This community stare had been easier to meet when she was merely a twenty-year-old daughter standing by Vice President Fonsagrada. While remaining reasonably feminine, one impressed upon one’s features a look of calm, national pride, as if receiving some tedious prize at the university. These wholly irregular honors were more difficult. They made her feel like the wife of an old-fashioned Caudillo, riding along with a ragged column, herself dressed in the remains of showy vulgarity, helping to cook the dinners and care for the wounded; they did not seem to go with sea-green linen and a white Mercedes. And one couldn’t respond like a film star with dazzling smile and a stage gesture. Nor could one adopt a queenly graciousness, since all this nonsense was unofficial. So she usually let her mood dictate her reply, even though it might at times border on shyness or bravado.
On this occasion — for she was happy — she called out “Good evening, paisanos!” and watched the set faces flicker with pleasure at a word which was more genial and intimate than its strict meaning of “fellow countrymen.”
Playing the Caudillo’s wife? Well, that was no odder than being married to a soldier — about the least likely destiny she had ever expected. But then, before Miro, she had never met a soldier who cared more for his men than for the color of his breeches. Or, if she had, she had been too prejudiced to discover it.
How absurd to look at a man’s trade for reasons why one fell in love with him! Yet was it? She was aware that she admired professionalism — that quality which was so common among cultured society abroad and so much more rare, though growing fast, in Guayanas. But in that case why hadn’t she chosen from the university or one of Vidal’s efficient Americanized, civil engineers? Any of them would have satisfied her reaction from her dear, brilliant, dilettante father.
She answered that fleeting question with a flash of interior amusement. How on earth could those slick moneymakers on their way to a belly and the Ateneo be compared with Miro? Her father thought they could. Or pretended to. He insisted that military gentlemen had the facade of power without the reality. That might be true. But men were too fond of these neat generalizations. A façade of power became the thing itself. A woman felt most real when she had accepted every possible aid from artificiality.
Her husband was in the shade of the trees: large, competent, always good-humored. He was surrounded by a group of overalled officers — boiler-suited officers in San Vicente! — inspecting a piece of lethal machinery which was entirely unfamiliar to her. She knew exactly what had happened. He had been standing on the veranda of his office waiting for her to arrive, and had then strolled over informally to the group. Within his own headquarters he was quite incapable of waiting without doing something. Rendered a little self-conscious by all those questioning, interested eyes which she had passed since entering the main gate, she wondered whether the soldiery gave him credit for any passion that was not professional. They seemed to hold it as an article of faith that only Latins . . . Or was it possible that, for their hero, they invented legends?
“What brought you out here?” he asked when she had picked him up. “I thought we were going to meet at Juan’s.”
“I telephoned because I didn’t want you to drive up to the house in your staff car, all official and pennant flying.”
“Why not?”
“Pancho told me that Gil Avellana was there.”
“I see. Yes. Well, I suppose it does look better, though nobody is likely to think you kidnaped me.”
Miro settled into his seat as they passed through the San Vicente Gate. The Avenida Gregorio Vidal stretched ahead white and temptingly straight, but partly unfinished, for seven kilometers as far as the outskirts of the capital. Feli’s driving had the national bravura. She was accustomed to cover the distance in four and a half minutes. His own trained driver was well content with five. But that was a point he never mentioned. He adored the touch of Latin recklessness in her character — also in silence, for she considered herself a coolly educated woman who had little in common with an excitable nation.
When two oxcarts and the stretch of potholes were safely behind and the Mercedes had accepted the pace of the city traffic, he remarked:
“It’s absurd that the commander of the San Vicente Garrison cannot meet the leader of the opposition without arousing alarm and despondency.”
“Then make it seem absurd, Miro. You could.”
“Feli, I am the commander of a division, not of heaven and earth.”
“In the United States a general isn’t expected to avoid Democrats because Republicans are in power,” she said.
“Generals in the United States don’t start revolutions.”
“They wouldn’t in Guayanas if they weren’t bored.”
“Well, I don’t think we’re bored in the Citadel,” Miro said, “not if young Irala and my colonels are typical. And I’ve convinced them all that playing politics is a waste of time. I like Gil Avellana. He’s a woolly thinker, but fanatically honest. A change from the Managerial Society.”
“You’ve been snorting about that phrase for the last three days, Miro. What happened?”
“Nothing,” he answered, reluctant to tell her of the insult — to her it would seem a stupid lack of discrimination rather than an insult — which had been offered to him when he last saw the President. “It reminds me that I am one of his managers. I have to admit it. I am a technician with my finger on the nearest thing to an atomic bomb in a group of countries that doesn’t have one. But I prefer dealing with dear old Jesús-María, who wants to fill up jeeps with hay and still thinks battles are won by the cavalry and a sense of glory. Avellana would probably agree. I must educate him about cavalry at any rate.”
Felicia drove slowly through the narrow streets and busy pedestrians of the old city. Between the stalls of a vegetable seller and a potter — both Indians — she turned right, bumping over large squares of stone, ancient and now irregular. The lane ran between two blank walls into a small plaza and then under an archway to the Alameda. Halfway along the right-hand wall was a formidable and expressionless double gate. Miro got out and rang the bell.
The discreet placing of this town house of the Fonsagradas was largely due to accident. When it had been built, in the first half of the eighteenth century, it stared with delicate insolence across a primitive Alameda at the Casa Consistorial. The Church, forever scuttling in and out of its administrative headquarters, had disliked the gaiety of the house — a flaunting of Paris rather than a submission to Toledo — but had not feared it. The dictator Orduñez, however, after exiling Juan’s father, had still further slighted the liberal family by rebuilding the east side of the Alameda right across the front of the house. Its baroque facade was lost forever. Its only gate was the old stable door.
The unforeseen result of this autocratic gesture was that it became nearly impossible for the dictator’s police spies to keep any real control on visitors to the house, for they never could find out from what shops or cellars there were entrances. As for the gate, it was never used if anyone were watching it; nor was there any obvious connection between the house and the Indians who were always half asleep in the shade of the grimy walls at the two ends of the lane.
When Juan’s father had defeated and imprisoned the dictator — and discreetly failed to prevent his escape right into the hands and knives of an angry crowd — he had not accepted the Chamber’s grateful offer to pull down fifty meters of the offending Alameda. For a politician the house was far too useful as it was, and a great deal cooler than before. He had contented himself with bricking up the bolt-holes.
Miro Kucera was disappointed that his pull on the massive iron handle was followed by a discreet buzzing rather than the harsh clang of the old stable bell. He had liked that bell. It always reminded him of the happy evenings when he first realized that Juan de Fonsagrada was going to welcome him as a son-in-law, for he had been doubtful whether that lighthearted warmth was due to genial acceptance of the beloved daughter’s choice or
genuine liking.
The double gate was opened by Juan’s porter. Pancho’s old-fashioned black-and-yellow waistcoat, his flat nose and receding, wrinkled forehead made him look like a benevolent circus ape. His more dangerous humanity was in the proud eyes and the smile he reserved for those he loved.
“Electric bell, now, my General,” he said. “Very modern! A man has to pass his whole day listening for it.”
Felicia drove into the courtyard. She too regretted the disappearance of the bell, which, throughout her childhood, had announced that the peace of the house was always alive, and ready to accept, for good or ill, the excitements of San Vicente.
“He’ll be employing a receptionist soon with a desk full of flowers and white telephones,” she said.
“Well, there she is!”
Through the half-open door of what used to be the harness room and now masqueraded successfully as the office of a minor but valued executive an attractive auburn-haired girl could be seen, busy checking a stock sheet. In the courtyard outside was a mess of crates and straw. Evidently a shipment of drugs and chemicals had just arrived from England.
“Dyed,” Felicia said.
“On the law of averages?” her husband asked. “Or are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
Juan de Fonsagrada descended the semicircle of wide stone steps which led down from the house, embraced his daughter and son-in-law and looked proudly over the signs of trade and profit which disfigured his courtyard.
“What does she do?” Felicia asked.
“Agueda? A trained pathologist, my dear.”
“You don’t need a pathologist.”
“So she tells me. Meanwhile she is taking over publicity. That hair has the most astonishing effect on journalists.”
Felicia laughed. She gave her father full credit for his perfect manners. Ever since her mother had died when she was a child, she had found herself from time to time in what might — with any other father — have been embarrassing situations. But he had always managed to leave her with a reasonable possibility that her suspicions were wrong.
“The new laboratory,” said Juan with a wave of his hand towards a perfect little stage set of spotless white on the other side of the courtyard. Beyond the impressive foreground of refrigerators and racks of test tubes, a white-coated girl, pale-skinned and with hair as black as Feli’s own, was bending over a sink.
“But I see you still have Vita,” said Felicia with some distaste.
“Invaluable, my dear. Somebody has to look after the laboratories.”
“Scientists always seem to be washing something,” Miro remarked.
“Her stockings,” said Juan. “Remember the words of our great President Vidal: Though entering the modern world with the colossal strides to be expected of our brilliant people, we must still cherish individual initiative.”
Juan led them up into the house, across the entrance hall and down again by falling terraces of green-lichened stone into the patio. It was a wild, informal oblong of shrubs and low palms, climbers and flowers, heavily leaved overhead as tropical forest. Even the carved sill of the fountain and its surrounding flags showed flecks of green upon the gray stone.
Felicia adored the place — almost unconsciously, for it was a part of her. One of her earliest memories was of helpless, screaming temper when she was dragged back from it to her nursery. Miro, too, was fascinated by the patio, for its uncompromising rejection of geometry, its disguising of deliberate intention, reflected the character of his father-in-law; but for himself he would have preferred one open space in which to enjoy, by contrast, the cruelty and simplicity of the sun.
As the three entered the patio, a tall figure rose from a chair in the shadows, merging for an instant with the parallel shafts of trees and shrubs, then silently crossing the fountain terrace with three or four strides of peculiar lightness. Gil Avellana was a dark, rather hatchet-faced man in his middle thirties, obviously of pure Spanish ancestry and dressed in the national costume of Guayanas. The short, embroidered jacket and baggy trousers seemed entirely natural, as if he had just ridden in from the country to San Vicente — but in 1929, not 1959.
Day had turned to deep dusk in the few minutes between the ringing of the new electric bell and their arrival at the fountain. Juan switched on the patio lamps. The light, diffused though it was by leaves and pools of shadow, left his formidable guests too suddenly face to face.
The general liked Avellana, as a casual friend of the family infrequently met. Behavior could, therefore, be natural. But in spite of Don Gil’s ease of manner he felt a sense of strain. Perhaps both of them had been standing too upright while exchanging their casual courtesies. It was visible to Feli. She quickly engaged Avellana in a rush of gossip about common acquaintances, diminishing him to the size of any other landowner who had, very properly and conventionally, taken to politics.
Miro relaxed in his chair with the sense of slightly amoral well-being which he always felt in his father-in-law’s house. Juan himself served the drinks from a table as lavishly provided as a hotel bar. But there was nothing conspiratorial in that. He always avoided, if he could, the formality of having servants in the patio.
While Feli’s dear contralto voice rippled from subject to subject, Miro was able to listen and to consider what he really thought of Avellana. Certainly the man had all the surface virtues which Miro most admired in his adopted country: frankness, grace, generosity. Judging him as a possible President of Guayanas, he could not withhold respect as well as liking. They had, he suspected, a common sense of values, though he was aware that he might be reading too much into gallant bearing and steady eyes which were on a level with his own.
Inevitably he assessed men as possible soldiers. He granted to Gil Avellana brains, courage and reliability, besides that quality of cherishing the individual which was at the heart of leadership; but there was too much imagination in the parcel, very possibly at the expense of solid industry. He would have to be put in harness with some stolid pen-driver to work out Movements and Rations.
At that point Miro Kucera checked his instinctive summing-up, aware of its absurdity. The man was a politician, not a soldier, and God only knew what qualities politicians needed! Vidal, for example, had most of them. A first-rate administrator, too. No doubt of that. But as a battalion commander he would be distrusted and disliked by his officers. Because he was efficient, he might have their loyalty. Never their devotion. Gil Avellana might very well be able to command both.
“That was an admirable cartoon of you in the Noticias, Gil,” Juan was saying. “Don Quixote Charging the Skyscrapers.”
“At least it admits that I have ideals.”
“The general feeling is that you wouldn’t go around in fancy dress if you hadn’t.”
“A very good reason for my fancy dress, as you choose to call it. Advertisement? Very well. But it’s an advertisement for a way of life. Why should we all wear it in Siete Dolores and on the llanos and not here?”
“My father,” said Juan, “used to change into frock coat and top hat at the Ateneo. That was a symbol, too. Progress, railways, education, top hats. For a good liberal, they all went together. I remember a cartoon of him trying to put on a stiff shirt over a feather headdress.”
“What did he think of it?” Felicia asked.
“It annoyed him thoroughly. But he couldn’t say so, since Freedom of the Press was another frock-coat virtue. He informed the Ateneo — he had a remarkably ecclesiastical manner for a freethinker — that it was a sign of political maturity to make fun of what we love.”
“Up to a point,” said Gil Avellana sharply. “But it’s a grave mistake to make fun of what we hate. The general does not make fun of inefficiency.”
“As a matter of fact I do,” Miro answered. “But then I don’t really hate it. I expect it. It’s the base from which training starts. Ten years ago I was too impatient, but now I am one of you — except that I should feel a sham in nati
onal costume.”
“Why? It’s very practical for anyone who spends his day on horseback. And you have a good seat, I know.”
“In a jeep, Don Gil, or an office chair?”
“Nonsense! I saw you on Independence Day. Wasn’t he magnificent on that black charger, Felicia?”
“He was very stiff next morning,” Felicia laughed.
“You wouldn’t feel a sham,” Avellana insisted. “We should all take it as a compliment. I’ll lend you a treasure of a costume when you come to stay with me. It was my grandfather’s. It should just fit you.”
“Is that an invitation?” Felicia asked.
“My dear, there is always an open invitation to you and your husband. Why not come up to La Joya next weekend?”
Miro realized that Gil Avellana had been carried away by his natural instinct for hospitality. That was what made the man so likable. His sincerity might at any moment overcome calculation. Well, mightn’t it be allowed to? If a purely social relationship were to be developed, it would be much easier to begin it now rather than at a possible time of crisis.
The moment of silence while neither he nor Felicia answered was perceptible, though not long enough to be embarrassing.
“Don’t think I want to compromise you,” Avellana said quickly. “It wasn’t in my mind at all. Look! Before you answer, I must tell you who will be at La Joya. Juan, I hope, and certainly Pedro Valdés, Professor Carrillo and Morote.”
“Morote?” Miro exclaimed. “I thought you were very far to the right of him in politics.”
“So far to the right that I come round the circle to the left,” said Avellana. “What I want is social justice. So does Morote. So do you.”
“Within the Army.”
“Can you separate the Army from the people?”
“One is my business and the other isn’t.”
“As a politician I thank heaven for that!” said Avellana, smiling. “Do you know that Morote would follow you anywhere?”
“But that’s absurd! Sometimes I feel I am not one of you at all, Don Gil. You are all so impressed by such little things.”
Thing to Love Page 4
