“I’ll try,” she said, picking up her handbag. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”

Montegrifo stroked one eyebrow.

“Do try.” His brown eyes looked at her with liquid, velvety tenderness. “It will be to everyone’s advantage; I’m sure you’ll manage it.”

There wasn’t a trace of menace in his voice, only a tone of affectionate entreaty, so friendly, so perfect, it could almost have been sincere. He took Julia’s hand and planted a gentle kiss on it, barely brushing it with his lips.

“I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before,” he added in a low voice, “but you really are an extraordinarily beautiful woman.”

She asked him to drop her near Stephan’s and walked the rest of the way. After midnight the place opened its doors to a distinguished clientele whose level of distinction was regulated by the high prices and a rigorously applied admissions policy. Everyone who was anyone in the Madrid art world gathered there, from agents working for foreign auctioneers, who were just passing through on the lookout for a reredos or a private collection for sale, to gallery owners, researchers impresarios, specialist journalists and fashionable painters.

She left her coat in the cloakroom and, after saying hello to a few acquaintances, walked to the sofa at the far end where Cesar usually sat. And there he was, legs crossed, a glass in one hand, immersed in intimate conversation with a handsome, blond young man. Julia knew the special contempt Cesar felt for clubs popular exclusively with homosexuals. He considered it a simple matter of good taste not to frequent the claustrophobic, exhibitionist, often aggressive atmosphere of such places, where, as he would explain with a mocking look on his face, it was hard, my dear, not to feel like some old queen mincing around at a stud farm. Cesar was a lone hunter – ambiguity refined to its elegant essence – who was at ease in the world of heterosexuals, where he felt perfectly free to cultivate friendships and make conquests, usually of artistic young bloods whom he would guide towards a discovery of their true sensibility, which the divine young things did not, a priori, know. He enjoyed playing at being both Maecenas and Socrates to his exquisite boys. After suitable honeymoons that always had Venice, Marrakesh or Cairo as their backdrop, each affair would follow its natural and distinctive course. Cesar’s long and intense life had, Julia knew, been shaped by a succession of confusions, disappointments and betrayals, but also by fidelities which, in private moments, she’d heard him describe with great delicacy, in that ironic and somewhat distant tone in which, out of personal modesty, he tended to veil any expression of his intimate longings.

He smiled at her from afar. My favourite girl, his lips said, moving silently as, placing his glass on the table, he uncrossed his legs, stood, and held out his hands to her.

“How did the supper go, Princess? Ghastly, I imagine. Sabatini’s isn’t what it was.” He pursed his lips and there was a malicious gleam in his blue eyes. “All those executives and parvenu bankers with their credit cards and restaurant accounts chargeable to their companies will be the ruin of everything. By the way, have you met Sergio?”

Julia had met Sergio and, as always with Cesar’s friends, she sensed the confusion he felt in her presence, unable quite to grasp the real nature of the ties that bound the antiquarian and that calmly beautiful young woman. She could tell at a glance that the relationship was not serious, at least not that night and not on Sergio’s part. The young man, sensitive and intelligent, wasn’t jealous. They’d met on other occasions. Julia’s presence merely intimidated him.

“Montegrifo wanted to make me an offer.”

“How kind of him.” Cesar seemed to be considering the matter seriously as they all sat down. “But allow me, like old Cicero, to ask: Cui bono? For whose benefit?”

“His, I suppose. In fact, he wanted to bribe me.”

“Good for Montegrifo. And did you let yourself be bribed?” He touched Julia’s mouth with the tips of his fingers. “No, don’t tell me yet, my dear; allow me to savour that marvellous uncertainty just a little longer… I hope his offer was at least reasonable.”

“It wasn’t bad. He seemed to be including himself in it too.”

Cesar licked his lips with expectant glee.

“That’s just like him, wanting to kill two birds with one stone. He always was very practical.” Cesar half-turned towards his blond companion, as if warning him not to listen to such worldly improprieties. Then he looked back at Julia with mischievous expectation, almost trembling with anticipatory pleasure. “And what did you say?”

“That I would think about it.”

“Perfect. Never burn your boats. Do you hear that, Sergio, my dear? Never.”

The young man gave Julia a sideways glance and took a long sip of his champagne cocktail. Quite innocently, Julia imagined him naked, in the half-light of Cesar’s bedroom, beautiful and silent as a marble statue, his blond hair fallen over his face, with what Cesar termed, using a euphemism Julia believed he’d stolen from Cocteau, the golden sceptre, erect and ready to be tempered in the antrum amoris of his mature companion, or perhaps it would be the other way round, the mature man busy with the young man’s antrum. Julia had never taken her friendship with Cesar so far as to ask him for a detailed description of such matters, about which, nevertheless, she occasionally felt a slightly morbid curiosity. She looked quickly at Cesar. He was immaculate and elegant in his dark suit, white linen shirt and blue silk cravat with the red polka dots, the hair behind his ears and at the back of his neck slightly waved, and Julia asked herself again what the special charm of the man was, a man capable, even at fifty, of seducing young men like Sergio. It must be the ironic gleam in his blue eyes, the elegance distilled through generations of fine breeding and the easy assumption of world-weary wisdom, tolerant and infinite, to which he never gave complete expression – he rarely took himself entirely seriously – but which was nonetheless there in every word he uttered.

“You must see his latest painting,” Cesar was saying, and it took Julia a moment to realise he meant Sergio. “It’s really remarkable, my dear.” His hand hovered over the young man’s arm, almost but not quite touching it. “Light in its purest state, spilling out over the canvas. Absolutely beautiful.”

Julia smiled, accepting Cesar’s opinion as a cast-iron guarantee. Sergio, simultaneously touched and embarrassed, half-closed his blond-lashed eyes, like a cat receiving a caress.

“Of course,” Cesar went on, “talent isn’t enough in itself to make one’s way in the world. You do understand that, don’t you, young man? All the great art forms require a certain knowledge of the world, a deep experience of human relations. It’s quite another matter with abstract activities, in which talent is of the essence and experience merely a complement. By that I mean music, mathematics… chess.”

“Chess,” said Julia. They looked at each other, and Sergio’s eyes flicked anxiously from one to the other.

“Yes, chess.” Cesar leaned over to take a long drink from his glass. His pupils had shrunk, absorbed in the mystery they were contemplating. “Have you noticed how Munoz looks at The Game of Chess?”

“Yes. He looks at it differently somehow.”

“Exactly. Differently from the way you, or indeed I, could look at it. Munoz sees things in the painting that other people don’t.”

Sergio, who was listening, frowned and deliberately brushed against Cesar’s shoulder; he appeared to be feeling left out. Cesar looked at him benevolently.

“We’re discussing things that are much too sinister for your ears, my dear.” He slid his index finger across Julia’s knuckles, lifted his hand slightly, as if hesitating over a choice between two desires, and placed that hand between Julia’s, but directed his words to the young man-“Guard your innocence, my friend. Develop your talent and don’t complicate your life.”