What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  That evening, the de Troeyes arrived together. Max was taking a breather next to the bank of palms alongside the stage, drinking a glass of water and smoking a cigarette. From there he saw the couple enter, preceded by the obsequious Schmöcker, with her walking slightly ahead. The husband had a white carnation in his black satin lapel, one hand in his pocket and the other holding a lighted cigarette. Armando de Troeye appeared indifferent to the interest he aroused in his fellow passengers. As for his wife, she looked as if she had just stepped out of the society pages of an illustrated magazine: she was wearing a long string of pearls with matching earrings. Slender, calm, walking confidently in high-heeled shoes to the gentle roll of the ship, her body etched long, straight lines onto her flowing jade gown (with an expert eye Max calculated it as costing at least five thousand francs on Rue de la Paix in Paris), which exposed her arms, shoulders, and back down to her waist, and was fastened around her neck by a fine strap, charmingly visible beneath her bobbed hair. Entranced, Max came to a two-fold conclusion. She was one of those women who at first glance ­appeared elegant, but when you looked again were beautiful. She also belonged to the select class of women born to wear gowns like that as if they were a second skin.

  He did not dance with her immediately. The orchestra played a Camel Walk then a shimmy (the absurdly titled “Tutankamon” was still in fashion), and Max was obliged to satisfy the wishes of two energetic young girls, watched over from a distance by their parents (two amiable-looking Brazilian couples), who were intent upon practicing the dance steps, not without skill: right shoulder followed by the left forward then back, until they decided they were exhausted, and had almost exhausted him. Afterward, when the first beats of a black bottom started (the title of the song was “Love and Popcorn”), Max’s services were solicited by an American woman, still in her prime, somewhat ungraceful but more than adequately clothed and bejeweled, who turned out to be an amusing dance partner, and, when he accompanied her back to her table, discreetly slipped a folded five-dollar bill into his hand. Several times during this last dance Max came close to the de Troeyes’ table, and yet each time he directed his gaze there, the woman seemed to be looking elsewhere. The table was now unoccupied and a waiter was clearing away two empty glasses. Busy attending to his partner of the moment, Max had not seen them get up and leave for the dining room.

  He took advantage of the dinner break, which was at seven, to enjoy a bowl of consommé. He never ate anything solid when he had to dance—another habit acquired during his time in the Legion, although the dance then was of a different nature, and a light meal was a healthy precaution in case of a bullet in the belly. After the soup he put on his coat and went out on the starboard promenade deck, to smoke another cigarette and to clear his head as he watched the crescent moon shimmering on the ocean. At a quarter past eight he returned to the ballroom, installing himself at one of the empty tables, close to the orchestra, where he chatted with the musicians until the first passengers began to float in from the dining room: the men on their way to the casino, the library, or the smoking room, and the ladies, younger people, and more game couples occupying the tables around the dance floor. The orchestra began tuning up, Schmöcker rallied his waiters, and there was the sound of laughter and champagne corks popping. Max stood, and, after making sure his bow tie was still straight and checking that his shirt collar and cuffs were in place, he smoothed down his tailcoat and scanned the tables in search of anyone requiring his services. Then he saw her enter, this time on her husband’s arm.

  They sat at the same table. The orchestra struck up a bolero and the first couples took to the floor. Miss Honeybee and her friend had not returned from the dining room, and Max had no way of knowing if they would that evening. In fact, he felt relieved. With that vague pretext in mind, he threaded his way through the people swaying to the fluid rhythms of the music. The de Troeyes were sitting in silence, watching the dancers. When Max paused in front of their table, a waiter had just placed on it a couple of champagne glasses and an ice bucket out of which peeped a bottle of Clicquot. He bowed to the husband, who was leaning back slightly in his chair, legs crossed, one elbow on the table, and another of his perpetual cigarettes in his left hand, where, next to his wedding band, Max noticed a thick, gold signet ring with a blue lozenge. Then he looked at the woman, who was studying him with interest. She wore no bracelets or rings, apart from her wedding band, only the splendid string of pearls and matching earrings. Max did not open his mouth to offer his services, but simply gave another, more fleeting bow than the last, clicked his heels together in almost military fashion, and stood stock-still until she, with a slow smile and apparently appreciative, shook her head. Max was about to withdraw, when the husband slid his elbow off the table, carefully straightened the crease in his trousers, and peered at his wife through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  “I’m tired,” he said in a lighthearted manner. “I think I ate too much at dinner. I’d like to watch you dance.”

  The woman did not stand up immediately. She looked for an instant at her husband, who took another draw on his cigarette, squinting in silent approval.

  “Enjoy yourself,” he added after a moment. “This young man is a magnificent dancer.”

  Scarcely had she risen from her chair when Max opened his arms, discreetly. Holding her right hand aloft, he placed his free hand on her waist. The unexpected touch of her warm skin took him by surprise. He had noticed the cut of her evening gown exposing her back, but it hadn’t occurred to him, despite his experience of embracing ladies, that when dancing with her he would place his hand on her naked flesh. His unease lasted only an instant, concealed beneath his professional mask of composure, and yet his partner sensed it, or he thought she did. For a split second she looked straight at him, before her gaze wandered again across the dance floor. Max leaned gently to one side to begin the dance, and she responded with perfect ease. They began to circle amid the other couples. On two occasions he glanced at the necklace she was wearing.

  “Are you ready to do a crossover here?” Max whispered after a moment, anticipating a favorable passage in the music.

  Her silent gaze lasted a couple of seconds.

  “Of course.”

  He removed his hand from her back, halting abruptly on the dance floor, and spun her full circle, first this way then that, sketching an arabesque around his still form. They came together again in perfect harmony, his hand resting once more on the supple curve of her waist, as if they had rehearsed the step half a dozen times. There was a smile on her lips and Max nodded, satisfied. A few couples had moved aside slightly to stare at them with admiration or envy, and she alerted him with a gentle squeeze of his hand.

  “Let’s not draw attention to ourselves.”

  Max apologized, for which he was rewarded with another indulgent smile. He enjoyed dancing with her. She was the perfect height for him, and he enjoyed feeling the curve of her slender waist beneath his right hand, the way she rested her fingers on his other hand, how easily she pivoted in time to the music, always with poise and finesse, maintaining the figure. With a hint of defiance, perhaps, and yet without any fuss, as when she had agreed to his spinning her around, doing so with all the elegance in the world. As they continued dancing, her eyes remained distant, nearly all the time staring into space, allowing Max to study her perfect features, the contour of her mouth colored with a subtle lipstick, her discreetly powdered nose, the neat arc of her eyebrows on her smooth forehead, above long eyelashes. She had a soft smell, a perfume he couldn’t quite identify, for it seemed to blend with her youthful skin: possibly Arpège. Max looked at her husband, who was watching them from the table, apparently paying little attention, as he raised his champagne glass to his lips, and then glanced again at the necklace, whose pearls of exceptional quality glowed faintly in the light of the electric chandeliers. Thanks to his own experience and a few unorthodox acquaintances, the twenty-six-year-old Max kn
ew enough about pearls to distinguish between the button, round, teardrop, and baroque varieties, including their official or unofficial value. These were round pearls of the highest quality: almost certainly Indian or Persian. And worth at least five thousand pounds sterling: more than half a million French francs. That could pay for several weeks with a beautiful woman in the best hotel in Paris or on the Riviera. But, carefully administered, it could also keep him in relative idleness for a year or more.

  “You really dance very well, Madam,” he repeated.

  Almost reluctantly, her eyes focused on him once more.

  “In spite of my age?” she said.

  It did not seem like a question. She had clearly been watching him before dinner, when he was dancing with the young Brazilian girls. Max looked suitably shocked.

  “Old? For heaven’s sake. How can you say such a thing?”

  She continued studying him quizzically. Or perhaps with amusement.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Max.”

  “Very well, Max. Go ahead, guess my age.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Please.”

  He had quickly collected himself, for he never lost his composure in front of a woman. She had a broad, dazzling smile, which he contemplated with feigned concentration.

  “Fifteen.”

  She gave a loud, vivacious laugh. A healthy laugh.

  “Correct,” she nodded, playing along good-naturedly. “However did you guess?”

  “I have a talent for that sort of thing.”

  She nodded, her expression half-mocking, half-pleased, or perhaps she was admiring the way he continued to lead her around the floor, amid the other couples, without their conversation distracting him from the music and the dance steps.

  “And not just that,” she said, rather mysteriously.

  Max searched her eyes for any added nuance in her comment, but once again they were staring blankly over his right shoulder. At that moment, the bolero came to an end. They separated, still facing each other as the orchestra prepared to launch into the next number. Max glanced again at the splendid pearls. For a moment he thought she had caught him in the act.

  “That’s sufficient,” she said suddenly. “Thank you.”

  The periodicals archive is on the upper floor of an old building, at the top of a marble staircase surmounted by a vaulted ceiling decorated with flaking paintings. The hardwood floor creaks when Max Costa, carrying three bound volumes of the magazine Scacco Matto, goes to sit down in a well-lit part of the room, beside a window overlooking half a dozen palm trees and the white-and-gray façade of the Basilica di San Antonino. On the desk he places a spectacle case, a notepad, a ballpoint pen, and several newspapers purchased at a kiosk on Vía de Maio.

  An hour and a half later, Max stops taking notes, removes his reading glasses, rubs his tired eyes, and looks out at the square, where the evening sun is casting long shadows from the palm trees. By now, Dr. Hugentobler’s chauffeur has read almost everything published about Jorge Keller, the player who over the next four weeks will be challenging the world chess champion, Mikhail Sokolov, in Sorrento. There are several photographs of Keller in magazines, invariably sitting in front of a chessboard, and in some of them he looks very young: a mere boy tackling opponents much older than himself. The most recent one is from that day’s edition of a local paper: Keller is posing in the hotel lobby at the Vittoria in the same jacket he was wearing when Max saw him strolling through Sorrento that morning with the two women.

  “Born in London in 1938, the son of a Chilean diplomat, Keller astounded the chess world when he maneuvered the American Reshevsky into a tight spot during a simultaneous exhibition in the Plaza de Armas in Santiago: he was fourteen years old at the time, and in the ten years that followed, he went on to become one of the most talented players of all time . . .”

  Despite Jorge Keller’s meteoric rise to fame, Max is less interested in his professional biography than in other aspects of his family history, and he has finally unearthed some information about that. Both Scacco Matto and the newspapers covering the Campanella Cup agree on the influence which, after her divorce from her Chilean husband, the young chess player’s mother has had on her son’s career.

  “The Kellers separated when their son was seven years old. Wealthy in her own right following the death of her first husband during the Spanish civil war, Mercedes Keller found herself ideally situated to offer her son the finest education. When she discovered his talent for chess, she sought out the best teachers, took the boy to every tournament both inside and outside Chile, and persuaded the Chilean-Armenian grand master, Emil Karapetian, to oversee his instruction. The young Keller did not disappoint her. He had no difficulty beating his peers, and under the supervision of his mother and Karapetian, both of whom still accompany him today, he progressed rapidly . . .”

  After leaving the archive Max returns to the car and drives down to the Marina Grande, parking near the church. Then he makes his way to the Trattoria Stéfano, which is still closed to the public at that time of day. He has gone out in his shirtsleeves, cuffs turned up twice to expose his forearms, jacket slung over his shoulder, pleasurably inhaling the easterly breeze with a tang of salt and the shores of a calm sea. On the terrace of the small restaurant, beneath a bamboo canopy, a waiter is laying tablecloths and cutlery on four tables situated close to the water’s edge and the fishermen’s boats, beached amid piled-up nets and coils of fishing line.

  Without looking up from the chessboard, Lambertucci, the restaurant owner, grunts in response to Max’s greeting. With the familiarity of a regular customer, Max strolls behind the little bar where the cash register is, sets his jacket on the counter, pours himself some wine, and approaches the table where Lambertucci is busy concentrating on one of the two chess games, which at the same time every day for the past twenty years he has been accustomed to playing with Captain Tedesco. Antonio Lambertucci, a lanky fellow in his midfifties, is wearing a none-too-clean T-shirt that reveals an army tattoo, a souvenir from when he was a soldier in Abyssinia before being sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in South Africa and later marrying the daughter of Stéfano, the previous owner of the trattoria. Lambertucci’s opponent, a black patch over the left eye he lost in Benghazi, gives him a somewhat scowling look. Being called Captain is not a joke: on the contrary, like Lambertucci a native of Sorrento, Tedesco won his promotion during the war, although the difference in rank between the two men lost significance over the three years of captivity both men endured, with nothing to do but play chess. Besides the basic moves, Max knows little about this game (he has learned more that day in the archive than during his entire lifetime), but these two seem like genuine chess lovers. They are regulars at the local chess club and know all about international tournaments, who the grand masters are, and lots more besides.

  “So, how good is this Jorge Keller?”

  Lambertucci gives another grunt, as he studies an apparently dangerous move his opponent has just made. Finally he makes his move, there is a rapid exchange of pieces, and then Tedesco nonchalantly says “checkmate.” Ten seconds later, the captain is putting away the pieces in their box while Lambertucci picks his nose.

  “Keller?” he finally remarks. “Very promising. The next world champion, if he defeats the Russian. . . . He’s brilliant and not as eccentric as that other young man, Fischer.”

  “Is it true he’s been playing since he was a child?”

  “So I hear. As far as I know, he became a phenomenon after winning four tournaments between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. Lambertucci glances at Tedesco for confirmation and proceeds to enumerate on his fingers: “Mar de Plata, the international tournaments at PortoroŽ and Chile, and the challengers’ tournament in Yugoslavia, tremendous . . .”

  “He beat all the big names,” Tedesco adds, equitably.

  “Meanin
g?” says Max.

  Tedesco smiles like someone who knows what he’s talking about.

  “Meaning Petrosian, Tal, Sokolov . . . The best players in the world. His consecration came when he beat Tal and Sokolov in a twenty-game tournament.”

  “No mean feat,” adds Lambertucci, who has fetched the carafe and is topping up Max’s glass.

  “All the greats were there,” Tedesco concludes, narrowing his one good eye. “And Keller trounced them all without turning a hair: he won twelve games and drew seven.”