“Because yesterday you hadn’t declined for the second time to take the white queen. Also because until this afternoon I hadn’t found what I was looking for: a bound volume of chess magazines for the fourth quarter of 1945. There’s a photograph of the finalists in a junior chess tournament in it, and you’re there, Cesar, your name and surname are on the following page. What surprises me is that you weren’t a winner. It also puzzles me that after that there’s no mention of you as a chess player. You never played in public again.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” said Julia. “Or, to be exact, there’s something else, apart from all the many things I don’t understand in all this madness. I’ve known you for as long as I can remember, Cesar. I grew up with you, and I thought I knew every corner of your life. But you never once mentioned chess. Never. Why?”

“That’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time,” said Munoz.

It was the last game in the tournament, with only a few pieces left on the board. Opposite the platform on which the finalists were playing, a few spectators were following the moves as a judge wrote on a panel on the wall, between a portrait of General Franco and a calendar -the date was 12 October 1945 – above the table on which stood the gleaming silver cup intended for the winner.

The young boy in the grey jacket fiddled nervously with the knot of his tie and looked despairingly at the black pieces on the board. The last few moves of his opponent’s methodical, implacable game had manoeuvred him relentlessly into a corner. It wasn’t that White had a brilliant game plan, it was simply a question of slow progress starting with a solid initial defence – the King’s Indian defence – and getting the upper hand purely and simply by waiting patiently and exploiting his opponent’s mistakes. An unimaginative game that risked nothing had, for precisely that reason, sabotaged every attempt at an attack on his king by Black, whose forces were now scattered, incapable of helping each other, or even of providing obstacles to the advance of the two white pawns, which, taking turns to move, were about to be promoted.

The eyes of the boy in the grey jacket were dull with weariness and shame. The knowledge that his game was superior, more daring and brilliant than that of his opponent, could not console him for his inevitable defeat. His fifteen-year-old’s imagination, extravagant and fiery, the extreme sensitivity of his spirit and the lucidity of his thought, even the almost physical pleasure he felt when he moved the varnished wooden chessmen elegantly across the board, creating on the black and white squares a delicate network that he considered to be of almost perfect beauty and harmony, all seemed sterile now, sullied by the crude satisfaction and disdain evident on his opponent’s face: a sallow-skinned lout with small eyes and coarse features whose only strategy had been to wait prudently, like a spider in the centre of his web, a strategy of unspeakable cowardice.

So this too was chess, thought the boy playing Black. In the final analysis, it was the humiliation of undeserved defeat, with the prize going to those who risk nothing. That was what he felt at that moment, seated for a game that was not merely a foolish set of moves, but a mirror of life itself, of flesh and blood, life and death, heroism and sacrifice. Like the proud knights of France at Crecy, undone in the midst of empty victory by the Welsh archers of the King of England, he had seen the attacks made by his knights and bishops, moves that were daring and deep, like the splendid, glittering blows of a sword, one crash after the other, like heroic but futile waves, against the phlegmatic immobility of his opponent. And that hated piece, the white king, on the other side of his insurmountable barrier of plebeian pawns, observed from a safe distance, with as much scorn as that reflected on the face of the White player, the discomfort and impotence of the solitary black king, incapable of helping his remaining faithful pawns, who were engaged in a hopeless battle, an agonising free-for-all.

On that pitiless battleground of cold black and white squares there was no room for honour in defeat. Defeat wiped out everything, destroying not only the loser but also his imagination, his dreams, his self-esteem. The boy in the grey jacket leaned his elbow on the table, cradled his forehead in the palm of his hand and closed his eyes, listening as the sound of clashing weapons died slowly away in the valley flooded with shadows. Never again, he said to himself. Just as the Gauls conquered by Rome refused ever to speak of their defeat, he too, for the rest of his life, would refuse to remember his, and sterility of victory. He would never again play chess. And, with luck, he would be able to wipe it from his memory, just as the names of dead Pharaohs were removed from all the monuments.

Opponent, judge and spectators were awaiting his next move with ill-disguised irritation, for the game had gone on for far too long. The boy took one last look at his besieged king and, with a sad feeling of shared solitude, decided that all that remained for him to do was to commit one last merciful act and give him a worthy death at his own hand, thus avoiding the humiliation of being boxed in like a fugitive dog. He reached out his hand and, in a gesture of infinite tenderness, slowly upended the defeated king and laid him lovingly down on the empty square.

When Cesar’s low voice stopped, he gave an absent smile and slowly turned his eyes from some indeterminate spot in the room to the ivory chess set on the table. Then he shrugged, as if to say, “Well, no one gets to choose his own past.”

“You never told me about that,” Julia said, and the sound of her voice seemed an absurd intrusion.

Cesar paused before replying. The light from the parchment lampshade lit only half his face, leaving the other half in shadow. The effect accentuated the lines around his eyes and mouth, emphasised his aristocratic profile, his fine nose and chin, like the effigy on an antique medal.

“I could hardly tell you about something that didn’t exist,” he murmured softly, and his eyes, or perhaps just the dull gleam of his eyes in the penumbra, rested on Julia’s. “For forty years I applied myself carefully to the task of believing that to be the case.” There was a mocking edge to his voice now, no doubt directed at himself. “I never played chess again, not even alone. Never.”

Julia shook her head, finding it all very hard to believe.

“You’re sick.”

He gave a short, humourless laugh.

“You disappoint me, Princess. I hoped that you at least would not resort to cliches.” He looked thoughtfully at his ivory cigarette holder. “I assure you I’m completely sane. How else could I have constructed with such meticulous detail this whole beautiful story?”

“Beautiful?” She looked at him in stupefaction. “We’re talking about Alvaro and about Menchu… Beautiful story?” She shuddered with horror and disgust. “For God’s sake! What the hell are you talking about?”

Cesar held her gaze, unmoved, and then turned to Munoz as if for support.

“There are… aesthetic aspects,” he said, “there are some extraordinarily original factors that can’t be dismissed in such a superficial way. The chessboard isn’t just black and white. There are higher planes, from which you can view events. Objective planes.” He gave them a look of sudden and apparently sincere pain. “I thought you’d both realised that.”