“That isn’t difficult in Paris,” he replied simply. “The different social classes mingle a lot. People with money frequent low-life bars . . . like you and your husband at La Ferroviaria; only they don’t need an excuse.”
“I see. I am not quite sure how to take that.”
“I had a friend in Africa,” he went on, ignoring her protest. “I mentioned him to you on the boat as well.”
“I remember. The Russian aristocrat with the long name. You told me he died.”
Max nodded, almost relieved. It was easier for him to talk about that than about Boske, half-naked in the misty morning on Rue de Furstenberg, about his last glimpse of the syringe, the empty vials, the glasses, bottles, and leftover food on the table, the dim half-light so close to remorse. That Russian friend, he said, had claimed he was an officer in the Tsar’s army. He fought with the White Guard until the retreat at Crimea, and from there he went to Spain, where he enlisted in the Legion after an argument over a wager. He was a peculiar fellow: condescending, debonair, popular with the ladies. He had taught Max good manners, provided him with the first basic veneer (how to knot a tie, fold a pocket handkerchief, explaining which hors d’oeuvres, ranging from anchovies to caviar, should accompany a glass of iced vodka). It amused him, he once remarked, to transform a bit of cannon fodder into something that could pass for a gentleman.
“He had relatives exiled in Paris, where some made a living as hotel porters or taxi drivers. Others had managed to salvage their money, among them a cousin who owned a few tango cabarets. One day, I went to see his cousin, he hired me, and things improved. . . . I was able to buy the right clothes, to live reasonably well, and to travel a bit.”
“And what happened to your Russian friend? . . . How did he die?”
This time Max’s memories weren’t somber. At least not in the conventional sense. His mouth twisted in a compassionate grimace as he thought of the last time he had seen Second Lieutenant Dolgoruki-Bragation, holed up in the most expensive room at the Tauima brothel with three whores and a bottle of brandy, whence, having finished with one then the others, he embarked upon life’s final adventure.
“He was bored. He shot himself because he was bored.”
Max is sitting at a table outside the Bar Ercolano, beneath the palm trees and the clock tower in Piazza Tasso, with his glasses on to read the newspapers. It is midmorning, the busiest time in the old quarter, and the occasional noise of a car exhaust pipe makes him look up from his reading. No one there today would think the tourist season was in its death throes: the tables outside Il Fauno, opposite, are all taken up by people enjoying a lunchtime drink; at the entrance to Via San Cesareo the stalls selling fish, fruit, and vegetables are crowded; and noisy swarms of Fiats, Vespas, and Lambrettas drive up and down Corso Italia. The only thing not moving are the horse-drawn carriages waiting for tourists, while their bored drivers stand in groups beneath the marble statue of the poet Torquato Tasso, chatting and smoking as they watch the women go by.
Il Mattino features a long article about the Keller-Sokolov contest, and the various matches they have played. The last ended in a draw, and apparently that puts the Russian ahead. According to the explanation Lambertucci and Captain Tedesco gave Max, each game won is worth a point, and when the opponents draw, they both mark up half a point. As things stand, Sokolov has two and half points to Keller’s one and a half. An indecisive lead, the specialist reporters agree. Max has spent a while reading all this with great interest, although skipping the technical details cloaked in strange terms like the Spanish Gambit, the Petrosian System, and the Nimzo Indian Defense.
The newspapers all highlight the tension surrounding the contest, not so much due to the fifty thousand dollars the winner will receive but rather the political and diplomatic situation. According to what Max has just read, the Russians have held on to the international chess crown for the past twenty years, the title of world champion having been won by successive grand masters from the Soviet Union. Since the Communist Revolution, the game has become a national sport (fifty million players out of a population of two hundred-odd million, according to one of the articles), and a valuable propaganda tool beyond the Iron Curtain, to the point where every chess competition enjoys the state’s full backing. As a result, according to one of the journalists, Moscow is throwing all its resources into the Campanella Chess Contest, since Jorge Keller in five months’ time will be challenging Sokolov for the world title (informal capitalist heterodoxy versus rigorous Soviet orthodoxy), in what, after the thrilling prologue in Sorrento, promises to be the chess contest of the century.
Max takes another sip of Negroni and leafs through the newspaper, skimming the headlines: the Beatles plan to break up, French rock star Johnny Hallyday attempts suicide, long hair and short skirts revolutionize England. . . . The international political section refers to other revolutions: the Red Guards continue their attack on Peking, in America colored people are demanding civil rights, and a group of mercenaries is detained while attempting to intervene in Katanga. On the page, between a headline about the launch of another Gemini space mission (“USA Heads Race to Moon”) and an advertisement for gasoline (“Put a tiger in your tank”), is a black-and-white image of a burly American GI, his back to the photographer, giving a piggyback ride to a little Vietnamese boy, who has turned his head and is staring distrustfully at the camera.
An Alfa Romeo Giulia goes by with the windows down, and for an instant Max thinks he recognizes the tune playing on the car radio. Looking up from the photograph of the GI and the boy (it has brought back memories of other soldiers and children, forty-five years ago), he gazes with a puzzled air at the car as it heads toward the yellow-and-white façade of Santa Maria del Carmine at the far end of the Corso Italia. Still absorbed by the newspaper, his brain takes a few seconds to identify the music his ear has already registered: the familiar strains of the popular classic, in an arrangement for orchestra with drums and electric guitar, among others, commonly known for the last forty years as the Old School Tango.
When Max halted midstep to perform the corte, Mecha looked into his eyes for a moment, before boldly pressing herself up against him, snaking this way and that, and sliding her thigh up and down his leg, firmly thrust forward. He stoically resisted the feel of her flesh beneath her thin crepe dress, their extraordinary intimacy, while everyone in La Ferroviaria (a dozen pairs of eyes, both male and female) seemed fixed upon them. Then Max stepped sideways, and she instantly followed with effortless grace.
“That’s what I like,” she whispered. “Slow and steady, don’t let them think you’re afraid of me.”
Max placed his lips close to her right ear. Enjoying the game, regardless of the risks.
“You’re quite a woman,” he said.
“You ought to know.”
Her proximity, the soft scent of perfume lingering on her skin, the tiny beads of sweat on her upper lip and at the roots of her hair, reawakened the desire freshly imprinted on his memory of warm, languid flesh, the aroma of sated sex and a woman’s perspiration, as he felt her skin grow moist once more, the thin fabric of her dress swaying in time to the tango. It was late and the warehouse was all but empty. The three-man band was playing “Chiqué,” to which only two other couples were tangoing halfheartedly, like tramcars on slow tracks: a small, chubby woman accompanied by a youth wearing a jacket and collarless shirt with no tie, and the Slavic-looking woman Max had danced with on the previous occasion. She was wearing the same floral blouse and moving with a bored expression in the arms of a fellow in a vest and shirtsleeves who could have been a docker. Occasionally, as they danced, the couples drew near to each other, and for a second the woman’s blue eyes met those of Max. Indifferent.
“Your husband is drinking too much,” Max said to Mecha.
“Don’t interfere.”
He looked nervously at the pearls she was wearing that evening, which tou
ched the neckline of her black knee-length dress. Then, with equal unease (wearing jewelry or drinking to excess in a place like La Ferroviaria wasn’t a good idea), he glanced over at the table laden with bottles, glasses, and brimming ashtrays, where Armando de Troeye sat smoking and topping up his glass with gin and soda, accompanied by Juan Rebenque, who two days before had danced a tango with his wife. Soon after they arrived, after watching them for a while, Rebenque had approached their table, his criollo mustache and black, slicked-back hair giving him a serious air, while his dark eyes flashed dangerously beneath the brim of his hat, which he never once took off. He took his time strolling over, a half-smoked cigar in the corner of his mouth, walking with that slow, rolling gait typical of the old toughs, one hand in his right pocket, knife bulging under his snug jacket with satin trim. He asked whether he might join the lady and the two gentlemen, while ordering a fresh bottle of gin and a full soda siphon from the waitress, with the authority of someone accustomed to not paying the bill. It was on him, if they had no objections, he said, looking more at Max than at Armando.
The one-eyed squeezebox player and his fellow musicians took a break, and, encouraged by de Troeye, drew their chairs around the table as Mecha and Max returned to their seats. The old pianola took up the musical baton, churning out a couple of unrecognizable tangos. After a long round of drinks and conversation, the musicians went back to their instruments, launching into “Wild Nights.” Rebenque, rakishly tipping the brim of his hat even farther, suggested to Mecha they dance together. She refused, claiming she was tired, and although the compadrón’s smile remained impassive, he looked daggers at Max, as though he were to blame for the snub. Rebenque doffed his hat casually, rose to his feet, and went over to the blonde dancer, who stood up with a sigh, and, placing her arm over his right shoulder, started to dance resignedly. Rebenque moved in time with the music, enjoying himself, manly and serious, holding his lighted cigar behind his back, while his free hand guided his partner with apparent ease. He paused for a moment after each corte, then continued to sketch tangled figures on the floor, before halting his forward and backward movements once more, only to begin again. Meanwhile, the woman acquiesced with a look of apathy on her face (during one corte, her overly short skirt rode up to reveal almost the whole of her thigh), consenting submissively to each movement, each flourish, each hold imposed by the man.
“What do you think of her?” Mecha asked Max.
“I don’t know . . . Vulgar. Jaded.”
“Perhaps she is controlled by one of those shady organizations you told me about. . . . Possibly they lured her over from Russia or somewhere, with false promises.”
“The white slave trade,” Armando de Troeye said in a faltering voice, as he raised yet another gin to his lips with relish. The idea seemed to amuse him.
Max glanced at Mecha to see if she had been serious. After a moment’s reflection he decided she hadn’t.
“She looks more like she’s from around here,” Max replied. “And going nowhere fast.”
“Vulgar, yes, but pretty,” de Troeye piped up again, sniggering unpleasantly. His eyes were becoming bleary from too much drink, Max noticed.
Mecha continued gazing at the blonde woman. She was following her partner’s catlike movements across the creaking floor, her body pressed against his.
“Do you like her, Max?” she asked suddenly.
Max took his time stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. The conversation was starting to make him ill at ease.
“She’s not bad,” he admitted.
“How dismissive. And yet the other night you seemed to enjoy dancing with her.”
Max contemplated the smudge of lipstick on the rim of Mecha’s glass, and on the ivory cigarette holder next to the smoky ashtray. He could feel the taste of that deep red in his own mouth, which had removed all trace of it on Mecha’s lips as he kissed, licked, and bit her during their violent embrace the day before at the Caboto boardinghouse. Only at the end was there any hint of tenderness, when, with a final shudder, she had whispered in his ear “out, please,” and he, exhausted and on the brink, had obeyed, slowly pulling out, his perspiring body pressed against hers as he gently spilled himself onto her smooth, inviting stomach.
“Do you mean she dances the tango well?” he commented, his thoughts returning to La Ferroviaria.
“She has a good body,” declared de Troeye, who was watching the dancer through the glass he was holding up shakily.
“Like mine?”
Mecha had turned toward Max, half-smiling. She was directing the question at him, at once playful and supercilious. As though her husband weren’t there. Or, Max concluded uneasily, precisely because he was.
“She’s a different sort,” Max replied, as cautiously as if he were advancing through the mist at Taxuda, bayonet at the ready.
“That goes without saying,” Mecha retorted.
Max shot Armando a sidelong glance wondering how this would end (a few hours ago, the two men had spontaneously begun using the informal tu with each other, at de Troeye’s instigation). But de Troeye only seemed interested in his gin and soda, which he had all but sunk his nose into.
“You’re taller,” he declared clicking his tongue. “Isn’t she, Max? . . . And skinnier.”
“Thank you, Armando,” she said. “For being so precise.”
She lifted her glass in an exaggeratedly polite toast to her husband that was bordering on the grotesque, and brimming with innuendos Max couldn’t decipher. Then she fell silent. Max noticed that de Troeye would occasionally pause and stare into space, the smoke from his cigarette making him wince, apparently absorbed by musical modulations only he could hear, skillfully tapping out notes and chords on the table in a way that scarcely evoked the gestures of a man the worse for drink. Wondering how inebriated he actually was, and to what extent he merely gave that impression, Max looked at Mecha, and then at Rebenque and the blonde woman. The music had stopped, and the man had turned his back on his tango partner and was sauntering toward them, in his habitual way.
“We should go,” said Max.
Between two sips, de Troeye emerged from his stupor to approve the idea.
“To another bar?”
“To bed. I imagine your tango is almost ready. . . . La Ferroviaria has nothing more to offer.”
Armando protested. Rebenque, who had sat between him and Mecha, was looking at the three of them with a smile so artificial it looked as it had been painted on his face, as he tried to follow their conversation. He seemed aggrieved, perhaps because no one had praised his masterful tango with the blonde woman.
“And what about me, Max?” asked Mecha.
He turned toward her, awkwardly. Her lips were parted slightly, and her eyes flashed defiantly. He knew that in days gone by he would have been capable of killing in cold blood to have her to himself. To quell his own urgency by stripping off her dress, almost soaked through, which in the warm, smoke-filled air clung to her body like a dark skin.
“Perhaps I am not ready for bed yet,” she insisted.
“We could go to La Boca,” suggested de Troeye jovially, draining his gin and soda with the air of someone coming back from a distant place. “And look for something to keep us up.”
“All right,” she said, rising to her feet and picking her shawl up from the back of the chair, while her husband took out his wallet. “Let’s take the vulgar, pretty blonde with us.”
“That isn’t a good idea,” Max protested.
Mecha and he tried to outstare one another. What the hell are you thinking, was his unspoken question. Her disdain was response enough. Ask for more cards, or throw in your hand, her expression implied. Depending on your curiosity or your courage. You know the prize.
“On the contrary.” De Troeye was counting out ten-peso notes with faltering fingers. “Inviting the young lady along is a . . . fantastic id
ea.”
Rebenque offered to escort the dancer, as there was room for everyone in the gentlemen’s big automobile, he said. He knew a good place in La Boca. Casa Margot. The best ravioli in Buenos Aires.
“Ravioli?” said de Troeye, bewildered.
“Cocaine,” Max translated.
“That’s right,” declared Rebenque, pointedly. “You can stay awake as long as you like.”
He spoke with his eye on Mecha and Max rather than her husband, as though he knew instinctively who his real opponent was. For his part, Max was wary of the ruffian’s static smile, the overbearing way he called over the blonde woman (he told them her name was Melina, and she was of Polish descent), and his surreptitious glance at the wallet Armando de Troeye slipped back into his inside jacket pocket after extracting a fifty, which, together with a generous tip, he left crumpled on the table.
“Too many people,” Max murmured, putting on his hat.
Rebenque must have overheard him, for he gave Max a slow, indignant smile. Sharp as a razor.
“Do you know the neighborhood, my friend?”
Max couldn’t help noticing the subtle change in the way Rebenque addressed him. No longer gentleman but friend. It was clear the night had just begun.
“Somewhat,” he replied. “I lived three blocks from here. A long time ago.”
The other man looked Max up and down, paying special attention to his pristine cuffs. His immaculate tie.
“Yet you talk like a Spaniard.”