‘Of course. With pleasure.’
The request was reasonable, for few of the mayor’s cronies could drive. Still, it seemed to Gil, as he strolled out of the back door of the Moderno a little after six on the Wednesday, that there was really no occasion for Kuchler’s party, even if on a conducted tour of the town, to pass down the lane alongside the garbage cans, shrimp heads and vintage lavatories of the café, and no grounds for assuming – unless Kuchler mentioned it – that the Vehicle belonged to the mayor.
Lazalaya was sunk in its evening peace. The detachment of the Civil Guard had tactfully removed itself to the courtyard at the back of the Town Hall. On the balcony of the mayor’s office, which overlooked the plaza, a German flag had, as a courtesy, joined the Spanish. It gave a slight air of fiesta – enough at any rate for the respectable clients of the Moderno to be a little hurt that Don Jaime had not arranged a civic reception and free drinks.
Gil entered the Vehicle, looked for the switch, remembered that motor-cycles did not have one and pulled an ornate little door knob of twisted wrought-iron spirals which replaced the original kick-start. The two cylinders shattered the evening with a succession of appalling backfires. Timing? A stuck valve? He cautiously opened the throttle lever. The result was a devastating explosion, as full and loud as that of a mortar, as the silencer shot off into the gutter. He tried to close the throttle. The lever had jammed. He had to use his pocket knife to loosen the holding screw. Meanwhile the machine gun, its crew having recovered from that near miss of the mortar, continued the battle.
The engine did occasionally produce a backfire or two in starting, so that Gil, sweating in the blessed silence, assumed that he hadn’t known how to control it. Then at last it occurred to him why that jesuitical crook of a mayor had asked him to put away the Vehicle. Round the corner from the plaza bounced the assault car of the Civil Guard, flanked by motorcycles whose riders leaped off and took cover in the doorways, their sub-machine guns commanding the lane. Gil left the driving seat with his hands up.
Recognising both the Vehicle and its occupant, the Guards sheepishly gathered round and were joined by the customers of the Moderno, pouring out of the back door.
‘I am sorry,’ Gil said. ‘I was trying to make it start.’
The sergeant in charge of mechanical transport examined engine and dashboard with professional interest.
‘Very original,’ he remarked. ‘As I expected, the silencer has fallen off.’
‘You’ll find it down the lane somewhere.’
The sergeant recovered the silencer and easily replaced it, since it was attached to the exhaust pipe by a simple screw thread. Gil, watching, realised that Jaime must have given it a mere half turn, and he was pretty sure that it was bigger and more eaten by rust than the usual silencer. The mayor had calculated his every move in advance and, as likely as not, those of the Civil Guard as well.
The sergeant slung his sub-machine gun across his chest, entered the Vehicle and pulled the starter. The result was a booming report more menacing than any Gil himself had produced. The thread held, but the rusty end of the silencer flew screaming into the Moderno garbage cans. No one listening in the Town Hall could have any doubt that a field gun was now engaged in the local battle. Before the sergeant could close the throttle, the artillery was promptly answered by those intrepid machine gunners.
The Civil Guard stood by their motorcycles and the assault car awaiting orders. When on duty they were not supposed to laugh. They regarded the Vehicle with some embarrassment as if it had uncivically broken wind. The call to action was welcome. Far outside and to the east of the town something blew up which was certainly not a mere car engine. The detachment hurtled out of the lane, sirens shrieking, round the plaza and away into open country.
Gil hurried up the lane after them and entered the Town Hall by the side door. Running up the stairs to the mayor’s office, he found Alonso Mejia and Enrique Jimenez, the two town policemen, wearing their best uniforms and white gloves, on guard in the anteroom. They saluted and opened the door of the office.
The mayor and his party were grouped around the window. Dust on Jaime’s knees and on the prominence of his waistcoat suggested that he had flung himself on the floor of the balcony at the outbreak of hostilities. The newspaperman was behind the inadequate protection of the fine white tablecloth on which were drinks and an excellent variety of tapas. Kuchler and his partner were sheltered by the stout pillars which framed the window, and, as befitted old combatants, still held their glasses.
Over the tumbled red roofs of the town a column of smoke could be seen rising from the Villanueva estate, somewhere near the far angle of the enclosure. The low sun in the west, brilliantly lighting their dark greens on one side of the wall and the rusty scrub on the other, made the mist of dust and smoke in the middle look immense and impenetrable.
Don Jaime sympathetically approached the stricken landowner.
‘On behalf of the citizens of Lazalaya I offer you my condolences, assuring you, my dear Count, that the damage will be made good as soon as the Government regains control.’
This was the last straw. Jaime must be suffering from the paranoia of power. He couldn’t possibly get away with it, however many bishops were in the background. The Vehicle – well, that had been clever. No one could maintain that the racket had been due to anything but a too individual system of engineering; and, if anyone did, he would hesitate to insist on it for fear of showing up the Civil Guard as impulsive fools. But this outrage would call for the immediate intervention of Madrid.
Kuchler quickly explained to his partner, who spoke no Spanish, the identity and social significance of Gil. Both then shook his hand with good German comradeship and emotion. The partner remained nameless and unreal as a figure in a nightmare. He had an obstinate, round, still face. Beer and money had both contributed to his shape. Nothing belonged to daily life at all except alarm at the probable future.
‘I hope that you will not allow this to affect your plans,’ Gil said, more from a vague intention of covering himself than from cunning.
‘A symbol!’ Jaime broke in heartily. ‘The wall around the Villanueva estate is a symbol like the police. It is of no importance!’
The Press had rejoined the party, and was making up for the interruption in the flow of hospitality. It was very properly inquisitive. The mayor willingly developed his theory of the symbols which enraged the Left. He protested that the hotel could not be included among them.
‘You do not believe me?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Well then, enquire of our humble citizens! Constables Jimenez and Mejias, now guarding our door in peace and with devotion, are well known to Senor Kuchler as public servants of sturdy and independent opinion whose inside knowledge of our little town is unsurpassed. We will have them in and you shall talk to them freely!’
He flung open the solid door to the anteroom and called genially for the pair. The outer door to the passage was slightly open. There was no Jimenez, no Mejias, only a splattering of blood upon the wall and an ugly gobbet on the floor. At the mayor’s exclamation of horror, the four rushed into the anteroom.
‘Quick! Quick!’ Jaime shouted, locking the outer door. ‘Here in Lazalaya we allow no scandals. All is quiet. All must always be quiet.’
He seized the tablecloth, napkins and soda syphon, and began feverishly to squirt and mop. Gil added a bottle of white wine to the pink pool. Whatever Jaime was up to, the risk was outrageous. It was urgent that the mess should vanish whether it came from the constables or, as was more likely, the pork butcher. And in any case where were they and how could they vanish for good without enquiry?
Silent and furious, he worked with Jaime, hurling the soiled linen into a cupboard. Kuchler and his partner stood by, looking very pale. The newspaper correspondent added his sandwiches and free drinks to the mess.
In three minutes from the mayor’s shout of alarm no sign of the tragedy remained and the doors were open. The anteroom gave the im
pression that someone carrying a tray had tripped, but of what he had spilt there was no evidence.
Gil tipped down his throat the last glass which remained in his scrubbing bottle. Kuchler’s partner and the journalist, though still belonging to nightmare, came back into focus. Their faces were lard-white and expressionless. They asked if they might, immediately, go down to their car. Jaime, with polite protests, accompanied them as if nothing had happened, leaving Gil and Kuchler together in his office.
‘Those two poor fellows!’ Kuchler cried. ‘So harmless! So good-natured! Why should they be just a symbol? Revolution I can understand, but not this cold-blooded assassination. And in another month they would have retired on pension!’
‘Perhaps the assailants were wounded,’ Gil babbled. ‘Perhaps Mejias and Jimenez have followed them …’
He knew very well that it didn’t matter what he said, or Jaime would never have left him alone with Kuchler.
‘They told me in private that they were in fear of their lives,’ Kuchler said. ‘I even warned Don Jaime.’
‘Well, they have lasted a long time for Lazalaya,’ Gil replied with some obscure intent of comfort. ‘What did Jaime say?’
‘He said they were devoted churchmen and always prepared to meet their end. You are – excuse me – so callous a people!’
‘Sometimes we cannot find words for what we think,’ Gil said, wandering helplessly off towards the bottles on the floor.
‘You can find plenty for what you don’t think,’ Kuchler retorted with the first flash of irony Gil had ever heard from him. ‘I cannot blame you or Don Jaime, but I have been grossly deceived by the Ministry of Tourism who must have known the conditions here.’
‘You are going to complain to them? Wouldn’t it be unwise?’
‘Naturally I shall have to be very careful. I do not want to spoil my chances of selling the land to some Englishman or Dutchman who does not know the country as I do.’
It was now or never. Gil doubted the power of the Little Brothers to keep him out of gaol, but nobody else had any interest in trying.
‘Shall we cancel the whole deal?’ he asked.
‘You mean you would buy the site back?’
‘It is my duty as a Grandee of Spain. I feel my honour is affected,’ said Gil stiffly. ‘All I regret is that I cannot afford to compensate you for the work on the foundations.’
‘Let us leave that to our lawyers, my dear Count,’ Kuchler replied, leaping at his opportunity. ‘Cash or a mortgage?’
‘Cash – I suppose.’
‘Then you will not find me unreasonable. And now, if you will pardon me, this room … I am unwell. I think I shall drive straight up to Madrid.’
There was nothing to do but wait for Jaime in the safety of his office. Gil felt utterly unable to face the outside world where questions would be unanswerable and silence equally disconcerting. Meanwhile he restlessly tidied up bottles, plates and glasses so that the room looked as though some small entertainment had decorously ended.
The Civil Guard roared back into the courtyard. From the window he saw Jaime playing his part imperturbably and demanding news, like any other mayor, from an officer who was giving nothing away. Two civilian figures, formal and well-dressed, appeared from nowhere – they might have arrived in the assault car of the Civil Guard or merely been waiting behind the Town Hall – and addressed the mayor with authority. He turned into the building with one on each side.
It was too late to escape. Anyway there was no handy frontier, and nothing less would do. Jaime ushered the visitors into his office, pretending surprise and satisfaction at finding Gil there. He introduced the two civilians. A Captain Somebody. A Lieutenant Somebody. Their men in the cafés had been a joke, but these two, who had never yet been seen in the town, were disturbingly professional. They were not at all aggressive; they were smooth with the certainty of power.
It was a hundred to one that the political unrest in Lazalaya would come up before the Cabinet, but Jaime was magnificently unembarrassed. He seated himself at his desk with the two opposite, and burst into speech. He welcomed, he said, investigation at last by two such talented and distinguished officers. Ever since some absurd prank at the old nunnery had alarmed the Civil Governor – but not, he might point out, the high ecclesiastical authorities – he had hoped that Madrid would make direct enquiries.
‘And let us at once get rid of the irrelevant complication of my Vehicle,’ he said. ‘The Conde de Villanueva will tell you what happened.’
‘It wouldn’t start,’ said Gil feebly.
‘Did you retard the spark?’
‘The spark? Jaime, in this day and age you have a lever to advance or retard the spark?’
‘Of course I do! She won’t climb the hills without a retarded spark. For starting one must also retard it or she will backfire. Friends, I think you will agree that I cannot be held responsible because the Civil Guard panicked at a sound which all my town is accustomed to? As our glorious Generalissimo has said, local affairs should be left to the local authorities with the least possible interference by the State.’
‘So this disturbance was not intended to cover up the attempt on Villanueva property?’ the captain asked with a slight smile which might have been relieved or ironical.
‘What attempt?’
‘Ten metres of the boundary wall are blown down.’
‘I will have it built up again. An accident!’
‘But who did it?’
‘Well, you know we don’t like sending humble, decent men to prison. It’s national policy.’
‘Not so much of national policy if you please, Don Jaime! We are as aware of it as you are.’
‘Patience, captain! I was on the point of explaining. The contractors who are building our hotel naturally have a store of explosives. Well, and we have a small community of fishermen. One should never be next to the other. To cut a long story short, they stole some explosives for use at sea. This was reported to me and I took the action which the father of a family should take. “Friends,” I said, for I am accustomed to being obeyed, “who did this I do not know and I do not want to know. If the whole lot is destroyed at once, I will forget it.”
‘Well, it appears that they let it off close to the Villanueva wall, which was upwind, so that the hillside should not catch fire. That was sensible. A morning’s work will repair the damage. But they chose for their explosion a moment when I was entertaining distinguished foreigners. As a result, our hotel, the valued, indispensable project which will give life to our town is in danger.’
‘You accept this story?’ the Captain asked Gil.
‘Of course. I have no enemies.’
‘He has been congratulated by the Syndicate of Agricultural Workers,’ added the mayor proudly.
‘And you are prepared to swear that there is no political unrest in Lazalaya?’
‘None. I am sure that all the reports of your agents will agree.’
The lieutenant, entering the conversation for the first time, remarked sourly that it was the only point on which they did agree. The captain, raising his eyebrows in astonishment that the reports of secret agents should be mentioned at all, gathered up his subordinate and left.
‘Thank God it wasn’t about Jimenez and Mejias!’ Gil exclaimed.
‘Don’t worry! You see I have talent. Father Miguel will write to the Civil Governor about their pensions, and after him the Bishop.’
‘Damn their pensions! What’s happened to them?’
‘Nothing! Nothing!’ the mayor answered soothingly. ‘But administratively speaking it presents a problem. Did you notice the slaughterman’s van at the side door when you arrived?’
‘I don’t know. There was something.’
‘Well, that’s how they left. He’ll return their uniforms this evening. Lazalaya cannot afford new ones.’
‘Suppose he talks?’
‘Then he won’t get the contract for the hotel.’
‘There isn’t
going to be a hotel, Jaime.’
‘And how is he to know that? Sometimes I think you left your intelligence in America.’
‘But it must all come out! Tomorrow at the latest!’
‘Then let it! Look! What has always been the defence of the humble? To make the authorities look fools, but in such a way that they cannot resent it. Gil, the town is proud of you.’
‘The police won’t be.’
‘This is too serious for the police. The Civil Governor is bound to investigate the affair in person. Besides, he’s in it up to the neck.’
‘I tell you, Jaime, he’ll sit with his fingertips together and sacrifice the pair of us.’
‘Not if he can score one up for himself. Let’s go over to the Moderno! It is time to calm the spirits of our fellow citizens.’
They certainly needed it. Lazalaya was buzzing with rumour, and the mayor’s café table was immediately surrounded, as if it had been a roulette table, by those who were privileged to sit there and others who had at least the right to lean over their shoulders.
When the crowd had thinned down to a dozen intimate friends, Jaime told his story of the damage to the Villanueva wall. The tale instantly became fact. No doubt, with a slight change of emphasis, it was. Gil, listening with such admiration as he could manage and once again privileged to pay for drinks, considered that a few explosives had indeed been stolen and that Jaime, as his price for keeping quiet, blackmailed the culprits into setting them off against the wall.
At about eleven the disappearance of Jimenez and Mejias was reported to the newsroom. They had not returned to barracks and had apparently vanished into the air. Jaime, who had just received a gigantic omelette from the Moderno’s kitchen, refused to be impressed. All he could say was that the missing constables had been on duty at the Town Hall when he went out to say goodbye to Kuchler’s partner and that they had not been there when he returned. He only hoped that no accident had happened, such as might be feared when an innocent town was under the threat of fire-arms in excitable hands.
Days of Your Fathers Page 18
