What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  After replacing the book, Max opens the wardrobe. On the top shelf are two tattered Louis Vuitton suitcases, and below, clothes arranged on hangers, on shelves, and in drawers: a suede jacket, dresses and skirts in dark colors, silk or cotton blouses, knitted cardigans, fine French silk scarves, good-quality English and Italian shoes, comfortable, with a low heel or flat. Under the folded clothes, Max discovers a large, black leather box with a tiny lock. He gives a growl of satisfaction, like a hungry cat seeing a fish bone; his fingers tingle with the pulsation of ancient habits. Thirty seconds later, with the help of a paper clip bent into an L-shape, the box is open. Inside is a small bundle of Swiss francs, and a Chilean passport in the name of Mercedes Inzunza Torrens, born in Granada, Spain, 7 June 1905. Her current address is given as Chemin de Beau-Rivage, Lausanne, Switzerland. The photograph is recent, and Max studies it closely, recognizing her graying hair, cropped almost like a man’s, her gaze fixed on the camera, the lines around her eyes and mouth, which he observed when she walked past him on the hotel terrace, and which are treated more ruthlessly by the harsh light of the photographer’s flash. An elderly woman, he concludes. Sixty-one. Three years younger than him, excepting that time is more relentless in its devastation of women than of men. Even so, the beauty Max saw nearly forty years ago on board the Cap Polonio is still evident in the passport photograph: the serene expression in the eyes of a refined woman of society, the exquisite line of her mouth, the delicate shape of her face, the long, still graceful neck. There are species of beautiful animals that even manage to age relatively well, Max reflects sadly.

  Replacing the passport and the money, taking care not to change anything, he checks the remaining contents of the box. A few pieces of jewelry: simple earrings, a slim, plain gold bangle, and a Vacheron Constantin ladies’ watch with black leather strap. There is also another flat, square, brown leather box, worn with age. When Max opens it and recognizes the necklace inside (two hundred perfect pearls, with a simple gold clasp), he can’t keep his hands from trembling, even as a smile of satisfaction flashes across his face; a look of unexpected triumph enlivens his expression, tense with the excitement of his discovery.

  His fingers protected by the rubber gloves, he removes the necklace from its case and examines it under one of the lamps: it is perfect, pristine, exactly like when he last saw it. Even the clasp is the same. The exquisite pearls reflect the light with an almost hazy softness. Thirty-eight years before, when for a few hours the necklace was in his possession, a jeweler from Montevideo by the name of Troianescu, who valued it at less than its true worth, still gave him what was then the respectable sum of three thousand pounds.

  Max studies the pearls, trying to estimate their current value. He has always been good at quick appraisals; his eye sharpened with time, practice, and opportunity. Natural pearls have depreciated with the overproduction of cultivated ones, but good-quality, antique pearls have kept their value, and these could easily fetch five thousand dollars. If he sold them to a reliable Italian fence (he knows one or two who still do business), he might get four-fifths of that sum: nearly two and a half million lire, equivalent to his salary of almost three years as a chauffeur at Villa Oriana. That is the value Max places on the necklace belonging to Mecha Inzunza, the woman he once knew. And the other one he no longer knows. The one in the passport photo, whose fresh, unfamiliar, perhaps forgotten scent he perceived as he entered the room and while he was searching through her clothes in the wardrobe. The woman who has changed, although not entirely, who walked past him less than an hour ago without recognizing him. Max’s memories come flooding back, pell-mell, at the warm touch of the pearls: music, conversation, lights from a past era that seem to belong to a different century, the poor neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, rain tapping on a windowpane overlooking the Mediterranean, the taste of warm coffee on a woman’s lips, silk, smooth flesh. Long-forgotten sensations that come rushing back like a gust of wind in autumn sweeping up dead leaves. Unexpectedly quickening his pulse, which he thought had calmed down forever.

  Pensive, Max goes over to the bed and sits for a while, gazing at the necklace, fingering the pearls one by one as if they were the beads of a rosary. Finally he sighs, gets up, smooths out the bedspread, and places the necklace back in its box. He puts away his spectacles and takes a last look around before switching off the light. After removing the towel from the door, he folds it and returns it to the bathroom. Then he draws back the curtain in front of the terrace. It is already dark, and he can see the lights of Naples in the distance. Leaving the room, he replaces the Non disturbare sign and closes the door. Afterward, he takes off the rubber gloves and strides down the carpet, left hand in his trouser pocket, right hand straightening his tie knot with thumb and forefinger. He is sixty-four years old, and yet he feels young again. Interesting, even. And, above all, daring.

  Bellboys carrying telegrams and messages, smartly dressed guests, and porters pushing luggage carts along the plush carpets emblazoned with the hotel’s name. The bustle was typical of such an exclusive establishment. Max Costa had been waiting for an hour and a quarter in the smoking room next to the columned foyer of the Hotel Palace in Buenos Aires, at the foot of the monumental wrought-iron-and-bronze staircase. Beneath the high corniced ceiling decorated with paintings, the afternoon sun lit up the enormous stained-glass windows, enveloping him in a warm, colorful glow. He was sitting in a leather armchair, from which he could see the revolving door to the street, the entire main foyer, one of the elevators, and the reception desk. He had arrived at the hotel in the afternoon, five minutes before his arranged three o’clock meeting with the de Troeyes, but the clock on the mantelpiece in the smoking room said ten past four. After checking the time again, he recrossed his legs, careful not to stretch the knees of his gray trousers, which he had pressed himself that morning in his room at the boardinghouse, and put out his cigarette in a large tin ashtray nearby. He remained unflustered by the couple’s lack of punctuality, aware that in most situations patience proved to be a highly practical virtue. Above all for a hunter.

  He had been on land five days, the same length of time as the de Troeyes. After calling at Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo, the Cap Polonio had sailed up the muddy waters of Río de la Plata, and, after lengthy docking maneuvers, had moored alongside the cranes and huge redbrick warehouses, where a teeming throng awaited the passengers. Although it was autumn in Europe, in the Southern Cone spring was beginning, and seen from the soaring decks of the liner, everyone on the quayside seemed to be wearing linen suits and white straw hats. From the second-class deck, Max, who had to wait for all the passengers to disembark, saw Mecha Inzunza and her husband descend the main gangway, at the foot of which they were greeted by half a dozen people and a cluster of journalists, before continuing on in search of their luggage: a pile of suitcases and trunks guarded by three porters and an employee of the shipping company. The de Troeyes had said good-bye to Max two days earlier, following the farewell dinner, after which Mecha Inzunza had danced three tangos with him while her husband sat smoking at his table, watching them. Then they invited him for a drink in the first-class cocktail lounge, and although he was breaking the staff rules, Max accepted because it was his last day on board. They drank champagne cocktails and continued talking about Argentinian music until the early hours, agreeing to meet after they had docked, so that Max could keep his promise of taking them to a place where they could see tango played in the old way.

  And here he was, in Buenos Aires, watching the hotel lobby with the same professional calm with which, trusting his intuition, he had been waiting for the last five days, lying on the bed in the room of a boardinghouse on Avenida Almirante Brown, as he chain-smoked and drank glasses of absinthe, which gave him a sore head in the morning. The time limit he had given himself before going in search of the couple, inventing some pretext, was about to run out, when the landlady knocked at his door. A gentleman was asking for him on the telephone. Arman
do de Troeye had a lunch date, but they were free the rest of the afternoon. They could have coffee together, and meet later for dinner, before setting off on the promised foray into enemy territory. De Troeye had said the words “enemy territory” in a lighthearted manner, as though he didn’t take Max’s warnings about the dangers of exploring the port city’s dens of iniquity seriously.

  “Naturally, Mecha will be going with us,” he had said after a brief pause, in response to the question Max was unable to pose. “She is even more curious than I am,” he had added after a further silence, as if his wife were within earshot (the Palace Hotel was equipped with every modern convenience, including a telephone in each room), and Max could imagine them exchanging knowing looks, and whispering while de Troeye placed his hand over the mouthpiece. That last night, when they were discussing the matter on the Cap Polonio, she had insisted on joining them.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she had asserted with complete equanimity.

  On that occasion she was sitting on a bar stool in the first-class cocktail lounge, while the bartender mixed drinks. The gleaming pearls hung in three strands around Mecha Inzunza’s neck, and a simple white Vionnet gown, cut away at the shoulders and back (the farewell dinner was a black-tie affair), accentuated her natural elegance to astonishing effect. That evening, when Max had danced those three tangos with her (he hadn’t seen her do that with de Troeye during the entire crossing), he could appreciate once more the pleasurable sensation of her bare skin beneath the full-length satin gown, which, as it moved to the music, traced the curves of her body.

  “We could get into some awkward situations,” Max insisted.

  “You and Armando will be there,” she replied, unfazed. “To protect me.”

  “I’ll take my Astra,” her husband said, playfully, patting an empty pocket in his jacket.

  He winked as he did so, and Max bridled at de Troeye’s flippancy and his wife’s self-assurance. He was beginning to wonder if it was worth the trouble, but a fresh glance at the necklace convinced him it was. Possible losses and probable gains, he told himself. All part of life’s routine.

  “I wouldn’t advise carrying a weapon,” he said simply, between sips of his drink. “There or anywhere. You might be tempted to use it.”

  “Isn’t that the point of them?”

  Armando de Troeye wore an almost conceited smile. He seemed to enjoy adopting that playful, gangsterish air, pretending to be an amused adventurer. Once again, Max felt the familiar stab of resentment. He imagined de Troeye, afterward, bragging about his escapade in the slums to his snobbish millionaire friends—to that Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes, for example. Or that fellow Picasso.

  “To pull out a weapon is to invite others to use theirs.”

  “Well,” exclaimed de Troeye. “You seem to know an awful lot about weapons for a dancer.”

  There was a sour, disdainful note beneath the apparently good-natured remark. Max was taken aback; perhaps the celebrated composer wasn’t always as nice as he pretended to be. Or possibly he considered the three tangos Max had danced with his wife too many for one night.

  “He certainly knows something about them,” said Mecha.

  De Troeye glanced at her, mildly surprised, as though wondering how much information his wife had about Max that he was unaware of.

  “Of course,” he said darkly, as if to put an end to the matter. Then he smiled in a perfectly natural way, and sank his nose into his glass, as though what was important in life remained outside it.

  Max and Mecha Inzunza looked straight at each other for a moment. Earlier, they had taken to the dance floor as before, her gaze drifting somewhere above his right shoulder, their eyes scarcely meeting, or possibly avoiding each other. Since the silent tango in the palm court, there was something hovering between them that changed their way of communicating as they danced: a calm complicity, made up of silences, movements, and attitudes (they performed some of the cortes and side steps by mutual consent, with a hint of shared, almost subversive humor), and also of implicit glances, or apparently straightforward situations, such as when Max offered her an Abdul Pasha and lit it for her hesitantly, turning to speak to her husband as if he were in fact addressing her, or when he stood waiting, heels together, with an almost military air, while Mecha Inzunza rose from her chair, casually extending a hand toward his, placing the other on the black lapel of his tailcoat as the two of them started to move in perfect harmony, skillfully avoiding the clumsier or less attractive couples already swaying on the dance floor.

  “It will be fun,” Armando de Troeye said, draining his glass. It sounded like the conclusion to a long inner debate.

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  Bewildered, Max didn’t know what they meant. He wasn’t even sure they were talking about the same thing.

  The clock in the smoking room at the Hotel Palace in Buenos Aires said a quarter past four when Max saw them crossing the lobby: Armando de Troeye was sporting a boater and a cane; his wife wore an elegant georgette ruffled dress with a leather belt and a wide-brimmed sun hat. He picked up his own Knapp-Felt hat (perfectly acceptable if a little shabby) and went over greet them. De Troeye apologized for their lateness (“You know, the Jockey Club and that excessive Argentinian hospitality, everyone talking about frozen meat and English thoroughbreds”), and as Max had been waiting so long, Armando suggested they go for a walk to stretch their legs and have a coffee somewhere. Mecha Inzunza made her excuses, declaring she was tired, and arranged to meet them at dinnertime, then proceeded toward the elevators as she pulled off her gloves. Max and de Troeye left the hotel together, chatting as they strolled beneath the arcades along Leandro N. Alem, the landscaped avenue opposite the port bordered by ancient trees that spring had festooned with yellow and gold blossoms.

  “Barracas, you say,” de Troeye commented after listening with rapt attention. “Is that a street, or a neighborhood?”

  “A neighborhood. I think that would be best . . . Or we could try La Boca.”

  “Which would you suggest?”

  Max said he thought Barracas was better. They both had corner cafés and brothels, but La Boca was too close to the port, and therefore swarming with sailors, dockworkers, and passing immigrants. Dives full of foreign riffraff, for want of a better word. There they played and danced a frenchified tango in the Parisian style, interesting but less pure. Barracas, on the other hand, with its Italian, Spanish, and Polish immigrants, was more authentic. Even the musicians were. Or seemed to be.

  “I understand,” de Troeye smiled, contented. “An immigrant’s dagger is more tango than a sailor’s switchblade.”

  Max burst out laughing.

  “Something like that. Only don’t be deceived. A knife can be equally dangerous in one place as in the other. . . . Besides, nowadays almost everyone prefers to carry a gun.”

  They turned left on the corner of Corrientes, near the Stock Exchange, leaving behind the arcades. Farther down the street, a stretch of asphalt road had been dug up as far as the old Post Office, in preparation for the new underground railway.

  “What I would ask,” Max added, “is that both you and your wife dress discreetly. As I said, no flashy clothes or jewelry. And no bulky wallets.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be discreet. I wouldn’t want to get you into any trouble.”

  Max halted, letting his companion go ahead of him around a workmen’s trench.

  “If there’s trouble, we’ll all be in it together. . . . Is it absolutely necessary for your wife to accompany us?”

  “You don’t know Mecha. She would never forgive me for leaving her behind at the hotel. Our outing to the slums excites her like nothing else.”

  Max considered the implications of the verb “to excite” with a feeling of irritation. He detested the way the de Troeyes used certain words so glibly. Then he recalled the glint in Mecha Inzunza�
��s eyes on board the Cap Polonio when she contemplated their trip to the poor neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. Perhaps, he concluded, some words were more appropriate than they seemed.

  “Why have you agreed to escort us there, Max? . . . Why are you doing this for us?”

  Taken off guard, Max glanced at de Troeye. The question had sounded sincere, spontaneous. And yet the composer’s face was blank. As if he were asking out of politeness, mere formality, his thoughts elsewhere.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  They continued walking up the street beyond Reconquista and San Martin. Workmen were digging more trenches below the tramcar cables and electric street lamps, and numerous automobiles and carriages for hire circulated between them, slowing whenever they reached a narrow part of the street. The sidewalks were teeming with people.

  “Needless to say, I’ll reward you generously.”