What We Become (17 page)

He puts on a forlorn face, hanging his head with a look of worldly, exaggerated acceptance.

“I know.”

“I don't mean it,” she laughs suddenly as before, rejuvenated. The same loud, forthright laugh. “You look very good for your age . . . Or should I say our age. I, on the other hand . . . Life is so unfair!”

She falls silent, and Max thinks he recognizes her son's features, Jorge Keller's expression when he rests his chin on his folded arms at the chessboard.

“Yes, perhaps we should,” she says eventually. “Chat for a while. But thirty years have gone by since the last time. . . . There are some places you can never return to. You said so yourself once.”

“I wasn't referring to actual places.”

“What then?”

Her smile has become ironic. Or rather, she looks dejected. Sincere and wistful.

“Look at me, Max. . . . Do you honestly think I am in a position to return anywhere?”

“I don't mean that kind of return,” he protests, standing erect, “but rather what we remember. What we were.”

“Witnesses of each other?”

Max holds her gaze without reciprocating her smile.

“Possibly. In that world we both knew.”

Now there is a tender look in Mecha Inzunza's eyes. The light intensifies the familiar glimmer.

“Old School Tango,” she whispers.

“That's right.”

They study each other. And she almost looks beautiful again, Max concludes. The miracle of a few simple words.

“I imagine,” she says, “that you came across it many times, as I did.”

“Of course. Many times.”

“Do you know something, Max? . . . Not once when I heard it, did I stop thinking about you.”

“I can say the same: I didn't stop thinking about myself, either.”

Her guffaw (oddly youthful once more) causes the people at the neighboring tables to turn their heads. For a moment, she lifts her arm, as though about to place it on his shoulder.

“The boys from the old days, you said back in that bar in Buenos Aires.”

“Indeed.” He sighs, with an air of resignation. “Now the boys from the old days are us.”

The blunt razor wasn't giving a smooth shave. Max rinsed it in soapy water from the washbasin, then dried it on a towel and drew the blade up and down the belt he had stretched after hooking it onto the latch of the window overlooking the treetops on Avenida Almirante Brown. As he honed the blade against the leather he gazed absentmindedly at the street below. A lone automobile (carts and trams were the more common vehicles in the neighborhood of Max's boardinghouse, the Pensión Caboto, and the horse dung was only occasionally flattened by a rubber tire) was stationed next to a mule-driven cart, where a little man in a straw boater and white
jacket was selling fresh brioche rolls, croissants, and burnt-sugar cakes. It was past ten in the morning, Max had not eaten breakfast yet, and the sight of the cart made his empty stomach rumble.

He hadn't had a good night. Arriving back in the small hours after accompanying the de Troeyes from Barracas to the Hotel Palace, Max had had a troubled, restless sleep. Long been familiar with that sense of unease arising from a blurred state between sleep and wakefulness, teeming with disturbing shadows. He had tossed and turned between crumpled sheets, as images distorted by his imagination assailed him suddenly, causing him to break out in a cold sweat. The most recurring image was of a landscape scattered with corpses: a hill of yellowish soil next to a wall ascending to a small fort farther up, and on the road running the length of the wall, three thousand corpses, desiccated by the weather and the sun, still bearing the marks of mutilation and torture that accompanied their deaths one summer's day in 1921. Volunteer Max Costa, 13th Company of the First Battalion of the Spanish Foreign Legion, had been nineteen at the time. Together with Boris and four other comrades, he'd made his way up the hill to the abandoned fort (“six volunteers for death” had been the order that had spurred them to advance before the rest of the company), amid the stench of rotting flesh and horrific sights, perspiring freely, dazed by the sun. Fingering his cartridge belt, his Mauser cocked, he had known with absolute certainty that only fate could save him from joining the ranks of those blackened corpses that only days earlier had been young, healthy flesh, and were now strewn along the road between Annual and Monte Arruit. From that day on, the officers in the regiment had offered their men a five-peseta piece for every Moroccan head they cut off. Two months later, in a place called Taxuda (“volunteers for death” had once again been the order), a Rif bullet ended Max's brief military career, landing him in a hospital in Melilla for five weeks. Afterward he deserted to Oran, before traveling on to Marseille, having already earned seven of those silver coins.

With the razor sharp once more, Max returned to the beveled wardrobe mirror and looked disapprovingly at the marks of insomnia on his face. Seven years had not been enough for him to lay those ghosts to rest—to drive out the demons, as the Moroccan saying went. Second Lieutenant Boris Dolgoruki-Bragation, fed up with listening to those demons, had chosen to banish them once and for all by placing the nine-millimeter barrel of a pistol in his mouth. But seven years was long enough for Max to accept their troublesome company. And so, attempting to thrust aside those unpleasant thoughts, he continued shaving as he hummed “I'm a Wild Animal”: one of the tangos they had played the night before in La Ferroviaria. A few seconds later, he smiled thoughtfully at the lathered face staring back at him from the mirror. The memory of Mecha Inzunza was useful for driving out demons, or for trying to: the arrogant way she danced the tango; her words, made of silences and glints of liquid honey. As were the plans Max was devising step by step, biding his time, involving her, her husband, and the future. Ideas that were progressively taking shape, and which he appraised as he drew the steel blade carefully over his skin, still humming to himself.

Much to his relief, their foray the night before had passed without incident. After a long while spent listening to tangos played the traditional way and watching people dance (neither Mecha nor Max had done so again that evening), Armando de Troeye called the three musicians over to their table when they put down their instruments, and a decrepit piano player began to play loud, unrecognizable tangos. De Troeye had ordered something special for them to drink. The best, most expensive thing you can find, he said, passing his gold cigarette case around liberally. However, the nearest bottle of champagne, the waitress informed him cagily, after consulting the owner (a Spaniard with a waxed mustache and a loathsome visage) required a forty-block ride on tram number 17, too far at that time of night. And so de Troeye had to content
himself with a few double grappas and brandies of dubious origin, a still-sealed bottle of cheap gin, and a blue glass soda siphon. They made short work of everything, including some meat pies brought as snacks, amid clouds of smoke from their cheroots.

Under normal circumstances, Max would have shown more interest in the conversation between de Troeye and the three musicians, but his thoughts were elsewhere. The bandoneon player had a glass eye and was a veteran from the days of the Hansen and the Rubia Mireya, back at the turn of the century. He assured them, following the first friendly exchanges and swigs of gin, that he couldn't read a note of music, and had never needed to. All his life he had played by ear. Moreover, what he and his fellow musicians played were authentic tangos, to be danced the old-fashioned way, fast and with
cortes
in the right places, not that smooth, ballroom style that was the rage, thanks to Paris and the cinema. As for the lyrics, they killed tango, degrading those who danced it with their obsession for making heroes of the cuckolded sucker who cried his eyes out when his woman left him for another man, or the young working girl who became a faded floozie. Authentic tango, he continued amid fresh swigs of gin and the vigorous approval of his fellow musicians, belonged to people from the working-class neighborhoods: it had a bitter sarcasm, the arrogance of ruffians and worldly women, the mocking contempt of those who thumbed their nose at life. There was no room for poets or fancy musicians. Tango was music for getting horny with a woman in your arms, or for carousing with the boys. He ought to know, he played it. In short, the tango was instinct, rhythm, improvisation, and risqué lyrics. With all due respect to the lady (his good eye glanced sideways at Mecha Inzunza), everything else was bullshit of the first order, if they would excuse his French. The way things were going, with all this starry-eyed love, sentimentality, and abandoned love nests, they would soon be singing about grieving mothers and the blind flower girl on the street corner.

De Troeye was enchanted by it all, and remained cheerful and talkative. He chinked glasses with the musicians and penciled more notes in tiny writing on his shirt cuff. The drink was beginning to show in his glassy-eyed look, occasional slurred speech, and his enthusiasm as he leaned over the table, absorbed by what they were saying. After half an hour of intense conversation, the three musicians from La Ferroviaria and the composer friend of Ravel, Stravinsky, and Diaghilev seemed as close as lifelong chums. For his part, Max kept one eye on the other patrons, who were looking over at their table with curiosity or distrust. The man who had danced with Mecha Inzunza was still staring at them, eyes squinting from the smoke of his cigar. His companion, the woman in the flowery blouse, bent casually forward to adjust her black stocking. At this point, Mecha Inzunza announced that she wanted to smoke a cigarette outside in the fresh air. Without waiting for her husband to reply, she rose and walked toward the door, heels gently tapping, as resolute and confident as when she had danced the tango a short while before. Juan Rebenque ogled her from a distance, eyes greedily taking in the sway of her hips, and only stopped to gaze at Max when he straightened his tie, buttoned his jacket, and followed the composer's wife out. As he approached the exit, Max knew without having to turn around that Armando de Troeye's eyes were also on him.

He made his way to the corner, stepping on his shadow, which the street lamp elongated across the brick pavement. Mecha Inzunza was standing there, not far from where the last of the squat dwellings with tin roofs, typical of that part of town, melted away into the dark waste ground next to the Riachuelo. As he drew closer, Max searched for the Pierce-Arrow, glimpsing it among the shadows on the far side of the street when the driver Petrossi flashed the headlights. Good man, he thought, reassured by this careful professional, with his blue uniform and peaked cap, and his pistol in the glove compartment.

By the time he reached her side, she had dropped the cigarette butt and was listening to the chorus of crickets and frogs coming from the bushes and rotting timber wharves along the river. The steel bridge at the end of the cobblestone street loomed tall in the darkness, stark against the eerie glow of the lights across the river piercing the night in Barracas Sur. The moon had not risen yet. Max came to a halt next to Mecha Inzunza and lit one of his Turkish cigarettes with a match. He could tell she was watching him in the flame's brief light. He extinguished the match and exhaled the first puff of smoke before looking at her.

“I liked your tango,” she said without preamble, her face silhouetted by the distant glow.

A brief silence followed.

“I imagine,” she said, “that we put into a dance what is inside us: elegance or evil.”

“The same as with alcohol,” Max replied softly.

“Yes.”

She fell silent again.

“That woman,” she finally said, “was . . .”

She broke off in midsentence. Or maybe she had said all she wished to say.

“Adequate?” he suggested.

“Perhaps.”

She did not pursue the subject, nor did Max. He was smoking quietly, pondering his next moves. Possible and probable errors. Finally, he shrugged as if to conclude.

“I, on the other hand, didn't like yours.”

“Really.” She seemed genuinely surprised, almost offended. “I didn't think I had danced so badly.”

“That's not what I meant.” He couldn't help grinning, knowing she wouldn't notice. “You danced magnificently, of course.”

“What, then?”

“Your partner. That isn't a very nice place.”

“I understand.”

“Some games can be dangerous.”

A three-second silence. Then five icy words.

“What games might they be?”

He allowed himself the tactical luxury of not replying. Instead he took a last draw on his cigarette and hurled it into the distance. The ember traced a semicircle before dying in the darkness.

“Your husband seems to be enjoying the evening.”

“Yes, very much,” she said at last. “He is excited, because this isn't what he was expecting. He traveled to Buenos Aires with ballrooms and high society in mind . . . intending to compose tasteful, white-tie tango. I fear that meeting you on the
Cap Polonio
changed his mind.”