“You’re going to make unnecessary difficulties for him when he’s in power,” the consul objected.
“No. Once he’s in power, they can’t fail to see the generosity of his character. Cowboy President. The cattleman who gave away his land. With Morote too, guitar and all! The enlightened modern marriage between the haves and have-nots. Think of the publicity! It’s bound to appeal to them. And if it doesn’t, they’ll have every other State of the Americas explaining to them that this is the vision of the future.”
“I don’t like it, Juan.”
“Why not?”
“You’re setting traps. You’re doing what we were always accused of when we had an Empire. And I doubt if we ever did it. When people like you were intoxicated by their own brilliance we went away for the weekend and drank our tea in silent prayer. As the only representative of Her Britannic Majesty that you are likely to see till the heat lets up, I warn you not to be too clever.”
“My dear Enrique, nonsense! You’re thinking of Arabs. And I refuse to be patronized by Her Majesty in your person — though in her own I should undoubtedly find the experience delicately charming — when only your private friends in London are aware that Guayanas exists.”
“That is completely untrue, Juan,” said the consul, trying to sound as warmly convincing as possible.
In a sense, it was untrue. Henry Penruddock was well aware that his country’s politicians were more likely to be able to draw a map of the latest Republic carved from African swamp than of Guayanas; on the other hand, he was used to being rebuked for reporting in the intimate and colloquial style of a gossip columnist and to being congratulated on his accuracy whenever the department had bothered to understand what in the world he really meant. So it was obvious that his unconventional notes from San Vicente were not always minuted “for amusement only” but entered an active file — possibly of some committee of the Imperial General Staff who were as familiar as the Pentagon with flying times from Guayanas to the Panama Canal and the Venezuelan oilfields.
But it was never any good talking power politics to Juan, who put his faith in the power of human eloquence to persuade anybody of anything. And he might be right — at any rate wherever public opinion could be as noisy as it was ignorant.
Pancho — now admiring and respectful — led to the top of the steps overlooking the patio a resplendent Captain Irala, flaunting his uniform. Certainly he should have been dressed for active service. But the consul got the point. Not for Salvador Irala was the inconspicuous coloring of war when the conduct of Fifth Division was in question.
“What’s the news?” Juan asked him.
“Out of danger.”
“I am so glad. Your dear mother —”
“I meant the general. Doña Felicia has left the hospital and gone home.”
“And your brother?”
“There is little hope.”
The consul felt more than ever that it was irresponsible to expose MacKinlay to the impact of this boy — hurt, at war with himself, contemptuous and angry — whose hopelessly volatile younger brother had been shot to pieces on the steps of the Palace, yet whose primary anxiety was for General Kucera.
When, however, Juan introduced Irala to the party, his manners were assured. He was the model Latin-American officer, a little supercilious perhaps, but no more than befitted the confidential A.D.C. of the Caudillo. There was a hardly perceptible moment of emotion when Paco Salinas greeted him, though Paco said nothing but the word compañero and laid his hand on Irala’s shoulder. Companionship must have been given a poignant meaning by the eyes and touch of the older man who in his time had also known brothers on opposite sides of the barricades.
Salvador answered MacKinlay’s questions without resentment. He showed a coolness which might have been formal military correctitude but was more probably due to disapproval of this searching interest in the family privacy of the Army.
“But what I still don’t understand,” MacKinlay pressed him, “is why such a magnificent Division had to play politics.”
“Your troops in the United States take an oath?”
“Sure they do.”
“Do you accuse them of playing politics when they are faithful to it?”
“Captain Irala,” said MacKinlay, “I have talked to a great many people in the course of today, but that’s the clearest explanation I have had. Does the rest of the Army think as Fifth Division?”
“I cannot answer for them.”
“Then aren’t you running a risk of civil war?”
“My general never for a moment considered it possible if he acted swiftly.”
“All the same — forgive me if I say this — to an American observer it looks very much like suppression of a progressive party by brute force.”
“Captain Irala’s brother was on the steps of the Palace,” Juan murmured tactfully. “He is dying.”
The consul was appalled by Juan’s Machiavellian tactics. It was perfectly plain that although he had briefed Andrew MacKinlay on the personalities he was going to meet he had held up the tragedy of young Irala until he could use it to the best effect.
The American, embarrassed and out of his depth, expressed his sympathy as best he could. He had not realized, he began, that feeling went so deep.
“My brother Federico carried a Communist banner,” Irala broke in contemptuously. “Does that again make it clearer to you?”
“You mean Avellana is backed by the Communists?”
Irala shrugged his shoulders, weary of this foreigner with his continual questions. A clever man who meant well, he thought bitterly, and yet understood nothing by instinct. Poor Federico! He was a most improbable Communist, and a wildly erratic liberal. All he had ever wanted was to be at the heart of whatever action was going on, and he had paid the price. It was impossible to explain that if he, Salvador, had been on the terrace of the Palace he would have fired to kill and kept on firing and willingly been court-martialed for it. Juan de Fonsagrada understood that without being told. But the American was obsessed with politics. So let him rest in peace. It was far too long a business to explain.
He turned to Agueda, whose eyes were big with pity. Curious how eyes could express so much in spite of different shapes. Those gray, bloodshot eyes of the Spanish captain, steady and merciless as himself, had assured him of sympathy and approval with the aid of only one word. And now the lovely brown liquid of old Fonsagrada’s spectacular bit of temptation was saying much the same thing. If that was anything like the natural shape of her breasts she was worth some attention. In any case there was a sweetness in disillusion, and we all did our best. This damned American apparently expected him to remove his own mental bra. To hell with him! He wouldn’t find anything very exciting — just the primitive fact that one followed a man when one had the luck to meet one. Those friends of poor Federico who insisted that nothing was worth living for — hadn’t they ever felt love?
“You have just come from Chile?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Are they as crazy as we are?”
“We have our problems.”
“What do you do here?” he asked bluntly.
“I am a pathologist.”
“The devil! There is a laboratory?”
“Captain Irala does not believe in science,” she remarked to Juan.
“Show him, my dear. Show him all round, if you wish,” said Juan benignly. “Vita will sit with us.”
He looked a little wistfully after the handsome pair as they stood for a moment on the steps of the patio outlined against the soft light of the house.
“There should always be a woman present when men talk,” he said, filling the glasses. “Or a picture. Or a magnificent view. Or the sea. In the presence of the eternal, even if we are unconscious of it, words have wings.”
“Try an archbishop,” said the consul rudely.
“Archbishops do not mirror eternity, Enrique; they are its political representatives on earth and they have
the same effect upon me as the Chamber. I allow myself to become intoxicated by myself. I desire to show how much more pious and eloquent an archbishop I should be. But with the sea at my feet or a woman across the table — even if she is not listening — I am bounded by reality. Don’t you agree, Don Andrés?”
Andrew MacKinlay looked up from the notebook in which he was busily writing.
“Frankly, I don’t. I find that women take my mind off my work.”
“There is that of course,” Juan replied. “Perhaps it is necessary to reach my age or to have no work. And you, my old conquistador! With which of us do you agree?”
“With neither, Don Juan,” said Paco Salinas. “Look! I am cursed with loving the unfortunate. And men have a deeper wish to suffer than women. In war and religion, art and politics, we do not care what suffering we bring upon ourselves. Women have no business in that evil world of ours. They don’t know where the limits are, as I saw in Spain. If we have enough love for a cause or a person we are not greatly blamed when we kill. But a woman is. You know all those Marys in the churches — Mary of this and that and whatever the priests can think up! There should be a special Mary to comfort those who commit our follies as well as their own. What are you writing in your notebook, Don Andrés? Are there any women in it?”
“Only the dead.”
“You find a girl’s body more pitiful than a boy’s?”
“Yes, of course I do,” answered MacKinlay indignantly. “But I see two sides to the action of the troops. I wish I didn’t.”
“What’s wrong with being fair to both sides?” the consul asked.
“Nothing — if it works out like that. See here, Mr. Penruddock, I’m going to accept General Kucera just as Captain Irala and Don Paco explained him. It seems too simple to be true, but I’ve a hunch it is true. Then there’s President Vidal — Well, to American eyes there’s not much wrong with him. And, if I may say so, I don’t think Guayanas would find much wrong with him if it wasn’t for this sudden feeling in you all that only a big dose of idealism and self-sacrifice is going to pull this country out of the rut. I appreciate that. Building avenues and filling the shops of San Vicente are not enough. It may be that democracy is not enough. I’ve seen the poverty of the Barracas and if the peons think they are better off in huts made of gasoline cans than they are on the land, the poverty upcountry must be worse still.
“But I have to tell the truth as I see it. Professional pride — well, I guess it isn’t confined to soldiers. And the truth is complicated. I have to say that Avellana’s politics are a bright shade of pink. Responsible people in my country will try to understand. The rest won’t, and the newspapers won’t help them. They have to put things in black and white. And when they quote me and leave out all my reservations and qualifications, Avellana is going to look like an expropriating red.”
“I have never heard that he was against democracy,” Penruddock protested. “He is merely too impatient to wait for elections.”
“Now, Mr. Penruddock, you can’t expect this country to follow the rules of the British Constitution.”
“No,” said the consul mildly. “No, that does sometimes occur to me. I just thought it might have some bearing on how red Avellana is today.”
“Enrique, you were extremely alarmed when your country went Socialist in 1945,” Juan interrupted. “You refused to meet the boats in case there was a political commissar on board to supersede you.”
“All right. I admit it. But who could tell that Socialists only mean a tenth of what they say and the tenth is worth having?”
“I could and I told you so then,” said Juan. “That is why I am an Avellanista.”
He turned to Andrew MacKinlay with the irresistible Fonsagrada smile. Henry Penruddock, though he did not know exactly what was coming, was aware that Juan’s delicate head had risen from its coils and was about to strike.
“An Avellanista with a difference, Don Andrés. Like him, I wish to see the day when Latin America can talk to the United States as equal to equal, not as a prodigal son to a tactful father. Like him, I am uneasy at certain aspects of your moral and financial influence. But I pray that in his willingness to humiliate you — his willingness, not his wish — he does not think it necessary to look for allies outside this continent.”
There was nothing Henry Penruddock could do, nothing in the calculated indiscretion that he could attack. Juan had spotted that MacKinlay was far from having any prejudice against left-wing policies as such, and had cleverly suggested that Avellana’s reforms need be no more alarming than those of social democrats anywhere else. Then, having established a comfortable area of mutual confidence, he had injected into it those devastating words humiliate and outside this continent.
Whether MacKinlay was merely a newspaperman of integrity and influence, or whether he had the ear of the Secretary of State and the C.I.A., the poison must work. To put it at its lowest, MacKinlay could no longer pooh-pooh his Embassy’s blind prejudice against Avellana.
Vidal was certainly going to get any support he wanted. He might be wise enough to play it down. He probably would. But United States newspapers and politicians wouldn’t. Juan was right — for as much of the future as he could foresee. The cause of Avellana, from being squashed, moribund and just another South American revolution, could become unbeatable.
But who cared in these days what the leader of an old-fashioned liberal party said? Henry Penruddock emptied his glass and decided that he was taking this intrigue far too seriously. He watched Agueda and Salvador lrala descend the steps on their return from the laboratory. A superb couple! A spectacular advertisement of Latin America at its most charming! Whatever Vidal and Avellana might do, Juan’s own policy — it was the one constant upon which one could count — was to temper all severities of government for them and their like.
CHAPTER VIII
[December 2]
DON JESÚS-MARÍA DE HOYOS Y ALARCÓN disliked the Citadel. Its little mounds, its cowls, its concrete cupolas, its grass terraces dominated by grinning slits, reminded him that war, like politics and finance, had become a playground for rival technicians. Modernization! Modernization for what? The Army of Guayanas was quite good enough for any campaign it was ever likely to have to undertake. And in any case one couldn’t in these day annex a slice of profitable territory or even create a frontier incident without interference from the United Nations or the Organization of American States. This Praetorian camp on the outskirts of San Vicente had no object. Under cover of patriotism and the innocent integrity of Major General Kucera, Gregorio Vidal had built it to enrich himself and his stockbroker.
When Jesús-María mounted his charger — for a soldier did not perform ceremonies with cushions under his breeches — and rode through the gates of the Citadel followed by his adjutant general, their A.D.C.’s and gallopers, such was his mood. It changed almost at once. That Kucera — wasn’t there anything he couldn’t do? There he was, magnificently mounted, in full uniform, with a squadron of his oily mechanics handling their sabers as easily as spanners. Theater! He’d like to see what would happen if he ordered the charge! But that was hardly fair. The armor, properly gay with pennants, was on the flank to do the charging. Never since he had commanded the Army of Guayanas had he been received with such precise pageantry. He brushed away a tear as the band crashed into the national anthem and Fifth Division, guns, infantry, armor and staff, saluted their nominal chief. Fine fellows! Don Jesús-María was passionately proud to have them under his command. His soldierly emotion of the moment obliterated all the doubts of a few seconds earlier as to whether in fact they were under his command.
He shook hands with Miro from horse to horse. Perfectly timed and maneuvered. Like a picture of Bolívar greeting Páez. The man was thinner, and his steady eyes, since the skin was no longer so brown, had lost that incredible dark blue of a flower. Ah, well, being trampled on by a lot of young atheistical scientists was no fun.
It seemed to Don Jesús-Mar�
�a that his world was divided into ordinary decent people and technicians. He wished that all the technicians would mass themselves into the party of either Avellana or Vidal; it would then be easy and congenial to declare for their opponents. But they didn’t. On one side were Vidal’s American-trained engineers destroying the traditional life of the country with concrete and Neon lights and sugar pop in bottles and domestic machines for doing what any servant could do better; on the other was this puzzling mixture of industrial workers, left-wing landowners and all the university students of science and technology. They seemed to be unimpressed by the mere imitative building of things. They called Vidal a chimpanzee with a box of bricks. Don Jesús-María had talked to a lot of them on the day of the state funeral and, though admitting he didn’t understand half of it, he was convinced that Avellana was right.
It had passed off more quietly than he ever expected, that funeral procession. The garrison by common consent did not take part in it, nor did the Presidential Guard. The armed forces of the Republic had been represented only by a few senior officers, including himself, Marshal Faustino Ledesma of the Air Force, and Captain Paco Salinas — though God only knew who, if anybody, had invited that doubtfully reformed old anarchist to take part. The mood of the public had been incalculable. Don Jesús-María, who in his time had suppressed and supported enough revolutions, had felt in his bones that at any moment the crowd might roar for vengeance. But on whom? Kucera had become more of a popular idol than ever, and anyway was in hospital. There was the corporal whose post had fired, but the masses, themselves usually ready to use knife or bullet in an emergency, understood him too well to do more than argue. There remained Vidal, who marched in the procession — a surprisingly courageous act even though the route was lined by his police and he wore a bulletproof vest under his shirt. Probably Concha, that old war-horse of a wife of his, had shamed him into it: But anybody trying to raise the crowd against Vidal would be in trouble. Apart from Morote and his reds, who were sitting on the sidelines, the average citizen of San Vicente was against any change of government.
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