What We Become (22 page)

“Your husband is drinking too much,” Max said to Mecha.

“Don't interfere.”

He looked nervously at the pearls she was wearing that evening, which touched the neckline of her black knee-length dress. Then, with equal unease (wearing jewelry or drinking to excess in a place like La Ferroviaria wasn't a good idea), he glanced over at the table laden with bottles, glasses, and brimming ashtrays, where Armando de Troeye sat smoking and topping up his glass with gin and soda, accompanied by Juan Rebenque, who two days before had danced a tango with his wife. Soon after they arrived, after watching them for a while, Rebenque had approached their table, his criollo mustache and black, slicked-back hair giving him a serious air, while his dark eyes flashed dangerously beneath the brim of his hat, which he never once took off. He took his time strolling over, a half-smoked cigar in the corner of his mouth, walking with that slow, rolling gait typical of the old toughs, one hand in his right pocket, knife bulging under his snug jacket with satin trim. He asked whether he might join the lady and the two gentlemen, while ordering a fresh bottle of gin and a full soda siphon from the waitress, with the authority of someone accustomed to not paying the bill. It was on him, if they had no objections, he said, looking more at Max than at Armando.

The one-eyed squeezebox player and his fellow musicians took a break, and, encouraged by de Troeye, drew their chairs around the table as Mecha and Max returned to their seats. The old pianola took up the musical baton, churning out a couple of unrecognizable tangos. After a long round of drinks and conversation, the musicians went back to their instruments, launching into “Wild Nights.” Rebenque, rakishly tipping the brim of his hat even farther, suggested to Mecha they dance together. She refused, claiming she was tired, and although the
compadrón'
s smile remained impassive, he looked daggers at Max, as though he were to blame for the snub. Rebenque doffed his hat casually, rose to his feet, and went over to the blonde dancer, who stood up with a sigh, and,
placing her arm over his right shoulder, started to dance resignedly. Rebenque moved in time with the music, enjoying himself, manly and serious, holding his lighted cigar behind his back, while his free hand guided his partner with apparent ease. He paused for a moment after each
corte
, then continued to sketch tangled figures on the floor, before halting his forward and backward movements once more, only to begin again. Meanwhile, the woman acquiesced with a look of apathy on her face (during one
corte
, her overly short skirt rode up to reveal almost the whole of her thigh), consenting submissively to each movement, each flourish, each hold imposed by the man.

“What do you think of her?” Mecha asked Max.

“I don't know . . . Vulgar. Jaded.”

“Perhaps she is controlled by one of those shady organizations you told me about. . . . Possibly they lured her over from Russia or somewhere, with false promises.”

“The white slave trade,” Armando de Troeye said in a faltering voice, as he raised yet another gin to his lips with relish. The idea seemed to amuse him.

Max glanced at Mecha to see if she had been serious. After a moment's reflection he decided she hadn't.

“She looks more like she's from around here,” Max replied. “And going nowhere fast.”

“Vulgar, yes, but pretty,” de Troeye piped up again, sniggering unpleasantly. His eyes were becoming bleary from too much drink, Max noticed.

Mecha continued gazing at the blonde woman. She was following her partner's catlike movements across the creaking floor, her body pressed against his.

“Do you like her, Max?” she asked suddenly.

Max took his time stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. The conversation was starting to make him ill at ease.

“She's not bad,” he admitted.

“How dismissive. And yet the other night you seemed to enjoy dancing with her.”

Max contemplated the smudge of lipstick on the rim of Mecha's glass, and on the ivory cigarette holder next to the smoky ashtray. He could feel the taste of that deep red in his own mouth, which had removed all trace of it on Mecha's lips as he kissed, licked, and bit her during their violent embrace the day before at the Caboto boardinghouse. Only at the end was there any hint of tenderness, when, with a final shudder, she had whispered in his ear “out, please,” and he, exhausted and on the brink, had obeyed, slowly pulling out, his perspiring body pressed against hers as he gently spilled himself onto her smooth, inviting stomach.

“Do you mean she dances the tango well?” he commented, his thoughts returning to La Ferroviaria.

“She has a good body,” declared de Troeye, who was watching the dancer through the glass he was holding up shakily.

“Like mine?”

Mecha had turned toward Max, half-smiling. She was directing the question at him, at once playful and supercilious. As though her husband weren't there. Or, Max concluded uneasily, precisely because he was.

“She's a different sort,” Max replied, as cautiously as if he were advancing through the mist at Taxuda, bayonet at the ready.

“That goes without saying,” Mecha retorted.

Max shot Armando a sidelong glance wondering how this would end (a few hours ago, the two men had spontaneously begun using the informal
tu
with each other, at de Troeye's instigation). But de Troeye only seemed interested in his gin and soda, which he had all but sunk his nose into.

“You're taller,” he declared clicking his tongue. “Isn't she, Max? . . . And skinnier.”

“Thank you, Armando,” she said. “For being so precise.”

She lifted her glass in an exaggeratedly polite toast to her hus
band that was bordering on the grotesque, and brimming with innuendos Max couldn't decipher. Then she fell silent. Max noticed that de Troeye would occasionally pause and stare into space, the smoke from his cigarette making him wince, apparently absorbed by musical modulations only he could hear, skillfully tapping out notes and chords on the table in a way that scarcely evoked the gestures of a man the worse for drink. Wondering how inebriated he actually was, and to what extent he merely gave that impression, Max looked at Mecha, and then at Rebenque and the blonde woman. The music had stopped, and the man had turned his back on his tango partner and was sauntering toward them, in his habitual way.

“We should go,” said Max.

Between two sips, de Troeye emerged from his stupor to approve the idea.

“To another bar?”

“To bed. I imagine your tango is almost ready. . . . La Ferroviaria has nothing more to offer.”

Armando protested. Rebenque, who had sat between him and Mecha, was looking at the three of them with a smile so artificial it looked as it had been painted on his face, as he tried to follow their conversation. He seemed aggrieved, perhaps because no one had praised his masterful tango with the blonde woman.

“And what about me, Max?” asked Mecha.

He turned toward her, awkwardly. Her lips were parted slightly, and her eyes flashed defiantly. He knew that in days gone by he would have been capable of killing in cold blood to have her to himself. To quell his own urgency by stripping off her dress, almost soaked through, which in the warm, smoke-filled air clung to her body like a dark skin.

“Perhaps I am not ready for bed yet,” she insisted.

“We could go to La Boca,” suggested de Troeye jovially, draining his gin and soda with the air of someone coming back from a distant place. “And look for something to keep us up.”

“All right,” she said, rising to her feet and picking her shawl up from the back of the chair, while her husband took out his wallet. “Let's take the vulgar, pretty blonde with us.”

“That isn't a good idea,” Max protested.

Mecha and he tried to outstare one another. What the hell are you thinking, was his unspoken question. Her disdain was response enough. Ask for more cards, or throw in your hand, her expression implied. Depending on your curiosity or your courage. You know the prize.

“On the contrary.” De Troeye was counting out ten-peso notes with faltering fingers. “Inviting the young lady along is a . . . fantastic idea.”

Rebenque offered to escort the dancer, as there was room for everyone in the gentlemen's big automobile, he said. He knew a good place in La Boca. Casa Margot. The best ravioli in Buenos Aires.

“Ravioli?” said de Troeye, bewildered.

“Cocaine,” Max translated.

“That's right,” declared Rebenque, pointedly. “You can stay awake as long as you like.”

He spoke with his eye on Mecha and Max rather than her husband, as though he knew instinctively who his real opponent was. For his part, Max was wary of the ruffian's static smile, the overbearing way he called over the blonde woman (he told them her name was Melina, and she was of Polish descent), and his surreptitious glance at the wallet Armando de Troeye slipped back into his inside jacket pocket after extracting a fifty, which, together with a generous tip, he left crumpled on the table.

“Too many people,” Max murmured, putting on his hat.

Rebenque must have overheard him, for he gave Max a slow, indignant smile. Sharp as a razor.

“Do you know the neighborhood, my friend?”

Max couldn't help noticing the subtle change in the way Reben
que addressed him. No longer gentleman but friend. It was clear the night had just begun.

“Somewhat,” he replied. “I lived three blocks from here. A long time ago.”

The other man looked Max up and down, paying special attention to his pristine cuffs. His immaculate tie.

“Yet you talk like a Spaniard.”

“I worked hard to get there.”

They continued studying each other in silence for a moment, with mutual distrust, while Rebenque flicked the last bit of ash from his cigar with the elongated nail on his little finger. Some situations shouldn't be hurried. A lesson both men had learned on the same streets. Max figured Rebenque must be ten or twelve years older than him. Probably one of the local youths he had seen as a little boy in a gray smock, with a satchel full of books on his back, envying their freedom to loiter outside pool halls, hitch free rides on the backs of the Southern Electricity Company trams, lie in wait like bandits for the carts selling Aguila chocolate, and filch croissants from the counter at the Mortero bakery.

“In which street, my friend?”

“Vieytes. Opposite the 105 tram stop.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” the other man declared. “Almost neighbors.”

The blonde woman took his arm, her breasts thrust forward beneath her half-unbuttoned blouse. She wore a cheap-looking imitation Manila shawl draped over her shoulders, and was gaping at Max and the de Troeyes with renewed interest, arching her plucked eyebrows, reduced to a thin, black pencil line. It was obvious that the prospect of leaving La Ferroviaria for a while appealed to her more than the monotony of tangos at twenty cents a dance.

“Allonzenfanz,” de Troeye declared cheerfully, seizing his hat and cane and making his way toward the door, staggering from the effects of alcohol.

As they stepped outside, Petrossi drove the Pierce-Arrow up and they all piled into the back. De Troeye sat on the backseat flanked by Mecha and Melina, with Max and Rebenque on the jump seats opposite. By then, Melina had understood the situation, realized who was paying for the party, and obediently followed the silent instructions Rebenque's darting eyes flashed at her through the gloom. Max observed all this, tense as a coiled spring, calculating the pros and cons, foreseeing the problems they might encounter, and the best way to escape from that dangerous territory when the time came, relatively unscathed and without a knife in the groin. As everyone from that neighborhood knew, no tourniquet could stanch a bleeding femoral artery.

Just after ten o'clock at night the game is adjourned. It is dark outside, and in the picture windows of the Hotel Vittoria images of the room reflected in the glass are superimposed on the lights from the villas and hotels along Sorrento's cliff top. Sitting in the audience, Max gazes at the big wooden panel reproducing the game, including the last move Sokolov made before the referee approached the table. The Russian scribbled something on his score sheet, then rose to leave the room while Keller remained behind studying the chessboard. After a while, Keller also scribbled something on his score sheet, but without moving any of his pieces, and slipped both score sheets into the same envelope, which he sealed before handing it to the referee.

And now, as Keller vanishes through a side door, the audience breaks its silence with murmurs and applause. Max stands up and glances about, puzzled, trying to determine what has just happened. He watches from a distance as Mecha Inzunza, who has been sitting in the front row between Irina Jasenovic and the burly grand master Karapetian, gets up to follow them and her son.