to shake hers and say good-bye, but Julia had seen a small envelope, about the size of a visiting card, stuck in the little grid next to her bell. When she opened it and looked at the card it contained, she knew that Munoz could not leave, not just yet, that a few other things, none of them good, would have to happen before they could let him do so.

“I don’t like it,” said Cesar, and Julia noticed that the fingers holding his ivory cigarette holder were trembling slightly. “I really don’t like the idea that there’s some madman out there, playing at being the Phantom of the Opera.”

As if those words were a signal, all the clocks in the shop started to chime, one after the other or simultaneously, in tones that varied from a gentle murmur to the grave bass of the heavy wall clocks. But the coincidence failed to make Julia smile. She looked at the Bustelli figure of Lucinda, absolutely still inside the glass case, and felt as fragile as it looked.

“I don’t like it either. But I’m not sure we have any choice.”

She looked away from the porcelain figure and across at the Regency table on which Munoz had set out his pocket chess set, once again reproducing the positions of the pieces in Van Huys’s chess game.

“If I ever get my hands on the swine…” Cesar muttered, casting a distrustful eye at the card Munoz was holding by one corner, as if it were a pawn he was not yet sure where to place. “It’s beyond a joke.”

“It’s no joke,” said Julia. “Have you forgotten about poor Alvaro?”

“Forgotten him?” Cesar put the cigarette holder to his lips and blew out smoke in short, nervous puffs. “I wish I could!”

“And yet,” said Munoz, “it does make sense.”

They looked at him. Munoz, unaware of the effect of his words, remained leaning on the table over the chessboard, with the card between his fingers. He hadn’t taken his raincoat off, and the light coming through the stained-glass window lent a blue tone to his unshaven chin and emphasised the dark circles under his weary eyes.

“My friend,” said Cesar, in a tone that was somewhere between polite incredulity and ironic respect, “I’m glad you can make some sense out of all this.”

Munoz shrugged, ignoring Cesar’s comment. He was clearly concentrating on the new problem, on the hieroglyphics on the small card:

Rb3?… Pd7 – d5+

Munoz looked at them for a moment longer, comparing them with the position of the pieces on the board.