She looked at him as if she'd expected something else. Her eyes moved to his dog collar. "You may not believe this, but I know very little," she answered finally. "I can guess at certain things. But I won't be the one to speak. You do your job, while others do theirs."
Quart set off up the narrow street. She followed in silence, clasping her leather rucksack to her chest.
Inside Las Teresas, hams hung among bottles of La Guita, old posters for Holy Week and the April feria, and faded photographs of slender, serious, long-dead bullfighters. At the bar, waiters wrote down customers' orders while Pepe, the manager, cut thin slices of Jabugo ham with a long razor-sharp knife, singing softly:
How pleased I am, dear cousin, how pleased I am to eat Serrano ham.
He addressed Quart's companion as Dona Macarena and, without either of them ordering anything, brought them tapas of pork in tomato sauce, pork sausage, grilled mushrooms, and two tall-stemmed glasses of fragrant, golden Manzanilla. By the door, leaning on the bar beside Quart, a regular with a red face was conscientiously downing one glass of wine after another. Pepe stopped singing occasionally and, still slicing ham, exchanged a few words with him about a football match soon to be played between Sevilla and Betis.
"Fantastic," the red-faced man said with drunken regularity. Pepe nodded and started singing again, and the man went back to his wine. A grey mouse poked its head from his jacket pocket. From time to time the man gave it little pieces of cheese from the plate beside him on the bar. The rodent diligently nibbled the cheese and nobody seemed in the least surprised.
Macarena sipped her Manzanilla. She rested an elbow on the bar confidently, as if she were at home. In fact, she moved through all of Santa Cruz as if it were part of her home; and in a way it was, or had been for centuries – every corner recorded in her genetic memory, known to her territorial instinct. Quart realised, and the realisation did nothing to calm the IEA agent, that he couldn't conceive of the district or the city without her presence, her black hair, her white teeth, her dark eyes. Once again he thought of the paintings of Romero de Torres, and the old tobacco factory that now housed the university. Carmen the cigarette girl, the damp tobacco leaves rolled against a tanned thigh. He looked up, and his eyes met hers, intent upon him.
"Do you like Seville?" Macarena asked.
"Very much," he said, wondering if she could guess his thoughts.
"It's a special place." She picked at their tapas. "The past and the present live here quite happily side by side. Gris says that we Sevillians are old and wise. We accept anything, and anything's possible." She glanced briefly at their neighbour with the red face and smiled. "Even sharing one's cheese in a bar with a mouse."
"Is your friend any good with computers?"
The look she gave him was almost admiring. "You never give up, do you?" she said, spearing a mushroom with a cocktail stick and eating it. "You have a one-track mind. Why don't you ask her?"
"I did. She was evasive, as you all are."
A man came in. He was fat, about fifty, and dressed in white. For a moment Quart thought he'd seen him somewhere before. The fat man raised his hat as he passed, looked around as if searching for someone, peered at his watch, then left by the other door, swinging a silver-handled walking stick. Quart noticed that the man's left cheek was red and covered with ointment, and that his moustache looked peculiar, as if it had been singed.
"What about the postcard?" Quart asked Macarena. "Does Gris Marsala have access to your great-aunt Carlota's trunk?"
She smiled, amused at his persistence. "She knows where it is, if that's what you mean. But it could just as easily have been Don Priamo. Or Father Oscar, or even me. Or my mother… Can you picture the duchess with her Coca-Cola, wearing a baseball cap back-to-front, hacking into the Vatican computer system in the wee hours?" She speared a piece of meat in tomato sauce and offered it to Quart. "I'm afraid your investigation may become absurd."
As Quart took the cocktail stick from Macarena, his fingers brushed hers. "I'd like to have a look at that trunk," he said.
She watched him as he ate the tapa. "Now? You and I, alone?" She smiled. "That's rather risky, isn't it? Although I suspect your real purpose is to see what kind of computer I have." Pepe put a plate of ham in front of them and she looked absent-mindedly at the red slices streaked with fragrant fat. "Well, why not? It'll give me something to tell my friends. And I'd love to see the archbishop's face when he finds out." She tilted her head to one side thoughtfully. "Or my husband's."
Quart looked at the silver hoops in her ears. "I don't want to cause you any trouble," he said.
She laughed. "Trouble? I hope it makes Pencho green with envy and seethe with rage. If he hears that not only is his deal for the church falling through, but there's also a rather interesting priest hanging around me, he'll go insane." She looked intently at Quart. "And become dangerous."
"Sounds worrying." Quart finished his glass of Manzanilla, not looking in the least bit worried.
"Anyway," said Macarena after a moment's thought, "it would be good for you to sec Carlota's trunk. You'd gain a better idea of what Our Lady of the Tears means."
"Your friend Gris," said Quart, taking a slice of ham, "complains that the money for the restoration work has run out…"
"It's true. The duchess and I have only just enough to live on, and the parish has no money. Don Priamo has a small salary, and the Sunday collection isn't enough even to pay for candles. Sometimes we feel like explorers in the movies, with the vultures circling. On Thursdays, in particular, a strange scene takes place."
With a couple of Manzanillas in front of them, she told Quart how Our Lady of the Tears couldn't be touched as long as Mass was held there for the soul of her ancestor Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija, at eight in the morning every Thursday. He died on a Thursday in 1709. So an envoy from the archbishop and a notary hired by Pencho Gavira were present in church every Thursday, in a pew at the back, waiting for the slightest error or irregularity.
Quart said he couldn't believe it, and they both laughed. But Macarena was soon serious again. "It sounds childish, doesn't it? Everything depending on such a little thing." She raised her glass to her lips but stopped and put it down. "All it would take to condemn the church is for the priest not to celebrate the Thursday Mass or to deviate from the set formula. The archbishop of Seville and the Cartujano Bank would then win… That's why I'm worried that once Father Oscar is out of the way, they'll try something against Don Priamo."
She actually seemed frightened. Quart didn't know what to think. "That's hard to believe," he said at last. "I don't much like Monsignor Corvo, but I'm sure he'd never allow…"
She raised a hand, as if to place it on his lips. "I'm not talking about the archbishop," she said. Then she drew back, turned to the bar, and played with the stem of Quart's glass.
You're trying to muddle me, he thought. He didn't know whether she was acting on her own initiative or for others, or whether the aim was to seduce the messenger or neutralise the enemy. The fact was that between them all, under the pretext of making him sec the other side of the story, they were confusing him thoroughly. You need something solid to hold on to, he told himself. Your work, the investigation, the church, anything. Data and facts, questions and answers. A clear mind, a serenity like hers. Woman as instrument of the devil, beacon of perdition, enemy of humanity and the immortal soul. Keep a distance or you're finished, Lorenzo Quart. What was it Monsignor Spada said? If a cleric kept money out of his pocket and his legs out of a woman's bed, he stood a chance of saving his soul. Or something like that.