What We Become

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  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

  The Glove and the Necklace

  HE 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 t
akes 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.”

  She is standing next to the bed and lights another cigarette. The flame from the match illuminates her bony fingers and manicured nails, her eyes that are fixed on Max, the lines on her forehead beneath her cropped gray hair.

  “My God. You only had to touch me and I’d tremble.”

  She extinguishes the flame so that only the glowing tip of the cigarette remains. And, like a twin spark, a soft, coppery glint in her honey-colored eyes.

  “I was just a young man,” he replies. “A hunter intent on survival. You were what I said before: as beautiful as a dream . . . one of those marvels which we men only have a right to when we’re young and daring.”

  She is still standing next to the bed, silhouetted in the semida
rkness, facing Max.

  “It was astonishing . . . and you’re still doing it.” The red end of the cigarette glows twice. “How do you manage it, after all this time? . . . You knew how to cast a spell with your words and gestures, as if you were wearing a mask of intelligence. You’d make some remark that was doubtless not your own, something you’d read in a magazine or overheard someone else say, but which gave me goose bumps all the same. And although twenty seconds later I’d forgotten it, the goose bumps remained . . . And nothing’s changed. Here, feel my arm. You’re a weak, battered old man, and yet you still have that effect on me. I swear.”

  She has stretched out her arm and is feeling for Max’s hand. Her skin, he confirms, it is still warm and soft. In that half-light, her tall, willowy figure looks the same as it did when he first knew her all those years ago.

  “That smile of yours, tranquil and treacherous . . . and daring, yes. You’ve held on to that, despite everything. The old smile of the professional dancer.”

  She lies down beside him. Once again the proximity of her smell, her warmth. The red tip illumines her face, so close Max feels the heat from the cigarette on his own face.

  “Every time I caressed my son, when he was little, I imagined I was caressing you. And that still happens when I look at him. I see you in him.”

  A silence. Then he hears her laugh quietly, almost blissfully.

  “His smile, Max . . . Can you honestly say you don’t recognize that smile?”

  With this, she sits up slightly, and, feeling for the night table, stubs out her cigarette.

  “Rest, take it easy,” she adds. “For once in your life. I’ve told you, I’m watching over you.”

  She has curled up very close, nestling beside him. Max screws up his eyes, contented. At ease. For some strange reason, which he doesn’t try to analyze, he feels compelled to tell her an old story.