What We Become

by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Romance; Suspense

Synopsis

From #1 bestselling author and Dagger Award winner, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, comes an epic historical tale following the dangerous and passionate love affair between a beautiful high society woman and an elegant thief-a story of romance, adventure, and espionage, this novel solidifies Pérez-Reverte as an international literary giant.

En route from Lisbon to Buenos Aires in 1928, Max and Mecha meet aboard a luxurious transatlantic cruise ship. There Max teaches the stunning stranger and her erudite husband to dance the tango. A steamy affair ignites at sea and continues as the seedy decadence of Buenos Aires envelops the secret lovers.

Nice, 1937. Still drawn to one another a decade later, Max and Mecha rekindle their dalliance. In the wake of a perilous mission gone awry, Mecha looks after her charming paramour until a deadly encounter with a Spanish spy forces him to flee.

Sorrento, 1966. Max once again runs into trouble-and Mecha. She offers him temporary shelter from the KGB agents on his trail, but their undeniable attraction offers only a small glimmer of hope that their paths will ever cross again.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte is at his finest here, offering readers a bittersweet, richly rendered portrait of a powerful, forbidden love story that burns brightly over forty years, from the fervor of youth to the dawn of old age.

Release date: April 4, 2017

Publisher: Atria Books

Print pages: 464

Sample

What We Become

1

The Ballroom Dancer

THERE WAS A time when he and all his rivals had a shadow existence. And he was the best of them. He always kept flawless rhythm on a dance floor, and off it his hands were steady and agile, his lips poised with the appropriate remark, the perfect, witty one-liner. This made men like him and women admire him. In those days, in addition to the ballroom dances (tangos, fox-trots, Bostons) that helped him earn a living, he had mastered the art of verbal pyrotechnics and sketching melancholy landscapes with his silences. During many a long and fruitful year he had rarely missed his mark: it was rare for a wealthy woman of any age to resist his charms at one of the tea dances at a Palace, Ritz, or Excelsior Hotel; on a terrace on the Riviera; or in the first-class ballroom of a transatlantic liner. He had been the type of man one might come across in the morning in a café, wearing a tuxedo and inviting to breakfast the domestic staff from the house where he had attended a dance or a dinner the previous night. He possessed that talent, or that shrewdness. Moreover, at least once in his life, he was capable of betting everything he had on the table at a casino and traveling home by tramcar, cleaned out, whistling “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,” apparently unconcerned. Such was the elegance with which he could light a cigarette, knot a tie, or sport a pair of perfectly ironed shirt cuffs, that the police never dared arrest him, unless they actually caught him red-handed.

“Max.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You may put my suitcase in the trunk.”

The sun over the Bay of Naples makes his eyes smart as it bounces off the Mark X Jaguar’s chrome plating, the way it did off the automobiles of long ago, driven by him and others. But all that has changed, and his old shadow is nowhere to be seen either. Max Costa glances beneath his feet, tries shifting slightly, to no avail. He can’t remember exactly when it happened, but that hardly matters. His shadow has gone, left behind like so many other things.

He grimaces resignedly, or perhaps it is simply the sun in his eyes, as he tries to think of something real and immediate (the tire pressure for a half or fully loaded car, the ease of the synchronized gearbox, the oil gauge) to fend off that bittersweet pang that always comes when nostalgia or loneliness gets the better of him. Taking a deep, leisurely breath, he finishes polishing the silver statuette of a leaping cat above the front grille with a chamois cloth, then slips on the jacket of his gray uniform that was lying folded on the front seat. Once he has carefully buttoned it up and straightened his tie, he slowly mounts the steps, flanked by headless marble statues and stone urns, leading up to the front door.

“Don’t forget the small bag.”

“I won’t, sir.”

Dr. Hugentobler doesn’t like the way that in Italy his employees address him as “doctor.” This country, he frequently says, is swarming with dottori, cavalieri, and commendatori. I am a Swiss doctor. A professional. I don’t want people mistaking me for a cardinal’s nephew, a Milanese industrialist, or some such thing.

As for Max Costa, everyone at the villa on the outskirts of Sorrento simply calls him Max. This is paradoxical, because most of his life he used various names and titles, noble or otherwise according to the needs of the moment. But for a while now, ever since his shadow fluttered its handkerchief in a last farewell (like a woman who vanishes forever amid a cloud of steam, framed in the window of a sleeping car, and one is never sure if she is leaving at that moment or if she started to leave long before), he has been using his own name. A shadow in return for the name which, until his forced retirement (recent, and in some ways natural), has appeared in thick case files in police departments all over Europe and America. In any event, he thinks as he picks up the small leather bag and the Samsonite suitcase and places them in the trunk of the car, never, not even in his darkest moments, did he imagine he would end his days replying “Yes, sir?” when addressed by his first name.

“Let’s be off, Max. Did you bring the newspapers?”

“They are on the backseat, sir.”

The clunk of two doors. Max Costa has donned his chauffeur’s cap, taken it off, and put it back on again in order to install his passenger. Once behind the wheel, he leaves it on the seat beside him, and in a reflex of vanity glances in the rearview mirror before smoothing down his gray, still abundant hair. Nothing like the detail of the cap, he thinks, to highlight the irony of his situation: the absurd beach where the tide has washed him up after his final shipwreck. And yet, when he is in his room at the villa shaving before the mirror and registers the lines on his face like someone tallying the scars of love and war, each with a name of its own (women, roulette wheels, uncertain mornings, evenings of glory or catastrophe), he always ends up winking at himself in absolution, as though recognizing in that tall, no longer so slim, old man with dark, weary eyes, the image of a former accomplice for whom any explanation is unnecessary. After all, his reflection seems to be saying in a tone that is familiar, gently mocking, and possibly a little spiteful, that, at age sixty-four and considering the dreadful hand life has dealt him of late, he can still count himself lucky. In similar circumstances, others (Enrico Fossataro, old Sandor Esterházy) were forced to choose between public charity or last moments spent writhing uncomfortably at the end of a necktie, in the bathroom of a miserable boardinghouse.

“Anything of importance happening in the world?” Hugentobler inquires.

A rustle of newspapers in the backseat of the car: pages leafed through absentmindedly. This was a remark rather than a question. In the rearview mirror, Max sees his boss’s eyes directed downward, spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

“The Russians haven’t dropped the A-bomb, have they?”

Hugentobler is joking, naturally. Swiss humor. When he is in a good mood, he often tries to joke with the servants, probably because he is a bachelor, without a family to laugh at his funny stories. Max gives a professional smile. Discreet and keeping the proper distance.

“Nothing much, sir: Cassius Clay has won another title, the astronauts on Gemini XI have returned safe and sound. . . . The war in Indochina is heating up as well.”

“You mean in Vietnam.”

“That’s it. Vietnam . . . And in the local news: the Campanella Chess Contest is about to begin. Keller versus Sokolov.”

“Good heavens,” says Hugentobler, dismissive and sarcastic. “How sorry I am to miss that. . . . There really is no accounting for taste, eh Max?”

“How right you are, sir.”

“Imagine spending your whole life poring over a chessboard. That is how those chess players end up. Crazy, like Bobby Fischer.”

“Indeed.”

“Take the low road. We have plenty of time.”

The crunch of gravel beneath the tires ceases as they pass through the iron gate and then the Jaguar begins to roll gently along the asphalted road through groves of olive, gum, and fig trees. Max downshifts effortlessly as he comes to a sharp bend, at the end of which he glimpses the calm sea, glittering like polished glass, silhouetting the pine trees and houses clustered on the mountain, with Vesuvius on the far side of the bay. For a moment he forgets his passenger and concentrates on the pleasure of driving, the movement between two places whose location in time and space is of no consequence to him. The air wafting through the open window smells of honey and resin—the lingering aromas of summer, which in that part of the world always refuses to die, engaging in a sweet, ingenuous battle with the calendar.

“It’s a beautiful day, Max.”

Max Costa blinks, collecting his thoughts, and once more glances up at the rearview mirror. Dr. Hugentobler is no longer reading the newspapers and has a Havana cigar in his mouth.

“Indeed, sir.”

“I’m afraid the weather will have changed by the time I return.”

“Let’s hope not. You’ll only be gone three weeks.”

Hugentobler lets out a grunt, accompanied by a puff of smoke. He is a placid-looking man with a pink complexion, who owns a private clinic near Lake Garda. He amassed a fortune in the postwar years dispensing psychiatric treatment to wealthy Jews traumatized by the Nazi atrocities: the sort who would wake up in the middle of the night believing they were still in the barracks at Auschwitz, with Dobermans snarling outside and SS men shepherding them to the shower rooms. Hugentobler and his Italian associate, Dr. Bacchelli, helped them wrestle with their phantoms, and to round out their treatment recommended a trip to Israel organized by the clinic, after which they were presented with an exorbitant bill that allowed Hugentobler to maintain a house in Milan, an apartment in Zurich, and the villa at Sorrento with five cars in the garage. For the past three years, it has been Max’s job to keep them serviced and to drive them, besides overseeing the general maintenance of the villa, whose other employees are a married couple from Salerno, the gardener and the maid, Mr. and Mrs. Lanza.

“Don’t go straight to the port. Drive through the center of town.”

“Very well, sir.”

He glances at the accurate but inexpensive watch on his left wrist (a gold-plated Festina), and joins the traffic on Corso Italia, which is light at that hour. There is plenty of time for them to reach the motor launch that will ferry Dr. Hugentobler across the bay, sparing him the tortuous road to Naples’ airport.

“Max.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Stop at Rufolos and get me a box of Montecristo No. 2s.”

Max Costa’s working relationship with his boss began like love at first sight: the moment the psychiatrist laid eyes on Max, he disregarded his exemplary references (entirely fictitious, in fact). He was a pragmatist, convinced his professional instinct and experience would never mislead him about the human condition. Hugentobler decided that this fellow who dressed with an air of faded elegance and bore a calm, frank expression, exhibiting polite discretion in both word and gesture, was the living embodiment of honor and decency. Thus he would lend just the right note of dignity to the doctor’s magnificent car collection (the Jaguar, a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II, and three vintage cars, including a Bugatti 50T coupé). Naturally, Hugentobler does not have the slightest notion that his chauffeur once enjoyed cruising around in cars, owned by himself or others, every bit as luxurious as those he is now paid to drive. Had he known, Hugentobler would have been forced to revise a few of his opinions about the human condition, and to hire a driver with a less elegant appearance but a more conventional résumé. But that would have been a mistake. Anyone familiar with the darker side of life understands that a man who has lost his shadow is like a woman with a dark past who marries: no one is more loyal, because she knows how much is at stake. However, it will not be Max Costa who at this stage of the game enlightens Dr. Hugentobler about fleeting shadows, tarts with hearts of gold, or the forced honesty of ex-ballroom dancers who turn into gentleman thieves. Even if they didn’t always behave like gentlemen.



When the motor launch pulls away from the Marina Piccola jetty, Max Costa remains leaning for a moment against the breakwater surrounding the harbor, watching the vessel’s wake cleave the blue surface of the bay. Afterward, he removes his jacket and tie, and, draping them over one arm, returns to the car, which is parked near the Guardia di Finanza building, at the foot of the cliff top where Sorrento is perched. He tips the youngster keeping an eye on the Jaguar fifty lire, starts the car, and drives slowly along the road that curves sharply as it climbs toward the town. As he enters Piazza Tasso, he rolls to a halt before three pedestrians, two women and a man, who are leaving the Hotel Vittoria, and watches idly as they cross a few inches in front of the car. They look like wealthy tourists, the type who vacation out of season so that they can enjoy the sun, the sea, and the mild weather, which lasts well into autumn, without the inconvenience of the summer crowds. The man, probably in his late twenties, is wearing sunglasses and a jacket with suede elbow patches. The younger of the two women is a pretty brunette in a miniskirt, her hair in a long braid down her back. The older woman has on a beige woolen cardigan, a dark skirt, and a crinkled tweed man’s hat, beneath which her cropped, silver-gray hair is showing. She is quite elegant, Max observes, with a sophistication that comes not from her clothes but rather from the way she wears them. A cut above the average woman to be seen in the villas and smart hotels in Sorrento, Amalfi, and Capri, even at this time of year.

Something about the second woman compels Max to follow her with his eyes as she crosses Piazza Tasso. Possibly her slow, relaxed bearing, with her right hand placed casually in the pocket of her cardigan, moving with the ease of those who have spent their lives sashaying across the carpets of a world that was theirs. Or perhaps what catches Max’s attention is the way she tilts her head toward her companions to laugh at their conversation, or to utter words whose sound is muffled by the car’s silent windows. In any case, for a split second, as fleetingly as someone recalling the confused fragment of a forgotten dream, Max is confronted with the ghost of a memory. With an image from the distant past, a gesture, a voice, a laugh. He is so taken aback that only the blast of a car horn behind makes him shift into first gear and crawl forward, still watching the trio, who have arrived at the other side of the sunlit square and are seating themselves at one of the tables on the terrace of Bar Fauno.

He is about to turn into Corso Italia when the memory crystalizes with full force: a face, a voice. A scene, or a number of them. Suddenly Max’s surprise gives way to astonishment, and he slams on the brakes, inviting another blast from the car behind, followed by angry gesticulations from the driver as the Jaguar turns sharply to the right, braking once more before pulling up alongside the curb.

He removes the key from the ignition and sits there motionless, staring at his hands still resting on the wheel. Finally, he gets out of the car, puts on his jacket, and crosses the square beneath the palm trees, heading toward the terrace outside the bar. He is nervous. Afraid, perhaps, of confirming his suspicions. The trio is still there, talking animatedly. Max tries to stay out of view, pausing beside the shrubs in the landscaped area. The table is ten yards away, and the woman in the tweed hat is in profile, talking to the others, unaware of Max’s intense scrutiny. No doubt she was once extraordinarily attractive, he confirms, as her face still shows traces of a faded beauty. She might be the woman he thinks she is, he concludes tentatively, and yet he can’t be sure. There are too many other women’s faces in the way, both before and long since. Watching from behind the bushes for any details that correspond to his memory, Max reaches no satisfactory conclusion. Finally, aware that he will eventually draw attention to himself standing there, he circles the terrace and goes to sit down at a table at the far end. He asks the waiter to bring him a Negroni, and for the next twenty minutes he observes the woman in profile, studying each of her movements and gestures to compare them with those he remembers. When the trio leaves the table and crosses the square again toward the corner of Via San Cesareo, he has finally identified her. Or so he believes. He rises and follows them, at a distance. His old heart hasn’t beaten this fast for centuries.



The woman danced well, Max Costa realized. Easily and with a certain boldness. She followed him confidently when he tested her ability with a more complicated, inventive sidestep that a less nimble woman would have stumbled over. He guessed that she was about twenty-five. Tall and slender, with long arms, slim wrists, and legs that seemed to go on forever beneath her dark taffeta dress with violet overtones, cut low at the back. Thanks to the high heels she was wearing, which set off her gown, her serene face with its well-defined features was on a level with his. She wore her ash-blond hair crimped according to the prevailing fashion that season, and cut in a short bob that exposed her neck. As she danced, she kept her eyes fixed on a point above the shoulder of her partner’s tailcoat, where her left hand adorned with a wedding ring was resting. Their eyes had not met since he’d approached with a polite bow, offering to lead her in one of the slow waltzes they called a Boston. Hers were the color of liquid honey, almost translucent, enhanced by a perfect application of mascara (no more than was necessary, the same as with her lipstick) beneath the fine arc of her plucked eyebrows. She was nothing like the other women Max had accompanied that evening in the ballroom: middle-aged ladies reeking of musky perfumes such as lily and patchouli, or awkward young girls dressed in light-colored dresses with skirts below the knee, who bit their lips as they struggled to keep in step, blushed when he placed a hand on their waist or clapped to a hupa-hupa. And so, for the first time that evening, the ballroom dancer on the Cap Polonio began to enjoy his job.

Their eyes didn’t meet again until the Boston (called “What I’ll Do”) was over and the orchestra launched into a rendering of the tango “A media luz.” They had stood there facing each other for a moment in the middle of the half-empty dance floor. At the first bars, realizing she wasn’t intending to return to her table (where a man in a tuxedo, doubtless her husband, had just sat down), he opened his arms wide, and the woman instantly responded, impassive as before. She placed her left hand on his shoulder, extended her right arm slowly, and they began moving across the dance floor (gliding was the word, Max thought), her eyes once more gazing past the ballroom dancer without looking at him, even as she shadowed his movements with surprising precision, his slow, sure rhythm, while, for his part, he endeavored to maintain the proper distance, their bodies touching just enough to perform the figures.

“Was that all right?” he asked after a difficult figure eight, which the woman had followed effortlessly.

At this she finally afforded him a fleeting glance. Possibly even the semblance of a smile, which faded instantly.

“Perfect.”

In recent years, the tango, originally Argentinian but brought into vogue in Paris by the Apache dances, had been all the rage on both sides of the Atlantic. And so the floor was soon filled with couples twirling more or less gracefully, linking steps, embraces, and releases, which, depending on the dancers’ ability, could be anywhere from passable to grotesque. Max’s partner, however, responded with ease to the most complex moves, adapting to the traditional, obvious steps as well as to the occasional embellishments which, increasingly sure of his companion, he would improvise, always in that slow, restrained style, introducing breaks and delicate side steps, which she followed effortlessly, without missing a beat. It was obvious she too was enjoying moving to the music, from the smile she graced Max with each time they performed a difficult turn, and from her bright gaze that would occasionally stop staring into space and alight for a few seconds, contentedly, on the ballroom dancer.

As they twirled around the dance floor, Max studied the husband with the steady eye of a professional hunter. He was accustomed to observing the husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, and lovers of the women with whom he danced. Men, in short, who accompanied them with pride, arrogance, boredom, resignation, or other similarly masculine emotions. There was much useful information to be gleaned from tiepins, fobs, cigarette cases, and rings; from the thickness of wallets opened as waiters approached; from the quality and cut of a jacket, the pleat of a trouser leg, or the shine on a pair of shoes. Even from the way a tie was knotted. All these details allowed Max Costa to elaborate plans and goals to the rhythm of the music, or, expressed in more mundane terms, to progress from ballroom dancing to more lucrative prospects. Time and experience had finally persuaded him of the truth of the comment Count Boris Dolgoruki-Bragation (second lieutenant in the First Regiment of the Spanish Foreign Legion) had made to him seven years earlier in Melilla, a minute and a half after regurgitating an entire bottle of cheap brandy in the backyard of Fatima’s bordello:

“A woman is never just a woman, dear Max. She is first and foremost the men she once had, those she has, and those she might have. Without them, she remains a mystery . . . and whoever discovers that information possesses the combination to the safe. The access to her secrets.”

When the music had finished and he accompanied his partner back to her table, Max took a last, closer look at the husband: elegant, self-assured, in his forties. Not a handsome man, yet ­pleasant-looking with his dapper mustache, curly hair flecked with gray, and lively intelligent eyes that missed nothing, including what was taking place on the dance floor. Max had searched for his name on the reservations list before approaching the woman, when she was still unaccompanied, and the headwaiter had confirmed that he was the Spanish composer Armando de Troeye, traveling with his wife. They had a deluxe first-class stateroom and a table reserved in the main dining room next to that of the ship’s captain.

“It has been a pleasure, Madam. You dance magnificently.”

“Thank you.”

He bobbed his head in almost military fashion, a gesture that always pleased the ladies, as did the graceful way he took their fingers and drew them to his lips, but she responded to his gesture with a quick, cold nod before sitting on the chair her husband had pulled out for her. Max turned around, smoothing his sleek, black hair back from his temples, first with his right hand then his left, and moved away, skirting around the people on the dance floor. He walked with a polite smile on his lips, his gaze directed at the room, all five foot ten of him in his impeccable tailcoat (on which he had sunk the last of his savings before boarding the liner with a one-way contract to Buenos Aires), aware of the female interest coming from the tables where a few passengers were already standing up to make their way to the dining room. Half the room hates me right now, he concluded with a mixture of boredom and amusement. The other half are women.



The trio pauses in front of a store selling souvenirs, postcards, and books. Although in Sorrento some of the shops and restaurants and even a few of the luxury boutiques on the Corso Italia close at the end of the summer, the old quarter around Via San Cesareo remains a tourist haunt all year round. The street is narrow, and Max keeps a prudent distance, hovering outside a salumeria where a chalkboard propped on an easel in the doorway offers discreet protection. The girl with the braid enters the store while the woman in the hat stays outside talking to the young man, who has taken off his sunglasses and is smiling. He is dark-haired, good-looking. She must be fond of him, because on one occasion she strokes his face. Then he says something and the woman laughs out loud, the distinct sound reaching the ears of the man spying on them: a clear, forthright laugh that makes her seem much more youthful and awakens precise memories from the past that set Max aquiver. It is her, he concludes.

Twenty-nine years have passed since he last saw her. A light rain was falling then on a coastal landscape, in autumn: a dog was scampering across the wet pebbles on the beach, beneath the balustrade on Avenue des Anglais, in Nice. Beyond the white façade of the HÔtel Negresco, the city melted into the gray, misty landscape. All the years that have gone since then could confuse the memory. And yet, the ex-ballroom dancer, current employee, and chauffeur to Dr. Hugentobler is no longer in any doubt. It is the same woman—the identical way of laughing, of tilting her head to one side, her composed gestures. The casual elegance with which she keeps one hand in the pocket of her cardigan. He would like to move nearer, to see her face close up, but he does not dare. While he wrestles with his indecision, the girl with the long braid emerges from the store, and the three of them walk back the way they came, past the salumeria where Max has quickly taken refuge. From inside, he sees the woman in the hat go by, studies her face in outline, and is absolutely certain. Eyes like liquid honey, he notes with a shiver. And so, carefully, at a safe distance, he follows them once more across Piazza Tasso to the hotel.



He saw her again the next day, on the boat deck. It was pure chance, as neither he nor she had any business being there. Like the other employees on the Cap Polonio who were not part of the ship’s crew, Max Costa was supposed to steer clear of the first-class area and promenade decks. In order to avoid the passengers in teak and wicker deck chairs taking the sun as it shone on the starboard side (those playing skittles and quoits, or skeet shooting, occupied the port side), he decided to climb a ladder to another deck, where eight of the sixteen lifeboats stood lined up on their chocks alongside the liner’s three gigantic red-and-white smokestacks. It was a peaceful place, a neutral area few passengers used, for the lifeboats were an eyesore and blocked the view. The only concession to anyone wanting to go there were a few wooden benches. On one of these, as he passed between a hatchway painted white and one of the huge ventilation outlets that sucked fresh air into the bowels of the ship, Max recognized his dance partner from the previous evening.

It was a bright, clear day, pleasantly warm for that time of year. Max had left his cabin without a hat, gloves, or cane (he was dressed in a gray suit with a vest, a soft-collared shirt, and a knitted tie) and so as he walked past the woman he simply bowed politely. She wore a smart flannel suit: a three-quarter-length jacket and a pleated skirt. She was reading a book resting in her lap, and as he walked in front of her, momentarily blocking the sun, she looked up at him, her oval face framed beneath the narrow brim of her felt hat. Perhaps it was the glimmer of recognition Max thought he detected in her eyes that made him pause for a moment, with the discretion appropriate to the situation and to their respective positions on the ship.

“Good morning,” he said.

The woman, who was lowering her gaze again toward her book, responded with another silent stare and a brief nod.

“I am . . . ,” he blurted, feeling suddenly awkward, on shaky ground, and already sorry he had spoken to her.

“Yes,” she replied calmly. “The gentleman from last night.”

She said gentleman instead of dancer, and he was secretly grateful for it.

“I don’t know whether I told you,” he added, “that you dance magnificently.”

“You did.”

She was already returning to her book. A novel, he noticed, glancing at the cover, which she was holding half-open on her lap: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.

“Good-bye. Enjoy your reading.”

“Thank you.”

He moved on, unaware of whether her eyes remained glued to her book or if she was watching him leave. He did his best to walk nonchalantly, one hand in his trouser pocket. When he reached the last lifeboat,