The Flanders Panel

“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.

“We need your help,” Julia said in a low voice. “It really is important, I can assure you, important to me and to my work.”

Munoz put his head on one side and looked at her, or, rather, at her chin, as if he feared that looking directly into her eyes would establish between them a commitment he was not prepared to make.

“I really don’t think it would interest me,” he said at last.

Julia leaned over the table.

“Think of it as a game that would be different from any game you’ve played before. A game which, this time, would be worth winning.”

Cesar was growing impatient.

“I must admit, my friend,” he said, his irritation evident in the way he kept twisting the topaz ring on his right hand, “that I find your peculiar apathy incomprehensible. Why do you bother to play chess?”

Munoz thought for a while. Then he looked straight into Cesar’s eyes.

“Perhaps,” he said calmly, “for the same reason that you are homosexual.”