Avellana picked up the telephone:
“Kucera and escort to the Little Salon immediately! . . . Captain Salinas, I am prepared to listen to you rather than blow the Frente Unido out of the water. But I warn you that if you attempt to reopen the civil war, I shall have no mercy on you and your officers.”
“And Your Excellency would be entirely justified, for my officers and I are all agreed. I would, however, remind you that the crew come from the poorest of your citizens, for whom I sincerely hope you will do better than Don Gregorio. They are trained to obey orders without question. And being most of them pure Indians, they delight in watching their shells explode without bothering very much what they explode on. But you understand your people as well as I do. If circumstances should compel us to forgo the honor of serving your government, let me assure you that you may have absolute trust in the seamen I have trained and the officers who have been left on shore. I would not like you to think that we have not done our duty.”
“Calm, Feli!” her father murmured. “This may be the one in ten thousand that I spoke of.”
She tried to give herself to his voice, for she was at the point of near hysteria. All her efforts to play on the emotions of Avellana had been utterly frustrated by Paco Salinas — or by Vidal if he was behind this nautical farce. But he couldn’t be. Salinas’s interruption sounded like some bizarre, personal challenge which had nothing to do with Miro and could only confirm his sentence.
The mayordomo opened the doors. It was unnecessary for him to bow as Miro between two young officers entered the room, but long habit could pass as the excuse.
Miro was in his field uniform without any badges of rank. Felicia felt the tears pour silently down her cheeks, for in his surprise at seeing her he had begun to stretch out his arms to her and stopped the gesture before it was more than an upward start of the wrists. His dark blue eyes passed from her to the four other occupants of the room, summing up so curious a disposition, where his own people were inextricably mixed with the enemy.
“Mercy, Gil, mercy!” she cried. “You cannot forget that he was your guest, your friend.”
Avellana merely raised a deprecating hand. The physical presence of that face, which he had so long imagined and feared during the helpless months in Los Venados, had ended, she could see, all hope of reprieve.
“The escort will remain,” Valdés ordered.
“There is no need, Pedro,” Avellana replied. “We have nothing to fear. And this business — Well, out of respect to Don Juan and his distinguished family, I think it should be settled in private.”
When the door was again shut, Avellana turned to Paco Salinas.
“Here is Kucera. You can see for yourself that your accusation of torture is an insult to me. Ask him your question.”
“A moment, Excellency. We are always in danger of forgetting the four minutes.”
He nodded cordially to Miro as if they had just been passing on the terrace of the Ateneo, and made the routine call to the Frente Unido. He ignored the fascinated eyes with the pretended detachment of a cat washing itself.
“Well, friend Miro,” he said. “Do you wish to die?”
“Not particularly, Paco.”
“I asked only because with a man like you one is never sure. Then at last I have the honor to inform Don Gil and Don Pedro that the Navy of Guayanas declares for the legal government of President Vidal.”
“While under the guns of the Citadel?” Avellana asked.
“Too close under the guns of the Citadel, Don Gil. But I admit it is a point which would not occur to a civilian.”
Miro walked to the window. His professional interest was so obvious that neither Avellana nor Valdés challenged his right to move about at ease.
“A mortar perhaps,” he murmured. “Nothing else.”
“She’ll have to move from there at low water, Gil,” Pedro Valdés said.
“Hombre! They should make you an admiral!” Captain Salinas exclaimed. “She will indeed! But it will then be dusk, and in a few minutes she will be covered by the skyline of the city. It is a risk I would not take against Miro’s radar-controlled turrets, but without disrespect to your cavalry gunners, Don Pedro, I think they would be more likely to drop a salvo on the port buildings or the moon.”
“Captain Salinas, we are all being carried away,” said Avellana with a forced but still admirably charming smile. “I hope never again to see citizens of Guayanas firing on each other. So do you. What motive can you possibly have for opposing me — you, an old republican of the left wing? It is true that until now we have been only casual acquaintances, but what I stand for you know, and you are not a man to be taken in by propaganda.”
“I have nothing against you at all, Don Gil. Put it that I am ready to fight for my religion, though God has omitted to tell me what it is. If I thought that Miro was any use to Him dead, I would not interfere. As it is, I can only judge by what I feel. What has it to do with me if Vidal provides the Barracas with a public lavatory in marble when they have nothing to eat and nothing to put in it? What has it to do with me if Avellana prefers them to borrow a horse and perform their needs like gentlemen in open country? Here I am, Don Gil — without country, without politics, without a faith. Only a man such as I can see truth. I would not fire a gun for Vidal or you, for Russia or the United States. You are all the same. You mean well, but you have nothing to do with anything of value to me. I am not a speaker. If Don Juan understands my principles, he can loose them off in the Chamber and get an ovation for you and himself. What I tell you is that if the world were full of lunatics like Miro Kucera there would be no more need of soldiers, priests and politicians. You ask me what my motives are. They are simple: Viva el General Kucera! For that I fight!”
“In that case, Captain Salinas, you will be shot with him tomorrow morning without trial.”
“A pity, Don Gil. You will have lost two excellent servants of the State, and the Palace too.”
“The Palace?”
“Those are the orders you asked about. As soon as I cease to communicate with the Frente Unido, the two eight-inch turrets — your seamen serve them with such enthusiasm, Don Gil, that they call them Mary and Joseph — will begin on the seafront and on the Little Salon where we are. We shall then destroy the patio, and work our way through the building until we reach the President’s study, the gallery and the portico. With the six-inch guns to help, I think there will be little of the Palace left by sunset. The range to the flower beds on the glacis is precisely 3870 meters. I do not wish to exaggerate. I do not say that Joseph could knock the telephone off that table without touching Don Pedro. But very nearly — very nearly.”
Avellana stared at him.
“I cannot believe —” he began. “No, there is not a man alive who would do such a thing! You cannot mean it!”
“No, Paco!” Miro exclaimed. “I forbid it absolutely.”
“And what right have you, friend, to give orders to the Navy? You should know by now that we don’t obey them.”
“Look, Captain Salinas,” said Pedro Valdés reasonably. “The Presidents, the guard, the nonsense — I understand that you think it is worthless. But you, you an old revolutionary, you cannot take that beauty from the people. It is theirs.”
“Beauty? A word, friend, a word! Let them look at the sunset. This beauty stuff is a word, like Democracy and Communism. It means whatever we want, and it is men who give it meaning. Don Gil, you will make a President after my heart. But I do not care if the Palace is not there for you to see. I care if Miro is not there to see it. For me, that is what gives it meaning. And the people, Don Pedro? You know very well that the poor bastards in the Barracas would sell the Palace for an extra bit of meat on Sunday. You can always ask the Russians to build you another. Or perhaps the North Americans, who will have to apologize for the incident. As architects, they are both somewhat uninspired; but in another hundred years the Palace will again be beautiful compared to the worse horrors they will have put up b
y then. . . . Do I get Miro’s life, Don Gil? Yes or no?”
“No!”
“I see that I have been talking too long. It is four and half minutes since my last call to the Frente Unido. Order your staff out of the Palace, Don Gil.”
“Gil, this is a nightmare. For God’s sake stop him!” Juan cried, jumping to his feet.
“I can’t! There’s not a gun which can touch him.”
Both of them were nearly wailing with anxiety. Felicia was amazed at the single-mindedness of men when they closed up their intelligence with blinkers and picked on one point which was momentarily essential.
“Don Gil is perhaps forgetting that it is very easy to stop him,” she said.
She smiled at Paco, though why he had needed to excuse himself at such length was beyond her. What, indeed, was the Palace compared to Miro? With superb impertinence she powdered her nose. It occurred to her that it might be the last time she ever did. Captain Salinas was not bluffing. She knew that as well as any of them. But presumably he meant to give them time to get out of the target area.
There was a moment’s silence, of which she felt herself at last and entirely in command, until it was broken by Paco.
“Away from the window! All of you to the back of the room!”
The tiger snarl of the eight-inch shell was just audible before it exploded. The glass of the great window fell into the room, and with it a shower of the black, well-gardened earth from the glacis, half a rosebush and a barrowload of blue salvias.
“That was a practice charge,” said Paco calmly, “as our military friends will realize. The next will be high explosive.”
But it was not altogether the threat that was going to save Miro. Felicia knew this as soon as Avellana’s desperately searching eyes fell on the rose. It swung the balance, because the gesture cried out to be made, because he could not resist making it. The magnificent tradition of his ancestors, of Christian conquest, of generosity, of chivalry towards a woman in desperate need were taking command of his indecision. The temptation to be Avellana and to make a legend that would be told of Avellana was too great. He picked up the rose and handed it to her with exquisite grace.
“I think you will keep this all your life, Doña Felicia.”
He turned to Miro, the broken glass crunching under his feet.
“I require from you your word of honor that you will never bear arms against my government or against Guayanas.”
“I give you my word of honor, Excellency. If you will write out a statement for me to sign. . . .”
“That will be quite unnecessary.”
Felicia thanked her President with his own pride and within his assumed world, but still uneasily aware that it was confined to Gil, herself and her father. Pedro Valdés and Paco Salinas had remained, unmoved, in the twentieth century, and her uncompromising husband still upon the edge of some self-chosen eternity.
Paco had picked up his incongruous little table from the floor and was speaking:
“Too high, Alberto. . . . No, no, friend, it served very well. . . . Every four minutes again, until my launch is clear of the naval basin. You will then proceed by direct observation. Any attempt to fire on me and my passengers, or to detain us, and you will destroy your target.”
He turned to Avellana.
“Don Gil, I feel deeply that I cannot call you Excellency when I find that I have declared for Vidal. Also I must apologize to you in advance for what I shall be compelled to say about you when my ship arrives in the United States. But, after all, you are free to return the compliment. For the sake of my officers and their future, I must take the Frente Unido, though God knows we are all weary of her. From what I know of Don Gregorio, he will undoubtedly sell her to some Africans. She has no value except as scrap, but one cannot feel one’s sovereignty without a battleship. You will not lose by that. When you have made your peace with the North Americans — as Don Juan has always considered that you will — you can ask five times her value and get it. Miro, I have only a taxi in the courtyard, but it is at your service and that of Doña Felicia.”
“I am very grateful, Paco,” Miro replied formally. “But first I must ask His Excellency if he does not consider that the terms of surrender forbid my escape.”
“Miro! . . . Miro, for God’s sake!” Juan and Felicia exclaimed together.
“It will of course release us at once from our promise to take no reprisals against Fifth Division,” Pedro Valdés said.
“The only conditions, Pedro, were that the former General Kucera surrender the Citadel and himself. That he did. Nothing was said about his fate. I am still most willing to have him shot if he thinks that honor demands it,” Avellana added with a half-smile, “but I am bound to disagree. There will be no reprisals. When such a man as Gregorio Vidal could command the loyalty of Fifth Division, it will be strange if I cannot. That, I think, is enough — when there is a four-minute limit on my eloquence. Juan, perhaps you would be good enough to escort your daughter and son-in-law to the naval basin?”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1953 by the Estate of Geoffrey Household
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
978-1-5040-0671-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Thing to Love Page 37
