14

ADRIANA

Carnival Friday, February 17, 2012

E lisa and I had covered almost the length of Calle Isabel II, in the most commercial part of Santander, Elisa pushing the pace as if she had a clear objective in mind. Having reluctantly taken my cousin’s advice, I’d arranged to go shopping with his wife. I realized it was carnival after we’d bumped into a six-foot-plus Little Red Riding Hood, two Men in Black hiding behind their Ray-Bans, and several brass bands dressed up as various types of fruit.

“Have you heard of The Java Man?” Elisa asked me, trying to add a note of mystery to her words.

“Yes, Homo erectus ,” I replied, surprised.

You want to challenge me, too? I thought wearily, repressing the bad memory of my verbal duel with Iago.

“No, silly. The Java Man is a chain of stores with colonial-style furniture,” she said, pointing to an imposing establishment on the corner of Avenida Calvo Sotelo. “They’ve opened one in every northern regional capital. All the inhabitants of Santander are decorating their homes with furniture from here.”

We walked up to the display window, and I could see the interior of the store jam-packed with heavy four-poster beds of African wenge wood with canopies of lightweight fabric, a never-ending collection of totems of differing sizes featuring idols with eyes, and walls dotted with necklaces of aquamarine, larimar, and any other exotic stone hard to find in a city like ours. I admit that I liked what I saw and began to picture how my newly furnished bedroom might look. So I nodded my approval to Elisa. We were on the point of entering through the glass door when my friend headed back toward the edge of the sidewalk and came to an ecstatic halt in front of a small, double-parked red Porsche.

“Look at that,” she whispered in fascination, her eyes glued to the car. “Isn’t it a beauty?”

“For heaven’s sake, woman, it’s just a car . . . There’s no need to make such a fuss.”

But Elisa was paying no attention to me. She started to circle the convertible, inspecting the bodywork.

“Hush, kiddo,” she said, beckoning me to join her. “We have to look for an inscription with the words ‘Little Bastard.’&#8202”

“It’s official, then: you’ve gone crazy.”

“How uncooperative,” she snorted, turning to face me. “This car belongs to Jairo del Castillo. As does The Java Man, by the way. They say this is the car James Dean was driving when he was killed in an accident. It’s certainly the same model, a Porsche Spyder 550, though this bodywork is red and the original one was gray.”

“Since when do you know so much about cars?”

“Our colleagues spend all their time in BACus arguing about whether this is the actual car or not. To summarize, we’ve bet a meal on it, if anyone can prove that it’s authentic. Although if that were the case, it would be creepy,” she murmured.

“How come?”

“Because people say the Little Bastard is cursed. After it killed James Dean, every owner post-1955 was in an accident and ended up dead, until the car was rebuilt for an exhibition in 1960 and then disappeared without a trace. Who’d want to drive a former wreck like that?”

“Someone who wasn’t afraid of death,” I answered without thinking. Great! Now I’m talking as if I were superstitious.

And then I saw it. On one side of the body, next to the driver’s seat, there were some shiny italic letters.

“I don’t know if that’s your definitive proof, but there you have it,” I said, showing her the small inscription “Little Bastard.”

Just then a gust of wind came from nowhere and lifted the skirt of Elisa’s white dress. She held it down coquettishly, reminding me of a scene from a fifties film.

Right behind us a hoarse voice whispered: “Ladies . . . ”

We both jumped, and Elisa began to behave like an adolescent, batting her eyelashes as if she’d fallen victim to a nervous tic.

“Jairo, what a fright you gave us! You’ve caught us red-handed. We were admiring your sports car,” she said with a nervous giggle.

Jairo smiled smugly. He was wearing a close-fitting red-and-brown-checked suit. Perfect for passing unnoticed in Santander, even during carnival!

“Fine, I’ll give you a spin in her another time,” he said, loading the passenger seat with bags from the shop. “But right now I should finish getting things ready for the dinner. By the way, shouldn’t you be primping and preening yourselves?”

He took out a gold pocket watch with an eagle engraved in the middle of a spiral pattern on its cover. I had a sense of déjà vu when I saw the delicately worked image. Where had I seen that type of artwork before?

“There are barely three hours to go,” he added.

“Of course. We’re heading home as soon as we buy something from your stores.”

I frowned in Elisa’s direction. Where had she parked her brains?

“In that case, I’ll see you this evening,” he replied, inclining his head in our direction in what came across as an overly deliberate farewell. “A pleasure, as always.”

He went back inside The Java Man under Elisa’s ever-watchful gaze. I turned toward her. “Of all the furniture stores in Santander, you bring me to the one owned by Jairo del Castillo. Are you mad? I have more than enough of the Holy Trinity during the week. And what’s this dinner business? I have no idea what you were talking about.”

“Calm down, Adriana. I mentioned the dinner to you the other day. We’re all invited to a carnival dinner at Jairo’s villa tonight. They always have one right about this time. It’s fancy dress, and we have to wear an outfit from some historical period. Everyone from the MAC will be there. What did you say you were going as?”

Again , I thought to myself. Elisa’s lapses of memory were turning into a very annoying habit.

“Elisa, that’s the first I’ve heard about this party. I haven’t received any invitation, so naturally I have no costume.”

Just then her cell phone rang. “What do you mean, a calf? . . .Well, tell him to wait . . . ”

I assumed it was Marcos.

“Today was your turn to pick up the kids, you can’t . . . You’re picking them up today, end of story! . . . Are you listening to me? . . . What do you mean, you can’t make it?”

I deduced that my cousin had hung up. Elisa jammed her phone into her bag.

“What day is it today?” she barked at me.

“Friday,” I replied. “All day.”

“Shit. Swim classes for the kids.”

She checked her watch and left me standing there, watching her disappear in the direction of the parking lot. Jairo emerged again at this point and came to stand next to me in front of the store window.

“Weren’t you going to come in?”

Too late to find a good excuse , I thought. It would have seemed really rude to refuse. So, with a sigh of resignation, I followed him into the store. I preferred not to mention the matter of the carnival fiesta again; if they hadn’t invited me, they must have had their reasons.

“I wanted to give my bedroom a new look,” I commented as we made our way through the orderly chaos of the shop.

“Then you’ve come to the right place. Allow me to make some suggestions.”

I nodded, glancing at the employees, who in turn were checking me out. We made our way between large armchairs, mirrors, and lamps toward the back of the store, while Jairo recited the material and exotic origin of each piece. I have to admit he was a good salesman.

“You don’t look like someone who attends to customers in person.”

“Oh, I tend to make an exception with the new female staff at the museum.”

Naturally, and you’re also hoping I’ll end up like Nieves.

“Are you sure?” I insisted. “Weren’t you in a hurry?”

“Time is such a relative thing . . . And this chess set, don’t you find it attractive?”

The board was made from two-toned wood. “The root of the teak tree,” he told me solicitously.

“Aesthetically, yes,” I replied, “but it’s been a while since I played a game seriously.”

With a sweep of his right hand, he invited me to sit down. I looked around, not entirely convinced. Jairo had arranged things so as to take me into a corner of his immense establishment where he knew no one would bother us. I eventually accepted his invitation.

“You see, you can either consider chess a board game or you can view it as something much more interesting.”

The look I gave him encouraged him to continue.

“As you know, chess is a battle between two groups. It’s a duel between strategies and tactics.”

“I’m lost. Is there a difference?”

“Strategy is what enables you to win in the long term. In other words, knowing what to do when there’s nothing to do. Tactics are the short-term moves that enable you to assume a position—or, to put it another way, knowing what to do when there is something to do.”

“Okay, I follow. Go on.”

“You’ll have heard somewhere that all’s fair in love and war, but there are many more parallels to be found between the two. When all is said and done, it’s a case of conquering something, be that a person or a nation. Well then, each chess piece can be assigned a specific role within the hypothetical war of seduction between two rival factions.”

I imagine that by this stage my expression said it all.

“Just as in chess, the winner is the faction that checkmates the king. The king, in this case, represents the heart, feelings. The queen is married to him. She represents desire, sensuality. If you think about it, she’s the most powerful piece on the board, the piece that can make virtually all the moves and traverse all the squares she wants. The king, on the other hand, is more restricted than his queen. He can only advance one square at a time, although he can also move in any direction. These are the player’s two most prized pieces—the ones with which he’ll threaten his opponent and the ones he has to be most careful not to lose.

“There’s an old saying among chess players: ‘Chess is an oedipal game because it consists of killing the king and seducing the queen.’ If you manage to beguile the queen, if you deflect her attention toward other parts of the board, you can focus on attacking the king. The same thing happens in love. To make the other person fall in love, to checkmate her king, you have to seduce her first. You have to toy with the queen and throw her off the scent so that she’ll stop protecting her heart.”

For a moment I forgot about the carnival and Elisa’s intrigues as I stared at the chessboard with the look of someone who’d never seen one in their life. “What about the other pieces?”

“The other pieces are the weapons the player, the seducer, uses to protect and help his cherished marriage, his love, and his desire.”

I gestured for him to continue.

“Take the bishop, for example. Centuries ago those board pieces represented real bishops, the devious advisers of the king. They never move in a straight line, they always move obliquely, and there’s no restriction in terms of the squares. The bishop, with his zigzag movements, is equivalent to intelligence.”

I don’t know why, but I thought of Iago.

I asked myself what the knight’s role would be in Jairo’s curious staging. Jairo anticipated my question.

“The knight, as you know, executes the most capricious moves—in the shape of an L. A single knight can end up occupying every square on the board. He fights, he deceives, he surprises. The knight represents chance, the dramatic effect that circumstances bestow on us from time to time, which any intelligent player takes advantage of to corner his opponent.

“By the knight’s side is the rook, either advancing straight up the columns, or moving from left to right across the rows. The rook is like time. Sometimes the rook moves quickly; at other times it comes to a standstill. Little wonder it’s the only piece that can castle the king, a protective move, as you’re aware. Just as the passage of time is the only thing that can shield the heart when neither luck nor the head is able to remove the king from the threat.”

“And the pawns?”

“Pawns are generally the pieces that are sacrificed during the game, unless they get from one end of the board to the other and reach the eighth row. In that case a pawn can be exchanged for any other piece of the same color, including a queen. That move is rightly called ‘the coronation of the pawn.’ Pawns are the other people we use to achieve our objective. We won’t hesitate to use them as often as we need to, subsequently leaving them stuck in some spot on the board away from the main action. The only things you have to be careful about are never to forget that they are mere pawns, and to eliminate your rival’s pawns before they unexpectedly threaten your queen. The strategies for pawns are infinite, from making use of them to stir up jealousy, to consoling yourself with them when time is standing still. There’s even a different strategy altogether, which is to attack with eight pawns in a block, although I wouldn’t recommend it, because it provokes quite a few headaches.”

I was silent for quite a while, taking in and discovering for myself the similarities he was talking about. Although, at the same time, I was beginning to tire of being left out of the game altogether by the Castillo brothers.

“Your theory is fine,” I finally admitted, “but it might have some flaws.”

“Flaws?” he repeated. He pronounced the word in astonishment, as if I had just invented it. His brain didn’t accept the word “flaws” in relation to himself.

“I can think of a couple, but so as not to take too long, since you have a theme party to organize, I’ll comment on the first one that comes to mind. In chess it’s obligatory to announce it when you checkmate the king. In love, on the other hand, your rival doesn’t tell you when you’re about to fall.”

He held my gaze for a long moment, then rested his forehead on one finger while he weighed up my objection.

“You’re right.” He wasn’t really talking to me but, rather, muttering to himself, as if he was used to talking alone. “During the last few moves of a seduction, it’s precisely subtlety that’s called for, so of course it would be a huge mistake to reveal your intentions ahead of time.”

Then he remembered that I was still sitting in front of him, and he lifted his head with an expression of something like admiration, or at least respect. “I see you are in control of the game.”

“Which of the two?”

“Both, I fear.”

A short while later, back at home, I had a call from Héctor del Castillo as I was unpacking the chess pieces and placing the exotic chessboard on the table by my bed. The rest of the furniture would take a few weeks to arrive: a bed with a mosquito net (decorative rather than practical), various tribal wall hangings, and an extra-large sofa in which I could lose myself with a good book and forget the world.

“Adriana, you’ll have to forgive our oversight. We’re celebrating carnival in my brother Jairo’s house tonight, and the invitations were sent out before you joined us. We’ve just remembered you.”

We? I thought. Who, exactly?

“I hope you can come nevertheless.”

“The fact is that I’ve just found out about it, Héctor, and I have no costume.”

“That’s not a problem. We can send you a dress in your size. Give me your address.”

Anyone else would have resisted, but curiosity was always my Achilles’ heel.

“Hold on. That won’t be necessary. I think I can improvise something.”

I had remembered a dress I’d worn to my friend Clara’s wedding, a Greek-inspired gown.

“Perfect. So we’ll see each other at ten,” said Héctor with a hint of satisfaction and hung up.