What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  For his part, during the flashes of lucidity, when he clung to particular details or thoughts that allowed him to steady himself briefly, Max was struck that morning by two remarkable things: in the throes of passion, Mecha Inzunza whispered obscenities improper for a lady; and on her warm, smooth flesh, deliciously soft in all the right places, there were bluish marks that looked like bruises left by blows.

  It has been a while since the lights came on in their paper lanterns, after the sun had dipped behind the cliffs encircling the Marina Grande in Sorrento. In that artificial light, less precise and reliable than the one that has just gone out in a final blaze of violet where sea meets sky, the most recent traces of age on the face of the woman sitting opposite Max Costa seem to fade. The soft lights illuminating the tables at the Trattoria Stéfano eradicate all trace of the intervening years, restoring the once sharply defined, remarkably beautiful face of Mecha Inzunza.

  “I could never have imagined chess changing my life in this way,” she is saying. “In fact, it was my son who changed it. The chess part is purely incidental. . . . If he had been a musician or a mathematician, the result would have been the same.”

  It is still pleasantly warm on the seafront. Her arms are bare, and draped over the back of her chair is a lightweight cream jacket. She is wearing a long and flowing mauve cotton dress that shows off her still-slender figure in a way that seems, deliberately, to flout the fashion for short skirts and garish colors, which even women of a certain age have recently adopted. She is wearing the pearls in three strands around her neck. Sitting opposite her, Max remains motionless, showing an interest that goes beyond simple politeness. It would require close scrutiny to recognize Dr. Hugentobler’s chauffeur in the calm gentleman with gray hair leaning forward slightly over the table and listening attentively. In front of him is a glass that he has barely touched, in keeping with his old habit of staying sober when the stakes are high. He is impeccably dressed in a dark double-breasted blazer, gray flannel trousers, a pale blue Oxford shirt, and a brown knitted tie.

  “Or maybe not exactly the same,” Mecha Inzunza continues. “The world of professional chess is complex. Demanding. It requires extraordinary things, a special way of life. And it very much shapes the lives of the people in the players’ entourage.”

  She pauses once more, pensive, tilting her head as she runs her finger (with its short, unpainted nail) along the lip of her empty coffee cup.

  “In my life,” she says at last, “I have experienced moments of radical change, upheavals that marked the beginning of new chapters. Armando’s death during the Spanish Civil War was one of those. It gave me back a certain kind of freedom which I did not necessarily want, or need.” She looks at Max with an ambiguous expression on her face, perhaps of resignation. “Another was when I discovered that my son was extremely gifted at chess.”

  “I hear you gave up your life for him.”

  She places her cup to one side and leans back in her chair.

  “Perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration. A child is something you can’t explain to others. Did you ever have one?”

  Max smiles, remembering very clearly her asking the same question in Nice, almost thirty years before. And he gives the same reply.

  “Not that I know of. . . . Why chess?”

  “Because that was Jorge’s obsession since he was a child. His joy and his despair. Imagine watching someone you love with all your heart, struggling to solve a problem at once imprecise and complex. You long to help him, but you don’t know how. So you try to find a person who can do for him what you cannot. Chess masters, analysts . . .”

  She glances about her with a wistful smile, while Max continues to follow her every word and gesture. Farther along the tiny quayside, toward where the fishing boats are, the tables at the next restaurant, the Trattoria Emilia, are empty, and a bored-looking waiter is chatting to the female cook in the entrance. At the far end of the beach, a group of Americans can be heard laughing and talking loudly on the terrace of a third establishment, over the background voice of Edoardo Vianello singing “Abbronzatissima” on a jukebox or record player.

  “It’s a bit like a mother whose son is addicted to drugs. . . . When she realizes she can’t stop him from taking them, she decides to supply them herself.”

  She is staring into the distance beyond Max and the beached fishing boats, toward the far-off lights that encircle the bay and the black slope of Vesuvius.

  “It was unbearable to watch him agonizing in front of a chessboard,” she goes on. “It still upsets me even now. To begin with I tried to discourage him. I’m not one of those mothers who push their children to extremes, projecting their own ambitions onto them. Quite the opposite. I tried to get him away from chess. . . . But when I realized I couldn’t, that he was playing secretly and that this could come between us, I didn’t hesitate.”

  Lambertucci, the owner, comes over to ask if they need anything, and Max shakes his head. “You don’t know me,” Max had instructed him that afternoon when he called to reserve a table. “I’ll arrive at eight, after the captain leaves and you put the chessboard away. Officially, I’ve only been to your restaurant a couple of times, so avoid being familiar this evening. I want a quiet, discreet dinner: pasta with clams followed by grilled fish, and a good chilled white wine. And don’t even think of wheeling out your nephew with his guitar to murder “O Sole Mio” the way you usually do. I’ll explain what it’s about some other time. Or maybe not.”

  “Sometimes after I punished him,” Mecha Inzunza continues, “I would go into his room and find him lying on the bed, staring into space. I realized he didn’t need to see the pieces. He was playing chess in his head, using the ceiling as a board. . . . And so I decided to support him, in every way I could.”

  “What was he like as a boy . . . ? I read somewhere that he started playing chess very young.”

  “To begin with he was a very nervous child. He would cry inconsolably if he made a mistake and lost a game. I, and later his coaches, had to force him to think before making a move. He was already showing signs of what would later become his style of play: dazzling, brilliant, and fast, always ready to sacrifice pieces when mounting an attack.”

  “Another coffee?” asks Max.

  “Yes please.”

  “In Nice you used to live off coffee and cigarettes.”

  She gives a faint, leisurely smile.

  “Those are the only old habits I hold on to. Though in moderation now.”

  Lambertucci arrives to take their order with an inscrutable expression and an almost exaggerated politeness, glancing sideways at Mecha Inzunza. He seems to like what he sees, and winks discreetly at Max before joining the waiter and cook from the restaurant next door, to chat about business. Every now and then, he turns his head, and Max knows what he is thinking: what is that old charlatan up to this evening? Dressed to the nines, as if it were perfectly normal, and accompanied.

  “Many people think chess is all about brilliant improvisation,” Mecha Inzunza says, “but they’re wrong. It requires a methodical approach, exploring every possible situation in search of new ideas. . . . A great chess player memorizes the moves from thousands of his own and others’ games, and tries to improve on them with new gambits or variations, studying his predecessors like someone learning languages or algebra. That is why they depend on their entourage, the assistants, coaches, and analysts I told you about this morning. Depending on the moment, Jorge may have several people in his entourage. One is his coach, Emil Karapetian, who goes everywhere with us.”

  “Does the Russian have assistants as well?”

  “Of all shapes and sizes. He is even accompanied by an employee of the Soviet embassy in Rome. Chess is an affair of state in the USSR.”

  “I hear they have occupied an entire apartment house overlooking the hotel gardens. And that even the KGB is there.”

  “
It doesn’t surprise me. Sokolov has up to a dozen people in his entourage, even though the Campanella Cup is only a prelude to the world championship. . . . In a few months’ time, in Dublin, Jorge will have four or five different analysts and assistants working for him. Imagine how many the Russians will have.”

  Max takes a small sip from his glass.

  “How many do you have?”

  “There are three of us here, including me. Besides Karapetian, we have Irina.”

  “The young woman? I thought she was your son’s girlfriend.”

  “She is. As well as being an extraordinarily gifted chess player. She is twenty-four.”

  Max listened as if this were all new to him.

  “Russian?”

  “Yugoslav parents, but born in Canada. She played for Canada at the Olympiad in Tel Aviv, and is among the top ten or fifteen women chess players in the world. She has a grand master title. She and Emil are the core of our team of analysts.”

  “Do you like her as a daughter-in-law?”

  “She could be worse,” replies Mecha Inzunza impassively. “Like all chess players, she is complicated. There are things going on in her head that you and I will never understand. . . . But she and Jorge get along well.”

  “Is she a good analyst or assistant or whatever you call them?”

  “Yes, excellent.”

  “And how does Karapetian feel about her?”

  “Fine. At first he was jealous, yapping like a dog defending a bone. A girl, he muttered. That sort of thing. But she is clever. She soon had him eating out of her hand.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, with me it’s different.” Mecha Inzunza finished off her coffee. “I’m his mother, you see.”

  “Of course.”

  “My job is to watch from a distance . . . attentive yet remote.”

  They hear the voices of the Americans on their way toward the ramparts leading to the top of Sorrento. Afterward everything is silent. The woman gazes thoughtfully at the red-and-white-­checkered tablecloth, in a way that reminds Max of a player before a chessboard.

  “There are things I can’t give my son,” she says suddenly, looking up. “And I am not just referring to chess.”

  “How long will you go on for?”

  “Until he no longer wants me,” she replies instantly. Until Jorge no longer needs to have her near. When that time comes, she hopes she will realize and take her leave discreetly, without any fuss. She has a comfortable house in Lausanne full of books and music. A library, and a life somehow suspended, yet which she has been preparing all these years. A place to pass away peacefully when the time comes.

  “That is a long way off, I assure you.”

  “You always were a flatterer, Max . . . an elegant scoundrel and a handsome impostor.”

  He bobs his head humbly, as though overcome by the backhanded compliment. How can he argue with that, his gallant gesture seems to imply. At their advanced age.

  “Something I read a long time ago,” she added, “made me think of you. I can’t recall the exact words, but it went something like this: ‘Men who have enjoyed the caresses of many women will suffer less pain and trepidation as they walk through the valley of the shadow of death’ . . . What do you think?”

  “Rhetoric.”

  Silence. She studies his face, as though attempting to recognize him despite his own appearance. Her eyes shine softly in the light of the paper lanterns.

  “Why did you never marry, Max?”

  “I suppose because it would have spoiled my passage through the valley of the shadow of death.”

  Her chuckle, spontaneous and vigorous like a young girl’s, causes Lambertucci, the waiter, and the cook, who are still chatting at the restaurant next door, to turn their heads.

  “You old rascal. You always were good at that type of riposte . . . swiftly making your own what belonged to others.”

  Max adjusts his shirt cuffs, making sure just the right amount is protruding from the jacket sleeves. He detests the recent fashion of showing almost the entire cuff, as he does tailored shirts, flashy ties, pointed collars, and tight bell-bottoms.

  “During all those years, did you ever think of me?”

  He asks the question gazing into Mecha Inzunza’s luminous eyes. She tilts her head to one side, still observing him.

  “I admit that I did. Every so often.”

  Max makes use of his finest attribute, flashing a dazzling smile, apparently spontaneous, which in the past had lit up his face to devastating effect depending upon the disposition of the woman to whom it was destined.

  “Old School Tango aside?”

  “Of course.”

  Mecha Inzunza has nodded her head, a tenuous smile on her lips, accepting to play along. Max is somewhat emboldened by this, and decides to push his luck, like a bullfighter cheered on by the spectators who continues to goad the bull. The blood is pumping at a steady pace through his old arteries, resolute and firm as in the distant days of adventure, with a touch of euphoric optimism similar to that provided by a couple of aspirin washed down with coffee after a sleepless night.

  “And yet,” he remarks with absolute calm, “this is only the third occasion we have met: on the Cap Polonio and in Buenos Aires in twenty-eight, and nine years later in Nice.”

  “I always had a soft spot for scoundrels.”

  “I was just young, Mecha.”

  His gesture is another of his favorite tricks: head bowed, oozing humility, accompanied by a wave of his left hand as though dismissing all that is superfluous. Which is everything except the woman in front of him.

  “Exactly. A young, elegant scoundrel, just as I said. That’s how you made your living.”

  “No,” he protests, politely. “That’s what helped me survive, which isn’t the same thing. . . . Those were hard times. Aren’t they always?”

  As he says this he is looking at the necklace, and Mecha Inzunza notices.

  “Do you remember it?”

  Max adopts the expression of a gentleman who has been, or is about to be, insulted.

  “Naturally I remember it.”

  “You certainly should.” She touches the pearls momentarily. “It’s the same one I had in Buenos Aires . . . and that ended up in Montevideo.”

  “How could I forget it.” Max pauses nostalgically. “It’s as magnificent as ever.”

  She seems no longer to be listening, caught up in her own thoughts.

  “That business in Nice . . . The way you used me, Max! And what a fool I was. That second dirty trick of yours destroyed my friendship with Suzi Ferriol, among other things. And that was the last I saw of you. Ever.”

  “They were looking for me, remember. I had to leave. Those dead bodies . . . It would have been crazy of me to stay there.”

  “I remember it all. Very clearly. To the point where I realized it gave you the perfect excuse.”

  “That’s not true. I . . .”

  Now it is she who raises her hand. “Don’t go down that road. You’ll spoil what has otherwise been a pleasant evening.”

  Augmenting her gesture, she extends her arm across the table and touches Max’s face, brushing it only for a moment. He instinctively kisses her fingers gently as she withdraws her hand.

  “My God . . . It’s true. You were the most beautiful woman I ever met.”

  Mecha Inzunza opens her bag, takes out a packet of Murattis, and puts one in her mouth. Leaning across the table, Max lights it with the gold Dupont that a few days ago was in Dr. Hugentobler’s study. She exhales the smoke and leans back in her chair.

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “You’re still beautiful,” he insists.

  “Don’t be an even bigger fool. Look at yourself. Even you aren’t the same.”

  Now Max is sincere. Or possibly so.


  “If things had been different, I . . .”

  “It was all fortuitous. If things had been different, you wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

  “For what?”

  “You know what. To get near me.”

  A prolonged pause. She avoids Max’s eyes and continues smoking as her gaze drifts to the lanterns, the fishermen’s huts dotting the beach, the piled-up nets and beached boats on the darkening shore.

  “Your first husband was certainly a scoundrel,” he says.

  Mecha Inzunza takes her time replying: two puffs on her cigarette and another drawn-out silence.

  “Leave him out of this,” she says at last. “Armando has been dead almost thirty years. And he was an extraordinary composer. Besides, he simply gave me what I wanted. Rather like I do with my son.”

  “I always suspected that he . . .”

  “That he corrupted me? . . . Don’t talk nonsense. He had his preferences, of course. Peculiar, at times. But no one forced me to play along. I had mine, too. In Buenos Aires as everywhere else, I was always in complete control over what I did. And remember, he was no longer with me in Nice. He had been killed in Spain, or was about to be.”

  “Mecha . . .”

  He has placed his hand on hers. She pulls it away, gently.

  “Don’t even think about it, Max. If you tell me I was the great love of your life, I shall get up and leave.”

  5

  An Adjourned Game

  THIS ISN’T THE Buenos Aires I imagined,” said Mecha.

  It was hot, all the more so because of their proximity to the Riachuelo. Max had removed his hat to cool the damp sweatband, and was holding it as he walked, his free hand casually placed in his jacket pocket. They would occasionally fall in step, brushing against each other before separating again.