The Panama Portrait

by Stanley Ellin

  “I wish them well at it. Of course, generation after generation is blown to hell in the process, but it’s always in a good cause. Whoever wins can prove that very easily.”

  “Why do you say such things, Max? You sound heartless. You sound like someone far from reality. Why? Is it because you know someone else will always be there to help the suffering while you take your ease?”

  “Someone else always will, whether I take my ease or not.”

  “Ah, there speaks the eternal merchant!” said Juliana. “Someone else always will. And that someone else will also find a way to heal all sickness, and a way to keep the angry poor contented, and a way to keep peace in the world. Then you won’t have to worry about sickness or revolution or war, because he has taken care of it. So much easier that way to enjoy the benefits of what he has done.” She turned to her husband. “Do you remember that story you once told me about the merchant?”

  Tito nodded.

  “Well, tell it to Max.”

  Tito shrugged apologetically at Ben. “It may not be to everyone’s taste.”

  “Never mind,” said Juliana. “Tell it.”

  “It’s an old story,” said Tito, addressing himself to a point on the wall above Klebenau’s head. “Who knows how old? And it tells about the two followers of Christ who stood in the crowd watching the Crucifixion. One was a poet, lean and hungry and wild-eyed, and the other a merchant, sleek and well-fed—”

  “And bald,” said Klebenau.

  “Possibly bald. But both stood watching with the same despair as the nails were driven through the holy hands.

  “Then the poet suddenly leaped forward and would have assaulted the executioners if his friend, the merchant, had not dragged him back to safety. ‘What are you doing?’ asked the merchant. ‘Have you gone out of your mind?’

  “And the poet cried out, ‘Yes, because I can’t bear this! I must help Him. I know that this day means the coming of a new world, it means redemption from our sins, it means eternal joy in Paradise for us—but why must He be made to suffer like that?’

  “And the merchant said, ‘Because, my friend, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.’”

  9

  With the approach of festival day a carnival spirit rolled like a tide the length of the Avenida Hermanos, inundating it with crowds of masquers and sightseers, filling it with noise and color. Impromptu parades entered the avenue from sidestreets and held the right of way unchallenged. At every plaza, guitarists surrounded by chanting and clapping enthusiasts played themselves into a frenzy, only stopping at times to restore themselves with liberal doses of raw chicha. The young now ran everywhere unrestrained, most of them wielding simulated hangman’s nooses made of brightly painted plastic which, Ben saw when he examined one in a shop, were marked Made In Japan.

  At night, when the population of the entire old city seemed compressed into the avenue there was an explosively alcoholic mood in the air, an ebullient inclination to brawl at the drop of a hat, and brawls crackled along the streets like a bundle of Chinese firecrackers until the Civil Guard raced up in cars to extinguish them. The Guardists themselves seemed uniformly youthful and good-natured, but they could wield clubs and bamboos with vicious effect when pressed too hard.

  There was no such activity in the streets of the new city across the river. In fact, it was impossible after dark now for anyone to pass the tough-looking guards at the Rio Xares bridge unless he could produce satisfactory credentials. But while those suburban streets were empty, the houses fronting them were thrown open to conviviality. The hospitality on tap was prodigal and unquestioning. Celebrants moved from party to party, eating, drinking, and dancing themselves to stupefaction. The Bambas-Quincys were among the most favored hosts. Once, viewing the scene in their home, Ben had the impression that it must be as solidly packed with merrymakers as the Avenida Hermanos.

  He himself had little to do with these festivities. He was there for the pleasure of Elissa’s company, and it was made the more pleasant by her dislike of crowds and her refusal to appear among them. One wing of the mansion was her apartment exclusively; it made a luxurious refuge where she and Ben talked, or played chess, or listened to recordings of Chopin or Debussy or Villa-Lobos while Juana, the handmaiden, sat in a corner, a watchful eye on them as she endlessly plied needle and thread on a shapeless piece of material like an Indian Penelope.

  Or, much more to Ben’s taste, they would walk alone through the moonlit gardens behind the house. At the far end of the gardens was the playhouse Julio Salazar had described to him, a miniature replica of the mansion itself built for Elissa and Luz when they were children. Luz, said Elissa, had long since lost interest in it, but she never had. She visited it often and made it her business to see that it was perfectly kept. Its interior consisted of one room barely high enough for Ben to move about in without stooping, and it was furnished with the same undersized pieces that had been placed there the day it was built. Nothing had ever been changed in it, Elissa said; she could not bear to think of its being changed in any way, and when Ben expressed approval of this she glowed with pleasure.

  “So many cannot understand,” she said. “They think that childhood is an inconsequential time, that its innocence is unreal and foolish. But what does the adult world offer in its place? Only cruelty and hypocrisy. Are these more real and wise than innocence?”

  It was her beloved grandfather who had built the little house.

  “And he would often come here with me and talk to me as if I were an equal. How kind he was, and, now when I think of him, how sad. Yet, he had endless patience with me. We would sit together, just he and I alone, and Juana would serve us lunch on this table while we talked.”

  “About what?”

  Elissa knit her brow. “It’s hard to remember. Oh, yes, sometimes he told me about great men—about El Cid or Hermanos or others he admired. But beyond that—no, I don’t really remember. It is as if I hear his voice in my ears, but not the words he spoke. All I remember is the feeling of great love he had for me. Without ever being aware of it, I knew that nothing I might say or do could cost me that love. What a wonderful possession for a child.”

  “Didn’t it make Luz jealous?”

  “It may have, a little. But Luz is like Jerome. They do not feel too deeply about anything. However, I am sure that it made my dear grandmother bitterly jealous.”

  “Your grandmother? What gives you that idea?”

  “Oh, there are reasons. Why should it surprise you? Women are women until the day they die. When their men are strong and handsome they are always jealous of them.”

  “But I was told that when you and Luz were children, your grandmother was affectionate to you and not at all to Jerome.”

  “Affectionate? She never knew the meaning of the word. Possessive, yes, because we were her possessions the way she wished everything in the world to be. As for Jerome, she saw him as a man to detest in the same way she saw me as a woman to be jealous of. Our being children made no difference. She knew that one day you are a child and the next day you are not. Perhaps this was not altogether her fault. Her parents in Argentina died when she was only a child herself, so that she never knew their love and kindness. All she knew was the fortune they left her, and, I imagine, the unscrupulous men who were attracted to her by the smell of it. That must be a hard school for a woman, especially a woman who has no beauty to give her assurance. Can she be blamed if it teaches her that all men are her enemies? Or if it makes her, in the end, as ruthless and greedy as they are?”

  “Except your grandfather.”

  “In some ways he was no different from the others. He married her only for her money, and he never let her forget that. Whenever she charged him with having affairs with other women he would tell it to her before everyone. No, she never learned about love from him. He had it to give, but not to her.”

  And, Ben mused afterwards, was that also true of Elissa? Was there love in her to give, or was it now o
nly a childhood memory buried with her grandfather? She was twenty-seven—Jerome had let that slip inadvertently one morning during a round of golf at the sports club—and she was still unwed, which, by Santo Stefano standards, made her long overdue for marriage. Why? Well, her family was certainly a fearsome barrier for any suitor to be confronted with. In Santo Stefano the daughter of a wealthy family might have a certain amount of independence, but she must still have the family’s imprimatur when it came to a choice of marital partners. In the case of someone like Elissa who was not only an heiress, but beautiful and intelligent as well, Victor Bambas-Quincy had every right to pick and choose carefully. For Luz a lapdog like Fontanas-Todd might be sufficient, but for Elissa nothing but the best would do. And unless Elissa and her father—and grandmother, for that matter—agreed on the best, time could go on indefinitely without any choice being made.

  Or could it be that Elissa, by withdrawing so completely from the world around her, had become indifferent to the idea of marriage? Could the capacity for love, the need to fulfill it with husband and children, have dried up and disappeared in any woman this young and desirable?

  What made the question so hard to answer, Ben knew, was his unfamiliarity with local custom. In New York or back home in Aurelia a man who had spent a solid week in the company of one woman would, by now, have been expected to make some discreet physical advances. The handholding, the arm around the waist, the parting kiss—these were regarded as no more than conventional signals of interest in his companion. If she chose to rebuff them, it would be without rancor. It was only when he gave her no opportunity to rebuff them that she might feel resentful. Ben had the conviction that most of the women he knew back home would rather fight off assaults every night of the week than be left wondering why no man found them worth assaulting.

  But because there was no way of telling how this applied to Santo Stefano, there was no way of judging whether Elissa avoided all possible physical contact out of respect for native convention or out of inhibition. The fact was that during the week he had never managed more than an occasional, almost accidental, touching of fingertips. Even this produced such an electric contact that he could not believe Elissa was immune to it. But beyond that chance contact, she managed to remain always out of reach. At the same time she was so confiding in her manner, so frank in what she had to say, that he had no sense of being kept at a distance. She was alluring without ever being coquettish. It led him to wonder sometimes if he were being secretly laughed at, if she were only waiting for him to make a bold overture so that she could then yield gracefully to the conquering male. It might be that she was afraid to put aside inhibition but would be glad to have him make her do so. Might be. On the other hand, if he argued himself into making a false move he might find himself tossed bag and baggage out of the country the next day and trying to explain to O’Harragh just how he had let his male ego cost Seaways a contract worth a few million dollars. It was not hard to picture O’Harragh’s reaction to any such explanation.

  At the end of that frustrating week, plans were made for the trip to the Victorica. Mr. Smith, of course, said Bambas-Quincy, would be a guest of the family on the Victorica. They would leave for the mountains in the evening two days before the ceremony, so that there would be time to view the scenery and see at first hand the life of the aborigines who inhabited Chicamayo village nearby. It was Elissa who countered that by suggesting that she and Ben leave early in the morning instead of the evening, and spend the day on the beach at Córdoba which he had never seen. Córdoba was on the northern tip of the island and the family had a cabaña there.

  “And the swimming is magnificent,” she said. “You have not yet been in our ocean waters, have you?”

  “No, just the pool at the club.”

  “Then you will have a surprise. The ocean is warmer than you can imagine during El Niño. We can go from there to the Victorica very easily, because there is almost no traffic on that road at night.”

  The meaning of this was made clear by Bambas-Quincy’s objections to the plan.

  “That road is not safe at night,” he said. “It runs along the jungle, and bandits camp at its very edges. There have been several incidents. It would be better to visit the cabaña some other time and return during the daylight hours.”

  In the end when Elissa remained indifferent to this logic he yielded sulkily, and Ben could see that his helpless surrender to his daughter was an old story. As, he surmised, it must be for most fathers with beautiful and imperious daughters.

  The next day he and Elissa left the city at noon, which, he knew from experience, was her definition of early in the morning. The trip as far north as Playa de Hermanos was a slow one; the highway was crowded with loud and smelly buses carrying passengers to the festival and stopping at every fishing village along the way to pick up families loaded with enough foodstuff and gear to last them a month. At Playa de Hermanos all this traffic diverged to the left along the Huanu Blanco highway which would take it to the foot of the Victorica; and the hundred-mile length of road to Córdoba pointed straight ahead into the distance, empty and inviting.

  Traveling that road had a dreamlike quality. To the right was the whiteness of beach and a single line of railroad track, to the left was the impenetrable green of tropical foliage. Between them the road was a black ribbon stretching to the horizon. The car moved over it almost soundlessly, picking up speed with each passing mile, until it came into sight of an army jeep traveling at a fast clip up ahead.

  “The patrol,” said Elissa. “Small boats from the mainland bring supplies to the bandits along these beaches, and they must be stopped. Also, cars sometimes bring guns to them from Port Buchanan itself. No one is allowed to pass a patrol car on the road unless he is given permission.”

  She pulled up steadily closer to the jeep until it was within hailing distance, and Ben saw that it mounted a machine gun and that the four men in it wore full battle dress. The man next to the machine gun waited until the convertible was very close. Then he grinned and swung the machine gun at it, simulating fire. The other men watched this, laughing.

  “Damn fools,” said Ben.

  Elissa shrugged. “They mean no harm.”

  “I know. But when I was in the army I was taught never to aim a gun at anyone unless you meant to shoot him.”

  “Yes,” said Elissa, “that would seem to be a wise policy.”

  She signaled the jeep, and the machine gunner waved her past, still grinning. In a few moments the jeep was left far behind, and now there was nothing ahead but the horizon and the stripes of white, black, and green converging on it.

  Ben could sense the steadily increasing pressure of foot on accelerator. He glanced at the speedometer which registered in kilometers and saw that it was past the 140 mark and still rising. He did some swift arithmetic as it mounted to 150. That was well over ninety miles an hour even though it seemed like much less. What made it deceptive was not only the tremendous power of the car but the road itself, which ran straight along without dip or curve. The speedometer continued to rise. It passed 180, moved toward the limit of the dial. The car was now doing better than 115 miles an hour, and Ben could feel apprehension curl in his stomach. Obviously, Elissa had no idea what traveling at this speed could mean. A patch of oil on the road, a strand of liana fallen from one of the trees towering overhead—he looked at her and saw that she reflected no tension at all. Her face was relaxed, her hands rested lightly on the wheel. Was this her way of testing him? Was she waiting for him to make some comment? To tell her to slow down? If so, would she favor caution over courage?

  The needle told him that they were moving at almost 120 now, which, he was sure, must be about the maximum of the Facel Vega’s performance. At this speed the scenery seemed to be racing past them in a blur of color while the car appeared to stand motionless, and that could be the most dangerous delusion of all.

  “You’d better slow down,” Ben said.

  “Why?”
>
  “Because I tell you to. If we pile up here, your father would probably blame me for it, and I wouldn’t like that.”

  “Do you really believe he would blame you?” But the car slowed, and the passing scenery took form again. Ben found that he had been sitting with his braking foot pressed so hard against the floorboards that his toes were cramped.

  “Do you always drive that fast along here?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you how dangerous it was?”

  “No,” said Elissa. “No one has ever traveled this road with me before,” but whether she were pleased or angry that he had taken charge, Ben could not tell.

  On the outskirts of Córdoba was a sizable army post and airstrip. Beyond it, the town lay sprawled sleepily in the sunlight, clearly a resort for the well-to-do. Its homes were spacious, and moored to its jetty were no fishing craft but pleasure launches and a pair of small navy cutters. These homes, Ben learned, were cabañas occupied only during the heat of February, and when he entered the Bambas-Quincy cabaña he saw with mixed feelings that it was considerably roomier and better furnished than the Smith homestead back in Aurelia.

  There was an Indian couple in charge of the place, permanent caretakers, and the man provided Ben with swimming trunks and robe from a wardrobe kept for the purpose. When he emerged from the dressing room ready for his first encounter with the Pacific, he was surprised to find that Elissa had not changed into bathing costume, had no intention of going into the water. Up to then he had an idea that in a bathing suit she would be less armored against him, more amenable to suggestion, and it was a disappointment to find her still fully armored, and more tantalizing than ever, in piquant dark glasses and beribboned straw hat.

  “No,” she said, when he argued that he wouldn’t enjoy swimming alone, “I am sure you will. We would not have come otherwise,” and the way she said it left no room for further argument.