What We Become (56 page)

“I have to admit it, granddad. You've got guts.”

Then he signals to the others, who cover Max's head again with the wet towel.

The Blue Train was speeding northward through the night, leaving Nice and its perils behind. After draining the last sip of a forty-eight-year-old Armagnac and dabbing his mouth with a napkin, Max left a tip on the tablecloth and walked out of the restaurant car. Five minutes before, the woman he had shared the table with had stood up and made her way toward the same carriage as Max: number two. Fate had brought them together at the first sitting for dinner, after Max had seen her embracing a man moments before the train pulled out of the station. She was French, around forty years old, and wore with an easy elegance what Max's trained eye thought was a Maggy Rouff suit. He also noticed the gold wedding band on her left hand, next to a sapphire ring. They didn't engage in conversation when he took a seat opposite her, apart from the obligatory
bonsoir
. They ate in silence, exchanging an occasional polite smile when they caught each other's eye or the waiter topped up their wineglasses. She was attractive, he decided, as he took his napkin off his plate: big eyes, finely penciled eyebrows, and just the right amount of red lipstick. After finishing her
filet de boeuf-­forestière
she said no to dessert and reached for a packet of Gitanes. Max leaned over the table to light her cigarette. It took him a while to open the dented lighter, and their first exchange on that pretext gave rise to a superficial, pleasant conversation: Nice, the rain, the winter season, the advent of paid holidays, the World Exhibition that was coming to a close in Paris. Having broken the ice, they
went on to discuss other topics. The man she had bade farewell to on the platform was indeed her husband. They lived in Cap Ferrat for most of the year, but she spent a week in Paris each month for her work: she was fashion editor at
Marie Claire
. Five minutes later, the woman was chuckling at Max's jokes and watching his mouth as he spoke. Had he never thought of being a male model? she asked after a while. Finally she glanced at her tiny wristwatch, remarked on how late it was, took her leave of Max with a broad smile, and left the restaurant car. By a pleasant quirk of fate their compartments were adjacent: numbers four and five. The vagaries of trains and life.

Max walked through the lounge bar (which at that time of night was as busy as the Ritz), stepping over the gangway connection between the cars, where the rattle of the train and the drone of the wheels was loudest. He stopped at the end of the carriage, where the conductor was checking the list of the ten compartments in his charge by the light of a small lamp that made the gold-colored lions on his pocket flaps gleam. The conductor was a small, friendly looking fellow, bald with a mustache, and a scar on his head—from a piece of shrapnel on the Somme, Max discovered when he asked about it. They chatted for a while about battle scars, and then about sleeping cars, Pullmans, and international railway lines and trains. Max produced his cigarette case at the right moment, accepted a light from the conductor's book of matches bearing the company's insignia, and when they had finished smoking their cigarettes and exchanging confidences, any passing passenger would have taken them for old friends. Five minutes later, Max glanced at his watch, and in the tone of someone who, had the roles been reversed, would have done the same for him, asked the conductor to avail himself of his key to open the door between compartments four and five.

“I can't do that,” the employee protested feebly. “It's against the rules.”

“I know it is, my friend . . . But I also know that you'll make an exception because it's me.”

As he spoke, he slipped into the conductor's hand, with a discreet, almost indifferent gesture, a couple of one-hundred-franc notes identical to the one he had tipped him with when boarding the train at Nice. The conductor wavered for a moment, although this was clearly more to do with upholding the reputation of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits than anything else. At last, he pocketed the money and put on his cap with the knowing expression of a man of the world.

“Breakfast at seven, sir?” he asked, completely naturally, as they walked down the corridor.

“Yes. Seven will be perfect.”

There was an almost imperceptible pause.

“For one, or for two?”

“For one, if you'd be so kind.”

On hearing this, the conductor, who had reached Max's door, gave him a smile of appreciation. It was a pleasure (Max could read his thoughts) to work with gentlemen who still knew how to conduct themselves.

“Naturally, sir.”

That night and the ones that followed, Max had little sleep. The woman's name was Marie-Chantal Héliard; she was athletic, passionate, and droll, and he continued to see her during his four-day stay in Paris. It provided him with the ideal cover, and moreover she gave him ten thousand francs to add to the thirty thousand from Tomás Ferriol's safe. On the fifth day, after much reflecting about his own immediate future, Max transferred all the money he had at Barclays Bank in Monte Carlo and drew it out in cash. Then he went to Thomas Cook on Rue de Rivoli, where he bought a train ticket to Le Havre and a first-class passage to New York on the transatlantic liner
Normandie
. As he was settling his bill at H
Ô
tel Meurice, he placed Count Ciano's letters in a manila envelope and
sent them via messenger to the Italian embassy without any card or explanation. However, before handing the envelope to the concierge together with a tip, he paused for a moment and smiled wistfully to himself. Then he plucked his fountain pen from his pocket and scrawled on the back in capital letters, by way of a return address, the names Mauro Barbaresco and Domenico Tignanello.

Max has lost all sense of time. After the darkness and the pain, the interrogation and the incessant blows, he is surprised that it's still light outside the room when they remove the wet towel again. His head is aching so much that his eyeballs feel as if they are about to pop out of their sockets with each erratic beat of his heart and rush of blood through his temples. And yet it's been a while since they stopped hitting him. Now he can hear voices speaking in Russian and make out vague shapes as his eyes become accustomed to the light. When at last he manages to focus clearly, he discovers a fifth man in the room: blond, burly, with watery, blue eyes that are gazing at him inquisitively. He looks familiar, although in his present state, Max is unable to order his memories or thoughts. After a moment, the blond man makes an incredulous, disapproving face. Then he shakes his head and exchanges a few words with the man with the ginger mustache, who has stood up and is also looking at Max. The man with the ginger mustache appears not to like what he is hearing, for he responds with irritation and a gesture of impatience. The other man answers back and their discussion grows more heated. Finally, the blond man utters what appears to be an abrupt command and storms out of the room at the very moment Max recognizes him as the grand master Mikhail Sokolov.

The man with the ginger mustache has gone over to Max. He studies him, as though appraising the damage. Apparently he doesn't find it excessive, because he shrugs and says a few gruff words to his companions. Max tenses again, anticipating the wet
towel and more blows, but that isn't what happens. What the man with lank hair does is fetch a glass of water and place it, brusquely, to Max's lips.

“You're very fortunate,” the man with the ginger mustache says.

Max drinks greedily, spilling the water. Then, with the liquid running over his chin onto his chest, he looks up at his interlocutor, who is observing him with a serious expression.

“You're a thief, a charlatan, and an undesirable with a criminal record,” the Russian says, moving his face closer to Max until he is almost touching him. “Your employer, Dr. Hugentobler, will be informed of this today, at his clinic in Lake Garda. He will also discover that you have been parading around Sorrento in his clothes, with his money and his Rolls-Royce. And more importantly: the Soviet Union won't forget your actions. Wherever you go, we'll do our best to make your life difficult. Until one day someone knocks on your door to finish what we started. . . . We want you to think about that every night when you go to sleep and every morning when you open your eyes.”

With this, he gestures to the man in the black leather jacket, and there is the sound of a knife blade opening in his hands. Still dazed, as if he were floating in a cloud of mist, Max feels the ropes slacken. A tingling sensation, which makes him gasp with surprise, flows through his swollen arms and legs.

“Now get out of here, and bury yourself in the deepest hole you can find, granddad. . . . Wherever you go, whatever you do, from now on you're finished. A dead man.”

13

T
he Glove and the Necklace

H
E HAS HAD
a hard time getting there. Before straightening his clothes with an instinctive gesture and knocking on the door, Max looks at himself in a mirror in the corridor to check the visible ravages. To see how far pain, old age, and death have progressed since the last time. But there is nothing extraordinary about his appearance. For the most part, anyway. The wet towel did its job, he observes with a mixture of resentment and relief. The only marks on his pallid face are the dark rings of fatigue around his puffy eyelids. His eyes also look feverish, the whites bloodshot as though hundreds of tiny blood vessels had broken inside them. But the worst damage is what can't be seen, he concludes, as he takes the last few steps toward Mecha Inzunza's door, pausing to lean against the wall and catch his breath: the bruising on his chest and stomach; his slow, irregular pulse, which exhausts him, requiring a supreme effort with every movement and covers
him in a cold sweat beneath the clothes that chafe against his raw skin. Only through sheer willpower has he managed to disguise his acute discomfort, forcing himself to walk upright as he crossed the hotel lobby. He has an intense, overwhelming urge to lie down somewhere, anywhere, to close his eyes and drift into a prolonged sleep. To sink into the oblivion of a void as peaceful as death itself.

“My God . . . Max.”

She is standing in the doorway to her room, looking at him in astonishment. The smile he is forcing himself to maintain doesn't seem to reassure her in the slightest, because she hurriedly takes Max's arm, propping him up despite his feeble protests as he tries to take the last few paces on his own.

“What's wrong? Are you ill? . . . What's the matter with you?”

He doesn't reply. The distance over to the bed seems interminable as his knees begin to give way. Finally, he slips out of his jacket and sits on the edge of the bed with an immense feeling of relief, his arms clutching his stomach, stifling a howl of pain as he doubles over.

“What have they done to you?” she asks, understanding at last.

He doesn't remember lying down, but he is in that position now, on his back. It is Mecha who is perched on the edge of the bed, one hand on his forehead and the other taking his pulse as she looks at him with alarm.

“A conversation,” Max finally manages to say in a choked voice. “It was just . . . a conversation.”

“With whom?”

He shrugs. But the smile that accompanies his gesture dissolves into a painful grimace.

“It doesn't matter who.”

Mecha reaches for the telephone beside the bed.

“I'm calling a doctor.”

“Forget about doctors.” He restrains her arm weakly. “I'm very tired, that's all . . . I'll be fine in a while.”

“Was it the police?” she asks, her concern apparently extending beyond Max's health. “Sokolov's people?”

“Not the police. It's all in the family, for now.”

“Devils! Swine!”

He tries to adjust his lips into a stoical grin, but only manages a lopsided pout.

“Put yourself in their place,” he says, objectively. “Talk about a dirty trick.”

“Will they report the theft?”

“I didn't get that impression.” He feels his stomach, gingerly. “In fact, I got a very different impression.”

Mecha looks at him as if she hasn't followed him. Finally she nods as she strokes his disheveled gray locks.

“Did my package arrive?” he asks.

“Of course it did. It's in a safe place.”

Easy as pie, Max tells himself. An innocent package for Mercedes Inzunza left with Tiziano Spadaro, and delivered to her room by a bellboy. The old way of doing things. The art of simplicity.

“Does your son know about it? . . . About what I did?”

“I prefer to wait until the contest is over. He has enough on his plate already with Irina.”

“What's happening with her? Does she know you're onto her?”

“Not yet. And I'm hoping she won't find out for a while.”

A sudden spasm makes Max cry out. Mecha attempts to undo his shirt, wet with perspiration.

“Let me see what's wrong.”

“It's nothing,” he protests, pushing her hands away.

“Tell me what they did to you.”

“Nothing serious. I told you, we just had a conversation.”

The two honey-colored eyes are staring so fixedly at him that Max can almost see himself reflected in them. I like it when she looks at me like that, he says to himself. I like it a lot. Especially today. Now.

“Not one word, Mecha. . . . I didn't say a word. I admitted nothing. Not even about myself.”

“I know, Max. I know you . . .”

“You may not believe this, but I didn't find it so hard. I didn't care, do you understand? . . . What they did to me.”

“You were very courageous.”

“It wasn't courage. It was just what I said. Indifference.”

He inhales deeply, trying to get his energy back, although with each breath he is racked with pain. He is so exhausted he could sleep for days. His pulse is still erratic, as if his heart were emptying out at times. She seems to realize this. Concerned, she stands up and brings him a glass of water from which he takes small, cautious sips. The liquid soothes his burning mouth, but hurts when it reaches his stomach.

“Let me call a doctor.”

“No doctors . . . I just need to rest. To sleep for a while.”

“Of course.” Mecha strokes his face. “Get some sleep.”

“I can't stay here at the hotel. I don't know what will happen. . . . Even if they don't accuse me openly, I'm in trouble. I have to go to Villa Oriana and return the clothes, the car . . . everything.”

He makes as if to get up, but she gently restrains him.

“Don't worry. Rest. That can wait a few hours. I'll go to your room and pack your bags. . . . Do you have the key?”

“It's in my jacket.”

She holds the glass up to his mouth again and Max takes several more sips, until the pain in his stomach becomes unbearable. Then he lies back, exhausted.

“I did it, Mecha.”

There is a hint of pride in his voice. She notices it and smiles with wistful appreciation.

“Yes, you did it. My God, you did. Incredibly well.”

“When the time is right, tell your son it was me.”

“I will. . . . You can count on it.”

“Tell him I climbed up there and took that damned book from them. Now the girl and the book make it a tie, don't they? . . . Like you say in chess, a draw.”

“Of course.”

He grins with a sudden hope.

“Perhaps your son will become world champion. . . . Then he might like me more.”

“I'm sure he will.”

Max sits up a little, and clasps her wrist with sudden urgency.

“You can tell me now. He's not my son, is he? . . . At least, you aren't sure. Of anything.”

“Come on, go to sleep now. . . .” She makes him lie back. “You old rogue. You wonderful fool.”

Max is resting. At times he sleeps deeply; at others he drifts in and out of consciousness. Occasionally, he gives a start and moans as he emerges, confused, from rambling, meaningless nightmares. He feels a physical pain and a dream pain that become superimposed and mixed up, vying in intensity so that he finds it hard to distinguish between real and imaginary sensations. Each time he opens his eyes it takes him a while to figure out where he is: the light outside has gradually seeped away until the objects in the room have become indistinct, and now there are only shadows. She remains next to him, leaning against the headboard of the still-made bed, a slightly clearer shadow among the others surrounding Max, the warmth of her body and the glowing tip of her cigarette close by.

“How are you?” she asks, noticing that he has moved and is awake.

“Tired. But I don't feel too bad. . . . Staying still helps. I needed sleep.”

“You still do. Sleep some more. I'll watch over you.”

Max, still dazed, wants to look around. Intent on remembering how he got there.

“What about my things? My suitcase?”

“I've packed everything. I brought your suitcase in here. It's by the door.”

He closes his eyes with relief: the contentment of someone who, for the moment, doesn't need to take charge of the situation. And finally it all comes back to him.

“As many years as the squares on a chessboard, you said.”

“That's right.”

“It wasn't for your son . . . I didn't do this for him.”

Mecha stubs out her cigarette.

“You mean, not entirely.”

“Yes. Maybe that's what I mean.”

She has moved away from the headboard slightly to nestle alongside him.

“I still don't know why you started all this,” she says in a hushed voice.

The darkness makes the situation seem very strange, he thinks. Unreal. As if in a different time. Another world. Other bodies.

“Why I came to the hotel, and all the rest of it?”

“Yes.”

Max smiles, knowing she can't see his face.

“I wanted to be what I once was,” he says simply. “To feel the way I did then . . . One of my most absurd plans was the possibility of stealing from you again.”

She seems astonished. And skeptical.

“You don't expect me to believe that.”

“
Steal
probably isn't the right word. Definitely not. But that was my intention. Not because of the money, of course. Not because . . .”

“Yes,” she cuts across him, convinced at last. “I understand.”

“That first day, I searched this room. I could smell traces of you.
Imagine. Twenty-nine years later, recognizing you in every object. And I found the necklace.”

Max inhales her closeness, alert to each sensation. She smells of tobacco mixed with the subtle aroma of perfume. For a moment he wonders whether her naked skin, wrinkled, blemished with age, also smells the way it did when they embraced in Nice or in Buenos Aires. Probably not, he concludes. Or surely not. No more than his own does.

“I intended to steal your necklace,” he says after a pause. “Nothing else. To seduce you for the third time, I suppose. To make off with it the way I did that night when we got back from La Boca.”

Mecha remains silent for a moment.

“That necklace isn't worth as much as when we first met,” she says at last. “I doubt you'd get half the price for it now.”

“That's not the point. It isn't about whether it's worth more or less. It was a way of . . . well. I don't know. A way.”

“Of feeling young and triumphant?”

He nods in the darkness.

“Of telling you I haven't forgotten. I didn't forget.”

Another silence. And another question.

“Why did you never stay?”

“You were a dream come to life.” He reflects before continuing, making every effort to be precise. “A mystery from another world. I never imagined I had the right.”

“You did. It was there in front of your stupid eyes.”

“I couldn't see it. It was impossible . . . It didn't correspond with the way I saw things.”

“Your sword and your steed, right?”

Max makes a sincere effort to cast his mind back.

“I don't remember that,” Max says at last.

“Of course not. But I do. I remember every word you said.”

“In any case, I always felt you were a bird of passage in my life.”

“It's strange you should say that. That was how you felt to me.”

Mecha has risen to her feet and is walking toward the window. She draws the curtain back a little, and the electric lights from the terrace below outline her dark, motionless figure against the glow.

“But those moments kept me going all my life, Max. Our silent tango in the Palm Room on the
Cap Polonio
 . . . the glove I put in your pocket that night at La Ferroviaria, the same one I went to pick up the next day from your room in the boardinghouse in Buenos Aires.”

He nods, even though she can't see him.

“The glove and the necklace . . . Yes. I remember the light from that window on the tiled floor and the bed. Your naked body and my astonishment at how beautiful you were.”

“My God,” she whispers, as if to herself. “You were so handsome, Max. Suave and handsome. A perfect gentleman.”

He laughs, obliquely. Between gritted teeth.

“I was never that,” he replies.

“You were more so than the majority of men I knew. . . . A true gentleman is someone to whom being or not being a gentleman is all the same.”

She walks back over to the bed. She has left the curtain open a crack behind her, and the faint glow from outside reveals the shapes of things in the darkness of the room.

“What intrigued me from the start was that your ambition had neither passion nor greed in it. That calm absence of expectation.”