The Third Hour

by Geoffrey Household

  “But there is always something to hope for,” answered Rosario.

  “And moreover the Church forbids suicide,” added Toby.

  “The Church!” exclaimed Rosario contemptuously. “What does the Church know? I am a Christian, yes! But I do not believe all the priests tell me. It’s easy for them to order us not to kill ourselves. What do they know of hunger and misery? They have everything they want. But what would a priest do if he had to live my life?”

  “She has courage, this girl!” remarked Manuel. “Do I please you, Rosario?”

  “Hombre! Claro!”

  “Let’s go then.”

  “My God!” exclaimed Toby in English. “Choose a prettier one!”

  “What’s the difference between one body and another? I respect this girl.”

  “Your taste is inhuman, Manuel!”

  “It is mine.”

  Toby was silenced by this answer. He merely asked:

  “Tardará mucho? Shall you be long?”

  “But, yes, we shall be long!” stormed Rosario. “This man likes a woman such as I. I am clean. I am well covered. He is sympathetic. Why shouldn’t we be long?”

  “More and more I respect this girl,” said Manuel.

  “Revolting sensualist!” Toby grunted genially.

  “No. You are the sensualist. I am merely sending my body to the laundry. So long as the laundry is efficient and easy to treat with, I do not worry about its architecture. You do.”

  “Bien! ” said Toby. “Muy bien! But my own body isn’t so damned obedient.”

  “No. You even allow it to command your mind. You read all sorts of impossible qualities into that mestiza merely because you want her.”

  “I’m a natural man,” replied Toby indignantly. “My desire is aroused by beauty.”

  “That is why I call you a sensualist,” Manuel retorted. “My desire is aroused by circumstances. If you invite the mestiza, don’t give her any brandy. It will make her sick.”

  “I’ll give her whatever she damned well wants. Amuse yourself!”

  “Thank you—I shall! Come, Rosario!”

  Rosario swept proudly across the room to the stairs, followed by Manuel. Toby was shocked by his power to ignore beauty at will, but envied it. Life—his eyes met and held the dark pools of the mestiza —would undoubtedly be simpler if one did not consider the architecture of the laundry.

  Manuel Vargas did not have the direct simplicity with which Toby credited him. He was actually mortifying his flesh as deliberately as any monk. He did not often have occasion to measure himself with a man of his own intelligence, and thus was all the more interested by Manning’s personality and aware that their minds were reacting on each other like two organic compounds about to form one single and infinitely more complex whole. On both sides there were reserve and reluctance to accept the alien influence, but they were breaking down under the catalysis of good brandy. Manuel was as yet unable to concentrate all his wits on the cultivation of this sexless union. He had been chaste for rather more weeks than usual, and the atmosphere of purchasable flesh affected him. He was angry with himself. He had turned down the two good-looking girls with the righteousness of a saint dismissing temptation, and had invited Rosario to sit with them not, as he had said, to keep the rest away, but to protect himself against desire by setting under his eyes an example of all that was undesirable in woman.

  But desire still dominated his thoughts, and there was only one certain way to shake it off. He chose Rosario partly because the flash of character had pleased him and partly because he wished to insult his body for its untimely annoyance. Another man might also have felt constrained to insult Rosario. Manuel did not. He was not tender—that was too difficult—but he was jovial and generous. Rosario, left alone in her room—for, though it flattered her to leave the floor with an escort, a sense of delicacy prevented her returning simultaneously with him—lay down contentedly, before repairing her make-up, to enjoy the repairs that had been effected in her self-esteem.

  When Manuel returned he was surprised to find that Toby Manning was alone. The mestiza was sitting at a table across the floor, directly opposite to them, with a Spaniard who was an occasional customer at the Muelle de Flores. Manuel gave him the shadow of a respectful bow, which could be acknowledged or not as the recipient wished, and re-joined his friend.

  “Feeling better?” Toby asked.

  “Thank you, yes. It was very friendly of you to wait for me. What went wrong?”

  “I don’t think she forgave us for turning her down,” Toby explained. “I invited her, but she went to sit with that unsympathetic type over there.”

  The Spaniard realised by their glances that the two were speaking of him, and looked Toby up and down with a calm insolence that could neither be mistaken nor resented. His firm cheeks, marked by the two deep channels of dissipation, suggested that he slept little, drank heavily, but hardened a ravaged body with exercise. He had distinction, yet no charm. The small mouth was too thin and the eyes too heavy-lidded.

  “He’s no beauty,” said Toby. “Do you know who he is?”

  “Yes. The Marquis of Almádena—a grandee who used to own about half the province of Huelva till the republic expropriated him. He had the hereditary right to accompany his most Catholic Majesty to the privy and close the door. He has bought an estate near Concepción and comes up to Valparaiso every month or so. I think he once brought young what’s-her-name—”

  “Elena,” said Toby. “So the waiter tells me.”

  “—Elena to eat at the Muelle de Flores. I am so sorry. Forgive me for spoiling your chance.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind!” Toby protested. “Or at any rate I didn’t. Now of course I feel I should like to get her away from the lavatory man after that look he gave me. It’s most unfair. He’s probably been longing for her for months.”

  “You romanticise,” said Manuel. “He wouldn’t have come here if he had had anything better to do. What a face the señorito has!

  “I’d call it evil,” Toby suggested. “I can’t define evil. I don’t know what’s a good man and what’s a bad man—the words are meaningless when applied to human beings. But that chap strikes me as proud, dull, conventional and insensitive. I’d be sorry for his peasants. Perhaps I mean cruel when I say evil. Cruelty is the unforgiveable sin.”

  “No. There are worse. Lara was cruel as a cat, but very likeable. He had imagination, you see. Poor devil, he was shot in the revolution of ’29. Well, he deserved it.”

  “Who was Lara?” asked Toby. “You mentioned him before.”

  “Lara was my general in Mexico. He was a communist—at least he thought he was. He loved destruction, and used to specialise in blowing up the railways. An artist and an individualist. So far as I have observed, all communists are individualists. It’s odd.”

  “Were you one?”

  “In a way, yes. I was out for adventure. I wanted a cause to fight for. A drug, as you were saying. I liked a life of action and there had to be a cause to excuse its brutality. Well, I was more anarchist than communist. I couldn’t blow up trains for my own benefit or because anyone paid me. But, by God, I could blow them up if I was against the government! I’ll tell you how I was cured. The day those toys were scattered over the desert, we broke the train in half, and the tail of it ran down hill and was smashed to splinters. The armed guard were all killed. Disgustingly killed. That ended my life of action. It woke my imagination. I want no more bloodshed. Nothing excuses it. Not even money.”

  “Money is the last thing that excuses it.”

  “I agree. I made that remark for my own good. I have to say it often to believe it.”

  “Nonsense! You’re essentially a noble, Manuel.”

  Manuel laughed and poured two brandies.

  “That thing’s a noble,” he said, nodding his head towards the Marqui
s of Almádena.

  “Possibly, but I think it unlikely. I’ll explain to you what I mean by a noble. Look here, amigo! You consider yourself able to rule, don’t you?”

  “No,” Manuel answered. “I’ve finished with revolutions and I never could be bothered with elections. To rule one must believe in something.”

  “In oneself. That’s sufficient. But I’m not talking about politicians, Manuel. A man who can lie and intrigue well enough to win a popular election isn’t a model for his fellows. What the world needs is a new class of nobles—out of politics and out of commerce. You find plenty of them in Latin America. Imagine a good Chilean or Argentine estanciero— loving his neighbours but careless of their opinions, just, good-humoured, muy noble y muy bruto.”

  “They are not brutos,” Manuel laughed. “Nobles, yes—sometimes. Noble y bruto —that is Lara, or Paolo, a friend of mine. But I see what you mean. Why do you think we need a class of nobles?”

  “To create some standards and get them accepted. We’re living in a world without standards. The newspapers, the politicians, the advertisers, even the churches all aim at the lowest common denominator of intelligence. So our taste and morality get lower and lower. And there’s no one to attack the whole crew who are persuading men that the object of life is to make money and fight for it. I want commerce and demagoguery put back in the places they held in the Middle Ages—as occupations so vicious that no noble would have anything to do with them.”

  “You’d better go to Russia,” said Manuel.

  “No, I’m not a communist. Philosophically, I have something in common with them. Politically, I haven’t. I don’t believe in democracy and I don’t believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Government is the business of a ruling class. And the proletariat has no sacred mission to form it.”

  “Communists would not say they had. But one cannot know everything. Go on, amigo.”

  “I can’t go on. These are ideas I have felt. I couldn’t even put them into words until I ran up against a Russian ex-colonel in Bucharest. He suggested an international aristocracy as a cure for the world’s ills, but destroyed his own theory. He said it had to be based on land tenure, and that’s impossible—at any rate in Europe. But the new nobility would have to have some sort of prestige behind them—money or land or birth—if they were to influence society. Money would spoil them. Land they can’t get and probably couldn’t use if they got it. And birth they despise, for the whole point is that the noble appears in all classes and colours. So it’s hopeless.”

  Manuel Vargas leaned forward with his elbows on the table. His sunken eyes seemed to reject all reflections and glow as the grey ashes of a fire when the lights of a room are extinguished. His employees in the printing shop and his platoon in Yucatan had known that look.

  “Even you!” he said slowly. “Even you are an Englishman. You have to base a creed on economics. Shopkeepers, all of you!”

  “Perhaps. But mere café talk isn’t good enough.”

  “A stab for the talkative Latin, verdad? The futile Spaniard, all noise and no practical sense! But we have launched ideas in our time. And we have never wanted to know its income before saying: I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. You will not have heard of San Ignacio?”

  “Of course I have heard of San Ignacio!”

  “Then can you tell me what was the economic basis of the Jesuits?”

  “There wasn’t any, I suppose.”

  “No! Nor for Christianity! Nor for Benedict! Nor for Francis! Por Dios!” Manuel swore. “You come to me with a creed and you cannot see it!”

  “It’s not a creed,” said Toby uneasily. “It’s a philosophy—by the stallion Drink out of the mare Disgust!”

  “So was the Republic of Plato.”

  “You have no respect for the classics, Manuel.”

  “I have, for I know how they were made. You don’t. You want a library and two kilos of statistics before you’ll act. What’s the difference between a tertulia of friends in a Madrid café and the forum of Athens?”

  “The agora,” said Toby, “but it’s all one.”

  “Or a brothel in Valparaiso! But it’s still all one. That’s the way thought is born—outside your literate northern countries where you think the written word more important than speech just because the whole population can write their names and know that M-I-E-R-D-A spells mierda. A faith that meets the desire of men is born on the words of men, not from logic and economics.”

  “I have no faith,” Toby insisted.

  “You have! You believe in nobility. But you’re blinded by what you call common sense. You think the noble must have an income provided for him by the people—and a patent engrossed on parchment. You are wrong. You are a shopkeeper. You talk of influencing the masses and forget the Church.”

  “Damn the Church!”

  “Certainly! But don’t forget it! Borrow from the Church—not from this modern farce, but the mediaeval Church! The saints didn’t worry about economics when they longed to influence men. Send your nobles out with bare feet and a single garment and a flagon of wine. They will not need lands and money to impress the world. Preach if you want to. Serve if they will let you. But don’t think that a friar must have a title or five hundred hectares of land before he can get a hearing!”

  “I’m impressed,” said Toby. “But you’re on the wrong lines. I don’t want to save souls or provide soup kitchens.”

  “I know! I know!” answered Manuel impatiently. “But you are a missionary. You come to me with a religion. And then you are astounded because I believe in it.”

  “You are serious?”

  “Never more in my life!”

  “But it can’t be so. I have nothing to offer. I have longed for someone else to bring me a faith.”

  “So have I. So have most of us. You have found it, I tell you.”

  “No,” Toby replied. “What there is, you have found. I have dreamed that Europe was ripe for a Confucius—a prophet of good manners and good government who would not worry about the unknowable. You have found the way for him, if he ever comes. The monastery!”

  “I had thought of an order, not a monastery,” said Manuel.

  “They must have some headquarters. You can’t have barefoot friars or Knights of Malta or whatever they are living apart from each other. Each noble would be little more effective than he actually is to-day. The community makes the moral force. I don’t mean that they should renounce the world completely. They are not spiritual enough. We should be more like Rabelais’s Frère Jean than Confucius. And, by God, our monastery would be an Abbaye de Thélème! Pass the bottle, Manuel! Thelemites without luxury! Franciscans without chastity!”

  “But Franciscans with the gentleness of Francis,” said Manuel, pouring two brandies.

  “Yes. It is you, amigo, who have the vision, not I. Damn! Here’s Rosario! I was almost beginning to think the dream was possible.”

  “It is possible,” said Manuel swiftly. “Remember that!”

  VIII

  THE HOUSE OF MANUEL VARGAS

  Rosario came down the stairs, stopping for a moment on the last step to look over the cabaret and to receive whatever admiring glances might be directed at her. There were in fact none, but habit compelled her to stand ready to accept them. She waddled majestically across the floor and sat down with Toby and Manuel. Seeing her greeted with courtesy, the Marquis of Almádena made a gesture of distaste and said something to Elena which made her laugh.

  “There are some odd types about,” remarked Rosario calmly.

  “That one reminds me of someone,” Manuel answered, “but I cannot think whom”—he hesitated, staring at Almádena—“Dead, something—I have it! An Easter Island statue.”

  “Have you ever been to Easter Island?” Toby asked.

  “Yes—as steward and chief eunuch on the yacht of a Hollywo
od magnate. They had a lordly sneer, those statues. My employer tried to imitate it. But he couldn’t. He was too fat.”

  “He’s getting restive,” said Toby. “We had better stop looking at him.”

  The Marquis, since he himself had been deliberately offensive, assumed that he was being answered in kind and that the glances directed at him by Toby and Manuel were intended to insult. He rose to his feet, scowled at the mestiza as if daring her to move, and presented himself in their box.

  “Do you want something of me?” he asked Toby, ignoring the waiter.

  It was difficult to quarrel with Toby when he was warm with alcohol, since he imagined in others the same uproarious humanity that he felt in himself. He saw the mestiza tap her right buttock meaningly, and shake her head in warning; the suggestion appeared to be that Almádena carried small arms in his hip pocket. It was, Toby thought, a harmless eccentricity in rather poor taste. The Marquis was to him a nuisance who might possibly create an awkward situation, but not a matter for the primitive reactions of cowardice or courage. He could not imagine any incident in a place of public amusement being worth violence.

  “Nothing,” said Toby. “I like your tie. Where did you buy it?”

  Almádena considered that more insolence was intended, but was puzzled by the lack of any aggressiveness in the Englishman’s bearing and the genial tone of his voice.

  “My tie?” he asked.

  “Your tie. Sit down and have a drink and tell me where you bought it.”

  “Here in Valparaiso.”

  “Have a drink, man!” repeated Toby, pouring him one. “Don’t worry about the girl. She can be alone for a minute. I tell you, I like your tie!”

  It was a yellow tie with a discreet pattern of blue dots. The Marquis was well dressed by Toby’s or any other standard.

  “It is yours,” he answered, undoing it.

  “No! No! I couldn’t think of it.”

  “Take it,” Almádena ordered, holding it out.

  Toby waved it away.

  “You must,” the Spaniard repeated. “You admire it. It is yours.”