He blew Sergio a kiss just as Menchu, all mink coat and legs, made her entrance with Max and demanded news of Montegrifo.

“The bastard,” she said when Julia had finished telling her about it. “I’ll talk to Don Manuel tomorrow. We must fight back.”

Sergio drew back from the tide of words issuing from Menchu, who was rushing from Montegrifo to the Van Huys, from the Van Huys to assorted platitudes, and from a second to a third drink, which she held in an increasingly unsteady hand. Max was silently smoking by her side, with the poise of a dark, sleek stallion put out to stud. Wearing a distant smile, Cesar sipped his gin-and-lemon and dried his lips on the handkerchief from his top jacket pocket. From time to time he blinked, as if returning from some far-off place, and distractedly stroked Julia’s hand.

“There are two sorts of people in this business, darling,” Menchu was saying to Sergio, “those who paint and those who pocket the money. And they’re rarely the same ones.” She sighed loudly, touched by the boy’s youth. “And all you young, blond artists, sweetheart.” She gave Cesar a poisonous sideways glance. “So utterly delicious.”

Cesar felt obliged to make a reluctant return from his remote thoughts.

“Pay no heed, my young friend, to voices poisoning your golden spirit,” he said in a slow, lugubrious voice, as if he were offering Sergio condolences rather than advice. “This woman speaks with forked tongue, as do all women.” He looked at Julia, bent to kiss her hand, and swiftly recovered his composure. “Forgive me. As do nearly all women.”

“Look who’s talking.” Menchu grimaced. “If it isn’t our own private Sophocles. Or do I mean Seneca? I mean the one who used to touch up young men as he sipped his hemlock.”

Cesar leaned his head back and closed his eyes melodramatically.

“The path the artist must follow, and I’m talking to you, my young Alcibiades, or Patroclus, or perhaps even Sergio… the path involves dodging obstacle after obstacle until finally you’re able to peer deep inside yourself. A difficult task if you have no Virgil by your side to guide you. Do you understand the subtle point I’m making, young man? Thus the artist at last comes to drink deep of the sweetest of pleasures. His life becomes one of pure creation and he no longer needs miserable external things. He is far, far above the rest of his despicable fellow men. And growth and maturity build their nests in him.”

This was greeted by a certain amount of mocking applause. Sergi0 looked at them, smiling but disconcerted. Julia burst out laughing.

“Take no notice of him. I bet he stole that from someone else. He always was a crook.”

Cesar opened one eye.

“I’m a bored Socrates. And I indignantly deny your accusation that I steal other people’s words.”

“He’s really quite witty, isn’t he?” Menchu was talking to Max, who had been listening with furrowed brow, while she helped herself to one of his cigarettes. “Give me a light, condottiere mio.”

The epithet caught Cesar’s malicious ear.

“Cave canem, sturdy youth,” he said to Max, and Julia was possibly the only other person present who knew that in Latin canem can be both masculine and feminine. “According to the history books, the people the condottieri really had to watch were those they served.” He looked at Julia and made an ironic bow; drink was beginning to have its effect on him too. “Burckhardt,” he explained.

“Don’t worry, Max,” said Menchu, although Max did not seem in the least upset. “See? It wasn’t even his idea. He crowns himself with other people’s bay leaves… or is it laurels?”

“You mean acanthus,” said Julia, laughing.

Cesar gave her a hurt look.

“Et tu, Bruta?” He turned to Sergio. “Do you understand the tragic nature of the matter, Patroclus?” After another long drink of gin-and-lemon, he looked dramatically about, as if searching for a friendly face. “I really don’t know what you’ve got against other people’s laurels, my dears. In truth,” he added after thinking about it, “no laurels can be said to belong to just one person. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but pure creation simply doesn’t exist. We are not, or, rather, you are not, since I am not a creator… Nor are you, Menchu, my sweet. Perhaps you, Max… Now don’t look at me like that, my handsome condottiere feroce. Perhaps you are the only person here who truly does create something.” He sketched a weary, elegant gesture, expressive of profound tedium, brought on perhaps by his own line of argument, his hand coming to rest, apparently by chance, close to Sergio’s knee. “Picasso – and I regret having to mention that old fraud – is Monet, is Ingres, is Zurbaran, is Brueghel, is Pieter Van Huys… Even our friend Munoz, who doubtless at this very moment is bent over a chessboard somewhere, trying to exorcise his demons, at the same time freeing us from ours, is not himself, but Kasparov and Karpov. He’s Fischer and Capablanca and Paul Morphy and that medieval master, Ruy Lopez… Everything is merely a phase of the same history, or perhaps the same history constantly repeating itself; I’m not altogether sure about that. And you, my lovely Julia, have you ever stopped to think, when you’re standing before our famous painting, just exactly where you are, whether inside it or outside? I’m sure you have, because I know you, Princess. And I know too that you haven’t found an answer.” He gave a short, humourless laugh and looked at them one by one. “In fact, my children, parishioners all, we make up a motley crew. We have the cheek to pursue secrets that, deep down, are nothing but the enigmas of our own lives.” He raised his glass in a kind of toast addressed to no one in particular. “And that, when you think about it, is not without its risks. It’s like smashing the mirror to find out what lies behind the mercury. Doesn’t that, my friends, send a little shiver of fear down your spine?”

It was two in the morning by the time Julia got home. Cesar and Sergio had walked her to her street door. They wanted to accompany her up the three flights to her apartment but she wouldn’t let them and kissed each of them good-bye before going up the stairs. She walked up slowly, looking about anxiously. And when she took the keys from her pocket, her fingers brushed reassuringly against the cold metal of the gun.

As she turned the key in the lock, she thought with surprise that, despite everything, she was taking it calmly. She felt a pure, precise fear, which she could evaluate without recourse to any talent for abstraction, as Cesar would have said, parodying Munoz. But that fear did not provoke in her any humiliating feelings of torment or a desire to run away. On the contrary, it was percolated by an intense curiosity, in which there was a strong dash of personal pride and defiance. It was like a dangerous, exciting game, like killing pirates in Never-Never-Land.

Killing pirates. She’d grown familiar with death at an early age. Her first childhood memory was of her father lying utterly still, with his eyes closed, on the mattress in the bedroom, surrounded by dark, sad people talking in low voices, as if they were afraid to wake him. She was six at the time and that image, incomprehensible and solemn, remained forever linked with that of her mother, all in black and less approachable than, ever, whom, even then, she never saw shed a single tear; and with that of her mother’s dry, imperious hand on hers as she forced Julia to plant final kiss on the dead man’s forehead. It was Cesar, a Cesar whom she remembered as much younger, who had picked her up in his arms and taken her away from there. Sitting on his knee, Julia had stared at the door behind which the undertakers’ men were preparing the coffin.

“It doesn’t look like him, Cesar,” she’d said, trying not to cry. You must never ever cry, her mother used to say. It was the only lesson she could recall having learned from her. “Papa doesn’t look the same.”