Read Online What We Become by Arturo Pérez-Reverte - Free Book Online

other man places a finger on the envelope. Finally he sighs and slowly opens the register.
    â€œI can only guarantee you one week. After that we’ll see.”
    â€œVery well.”
    With the palm of his hand, Spadaro rings the bell three times to call the bellboy.
    â€œA small, single room, without a view. Breakfast not included.”
    Max reaches into his jacket pocket for his identity papers. When he lays them on the desk, the envelope has disappeared.

    Seeing the husband enter the bar in second class on the Cap Polonio took Max by surprise. He was enjoying a glass of absinthe and water and some olives, sitting next to one of the big sliding windows overlooking the promenade deck on the port side. He liked this spot, because it allowed him to observe the entire room (wickerchairs replacing the plush, red-leather armchairs in first class) and also gaze at the ocean. The weather was still fine, sun all day long and clear skies at night. After the rough seas they had endured for the past forty-eight hours, the vessel had stopped rolling and the passengers were moving about the ship more easily, looking at one another instead of worrying about which way the deck was sloping. In any case, Max, who had crossed the Atlantic five times, couldn’t recall a calmer trip.
    A few of the passengers at the neighboring tables, almost exclusively men, were playing cards, backgammon, chess, or steeple­chase. Max, who was only an occasional, practical player (not even during his army days in Morocco had he been as passionate about gambling as other men were), nonetheless derived pleasure from watching the professional cardsharps who plied their trade on ocean liners. The ruses, bluffing, variety of reactions, and codes of behavior all reflected the complexity of the human condition so faithfully that they provided an excellent open school for anyone who knew how to look, and Max invariably learned some useful lessons. As on every ocean liner, there were cardsharps on the Cap Polonio in first class, second class, and even in steerage. The crew was aware of this, of course, as were the ship detective, the headwaiters, and the stewards, who were acquainted with a few of the regulars and kept an eye on them, underlining their names on the passenger list. A while back, on the Cap Arcona , Max had met a gambler called Brereton, who was reputed to have finished a legendary game of bridge in the tilting first-class smoking room on the Titanic before it sank in the frozen waters of the North Atlantic, and to have won substantially just in time to dive into the water and swim to the last lifeboat.
    Max Costa was astonished to see Armando de Troeye in the second-class bar on the Cap Polonio that morning because it was unusual for passengers to cross the boundaries defined by their social status. However, his astonishment grew when the famouscomposer—who was wearing a Norfolk jacket, a vest with a gold fob, plus fours, and a fedora—stood surveying the room from the doorway, and, on seeing Max, made a beeline for him, smiling affably as he sat down in the chair beside him.
    â€œWhat are you drinking?” he asked, signaling to the waiter. “Absinthe? . . . Too strong for me. I think I’ll have a vermouth.”
    By the time the waiter had brought over his cocktail, Armando had already praised Max’s skill on the dance floor, and was engaging him in polite conversation on the subject of ocean liners, music, and ballroom dancing. As the composer of “Nocturnes” (and other successful works such as “Scaramouche” and the ballet “Pasodoble for Don Quixote,” to which Diaghilev had brought international fame), de Troeye was someone Max saw as supremely self-­confident, an artist who knew who he was and what he represented. And while de Troeye maintained an attitude of worldly superiority in this second-class bar (the celebrated composer opposite the humble employee from a lower