The Flanders Panel (10 page)

“It’s a chess club,” Cesar said as they went up the steps. “The Capablanca Club.”

“Capablanca?” Julia looked warily through the open door. She could see tables inside with men leaning over and spectators grouped around them.

“Jose Raul Capablanca,” Cesar said, by way of explanation, clasping his walking stick beneath one arm as he removed his hat and gloves. “Some people say he was the best player ever. There are clubs and tournaments named after him all over the world.”

They went in. The club consisted of three large rooms, filled by a dozen tables, at almost every one of which a game was in progress. There was an odd buzz, neither noise nor silence, but a sort of gentle, contained murmur, slightly solemn, like the sound of people filling a church. A few players and spectators looked at Julia with incredulity or disapproval. The membership was exclusively male. The place smelled of cigarette smoke and old wood.

“Don’t women ever play chess?” asked Julia.

Cesar offered her his arm before they went in.

“I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest,” he said. “But they obviously don’t play here. Perhaps they play at home, between the darning and the cooking.”

“Male chauvinist!”

“Hardly an appropriate epithet in my case, my dear. Anyway, don’t be horrid.”

They were welcomed in the hallway by a friendly, talkative gentleman of a certain age, with a bald, domed head and a carefully trimmed moustache. Cesar introduced him to Julia as Senor Cifuentes, the director of the Jose Raul Capablanca Recreational Club.

“We have five hundred members on our books,” he told them proudly, pointing out the trophies, certificates and photographs adorning the walls. “We also sponsor a nationwide tournament.” He paused before a glass case containing a display of various chess sets, old rather than antique. “Nice, eh? Although here, of course, we use only the Staunton set.”

He had turned to Cesar as if expecting his approval, and the latter felt obliged to adopt an appropriately serious expression.

“Of course,” he said, and Cifuentes rewarded him with a friendly smile.

“Wood, you know,” he added. “No plastic.”

“I should hope not.”

Cifuentes turned to Julia.

“You should see it here on a Saturday afternoon.” He looked around contentedly, like a mother hen inspecting her chicks. “It’s a fairly average day today: keen players who leave work early, pensioners who spend the whole afternoon playing. And, as you’ve no doubt noticed, there’s a pleasant atmosphere here. Very…”

“Edifying,” said Julia, without thinking. But Cifuentes seemed to find the adjective appropriate.

“Yes, that’s it, edifying. As you can see, there are a number of younger men. That one over there, for example, is quite remarkable. He’s only nineteen but he’s already written a hundred-page study on the four lines of the Nimzo-Indian Defence.”

“Really? Nimzo-Indian? It sounds very…” - Julia searched desperately for the right word - “definitive.”

“Well, I don’t know about definitive,” Cifuentes replied honestly. “But it’s certainly significant.”

Julia looked to Cesar for help, but he merely arched an eyebrow, as if expressing a polite interest in the conversation. He was leaning towards Cifuentes, his hands behind his back holding both stick and hat, apparently enjoying himself hugely.

“Some years ago,” added Cifuentes, pointing at the top button of his waistcoat with his thumb, “I added my own little grain of sand.”

“Really?” said Cesar, and Julia gave him a worried look.

“Yes, believe it or not,” Cifuentes said, with false modesty. “A subvariant of the Caro-Kann Defence, using two knights. You know the one: knight three bishop queen. The Cifuentes variant, it’s called,” he added, looking hopefully at Cesar. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

“Naturally,” replied Cesar with great aplomb.

Cifuentes smiled gratefully.

“I can assure you it would be no exaggeration to say that in this club, or recreational society, as I prefer to call it, you’ll find the best players in Madrid, and possibly in all Spain.” Then he seemed to remember something. “By the way, I’ve found the man you need.” He scanned the room, and his face lit up. “Ah, there he is. Come with me, please.”

They followed him through one of the rooms, towards the rear.

“It wasn’t easy,” said Cifuentes as they approached. “I’ve spent all day turning it over in my mind. But then,” he half-turned towards Cesar with an apologetic gesture, “you did ask me to recommend our best player.”

They stopped a short distance from a table at which two men were playing, watched by half a dozen others. One of the players was softly drumming his fingers at the side of the board over which he was leaning with, thought Julia, the same serious expression Van Huys had given to the chess players in the painting. Opposite him, apparently untroubled by his opponent’s drumming, the other player sat utterly still, leaning slightly back in his wooden chair, his hands in his trouser pockets, his chin sunk on his chest. It was impossible to tell whether his eyes, fixed on the board, were concentrating on that or were absorbed on something else entirely.

The spectators maintained a reverential silence, as if what was being decided was a matter of life and death. There were only a few pieces left on the board, so intermingled that it was impossible, at least for new arrivals, to work out who was White and who was Black. After a couple of minutes, the man drumming his fingers used the same hand to move a white bishop, placing it between his king and a black rook. Having done that, he glanced briefly at his opponent and returned to his contemplation of the board and to his gentle drumming.

The move was accompanied by a lot of murmuring amongst the spectators. Julia went closer and saw that the other player, who hadn’t changed his posture at all when his opponent made his move, was staring intently at the intervening white bishop. He stayed like that for a while, when, with a gesture so slow it was impossible to tell until the last moment which piece he was reaching for, he moved a black knight.

“Check,” he said and returned to his former state of immobility, indifferent to the buzz of approval that rose about him.

Though no one said anything, Julia knew that he was the man Cifuentes had recommended to Cesar. She therefore watched him closely. He must have been just over forty, he was very thin and most likely of medium height. His hair was brushed straight back, with no parting, and was receding at the temples. He had large ears, a slightly aquiline nose, and his dark eyes were set deep in their sockets, as if viewing the world with distrust. He completely lacked the air of intelligence Julia now believed essential in a chess player; instead, his expression was one of indolent apathy, a kind of deep-seated weariness that left him utterly indifferent to his surroundings. Julia, disappointed, thought he had the look of a man who expects very little from himself, apart from making the correct moves on a chessboard.

Nevertheless - or perhaps precisely because of that, because of the look of infinite tedium written on his impassive features — when his opponent moved his king one square back and he then slowly stretched out his right hand towards the remaining pieces, the silence in that corner of the room became absolute. Julia, perhaps because she didn’t understand what was going on, realised that the spectators did not like him, that they felt not the least warmth towards him. She read in their faces a grudging acceptance of his superiority at the chessboard, for, as enthusiasts of the game, they could not help but see the slow, precise, implacable advance of the pieces he was moving.

“Check,” he said again. He’d made an apparently simple move, merely advancing a modest pawn one square. But his opponent stopped his drumming and rested his fingers instead on his temples, as if to calm a troublesome throbbing. Then he moved the white king diagonally back another square. He seemed to have three squares on which he would be safe, but, for some reason that escaped Julia, he chose that one. An admiring whisper round him seemed to suggest that the move had been an opportune one, but his opponent did not react.

“That would have been checkmate,” he said, and there wasn’t the slightest hint of triumph in his voice; he was merely informing his opponent of an objective fact. There was no pity there either. He pronounced those words before making another move, as if he felt it unnecessary to accompany them with a practical demonstration. And then, almost reluctantly, without appearing in the least affected by the incredulous look on the face of his opponent and on the faces of a good many spectators, he made a diagonal move with his bishop right across the board, bringing it, as it were, from some far distant place, and setting it down near the enemy king, but not near enough to constitute any immediate threat. Amidst the rumble of remarks that burst out around the table, Julia looked at the board in some bewilderment. She didn’t know much about chess, but enough to know that checkmate involved a direct threat to the king. And the white king appeared to be safe. Hoping for clarification, she looked first at Cesar and then at Cifuentes. The latter was smiling good-naturedly, shaking his head in admiration.

“It would, in fact, have been mate in three,” he told Julia. “Whatever he did, the white king had no escape.”

“Then I don’t understand,” said Julia. “What happened?”

Cifuentes gave a short laugh.

“That black bishop was the piece that could have delivered the
coup de grace,
although, until he moved it, none of us could see that. What happened, though, was that this gentleman, despite knowing exactly which move to make, chose to take it no further. He moved the bishop to show us what would have been the correct move, but he deliberately placed it on the wrong square, thus rendering it completely harmless.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Julia. “Doesn’t he want to win the game?”

“That’s the odd thing. He’s been coming here for five years now, and he’s the best chess player I know, but I’ve never once seen him win.”

At that moment, the chess player looked up, and his eyes met Julia’s. All his poise, all the confidence he’d shown during the game, seemed to have vanished. It was as if, when the game was over and he once more looked at the world around him, he found himself stripped of the gifts that ensured him the envy and respect of others. Only then did Julia notice his cheap tie, the brown jacket creased at the back and baggy at the elbows, the stubbly chin that had been shaved at five or six in the morning before catching the metro or the bus to go to work. Even the light in his eyes had gone out, leaving them grey, opaque.

Cifuentes said: “May I introduce Senor Munoz, chess player.”

The Third Player

“So, Watson,” continued Holmes with a chuckle,
“is it not amusing how it sometimes happens
that to know the past, one must first
know the future?”
Raymond Smulfyan

“It’s a real game,” said Munoz. “A bit strange, but perfectly logical. Black was the last to move.”

“Are you sure?” asked Julia.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

They were in Julia’s studio, in front of the picture, which was lit by every available light in the room. Cesar was on the sofa, Julia was sitting at the table and Munoz was standing before the Van Huys, perplexed.

“Would you like a drink?”

“No.”

“A cigarette?”

“No. I don’t smoke.”

A certain embarrassment floated in the air. Munoz seemed ill at ease. He was wearing a crumpled raincoat and had kept it firmly buttoned up, as if reserving the right to leave at any moment, with no explanation. He remained shy, mistrustful. It hadn’t been easy to get him there. When Cesar and Julia first put their proposition to him, the expression on Munoz’s face had required no commentary; he took them for a couple of lunatics. Then he became suspicious, defensive. They must forgive him if he seemed rude, but this whole story about medieval murders and a game of chess painted in a picture was just too bizarre.

And even if what they told him were true, he didn’t really understand what it could possibly have to do with him. After all, he kept saying, as if that way he could establish the necessary social distinctions, he was just an accounts clerk, an office worker.

“But you play chess,” Cesar had said with his most seductive smile. They had gone across the street to a bar and were sitting next to a fruit machine that deafened them at intervals with its monotonous jingle designed to ensnare the unwary.

“So?” There was no defiance in the reply, only indifference. “So do a lot of other people. And I don’t see why I…”

“They say you’re the best.”

Munoz gave Cesar an indefinable look. Julia interpreted it as meaning: Perhaps I am, but that has nothing to do with it. Being the best has no meaning. You could be the best, just as you could be blond or have flat feet, without feeling obliged to prove it to everyone.

“If that were true,” he replied after a moment, “I’d go in for tournaments and such. But I don’t.”

“Why not?”

Munoz glanced at his empty coffee cup and then shrugged his shoulders.

“Because I don’t. You have to want to do that kind of thing. I mean, you have to want to win…” He looked at them as if he wasn’t sure whether or not they would understand what he said. “And I don’t care whether I win or not.”

“So, you’re a theoretician,” remarked Cesar, with a gravity in which Julia detected a hidden irony.

Munoz held his gaze thoughtfully, as if struggling to find a suitable reply.

“Perhaps,” he said at last. “That’s why I don’t think I would be much use to you.”

He started to get up, but was prevented by Julia’s reaching out her hand and placing it on his arm. It was only the briefest of contacts, but it was invested with anxious urgency. Later, when they were alone, Cesar, arching one eyebrow, described it as “supremely feminine, darling; the damsel asking for help, though without overstating her case, and ensuring that the bird doesn’t fly the coop.” He himself could not have done it better; except that he would have uttered a little cry of alarm not at all appropriate in the circumstances. As it was, Munoz had looked down fleetingly at the hand Julia was already withdrawing and let his eyes slide over the table and come to rest on his own hands, with their rather grubby nails, which lay quite still on either side of his cup.