“Once or twice. I went back and forth between Europe and the Americas during the Second World War.”
“You weren’t afraid of U-boats?”
“Terrified, but I had no choice. Business, you know.”
She smiles, almost benevolently.
“Yes, I know . . . Business.”
He tilts his head, with deliberate candor, conscious she is watching him. They both know that the word is a simplification, although Mecha has no idea to what extent. The truth is that during the war in Europe the Iberian peninsula was an extremely lucrative hunting ground for Max Costa. With his Venezuelan passport (he paid a great deal of money to acquire that nationality, which guaranteed him immunity in almost any situation), he employed his easy manner in restaurants, dance halls, tea dances, bars, and cabarets, in winter and summer resorts—frenetic hubs of social life frequented by beautiful women and men with fat wallets. By that time Max had honed his professional skills to an extraordinary extent. The result was a run of resounding successes. The era of failure and decline, the disasters that would cast him into the pit of despair, were a long way off. The new Spain, under Franco, was generous: a string of profitable deals in Madrid and Seville; an elaborate three-way swindle between Barcelona, Marseille, and Tangiers; an extremely wealthy widow in San Sebastián; and a jewelry heist that began in the Estoril casino and ended successfully in a villa in Sintra. During that episode (the lady concerned, not overly attractive, was cousin to the would-be heir to the throne, Juan Carlos of Bourbon), Max started dancing again, furiously. Even to Ravel’s “Bolero” and the “Old School Tango.” And he must have danced devilishly well, for, once it was all over, the victim was the first to clear his name with the Portuguese police. Max Costa couldn’t possibly be a suspect, she swore to them. He was far too much of a gentleman.
“Yes,” Mecha says distractedly, glancing back up at the balcony where the two youngsters are no longer standing. “Armando was different.”
Max knows she isn’t really talking about Armando. She is thinking about the Spain that killed him, the country she never wanted to return to. Still, he feels a pang of resentment. A trace of old anger toward a man whose company he kept for only few days: on board the Cap Polonio and in Buenos Aires.
“So you said. He was cultured, imaginative, and a freethinker. I haven’t forgotten the bruises on your body where he hit you.”
She notices the tone in his voice and gives him a disapproving look. Then she turns toward the bay, in the direction of Vesuvius’s dusky cone.
“That was a very long time ago, Max. It’s tasteless of you.”
He doesn’t reply. He is content to look at her. Narrowing her gaze against the sun’s glare has increased the number of fine wrinkles around her eyes.
“I married very young,” Mecha adds. “And Armando made me delve into my dark, inner places.”
“In a way, he corrupted you.”
She shakes her head before replying.
“No. Although in a way might hold the clue. It was all there before I met him. He merely placed a mirror in front of me. Guided me to those inner places. Or perhaps not; perhaps his role was simply to show them to me.”
“And you did the same with me.”
“You liked looking, as much as I did. Remember those hotel mirrors?”
“No. I liked to look at you looking.”
A sudden burst of laughter makes her sparkling eyes appear young again. Her face is still turned toward the bay.
“You wouldn’t let go, my friend. You weren’t that sort of fellow. On the contrary. Always so clean, despite your dirty tricks. So wholesome. So conscientious and true to your lies and betrayals. A good soldier.”
“For God’s sake, Mecha. You were . . .”
“It doesn’t matter anymore what I was.” She has turned abruptly to face him, all of a sudden serious. “But you are still a charlatan. And don’t look at me like that. I know that look too well. Better than you could imagine.”
“I’m being honest,” Max protests. “I never thought I mattered to you.”
“Is that why you left Nice as you did? Without waiting to see what happened? My God. As stupid as the others. That was your mistake.”
She has leaned back in her chair. She remains like that for a moment, as though searching for a precise memory in the aged face of the man before her.
“You were living in enemy territory,” she says at last. “In the midst of an ongoing war: I could see it in your eyes. In situations like that we women realize that men are mortal, passing through, returning from some front or other. And we are just that little bit more willing to fall in love with you.”
“I never liked wars. Men like me are usually on the losing side.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she says coldly. “But I’m glad you haven’t lost your easy smile. That elegance you have maintained, like the last square at Waterloo. You remind me very much of the man I forgot. You have aged, and I don’t mean physically. I suppose that happens to everyone who attains a degree of certainty. Do you have many certainties, Max?”
“Not many. Only that men doubt, remember, and die.”
“That must account for it. Doubt is what keeps people young. Certainty is like a malignant virus that infects us as we get older.”
“Memory, you said. Men remember, then they die.”
“At my age, yes.” He nods. “That’s all.”
“What about doubts?”
“Not many. Only uncertainties, which isn’t the same.”
“What do I remind you of?”
“Women I forgot.”
She seems to sense his irritation, because she tilts her head slightly, observing him with interest.
“You are lying,” she says at last.
“Prove it.”
“I will . . . I promise you I will. Just give me a few days.”
He sipped his gin fizz and looked around at the other guests. Almost everyone had arrived, and there were no more that twenty or so. It was a black-tie dinner: the men in tuxedos, the majority of women in low-backed dresses. Not much jewelry, and discreet in almost every case, polite conversations that took place largely in French or Spanish. They were friends and acquaintances of Susana Ferriol. There were a few refugees from Spain, but not the kind habitually shown in the newsreels. The rest belonged to the international set, permanent residents of Nice and the surrounding areas. The aim of the dinner was for the hostess to introduce the Colls, a Catalan couple, to her friends. The Colls had managed to flee from the republican zone. Luckily for them, aside from their apartment in Barcelona in a building designed by Gaudí, a tower in Palamós, and a few factories and warehouses that had been requisitioned by the workers, the Colls had sufficient funds in European banks to keep them going until things returned to normal. Minutes before, Max had overheard Mrs. Coll (full hips and big eyes, small and feisty) explaining breathlessly to several of the other guests how she and her husband had hesitated at first between Biarritz and Nice, finally opting for the latter because of its mild climate.
“Dear Suzi was kind enough to find a villa for us to rent. Right here, in Boron. The Savoy isn’t bad, but nothing compares to having your own place. And with the Blue Train, Paris is only a step away.”
Max deposited his empty glass next to one of the picture windows that looked out onto the illuminated environs of the house: the circular, gravel driveway lined with leafy plants; the cars lined up beneath the palm trees and cypresses, gleaming under the street lamps; the chauffeurs gathered around the glowing tips of their cigarettes to the side of the stone steps (Max had arrived in the Chrysler Imperial belonging to Baroness Schwarzenberg, who was at present sitting in the main room conversing with a Brazilian movie actor). Beyond the trees in the garden, Nice was a glittering arc around the dark stain of the sea, with the tiny prong of the Jetée-Promenade like a jewel encr
usted in its side.
“Another cocktail, sir?”
Max shook his head, glancing about as the waiter moved away. A small jazz band was playing in the main hall, welcoming the guests amid the scent from the myriad flowers arranged in blue and red glass vases. Dinner was in twenty minutes. In the dining room, visible through a glass door, twenty-two places were laid. According to the seating list propped on a lectern outside, Mr. Costa was near the far end of the table. After all, he was only invited as Baroness Schwarzenberg’s companion, which counted for very little in society. When he was introduced to her, Susana Ferriol had addressed him with the precise smile and the appropriate words expected of an efficient hostess who knew how to behave (how nice to meet you, I’m so glad you could come), before inviting him in, introducing him to some of the other guests, guiding him toward the waiters, and forgetting about him for the moment. Susana Ferriol (Suzi to her friends) was dark-haired and extremely thin, almost as tall as Max, with a hard, angular face, from which shone a pair of intense black eyes. Her choice of evening dress was unconventional: she wore a flowing white trouser suit with a silver pinstripe that accentuated her thinness, and Max would have wagered his pearl cuff links that somewhere stitched into the lining was a Chanel label. Tomás Ferriol’s sister weaved in and out of her guests, affecting a sophisticated languor of which she was doubtless overly conscious. As Baroness Schwarzenberg had remarked, leaning back against the car seat on the way, elegance could be acquired through money, education, hard work, and intelligence, but wearing it with ease, my dear (the glow from the street lamp lit up her spiteful smile), required crawling around on genuine Persian rugs from birth. For at least two generations. And the Ferriols’ extreme wealth only went back one (their father had begun building his fortune during the Great War selling contraband tobacco in Mallorca).
“There are exceptions, of course. And you are one of them, my friend. I don’t know many men who can cross a hotel foyer, light a woman’s cigarette, or discuss wine with a sommelier the way you do. And I was born when Leningrad was still called Saint Petersburg. Imagine the things I have seen, and what I see now.”
Max took a few steps, glancing around the room with the stealth of a hunter. Although the villa was a typical turn-of-the-century building, the interior was functional and simple, in accordance with the latest fashion: clean, straight lines; bare walls, save for an occasional modern painting; furniture made of steel, polished wood, leather, and glass. The former ballroom dancer’s sharp eye, practiced in the art of survival, took in every detail of the house and its guests. Clothes, jewelry, trinkets, conversation. Tobacco smoke. With the excuse of taking out a cigarette, Max paused between the main hall and the entrance to take a look at the staircase leading up to the next floor. According to the plans he had studied in his room at the Negresco, on the other side were the library and the study Ferriol used when he was in Nice. Getting into the library was simple: the door was open, and on the far wall the books with their gilded covers shone on the shelves. He took a few more paces, cigarette case open in his hand, then came to a halt once more, pretending to listen to the five musicians in evening dress playing a slow swing (“I Can’t Get Started”) amid some potted plants, near a glass door that gave onto the garden. Max finally lit his cigarette as he leaned against the library door close to where a French couple were speaking in hushed tones (the woman was blonde and attractive, and her eye shadow was too thick). He glanced inside the room and discovered the study door, which according to the information he had was usually locked. Getting in wouldn’t be difficult, he concluded. Everything was on the ground floor and there were no bars. The safe was built into a cupboard in the wall, next to a window. He would need to see it from the outside, but this window was a possible entry point. Another was the glass door where the musicians were playing, which gave onto a patio. A diamond tip or a screwdriver for the window, a picklock for the study door. An hour inside, and with a little luck the job would be done. That part of it, at least.
He had been loitering on his own for too long in the entrance, and that wasn’t good. He took a puff on his cigarette and glanced about with an indolent air. The last guests were arriving. He had already spoken with a few people, exchanged the customary smiles and pleasant words. Appropriate gestures for the ladies, and an apparently sincere friendliness toward their husbands and companions. After dinner, a few couples would decide to dance. This generally gave Max the almost perfect opportunity (especially with the married women who got into difficulties, and this smoothed his path as well as spared the need for conversation). However, that evening he wasn’t about to venture into such dangerous territory. He couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself. Not there. Not with what was at stake. And yet, as he walked around, from time to time he sensed women staring at him. An occasional whispered comment: who is that handsome fellow, and so forth. Max, who was thirty-five then, had been interpreting those kinds of looks for fifteen years. Everyone attributed his presence there to a probable liaison with Asia Schwarzenberg, and it suited him that they think that. He decided to join a woman and two men chatting on a steel-and-leather sofa. The woman and one of the men were sitting; the other man was standing. Shortly after he had arrived, Max had exchanged pleasantries with the seated man—a rather stocky fellow with a thin, blond mustache, closely trimmed hair, and a friendly face. He had given Max his card: Ernesto Keller, Chilean Vice-Consul in Nice. The woman also looked familiar, but not from that evening. An actress, Max seemed to remember. Spanish as well. Beautiful and serious. Conchita something. Monteagudo, perhaps. Or Montenegro.
For an instant, still motionless, Max caught sight of his reflection in a large mirror with a thin, oval frame hanging above a narrow, glass table: the vivid white of his shirt between black silk lapels, his handkerchief poking out of his top pocket, and the meticulous strip of starched cuff emerging from each sleeve of his waisted tuxedo; a hand casually placed in his right trouser pocket, the other half-raised clutching his smouldering cigarette, and revealing a glimpse of the gold strap and casing of his eight-thousand-franc, slim-line Patek Philippe wristwatch. Then he looked down at the brown-and-white diamond carpet beneath his patent leather shoes, and thought (as he still often did) about his friend and fellow legionnaire, Lieutenant Boris Dolgoruki-Bragation. About what he would have said or how he would have laughed, between glasses of brandy, at seeing Max dressed that way. From the child playing on the banks of the Riachuelo in Buenos Aires, or the soldier climbing, rifle at the ready, amid desiccated corpses up the charred slopes of Mount Arruit, Max had come a long way before stepping onto that carpet in the Riviera villa. And there was still a difficult stretch to cover between him and the closed door awaiting him at the far end of the library, as unfathomable as fate itself. He took a short, precise draw on his cigarette, while also deciding that the risks and hazards of some paths never entirely vanish (he felt another pang of anxiety as he remembered Fito Mostaza and the two Italian spies). And that, in fact, the only truly simple day in his life was the one he managed to leave behind each night as he drifted into an always restless, uncertain sleep.
Then he smelled a woman’s soft perfume close by him. He recognized it instinctively as Arpège. And when he turned around (nine years had passed since Buenos Aires), he found Mecha Inzunza standing before him.
8
La Vie Est Brève
YOU STILL SMOKE those Turkish cigarettes,” she remarked.
She was gazing at him, with curiosity rather than surprise, as though attempting to fit together disparate fragments: his well-tailored evening suit, his features. The glow from the nearby electric lamps seemed suspended in her eyes, spilling over the ivory-colored satin evening gown that hugged her shoulders and hips, illuminating her naked arms and back above the plunging line of the dress. Her skin was bronzed, and she wore her hair in the latest style, a few inches longer than in Buenos Aires, with a slight wave, parted and pulled back from her face.
&nbs
p; “What are you doing here, Max?” she said, after an instant. It wasn’t so much a question as a conclusion, and the meaning was clear: this couldn’t possibly be happening. The man Mecha Inzunza had met on the Cap Polonio could not have made his way naturally to that house.
“I demand to know. . . . What are you doing here?”
There was a harshness in her insistence. And Max, who, after his initial shock (mixed with waves of panic) was starting to regain his composure, realized that remaining silent would be a grave mistake. Suppressing the urge to withdraw and protect himself (he felt like a raw clam having just received a squirt of lemon), he gazed at those luminous eyes, while contriving to refute everything with a smile.
“Mecha,” he said.
Her name and the smile were simply ways to gain time. He was thinking on his feet, or trying to. Without success. He glanced discreetly to either side of him, to see if their conversation had aroused anyone else’s interest. She noticed this, for her gleaming eyes hardened beneath her eyebrows plucked in two finely penciled brown lines. She is just as ravishing, Max thought absurdly. More compact, more womanly. He looked at her slightly open mouth, painted bright red (it still appeared less angry than expectant), and then his gaze descended to her neckline. Suddenly he noticed the necklace: splendid pearls with a soft, almost muted glow, in three strands. It was either an exact replica of the one he had sold nine years before, or it was the same one.
That was probably what saved him, he would later conclude. His expression of surprise when he saw the pearls. The sudden flash of triumph in her eyes when she seemed to read his thoughts as if he were transparent. Her initial look of disdain giving way to irony and finally suppressed amusement that caused her throat and lips to quiver as though about to laugh. She had raised a hand (in the other she was holding a snakeskin baguette bag) and her long, slender fingers, with nails painted the same shade as her lips, and adorned with a simple, gold wedding ring, came to rest on the pearls.
What We Become Page 27
