The head waiter was standing by her side, expressionless, as if he hadn't heard a word. He hoped everything was to their satisfaction, and what would madam like for dinner? She ordered only a salad, and Quart didn't have a main course either, and they both declined the dessert that they were offered on the house, as the management was sorry that her ladyship and the reverend father had so little appetite. They decided to go on with the wine while the)' waited for their coffee.
"Have you known Sister Marsala long?" Quart asked.
"That sounds so strange. Sister Marsala . . . I've never thought of her like that."
She had almost finished her wine. Quart took the bottle and poured her another glass. His own was barely touched.
"Gris is older than I am," she said. "We bumped into each other in Seville several times a few years back. She came here quite often with her American students on summer courses in fine art ... I met her when they came to do practice restoration on the summer dining room in my house. I introduced her to Father Ferro and got her accepted on the church restoration project, when relations with the archbishop were still cordial."
"Why are you so interested in that church?"
She looked at him as if he'd asked a strange question. Her family had built it. Her ancestors were buried there.
"Your husband doesn't seem to care much about it."
"Of course he doesn't. Pencho has his mind on other things."
The candlelight made the wine glow red as she lifted her glass to her lips. This time she took a long swallow, and Quart felt obliged to drink a little of his.
"And is it true," he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin, "that you no longer live together although you're still married?"
She blinked. She didn't seem to have expected two questions in a row about her marriage that evening. There was amusement in her eyes. "Yes," she said. "We no longer live together. And yet neither of us has asked for a divorce, or a separation, or anything. Maybe he hopes to get me back. By marrying me, to everyone's applause, he has ensured himself a place in society."
Quart glanced round at the people at the neighbouring tables and then leaned towards her a little. "I'm sorry," he said. "Who do you mean by everyone?"
"Haven't you met my godfather? Don Octavio Machuca was a friend of my father, and he's particularly fond of my mother and me. As he says, I'm the daughter he never had. He wanted my future to be secure, so he encouraged my marriage to the brightest young talent at the Cartujano Bank - who's destined to be his successor now that he's about to retire."
"Is that why you got married? For security?"
Macarena's hair slid forward over her face, and she brushed it back. She was assessing, trying to work out how interested he really was in her.
"Well, Pencho is an attractive man. And he has a very good brain, as they say. And a virtue: he's brave. He's one of the few men I've met who's prepared to risk everything, cither for a dream or an ambition. In the case of my husband - ex-husband, or whatever you want to call him - it's ambition." She smiled slightly. "I suppose I was even in love with him when we got married."
"So what happened?"
"Nothing, really. I kept my side of the bargain, he kept his. But he made a mistake. Or several. He should have left our church alone."
"Your church?"
"Mine. Father Ferro's. The duchess's. The church of the people who attend Mass there every day."
Quart laughed. "Do you always refer to your mother as the duchess?"
"When I'm talking to other people about her, yes." She smiled, with a tenderness now that Quart hadn't seen in her before. "She likes it. She also likes geraniums, Mozart, old-fashioned priests, and Coca-Cola. Rather unusual, don't you think, for a woman of seventy who sleeps in her pearl necklace once a week and still insists on calling her chauffeur a coachman? You haven't met her yet? Come and have coffee with us tomorrow afternoon, if you like. Don Priamo visits us every afternoon to recite the rosary."
"I doubt that Father Ferro will want to see me. He doesn't like me much."
"I'll sort it out. Or my mother will. She and Don Priamo get on very well. Maybe it would be a good opportunity for you and him to have a talk, man to man . . . Does one say 'man to man' when talking about priests?"
Quart was thinking of something else, "As for your husband . . ." "You do ask a lot of questions. I suppose that's the reason you're here."
She seemed sorry that that was the reason. She was looking at his hands again, just as she had when they first met in the hotel lobby. Embarrassed, he'd removed them from the table a couple
of times. At last he decided to keep them on the tablecloth.
"What do you want to know about Pencho?" she asked. "That he was wrong to think he could buy me? That the church was why I declared war on him? That he can sometimes be an absolute bastard?"
She spoke matter- of-factly. The people at a nearby table were leaving and a few of them greeted her. They all stared at Quart, particularly the women. Blonde and tanned, the women had the air of upper-class Andalusians who hadn't known a day's hardship in their lives. Macarena responded with a nod and a smile. Quart watched her closely.
"Why don't you ask for a divorce?" he asked. "Because I'm Catholic."
He couldn't tell if she was serious or not. They said nothing for a moment, and he settled back in his chair, still watching her. In the candlelight, her skin was dark in contrast to her ivory necklace and silk shirt. Her large dark eyes looked back into his. He realised then that his soul was in peril. Had it been a share on the stockmarket, its value would have plunged.
He opened his mouth and spoke, to fill the silence. Something appropriate, no doubt, but five seconds later he forgot what it had been. Now she was saying something, and Quart thought of Spada. Prayer and cold showers, he had said to the Mastiff on the steps of the Piazza di Spagna.
"There are things I'd like to explain to you," she said. "But I don't know how ..." She stared past him. He nodded, not quite sure why. The main thing was to pay attention to her words again. "In life, you pay very dearly for certain luxuries, and now it's Pencho's turn to pay. He's the type who asks for the bill without flinching, rapping on the bar with his knuckles for service. He's so macho," she said sardonically. "But he's having a hard time now. He may not show it, but I know, and he knows that I know. Seville is like a village; we love gossip. Every whisper, every smile behind his back is a blow to his pride." She gestured round the restaurant. "Imagine what they'll say now they know I'm having dinner with you."
"Was that what you wanted?" Quart was in control of himself again. "To show me off like a trophy?"
She looked at him wearily, knowingly. "Perhaps," she said. "Women are so much more complicated. Men are so straightforward in their lies, so childish in their contradictions ... So consistent in their vileness." The head waiter brought the coffee; with milk for her, black for him. Macarena added one lump of sugar and smiled thoughtfully. "You can be sure that Pencho will know all about this tomorrow morning. God, some things have to be paid for very slowly." She sipped her coffee and looked at Quart. "Maybe I shouldn't have said 'God'. It sounded like an oath. Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain after all."
Quart placed his spoon carefully on his saucer. "I sometimes do it too," he said.
"It's strange." She leaned forward on her elbows, and her silk shirt brushed the edge of the table. Quart could sense what was inside: heavy, brown, soft. He needed more than a cold shower. "I've known Don Priamo for ten years, since he first came to the parish, but I can't imagine a priest's life from the inside. I'd never thought about it until now, looking at you." She gazed again at his hands and then up at his dog collar. "How do priests manage with the three vows?"
If ever there had been an untimely question. He stared at his wine glass and summoned all his composure. "Each of us gets by as he can," he replied. "Some think of it as negotiated obedience, shared chastity, and liquid poverty." He raised his glass as if to make a toast, but put it down untou
ched and sipped his coffee instead. Macarena laughed. Her laugh was so open and contagious that Quart almost laughed too.
"And you?" she asked, still smiling. "Do you observe your vows?"
"I tend to." He put down his cup, wiped his mouth, folded his napkin carefully and placed it on the table. "I make sure I think through the implications, but I always follow the rules. Some things don't function without obedience, and the firm I work for is one of them."
"Do you mean Don Priamo?"
Quart arched his eyebrows with calculated indifference. He hadn't been alluding to anyone in particular, he said. But yes, now that she mentioned it, Father Ferro wasn't exactly an exemplary priest. He did his own thing, to put it charitably. Deadly sin number one.
"You don't know anything about his life, so you can't judge him."
"I'm not judging. I just want to understand."
"No you don't," she insisted. "For most of his life he was the parish priest in a tiny village up in the Pyrenees. It was cut off by snow for weeks at a time, and sometimes he had to trudge eight or ten kilometres to give a dying man extreme unction. His parishioners were all old and died off one by one. He buried them with his own hands, until there was nobody left. The experience gave him a certain view on life and death, and on the role you priests have in the world. To him, this church is terribly important. He believes it's needed, and that every church closed or lost is a piece of heaven that- disappears. Nobody takes any notice, but instead of giving in, he fights. He says he lost enough battles up there, in the mountains."
That was all very well, said Quart. Very moving. He'd even seen a couple of films like that. But Father Ferro was still subject to Church discipline. We priests, he said, can't go through life proclaiming independent republics where we please. Not with things as they are now.
She shook her head. "You don't know him well enough."
"He won't let me get to know him."
"We'll fix that tomorrow. I promise." She pointed. "You obviously meant what you said about liquid poverty. You've barely touched your wine. But you don't look so poor in other respects. You dress well. I know expensive clothes when I see them, even on a priest."
"It's because of my work. I have to deal with people. And have dinner with attractive duchesses in Seville." They looked into each other's eyes, and neither of them smiled this time. "This is my uniform."
There was a brief silence.
"Do you have a cassock?" she asked.
"Of course. But I don't often wear it."
The waiter brought the bill. Macarcna wouldn't let Quart pay. She invited him, she said firmly. So he just watched while she took out a gold American Express card. She always let her husband pay the bills, she said mischievously when the waiter had gone. It worked out cheaper than alimony.
"We haven't discussed the last of your three vows," she said then. "Do you also practise shared celibacy?"
"I'm afraid I'm celibate, period."
She nodded slowly and looked round the restaurant before turning to him again. She stared at him, assessing him. "Don't tell me you've never been with a woman."
There are some questions that can't be answered at eleven at night in a restaurant in Seville, by candlelight. But she didn't seem to expect an answer. She carefully took a pack of cigarettes from her bag, put one in her mouth, and then, with a brazenness both calculated and natural, she took a plastic lighter from beneath her bra strap. Quart watched her light the cigarette, forcing himself to think of nothing. Only later did he allow himself to wonder what the hell he was getting himself into.
In a closed world governed by the concept of sin, where contact with women was forbidden, the only even unofficially accepted solution to sex was masturbation or a clandestine liaison later atoned for through the sacrament of penance. For Quart, life as a diplomat and his work for the Institute of External Affairs facilitated what Spada - always good at euphemism - referred to as tactical alibis. But in fact, as a result of his education in Rome and his work over the past ten years, Quart's attitude to sex had become different from that of other priests, who were dominated by the sordid gossip of the seminary and the ways of the Church. The general good of the Church, considered as an end in itself, sometimes justified certain sins; so the success of a handsome nunciature secretary with the wives of ministers, financiers and ambassadors, women who yielded readily to the temptation to adopt an interesting young priest, opened many doors that were barred to older, more leathery monsignors or eminences. Spada called it the Stendhal Syndrome, after two of that writer's characters, Fabrice del Dongo and Julien Sorel. When Quart joined the IEA, Spada recommended that he read the novels. For the Mastiff, culture wasn't at odds with duty. It was left to the moral discretion and intelligence of each priest, God's soldier on a battlefield where the only weapons were prayer and common sense. Risks accompanied the advantages gained from confidences given at receptions, or during private conversations or confession. Women came to priests, seeking a substitute for unavailable men or indifferent husbands. And nothing was more troubling to Old Adam, who lurked beneath most cassocks, than the innocence of a young girl or the pleas of a frustrated woman. Ultimately, the unofficial permission of superiors was more or less assured - the Church of Peter in its wisdom had thus survived for centuries - as long as there was no scandal and results were achieved.
Quart's faith, on the other hand, was that of a professional soldier, and his celibacy was a question of pride - and therefore a sin rather than a virtue. But sin or not, it was a rule that governed his life. Like some of the ghosts he saw when he stared into the darkness, the Knight Templar whose sword was his only weapon beneath a godless sky needed such rules if he was to face with dignity the thunder of Saracen cavalry roaring down from the hill of Hattin.
He returned to the present with difficulty. Macarena was smoking, one elbow on the table, supporting her chin with the hand that held her cigarette. Somehow he could feel the troubling proximity of her legs. She was very close. He could have reached out and brushed her skin with his fingers. But with the same hand that tingled with the desire to touch her he took the postcard to Captain Xaloc from his jacket pocket instead and placed it on the table.
"Tell me about Carlota Bruner," he said.
Instantly the atmosphere changed. She stubbed out her cigarette and looked at him sharply. The gold flecks in her eyes were gone. "Where did you get that postcard?"
"Somebody put it in my room."
Macarena stared at the yellowed photo of the church. She shook her head. "It's mine. From Carlota's trunk. You can't possibly have it."
"Well, I do." Quart turned the postcard over. "Why isn't there a postmark?" he asked.
Her anxious eyes went from Quart to the postcard and back. He repeated the question. She nodded but didn't answer immediately.
She picked up the card and examined it. "Because it was never posted," she said. "Carlota was my great-aunt. She was in love with Manuel Xaloc, a poor sailor. Gris said she told you the story . . ." Macarena shook her head, as if denying something or overcome by sadness. "When Captain Xaloc emigrated to America, she wrote him a card or letter almost every week for years. But her father the duke, my great-grandfather Luis Bruner, prevented the letters from getting through. He bribed the post office employees. In six years she didn't receive a single letter, and we believe he didn't either. When Xaloc came back for her, Carlota had lost her mind. She spent days at the window, watching the river. She didn't recognise him."
Quart pointed at the card. "And what happened to the letters?"
"Nobody dared destroy them. They ended up in the trunk where all Carlota's things were stored after she died in 1910. I was fascinated by the trunk when I was a child: I'd try on the dresses, the jet necklaces ..." Quart saw the beginnings of a smile on her lips, but her eyes returned to the postcard and the smile vanished. "In her youth, Carlota went with my great-grandparents to the Universal Exposition in Paris, and to the ruins of Carthage in Tunisia. She brought back old coin
s. There are also boat timetables and hotel brochures, old lace and muslins. A whole life. Imagine the effect it all had on me when I was ten or eleven. I read every single letter. My great-aunt seemed such a romantic character. She still fascinates me."
She was running a fingernail on the tablecloth, around the postcard. She stopped, thoughtful.
"A moving love story," she said, looking up at Quart. "And like all moving love stories it had an unhappy ending."
Quart said nothing, wanting her to go on with the story. But she was interrupted by the waiter, who brought her credit card receipt. Quart noticed her signature: nervous, full of angles as sharp as daggers. She gazed at the cigarette stub in the ashtray, lost in thought.
"There's a beautiful song," she went on after a moment, "sung by Carlos Cano, with lyrics by Antonio Burgos: 'I still remember that girl and her piano in Seville . . .'It makes me want to cry every time I hear it. . . Do you know there's a legend surrounding the story of Carlota and Manuel Xaloc?" Her smile was uncharacteristically shy and indecisive. Quart realised that she believed in the legend. "On moonlit nights, Carlota reappears at her window while her lover's ghostly schooner sails down the Guadalquivir." She leaned forward, and again Quart once again felt she was too close. "When I was little, I spent whole nights looking out for them! And once I saw them. She was a pale shadow at the window. And down on the river, in the mist, the sails of an old ship slid slowly out of sight."
Macarena fell silent and leaned back in her chair. The distance between them returned. "After Sir Marhalt," she said, "my second love was Captain Xaloc . . ." Her look was provocative. "Do you think it's an absurd story?"
"Not at all. Everyone has ghosts."
"And what haunts you?"
Quart smiled with a distant look in his eye. Wind and sun, and rain. The taste of salt in his mouth. Memories of a poor childhood, of knees always dirty, and him watching the sea for hours. His youth had been intellectually confined, dominated by discipline, with some happy memories of companionship and brief moments of satisfied ambition. Solitude at airports, over a book, in a hotel room. And fear and hatred in the eyes of other men: the banker Lupara, Nelson Corona, Priamo Ferro. Corpses - real and imaginary, past and future.