What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “So what?” he murmurs.

  “So, nothing.” Irina moves her head and Max’s reflection bobs up and down in her dark glasses. “He goes down, and there she is with everything ready: orange juice, fruit, coffee, toast. Waiting for him.”

  The red and green lights on a boat sailing out of Nice harbor advanced slowly between the dark stains of the sea and sky, against the flashes from the lighthouse beyond. Separated from the port by the dark hill of the castle, the city encircled the Bay of Angels like a luminous strip, curving slightly southward, from which a few specks of light have detached themselves, to drift up toward the nearby hills.

  “I’m cold,” Mecha Inzunza said with a shiver.

  She was sitting behind the wheel of a car she herself had driven there, in her shimmering gown, her embroidered silk shawl with long tassels wrapped around her shoulders. From the passenger seat, Max leaned toward the dashboard, slipped off his jacket, and draped it over her. In his shirtsleeves and skimpy vest, he, too, could feel the dawn chill seeping through the closed roof of the convertible.

  Mecha rummaged in her bag in the dark. He heard her crumple an empty pack of cigarettes. She had finished them after dinner, and then smoking with him there in the car. It felt like an eternity ago, Max reflected, since he had taken his place at the dining table, next to an extremely thin, middle-aged Frenchwoman who designed jewelry for Van Cleef & Arpels, and the young blonde with the cheap perfume: a singer and actress named Elvira Popescu, who turned out to be an amusing tablemate. During dinner, Max gave his attention to both women, although he ended up chatting more with the actress, who was delighted that the attractive, elegant gentleman on her left was from Argentina (I’m crazy about tango, she declared). The younger woman giggled a lot, especially when Max gave a discreet imitation of the different ways screen actors like Leslie Howard or Laurence Olivier lit a cigarette or held a glass. A good raconteur, he told a funny story that made the older lady smile, and even lean toward them with interest. Each time the young actress laughed, Max disguised his unease as he felt Mecha Inzunza observing him from the other end of the table, where she was sitting next to the fair-haired, mustachioed Chilean gentleman. Over dessert, he saw her drink two cups of coffee and smoke four cigarettes.

  After that, everything happened as it should have. Without forcing the issue, she and Max avoided each other when all the guests left the dining room. Later, while he was chatting to the Colls, the young actress, and the Chilean diplomat, their hostess approached the group, informing the baroness that a dear friend of hers, who had come there unaccompanied, was feeling unwell and was preparing to return to her house in Antibes, and would she mind awfully if Max accompanied her, for they had just discovered they were old acquaintances. Max confirmed that this was true and agreed to the request. After first hesitating, almost imperceptibly, for an instant, Asia gave her consent. Of course she didn’t mind, she declared, charmingly cooperative, before observing wittily that Max was the perfect companion for any woman feeling under the weather, or even in perfect health. There were sympathetic smiles, apologies, and thanks all around. The baroness gave Max a long, knowing look (how do you do these things, she seemed to be saying, admiringly) while Susana Ferriol glanced at him out of the corner of her eye with fresh and barely concealed curiosity as she shepherded him toward the entrance where Mecha Inzunza was waiting, enveloped in her shawl.

  After formally taking their leave, they walked outside, where, instead of a large, chauffeur-driven limousine, Max was surprised to find a small Citroën 7C two-seater with its engine running, which an attendant had just parked at the front of the house. Mecha paused beside the open car door, and began to touch up her makeup with the lipstick and mirror she had fished out of her bag, in the light of the lanterns illuminating the steps and the circular driveway. Afterward, they climbed into the car and she drove in silence for five minutes, Max gazing at her profile in the glare of the headlights reflecting off the walls of the villas. The car stopped near the sea, at an overlook close to Le Lazaret, amid pines and agaves. From there they could make out the flashing lighthouse, the harbor entrance, the dark mass of the hill beneath the castle, and the lights of Nice in the distance. Then she switched off the engine and they talked. They continued to do so, between lengthy silences, as they smoked in the dark, scarcely able to see in the dimness of distant lights or the glow of cigarettes. Without looking at each other.

  “Give me one of your Turkish ones, please.”

  She hadn’t lost the ease of tone and manner he had so admired on board the Cap Polonio, typical of young women of her generation, brought up on movies, novels, and illustrated women’s magazines. But nine years later she was no longer a girl. She must have been thirty-two or thirty-three, Max calculated, looking back. A couple of years younger than him.

  “Of course. Forgive me.”

  He took his cigarette case from his inside jacket pocket, felt for a cigarette, and lit it with his Dunhill. Then, without extinguishing the flame, he exhaled the first puff of smoke and placed the cigarette directly between her lips. Before snapping the lighter shut, he was able once again to make out her silent profile facing the sea, just as it had been earlier when it was lit up by the intermittent beams from the lighthouse.

  “You haven’t told me where your husband is.”

  He had been turning the question over in his mind all evening. Despite the passage of time, a slew of memories was washing over him. Far too many intense images. Armando de Troeye’s absence somehow distorted the situation. Made everything feel incomplete. Still more unreal. The tip of Mecha’s cigarette glowed twice before she spoke again.

  “He’s in prison in Madrid. They arrested him a few days after the military uprising.”

  “Despite his fame?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. Almost silent.

  “Because of it, you ought to say. Have you forgotten what Spain is like? The paradise of envy, barbarity, and treachery.”

  “Still, it seems absurd. Why Armando? I didn’t think he was active in politics.”

  “He never took sides. He has as many Republican friends on the left as he does monarchist friends on the right. Add to that the jealousy over his international fame. And finally some statements he made in Le Figaro about the chaos and lack of authority in the Republican government, which brought him a few more enemies. As if that weren’t enough, the head of the secret service is a communist, and a composer, as mediocre as they come. Need I say more?”

  “I thought Armando’s fame would ensure your safety. Influential friends, success abroad . . .”

  “That’s what he thought. And so did I. But we were wrong.”

  “Were you there?”

  Mecha nodded. The military uprising took place when they were in San Sebastián, and when Armando de Troeye saw which way the wind was blowing, he convinced her to cross the border into France. They had planned to meet up in Biarritz, but before that, he said he wanted to drive to Madrid to deal with a few family matters. They arrested him shortly after he arrived. Denounced by the concierge.

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “Only a letter written three months ago from the Model Prison. As far as I know he is still there. I’ve made appeals through friends, and Picasso and the Red Cross are doing what they can. We are attempting a trade-off with another prisoner in the nationalist zone, but so far without result. And that worries me. There is a lot of talk about executions on both sides.”

  “Do you have enough funds to keep up this lifestyle?”

  “We saw what was coming in Spain, so Armando took precautions. And I know the right people who will make sure things remain as they should until this madness is over.”

  Max stared at the flashing lighthouse, without saying a word. His mind was on people whose money protected them, and what he understood by things remaining as they should, from the point of view of Susana Ferriol’s dinner guest
s. He thrust the thought aside, experiencing the familiar age-old pang of dim resentment. In fact, he concluded, the idea of Armando de Troeye betrayed by his concierge and marched off to prison by left-wing militias wasn’t so absurd, given the way the world was. Someone occasionally had to pay the price in the name of, or on behalf of, the right people. And it wasn’t such a high price. Even so, Mecha wasn’t far off the mark when she described the situation in Spain as madness. Traveling on his Venezuelan passport, Max had visited Barcelona on business a few months earlier. Five days had been enough for him to witness the sorry spectacle of the Republic plunging into chaos: Catalan separatists, communists, anarchists, Soviet agents, all protecting their own interests, killing one another miles from the battlefront. Settling scores with more ferocity than when fighting the fascists. Envy, barbarity, and treachery, Mecha had said with clearheaded precision. The diagnosis was correct.

  “Fortunately, I have no children,” she was saying. “It’s hard to flee with them in your arms when Troy is burning. Do you have children?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  A brief silence. Rather cautious, he thought he noticed. He anticipated her next question.

  “And you didn’t marry, either?”

  He smiled to himself. Mecha couldn’t see his face.

  “Not as far as I know.”

  She didn’t laugh at his joke, and another silence followed. The lights in Nice shimmered on the still, dark water beneath the parapet wall.

  “I thought I saw you once, from a distance. Three years ago, at the Longchamps racetrack. . . . Is that possible?”

  “Yes,” he lied. He had never been to Longchamps.

  “I asked my husband for the binoculars, but it was too late. I lost you.”

  Max was gazing into the darkness toward the now invisible hills around Le Lazaret. Susana Ferriol’s villa stood out in the distance, amid the shadows of the pine trees. He would have to approach from there, he thought, the day he made his move. From the sea, it should be fairly easy to climb over an unobtrusive part of the wall. In any event, he would need to look at everything more closely in daylight. Make an exhaustive study of the terrain. Find the way in, and more importantly the way out.

  “My memories of you are strange, Max . . . the Old School Tango. Our brief adventure.”

  Gradually he returned to her words. To her profile in the darkness.

  “That tune has haunted me for years,” she was saying. “I hear it everywhere.”

  “I imagine your husband won his wager with Ravel.”

  “Do you really remember that?” She seemed surprised. “The tango versus the bolero? It was terribly amusing. And Ravel was a good sport. The night of the premiere in the Salle Pleyel in Paris, he admitted defeat and invited us to dinner at Le Grand Véfour, with Stravinsky and a few other friends.”

  “Your husband composed a magnificent tango. It’s perfect.”

  “In fact all three of us created it. Have you ever danced to it?”

  “Many times.”

  “With other women, naturally.”

  “Of course.”

  Mecha leaned her head against the seat.

  “What happened to my white glove? Do you remember? You used it as a handkerchief in your jacket. Did I ever get it back?”

  “I think so. I don’t recall keeping it.”

  “What a shame.”

  She was holding her cigarette in the hand resting on the steering wheel, and each beam from the lighthouse illuminated curls of smoke drifting upward.

  “Do you miss your husband?” Max asked.

  “Sometimes.” Mecha hadn’t replied immediately. “But the Riviera is a good place to be. A sort of foreign legion that only allows in people with money; Spanish fugitives from one side or the other or both, Italians who dislike Mussolini, rich Germans fleeing the Nazis. . . . What most bothers me is not having been able to go to Spain for over a year. That cruel, stupid war.”

  “There is nothing to stop you from traveling to the nationalist zone if you want. The border at Hendaye is still open.”

  “When I say cruel and stupid, that goes for both sides.”

  The tip of her cigarette glowed once more. Then she rolled down the window and flung it into the darkness.

  “In any event, I was never dependent on Armando.”

  “You mean only for money?”

  “I see that your fine clothes can’t mask your impertinence, my dear.”

  He knew that she was looking at him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the distant glimmer of the lighthouse. Mecha shifted restlessly in her seat, and once again Max felt her closeness. Warm, he remembered. Slender, soft, and warm. He had been admiring her naked back at Susana Ferriol’s house, the low-cut ivory-colored satin dress, her bare arms, the curve of her neck as she tilted her head, her gestures as she spoke to the other guests, her pleasant smile. Her sudden seriousness when, from the far end of the table or of the main hall, she became aware of his eyes on her and turned her gaze on him.

  “I was a young girl when I first met Armando. He had experience, and imagination.”

  A violent rush of remembered images jostled in Max’s mind. A surfeit of sensations, he reflected. He preferred the word sensations to emotions. He did his best to collect himself. To listen to what she was saying.

  “Yes,” Mecha went on. “Armando’s imagination was the best thing about him. To begin with.”

  She had left the window open to the night breeze. After a moment, she rolled it back up.

  “He used to tell me about other women he had known,” she resumed. “For me it was like a game. A challenge. It excited me.”

  “He also beat you. The bastard.”

  “Don’t say that. . . . You don’t understand him. It was all part of the game.”

  She stirred again, and Max could hear the soft rustle of her dress against the leather seat. When they were leaving Susana Ferriol’s place, he had lightly touched her waist as he politely ushered her first through the main door, before going in front of her down the steps. During that tense moment, absorbed by the strangeness of the situation, he had not noticed his sensations (or perhaps they were emotions after all, he decided). Now, in the shadowy intimacy of the car, as he remembered the way her evening dress hugged her hips, he felt an all too real, overwhelmingly physical desire. An astonishing hunger for her skin, her flesh.

  “We ended up progressing from word to deed,” she was telling him. “Watching and being watched.”

  He returned to her words as though from a long way off, and for a while he didn’t realize that she was still talking about Armando de Troeye. About their strange relationship, to which on at least two occasions Max had been a witness and an unexpected participant in Buenos Aries.

  “I discovered, or he helped me discover those dark excesses. Desires I never imagined in myself. . . . And that fueled his own.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Now, you mean? Today?”

  She fell silent for a moment. Apparently surprised by his interruption, or his question. Her voice sounded sad when she spoke again.

  “That last night, in Buenos Aires . . .”

  She broke off, abruptly. Opening the door, she stepped out of the car and walked beneath the shadows of the pine trees until she reached the parapet wall overlooking the rocks and the sea. Max stayed where he was, apprehensive, before finally joining her.

  “Promiscuity,” he heard her say. “An ugly word.”

  Outside in the night air, the twinkling lights in Nice were smothered at regular intervals by the flashing lighthouse. Mecha gathered the tuxedo jacket around her, revealing the tassels of her light shawl. Max shivered in his shirtsleeves and vest. Without a word, he took a step toward her, prizing the lapels of the jacket out of her hands, and reached into the inside pocket for his cigarette case. As
he rummaged around, he inadvertently brushed her breast, hanging free beneath her silk shawl and satin gown. Mecha did nothing to stop him.

  “Money made it all easy. Armando could afford to buy me anything. Any situation.”

  Max tapped his last cigarette against the lid of the cigarette case. He had seen enough that last night in Buenos Aires to have no trouble imagining to what situations she was referring. The momentary flare of the lighter illuminated the pearl necklace close to his hands cupped around the flame.

  “Thanks to Armando, I discovered pleasures that drew out my pleasure,” she added. “Made it more intense. Dirtier, perhaps.”

  Max shivered, uncomfortable. He didn’t want to hear about this. And yet, he concluded with irritation, he had taken part in it himself. He had been a necessary collaborator, or accomplice: La Ferroviaria, Casa Margot, the blonde tango dancer, Armando de Troeye soused in alcohol and cocaine, slumped on the sofa at the Hotel Palace while they coupled shamelessly before his bleary eyes. Even now, the memory of it aroused his desire.

  “And then you came along,” Mecha had continued, “on that dance floor that swayed to the ship’s roll. With your winning smile. And your tangos. Appearing on cue. And yet . . .”

  She moved, withdrawing in the distant glow of the lighthouse, its beam circling over the rocks at Le Lazaret and the walls of the villas closest to the sea.

  “What a fool you were, my dear.”

  Max leaned over the parapet wall. This wasn’t the conversation he had expected that evening. No recriminations or threats, he noted. He had spent part of the time preparing to confront that other matter, but not this. Anticipating the understandable rage and recriminations of a wronged, and therefore dangerous, woman, but not the strange melancholy that imbued Mecha Inzunza’s words and silences. It struck him that the word wronged was inappropriate. At no moment had Mecha felt wronged. Not even when she had awoken that morning in the Hotel Palace in Buenos Aires to find him gone and her pearl necklace missing.