The Oldest Confession Read online

  Along the bottom aisle the corredores acted out the phrase in the prayer at the end of the Mass, seeming to roam through the world seeking the ruin of souls, flinging ruptured tennis balls into the mottled face of the crowd. Bourne had to explain their motivations to Mrs. Pickett.

  He explained that corredores were betting commissioners. A bettor in the crowd would signal his sporting choice, betting on the changes in lead between the blue or the white team on the court. The agent would stuff a blue and white slip containing the current odds quotation into a split tennis ball, fling it to the bettor who would return it crammed with the cash amount of his bet. He yelled at a corredore who had a scar as red as an ambassador’s decoration running diagonally and memorably across his face and held up ten fingers. The agent yelled back like a dubbed version of Dizzy Dean and let fly at Bourne’s head with the ball. He showed her the betting slip.

  He didn’t show her the other slip which said QUINN NUMERO 11. He read it and dropped that slip on the floor.

  When he threw the ball back to the agent, Mrs. Pickett still didn’t understand the game. Within a half hour they stood outside the frontón. The duchess decided for everyone, without asking anyone, that they would go to the garden at the Fenix for another drink.

  Bourne turned her aside for a moment and excused himself. They agreed that he was to rejoin them for dinner at the German restaurant at eleven o’clock, an hour and twenty-five minutes away. Bourne helped Mrs. Pickett into the Bentley as Mr. Pickett complained that Byron’s lines in Don Juan were unjust to the Spanish master, Ribera, and Mr. Pickett quoted, “Spagnoletto tainted his brush with all the blood of all the sainted.” As the Bentley drew away with Cayetano behind the wheel, and the duchess closely beside him, Bourne could still hear the marqués’ answer from the tonneau which promised to be a rather long anecdote concerning Ribera and the bastard half-brother of Philip IV.

  Bourne crossed the street, walking slowly. He entered the lobby of the hotel and went to the key desk to ask if the Paris plane had arrived at Barajas. The conserje looked up at the clock and told him that the flight had been on the ground for thirty-five minutes and that any passengers the hotel might expect should be arriving immediately. Bourne thanked him, then slipped around behind the desk and began a thoughtful examination of the room rack. He did not run his fingers down the cards so that neither the conserje nor Gustavo Elek, the assistant manager, who had joined them silently could discover which card Bourne was interested in reading.

  When one moves from airport to airport one can observe the restlessness which has come to the world since Hiroshima. Barajas Airport, which serves Madrid, had prospered in a few short years as the driven people, led by their Father William of a Foreign Secretary, had soared out across the world on a go-now-pay-later basis.

  The girl was on the Iberia flight from Le Bourget. Her real name was Eve Lewis, or had been Lewis until she had married. She never questioned why she had changed it illegally four times on four sets of vital documents which had had to be forged.

  She was a tall, young woman. She had dark hair, either gray-blue or green eyes and a straight nose. She was tastelessly dressed as though through a fruitless effort to discount her physical beauty which had brought her so much attention in the past that it had eventually led to the business of her changing her name. She walked across the apron of the field like a moving light; refreshing and refreshed. She carried a cardboard tube; two and a half inches in diameter, three feet long.

  To comprehend the tastelessness of her clothes it must be seen that they were frumpish and untidy, not loud or vulgar. There was a spot on her hat, perhaps two smudges which could have come from greasy fingers holding a greasy sandwich on a tourist flight. Her skirt was longer on the right side than on the left. The lipstick on the corner of her full, soft, moist mouth was out of registration with the line of her lip. She had the slightly tilted mouth of the secret self-pitier. Her eyes could not be said to pity anyone or anything, but the general lucky expression on her face and the way she carried her full body created excellent diversion from this which, after all, not everyone would have regarded as a shortcoming.

  In the Aduanas as she cleared Currency Control, after a speechless ritual with the kelly-green passport, the baggage from the flight was just coming off the trucks, jarring the low customs counters. The duanistas, in field green with scarlet bursts, ignored the physical manifest of visitors until the last bag had been placed. Then they moved down the lines of cases, touching the cargoes softly, appealing with their eyes, and waiting patiently until the baggage was opened for examination.

  She had one large bag and a make-up kit besides the cardboard tube. She propped the tube against the counter carelessly. She opened the big bag. The duanista patted the silken contents gingerly. He signaled for her to shut the bag, then chalked it. He chalked the make-up kit without asking her to open it. He asked her, in English, what was in the cardboard tube. She answered, in Spanish, that it was the copy of a painting she had bought in Paris. He smiled briefly to acknowledge his appreciation of her courtesy in taking the trouble to learn his language, and held out his hand. She gave him the tube then, losing interest, looked away over the heads of the departing crowd calling, “Portero! Portero!”

  A porter shouldered his way to her. She told him to put her bags in a taxi, not the bus. When she turned back to the duanista he was returning the rolled copy to the cardboard tube. He directed her to the chief of the Aduanas whose office adjoined the main room.

  She took the tube there and the chief entered a description of its contents in his charge book explaining that this was done to convenience her as a tourist so that she could leave Spain with the same copy of a great painting without red tape and bother, also explaining how absolutely necessary it would be that she be sure to leave Spain with the same article as, in the case of an oversight in this regard, the red tape would be bothersome indeed. She thanked him.

  He smiled at her, appreciating her with great delicacy, and staring at her breasts. He asked for her name and for her passport to complete the official forms. She told him her name was Carmen Quinn as she handed him the green book. He reminded her that Carmen was a very Spanish name. He told her how very well she spoke Spanish. She thanked him.

  She explained that she had been born Mary Ellen Quinn, as the words under the brutalized picture on her passport showed, but that she adored Spain and the Spanish and that Carmen had been the only name she would answer to since she had been fourteen years old. She told him that she had saved up for many years to come to Spain; that at last her dreams were coming true in that she was about to see with her own eyes the fabled cities of Madrid, Córdoba, Seville and Granada. She told him she had always wished with all her heart that she could marry a Spaniard. She sighed. For an instant it seemed as though he could not look up at her.

  “You are married?” she asked softly. He nodded. When he looked up he had finished with staring at her breasts and looked into her eyes. He produced a pen and asked her to sign the form. His face seemed flushed. She signed, spelling her name carefully. He gave her the cardboard tube with a slight bow. He walked with her to the entrance of his office, signaled importantly to the pistoled guard at the outer door to gain her passage through, then smiled at her brilliantly. She wasted no more time on him but left hurriedly to find her cab.

  The elevator went up very slowly, Bourne almost filling it. He stared at the roof of the cage as he ascended. He seemed to rest his head on his own back. With his mouth open and his eyes staring fixedly upward into the gloom he had the look of a drowned man.

  When the cage halted at the eighth floor Bourne fought the two doors open then turned right in the corridor, fumbling in his trousers pocket to bring out a ring of master keys. He whistled softly which made his heavy chin more prominent and made his mouth look like a bee sting. As he walked his fingers found the individual master key without consulting his eyes. Everything in Bourne’s physical plant was trained to move and act indepe
ndently with maximum economy and without distracting his eyes from their constant vigil. He stopped walking when he came to the door marked 811. He opened the door with the passkey, entered and closed it behind him, carrying a cardboard tube in his left hand.

  She was in the chair by the window. She still had the soiled hat on. She was staring, without focusing, out the window, over the top of the Post Office, across the Plaza de la Cibeles and up toward the Gran Via, holding that sentimental look many people get when they are daydreaming about impossible quantities of money. She didn’t hear him until he closed the door, then she turned.

  “My God, what’s that tube for?” she said. Her cardboard tube was on the bed. Bourne propped his in the corner near the door and answered, “You’ll have to take a tube along to Seville and so forth and I’ll need one for the project.”

  He walked to the bed and slipped the copy out of the tube Eve had brought from Paris. He unrolled it and stared at it, nodding. He slid it back into the tube then placed the tube across the marble top of the bureau.

  “Jean Marie is a marvel,” he said to no one but himself to remind himself, perhaps, that he could not do without Jean Marie. Rubbing his hands with satisfaction he went to the window sill and sat down between Eve and her view. He took an envelope printed in two colors from his pocket and dropped it gently in her lap. She held the envelope by the corners, staring down at it with an absent smile which marked her mouth with the stain of secret self-pity. Bourne spoke more quietly than usual. It wasn’t a whisper, but it wasn’t a conversational tone either.

  “You’ll have a wonderful time. Córdoba, Seville, Granada then back to Madrid, all by luxury bus.”

  Her voice became just as subdued. “You’re a smart man, Jim.”

  “If you say so, I believe it.”

  “I did everything you said at the airport. The clothes this way were a tremendous help. I said those outrageous things to the chief of customs and everything happened as though it were all part of a play you had written. I don’t even bother to worry any more. I just do it the way you rehearse me.”

  “You are my angel,” he said, leaning over to lift her out of the chair by the waist as though she were a tiny slip of a thing instead of five feet ten and a half, as though she were a large stein of beer. He lifted her high enough to place her mouth on his mouth then to bring her down to him, pressed into him. They clung to each other like human flies clinging to a wall of life, like Toynbee’s people clinging to their history. She broke the fluid oneness of the still statue they had become by wrenching her heavy mouth away from his and dropping her head to rest on his shoulder, breathing heavily in the silence.

  “What painting this time?”

  He was breathing even more heavily. “Diego Rodríguez da Silva y Velázquez,” he said, “born on June 6th, 1599 of noble, if not aristocratic, parents. Court painter to Philip IV for thirty-seven years until his death in 1660. His work was proud, exquisitely refined and sensitive, gentle, serious and brilliantly intelligent. He was the painter of painters.”

  “How much will it bring?”

  His hands seemed to grow into her back. His eyes, closed in pain or ecstasy, opened slowly. They became compassionate. The compassion congealed. Their protoplasm was transmuted into green polystyrene flecked with gold. “Over a hundred thousand dollars,” he whispered. Her mouth soared toward his again. This time she gave up control of herself.

  Although Bourne arrived ten minutes late at the German restaurant, he was twenty minutes ahead of his hosts. He sat at the table for six before an open window across from El Retiro, ordered white wine upon young strawberries which is not as delicious as it sounds merely because it could not be, and went over his plans for the two hundredth time. His plans were sound because in every over-all sense they remained general plans, going into minute and rigid detail only within the areas of possible contingencies. To remain elastic and yet to be able to move reflexively without the need to think at the moment of stress was a measure of Bourne’s excellence in design. Years before he had planned his method of planning.

  When the others arrived Mrs. Pickett, who was quite flushed, noticed in a loud voice that Bourne had changed his clothes, but the duchess glossed over that. Mr. Pickett was saying, “—perhaps it looked better above the altar than in the gallery alongside the other paintings. I must say I prefer the charming serious-faced Blessed Henry Suso and Saint Louis Bertram which were designed to hang together. Or Saint Hugh of Grenoble Visiting the Refectory—he had the monks fasting, you know, refusing to eat the meat the cooks had served by mistake.” Muñoz, the saffron, inky-eyed cat Montes held in the crook of his arm, insisted upon its being known that his Zurbarán favorite was the adorable Santa Marina in the black tricorne hat, black bodice, blue-green gown with red and olive-green bustle, holding a boat hook.

  Their prattle caused Cayetano to shake his head violently like a muddled prizefighter. He held the silk scarf of the duchess loosely in his hands. He stared at her, then forced himself to look away for an equal period of time, then looked back at her. The few drinks she had had brought gentle action to the capillaries beneath her fair skin so that she was sublimely rosy and white. Conscious of Cayetano’s hungry stare, the duchess was happy.

  Mrs. Pickett caught the table captain’s attention most discreetly and told him she had heard about a French alcool called framboise, something she had been told had been distilled from raspberries, which she would very much like to taste. Equally discreetly, as privately as though they were planning an assignation, the table captain explained that, while framboise was delicious indeed when served quite cold, it was an after dinner liqueur which, by the way, madame should know, was the strongest of all liqueurs, running, as it did, to one hundred and fifty-three proof. Mrs. Pickett thanked him for all that detailed information and said that since she was only interested in smelling framboise to savor its delicate raspberry bouquet she would greatly appreciate his bringing some at once. The table captain sent a man to fetch a bottle and Mrs. Pickett confided to Bourne that her husband was a gourmet who could order for everyone if they so wished.

  A waiter brought the bottle of framboise in a mound of ice. While everyone was either talking or listening to talk about art Mrs. Pickett poured six tiny glasses full, then offered a glass to each one at the table, with gracious generousness. Everyone refused. Cayetano explained that he was allergic to fruit. The others were checking a point of information with Bourne about a painter named Ramón Casas. Mrs. Pickett said, as though propitiating a god, that, oh dear, now that they had been poured she certainly didn’t want to see them wasted so suiting the action to the word she emptied every little glass into her own throat, then settled down with the bottle and a little glass all her own.

  They dined extremely well on venison stew, dumplings, apple sauce and other un-Spanish dishes. Bourne was beginning to feel that his pent-up tension would explode through the ends of his fingers, hitting someone and mortally wounding them. Fortunately, years before he had conditioned the reflexes of his friends to the realization that he spoke very little, usually only when spoken to, so that he could sit very still and concentrate upon controlling himself. He was a nervous man to be in such work as high-stakes crime, but there was no doubt that his degree of sensitiveness and imagination had most certainly made him a leader in that field. In his mind, he began a mental drill; the moves he had practiced again and again and again in his own locked room at the hotel. The clock in his head stayed apace with the movements within his imagination. He was relieved to see that he had cut seconds from the operation. This cheered him enormously. He began again from the very beginning to the completion of the task. It was true. He had shaved seven and one-half seconds. Soon he would make the moves in reality, with the reassurance which contact with material objects could bring.

  Midway through the meal, Mrs. Pickett began to speak somewhat ramblingly about bullfighters whom she adored. She asked if they had ever met any. She asked each one in grave turn, except he
r husband. The duchess seemed most puzzled by the question but she admitted that she had, turning to Cayetano with a questioning shrug. Cayetano answered briskly. He had met several toreros he said but he had seen so many newsreels about bullfighting to say nothing of other kinds of motion pictures, that he felt as if he knew bullfighters very well. Bourne said he didn’t know many bullfighters but that he had met Ava Gardner. Muñoz listened to her question with a blank expression, answered with a quick, yes of course, then turned to continue his discussion with Mr. Pickett concerning Murillo’s “Sagrada Familia de Pararito” with the Christ Child holding the bird in his hand in a perfectly charming manner, to say nothing of that little dog, that precious little dog, looking up at it. Mrs. Pickett explained that although she had never permitted herself to attend a bullfight she absolutely adored bullfighters then offered the thought that bullfighting was all tied up with the national death wish of Spain, of course, proving how morbid the Spanish actually were.

  The duchess had no capacity to suffer such boredom. She said, “Come, come, Mrs. Pickett I have been Spanish for more than nine centuries and I will thank you sincerely not to explain Spaniards to me. We have a ninety-kilometer journey ahead of us. Eat your food and stop parroting what the ignorant think they think.” Cayetano said, “It is rather morbid, you know. I’m a vegetarian myself.” Bourne took exception to this, saying that plants were not only living things but that plants made it possible for humans to live supplying as they did the very oxygen in the air we breathe, and that for his part science damned well should come up with a chemical diet, an all-mineral chemical diet because there was nothing morbid about killing rocks. Mrs. Pickett retreated to her private world, pink as raspberries, where she always had a much better time anyway. She slowly undressed a tall, faceless film actor in her mind, then caused him to come running to her pleading for her body. With delicacy and out of consideration of the others, she closed her eyes as she gave herself to him.