What We Become (4 page)

They sat at the same table. The orchestra struck up a bolero and the first couples took to the floor. Miss Honeybee and her friend had not returned from the dining room, and Max had no way of knowing if they would that evening. In fact, he felt relieved. With that vague pretext in mind, he threaded his way through the people swaying to the fluid rhythms of the music. The de Troeyes were sitting in silence, watching the dancers. When Max paused in front of their table, a waiter had just placed on it a couple of champagne glasses and an ice bucket out of which peeped a bottle of Clicquot. He bowed to the husband, who was leaning back slightly in his chair, legs crossed, one elbow on the table, and another of his perpetual cigarettes in his left hand, where, next to his wedding band, Max noticed a thick, gold signet ring with a blue lozenge. Then he looked at the woman, who was studying him with interest. She wore no bracelets or rings, apart from her wedding band, only the splendid string of pearls and matching earrings. Max did not open his mouth to offer his services, but simply gave another, more fleeting bow than the last, clicked his heels together in almost military fashion, and stood stock-still until she, with a slow smile and apparently appreciative, shook her head. Max was about to withdraw, when the husband slid his elbow off the table, carefully straightened the crease in his trousers, and peered at his wife through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“I'm tired,” he said in a lighthearted manner. “I think I ate too much at dinner. I'd like to watch you dance.”

The woman did not stand up immediately. She looked for an instant at her husband, who took another draw on his cigarette, squinting in silent approval.

“Enjoy yourself,” he added after a moment. “This young man is a magnificent dancer.”

Scarcely had she risen from her chair when Max opened his arms, discreetly. Holding her right hand aloft, he placed his free hand on her waist. The unexpected touch of her warm skin took him by surprise. He had noticed the cut of her evening gown exposing her back, but it hadn't occurred to him, despite his experience of embracing ladies, that when dancing with her he would place his hand on her naked flesh. His unease lasted only an instant, concealed beneath his professional mask of composure, and yet his partner sensed it, or he thought she did. For a split second she looked straight at him, before her gaze wandered again across the dance floor. Max leaned gently to one side to begin the dance, and she responded with perfect ease. They began to circle amid the other couples. On two occasions he glanced at the necklace she was wearing.

“Are you ready to do a crossover here?” Max whispered after a moment, anticipating a favorable passage in the music.

Her silent gaze lasted a couple of seconds.

“Of course.”

He removed his hand from her back, halting abruptly on the dance floor, and spun her full circle, first this way then that, sketching an arabesque around his still form. They came together again in perfect harmony, his hand resting once more on the supple curve of her waist, as if they had rehearsed the step half a dozen times. There was a smile on her lips and Max nodded, satisfied. A few couples had moved aside slightly to stare at them with admiration or envy, and she alerted him with a gentle squeeze of his hand.

“Let's not draw attention to ourselves.”

Max apologized, for which he was rewarded with another indulgent smile. He enjoyed dancing with her. She was the perfect height for him, and he enjoyed feeling the curve of her slender waist beneath his right hand, the way she rested her fingers on his other hand, how easily she pivoted in time to the music, always with poise and finesse, maintaining the figure. With a hint of defiance, perhaps, and yet without any fuss, as when she had agreed to his spinning her around, doing so with all the elegance in the world. As they continued dancing, her eyes remained distant, nearly all the time staring into space, allowing Max to study her perfect features, the contour of her mouth colored with a subtle lipstick, her discreetly powdered nose, the neat arc of her eyebrows on her smooth forehead, above long eyelashes. She had a soft smell, a perfume he couldn't quite identify, for it seemed to blend with her youthful skin: possibly Arpège. Max looked at her husband, who was watching them from the table, apparently paying little attention, as he raised his champagne glass to his lips, and then glanced again at the necklace, whose pearls of exceptional quality glowed faintly in the light of the electric chandeliers. Thanks to his own experience and a few unorthodox acquaintances, the twenty-six-year-old Max knew enough about pearls to distinguish between the button, round, teardrop, and baroque varieties, including their official or unofficial value. These were round pearls of the highest quality: almost certainly Indian or Persian. And worth at least five thousand pounds sterling: more than half a million French francs. That could pay for several weeks with a beautiful woman in the best hotel in Paris or on the Riviera. But, carefully administered, it could also keep him in relative idleness for a year or more.

“You really dance very well, Madam,” he repeated.

Almost reluctantly, her eyes focused on him once more.

“In spite of my age?” she said.

It did not seem like a question. She had clearly been watching him before dinner, when he was dancing with the young Brazilian girls. Max looked suitably shocked.

“Old? For heaven's sake. How can you say such a thing?”

She continued studying him quizzically. Or perhaps with amusement.

“What's your name?”

“Max.”

“Very well, Max. Go ahead, guess my age.”

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

“Please.”

He had quickly collected himself, for he never lost his composure in front of a woman. She had a broad, dazzling smile, which he contemplated with feigned concentration.

“Fifteen.”

She gave a loud, vivacious laugh. A healthy laugh.

“Correct,” she nodded, playing along good-naturedly. “However did you guess?”

“I have a talent for that sort of thing.”

She nodded, her expression half-mocking, half-pleased, or perhaps she was admiring the way he continued to lead her around the floor, amid the other couples, without their conversation distracting him from the music and the dance steps.

“And not just that,” she said, rather mysteriously.

Max searched her eyes for any added nuance in her comment, but once again they were staring blankly over his right shoulder. At that moment, the bolero came to an end. They separated, still facing each other as the orchestra prepared to launch into the next number. Max glanced again at the splendid pearls. For a moment he thought she had caught him in the act.

“That's sufficient,” she said suddenly. “Thank you.”

The periodicals archive is on the upper floor of an old building, at the top of a marble staircase surmounted by a vaulted ceiling decorated with flaking paintings. The hardwood floor creaks when Max Costa, carrying three bound volumes of the magazine
Scacco Matto
, goes to sit down in a well-lit part of the room, beside a window overlooking half a dozen palm trees and the white-and-gray façade of the Basilica di San Antonino. On the desk he places a spectacle case, a notepad, a ballpoint pen, and several newspapers purchased at a kiosk on Vía de Maio.

An hour and a half later, Max stops taking notes, removes his reading glasses, rubs his tired eyes, and looks out at the square, where the evening sun is casting long shadows from the palm trees. By now, Dr. Hugentobler's chauffeur has read almost everything published about Jorge Keller, the player who over the next four weeks will be challenging the world chess champion, Mikhail Sokolov, in Sorrento. There are several photographs of Keller in magazines, invariably sitting in front of a chessboard, and in some of them he looks very young: a mere boy tackling opponents much older than himself. The most recent one is from that day's edition of a local paper: Keller is posing in the hotel lobby at the Vittoria in the same jacket he was wearing when Max saw him strolling through Sorrento that morning with the two women.

“Born in London in 1938, the son of a Chilean diplomat, Keller astounded the chess world when he maneuvered the American Reshevsky into a tight spot during a simultaneous exhibition in the Plaza de Armas in Santiago: he was fourteen years old a
t the time, and in the ten years that followed, he went on to become one of the most talented players of all time . . .”

Despite Jorge Keller's meteoric rise to fame, Max is less interested in his professional biography than in other aspects of his family history, and he has finally unearthed some information
about that. Both
Scacco Matto
and the newspapers covering the Campanella Cup agree on the influence which, after her divorce from her Chilean husband, the young chess player's mother has had on her son's career.

“The Kellers separated when their son was seven years old. Wealthy in her own right following the death of her first husband during the Spanish civil war, Mercedes Keller found herself ideally situated to offer her son the finest education. When she discovered his talent for chess, she sought out the best teachers, took the boy to every tournament both inside and outside Chile, and persuaded the Chilean-Armenian grand master, Emil Karapetian,
to oversee his instruction. The young Keller did not disappoint her. He had no difficulty beating his peers, and under the supervision of his mother and Karapetian, both of whom still accompany him today, he progressed rapidly . . .”

After leaving the archive Max returns to the car and drives down to the Marina Grande, parking near the church. Then he makes his way to the Trattoria Stéfano, which is still closed to the public at that time of day. He has gone out in his shirtsleeves, cuffs turned up twice to expose his forearms, jacket slung over his shoulder, pleasurably inhaling the easterly breeze with a tang of salt and the shores of a calm sea. On the terrace of the small restaurant, beneath a bamboo canopy, a waiter is laying tablecloths and cutlery on four tables situated close to the water's edge and the fishermen's boats, beached amid piled-up nets and coils of fishing line.