What We Become (5 page)

Without looking up from the chessboard, Lambertucci, the restaurant owner, grunts in response to Max's greeting. With the familiarity of a regular customer, Max strolls behind the little bar where the cash register is, sets his jacket on the counter, pours himself some wine, and approaches the table where Lambertucci
is busy concentrating on one of the two chess games, which at the same time every day for the past twenty years he has been accustomed to playing with Captain Tedesco. Antonio Lambertucci, a lanky fellow in his midfifties, is wearing a none-too-clean T-shirt that reveals an army tattoo, a souvenir from when he was a soldier in Abyssinia before being sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in South Africa and later marrying the daughter of Stéfano, the previous owner of the trattoria. Lambertucci's opponent, a black patch over the left eye he lost in Benghazi, gives him a somewhat scowling look. Being called Captain is not a joke: on the contrary, like Lambertucci a native of Sorrento, Tedesco won his promotion during the war, although the difference in rank between the two men lost significance over the three years of captivity both men endured, with nothing to do but play chess. Besides the basic moves, Max knows little about this game (he has learned more that day in the archive than during his entire lifetime), but these two seem like genuine chess lovers. They are regulars at the local chess club and know all about international tournaments, who the grand masters are, and lots more besides.

“So, how good is this Jorge Keller?”

Lambertucci gives another grunt, as he studies an apparently dangerous move his opponent has just made. Finally he makes his move, there is a rapid exchange of pieces, and then Tedesco nonchalantly says “checkmate.” Ten seconds later, the captain is putting away the pieces in their box while Lambertucci picks his nose.

“Keller?” he finally remarks. “Very promising. The next world champion, if he defeats the Russian. . . . He's brilliant and not as eccentric as that other young man, Fischer.”

“Is it true he's been playing since he was a child?”

“So I hear. As far as I know, he became a phenomenon after winning four tournaments between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. Lambertucci glances at Tedesco for confirmation and proceeds to enumerate on his fingers: “Mar de Plata, the international
tournaments at Portoro
Ž
and Chile, and the challengers' tournament in Yugoslavia, tremendous . . .”

“He beat all the big names,” Tedesco adds, equitably.

“Meaning?” says Max.

Tedesco smiles like someone who knows what he's talking about.

“Meaning Petrosian, Tal, Sokolov . . . The best players in the world. His consecration came when he beat Tal and Sokolov in a twenty-game tournament.”

“No mean feat,” adds Lambertucci, who has fetched the carafe and is topping up Max's glass.

“All the greats were there,” Tedesco concludes, narrowing his one good eye. “And Keller trounced them all without turning a hair: he won twelve games and drew seven.”

“So why is he so good?”

Lambertucci looks quizzically at Max.

“Have you got the whole day?”

“Yes. My boss has gone away for a few days.”

“In that case stay to dinner . . . eggplant parmigiana washed down with a nice little Taurasi.”

“Much obliged, but I have a few things to do at the villa.”

“This is the first time I've seen you show any interest in chess.”

“Well . . . you know how it is.” Max smiles wistfully. “The Campanella Cup and all that. Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

Tedesco narrows his one good eye again, pensively.

“You can say that again. Who'll get their hands on it?”

“Why is Keller so good?” Max insists.

“He has a natural talent and is well taught,” replies Lambertucci. Then he shrugs and looks at Tedesco, leaving it to him to fill in the details.

“He's a tenacious young fellow,” Tedesco says, mulling it over for a while. “When he was starting out, many of the grand masters played a conservative, defensive game, but Keller changed all that.
He defeated them with his spectacular assaults, astonishing sacrifices of his pieces, daring gambits . . .”

“And now?”

“That's still his style: bold, brilliant, heart-stopping endgames. . . . He plays like someone immune to fear, with terrifying casualness. Occasionally he makes seemingly sloppy, incorrect moves, yet his opponents are confounded by his complex strategies. . . . His ambition is to be world champion, and the contest here in Sorrento is considered a preliminary competition, a warm-up for the championship being held in Dublin five months from now.”

“Will you be attending the games here?”

“We can't afford it. The Vittoria is reserved for moneyed folk and journalists. . . . We'll have to follow the games on the radio and television, with our own chessboard.”

“And is it all as important as they say?”

“It is the most anticipated meeting since the Reshevsky-Fischer head to head in sixty-one,” Tedesco explains. “Sokolov is a hardened veteran, coolheaded and rather dull: his best games usually end in a draw. They call him the Russian Wall, just imagine. . . . The fact is there is plenty at stake. The prize money, of course. But politics as well.”

Lambertucci gives a shrill laugh.

“They say Sokolov has rented an entire apartment house next to the Vittoria, and is surrounded by advisers and KGB agents.”

“What do you know about the mother?”

“Whose mother?”

“Keller's. She's mentioned in all the magazine and newspaper articles.”

Tedesco remains pensive for a moment.

“Well, only what I've heard: that she is his manager. That when she saw her son's talent she got the best teachers for him. Chess is an expensive sport until you make a name for yourself. All that
traveling, hotels, inscription fees . . . You need to have money, or to obtain money. It seems she had some. I believe she is in charge of everything: his team of trainers, his physical fitness. She even keeps his accounts. . . . People say he is her creation, but I think they exaggerate. Regardless of any help they get, players of genius like Keller create themselves.”

Their next encounter on the
Cap Polonio
took place on the sixth day at sea, before dinner. Max Costa had been dancing for half an hour with female passengers of various ages, including the American woman who tipped him five dollars, and Miss Honeybee, when the headwaiter Schmöcker led Mrs. de Troeye to her usual table. She was alone, as she had been on the first evening. When Max passed close by (at that moment he was dancing with one of the young Brazilian girls to “La Canción del Ukelele”), he saw a waiter bringing her a champagne cocktail while she lit a cigarette in a short ivory holder. She wasn't wearing the pearl necklace this time, but one made of amber. Her black satin dress was cut away at the back, and her hair, smoothed down like a boy's, sleek with brilliantine, a thin line of kohl slanting her eyes. Max glanced at her several times, unable to catch her eye. He exchanged a few words with the musicians as he went by, and when they obligingly struck up a tango that was all the rage (“Adiós Muchachos”), Max took his leave of the young Brazilian girl and walked up to her table during the opening bars. Bowing his head briefly, he smiled and stood there motionless as a few other couples got to their feet. Mecha Inzunza de Troeye looked up at him, and for an instant he feared she would turn him down. But a moment later he saw her deposit her cigarette in the ashtray and stand up. It took her an eternity to do so, and the action of placing her left hand on his right shoulder seemed unbearably languorous. Then the tango, already in full swing, swept them both up, and Max knew instantly that the music was on his side.

He realized yet again that she danced outstandingly. The tango did not demand spontaneity, but rather implicit intentions carried out swiftly, in sullen, almost resentful silence. And that was the way they moved, embracing and separating, performing calculated
quebrados
, and following a shared instinct that allowed them to glide effortlessly around the floor, amid couples tangoing with the obvious clumsiness of novices. As a professional, Max knew it was impossible to perform the tango without a skilled partner capable of following a dance whose flow would suddenly stop, the man slowing the rhythm, reenacting a struggle, in which, entwined around him, the woman would continually attempt to flee, only to yield each time, proud and defiant in her submission. Mecha Inzunza de Troeye proved to be that sort of partner.

They danced two tangos in a row (the second was called “Champagne Tango”), during which neither of them uttered a word, surrendering completely to the music and the pleasure of the dance, to the occasional brush of her satin against his flannel and to the heat Max could feel coming from his companion's youthful body, the outline of her face and combed-back hair descending to her exposed neck and shoulders. And when in the pause between the two dances they stood facing each other (slightly breathless from their exertions, waiting for the music to start again, without her showing any sign of returning to her table), and he noticed tiny pearls of sweat on her upper lip, he pulled out one of his two handkerchiefs, not the one protruding from the top pocket of his tailcoat, but another, clean and ironed, from his inside pocket, and offered it to her spontaneously. She accepted the piece of folded white linen, scarcely dabbing her mouth with it before returning it to him, a little damp and smudged with lipstick. She did not even go over to the table for her bag, as Max had anticipated, to powder her nose. Max also wiped the sweat from his upper lip and brow (it did not escape her notice that he touched his lips first), then put away the handkerchief. The second tango started and they
danced as before in perfect harmony, only this time her gaze did not stray across the ballroom. After faultlessly executing a particularly complicated turn or step, they would pause for an instant and look straight at each other, before breaking the stillness on the next beat, and turning once more around the dance floor. Once, when he halted abruptly, in midmovement, cool and aloof, she clung to him, suddenly, swaying to one side then the other with a mature graceful elegance, as though fleeing his embrace without really wanting to. For the first time since he had become a professional ballroom dancer, Max felt the urge to brush the nape of her slender, youthful neck with his lips. It was then that he realized, with a casual glance, that his dance partner's husband was sitting at the table, legs crossed, a cigarette between his fingers, watching them closely, despite his apparent indifference. And when Max looked back at her, he discovered golden reflections that seemed to explode into silences of eternal, ageless women. Keys to all the mysteries men could not fathom.

The ship's smoking room connected the first-class promenade decks on the port and starboard sides with the poop deck. Max Costa made his way there during the dinner break, knowing it would be almost empty at that hour. The waiter served him a double espresso in a cup bearing the Hamburg Südamerikanische crest. After loosening his white tie and starched collar, he smoked a cigarette next to the window, through which, amid the reflections of light within, the night outside was visible, the moon shining on the poop deck. As the dining room gradually emptied and passengers started to appear and fill the tables, Max got up to leave. In the doorway he stood aside to let a group of men holding cigars pass, among whom he recognized Armando de Troeye. The composer was unaccompanied by his wife, and as Max strolled along the starboard promenade deck, he searched for her among the groups
of ladies and gentlemen wrapped in overcoats, mackintoshes, and cloaks, taking the air or contemplating the ocean. It was a warm evening, but the sea was beginning to get choppy for the first time since they had set sail from Lisbon, and although the
Cap Polonio
was equipped with state-of-the art stabilizers, the roll of the ship brought expressions of concern. The ballroom was quiet that evening, and many of the tables remained empty, including that of the de Troeyes. The first cases of seasickness were occurring, and the musical entertainment was cut short. Max barely had a couple of waltzes, and could finish early.