What We Become (45 page)

“You and they have embroiled me in something I don't like,” Max added after a moment. “And all I want is to get it over with. To be rid of you all.”

Mostaza tutted sympathetically.

“Well, I've got bad news for you,” he replied. “Because you can't get away from us. We are the future, like machines, airplanes, red flags, black, blue, or brown shirts. . . . You arrived too late for a party that is already doomed.” He pointed with his pipe toward the clouds gathering over the water. “A storm is brewing not far from here. That storm will sweep everything away, nothing will ever be the same again. Those fancy ties you bought in Paris will be of little use to you then.”

“I don't know whether Jorge is my son,” says Max. “Actually, I've no way of knowing.”

“Of course not,” replied Mecha Inzunza. “You only have my word for it.”

They are sitting at a table on the terrace of a bar on the Piazzetta in Capri, next to the cathedral steps and the clock tower looming above the road that winds up from the harbor. They arrived midafternoon, in the little ferryboat that takes half an hour from Sorrento. It was Mecha's idea. “Jorge is resting,” she said, “and it's been years since I went to the island.” She invited Max to go with her.

“During that time, did you . . .” he starts to say.

“Go with other men, you mean?”

Max doesn't reply immediately. He watches the people sitting at the other tables or strolling past, backlit by the setting sun. Snatches of conversation in English, Italian, or German reach them from the adjacent tables.

“The other Keller was around then,” he adds as though concluding a convoluted line of reasoning. “Jorge's official father.”

Mecha gives a scathing laugh. She is playing with the ends of the silk scarf tied at her neck, over a gray sweater and black slacks that hug her long legs, skinnier now than twenty-nine years ago. She is wearing a pair of black Pilgrim shoes without buckles, and the leather and canvas shoulder bag is hanging from the back of her chair.

“Listen, Max. I'm not asking you to accept paternity, not at this time of your life and mine.”

“I don't intend . . .”

She raises her hand, silencing him.

“I can imagine what you intend or don't intend. I was merely answering your question. Why should I do it, you asked. Why should you should run a risk with the Russians by stealing their book?”

“I'm too old for these tricks.”

“Perhaps.”

Mecha reaches absentmindedly for her wineglass on the table,
next to Max's. He looks once more at her skin sagging with age, like his own, and the blemishes on the back of her hand.

“You were more interesting when you took risks,” she adds, wistfully.

“And a lot younger,” Max replies, unflinching.

She gazes at him, sardonically.

“Have you, or we, changed so much? Don't you feel the old tingling in your fingertips anymore? Your heart beating faster than usual?”

She contemplates the graceful look of resignation he gives her by way of a reply: a gesture in keeping with the navy-blue sweater draped with deliberate casualness over the shoulders of his white cotton polo shirt, the gray linen trousers, and his white hair combed back like in the old days, with an immaculate side part.

“I wonder how you did it,” she adds. “What stroke of luck allowed you to change your life . . . and what her name was. Or their names. The women who footed the bill.”

“There weren't any women.” Max tilts his head, uneasily. “Just luck. As you said.”

“An easy life.”

“Yes.”

“The one you always dreamed of.”

“Not exactly. But I can't complain.”

Mecha looks over at the steps leading from the Piazzetta to the Palazzo Cerio, as though searching for a familiar face among the crowd.

“He
is
your son, Max.”

A silence. She drains her glass, with short, almost thoughtful sips.

“I'm not trying to make you pay for anything,” she says after a moment. “You aren't responsible for his life or mine. . . . I was merely giving you a valid reason for helping him.”

Max pretends to busy himself with smoothing out his trousers, so as not to appear troubled.

“You will do it, won't you?”

“His hands, perhaps,” he concedes, at last. “His hair looks like mine, too. . . . And something about the way he moves.”

“Don't keep dwelling on it, please. Take it or leave it. But stop acting so pathetic.”

“I'm not pathetic.”

“Yes you are. A pathetic old man, desperately trying to rid himself of a sudden, unwanted burden. When there is no burden.”

She has risen to her feet, seizing her bag. She looks up at the clock tower.

“There's a vaporetto leaving at six forty-five. Let's take a last stroll.”

Max puts on his glasses to read the bill. Then he returns them to his trouser pocket, pulls his wallet out, and leaves two thousand-lira notes on the table.

“Jorge never needed you,” says Mecha. “He had me.”

“And your money. An easy life.”

“You sound almost disapproving, my dear. Although if memory serves, you were always chasing money. And now that you appear to have it, you aren't hurrying to give it up.”

They walk over to the parapet wall. Lemon groves and vineyards slope down toward the cliff tops, tinged red with the light streaking the Bay of Naples. The disk of the sun begins sinking into the sea, throwing into relief the distant island of Ischia.

“And yet you missed your chance twice. . . . How could you have behaved so stupidly toward me? So clumsy, and so blind?”

“I was too busy, I suppose. Trying to survive.”

“You were impatient. Incapable of waiting.”

“You were heading in a different direction.” Max chooses his words carefully. “To places where I felt uncomfortable.”

“You could have changed that. You were a coward . . . although in the end you succeeded, unintentionally.”

She shivers for a second as if she were cold. Max offers her his
sweater, but she shakes her head. With her silk scarf she covers her short gray hair, fastening it under her chin. Then she stands beside him leaning over the parapet wall.

“Did you ever love me, Max?”

Taken aback, Max doesn't reply. He gazes obstinately at the red-tinged water trying silently to separate the word
regret
from the word
melancholy
.

“Oh, what a fool I am.” She touches his hand in a fleeting caress. “Of course you did. You did love me.”

Desolation
is another word for it, he decides. A kind of damp, hidden lament for all that was and is no more. For the warmth and the body that are unreachable now.

“You don't know what you've missed all these years,” Mecha goes on. “Seeing your son grow up. Seeing the world through his eyes, as he began to open them.”

“Assuming it's true, why me?”

“You mean, why did I choose you?”

She doesn't reply straightaway. The church bell has chimed, its sound echoing over the island's hills. Mecha glances up at the clock once more, turns away from the parapet wall, and begins walking toward the terminus of the funicular railway that runs from the Piazzetta down to the marina.

“It happened,” she says when he sits down beside her on a bench inside the funicular, where they are the only passengers. “That's all. Then I had to decide, and I decided.”

“To keep him.”

“To keep him, yes. All to myself.”

“And the father . . . ?”

“Oh, yes. The father. As you say, he was convenient. Useful, at first. Ernesto was a good man. Good for the boy . . . But then that need diminished.”

With a slight judder, the funicular descends between banks of vegetation and views of the sunset over the bay. The remainder
of the short journey passes in silence, broken in the end by Max.

“I spoke to your son this morning.”

“How funny.” She seems genuinely surprised. “We had lunch together and he didn't mention it.”

“He asked me to stay away from him.”

“What did you expect? He's an intelligent lad. His instinct doesn't only work for chess. He senses something ambiguous about you. Why you're here, and all the rest. Actually, I think he senses it through me. He couldn't care less about you. It's my attitude toward you that puts him on guard.”

By the time they reach the harbor, the sun has gone down and the marina has taken on grayish tones and shadows. They walk along the quayside, watching the fishing boats moored nearby.

“Jorge can feel there's a special bond between us,” says Mecha.

“Special?”

“Old. Misguided.”

After saying this, she falls silent for a moment. Max walks beside her, not daring to say a word.

“You asked me a question just now,” she says at last. “Why do you think I wanted to keep that child?”

Now Max is the one who remains silent. He looks to one side, then the other, finally smiling nervously, admitting defeat. And yet she continues to stare at him intently, awaiting his reply.

“The truth is, you and me . . .” he ventures.

Another silence. Mecha watches him as the light fades and everything around them seems to die slowly.

“Ever since that first tango we danced in the ship's ballroom,” Max says at last, “ours was a strange relationship.”

Mecha is still staring at him, with a look of such utter contempt now that he almost has to force himself not to look away.

“Is that all? Strange, you say? . . . For God's sake, Max. I've been in love with you ever since we danced that tango . . . almost my whole life.”

Night was also drawing in twenty-nine years before, over the bay in Nice, while Max Costa and Mecha Inzunza walked along the Promenade des Anglais. The sky was overcast, and the last rays of light were fading fast among the dark clouds, fusing the line between the sky and the rough sea crashing onto the pebbly beach. The odd heavy raindrop, presaging a downpour, splashed on the ground, giving a forlorn look to the motionless palm fronds.

“I'm leaving Nice,” said Max.

“When?”

“In three or four days. As soon as I've finished some business here.”

“Will you be coming back?”

“I don't know.”

She said nothing more about it. She was walking steadily in her high heels, despite the damp ground, hands in the pockets of a gray raincoat with the belt pulled tight, accentuating her slender waist. Her hair was swept up under a black beret.

“Will you stay in Antibes?” asked Max.

“Yes. Probably all winter. At least for as long as the situation in Spain lasts, and while I'm awaiting news of Armando.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“No.”

Max hooked his umbrella over one arm, then removed his hat and shook the raindrops off before putting it on again.

“At least he's still alive.”

“He was a few weeks ago. Now, I don't know.”

The Palais de la Méditerranée had just switched on its lights. As though responding to a general signal, the street lamps suddenly came on along the wide sweep of the Promenade, casting alternate light and shadows on the façades of the hotels and restaurants. Opposite the H
Ô
tel Ruhl, beneath the covered walkway to La
Jetée-Promenade where a uniformed doorman was standing guard, three young men in evening dress were hanging around, trying their luck with the cars that pulled up and the women who stepped out of them on their way inside, where music was playing. Clearly none possessed the hundred francs that was the price of admission. All three men looked at Mecha, quietly covetous, and one of them went over to Max to cadge a cigarette. He smelled of cheap cologne. Extremely young and rather handsome, he looked Italian and was dressed like the others in a double-breasted jacket, tapered at the waist, a starched collar, and a bow tie. The suit looked hired and the shoes were somewhat scuffed, but the young man behaved with a self-assurance and almost insolent swagger that made Max smile. Max came to a halt, unbuttoned his Burberry, took out his tortoiseshell cigarette case, and offered it to the young man, open.