“Shall we go over?”
“I can’t, Enrique. Any suspicion that I was trying to work on Jesús-María would harden Avellana’s heart for good. You go. He may talk to you frankly.”
Juan vanished into the club and the consul rolled slowly along the line of chairs. He very much doubted if Don Jesús-María really had the generous feelings towards his conqueror which Juan ascribed to him. On the other hand the old boy, however incompetent he might be in the field, set great store by honor and military courtesy. Miro Kucera’s first act on entering the Citadel had been to release his distinguished prisoners, whom he had, it was said, treated luxuriously well. Most of them had scattered at once to reorganize their commands. Don Jesús-María had remained to give his advice — as likely as not unasked — to Avellana.
After greeting Paco by a wave of the hand, Henry Penruddock said:
“I have not yet had an opportunity of congratulating you, Captain General, on your liberty.”
“Sit down, Señor Consul, sit down! Why does Great Britain no longer take an interest in us? And to think that in the days of my youth it was you who owned the country! But because you never intervened in our politics there was not a soul in Guayanas who did not like you.”
“Times change, Captain General. We are a little island doing the best it can on the edge of the Arctic, and soon it may be Guayanas we shall thank for not intervening in our revolutions.”
“Nonsense! You have no revolutions. You are the only great country where the Army has never played politics. Even in the United States it tries. And, thanks to them, a Communist Guayanas is now just possible!”
Most unfair, the consul thought. The Captain General was prejudiced. Washington didn’t give a damn how Guayanas was governed; but it would fight at the drop of a hat for even a distant threat to the Panama Canal. The Americans were perhaps to blame for the speed with which they had bounded into the arena like some big-eyed, suffering movie star knocking out lions for the honor of Christianity. The Androcles approach seemed wiser, though it was late for it now.
What Avellana ought to do was to take a leaf out of Vidal’s book and preserve Fifth Division as a counter to the red Army which might one day be led by Valdés. He hadn’t a chance of that if he executed General Kucera; but he might easily win over the Division if he showed mercy. That wasn’t the kind of thing which the Foreign Office would instruct him or the Ambassador to point out. Too obscure at a distance, though obvious on the spot. And, as Jesús-María said, the British had never intervened. Or if they had, it was a private venture by some old fool like himself who knew the country.
“Captain General,” said Penruddock cautiously, “in a moment I shall begin to think you agree with Kucera that the Army has no business in politics.”
“I will tell you this, my respected Consul! The officers of Fifth Division are gentlemen of honor whom any soldier would be proud to command. If only the students and the llaneros had their discipline! But the extremes of our people have no sense of reality.”
“Nor has Miro!” Paco Salinas exclaimed. “If he had any sense he would have kept you all as hostages instead of playing at chivalry like a Quixote on half-tracks.”
“Miro has the logical mind which derives inevitably from our profession of arms, Captain Salinas,” replied Don Jesús-María, unruffled. “It is true that he could have held us as hostages. But what good is a hostage unless you are prepared to shoot him? Not even Pedro Valdés would believe for a moment that he was capable of anything of the sort. If his Colonel Chaves had been in command, he might well have built a pyramid and sacrificed one of us daily in sight of the besiegers. I trust he would forgive the exaggeration. In fact he and Nicuesa treated us until Miro’s arrival with the courtesy of Miro himself.”
“I have heard that Kucera has offered a bargain,” said the consul suggestively.
“A bargain!” Paco Salinas snorted. “Miro wouldn’t haggle a penny off the price of a cabbage!”
“You think so?” Penruddock asked, annoyed that Paco kept on interrupting his delicate diplomacy. “Ask Don Jesús-María how he brought down the price of his Saracens!”
“For himself, I mean, friend Enrique.”
The consul tried again.
“I am glad to hear that Avellana has consulted you on what answer to give, Captain General. The decision of the head of the Army, the revered guardian of its traditions, should be final.”
“Final? The devil! It’s impossible to argue with Avellana. His ears are too full of vivas. There was I in the Cabinet. Do not fear the Division, I told them! I can work even with Rosalindo Chaves. I shall send him to the jungle frontier for five years, and by the end of that time you will have a new province. But no! But no! The commanders must answer for their crimes: Quebradas, the Escala, the murder of Ledesma — for which, my friends, the only proof is that all the statements that he was not murdered agree too exactly. War is war, I told them, and a court-martial will acquit. So it would, if I could prevent it being held till the winter. Then they shall be tried by the civil courts, said Avellana. Well and good, but Vidal is still President. If he had resigned, the civil courts would know where they were. But since he has formed a government-in-exile which has been recognized by the United States . . .”
“What?” Penruddock exclaimed.
“Yesterday! Naturally it has not been published. That signs Miro’s death warrant. I cannot avoid seeing it must be so. But why his officers?”
“What were Kucera’s terms?” the consul asked.
“All officers and men to be confirmed in their ranks or retired on pension. No reprisals. When he has Avellana’s signature to that, he will surrender the Citadel.”
“And he himself?”
“He holds himself at the disposition of the government.”
“Won’t they accept that?”
“In the end they must. Miro in the Citadel is impossible to defeat. Even when we have our planes in the air again I doubt if they will be able to bomb him into surrender. No, my dear Consul, if Miro insists that he alone is responsible and that he alone shall pay the penalty, Avellana must sign and be content. But you cannot imagine the bitterness! ‘Gentlemen,’ I said at last, ‘I have given you my opinion and I have no more to do here. All I demand is that General Kucera shall be shot in full uniform and that I myself am the last to shake his hand!’ They have no decency, these civilians. Would you believe what Pedro Valdés replied? That for all he cared, he could be shot in a shirt with A Present from Washington printed on it.”
“Good! And when Valdés is shot himself it will be a present from Moscow,” said Paco Salinas, banging his fist on the table, “at the base of the skull and at night. It seems to me I am back in Barcelona twenty years ago!”
The members at nearby tables looked round, for Paco’s strong Spanish accent had cut loudly through a dozen discreet little conversations on the future of commerce and politics. Don Jesús-María politely disengaged himself and decorated with his embrace a some-what surprised colonel who had conveniently arrived upon the terrace.
Paco lowered his voice to a savage hiss.
“Friend Enrique, what a world is this! Look what has happened to it since we had the misfortune to be born! Its one purpose is to destroy a man wherever one is found. I tell you, I saw it begin in Spain. Whenever the Republicans caught a man who was a man, they shot him. Whenever Franco got his hands on one, he shot him. At this pace there will be nothing left but mediocrities. By God, it is the fashion to think that a man who is a man is mad. Quick! If you cannot shoot him, set up a committee to control him. It cannot? Then pay the newspapers to make his wife and daughter ridiculous! He is a disturbance. He might intervene most dangerously between corruption and the computers. Enrique, I have enough!”
“I did not know you were so fond of Miro Kucera.”
“Fond of him? I am not fond of him! He is the biggest fool in Guayanas and I am at his feet. I have no religion. I have no faith that Christ was crucified. It is only ex
perience of my fellow men which makes me sure he was. But I have been educated by Jesuits and I remember my catechism. Miro has done his duty in that state of life to which it pleased God to call him. We cannot all be saints. Some of us must be generals of Divisions. Who gave him the Citadel? Juan de Fonsagrada, I suspect. And why? To make quite sure that he had the power to save his own life. So what does he do? Gives it up for the Division! The folly of it! But when I observe our fellow members whose faces resemble the hindquarters of butchered pigs upon which a boy has drawn animated features with a piece of burnt cork, I cannot feel it is folly at all. Let us get away from their influence and be sane. Come on board and lunch with me, Enrique. There’ll be something rich, for they took the launch out at dawn to go fishing.”
The invitation suited Henry Penruddock’s mood. It would be refreshing to get outside the tense city and look at it. Not that one could see very much from the naval basin. Before the expansive days of Vidalismo it had been a pleasant spot with nothing between the quays and open country except the buildings of an eighteenth century shipyard and the long, low, white barracks of the customs officers; but now it was solidly hemmed in by factories and the twelve-story blocks of flats which housed the workers.
The consul general stepped on to the quarterdeck of the Frente Unido and raised his hat. There was a faint flutter above him as the Union Jack whipped out from its halyard and then hung motionless in the midday heat. The same old delightful compliment. The same old weather-beaten Spanish faces in the wardroom, and only three officers born in Guayanas. It was a great pity, he thought, that though fourteen years had passed since the government had made a token payment to Spain and at last settled the angry question of the ownership of the Frente Unido there was still no eagerness to serve in her. Only the coastal Indians, Negros and mestizos much preferred to do their national service in the so-called Navy.
After an excellent lunch — for the cook was a Coruñes who never in all his life had wanted to do anything else — Henry Penruddock expanded over his brandy under the awning outside the captain’s bridge cabin.
“What I cannot understand, Paco,” he said, “is why Vidal never made you hand over to one of the officers you have trained.”
“Enrique, don’t think it is our fault. We are not jealous. The officers we have trained would be very competent if we had frigates and destroyers for them to command; but Vidal preferred to spend money on the Citadel and the Air Force. The Frente Unido is too big. They are afraid of her. Not one of them would dare to take her out of the basin even with a couple of tugs to do the work. So my best cadets occupy a desk at the Ministry of Defense and countersign papers I have already signed, or become harbormasters and inspectors of river police. The Frente Unido is as useless to Guayanas as to us. If Avellana has any common sense he will sell her for breaking up.”
“What will you do?”
“I? I declare for General Kucera!”
The consul was inclined to dream after his lunch, quietly congratulating himself on his digestion and the excellence of the company. He pulled himself together.
“You . . . what?”
“I told you. I have enough. In all this they have forgotten the Navy.”
“If you had intercepted the Santa María —”
“I spit on the Santa Maria! There was nothing to fight for.”
“But Avellana has won. Whatever you do, you cannot affect the issue now, Paco.”
“The issue? What issue? Do you think it makes any difference to all those poor devils?” he waved his hand at the sordid crossword puzzle of windows and wash-hung balconies which overlooked the basin. “Under Vidal, plenty of work and good wages until they find their money buys nothing. Under Avellana, cheap food, unemployment and misery. The issue is a man. The Navy declares for General Kucera.”
“Paco, I beg of you!” Henry Penruddock exclaimed, seeing that he was dead serious, at any rate for the moment. “They are bound to accept his terms. If you revolt now, he won’t even have time to say good-by to his wife.”
“Then perhaps he will have the goodness to fight for her.”
Juan. . . . The little Feli he had known as a child. . . . Guayanas, so full of potential happiness. . . . But it wasn’t his business to interfere. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? No foreigner knew the country as he did.
With utter horror the consul heard himself say: “Why not declare for Vidal?”
“What good is that going to do?”
“It seems to offer more opportunities to save Kucera than banging off your guns for him. Also it gives you and any of your officers who will follow you a home.”
“They will all follow me. And we have no home but each other.”
“Why not try the United States?”
“Because I do not wish to earn my living as a waiter.”
“What’s wrong with Minister of Marine?”
“I think they have one.”
“In Vidal’s government, I mean.”
“What the devil does Gregorio Vidal want with a Minister of Marine?”
“Nothing. But the North Americans are paying the salaries of his government in exile, and a Minister of Marine will seem to them quite reasonable. As for your political opinions, you, as an old anarchist — which it would be best not to mention — are more Anti-Communist than most.”
“Enrique, is this a joke?”
“Not in the least, old friend. I can see nothing whatever to stop you declaring your support for the legal government and taking the Frente Unido to sea before the guns of the Citadel — if, as I fear, they are no longer served by Fifth Division tomorrow — can get your range. We seem to be agreed on the objective. I leave it to you to decide if it is practical politics. You heard the Captain General say that the British never intervene. At the most they allow themselves, as I am doing, to point out the often startling effects of sea power.”
“Listen, Enrique, like all your nation, you glorify piracy. For myself I do not mind. But I will not have my officers executed. I am like Miro in nothing — but in that, yes!”
“Avellana’s government is not legal, Paco. Or not yet. In refusing to obey it, you cannot be a pirate. I do not know what my official opinion of Vidal’s government-in-exile must be; but my private opinion is that Washington will find themselves supporting it in idleness for the next ten years, and that the Twenty-seventh Fleet, as I have heard you call it, will regretfully back its legality as long as necessary. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you and your officers were heroes for a second time.”
“At least we can use the same speeches. How far can I count on you?”
“On me? Not at all!” replied the consul hastily. “All I say, Paco, is that if you are determined to declare for Miro Kucera, it would be more sensible to begin by declaring for Vidal. And if you like I will take with me when I go onshore whatever worthless bits of paper the police of this hospitable country have issued to you all instead of passports, and return them to you visaed for entry into the United States — on the understanding that if you can, you may, and if you can’t you won’t. My North American colleague will be wild with excitement, but I can trust him to keep his mouth shut.”
“That will reassure my officers. But the best visa to the United States is to fire a shot which they believe to be in their interests. All I want from you is to watch continually for the opportunity to fire it. The timing will be difficult. My objective must be to get Avellana and Miro is the same room with me at the top of the tide. You see that I have some ideas already. To one of them I must give some thought, for it fits my genius. I have seen too much bloodshed, Enrique. Even in defense of my principles I prefer to make war without it.”
CHAPTER XXI
[March 22]
WHAT HAD A RAGING ANGER to do with grief and that intolerable, unbelievable thought that in another sixteen hours Miro would have ceased to exist? If she herself were about to be killed, anger would be such a waste of spirit and precious time; it was just as much a waste when that noble,
beloved body was going to watch, quite calmly, the shaking rifles pointed at it. To be brave was easy. Felicia had been brave — a meaningless word — ever since the first action at Cumana. But not to be angry was impossible.
None of these military men had even given her a chance to speak to him. She had seen him and exchanged a long look as the rear guard entered the city. She had seen him again, distant and lonely, when he surrendered. Neither he nor she could throw away all dignity in the presence of these pomposities of death. Surely Avellana could have relented, or Jesús-María had the humanity to permit the prisoner to see his wife between arrest and the ritual murder of their so-called court-martial? Surely they would have enjoyed the emotional moment, the bowing, saluting and lowered voices? No doubt some fool would have put on a sword and expected her to notice the honor.
Miro could and should have saved himself. She blamed Salvador Irala — knowing that she was unjust — since Salvador’s death, if one judged by the mere sequence of events, seemed to be the end of the story, the point at which Miro had given up. That it was not so she had learned from Rosalindo Chaves — Rosalindo, whom she had always disliked and distrusted, who now was the only person, she felt, to suffer an exact replica of her own emotions: anger, grief and despair.
The surrender of the Citadel had been carried out with calm military efficiency. Miro might have been receiving rather than resigning his command. He had worked out the details right down to the suggested dispersal areas; and his final note to Avellana had been published by the papers without comment but with an evident editorial gasp of astonishment.
Your Excellency will understand that it must be made easy for my troops to obey me. The surrender will therefore be carried out as I wish it. I have the honor to forward a copy of my Orders of the Day, from which Your Excellency will observe that the Division will move without ammunition and with four days’ rations. As soon as units have passed out of the Citadel their commanders will report to Don Jesús-María de Hoyos y Alarcón, or whomever Your Excellency may designate, for further orders. When I have taken the salute and the Citadel is empty except for maintenance parties and the Hospital, I myself shall leave by the San Vicente Gate.
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