The Panama Portrait

by Stanley Ellin

  It was Jerome who came out to shake his hand warmly. “Well,” he said with obvious delight, “you’ve been having a time for yourself, haven’t you? To find contentment, try the Calle Contenta. I hope you don’t mind if I call you Ben after this. Nobody who hangs around the Calle Contenta can afford to be known as Smith. People would never believe it.”

  Ben tried to appear amused by this dismaying compliment. “I didn’t really make that bad an impression, did I?”

  “Far from it. You made a tremendous impression on some people. Gil said you stole that Chapin woman right out from under her husband’s nose. He’s green with envy.”

  “He doesn’t have to be. I escorted her home, and that’s the whole story. You can tell him to enjoy life again. He didn’t miss a thing.”

  “He didn’t? Well, I won’t tell him a word about it. I’d rather have him suffer. As it is, he’ll be impossible to bear, the way he broke into the papers today. Now come meet my family and its choice of friends. Oh, and don’t mind what Papa might say about the excitement last night. He gets all heated up by that kind of nonsense, and it takes him time to cool off.”

  It was clear that Victor Bambas-Quincy had not yet reached the cooling-off stage. He welcomed Ben almost tenderly, and then, disregarding the rest of the company in the room, he immediately broke into a recital of his grievances. It was outrageous that an honored guest, a visitor from abroad, should have been treated to such a display of bad manners, of violence, of depravity as had occurred at The Sun and Moon. What could any visitor think of Santo Stefano if this scene was offered as typical of it? How could a trusted employee like Julio Salazar—yes, and Salazar was like a son to him, as was every one of his employees—how could he invite a stranger to such a den of iniquity, such a sink of vice? Oh, Salazar would pay for this. And if there were only a way of exacting like payment from Santa Cruz and Alden-Aragone, what a satisfaction that would be!

  When Ben tried to enter a disclaimer Bambas-Quincy promptly overrode him. “No, no, I will not hear a word in their defense. The only one who has some excuse is Salazar. He, at least, left the premises as quickly as possible. The other two are absolute scoundrels. They take pleasure in making trouble.”

  “In making a joke, Papa,” Jerome protested. “You’ve known them since they were children.”

  “What I might have found amusing in a child I find despicable in a grown man. Yes, I know that pair very well. Santa Cruz spends his time wasting the money his father left him, and Alden-Aragone has arrived at the point where he would cut anyone’s throat for the sake of political glory. Don’t tell me that this painter suddenly decided to speak out for the festival of his own volition. The whole affair was a conspiracy from the start. Yes, the Radical Party can be proud of their candidate. Next he’ll go out to enlist the Party of the Resistance on his side. I’m sure he would welcome their support. Anything to win office, that’s his program.”

  “What nonsense,” said Jerome wearily, and Ben asked, “What’s the Party of the Resistance?”

  “A collection of bandits, of Fidelistas, of runaway Indians,” said Bambas-Quincy. “Criminals hiding behind the label of a party. Some of them live like packs of wolves in the jungle north of the mountains and prey on the helpless. That’s what Alden-Aragone and his precious Radicals will come to yet. They have no knowledge of politics. Scandal and riot is all they know.”

  A gray-haired woman came up and placed a hand on Bambas-Quincy’s arm. “You’re shouting, Victor,” she said gently, and raised her eyebrows at Jerome to indicate that she knew who was to blame for it. “And you are monopolizing our guest. There are others here who wish to meet him.”

  “My mother, Mr. Ben Smith,” said Jerome perfunctorily, and was about to pursue the discussion with his father when Mrs. Bambas-Quincy drew Ben away. “I’m sure you’ve had enough of that,” she said, and from her harried expression Ben gathered that acting as mediator between father and son was nothing new to her. She was a small, faded woman who looked as if she lived under a constant strain. Yet it was not hard to see that in her younger days she must have been extremely pretty.

  She led him from introduction to introduction on little eddies of polite conversation. First there was Jerome’s younger sister, Luz, and her husband, Florian Fontanas-Todd. Luz was a tall, mannish girl who bore a striking resemblance to her brother. Fontanas-Todd was a chinless, effeminate young man with a limp handshake and supercilious cast of features who could be disliked at first sight. At second sight he invited some pity, he was so obviously the cringing shadow of his booming, rawboned wife. Mr. Smith must tell her all about that affair at the café, she said. And wasn’t Gil Alden-Aragone the wild one! Certainly the most handsome creature, too. She had been madly in love with him as a girl, she confided hoarsely, and who could blame her? She smiled at her husband as she said this, and he smiled back indicating that he for one could not. She was his goddess. He forgave her all her youthful follies.

  After them it was a relief to meet Ian Kipp and his wife and daughter. More than that, Ben was pleased to find that Kipp was extremely cordial. He had been waiting impatiently for the man to return his call, had begun to fear that for some reason of his own the operator of the Santo Stefano railroad, a self-declared ally, had decided not to play the game on Seaways’ side. If warmth of greeting meant anything, however, there was no need for such fears.

  Kipp was a beefy, oversized man who managed, despite his girth, to cut a splendid figure in his plaid jacket. His wife and daughter, on the other hand, looked dowdy. On behalf of Seaways, Ben had sometimes played host to British families traveling through New York, and the Kipps confirmed a theory those visitors had led him to. Namely, that the British were the one surviving race whose males garbed themselves more decoratively than its females.

  The daughter of the family, Penelope, an angular girl of about twenty, was being squired by a middle-aged man with a markedly intelligent face and a fine air of Castilian urbanity. This, said Mrs. Bambas-Quincy, was Mr. Virgilio Barruguete, the playwright and novelist, and surely one of the most distinguished citizens of Santo Stefano.

  Barruguete took the introduction with resigned good grace. “You would hardly be familiar with my work,” he told Ben. “Only one of my books appeared in your country, and it had no success there. I’m afraid that my style of writing has little appeal for your people. I am, as our host himself so much enjoys telling the world, an old-fashioned man. I write about the interesting vices of humanity, of course, but only that segment which practises these vices with aplomb and which is civilized enough to be articulate about them. Alas, it is too small a segment to support an author as he would like to be supported.”

  “Nonsense,” said Penelope. “I adore your books. You write literature. Who else even tries to write literature any more?”

  “Oh, a few others perhaps,” said Barruguete, smiling.

  “Well, he’s not far wrong about one thing,” Kipp remarked to Ben. “My daughter’s recently returned from school in England, and, from what she says, everything’s changed for the worse. I haven’t been back there myself for thirty years, but damned if I’d want to go back now and see the holy horror they’ve made of it.”

  “It’s gray,” said Penelope. “It’s dispirited. Nothing at all like Santo Stefano. I was so happy when I first arrived in London, and a week later I would have given my soul to be home with Mummy and Daddy in our old house here. I don’t know how people can bear it in England.”

  “I warned you when you left,” said Barruguete. “Your picture of England then was a dream of poets and story tellers. ‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s there,’ but only if one carries an umbrella. Did I not tell you that? And there is socialism in England now. The leveling process has begun, and it is worse than the weather. It will lay a gray pall on that once lovely land forever. It is the blight of the future. Let us hope that it does not some day extinguish the brilliant sun of Santo Stefano.” He turned to Ben. “Have you traveled much,
Mr. Smith?”

  “Not outside the United States. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I’ve ever been abroad.”

  “How fortunate you are. The first time is always the best. And I say with pride that this beautiful island has much to offer even the most blasé traveler. Have you seen Huanu Blanco and its strange cliffs? Or the Victorica among the mountain crags? Or Córdoba, our northern promontory?”

  “So far I haven’t seen anything but the city. However, I expect to go with the Bambas-Quincys to the Victorica for the festival.”

  Barruguete inclined his head toward Mrs. Bambas-Quincy. “Then by the grace of our dear friends we will all be together there. We will share the festival with each other.”

  “It’ll be my first time, too,” Penelope said happily. She pressed a hand to a barely perceptible breast. “I’m terrified to think what it will be like.”

  “Nothing like last year, I hope,” said her mother. “It was horrid. All those hoodlums in black jackets. And that mad priest doing his best to stir up trouble.” She looked apologetically at Mrs. Bambas-Quincy. “Forgive me, my dear, but he must be mad to act the way he does. Absolutely barbaric. I was sure there’d be a riot before it was all over.”

  Mrs. Bambas-Quincy sighed. “Yes, Father Bibieni is a strange one, indeed.”

  “Father Bibieni is not so strange,” said Barruguete. “Like all medievalists he equates paganism with evil. The festival is pagan, ergo, it is evil. That is what happens when an uncultured man is left to determine our morals. Savonarola burned the great books of the Renaissance, and now we have a new Savonarola in our midst. Believe me, it would be much better to burn him than the books. Which is to say, he should be sent some place where the festival will not suffer his unwanted attentions.”

  “Easier said than done,” remarked Kipp, and Mrs. Bambas-Quincy said, as she led Ben away, “In any event, Victor assured me that the ceremony would be well policed this year. There is no need to anticipate unpleasantness. The Civil Guard can be trusted to see that all goes well.”

  She completed the cycle of introductions by guiding Ben back to her husband and son who were now engaged in amiable conversation with a pair of latecomers. These were introduced as Dr. Felix Mola and his wife; and the doctor, silver-haired, grandfatherly, beaming with good spirits, immediately made known to Ben that a mutual acquaintance, Blas Miralanda, had mentioned to him this North American visitor’s interest in the festival of the rope.

  “He flattered me,” said the doctor, “by suggesting that I was the only one capable of informing you about some curious physical aspects of the hangings. That is hardly the case, but who does not like to be told that he is the supreme authority in his chosen field?”

  “What modesty,” said Mrs. Bambas-Quincy fondly, and Bambas-Quincy clapped a hand on the doctor’s shoulder and said, “What the devil, Felix, before you know it, you’ll have Mr. Smith believing you. This man,” he advised Ben, “receives mail from every part of the world asking for information on the subject. He is writing a book now which important publishers of Europe and the Americas are bidding for. Don’t let his innocent ways deceive you. He is the great authority in the field, and he knows it. Ask him any question you wish, and you’ll find that he can answer it on the spot.”

  “But not now,” protested Mrs. Bambas-Quincy. “Please remember that Mrs. Mola and I do not share your taste for such questions and answers.”

  “True,” said the doctor. “There are some subjects best flavored by mellow cigars and fine liqueur. Time enough then.”

  While he turned the conversation to an interesting case he had dealt with that morning, Ben surreptitiously took note of those in the room. By his count two were missing—the family’s older daughter and its aged matriarch. It was the absence of the latter that disturbed him. She had taken on dragonlike proportions in his mind’s eye, he dreaded meeting her, but at least the meeting might bring him a step nearer his goal. Now he had the feeling that the step was going to be postponed.

  As the company moved into the dining room he drew Jerome aside and tactfully put the question to him. He was torn between sudden relief and renewed foreboding when Jerome said, “Grandmother? Oh, she’ll be here all right, but only when we’re all standing at attention ready to salute. She’s a great woman but vain as a peacock. She loves to make an entrance.”

  Nor was there any doubt that the dining room was the place to make an entrance. It had the appearance and dimensions of a baronial hall, cool, high-ceilinged, and spacious, and almost naked of furniture except for a gigantic sideboard against one wall, and a long refectory table, glittering with silver and crystal, in the center of the floor. The floor was surfaced with the highly glazed, earthen-colored, Santo Stefano tile, and while footsteps sounded sharply against it as the company was arranged around the table, the servants in the room moved over it as noiselessly as cats. It had an eerie effect, that silent Indian progress back and forth, until Ben looked down and realized that the servants were barefooted.

  There were two unoccupied places to be seen: the one at his left and the one at the foot of the table where no chair at all had been placed. At his right was Mrs. Mola, the doctor’s wife, who had not yet spoken a word in his presence. She was the kind of woman, Ben decided, who spent her time wondering if her daughter-in-law was taking proper care of her grandchildren. Contemplating her as she smiled vaguely at him and then retired to her own dim thoughts, he knew that for better or worse whoever sat at his left—probably the older Bambas-Quincy daughter, Elissa—was going to get most of his attention at dinner. All he could do was pray that she wasn’t too much like her sister Luz.

  The procedure at the table must have been familiar to the company. All stood waiting patiently at their places in a funereal hush until, at last, a wheelchair appeared in the doorway. It was draped in red velvet so that only its outlines showed; it looked more like a perambulating throne than a wheelchair, and it was propelled, Ben saw, by the chauffeur who had brought him here, now in houseman’s uniform. Beside it walked a young woman, small and slender, demurely clad in a high-necked gown of ivory brocade. The exquisite oval of that face framed by a cloud of dark hair, those gray eyes shadowed by long black lashes made introductions unnecessary. This, Ben knew, was Elissa Bambas-Quincy, the Infanta of the house, and she was a vision to behold. Incredible that she should have flowered from anything like that image of decay in the wheelchair.

  Time can be cruel. It had drained the vital juices from the old woman swathed in black lace on her red throne. It had shriveled her to puppet dimensions; she sat like a puppet propped into a resting position. And what it had left of her face was what is left of a toy balloon long inflated but with most of the air gone from it now. Her skin was a web of wrinkles; her cheeks had fallen into empty sacks and hung as wattles below her toothless jaws. Yet pride remained. It was there in those bloodless, tightly compressed lips, the hard, probing eyes, the elaborate coiffure of the white hair with a wisp of black lace pinned to it. There was even pride expressed in the way those old hands, scrawny as a chicken’s claws, clutched the arms of the chair. And a sense of righteous propriety in the sole ornament this wealthy and powerful relic had permitted herself: an immense emerald on the forefinger of her right hand.

  “My mother,” said Bambas-Quincy, and addressing himself directly to Ben, “and my daughter Elissa.”

  The assembled company dipped its heads at the wheelchair and said good evening in a muted chorus like an orison. The old lady looked slowly around at them, her eyes nearsightedly circling the table until they became fixed on Ben. Then one of the yellow claws was raised from the arm of the chair. The bejeweled finger was crooked at him.

  “If you don’t mind,” said Bambas-Quincy, “my mother wishes to meet you.”

  Ben walked to the chair. “I’m honored,” he said, but the old woman was indifferent to what he had to say. The claw came out and gripped his hand; the lizard eyes surveyed him from head to foot.

  “Norteamer
icano? The voice was so faint that he barely made out the words.

  “Si, señora.”

  The thin lips curled in a sneer. “Do you think I am an Indian?” the old woman whispered. “I speak English. You can speak English to me.”

  That was all. She released his hand, and he saw that the inspection was over, at least for the time being. How he had fared he had no idea. But he understood now the impression of her that Salazar and Alden-Aragone and Santa Cruz had tried to convey. An icy aura emanated from her. She was like a crumbling stony idol, aloof from the fleshly world around her, disdaining it.

  It was good to be away from her, to devote his attention to her granddaughter instead. During dinner he and Elissa talked with some constraint at first, then more and more easily. In fact, he found the conversation flourishing as it rarely flourished on his initial acquaintance with any woman. One reason was that he was unable to keep his eyes off her, and under the circumstances, he knew, it was a case of either speak up or look like a moonstruck gawk. And, too, they were such complete strangers to each other that the mere process of getting acquainted provided more than enough grist for the conversational mill.

  She had never been away from Santo Stefano. She felt no need to when everything she wanted was there. Not only her books and music and fine motor car, but even solitude itself which, she believed, one could find most readily at home. To savor life one had to be alone. But perhaps Mr. Smith could not understand this feeling. Men seemed to feel a need for others around them. They were always eager to pit themselves against the world instead of taking what it had to offer.

  “We can’t help that,” said Ben. “We have our jobs to think about, our careers. It’s hard to build a career in privacy.”

  “But how sad.”

  “Not at all. If it weren’t for my job I’d never have met you. That would have been even sadder for me.”

  “Thank you,” she said with charming gravity. “And you would not have met Santo Stefano either. It is very different from the United States, is it not?”