Thing to Love

by Geoffrey Household

  “She was not. She has eyes — and a very quick intelligence.”

  “This is dangerous, Salvador,” said Miro, not rebukingly but as if it were an adventure common to them both. “Vidal’s police are well informed. In a moment of emotion she cheered for me; but to whom is her loyalty?”

  “May I say without conceit that I believe I have educated her. She started with the profound contempt of a pathologist for war.”

  “Your affair has gone far?”

  “My General, I will say this — that no sooner is my curiosity satisfied in one respect than it stretches to infinity in others. But I bore you with my private life. The point is that if Vidal wishes to save us from our enemies, it is quite certain that Don Juan is in a position to pass on his proposals to Vergara.”

  “He won’t get any concessions from Vergara so long as Avellana has four Divisions to our one.”

  “He may be thinking beyond that, my General. When there is no more Avellana, he must use Juan de Fonsagrada and the Ateneo to balance Captain General Kucera and Fifth Division.”

  “You disgust me, Salvador. You should be in politics.”

  “Some lunch and a bottle, my General. I am sure Lieutenant Colonel Irigoyen is eating his.”

  Well, that was true enough. Calixto was typical of his Basque ancestry. Nothing was likely to worry him so long as he had a foot of sandwich and a bottle of coarse red wine. There was no point in remembering him every minute until he had to be remembered. Miro accepted a tray from his orderly, and turned at the same time to a file of signals which had just come in.

  At last some pins could go into the map and wave their little flags in a pretense of representing reality. Fourth Division could at last be placed, advancing along the edge of the forest some forty miles to the south. It appeared to be dangerously strung out — inevitable when it was hurrying to catch up and three-quarters of the infantry were marching on their feet. Third Division was much farther away than it need have been. Whatever the Air told him, Jesús-María was leaving no gaps for exploitation.

  It was already dark and the advance guard was approaching Cruzada when the vital signal came in from the Citadel.

  PERSONAL DONA FELICIA KUCERA TO CAPTAIN GENERAL LISTEN TO RADIO-DIFUSION SAN VICENTE AT TWENTY-TWO HOURS

  Nothing at all from the President, but that was in character. If he had a reliable go-between he never appeared. It was impossible even to guess what the comings and goings in the capital had been.

  Miro kept his Headquarters halted, and let the dim lights of the Armored Brigade go by. At ten he listened. There was a spate of commercials. The clock ticked in the Headquarters lorry. 10:01. 10:02. 10:03. Nothing but soap and soft drinks. And then — oh, ingenious Don Gregorio! It was just like him to have prepared the sort of thing that the so-called “Coca-Cola civilization” could handle in its stride. And with Vidal’s close connections in commerce he had only to express a wish — without giving away anything — to have a new product launched upon the market. There wasn’t even the remotest suggestion of taquilla in its sense of a railway ticket office. It was the box office of cinema and theater.

  “TAQUILLA!” entoned the oily voice with its professional thrill. “Watch for TAQUILLA! TAQUILLA, the entry to all beauty! Do you wish for delicate, desirable development? Massage every evening with TAQUILLA. The entry to the World of the Stars. TAQUILLA! TAQUILLA! TAQUILLA, prepared in the foremost scientific laboratory of Paris. TAQUILLA, soft as the caress of a lover’s lips. Next week . . . in the shops . . . TAQUILLA!”

  Salvador Irala looked with amazement at the broad grin on his commander’s face.

  “From the Fonsagrada stable?” he asked.

  “Didn’t they give the name of the maker, Salvador?” replied Miro innocently. “I was just thinking that it was a medicament the ladies of Guayanas rarely needed.”

  CHAPTER XII

  [December 13–14]

  THE CRUZADA Box was defended in depth, for nature itself had no front line. The dry, rolling country across which the Division had retreated, with its scrub and scattered trees by the wells and its mud villages forever fighting the sun for something to eat, ended at a low range of hills which, closer at hand, sorted themselves out into individual heights, some conical, some rounded, without any continuous, connecting ridge. The slopes appeared rougher and of darker shade than the plain.

  Through this narrow belt of broken country the shallow valleys ran downhill to the west. Some were impassable from the start. In others the tracks twisted for miles before vanishing into the forest. The rider from the plain would see his way ahead of him over the familiar scrub, then he would notice that it was greener and above the level of his eye, then he would look up in surprise because it was dark, and see no sky at all.

  At no point existed the dramatic change from subtropical to tropical, from savannah to a wall of trees. Only from the top of the higher hills could it be appreciated that the simplicity of the map was true. The coffee belt was immediately below, its outlines just sufficiently geometrical to show that the dark green was planned by man. Beyond was the top of the forest, rounding all irregularities of rock and contour, rolling down and down until green changed to black, and black to the pastels of distance; until distance was cut off by the glitter of the Pacific, sometimes blue as a humming bird, sometimes like a strange gray metal in which radio activity was visible.

  That was the country which, from Fifth Division’s point of view, protected its rear, and in the eyes of the rapidly closing enemy completed its encirclement. Cruzada itself, a little town of palms and running water, was at the upper end of the widest valley in the hills and well behind the Division’s perimeter. There was no activity very obvious to its alarmed citizens. Here and there, puffs of smoke toppled trees and left orange scars on familiar hillsides; here and there jeeps impudently bumped where nothing but sedate mules had ever moved before. Once, on a skyline, quickly hiding again their romantic brutality, there were guns.

  Cruzada was divided between terror and an excitement which could not be expected again till next year’s fiesta. The citizens had a ringside seat for what promised to be an admirable effusion of blood. Added to that were the enchanting manners of the general who had driven in shortly after midnight and assured the mayor that the townsfolk had nothing whatever to fear. The fighting, he said, was most unlikely to reach Cruzada, and if it did he would surrender his sword — they were disappointed that he had not got one — to the mayor himself, as the nearest representative of civil government. That was why he and his Division were in arms — for their elected representatives against illegal revolution. He spoke so nobly that everyone forgot that the town’s elected representative was an ardent Avellanista. They were also inclined to doubt that so civilized and courtly a person could have shot down the students of the university and reduced Cumana to a smoking heap of ruins. Cruzada held its breath, awed by the discipline of the few units which had business in the town. A little drunkenness, a few genial attempts at rape, would have made them more human.

  The Division rested, for it had been in movement for forty hours. It had the last of the night and a full day in which to recover, and could reasonably count on another night since Jesús-María was most unlikely even to probe the strongpoints hidden in those innocent hills until he had the sun to help him. Miro left the siting of the positions to Rosalindo Chaves. The Indian in him was cunning and had a streak of savage humor to go with it. Later, in action, he would have to be watched, for also in his character was too much of the proud defiance of the Spaniard, with the flag of his Maker ever pinned between his shoulders.

  At dawn, dead tired after two days with very little sleep, Miro made his last inspection of the Armored Brigade. It had passed north and west of Cruzada in the night and was leaguered under cover around Purua where the Breakfast Tram joined the Viera Railway. He was satisfied that not a vehicle could be seen from the air and that all tracks in and among the coffee had been disguised by dead leaves from the forest f
loor.

  His security problem was difficult. The trouble was not Cruzada. So far as Cruzada was concerned, the Armored Brigade had gone trundling off to the left of his position; and on the left air reconnaissance would find it. Its true whereabouts, however, could not be concealed from the peons and small farmers along the edge of the forest, nor from the handful of railwaymen at Purua. They had been immobilized by requisitioning their labor. As there was little work for them to do and plenty of rations to keep them quiet, they failed to realize that they were in a temporary concentration camp; it looked more like a holiday at the Army’s expense.

  To the painting and sculpture of Basilio Ferrer and his Field Company Miro paid particular attention. By the afternoon, dummy armor was beginning to appear in the scrub of a reverse slope fairly far forward on the left, and its camouflage was inefficient enough for it to be easily recognizable from the air. He hoped that Ledesma’s young pilots and observers would at last congratulate themselves on being up to international standards. Painted tarpaulins roughly angled and modeled over the former Air Force trucks, straight gray tree trunks for guns, churned-up tracks leading to obvious petrol points, formed a picture which could not be misinterpreted.

  At nineteen hours on this night of the thirteenth, Mario Nicuesa started his Armored Brigade along the line of the Breakfast Tram. He didn’t like it. His careful mind — its precision exaggerated by the continual necessity of controlling excitable individualists in tanks — objected strongly to committing his precious vehicles to advancing in single file along a derelict railway line. He could only comfort himself with the thought of what would happen if the Armored Brigade emerged from the valleys and deployed without ever being spotted from the air. The Army of Guayanas, compared to those of the neighboring Republics, was reasonably professional. Old Jesús-María and his commanders knew in theory how to react to an unexpected thunderbolt falling on an exposed flank. But they had not the speed or cohesion, nor — at the beginning of a campaign — had their men the morale to resist panic.

  He was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which the first six kilometers were covered. No cuttings or embankments. A half moon. Plenty of room on one side of the track or the other. No vegetation so thick that it could not be felled by machete or, at the worst, splintered by the weight of a tank. Somewhere ahead of him was Fifth Combat Group covering all possible approaches to the line. Leading the column was that indestructible, melancholy mulatto, Basilio Ferrer, with two bulldozers and a bridging train. He and his Field Company must have put in their sleep on the retreat to Cruzada. They certainly hadn’t had much since.

  The crossing of the first bridge, which Ferrer had widened by girders, steel mats and chains, terrified Colonel Nicuesa more than his drivers. He was aware that the owner of a country bus would have charged it confidently, one hand on the wheel and the other lighting a cigarette. But he did not approve of the style of country buses. Reckless driving was an offense he would not put up with, from officers or men.

  On again for another half-hour. Then where the track traversed a sharp slope the leading tank of the second squadron went over the outer edge of the curve and came to rest twelve feet down against a tree, its tracks clawing at the unstable earth and rubble. The next tank in line tried cautiously to negotiate the torn embankment and followed the first downhill. The column halted.

  Colonel Nicuesa came hurrying up on foot from the rear and found Basilio Ferrer gazing down at the mess with an unworried air of being rotten with hookworm and hoping that somebody would do something about it the week after next.

  “How long will it take you to repair that?” the colonel asked with a note of exasperated efficiency in his voice which he couldn’t help. “And all your machines up at the front!”

  “An hour if God wills.”

  “And if He doesn’t?”

  “An hour and a half. But I shall need another tank down there for a chaperone.” Basilio pointed down at the two monsters which appeared to be savagely mating up against the tree.

  “Man, they are fighting vehicles!”

  “I know, my Colonel,” said Basilio sadly. “But three of them together make an excellent steel revetment.”

  Nicuesa cursed and gave the order. A third tank slid unhappily over the edge and came to rest against the other two.

  Meanwhile Ferrer’s men had come down the line. He was most unmilitary. He seemed to command with shrugs and gestures like a builder’s foreman with an old established crew. Four charges cut the rails. The length with its sleepers was lifted out and set aside as useful material for a ramp. Picks and shovels hurled the ballast and earth of the line into the gap between the edge of the embankment and the uppermost tank. In a little over an hour the road had a switchback hollow in it, but the outer side was perfectly safe. The great engines grumbled, spat and roared again. The advance was resumed.

  “Do you want those three back?” Ferrer asked. “Or will after the war do?”

  “By God, I want them back!”

  “Then you must be off the line and dispersed three hours before dawn. I’ll need all of that to return with my machines and tow them out.”

  “It can be done?” Nicuesa asked.

  “Depends on them,” said Basilio waving a casual hand at his sweating gang. “What do you think, Sergeant?”

  “Two and three easy. Top one — depends how she slides.”

  “Well, there you have it,” said Basilio, as if it had nothing at all to do with him.

  The Brigade crept on cautiously till three in the morning, when it arrived in a flat moonlit clearing where the line was doubled for trains to pass. There was a station with a siding and a small goods yard roofed against the rain. An overgrown road and a network of tracks led from derelict plantations into the clearing. The armored vehicles dispersed into cover while Ferrer with his men and machines went back to recover the three lost tanks, and to hide them in any convenient patch of jungle where the mechanics of the mobile workshop could work on them during the day.

  At eight Miro himself came up the line. To avoid the slightest chance of recognition by low-flying aircraft, his jeep was roughly camouflaged to present the outline of a hand trolley, and he and his driver were wearing floppy, wide-brimmed straw hats.

  “It worked,” said Colonel Nicuesa. “We’re halfway. What a nightmare, Chief!”

  “I know, Mario. Unjustifiable! But we have to gamble. A single division can’t go on winning and losing battles, gradually wearing down the enemy. We have to risk disaster for the chance of immediate victory.”

  Mario Nicuesa doubted if there were any chance of disaster in any circumstances. The Caudillo looked far too refreshed, large and confident.

  “What’s the position up there?” he asked.

  “Any moment now. It looks as if Jesús-María is going to assault with Third Division on a narrow front. I shall trade ground for lives. But if they can stick it, we shall be forced back on Cruzada by night.”

  It had been perfectly plain at dawn what was going to happen. The Ridge of the Lizards, an indented, broken tongue of the hills commanding the roads to Cruzada, would have been obvious to any soldier, even before the days of air reconnaissance, as the main forward position of Fifth Division. And the way to use superior force to dislodge the defenders was equally obvious. Pin them down by a frontal attack and work round their left flank. It was all as immutable as an opening move of chess.

  Miro hoped that Third Division would not stand their punishment and thus end the quarrel between Vidal and Avellana without any necessity for his own complicated tactics. But no one knew. No one except himself had experience of the speed and fire power of a modern army. Chaves, Irigoyen and several of the commanders on the other side had known skirmishes in mountain and jungle. Jesús-María, who in his twenties and thirties had adventured in every Latin-American war, had learned all there was to know about patience, courage and discomfort, but that was nearly all.

  As Miro was sharing Colonel Nicuesa’s coffee,
the commander of Fifth Combat Group came in to report. For two blinks of an eye he gave the impression of a young coffeebush which had unaccountably moved. Miro guessed that he had been watching them, unseen, for minutes.

  “Well?” he asked sharply, suspecting hero worship rather than curiosity.

  “Fourth Division is on the plain below us.”

  “Any of them moving off to their right?”

  “No. The transport is still coming up from the south. I don’t think they can be in the battle till tonight or tomorrow, my General.”

  “Anything at Ventas yet?”

  “Two platoons.”

  “Are they showing any interest in the line?”

  “Only interest in sleep, my General.”

  “They have a radio?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mark down its position and get it with your first grenade. And see that not a man escapes.”

  “Prisoners?”

  “Yes, of course you may take them. Tie them up tight till the armor is through. After that it doesn’t matter if they get loose.”

  There was a sudden falling of dust and dead foliage upon the breakfast table followed instantly by a tenuous, light thunder.

  “Rosalindo is getting it?” Colonel Nicuesa asked, twisting a dead, red leaf between his fingers.

  “Not yet. Those were ours. What about petrol, Mario?”

  “Enough for us to fill right up at dawn tomorrow unless the night march is very difficult. After that the enemy must supply us, Chief.”

  “Well, we only have one brand in Guayanas,” said Miro coolly. “I shall join you at Ventas, Mario. Let me know at once if you can’t get through. Signals will have given you a land line, by tonight.”

  In an hour Miro was back at his Headquarters. Rosalindo Chaves had little to report. Third Division’s attack on the Ridge of the Lizards had been broken up by artillery fire while they were still six hundred meters short of the position. There was as yet no pressure from Sixth Division on the left.