Thing to Love

by Geoffrey Household

  And so he had, alone. It was a company of the Presidential Guard which had taken his surrender and driven him off to the Palace — a last insult from the point of view of Fifth Division. Her father insisted that it was not so intended. The other available troops were too full of enthusiasm and humiliation to be allowed the custody of Miro. The guard, representing tradition and continuity beyond civil war, could be trusted to take charge of his last hours with formal courtesy.

  Felicia and her father had watched him leave the Citadel — if it could be called watching, when the far-off figure was smaller than her tears. Few civilians, whatever their standing, had been allowed on the Avenida Gregorio Vidal, for that was the route of the Armored Brigade and two regiments of artillery, so that there was little space among the cactus and brush by the side of the road. Then they had driven to the outskirts of San Vicente Airport, where Colonel Chaves and the rest of the Division were bivouacked to await orders. It was there on the dead plain that she had spoken to the raging, desolate Rosalindo. And even there she could not stay, for the nearest Combat Group, recognizing her with joy, had spontaneously formed up. In another moment they would have cheered. In another moment both Chaves and she might have forgotten they had no ammunition. It was her father, as always, who delicately imposed sanity.

  His care of her for the last two days had been hard to bear. He was loving and gentle as he had been when she was a little girl — yet helpless and admitting helplessness. Leader of the liberals. Easily able to mass a crowd in the streets or to raise the province of Los Venados in rebellion. And all he could ever say was: “What good would it do, Feli?”

  At least he had not said that of her decision to make a personal appeal to the President for mercy. The appointment was at half-past three. Afterwards she was to be allowed at last a long interview with her husband. There would be a blind farewell at dawn next day, when they took him out.

  She dressed as if for Mass, for it was official pity that she had to arouse. After leaving Avellana she could take off the mantilla and add some touch of color by belt and flower to her black. She would not let Miro think her already in mourning when still they had an hour or two together.

  “We have a little while to wait, Feli,” said her father when she came downstairs. “I have arranged with Gil Avellana that we shall call on him at four, not half-past three.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Enrique Penruddock asked me to. My darling, I do not flatter myself that his country has any official interest. But he sounded urgent, and it can do no harm to act as he advised. When there is nothing left to trust in the world, one seizes at old friendship.”

  “So I give up half an hour of Miro because your old companion of the Ateneo terrace. . .”

  Again she knew that she was piling injustice on injustice, and at the same time blessed him because he could not be hurt.

  “Daughter mine, you may be right. But let us cheer ourselves with the thought that you might not be; that even if the odds are ten thousand to one against Enrique’s having any influence, there is still the one.”

  “I can do better. Gil Avellana must still have some remains of friendship and chivalry.”

  “I hope so, Feli. God knows I hope so. Whatever you do, do not be sharp with him.”

  They walked together into the courtyard, now cleaned of packing straw. A dozen of the wounded were there, some idling in the shade; others, more helpless, taking carefully measured doses of the sunlight on camp beds. The Fifth Division men rose or tried to rise to greet her. The Avellanistas were embarrassed; most made some slight gesture of recognition and pity.

  It was Pancho who saved her from tears. Before he opened the gates for the car, he bowed over her hand and begged her to give his most respectful greetings to the general. His tone was loud and matter-of-fact. It did not for a moment assume that there was any possibility he would not see the general again.

  The calm radiance of the Palace was unbelievably neutral. It had no right to be unchanged, to remain the unparalleled eternal beauty of all the Americas when there was no Concha in it any more, when the confident soldier who had so often mounted the steps was now resignedly reading — she was as sure as if she had seen him — behind locked and guarded doors in the small, formal suite of two rooms reserved for distinguished state prisoners. Usually they left it for exile, or in triumph. Except in the heat of anger Guayanas was merciful. She clung to the hope given by tradition.

  Even the Palace servants were unchanged. Why, after all, should they be changed? But that, too, was a part of this unnerving neutrality. It seemed unnatural that men who had loyally served a master they liked should show equal deference to the successor who had insulted him and thrown him out.

  The mayordomo received them as if he had no memory of that terrible night when his fat knees had plopped against each other. He said that the President awaited them in the Little Salon. As she walked with her father down the long corridor, she tried to think why. Everything counted: why not the President’s study? Because, perhaps, he wished to emphasize his private friendship for the Fonsagradas, although he had to refuse their request. Because, perhaps, he had no need of formality when he meant to grant a reprieve.

  As soon as she entered the room she knew there was no hope that the latter guess was right. With the President was Pedro Valdés. That was a bad sign. Either Gil Avellana wasn’t going to risk being alone with herself and Juan, or Valdés was there on his own insistence to see that the sentence was carried out.

  They were both thinner and Avellana’s hair was grizzled over the temples. Pedro Valdés had emphasized his military Communism by wearing the simplest possible gray uniform. It was not elegant. The people of Guayanas liked a show of gold lace and gallantry. He would never be able to make a stand against the proud Latinity of Avellana if they quarreled, nor would the Army accept for long a commander who played at being Stalin or an ascetic Chinese. A flash of insight, at last inspired by Valdés’s uniform, convinced her that both she and the North Americans had been wrong. Not even the Barracas would accept the conformity of which that uniform was the symbol. Avellana and Morote they would follow with joy, but Valdés never.

  They received her father with the false geniality of politicians, and herself with distant courtesy. Avellana sat at the desk with the two telephones by which Concha had stood so commandingly. Valdés remained by the great window which overlooked the glacis and the sea, disassociating himself from a painful interview which, it was certain, gave him no pain at all.

  “Excellency, however much we have been opposed, may I congratulate an old friend upon his victory?” she said.

  “Thank you, Doña Felicia. You are most generous.”

  “And I wish you success. You will do much for Guayanas that ought to be done!”

  Something in her was being sincere in spite of the fact that she would gladly have assassinated him then and there. But his face was a mask. Intuitively she perceived that he recognized only the actress in her. He liked and was accustomed to women of little depth. From his point of view, she was Pilar flattering him into a diamond bracelet or that detestable Vita begging to be installed in Concha’s private drawing room with its own entrance. This stately opening, which in normal times would have appealed to him, was useless. It was better to be natural.

  “Don Gil, what has he done to deserve death? Exile, imprisonment, whatever punishment you like. . . . But death? You are so strong now that you need not fear him.”

  “I would not fear him if the civil war were over, Doña Felicia,” he replied. “But it is not. While the United States supports and recognizes Vidal, I am not leaving such an able commander at his disposal. It is inexpressibly painful for me to say so, but your father at least will understand.”

  “Miro would give you his word of honor.”

  She noticed that he hesitated before answering. Even Gil Avellana could not deny that Miro’s word of honor was a formidable bond.

  “But it is not only a question of
fear, Doña Felicia.”

  Valdés from the window interrupted with a loathsome remoteness:

  “May I be permitted to remind Doña Felicia that the former Major General Kucera has been condemned by court-martial for rebellion against his superior officer, aggravated by murder, destruction of State property and refusal to accept surrenders?”

  “And no credit for omitting to murder Red Cross personnel?” Juan asked.

  Felicia turned to him, startled. This was exactly what he had warned her not to do.

  “That was done without orders and in panic, Don Juan,” Valdés replied, “by very simple men who have not our advantages. You will agree it is different from killing prisoners, sabotage, and the deliberate massacre of innocent students.”

  “You know he never ordered that!” Felicia exclaimed.

  “Directly, no. But he told his troops what to do before he went down the steps.”

  “He did not!”

  “Then who did?”

  “I did.”

  The two men smiled skeptically. Her father, she could see, at once believed her.

  “I should have guessed, Feli,” he said. “I thought it was probably Concha Vidal.”

  “Doña Felicia, my debt and the debt of Guayanas to the Fonsagradas is very great,” said Avellana, the gentleness of his tone contrasting with the bitter incisiveness of Pedro Valdés. “I dearly wish that I could reprieve your husband, but justice must be done. I have promised it to the people. It is a punishment in the name of the thousands of dead, a pledge to the whole country that such bloodshed shall never happen again.”

  “Gil, we are not in the Chamber,” Juan retorted. “You know as well as I do that revolution very rarely turns into civil war. It can only do so if the armed forces are split, as they were this time. It is then the custom for the winning side to shoot a few generals. Justice has nothing to do with it.”

  The telephone purred. Valdés picked it up and said:

  “Captain Salinas requests an immediate interview.”

  “Tell him to wait, Pedro.”

  “You said old friendship counted, Don Gil,” Felicia appealed. “Then let it count.”

  “I cannot. I cannot do it any more than a judge can.”

  “But you are not a judge. You are the President. And I come to you as any other citizen, begging the President for mercy.”

  “I have already been very merciful, Doña Felicia.”

  “Not of your own free will. But now you can be. Give me my husband’s life. In a month, everyone will have forgotten him.”

  “Everyone? You think so?” he answered sternly. “You forget how many are in mourning!”

  “Will it help them if there is one more?”

  She heard her father catch his breath. But her reply was not intended to be moving. It had been a simple way to state a fact.

  Juan at once took advantage of Avellana’s silence.

  “Gil, have you considered the effect of this sentence on foreign opinion?”

  “I have indeed. And I will show you the telegrams if you wish. From universities, Juan. From writers and intellectuals. From left-wing movements in Europe and the Americas. And they are all the same. Death to the mercenary who used his forces to deny social justice to the people!”

  They would. Of course they would. Felicia remembered how she, too, had once thought as they did. How could it ever be possible to explain to them that Miro had made his stand for something higher still? They did not know him as she and Fifth Division and even Pablo Morote did. They were bound to file him indignantly away in one of the existing pigeonholes of their intellectual minds. By far the most convenient was Fascist Mercenary, To Be Shot. And if they did not approve on principle of shooting a man to death (except perhaps in South America) at least they would have no objection to imprisonment for life. An hour a day to see his beloved sun was quite enough for him.

  Obsessed by the imagining of that burst of fire, that cone of bullets which would leave the hard and splendid body a white sack emptying its blood, she leaped out of her chair at the double deep crash of two explosions from the sea. They were followed instantly by a thunder of guns which were unfamiliar to her.

  All of them were on their feet in time to see through the great window of the Little Salon two white fountains still hanging in the air five hundred meters from the shore. From the corner of the arch, looking to the northwest, the Frente Unido could be seen silhouetted against the tumbled red rocks below the Avenida Gregorio Vidal. She was so close inshore that she seemed to be aground, and so confused with her own shadow on the cliffs that anyone unfamiliar with the coastline would have had to look twice to see that she was not a cave or a stratum of gray clay.

  Avellana did not bother with the discreet and gentle telephones. He strode across the Little Salon, flung open the door and shouted for Salinas.

  As the captain entered, he saluted with exaggerated deference and exchanged a casual greeting with Felicia and her father. She could tell nothing from his lined face, which only showed its usual, genial indifference. In the depths of the creases something was alive, some hint of savagery and mischief. Oh, but for God’s sake, was it now going to be necessary to analyze an ape?

  He drew out the formalities, ignoring the President’s demand for an explanation.

  “What does this mean, Captain Salinas?” Avellana repeated.

  “Nothing, hombre, nothing! I merely wished to speak with your Excellency. And I thought it more fitting that you should send for me rather than that I should have the discourtesy to insist.”

  “Now that you see with whom I am engaged —”

  This was intolerable. She had not yet given up hope, though even if Gil Avellana could be shaken, there was still the cold, deadly fanaticism of Pedro Valdés. But this mad Spaniard was making mercy impossible.

  “Go, please go, Captain Salinas!” she cried. “Some other time, for God’s sake!”

  “Have you seen your husband, Doña Felicia?”

  “No.”

  “I am not surprised. All I wished to say, Excellency, is that Miro Kucera has deserved death ten times over. In these days there is only one fate for a Quixote. But torture, no!”

  “Miro Kucera has not been tortured,” Avellana replied, his voice more puzzled than indignant. “What do you think I am?”

  “Paco, your accusation is ridiculous!” Juan exclaimed. “And it is I who tell you so.”

  Felicia, too, knew that it was impossible. She would have felt Miro’s physical agony as clearly as she felt his depression.

  “Friend Juan, you are an Avellanista. You have faith in your leader, but what do you know? The North Americans say he has been tortured, and the Navy of Guayanas wishes to know the truth.”

  Avellana seemed to have completely recovered his poise. For a moment she could almost admire him, or at any rate understand the devotion he inspired.

  “I fear newspaper readers are more interested in torture than truth, Captain Salinas,” he said, smiling.

  “Quite true, Excellency! But all the same I wish to see him.”

  “It did not need so loud a knock on the door. You may go down and see him now if you wish.”

  “I have not the face for a prison chaplain, my President. And besides, once I am in with Miro I see no reason why you should not keep me there as the next tenant of his cell.”

  “Frankly, I had not thought of it.”

  “I feel sure that General Valdés would recommend it to Your Excellency in my absence. Meanwhile, perhaps I had better have a word with him, for long experience of Communist mentality persuades me that when they do not understand what is happening their first instinct is to fiddle with a trigger. Don Pedro, if communication ceases for four minutes between me and the Frente Unido, the gunnery lieutenant will carry out his orders. I regret that he will do so with relish. He has never enjoyed San Vicente as much as I.”

  “What are those orders?” Avellana asked.

  “Mutiny. No doubt he will allow us ano
ther minute, in case we are so engrossed in conversation that I forget to call. But slowly, slowly, Excellency! To tell you the truth, science bores me, but sometimes it is useful.”

  He took a flat box from the inside pocket of his tunic, which had appeared to them all clumsy and ill-fitting. His return to a normal, naval smartness somehow emphasized — though so little a thing — an impression of ruthlessness.

  “My wireless officer assures me this will work if I remember what to do. Do you understand transistors, Don Juan?”

  “Not I! Not even when it has wires.”

  “That is a pity, for these gentlemen of the open spaces are most unlikely to be of any help. Well, we can only try. With your permission, Excellency . . . for my first call is due at sixteen hours fifteen. That clock is a minute fast. It always annoyed me that Don Gregorio liked his clocks to be fast.”

  He sat down before a little occasional table of mahogany and silver which had belonged to Concha, placed on it the miniature walkie-talkie and snapped up a folding aerial.

  “We will see if I am able to communicate with the conning tower. . . . It is I, Paco. . . . Over.”

  The box replied very audibly: “Can I give them one, my Captain?”

  “Patience, Alberto! Patience! I am testing. Give me two from the bridge pom-pom.”

  Two sparks of light flashed against the Frente Unido’s shadow, followed by the sharp cracks of the pom-pom.

  “Thank you, Alberto. Targets as ordered, should I fail to call you. . . . What a marvel, Excellency! It seems incredible! . . . Now, to return to our conversation, would it be possible for me to ask a simple question of Miro Kucera? I give you my word that it has nothing to do with politics.”