Marcia Parini stops behind him. They both stare at the entrance curtain for a moment. Somehow it is easy to understand Giraut's gesture as one of reverence and respect toward the tremendously rare and sublime art objects.
Things are not like they used to be. At least from Lucas Giraut's perspective. The entire gallery seems to now be organized around a black, pulsating center: the room closed off with a curtain. Which somehow gives the impression that it shines from within. That the curtains aren't there to keep outside light from getting in but rather to keep something more powerful from getting out. Something like the black light of a radiant, pulsating black lamp. Something that, if one opens the curtain, will bathe the entire gallery with its radioactive glow and will blind everyone and make all those present fall to their knees and cover their eyes.
Marcia Parini takes Lucas Giraut by the hand. Giraut sighs deeply. And opens the curtain.
CHAPTER 20. The Winter of Our Discontent
“I don't know many people that would paint their office walls this color,” says the redheaded lawyer who is sitting in an armchair covered with towels in Lucas Giraut's office on the mezzanine of the headquarters of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. All of the office furnishings are covered by sheets and towels of different sizes and colors. The redheaded lawyer gestures with his head toward a wall that has recently been painted black. The way he makes his comment suggests an element of sarcasm mixed with something else. Something similar to a veiled threat. “But I've been given to understand that there is a vein of eccentricity in your family. Something having to do with your father and the way he decorated places, and with the fact that he didn't like windows.” The redheaded lawyer smiles in a way that suggests an expression of mild pain. “Correct me if I'm wrong.”
The Louis XV cartonnier in Lucas Giraut's office is covered with a sheet. The shelves have been taken down from the walls. The way in which everything is covered with sheets and towels suggests a house being renovated.
Lucas Giraut is on his knees next to the latest addition to his collection of magic desks, with his stethoscope in his ears. A mahogany Victorian magic desk, circa 1860, with nine drawers, a frieze of vegetable and animal decorations and a green leather writing surface inlaid into the top. The end of Giraut's stethoscope without ear tips hangs over the front of his shirt like some sort of cybernetic elephant trunk. Giraut leans over one side of the Victorian desk and finishes applying a label with nonabrasive glue to its green leather surface. The label reads: REF. 3522. MAHOGANY VICTORIAN DESK 9 DRAWERS. VEG./ANIMAL FRIEZE, BRONZE KNOBS, 183 X 107 X 8 °CM, PRIVATE COLLECTION OF LUCAS GIRAUT. Then he smooths the sticker onto the surface of the desk with his fingertips. The new Victorian desk has a large main drawer in the front, two small drawers on either side of the main one and three graduated drawers on either side of the twin pedestals. To anyone trained in deciphering magic desks, the distance of about two inches between the upper edge of the main drawer and the leather-covered top is an obvious indication of the location of the secret drawer. Giraut knocks his knuckles along the top of the desk as he applies the stethoscope to the animal-vegetable frieze two inches up and furrows his brow with a vaguely medical expression.
“My mother's lawyer is named Fonseca,” Lucas Giraut tells the redheaded lawyer as he applies the stethoscope to different points on the magic desk's animal-vegetable frieze. “He's been my family's lawyer for thirty years. So I find it hard to believe that you represent my mother. My mother has never trusted anyone besides Mr. Fonseca.”
The redheaded lawyer places his briefcase on his knees and opens its silver clasps with his fingertips.
“My participation in this case is the result of a personal friendship with Mr. Fonseca,” he says, taking a dossier out of the briefcase open on his knees. “The reasons that have brought me here today as Estefanía Giraut's representative are detailed in this dossier. I have also been asked to represent the injured party due to my legal specialty.” He takes several documents out of the dossier and he places them one by one on top of the cartonnier's sheet-covered surface. “This one here is a subpoena. The details are inside and et cetera. This one is a summons for you to visit a forensic psychologist. Of course, you have the right to ask for the opinion of any other psychologist that you choose. For the record.”
The redheaded lawyer seems to be one of those redheads whose skin and hair give him a perpetually sickly appearance. His facial epidermis has that rosy and perpetually irritated appearance, as if it had just been scalded with boiling water. His hands have pigmentation spots and his wrists are covered with a sickly-looking layer of fine hair. The redheaded lawyer did not take off his coat when he came into Lucas Giraut's office. Which makes any sort of suitological analysis on Giraut's part difficult.
“I have mostly come to convey a message, one of concern,” says the redheaded lawyer, with one of those smiles of his that looks like an expression of mild facial pain. “Concern about certain behaviors that remind one of that vein of eccentricity in the family. Behavior that is incompatible with the presidency of a company in the process of international expansion. I represent people who love you, Mr. Giraut. People who love you personally. People who are now worried.” He gestures toward the ceiling of the patriarchal office under renovation, which has also been painted black. The lamps have been taken down from the ceiling and are in a corner. Covered with sheets. Creating a lighting situation clearly insufficient for any type of meeting. “I am referring to your attitude toward furniture, Mr. Giraut. Toward furniture and curtains and windows. Something that has already caused your family a great deal of pain in the past. Imagine how concerned the people who love you are when they see these things starting to happen again. The black walls and the darkness and the opaque curtains and the furniture moved to the middle of the room.”
“Help me.” Lucas Giraut frowns and pushes on a vegetable motif in the frontal frieze of the Victorian desk. “Put your hand here. And push,” he says. “I've been waiting for some time for my mother to try to divest me of my stock holdings. So I'm not surprised that she's questioning my mental health.”
The redheaded lawyer sighs and gets up from the towel-covered armchair. He kneels down beside Giraut. The basic difference between the Louis XV cartonnier and the Victorian mahogany desk has to do with the degree of complexity of the mechanisms that unlock the openings to their respective secret compartments. It's what the experts call N-Grade of a magic desk. In technical jargon, the mahogany desk circa 1860 is a Grade 5 magic desk. That means it takes five steps to open its secret compartment. The particular opening of the Victorian magic desk requires a series of operations with the bronze knobs of the different drawers and with the animal-vegetable motifs on the frontal frieze as well. The specific mechanics of the Victorian desk are the following:
1. First of all, you have to press two different animal-vegetable motifs on the frontal animal-vegetable-themed frieze, namely, an oak leaf and the inner part of a bird's wing that exactly replicates, in reverse, the leaf's structure according to the classic trompe l'oeil technique. The two animal-vegetable motifs must be pressed simultaneously.
2. This simultaneous pressing unblocks the turning mechanism at the base of one of the knobs on the desk's left pedestal. Said knob can be turned to four different positions, each separated by a 90-degree angle of rotation. The knob must be turned five times, which is to say it must be moved 450 degrees, clockwise.