Thing to Love

by Geoffrey Household

  A codicil signed by the senior officers of the Division confirmed that their commander had been killed and that Pedro Valdés had been elected in his place. Some of the signatories Miro knew. They were strutting, turkeycock professionals — most unlikely to accept an amateur as their commander, though they might have inspired his literary style.

  Jesús-María’s honorable old face preserved a studied detachment which showed that he was bursting with curiosity. Miro suggested that he might like to take coffee and a cigar at the Command Post, and there in privacy showed him Valdés’s reply.

  “What the devil does it mean?” Miro asked. “Elected? Not unless the electors were surrounded by Valdés’s own men! Is he playing the political commissar?”

  “He was to be Avellana’s representative in the field. In any emergency it was understood he would be consulted,” Jesús-María replied. “He also raised a volunteer battalion of his own in Vergara. You met it in the first action when the speed of its advance compelled you to retreat on Cruzada.”

  “Talk to my officers, Don Jesús-María, and you will find that I intended to retreat on Cruzada whatever I met and whenever I met it.”

  “No doubt, no doubt, Captain General,” Jesús-María replied courteously. “But you will admit that the battalion was well-handled.”

  “Of course. Enthusiasm in attack — one expects it at the first brush of a campaign. But now, when the position is hopeless? How can Valdés gain the trust of the Division and persuade them there is any point in fighting?”

  “They have more to fight for than a Caudillo, Captain General.”

  “Good! Then put it they are fighting for Avellana’s Utopia! But without food and ammunition they cannot. And no one but an amateur would think they could.”

  “It has been done.”

  “In the days of horse and lance, yes. But now when war is over, it is over.”

  “I hope so. I hope so. But you must not forget that the people have faith in Avellana.”

  “Then let them see that he is elected!” Miro answered bitterly. “For me it is all the same.”

  And indeed, for him personally, it was. When Jesús-María, still with his bumbling air of patronizing, ecclesiastical grief, had returned to his quarters, Miro realized with complete finality that whether the next government of Guayanas was of Vidalistas or of Avellanistas, there was no future for him. The Army must be remade by officers who had not inspired the extremes of loyalty and hatred.

  In a revulsion against more useless waste of lives and material, he called up Rosalindo Chaves and ordered him not to attack at dawn. The Armored Brigade would make a fast-moving reconnaissance of the enemy positions in full daylight. If the enemy attempted any foolhardy offensive meanwhile, it was to be checked and punished in overwhelming force.

  A night’s sleep, at last full and deep, persuaded Miro that most of his vague forebodings had been due to the exhaustion of his nerves. The alternatives of Caesarism or retirement no longer seemed so stark and unavoidable. There might be a hundred compromises between, and if the politicians wanted to discover them they would. His own business was to soldier on successfully and to obey.

  The plain blazed with the sun he loved. Breakfast was good, and so was the news. Twelfth Cavalry was in full retreat up the Quebradas Pass. The ambulances were already on their way to the Jaquiri Bridge and the hospitals of San Vicente and the Citadel. Ferrer’s column had fought or bulldozed its way through the rubbish of Fourth Division, more refugees than soldiers, and relieved the half-regiment of Saracens. He had no enemy in the field but that lunatic, half-communist “Valdeski,” leading to destruction — damn him! — the only infantry in Guayanas at all comparable to his own.

  The picture, however, was far from clear in spite of the immense superiority of the armored reconnaissance. Mario Nicuesa didn’t like probing valleys, and it looked as if the enemy knew he didn’t. There was stiff resistance at scattered strongpoints; it gave the impression of an obstinate rear-guard action to delay the mopping-up while Valdés retreated into the coffee and the forest. That this had actually happened on Sixth Division’s left was certain. There it had vanished, abandoning all heavy equipment and guns. The typical gesture of a charlatan! Gallantly refuse to surrender, but commit your men to a position where finally they would be begging to be brought in and fed by patrols of military or civil police! Well, if that was what they were up to, the sooner they had a taste of it, the better. Miro dispatched a strong force to Cruzada, for there was little to prevent Pedro Valdés from moving along the line of the Breakfast Tram and the coffee paths to take the little town — a futile gesture which could do no conceivable good but might occur to an amateur. Then he ordered Chaves to advance the whole line up to the edge of the escarpment.

  Sixth Division rear guard certainly did not stand and die. Under the sudden pressure they cleared out quickly, taking their wounded with them. In an hour Chaves himself was looking down over the trees to the Pacific. There were few prisoners. They only knew that their orders were to retire downhill by marked paths and to avoid losses.

  Miro was more puzzled than ever, and near to losing his temper with the folly of the invisible. His mind had no contact at all with this ridiculous elected command which didn’t know the rules, ancient or modern. Did it intend to do its standing and dying in a defensive box without communications? And if it did, why the devil should Pedro Valdés think the position would ever be assaulted when starvation would do the job more thoroughly? Or had he been reading too much of guerrillas in Asian forests, and was now hoping to create a running sore of resistance to Vidal in the coastal belt? Perhaps he could, but it was strategically inept. Viera was no longer of any value whatever as a port. As for Cruzada, equally unimportant, a small permanent garrison could deal with the few ragged guerrillas which were all that Valdés could ever feed.

  It was midday before the problem was solved — a stark mad solution infuriating Miro by its futility and by the fact that he had never thought of it. A radio message from the Santa María, broken off before it was complete, reported that she had been captured. There was nothing whatever he could do about it. He could not use his superior speed and mobility. Sixth Division had the best part of twelve hours’ start, and he had not a hope of reaching Viera and preventing embarkation against rear guards of that quality, determined to defend their roadblocks on the narrow paths and their demolitions of the railway.

  Well, let them embark their five or six thousand men who might reach Viera — if they would fit in the holds and on deck. The triumph of Señor Elected-General Valdés would be short-lived. The Santa María was an unarmed merchantman. The volume of small-arms fire on board her was terrific, but she had no guns. Paco Salinas and the Frente Unido would have to deal with her. He picked up the telephone to call President Vidal.

  CHAPTER XIV

  [December 18]

  “SEEKING ASYLUM, JUAN?” the consul asked.

  “Certainly not, Enrique. What I want is to listen to Gil Avellana’s broadcast.”

  “Has Vidal planted a policeman on you?”

  “That would be most improper, with two unmarried girls under my roof. But the street crawls with the hyenas of Vidalismo. To their grave embarrassment I send out a tray of refreshments every two hours. No, I am here because I do not wish to compromise any of my friends by encouraging them to call on me at the hour when Gil Avellana, as we are not supposed to know, is addressing the nation. On the other hand, I do not wish to listen to him alone. I require a steadying influence such as yours, Enrique, to prevent me from weeping, smashing the set or sending a telegram of protest to the United Nations when I do not quite know what to protest about.”

  Juan de Fonsagrada lowered himself into an immense, leather-covered chair and accepted a drink. Henry Penruddock’s private sitting room was extremely comfortable, almost without color — for curtains and cushions had long since lost whatever they had — and had evidently been modeled once and for all upon the indestructible amenities o
f a London club. The consul had adjusted himself completely to Latin-American life except in the matter of interior decoration. Juan gave himself most gratefully to his surroundings. Not only was he able to rest, momentarily at ease, upon such ultra-solid ground, but he could also feel patronizing about it.

  “Well, thank God it’s all over but the shouting!” the consul said. “I’m astonished that Vidal had the guts to go through with it.”

  “He didn’t, Enrique. For your own private ear, Vidal came to see me in the hope that I could mediate.”

  “What did he offer?”

  “Anything for a quiet life. Anything except resignation. A return to the status quo. Just how he thought he was going to return Fifth Division to the status quo I don’t know. He couldn’t run the film backwards and return bullets tailfirst into the machine guns. I told him I had no means of communication with Vergara. It wasn’t true, but the position was hopeless. Avellana was just about to teach Fifth Division a lesson — a task, I gather, which the more senseless officers looked forward to. All over? Well, on the pattern of every other revolution it ought to be.”

  “I told Paco Salinas to give it the puntilla”, said Penruddock. “I told him that he ought to stop the Santa María and escort her into San Vicente.”

  “Enrique, I wish to God I knew who was in command of the country. Concha Vidal? Miro and my dear daughter? And now you assume that your orders to our Navy are more likely to be obeyed than the President’s!”

  “Paco Salinas is a very old friend,” the consul replied peaceably. “I assured him that he wouldn’t cause any loss of life at all. The Santa María still had half Miro’s ammunition in her. Not even Valdeski would have been prepared to risk a shell in that lot. All Paco had to do was to train the Joseph and Mary turrets on her and have a tug and some barges standing by for the Sixth Division boys to jump into. But he swore he couldn’t get steam on the Frente Unido for a week. He was descaling the boiler tubes. It was true. It would be. But it’s a pity. There’s nothing in the north strong enough to stop Valdeski beaching her whenever he likes. What does the Captain General think?”

  “He’s hardly likely to confide in me.”

  “That’s sad — for Guayanas.”

  “Thank you, Enrique. It’s possible that he would agree with you. But my dear daughter is like all women in an emergency. She immediately sees everything in black and white — or, in this case, red and white.”

  “Are there to be any firing squads?”

  “No. The only advantage of Miro treating revolution as war is that the rules of war apply. He won’t hear of it.”

  “Does Vidal want it?”

  “The Managerial Society, Enrique, is too squeamish to take life. It merely assassinates the reputation and the means of livelihood. But I wouldn’t put it past the Chamber to demand some heads. And the colonels of Fifth Division want Ledesma’s”

  “I hope they get it,” said the consul. “If it hadn’t been for him, poor old Jesús-María de Hoyos and Miro Kucera might have thought of something.”

  “Perhaps. But I doubt it. Whatever the intrigues of their officers, the men who died at the Battle of Cruzada died for Avellana and nothing else. Then or later it had to happen.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “Turn on Vergara, Enrique.”

  “Can’t they jam it?”

  “The Casa de Radio-Difusión is largely staffed by young men and women from the university. The latter part of Avellana’s speech will be jammed. An unforeseen technical difficulty — something extraordinarily abstruse to do with magnetism and mountains — will prevent the jamming from being successful for the first ten minutes.”

  Avellana’s beautifully modulated voice easily dominated the radio’s halfhearted shrieks and trills, which in any case only gathered volume during his pauses. A certain harshness of delivery was effective, giving the impression of a man — and very much a man — unused to the artificialities of the broadcaster. He had borrowed at least one technique from abroad: that of the fireside chat. His style contrasted strongly with Juan’s own traditional oratory. There was enough passion in it to satisfy the demands of enthusiastic supporters, but the general tone was of the reasonable man, the calmer-down of café disputes, the scrupulously fair observer carried away, on this occasion only, by his just indignation.

  “People of Guayanas, my brothers in suffering, my sisters who mourn the dead, all of you who believe at this moment that your sacrifice is in vain, let me comfort you. Decision is never military. Decision is of the people, and in the determination of the people. The future of Guayanas still lies in your hands, not in those of a brutal Division, drunk with power, trained to kill without mercy, led by a mercenary without a country, without honor, without love.”

  “Oh Miro, poor Miro, my dear son!” Juan whispered.

  “I never desired this horror. My patience was not exhausted. I gave no call to arms. I waited, my person secure in Siete Dolores, my policy safe in the whispers of the very poor and the fearlessness of those of us who are privileged to serve them. I waited until I had won over the generous hearts of the armed forces, until I was sure that the corruption of Vidal would rot into its grave. There was nothing in it to fight, nothing worthy of the blood of men and the tears of women. What can one say of a government which provides the people of the Barracas with lavatories and a cinema while allowing them to fight the seagulls for their food? It is a farce, a bad farce. One does not storm the stage. One waits for the public to demand that it be taken off.

  “And while we waited — what? An avalanche of steel, equipped by Vidal, launched by Vidal and paid for — if it is paid for — by the sleek financiers of the United States who support Vidal! Bravely the Air Force interposed their handful of planes, the shield of the people at Cumana. But their innocence, their purity of purpose could not prevail against the treachery of a military Caudillo and his sanguinary colonels. The Army of the people moved to meet them, their feet bleeding with the speed of their advance, while the mercenaries of Vidal were carried on wheels, protected by armor. Rifles against tanks.”

  “Nothing wrong with their artillery, was there?” Henry Penruddock asked.

  “Enrique, this legend will not be destroyed in your lifetime or mine. So you might just as well shut up.”

  “What can one expect of men who shoot down girls upon the steps of the Palace? I will say nothing of the Battle of Cruzada, where the glorious Army of Guayanas was treated as if it were a foreign enemy, annihilated with a cruelty unknown hitherto upon this peaceful southern continent. But let us look at what happened far from the decisive front, far from the gallant battle of bayonets against Shermans. Not content with that slaughter, Vidal and his paid assassin committed murder. Fearful lest the lances of Twelfth Cavalry should destroy their armored cars, they hurled down five hundred men to death in the Quebradas Pass. Horses and men in one cataclysm. And if any were left alive, they were burned alive.

  “That is neither revolution nor civil war. It is cold-blooded murder. And I swear to you, brothers, that the Law shall take revenge.

  “And the flying, the helpless in the Escala de los Ingleses! Those of you of my father’s generation will remember the armed rising against the Dictator Orduñez — the horsemen of the plains, the poor of San Vicente armed only with their knives, the flower of the liberal youth of Guayanas, led by the gallant Cayetano de Fonsagrada. The troops of the Dictator fled in disorder, and it was enough. Fonsagrada raised his sword and halted the last charge. Why kill men who have no hope?

  “But in the Escala de los Ingleses what happened? When the battle was over, when the mercenary Kucera already held our revered captain general, Don Jesús-María de Hoyos y Alarcón, when General Valdés and his immortal Sixth Division were cutting their way down to the Pacific, when the half-trained youths of Fourth Division were stumbling through the Escala on their way to the safety of Siete Dolores, the armor of Kucera, like a puma which follows the staggering traveler till he falls, came growlin
g up the Pass behind them.

  “This too was Vidalismo. I will tell you who commanded those savages. A certain Lieutenant Colonel Ferrer, once an unassuming, valued, colored citizen of the coast. A contractor’s foreman. A contractor working on Vidal’s Citadel. No doubt Ferrer lined his pockets like the rest of them. But for him that was not enough. He asked to be trained to kill for his masters.

  “This was the man who followed those defenseless boys up the narrow paths of the Escala. They tried to climb the slopes out of the way of the advancing tanks. They threw themselves into the abysses. But Ferrer and his drivers did not care. They crushed the bodies beneath the tracks of their tanks. They refused to accept the surrender of helpless men. . . .”

  The jamming of the broadcast became momentarily effective, overwhelming Avellana’s voice.

  “Probably police in the Casa de Radio-Difusión telling them they’d better, or else,” Juan remarked. “But Ferrer? Does he mean that energetic, diseased-looking Sambo who digs trenches for my son-in-law?”

  “Mulatto, Juan.”

  “Technically a Sambo, Enrique. I know him well. He got my patio fountain to work and did the floodlighting for Miro’s wedding. A most kindly, commonsensical fellow and honest as the day. I don’t believe a word of it. He’d do nothing of the sort.”

  “Oh, it’s true enough for a politician’s speech,” the consul said. “Ferrer couldn’t help it. I know, because I am interested in every bit of information about the Saracens. After all, I sold them. The survivors of the regiment which destroyed Lérida were laagered on a hilltop — nearly out of ammo, and drinking the water from the radiators. They were being shelled by Twelfth Cavalry on one side and machine-gunned by bits and pieces of Fourth Division on the other. Ferrer was racing up to relieve them. God knows what he was doing in command of armor! He couldn’t halt and he couldn’t get out to take surrenders. I don’t suppose he ran over more than a dozen of the enemy. What’s bothering Avellana is that Fourth panicked again, and a lot of them blinded into the hills without thinking and died of thirst. But the strawberry jam makes a better story.”