What We Become Read online

  “And yet,” objected de Troeye, “you dance modern tango, so to speak.”

  Max smiled at the word modern.

  “Of course. That is the kind everyone asks for. And the one I know. I never danced the old-style tango in Buenos Aires. I was too young. Although I saw it danced often enough. . . . Ironically, I learned the tango I dance in Paris.”

  “How did you end up there?”

  “That’s a long story. It would bore you.”

  De Troeye had beckoned the waiter, and was ordering another round, ignoring Max’s protests. Ordering drinks without consulting anyone seemed to come naturally to him. Apparently he was the sort of fellow who behaved like a host even when he was a guest at someone else’s table.

  “Bore me? On the contrary. You cannot imagine how fascinated I am by what you’re saying. . . . Are there still people in Buenos Aires who play the old way? . . . Pure tango, as it were?”

  Max thought about it for a moment and finally shook his head, doubtfully.

  “There is nothing pure. But there are still a few places. Not in the fashionable dance halls, obviously.”

  De Troeye examined his own hands. Broad, strong hands. Not tapered, the way Max imagined those of a famous composer would be. Clipped, shiny nails, he noticed. He wore the gold signet ring with the blue lozenge on the same finger as his wedding band.

  “I am going to ask a favor of you, Mr. Costa. Something that means a lot to me.”

  The fresh drinks had arrived. Max did not touch his. De Troeye was grinning, sure of himself.

  “I’d like to invite you to lunch,” he went on, “so that we can discuss this in more detail.”

  Max concealed his surprise beneath an awkward smile.

  “I appreciate the gesture, but as an employee I am not allowed in the first-class dining room . . .”

  “You’re right.” The composer frowned, thoughtful, as though wondering to what extent he could change the ship’s regulations. “That is an unfortunate inconvenience. We could eat together in second class . . . but I have an even better idea. My wife and I have a double stateroom that can easily accommodate a table for three. . . . Would you do us the honor?”

  Max hesitated, still taken aback.

  “That is very kind of you, but I’m not sure that I should. . . .”

  “Don’t worry. I will arrange it with the steward.” De Troeye took a last sip before placing his glass firmly on the table, as if the matter was decided. “So you accept, then?”

  Any qualms Max still had were simply because he was cautious. It was true that nothing was going the way he had imagined. Or was it? he wondered after reflecting for a moment. He needed a little more time and information to be able to weigh the pros and cons. Armando de Troeye’s entrance was a new, unforeseen element in the game.

  “Perhaps your wife—” he began to say.

  “Mecha will be delighted,” de Troeye declared, raising his eyebrows as he signaled to the waiter to bring the bill. “She says you are the best ballroom dancer she has ever met. It will be a pleasure for her as well.”

  Without glancing at the total, de Troeye signed with his room number, tipped the waiter with a banknote, and rose to his feet. Out of courtesy Max made to do likewise, but de Troeye detained him, placing a hand on his shoulder. A hand stronger than he would have imagined for a musician.

  “In a manner of speaking, I want your advice.” De Troeye had slipped his gold fob watch out of his pocket and was checking the time with a nonchalant air. “Until midday, then . . . Cabin 3A. We shall be expecting you.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Armando de Troeye left the bar, taking for granted that Max would keep the appointment. After he had gone, Max sat staring at the door through which he had just disappeared. He reflected on the surprising turn this gave, or might give, events he had been trying to set up for the days to come. On balance, the situation could offer richer pickings than he had ­initially imagined, he concluded. He placed a sugar cube in a teaspoon, balanced it on top of the glass of absinthe, and poured a small amount of water over it, watching the sugar dissolve into the greenish liquid. Grinning to himself, he raised the glass to his lips. This time, the sweet, pungent taste of the alcohol did not conjure memories of second lieutenant legionnaire Boris Dolgoruki-­Bragation and the native shacks of Morocco. His thoughts were with the shiny pearl necklace glistening beneath the ballroom chandeliers in Mecha Inzunza de Troeye’s cleavage. And with the line of her bare neck, rising from her shoulders. He felt an urge to whistle a tango, and would have done so had he not suddenly remembered where he was. When he rose to his feet, the taste of absinthe in his mouth was sweet like a promise of women and adventure.

  Spadaro, the receptionist, has lied. The room is indeed small, furnished with a chest of drawers and an antique wardrobe with a full-length mirror, the bathroom is cramped, and the single bed is modest. But it is not true that the room has no view. Through its only window, Max can see the part of Sorrento that overlooks the Marina Grande, as well as the copse of trees in the park and the villas clustered on the rocky slopes of the Punta del Capo. And when he opens the shutters and leans out, the light dazzling his eyes, he can also see part of the bay, with the island of Ischia a blur in the distance.

  Fresh out of the shower, naked beneath a bathrobe bearing the embroidered monogram of the hotel, Dr. Hugentobler’s chauffeur observes himself in the wardrobe mirror. His critical eye, trained by the habits of his profession in the study of human beings (for his success or failure always depended on this), lingers on the motionless figure of an old man, contemplating his own wet, gray hair, his furrowed face and tired eyes. He is still in good shape, he concludes, providing one looks with a kind eye upon the ravages men his age usually show—the irreparable damage, diminishment, and decay. And so, in search of consolation, he prods the bathrobe: there’s no doubt he is heavier, thicker set than he was some years earlier, but his waistline is still acceptable. He holds himself erect and his eyes remain lively and intelligent, proof of an elegance that the decadence, dark years, and ultimate loss of hope have never completely eradicated. As if to verify this, like an actor rehearsing a tricky part of his role, Max suddenly smiles at the old man in the mirror, who responds with a seemingly spontaneous gesture that lights up his face: friendly, persuasive, polished to perfection so as to inspire confidence. He stays that way a moment more, motionless, allowing his smile to slowly slip away. Then, taking a comb from the top of the chest of drawers, he smoothes his hair down in the old style, straight back, parting dead straight, on the left side close to the middle. Appraising the result with a critical eye, he concludes that his gestures are still elegant. At least they can be. They reveal an alleged good breeding (and in the old days that was a simple step away from alleged good birth), which years of practice have refined until anything that might betray their fraudulent origin has been eliminated. In short, the remains of a stimulating past, which in days gone by allowed him to venture with a hunter’s ease into uncertain, often hostile territory. Not only to survive, but to prosper. Almost. Until quite recently.

  Slipping out of his bathrobe, Max whistles “Torna a Sorrento” as he starts to dress with the meticulous care of the old days, when he devoted minute attention to the angle of a hat, the knot of a tie, the five different ways of folding a white handkerchief in the top pocket of a jacket. It would make him feel confident in his resourcefulness, like a warrior preparing for battle. That vague awareness of the past, the familiar whiff of expectation, of imminent combat, now soothes his rediscovered sense of pride, as he dons a pair of cotton underpants, gray socks (which take a bit of effort to put on, bending over on the edge of the bed), and the shirt from Dr. Hugentobler’s wardrobe, slightly loose at the waist. In the last few years snug clothes have been in fashion, flared trousers, tight-fitting jackets and shirts, but Max, who cannot conform to such trends, prefers the classic cut of the Sir Bonser pale
-blue silk shirt with button-down collar that looks like it was made for him. Before buttoning it up, his eyes linger on the small, star-shaped scar an inch in diameter on the left side just below the rib cage—courtesy of a bullet fired by a cop from the Rif in Taxuda, Morocco, on November 2, 1921, which narrowly missed his lung, and, following a spell in the hospital at Melilla, brought to an end the short-lived military career of the legionnaire who five months earlier had enlisted in the 13th Company of the First Battalion of the Spanish Foreign Legion as Max Costa, thus renouncing forever his original name: Maximo Covas Lauro.

  Tango, Max explained to the composer and his wife, was a coming together of several strands: Andalusian tango, Cuban habanera, Argentine milonga, and black slave dances. When the Argentinian gauchos first brought their guitars to the bars, stores, and brothels on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, they brought with them the rural milonga, based on songs, and eventually the tango, which began as a milonga dance. The black elements were important, because in those days couples danced farther apart than they do now, with cross and back steps, simple or more elaborate turns.

  “Black tango?” Armando de Troeye seemed genuinely surprised. “I didn’t realize there were black people in Buenos Aires.”

  “There used to be. Former slaves, of course. They were decimated at the turn of the last century by a yellow fever epidemic.”

  The three of them were still seated at the table that had been set up in the couple’s double stateroom. It smelled of fine leather trunks and eau de cologne. Through a large window they had a view of the calm blue ocean. Max, who wore a gray suit, soft-­collared shirt, and paisley necktie, had knocked on the door at two minutes past twelve, and, after a few initial moments during which Armando de Troeye alone seemed to be at ease, the lunch (sweet pepper soup, lobster salad, and a chilled Rhine wine) had passed in an atmosphere of pleasant conversation. At first it was conducted almost entirely by de Troeye, who, after recounting a few of his own anecdotes, once again expressed interest in Max’s childhood in Buenos Aires, the return to Spain, and his time as a ballroom dancer in luxury hotels and transatlantic liners. Habitually circumspect when talking about his own life, Max had skirted around the issue with brief remarks and deliberate vagueness. Finally, over coffee and cognac, at de Troeye’s request, he had resumed their discussion about tango.

  “The white Argentines,” Max explained, “who at first only watched the blacks, soon adopted their way of dancing, but slowed down steps they couldn’t imitate and introduced movements from the waltz, the habanera, or the mazurka. . . . Remember at that time tango wasn’t so much a kind of music as a way of dancing, or playing music.”

  From time to time, as Max spoke, his cuffs with their silver cuff links resting on the edge of the table, his eyes met those of Mecha Inzunza. The composer’s wife had remained silent throughout most of the meal, listening to their conversation, and only occasionally commenting briefly or slipping in a question and awaiting the reply with polite interest.

  “The tango danced by Italians and European immigrants,” Max went on, “became slower, less disjointed, although the compadritos from the poor neighborhoods adopted some of the African mannerisms. . . . When a couple were dancing in a straight line, so to speak, the man would stop in midflow, to show off or to perform a quebrada, halting his movement and that of his partner”—Max glanced at Mecha, who was still listening attentively—“the famous corte, the respectable version of which you are so good at in the tangos we dance currently.”

  Mecha Inzunza honored the compliment with a smile. She was wearing a delightfully diaphanous, champagne-colored dress, and the light from the window set off her hair, bobbed at the nape of her neck, whose slender shape had filled Max’s thoughts ever since the silent tango they had danced in the palm court of the ocean liner. The only jewels she had worn then were the pearls in a double string around her neck and her wedding band.

  “What are compadritos?” she asked now.

  “What were they, you mean.”

  “Do they no longer exist?”

  “Things have changed a lot in the last ten to fifteen years . . . When I was a child, compadritos were young men of humble background, the sons or grandsons of the gauchos who rode in with the cattle and dismounted in the working-class suburbs of Buenos Aires.”

  “They sound dangerous,” remarked de Troeye.

  Max made a dismissive gesture. They were relatively harmless, he explained, unlike the compadres and compadrones, who were much rougher characters: some were real villains, others only appeared to be. Politicians would employ them as bodyguards, or during elections, and so on. But the authentic compadres, who often had Spanish surnames, were being replaced by the sons of immigrants who tried to emulate them: petty criminals who still adopted the old ways of the knife-fighting gauchos, but without possessing their code of honor or their courage.

  “And is authentic tango a dance of compadritos and compadres?” asked Armando de Troeye.

  “It used to be. Those early tangos were openly lewd, with couples bringing their bodies together, entwining their legs and thrusting with their hips, like I said before. Remember that the first female tango dancers were camp followers and women from the brothels.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Max could see Mecha Inzunza’s smile, scornful yet fascinated. He had seen that same smile before in other women of her class, when topics like this were mentioned.

  “Hence its bad reputation, naturally,” she said.

  “Of course,” Max went on, still addressing her husband out of politeness. “Imagine, one of the earliest tangos was called ‘Give Me the Tin . . .’ ”

  “The tin?”

  Another sidelong glance. Max paused, searching for how best to put it.

  “The token,” he said at last, “which the madam gave each client, and which the whore in turn gave to her mack, who cashed them in.”

  “Mack, that sounds foreign,” said Mecha Inzunza.

  “It comes from maquereau,” de Troeye explained. “The French word for pimp.”

  “I understood that perfectly, my dear.”

  Even when tango became popular and was danced at family gatherings, cortes were banned on grounds of indecency. When he was a child, tango was only danced at afternoon shindigs in the Spanish or Italian social clubs, in brothels, or in the garçonnières of well-to-do young men. And even now, when tango had taken the dance halls and theaters by storm, the ban on cortes and quebradas remained in place in some circles. The “leg thrust,” as it was crudely termed. Once the tango became socially acceptable, it lost its character, Max concluded. It became slow, calculated, less lewd. This was the tame version that had traveled to Paris and become famous.

  “It was transformed into that dull routine we see in dance halls, or into Valentino’s ridiculous caricature of it on screen.”

  Max could feel her eyes on him. Avoiding them with as much calm as he could muster, he reached for his cigarette case and offered it to her. She took one of the Abdul Pashas, inserting it into her short ivory holder. De Troeye did likewise, and then lit his wife’s with his gold lighter. Leaning slightly toward the flame, she raised her eyes, looking once more at Max through the first puff of smoke, which the light from the window turned a bluish shade.

  “And in Buenos Aires?” asked Armando de Troeye.

  Max smiled. He had lit his own cigarette after tapping one end of it gently on the closed lid of the case. The turn in the conversation enabled him to meet Mecha’s eyes once more. He held her gaze for three seconds, maintaining his smile, then addressed her husband again.

  “In the slums of the suburbs a few people still dance tango with the occasional quebrada and leg thrust. That is where the last of the Old School Tango survives. . . . What we dance is actually a watered-down version of that. A tasteful habanera.”

  “Is it the same with the lyrics?”

  “Yes, but
that’s a more recent phenomenon. At first tango was only music, or couplets sung in the theaters. When I was a boy it was still rare to hear tango sung, and when it was, the lyrics were always obscene, stories with double meanings told by shameless ruffians. . . .”

  Max paused, unsure if it was appropriate for him to carry on.

  “And?”

  It was Mecha who had posed the question, toying with one of the silver teaspoons. That decided him.

  “Well . . . you only have to consider some of the titles from back then: ‘Que polvo con tanto viento,’ ‘Seeds in the Wind; ‘Siete Pulgadas,’ ‘Seven Inches’; ‘Cara Sucia,’ ‘Dirty Face’—all of which have double meanings, or ‘La c . . . ara de la l . . . una,’ ‘The F . . . ace of the M . . . oon,’ written like that, with three dots in the title, which, forgive me for being crude, actually means ‘La concha de la lora,’ ‘The Floozie’s Muff.’ ”

  “Floozie?”

  “A word for ‘prostitute’ in Buenos Aires slang. The sort Gardel uses in his songs.”

  “And muff?”

  Max looked at Armando de Troeye, without replying. The husband’s amused expression gave way to a broad smile.

  “Understood,” he said.

  “Understood,” she repeated a moment later, without smiling.

  Sentimental tango, Max went on, was a recent phenomenon. It was Gardel who popularized those melancholy lyrics, filling tango songs with cuckolded hoodlums and fallen women. His voice turned the ruffian’s shamelessness to tears and regret. Poetic guff.

  “We met him two years ago, when he was touring in Rome and Madrid,” said de Troeye. “Charming fellow. A bit of a gossip, but pleasant enough.” He looked at his wife. “With that fixed smile of his, remember? . . . As if he could never relax.”

  “I only saw him once, from a distance, eating chicken stew at El Tropezón,” said Max. “He was surrounded by people, of course. I didn’t dare approach him.”