The Flanders Panel

He was standing in the middle of the room with the chess set in his hands. Julia didn’t need to follow the direction of his gaze to know what he was looking at. His expression had changed, switching from elusive to fascinated intensity, like a hypnotist surprised by his own eyes in the mirror.

Munoz left the chess set on the table and went nearer to the painting, focusing only on the part depicting the chessboard and the chess pieces. He leaned closer to look much more intensely than he had the previous day. And Julia realised that he was not exaggerating in the least when he said, “All I do is think about it.” He was a man intent on resolving something more than just her problem.

He studied the painting for a long time before turning to Julia.

“This morning I reconstructed the two previous moves,” he said, without a trace of boastfulness. “Then I ran into a problem. Something to do with the unusual position of the pawns.” He pointed to the chess pieces in the picture. “We’re not dealing with a conventional game here.”

Julia was disappointed. When she’d opened the door and seen Munoz standing there, she’d almost believed that the answer was within reach. Naturally, Munoz had no idea of the urgency of the matter, nor of the implications the story now had. But she was not the person to explain it to him, at least not yet.

“The other moves don’t matter,” she said. “We just have to find out who took the white knight.”

Munoz shook his head.

“I’m spending all the time I can on it.” He hesitated, as if his next remark were almost a confidence. “I’ve got the moves in my head, and I play them backwards and forwards.” He paused again and curved his lips into a pained, distant half-smile. “But there’s something odd about this game.”

“It’s not only the game,” she said. “The thing is, Cesar and I saw it as the central part of the painting, because we couldn’t see anything else.” Julia reflected on what she’d just said. “But it may be that the rest of the painting simply complements the game.”

Munoz nodded slightly, and Julia had the impression that he took for ever to do so. Those slow movements, as if he spent much more time on them than was strictly necessary, seemed to be an extension of his mode of reasoning.

“You’re wrong to say that you see nothing else. You see everything, although you may not be able to interpret it.” Munoz didn’t budge from where he was; he merely indicated the painting with a movement of his chin. “I think it comes down to points of view. What we have here are different levels, which are contained within each other: the painting contains a floor that is a chessboard which, in turn, contains people. Those people are sitting at a chessboard that contains chess pieces. The whole thing is contained in that round mirror to the left. And to complicate things further, another level can be added: ours, where we stand to contemplate the scene or the successive scenes. And beyond that there’s the level on which the painter imagined us, the spectators of his work.”

He’d spoken without passion, an absent look on his face, as if he were reciting a monotonous description whose importance he considered to be, at best, relative and over which he lingered only to please others. Dazed, Julia gave a low whistle.

“It’s odd you should see it like that.”

Impassive, Munoz again shook his head, without taking his eyes off the painting.

“I don’t know why you find it odd. I see a chess game. Not just one game, but several, which are all basically the same one.”

“That’s too complex for me.”

“Not at all. At the moment, we’re operating on a level from which we can obtain a lot of information: the level of the chess game. Once that’s resolved, we can apply any conclusions we reach to the rest of the painting. It’s simply a question of logic, of mathematical logic.”

“I never thought mathematics would have anything to do with this.”

“It has to do with everything. Any imaginable world, like this picture, for example, is governed by the same rules as the real world.”

“Even chess?”

“Especially chess. But a real chess player’s thoughts move on a different plane from those of the amateur. His logic doesn’t allow him to see possible but inappropriate moves, because he discounts them automatically. The same way a talented mathematician never studies the false pathways to the theorem he’s seeking, whereas that’s exactly what less gifted people have to do, plodding forwards from error to error.”

“Don’t you ever make mistakes?”

Munoz slowly shifted his eyes from the painting to Julia. The suggestion of a smile hovering on his lips was utterly without humour.

“Not in chess.”

“How do you know?”