What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “I feel a bit like that. I live by what I carry with me. By what I find along the way.”

  “Everything has an ending,” she said softly.

  “I don’t know what that ending will be, but I know the beginning . . . I had few toys as a child, almost all of them made out of painted tin and empty matchboxes. Occasionally on a Sunday, my father would take me to a matinee at the Libertad cinema. Admission was thirty cents and they gave away sweets, and tickets for a raffle I never won. On the screen, with the piano accompaniment playing in the background, I saw starched, white-bib fronts, well-dressed men and beautiful women, automobiles, parties, and champagne glasses. . . .”

  Max took his tortoiseshell cigarette case out of his pocket again, but didn’t open it. He was content to play with the lid, running his fingers over the initials MC at the bottom, monogrammed in gold.

  “I used to stand outside a cake shop in Calle California,” he went on, “looking through the window at the pastries, cakes, and tarts. . . . Or I’d play along the banks of the Riachuelo on my way to La Boca, watching the sailors disembark: men with tattooed arms, who had come from places I imagined were fascinating.”

  He broke off almost abruptly, feeling awkward. It had just occurred to him that he could have gone on endlessly stringing together memories like this. He was aware, too, that he had never talked about himself so much to anyone. Not truthfully, not with genuine memories.

  “Some men dream of leaving, and they do it. I was one of them.”

  Mecha remained silent, listening as though fearful of cutting the slender thread of his confessions. Max gave a deep, almost pained sigh, and put away the cigarette case.

  “Of course there’s an ending, like you say. Only I don’t know where mine is.”

  He stopped looking at the lights and the blurred shapes outside, and, turning toward her, he kissed her spontaneously. Gently. On the lips. Mecha let him, without resisting the contact. A delicate, moist warmth that made the rainy landscape outside seem even bleaker to him. Afterward, when she moved her face away slightly, they remained close, gazing into each other’s eyes.

  “You don’t have to leave,” she whispered. “There are a hundred places here . . . near me.”

  He was the one who pulled away this time. Without taking his eyes off her.

  “In my world,” he said, “everything is wonderfully simple: I am what the tips I hand out say I am. And if one identity turns bad or his luck runs out, the next day I take on another. I live off other people’s credit, without any bitterness or any grand illusions.”

  “Has it never occurred to you that I could change that?”

  “Listen. A while ago, I was at a party, in a villa on the outskirts of Verona. Wealthy people. After dinner, at the behest of the owners, amid laughter, the guests began scratching the plaster off the walls with their coffee spoons to reveal the painted frescoes beneath. And as I watched, I thought how absurd everything was. How I could never feel like they did. With their silver coffee spoons and their paintings hidden beneath the plaster. And their laughter.”

  He paused for a moment to wind down the window and inhale the moist air from outside. Among the billboards on the station walls, political posters from Action Française and Front Populaire had been pasted: ideological slogans vying with advertisements for lingerie, mouthwash, or the latest movie, Abus de Confiance.

  “When I see all those black, brown, red, or blue shirts, demanding affiliation to this or that group, I think that before the world belonged to the rich and now it will belong to the embittered. . . . I fall into neither category. Try as I might, I can’t even feel bitter. And I certainly try.”

  He looked at her once more. She was still listening to him, motionless. Solemn.

  “I think that in today’s world indifference is the only possible form of freedom,” Max concluded. “That’s why I’ll go on living by my sword and my steed.”

  “Get out of the car.”

  “Mecha . . . ”

  She looked away.

  “You’ll miss your train.”

  “I love you. I think. And yet love has nothing to do with all this.”

  Mecha beat the steering wheel with both hands.

  “Just go. Damn you.”

  Max put on his hat and got out of the car, buttoning up his raincoat. He took his suitcase and travel bag out of the back and walked away without uttering a word or looking back, through the falling rain. He felt a piercing, grief-like sadness. A sort of premature nostalgia for everything he would long for later on. As he entered the station, he handed his luggage to a porter who led him through the crowd, toward the ticket office. Then he followed him until they reached the vaulted roof of iron and glass that covered the platforms. Just then, a locomotive came chugging into the station amid clouds of steam, dragging behind it a dozen dark blue carriages with a gold stripe beneath the windows bearing the words Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. A metal plate on either side showed the route: Monaco-Marseille-Lyon-Paris. Max glanced around, on the lookout for any disquieting signs. Two gendarmes in dark uniforms were chatting outside the door to the waiting room. Everything looked calm, he thought, and no one seemed particularly interested in him. Although that was no guarantee.

  “Which car, sir?” the porter with his luggage asked.

  “Number two.”

  He climbed aboard the train, handed his ticket to the conductor together with a one-hundred-franc note (a surefire way of winning the man over for the entire journey), and while the conductor was doffing his cap and bowing from the waist, he gave another twenty to the luggage porter.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “No, my friend. Thank you.”

  As he entered the compartment, he closed the door and pulled the curtain back, just far enough to be able to take another look at the platform. The two gendarmes hadn’t moved and were still chatting, and he saw nothing to alarm him. People were saying their farewells and climbing aboard the train. There was a group of nuns fluttering their handkerchiefs, and an attractive woman embracing a man outside a carriage door. Max lit a cigarette and leaned back in his seat. When the train started to move, he looked up at the suitcase on the luggage rail. He thought about the letters hidden inside the lining. And about how he would stay alive and a free man until he disposed of them. Mecha Inzunza had already vanished from his memory.

  Pain, Max realizes, sooner or later reaches a saturation point where intensity is no longer important. Where being hit twenty times is the same as being hit forty times. From that point on, what hurts are the breaks between blows, not each fresh blow, but the moments when your tormentor stops what he is doing to take a breather. When the numbed flesh relaxes and feels the pain inflicted upon it. The sum of all the previous blows.

  “The book, Max . . . Where’s the book?”

  The man with the ginger mustache and the hands that resemble tentacles is talking, but his voice sounds distorted and muffled to Max, because his head is wrapped in a wet towel, making it difficult for him to breathe, even as it muffles his cries, absorbs some of the impact of the blows, and leaves no visible marks or bruising on his body, which is now tied to the chair. The rest of the blows are directed at his stomach and abdomen, exposed by the posture the ligatures have forced him to adopt. They are meted out both by the man with lank hair and the one in the black leather jacket. He knows it’s them, because from time to time they remove the towel, and through the mist of his throbbing eyes filled with tears he sees them next to him, rubbing their knuckles, while the other man watches seated.

  “The book. Where is it?”

  They have just taken the towel off his head. Max gulps air into his bruised lungs, despite each breath stinging as if his skin were flayed. His blurry eyes finally manage to focus on the man with the ginger mustache.

  “The book,” the man says again. “Tell us where it is, and let’s be
done with this.”

  “I know . . . nothing . . . about any . . . book.”

  On his own initiative, under no orders from anyone and as a personal contribution to the procedure, the man in the black leather jacket suddenly punches Max in the groin. Max writhes beneath the ropes as this new pain radiates out into his thighs and chest. He wants to curl up, but that’s impossible because his legs, chest, and arms are tied to the chair. A cold sweat breaks out over his whole body, and a few seconds later, for the third time since this started, he vomits bile, which dribbles down his chin onto his shirt. The man who hit him looks at him in disgust and turns toward the man with the ginger mustache, awaiting further instructions.

  “The book, Max.”

  Still gasping for breath, Max shakes his head.

  “Well, well.” There is a hint of mocking admiration in the Russian’s voice. “The old man is playing tough guy . . . at his age.”

  Another blow in the same place. A fresh spasm causes Max to writhe once more, as though something sharp were piercing his innards. And then, after a few seconds of intense pain, he loses control and cries out: a short, savage cry that brings him some relief. This time he retches without producing any vomit. Max sits with his head lolling on his chest, breathing unevenly and painfully. Shivering because of the sweat that seems to be freezing beneath his damp clothing, in every pore of his body.

  “The book . . . Where is it?”

  Max lifts his head, slightly. His heartbeat is erratic, with long pauses, followed by violent palpitations. He is convinced he is going to die in the next few minutes, and is surprised at his own indifference. His numb resignation. He never imagined it like this, he reflects in a moment of clarity. Letting himself go, punch-drunk, like allowing the current to drag you away into the night. But this is how it will be. Or so it seems. With all that pain and weariness wracking his body, it feels more like a promise of relief than anything else. Rest, at last. A long, final sleep.

  “Where’s the book, Max?”

  Another blow, to the chest this time, followed by a explosion of pain that seems to crush his spine. Once more he is seized by violent retching, but there is nothing left to come out of his mouth. He urinates freely, wetting his trousers, with an intense stinging sensation that makes him howl. His head feels like it’s splitting, and there is scarcely space for any coherent images among his jumbled thoughts. All he can make out with his blurred vision are white deserts, blinding flashes of light, vast surfaces undulating like heavy mercury. The void, perhaps. Or nothingness. Sometimes, into this nothingness old images of Mecha Inzunza appear, random fragments from his past, strange sounds. The one he hears the most is that of the three ivory balls clicking against each other on a billiard table: a soft, monotonous, almost pleasant sound that brings Max a strange kind of peace. Which inspires him with the necessary strength to raise his chin and look straight into the steely eyes of the man sitting opposite him.

  “I hid it . . . up your mother’s . . . cunt.”

  With that last word, he spits at the man with the ginger mustache. A pathetic string of bloody sputum that misses its target and dribbles to the floor between his own knees. The man with the ginger mustache contemplates the spittle on the floor with a look of displeasure.

  “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 HÔtel 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.