Don Jesús-María did not like the present position at all. That was why he had made the gesture of inspecting the garrison. Partly he wished to show that in the eyes of the Army the military honor of Fifth Division was unaffected; partly he wanted to remind the units and their officers that Kucera was nothing more than a divisional commander. Yes, the present position was very embarrassing indeed. Revolution ought clearly to fail or clearly to be successful. The province of Siete Dolores, raised by Pedro Valdés on the day of Avellana’s attempt in the capital, had not returned to its allegiance. The civil governor, the military governor and the Twelfth Cavalry Division had declared for Avellana. And now Avellana was with them and was forming an effective shadow government in Vergara, the provincial capital. Siete Dolores was politically unimportant, but it possessed the country’s second airfield at Lérida and good communications by road and rail to San Vicente.
Don Jesús-María inspected the Division, giving particular attention to the niceties of ceremonial. He did know what else to look for. This was a very different body of troops from those among whom he had spent the last forty years of his life. All one could ever expect of the infantryman of Guayanas was to keep his person and his rifle clean. The cavalry had far higher standards. Don Jesús-María believed that they were as good as any European cavalry between the wars. Certainly their horsemanship was superb. He had a theory — and he knew what he was talking about — that the close attention to detail demanded by the care of the horse extended itself naturally to detail of equipment and tactics.
Detail was his specialty. He was the terror of quartermasters and well aware of it. Don Jesús-María was therefore perfectly in character when he paid particular attention to the water supply of the Citadel and its stock of petrol, rations and ammunition. What he wanted to know — without arousing suspicion — was how long Fifth Division, if the worst came to the worst, could stand a siege. It could fight its way out. He had no doubt of that at all. But where could it go then? The future isolation of the Citadel, whether besieged or masked, seemed a possibility.
All this, however, was a nightmare. Much more important than counting rounds per man was a long and affectionate talk with Miro Kucera. He managed to arrange it not too obviously, pairing off Captain Irala with his own A.D.C. and turning his adjutant general loose on the colonels in command of brigades. At last he found himself in Kucera’s office without ever having to suggest a private interview.
When the entirely neutral subject of promotions had been discussed, Don Jesús-María said:
“I wish I had known in time what your politics were, Miro.”
“As a soldier, I haven’t any. As a citizen, I should vote for Avellana.”
“That is what I thought. You geniuses stick together. And when you asked for leave to go to La Joya . . . Well, a fine mess of it you and Gil have made! Would it be any help if I accepted your resignation and gave you my word of honor that I’ll have you back within a year?”
Miro answered the smile. Old Jesús-María had always such an expression of calm and benignity. He had modeled his face, mustache and gallant carriage upon the French and British leaders of the First World War, and it was too late to change to the military face of the Second.
“I cannot retire now,” he said. “It would not be fair to the Division.”
“You’ll have to go if Avellana comes in. And then I should be powerless to do anything about it.”
“I know that, Captain General.”
“You’ll be all right? I suppose the Fonsagrada interests . . . ?”
“Yes. There are family plans.”
“What are Juan’s intentions, Miro? He could bring Los Venados and the highlands over whenever he wished.”
“Not without the frontier garrisons. How far will Twentieth Cavalry obey your orders, now that Twelfth have declared for Avellana?”
“What a question, man! How far will you obey my orders?”
“Captain General, in everything that I can. But you know that I am directly responsible to the President.”
“And if my other commanders say they are Avellanistas and directly responsible to the Vergara government?”
“I cannot believe that your influence as the revered chief of the nation’s Army —”
“Miro, as an older man will you permit me to say that you are too much of a soldier? My influence will hold the Army for just as long as it thinks it cannot win. But let us take, for example, two situations: one where it believes you might desert Vidal; another, where Vidal and San Vicente can only accept defeat. In either of those eventualities, the whole Army would declare for Avellana. You will say that I should not follow. But what is the father of a family to do when all his sons are determined on a certain course?”
Don Jesús-María’s illustration was apt. His puzzled, kindly face expressed his dilemma. He couldn’t be expected to give up his paternal power — promotions, movements, ceremonies. He enjoyed the deference too much. And it wasn’t altogether empty deference. He was liked. For Miro and his officers he was a joke, but they were well aware that Vidal could never have given them their present freedom without the tacit consent of Don Jesús-María.
“I am deeply sorry to have made things so difficult for you,” said Miro sincerely. “But my duty was quite clear.”
“Yes, yes! You and Don Gregorio! A masterstroke! It would have been an example to all Latin America without those poor, misguided students. But, Miro, the Army was always a little afraid of your power. And now — well, you have rubbed their noses in it. The Presidential Guard, for example . . . as garrison commander, you were fully entitled to relieve them of their immemorial duties. But I would have liked more tact. They are bound to wonder whether it would not be less boring to use their lances rather than polish them. And couldn’t you have let that helicopter escape? And that case of Trumpeter Menendez who spat on the flag. Justice is not everything. One must consider the glory of the Army as well as its efficiency.”
“We leave that to you, Don Jesús-María,” said Miro with a deferential little bow.
The use of we rather than I was unconscious, but he saw that Don Jesús-María had not liked it. Perhaps it had emphasized too plainly the solidarity of Fifth Division.
“I would advise you, my dear Miro, not to pay too much attention to the adulation of your officers. I remind you that a Caesar is made by the declaration of his troops, not by his own. And he cannot avoid obeying. That could be your position, and frankly I do not believe that Vidal and Avellana are worth it.”
“Do you mean,” asked Miro, much shocked, “that the real issue could be the Army versus Fifth Division?”
“No, no, no! What a habit you have of seeing everything in black and white! But it would have been easier for us all if your conscience had been more elastic.”
“The whole thing was too sudden for me. I could do nothing else.”
“Good, good! But now discretion — eh?” said Don Jesús-María, getting up and patting him consolingly on the back. “It is only necessary to have time on our side, and do you know how that can be assured?”
“By moving a little faster than the rest,” said Miro.
“Not at all! Not at all! To have time on one’s side it is necessary to delay doing anything whatever.”
Miro Kucera led his commander to a lunch of such excellence that Don Jesús-María, toasting his major general, declared it to be a perfect example of the Division’s attention to detail. The convivial side of Army life appealed to Miro as much as its precision, and in that he was enthusiastically seconded by Salvador Irala — who had once shocked the mess by declaring that you couldn’t create a first-class killing machine without an early Christian spirit of trust and charity between man and man. At any rate, the style of the Division or its hospitality inspired Don Jesús-María to send for his car instead of his horse.
Miro, alone in his office with a cigar and a pretense of papers, considered the wisdom of his senior’s advice. It would indeed be easier to rem
ain cynically in the Citadel and allow the politicians to tear Guayanas apart without any officious assistance. But there it was; not even inaction would keep Fifth Division out of the arena. Don Jesús-María was either very disingenuous or hadn’t thought it out. The neutrality of the San Vicente garrison would put Gil Avellana in power just as surely as if it had declared for him with flags, artillery salutes and a pronunciamiento. Jesús-María had brought up another worrying point as well: What would happen if Avellana tried to remove the Division’s commander after the officers had tasted power?
His imagination sharpened by wine, Miro faintly realized the perilous nature of his success. If he had been content to be a normal major general of the Guayanas Army, with a normal Division of sloppily dressed, out-at-grass infantry, none of this would ever have happened. Well, it had happened. And very probably Gregorio Vidal, that delicate insect building instinctively among panels and pictures, had intended it. The only possible course was to continue to set an example, to support the oath and the Constitution, until such time as Vidal was turned out by a free vote. If Miro’s own motives were fully understood by the people — and it looked as if they were — he might one day go so far as to supervise the honesty of that vote. You will see that we get justice? Morote had asked.
He returned early to San Vicente and his flat, thankful to find it empty of journalists, minor diplomatists and United States businessmen, though he hoped it had not been empty for long.
There was no need to explore the full depths of the horror which, he knew, remained with Feli. The best psychiatry was to keep her steadily assured of his love and sympathy and to indoctrinate her, as if she had been some young and sensitive subaltern whose first battle had been of a brutality which he would never see again, with a sense of the inevitable.
That was easy, because he was sincere. He should never have gone down those steps, hypnotized by his own personality and the President’s wish to play down military intervention; and it was his fault, too, that there had been no experienced officer present. He was still overwhelmed by pity for his once gay and always courageous Feli, who couldn’t help what she had done. If it had been she who had gone down, he might easily have cleared those young lunatics from her body with one burst of automatic fire. And only she would have understood afterwards.
Her face had become a little thinner, and the soft yellow of the rose was more marked than the flush of pink. He adored this tenseness in her. To heal herself she was using energy of which she had only had an impatient awareness. She was employing all her charm and intelligence to form a pressure group in favor of Vidal among the international society of San Vicente. Especially she was seeking out and entertaining the North Americans, quite inexplicably with the benevolent approval of Juan. She was still in every way his unchangeable Feli, but the difference in her was that between a recoil spring on the armorer’s bench and the same spring compressed and ready in its slot.
The flat was at the top of one of the most spectacular triumphs of Vidalismo, its wide balconies catching whatever air blew from the Pacific. Now in the calm before sunset it was very warm, but contained within its shuttered twilight a fresh essence of the open, blazing sea. Feli, at ease in transparencies, was intolerably lovely. The new strength of her face suddenly and tempestuously reminded him of the fine-drawn change in it after their honeymoon.
When he had at last remembered that she was not some divine tropical mistress but his wife — with wonder, for that Latin relationship somehow, by its solidity, seemed to preclude the ecstasies of passion — Miro threw his boots after his discarded tunic, bathed, drank, became a respectable civilian and joined his cool and exquisite Feli on the balcony, while far below the street lights went on and chalked an intelligible map upon the blackboard of San Vicente.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“Very well. I like Jesús-María — as a man as well as a figurehead.”
“Will he give a lead to the Army?”
“He reminds me of a politician out of office. He can afford to give good advice because he hasn’t to take responsibility for its effect.”
“Does that mean he is going to declare for Avellana?”
“Not if he can help it!”
“And the Division?” she asked.
“We take no orders except from the elected government. The troops have been taught that, day in and day out — and they will march on Siete Dolores whatever their politics. They understand discipline, you see. A colonel doesn’t dispute my orders, however wrong he thinks them. But he is perfectly free to argue with me at the postmortem afterwards. And that goes all down the line. We are proud of our efficiency as a machine. Call it conceit — but the troops are quite clear in their minds. I’m the one who is least clear. Avellana could say openly that neither legality nor democracy is enough. It wouldn’t make any difference to my stand, but I don’t know the answer.”
“You . . . That is the answer!”
“What do you mean, Feli?”
“That you’d be a far better President than either Vidal or Avellana. If legality is not enough, go on and be it!”
“For God’s sake, beloved!” Miro protested.
“What could stop you but yourself? So if you think it’s wrong for you, it’s just as wrong for Avellana.”
“No. Not quite so wrong. I have no policy to offer. He has.”
Miro heard his orderly’s boots crossing the parquet floor of the room behind them and with a hardly perceptible movement of his chair changed his pose from that of adoring husband to commander. Unlike his fellow officers, he never kept military servants at his home in normal times, preferring to be served less reverently by Felicia’s maids. But now Fifth Division had to be allowed to fuss. The orderly was permanently on the landing, two formal sentries were on the main door of the building and a heavily armed guard at the back of the stairs — ordered by the general to keep out of sight of the public and by the divisional provost marshal to keep, for God’s sake, out of sight of the general.
The orderly presented a sealed note to Miro and withdrew.
“For you,” said Miro, handing it to Feli. “I don’t know whether he was just being military or believes that wives have no right to private correspondence.”
“From Doña Concha,” she said, reading it. “She sent it through the guard commander at the Palace.”
“Why not telephone? Or has she been listening to my lectures on security?”
“She knows more about security than you do. What she says is that Don Gregorio will probably want you at a conference tonight. I am to use my influence to persuade you to call on her privately in the Little Salon beforehand.”
“Have you any idea what I am letting myself in for?”
“No. But it isn’t like her. So pay attention to anything she tells you. They can say what they like about Concha, but she loves her husband.”
“Well, yes — as a little girl loves her guinea pig.”
“That isn’t fair!” Feli replied with unexpected warmth.
It was, and true too. But he did not pursue the subject. Even his Feli was not free from the inexplicable feminine vice of feeling guilty for no reason. She could hardly believe that her love for him was girl-and-guinea-pig, but perhaps she was conscious that she had too warmly recommended obedience to Concha’s wishes.
“Feli, my darling,” he said with his slow smile which always seemed to flash into affection at the tips before it subsided, “the night is ours till the Managerial Society says it isn’t.”
“It will do that in the middle of dinner,” she replied. “We’ll have something on the balcony now.”
As if she felt the urgency of the future pressing on them, she seemed to be packing into half an hour the quintessence of all the little peaceable things he so dearly loved in his adopted country: herself radiant in the cool of the young night, the pool of light on the table, the wine and the quick, delicate food surprisingly produced at a word by the two dark-plaited Indian maids. Under the gay f
ringe of the awning the lights of San Vicente glittered in rectangles and parallel lines which met and faded in the darkness of the plain. Away to the east was the Cordillera, just visible on a clear day, and beneath it the long valley of Siete Dolores.
The strip of darkness between San Vicente and the stars held his imagination. Out there was Gil Avellana, cut off from the world except for Lérida Airfield, and protected — if you could call it protected — by Twelfth Cavalry Division. But even cavalry could hold the road and railway through the Quebradas Pass. And if they held it long enough to attract other wavering divisions?
It was curious how Feli, whose eyes too were turned towards the east and who, he knew, had caught his thoughts — or he hers — spoke unforgivingly of “reds” and yet supposed that a mere exchange of shots, a little old-style marching and countermarching, the political maneuvering of Juan and the Ateneo would end the crisis, while he, who felt respect rather than hatred for Avellana, was watching darkness in terms of roads and bridges, of fire power, of his left flank in the air, of the launching — if he were ordered to do so — of a murderous mass of steel into the half-trained softness of the enemy. Speed. It was the only way — for that softness of clinging, overwhelming numbers could close around him.
The telephone rang. As he held it to his ear he had a sudden nightmare vision of himself as a lit typhoon-center in the midst of darkness, darkness underground where the line ran to the military exchange and back to Vidal in his office, darkness of Siete Dolores between plain and stars. Vidal was, as ever, most courteous. Could Miro come round at ten? A private conference of vital importance. His compliments and excuses to Doña Felicia.
There were no sentries in the boxes of the Presidential Guard. The security of the President had, outwardly, been handed over to lounging civil police. Miro Kucera hoped that the plain-clothes men in the Glorieta and the side streets were more efficient. Not that it mattered. Out of sight, with a field of fire which covered the ancient stone terrace between those terrible steps and the entrance hall, were his own men. Never had it been so obvious to him that the power of the police depended ultimately on the fighting forces. Yet Fifth Division never considered itself the Praetorian Guard of Vidalismo.
Thing to Love Page 14
