The Oldest Confession

  She did not telephone Cayetano or take the opportunity to think about him very much until all of the relatives had shuffled back to shuttered houses and all of the priests had finished chanting.

  Cayetano fought in Madrid on the afternoon of the first Sunday in April where some of the bulls of Don Carlos Nuñez had been assembled. The duchess was sitting in barrera in Tendido 10 behind the matador’s burladero. He saw her from the center of the ring as he marched in the paseo. It was the first time he had ever seen her in a bull ring and it made the scene, familiar since his boyhood, seem thrillingly different.

  As the bull for Vasquez came out of the toril, Cayetano slipped into the callejon and stood grinning up at her. She said, “I thought we might have a drink at El Meson later.”

  He blushed like a schoolboy and, knowing he was blushing, closed his eyes and shook his head at the wonder of what was happening. He was trying to think of too many things at one time and it made him heady and made his legs feel weak. He said, “I can have my mozo rush back to the apartment right now and bring my clothes here. They can be here before the second bull.” He was wearing a traje of apple green and silver. It contrasted with his golden-red hair and gold-flecked eyes.

  “Oh yes.”

  “If you could wait in the patio de caballos outside the chapel say five minutes after the last bull I might even drive you out to El Meson myself.”

  “I will. Oh, I will.”

  Cayetano moved like a sleepwalker back to the burladero.

  He played the two bulls like a sleepwalker. He worked them mainly about fifteen yards in front of Tendido 10. His templar moved like a wave of water; accumulatively, slowly and fluidly. All of his work had much art but it was done with absent-mindedness as though he were fighting with his grandfather’s reflexes while his mind was employed dreaming of different glories. He made fourteen linked passes with the muleta on the first bull and killed recibiendo. He cut one ear for his first bull.

  For the second bull his veronicas seemed to be rooted into the earth and the cape leaden-slow. He handled his own sticks, his long body most suited to give the greatest beauty to the instant he hung in the air, arms high, seeming to come out of the bull’s morillo like a fountain as he shot the sticks. The crowd sang with an ecstatic voice.

  For his faena, Cayetano gave them statuary and plastic friezes with that second bull. The odd illusion of extreme slowness plastered him and the bull together as one figure, no light showing through anywhere; two friends who had taken Sunday afternoon to be together and who seemed to stop in mid-flight so that the bull, whom the man had drawn slowly up to the level of his lips with a pase de la muerte, could cock an ear closely and hear the promise of death.

  When he killed, going in, his elbow line had passed both horns. He seemed stretched out along the bull’s back with casual grace, while his right hand seemed buried to the wrist in the bull’s withers and his left hand solicited the bull’s attention, holding the crimson muleta beyond and below his right knee. They stayed together in this attitude for an eternity of truth then the still picture broke. The bull fell at Cayetano’s feet as he stepped back to honor it with a bow.

  He cut two ears and a tail for the second bull. It was the third time a tail had been awarded in the history of the Madrid ring. The “Olés!” had slapped at the sky the way a giant’s hand might pound a bass drum which would need to be as big around as the arena. Twenty thousand white handkerchiefs were agitated. The second bull had been so tremendous in its valor that it was given three vueltas of the ring, pulled from its horns as it lay on its side, by a team of union mules.

  On his first bull Cayetano had been encouraged to take two vueltas, but after the second bull he had given the mob such emotion that the vueltas were urged on him, one after another. Cayetano and his peons strode around the full turn of the arena with that slow-motion, long-stepping run of a triumphant matador, a gait used only for vueltas and presumably designed for vueltas, which resembled ballet masters pretending to be circus horses.

  The crowd cried out for his immortality; it sang that he was numero uno of all of the matadors of the world. It cried “Olé tu madre!” and threw watches, flowers, cigars, shoes, brassières, hats and skins of wine into the ring all of which the cuadrilla threw back after belting the wine as they stood in the exact center of the world.

  The duchess was standing as he came past Tendido 10 and the end of the fifth and last vuelta. Her eyes were shining with being a Spanish woman who had seen the most Spanish beauty and knowing that she would soon be a part of this physical hymn. She was all he could see in a ring filled with twenty-two thousand people. Although he seemed to slow down as he passed, he did not stop. He saw her smile, as she remembered Ibanez’ gambit, and slip her wedding ring from her finger, run a tiny handkerchief through it and throw it into the piste. He scooped it up as he ran by. Against all custom, he did not throw it back into the stands.

  He was dressed and standing in the patio de caballos outside the chapel before she could get there because the crowd had been so great, refusing to leave such a scene of its triumph too quickly. For some reason, the crowd did not molest him with its adoration. It parted respectfully and gave him free way. Perhaps with a shared eye it knew what it was seeing and, because of other miracles passed that afternoon, felt it was in the presence of a god and goddess.

  El Meson is about four miles out of Madrid on the Burgos road. It has outdoor tables, wine in pots, and a big view of the Sierre de Guadarrama. The duchess drank white Puerto Rican rum over ice cubes with a little water, which is for little children if you remind the child to stop at four of them.

  They talked for a while, with their heads close together. He stared at her, suddenly popeyed at the realization of what was about to happen to them, unable to believe it. She began to giggle at the look on him, reading it easily. He kissed her then. It was the first time he had ever kissed her. They stood together motionless, welded, their tears reflecting the sun as a statue, safe within a fountain, cloistered in a green garden behind a high, cool wall, can reflect the sun.

  Bourne, in Paris before that memorable Sunday, sat facing Jean Marie and Eve in the salon of their apartment on Rue du Boccador. It was on the ground floor. It had a tiny garden in the back and an ancient cellar for storing wine, or gold coins, or for growing mushrooms. It had been rented furnished from a French family then in Kwangchowan. He paid ninety thousand francs a month for space which cost his landlords forty thousand francs a year but, as rents went for furnished apartments off the Avenue Georges V, they had a bargain.

  Bourne explained his analysis of the unexpected situation and the conclusions he had reached with the regard to the recent business reverses they had suffered.

  “Now, understand me, I don’t say that Chern knew that his principal was going to hit us. On the other hand, for all we know, Chern may be the principal. We’ll find that out this evening, or at least we’ll start to find that out this evening.”

  “What do you mean, start to find out?” Jean Marie, who had been in filthy humor all the day, suddenly asked.

  “I mean it may take some time,” Bourne answered lightly. “He’ll undoubtedly have to be persuaded to talk.”

  “Suppose he won’t talk?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jean Marie,” Eve exploded, “stop making faces like you were Jean Gabin in a policier. You know you’d faint if Chern as much as yelled at you.”

  “Why should he yell at me? I won’t be asking him the questions, Jim will. The more I think of this entire outrage, the angrier I become. I feel like filing my teeth to sharp points and biting this damned Swiss as he comes through the door.”

  “It’s just terrible, that’s what it is,” Eve said, combing her hair with vicious swipes.

  “And I repeat—suppose he won’t talk?”

  Bourne said, “I am going to proceed in this meeting as though we have already granted the fact that Chern will not talk or tell us anything. I think we must plan as though he
either will not or cannot tell us anything because it is possible, after all, for him to get hit in the ass by a taxi on his way here and we have to be ready for contingencies like that.”

  “How?” Jean Marie demanded.

  “That merchandise is worth a lot of money. We have to find out if it has been sold as soon as it has been sold, or more importantly we have to rig it so we find out as soon as it’s offered for sale. This isn’t going to be flash and run. There’ll be a lot of haggling over those pictures. If we connect everything up right we can be there before they close any transfer.”

  “But how? Who do we ask all these questions?”

  “Crooks. Fences and thieves.”

  “But we don’t know any crooks.”

  “Then we’ll arrange to meet some. But first let’s organize the legitimate side.”

  “Would you like some coffee, Jim?” Eve asked. “Jean Marie?” They both declined.

  “The art business is like any other business,” Bourne said. “Let an art dealer sneeze in Rome and a dealer in Amsterdam catches cold. If these three pieces are out and circulating, looking to catch some money, the news will be felt somewhere in the legitimate market. And that’s your job, Jean Marie. You’ll cover London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Geneva, Paris and Rome during the next week. You’ll chat with the active dealers and you’ll ask them to contact you if they hear of a Velázquez or a Zurbarán or a Greco becoming available. When they ask you which ones you’re interested in you’ll show them the pictures from the Dos Cortes catalogue which I’ll have cut out of the book and pasted on stiff cards. These pictures haven’t been seen out of Dos Cortes in two hundred years or something so the dealers won’t catch on that they’re hot. They’ll figure you are a legitimate buyer or acting for a legitimate buyer. I doubt that even one of them will be sharp enough to spot these as Dos Cortes masters, but the pictures are so great they’ll remember them real clear and if they get a rumble on them it figures that they’ll contact you if only to get the bidding started.”

  “That won’t do any good.”

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  “But, Jim—the maniac we took this job from is obviously not a man who is going to sell the pictures. He’s obviously some kind of an art nut. Why waste all that time and money traveling around Europe.”

  “We don’t know that. We don’t know if the person who had us hijacked is a man or a woman, a professional criminal or an art nut. I never told you but I had figured out an entirely different kind of a dodge as The Market for these paintings before you came in with the Chern wrinkle, so for all we know this one has figured out a wrinkle or two on his own. We know he can figure real good because he certainly figured rings around us. Now please, Jean Marie. No arguments. There’s just one boss on this job and that’s me.”

  “Then we are no longer a democratic group?” Jean Marie’s feelings were hurt. “I have joined an army, is that it?”

  Eve looked at him stonily. “This never was a democratic group, and you’ve probably thanked God for it every night in your prayers.”

  Bourne said, “Do you want to hear the rest or do you want to go home and pack and start for London?”

  “I will hear the rest,” Jean Marie said loftily.

  “All right. Thank you.” Bourne turned to Eve. “We’ll need a well-entrenched, well-organized criminal contact in Spain. That shouldn’t be too hard to set up.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard?” Jean Marie was incredulous.

  “Aren’t you glad this isn’t a democratic little group?” Eve asked him.

  “Call Frank Renaro, the publicity man over on Rue Stockholm,” Bourne said to Eve. “You remember him. He handled both of Jean Marie’s shows for us.”

  “Oh, I remember him all right,” commented Eve in a sardonic tone, but she made no comment beyond that.

  “Renaro knows Spanish criminals?” Jean Marie was shocked.

  Bourne ignored him, or didn’t hear him. He concentrated on Eve and the problem at hand. “Ask him to call the editor of The Populace in London. It’s a Sunday paper. National circulation and lots of dirt. If Renaro doesn’t know somebody on the paper he’ll know some British newspaper guy who does. Have him set up a meeting with the editor, Sam Gourlay, for you tomorrow if possible. The Populace has syndicated the memoirs of every top hoodlum in England and they have a man who knows every one of them like a brother.”

  “Would he know Spanish mobbies, too?” Eve asked.

  “No, but it’s like any other business. The English hoods have to do business outside the country from time to time. Perhaps a top British thief might not know a Spanish thief directly but he’d know a French thief or a German thief who could set up a Spanish boy.”

  “Why go all the way to England then?” Jean Marie shrugged patriotically. “If we have more influential crooks in France why not make the arrangements in France?”

  “That makes sense,” Eve said.

  “I just think there is something much more reliable about a hoodlum who works year in year out to build his reputation up to a position where The Populace will be interested in his memoirs. A man like that is likely to be far more of a romantic than any of your grubby French thieves, and therefore much more likely to cooperate with our requests. I ask you—if you were a literary gangster and a beautiful, mysterious young woman came to you and asked for a Spanish contact, wouldn’t you cooperate?”

  “Yes, I suppose I would.”

  “Of course you would! A setup like that would have all the makings for a really first-rate chapter in your memoirs and you know it. You’d have to cooperate!”

  Eve asked, “Does that go for the editors of The Populace, too? I mean, they’ve spent years conditioning these mugs into the literary frame of mind. Why should they just turn one over to me?”

  “You are absolutely on the right track. One of the reasons I adore you is because you always ask exactly the right questions.”

  “As opposed to me,” Jean Marie asked tartly.

  “A few years ago, just after a film festival at Cannes, some people from Hollywood were staying at Cap Ferrat and I got some shots of them. Not what you’re thinking. It’s just absolutely top stuff—intimate, informal stuff of two people who make it a point to be photographed as infrequently as possible which makes it the kind of a layout which would be pure gold for Sam Gourlay of The Populace and which would render him delighted to see that you are introduced to the elite of hoodlumry because that will be your stated fee for the pictures and he’s a professional Scotsman.”

  “Shouldn’t I have a reason for wanting to meet English muscle?” Eve wanted to know.

  “You are a lady novelist. A condition like that can explain any difficulty.”

  Eve stood up and said she’d get started by calling Renaro and asking him to lunch if she could find a pair of iron pants. She walked into the bedroom and shut the door. Bourne slapped Jean Marie on the back as he crossed behind him to the kitchen saying, “Let’s have some coffee.” Jean Marie got up to follow him.

  “Do you want me here for the meeting with Chern?” Jean Marie asked.

  “Solidarity is in order.”

  “Then you want me here?”

  “It’s up to you. Some pretty rough stuff may be necessary.”

  “That is exactly how I feel.”

  “Then you’ll be here?” Bourne handed him a steaming cup of black coffee.

  “Yes. Five o’clock?”

  “Right.” Bourne walked back into the salon with his own cup of the stuff.

  “I’ll be here,” Jean Marie said again. “Then I’m going to get a nine o’clock plane to Geneva. Then I’ll swing through all of them to Rome.”

  “Good.”

  “What happens after Rome?”

  “Go straight to the hotel in Madrid. Then we’ll pool what we’ve been able to find out and see what we’ll want to do next.”

  “All right.”

  “Let Lalu know where you’ll be staying.”

  “Yes.” Jean
Marie walked away and stared out at the little garden in the back. “You know something, Jim?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I wasn’t so upset yesterday. I mean those copies to me were no different from a few hundred other copies I had made and, after all, from my end I couldn’t feel bitter or outraged the way you could because I couldn’t get the sense of having been directly violated. You know? Like if I had been there, I could have felt that way. You know what I mean?” Bourne nodded. Jean Marie’s eyes were troubled. “What I mean is, they shouldn’t have killed that fellow. That’s what has me so upset today.”

  Eve had lunch with Renaro upstairs at Le Tangage and let him pinch her twice, then bore down heavily with a salad fork when he tried for her thigh under the table. Neither of them spoke of the other’s tactic. Renaro made a sound like an ancient Chinese as the fork dug into him. It started with a sound something like Aaaiiii, then segued into the first person pronoun beginning his next sentence. “Aaaiiiii certainly will be most happy to help, Mrs. Bourne. Your husband and I have had a wonderful association.”

  She left for London on the four o’clock plane because of the seven o’clock appointment Renaro had made for her with Sam Gourlay, editor of The Populace, at the Ivy on West Street in London. Renaro had walked with her, chattering away, from the restaurant to the Hôtel California on Rue de Berri where he left her with Buchwald and Nolan, newspaper and airline peons respectively, who were at a chessboard in the bar, while he went off to telephone a pal on The Populace. When the call and the arrangements had been completed he took her out to a cab, explaining the action. After they had been gone five minutes Nolan asked Buchwald who was the beautiful broad with Renaro. Buchwald looked up at him from the chessboard as though Nolan had been chewing cocoa leaves. “What beautiful broad?” he demanded querulously.