The Panama Portrait

by Stanley Ellin

  “Please,” Blas said, clearly resentful of this whispered colloquy. “It is almost time.”

  The bright tracery of color around the gallows post was complete. The priests, heads bobbing under the weight of the masks, moved in single file toward the barrier and disappeared beneath it. The music stopped. Then a wave of laughter rippled through the crowd. One of the small birds perched on the arena wall had taken to the air and come to a landing on top of the gallows. It jauntily hopped a few steps, then stood preening its feathers. The laughter grew raucous as a musician ran forward waving his arms at the bird and it paid him no attention. When he flung a stone at it, sending it into precipitate flight, the laughter changed to a volley of mock applause, and the musician, grinning broadly, scampered back to his place beneath the barrier.

  There was a squawk from loudspeakers overhead, a metallic blare of music. The national anthem. Everyone stood, most with an air of resignation, a few singing along with the music. Blas sang the words as sternly as a Te Deum, and Penelope joined in with schoolgirl fervor. Barruguete yawned delicately. In the Bambas-Quincy box, Ben saw Luz animatedly talking to her supercilious-looking husband. Not far away, Alden-Aragone and Salazar had their heads together over a sheet of paper, a form sheet probably. Next to them, Santa Cruz, puffing on a fat cigar, idly waved a hand back and forth in time to the music. The music went on and on, making up in volume what it lacked otherwise, and when it was over the crowd reseated itself quickly, suggesting that it had suffered enough for the national cause and was now in a mood for its reward. National anthems were national anthems the world over, Ben reflected.

  The loudspeakers squawked again and emitted an unintelligible fusillade of Spanish. Blas sat up eagerly. “A message from the President of the Republic,” he said, and cupped a hand behind his ear. “Now the order of contestants. They are waiting below us and have just chosen lots.”

  “As if position meant anything,” remarked Barruguete. “In the final analysis, it is only the mettle of the contestant that counts. Not whether he is first or last in the event.”

  “I beg to disagree,” said Blas. “Consider that the last man knows exactly what is demanded of him. Also that the first is often cautious in the hope that he may be the only survivor. The records prove this. Can you dispute the records?”

  “I dispute nothing. I only say that no man knows his capacities until he has put his rope on the gallows. A planning of strategy means nothing where the flesh and spirit are not answerable to the intellect.”

  The voice coming over the loudspeaker was silent momentarily, and then boomed out again, this time enunciating each syllable with care. “Miguel Tercero.”

  “He will be first,” Blas said tensely, and Ben braced himself for what was to follow.

  “Pablo Huanu Blanco.”

  Maybe Chapin wouldn’t show up at all. That was it. At the last moment Klebenau had convinced him—

  “David Chapin.”

  Oh, God, Ben pleaded silently, there was nothing I could do about it. He felt a gentle tapping against his knee, and when he looked down he saw that Elissa was offering him the flask. Blessed, beautiful woman. He drank deeply, aware that Blas and Barruguete were keeping their eyes politely averted while he did so. A gentleman does not stare at someone caught in a moment of weakness.

  “León Chicamayo.”

  There was a mass groan of disappointment as the name was pronounced. “They hoped he would be last,” whispered Blas. “He is the favorite, and despite Mr. Barruguete’s opinion, the last man holds an advantage.”

  “Juan Chicamayo.”

  At the sound of that final name on the roll call, the crowd released its tensions in a wild yell. The volume of noise increased as a swarthy little Indian appeared from beneath the barrier and, paying no attention to the pandemonium around him, started walking with firm steps toward the gallows. He was naked except for an antia, a patch of cloth tied to his loins with a string, and around his neck was a closely fitting noose. Its free end was looped twice around his upraised and stiffly extended left arm and terminated in a bulky knot which dangled below the wrist. A few paces behind him walked the four masked priests.

  “That is Miguel,” said Barruguete. He placed his mouth close to Ben’s ear to make himself heard over the uproar. “Poor man, he has a heavy load to bear. Not only have his father and grandfather failed to survive the gallows, but I have been told that his mother is one of the women in that parade outside, that degrading cortege led by Father Bibieni. What a disgrace. It will be worth her life if she dares to return to the village tonight.”

  “He walks in the classical style,” commented Blas approvingly. “Very sure. And solitario. It means—” he groped for the translation “—it means more than alone. It is what one would feel if he knew everyone else in the world were dead. If there were no one to help him.”

  “True,” said Barruguete. “And how different from the bullfight with its glittering trappings, its bowing and scraping for applause before the event, its army of assistants waiting to make a rescue, Solitario. Man alone as he was meant to be. Now watch. That is all the assistance he will get.”

  Miguel stood beneath the crossbeam of the gallows. The priests closed around him in a circle. They stooped and placed their hands together on the ground, palms up. Miguel set his feet carefully on the supporting hands and was immediately lifted to the height of the crossbeam. He threw an arm around it, bracing himself there, and the priests turned their backs on him and moved at a rapid pace to the barrier. Solitario was the word for it, Ben thought. If ever he had seen a man alone in the world, it was Miguel Tercero in the act of preparing for his ordeal.

  Now Bambas-Quincy’s remark about a great silence took on meaning. The silence fell so abruptly that it left a singing in the ears. In that vacuum of silence the sound of a cough, of a match being struck, reverberated like a pistol shot.

  Miguel made ready. A slot had been cut into the head of the crossbeam, and into it he thrust the free end of the rope, the knot resting on top of the beam to bear the weight put on it. So far he was safe. One loop of the rope still remained around his arm, and his weight rested on that arm, not yet upon the noose around his throat. Now slowly, very slowly, he moved the upraised arm in a small circle to free it from the rope. His hands closed around the line, sliding down it. When those hands released their hold, Ben told himself, was the time to turn away and not look.

  The hands released their hold, Miguel delivered himself to the noose, but there was no turning away. The man seemed dead already. Body limp and head hung forward, he dangled there like a corpse. Then the play of muscles showed, the writhing of them in arms and thighs, the thrust and pull of them across the belly. The head came back to reveal the eyes wide and staring, the mouth distended in a silent scream.

  Watching dazedly, Ben felt himself possessed by the feeling that he himself was that object straining on the gallows. His breath locked in his throat. His muscles tautened with strain. The blood began to hammer in his head with a thunderous beat. The knife, he thought. For God’s sake, the knife!

  It was as if his brain were frantically directing that hand groping toward the knife in the band of the antia. The blade flashed in the sunlight. Like something viewed in slow motion it moved upward, the body twisting in its effort to deliver the life-giving stroke. The rope parted, seemingly at a touch. Miguel, suspended a foot above the ground, dropped heavily and pitched forward, the knife still clutched in his hand. He lay like that a moment, his face in the dirt, then managed to raise himself to his knees. The effort proved too much for him. He fell again, this time rolling over on his back where he remained, legs sprawled out, chest heaving so deeply that with each inhalation, his ribs stood out in sharp relief.

  The torrent of sound that erupted deafened Ben. Not all of it was approbation; there were catcalls and whistles of derision as well. A few seat cushions were flung toward the gallows, one of them almost landing on the recumbent Miguel. Crumpled ice cream containers
rained down. Civil Guardists took positions along the aisle looking up angrily, bamboos at the ready. Then all hostile activity was cut short by the appearance of Dr. Mola who trotted briskly out to Miguel, a small black medical bag in hand, the four Axoyac priests following at his heels. The doctor kneeled over Miguel, spoke to him, made a cursory examination. Evidently, all was well. At his signal, two of the priests raised Miguel unsteadily to his feet and led him away, while the remaining pair cleared the gallows of the severed length of rope still attached to it. As they finally disappeared from sight beneath the barrier, the noise of the crowd diminished to a confused gabbling.

  Ben looked up at the clock on the arena wall. Six seconds. Impossible. He refused to believe it. Only six brief seconds, a little more than six heartbeats, and it had seemed a lifetime. Ironic thought. If not for that flashing, razor-edged blade, it would have been a lifetime.

  Penelope Kipp turned around toward him, her face alive with excitement. “Did you see it? Wasn’t it thrilling? Wasn’t it utterly devastating? You know, I wanted to close my eyes when it started, and then I couldn’t. After all, it would still be happening whether I looked or not, wouldn’t it? And the way he hung there! I really thought he was quite dead.”

  “Small chance,” said Barruguete sourly. His tone suggested that he had bet heavily on Miguel and was not going to forgive him an undistinguished performance.

  Blas, on the other hand, was much pleased with himself. “So my prediction was correct, was it not? The first man rarely extends himself. A study of the records—”

  “Records!” snapped Barruguete. “Records are for clerks.”

  The shot hit home. Blas flinched under it and then rallied bravely. “One does the best he can,” he said with great dignity, and whatever Barruguete was going to answer was cut short by Penelope who glared at him. “How rude of you, Virgilio. How unspeakably rude.”

  Barruguete was clearly taken aback by assault from this quarter. “My dear girl, I intended no rudeness. Believe me, none at all.”

  “Indeed,” said Penelope, and Ben was interested to see that she was now regarding Blas for the first time with warm affection. So it went. Quite possibly, Barruguete’s little display of temper was all Blas needed to assure success to his courtship, although he was hardly likely to appreciate this or offer Barruguete appropriate thanks for it.

  A squad of attendants ran out on the field to clear it of its debris. The reeds and drums accompanied their efforts with the ritual song. Venders moved along the aisles. Barruguete’s girl friend shyly indicated her desire for ice cream and nibbled a bar of it with neat little bites, like a mouse working around a cut of cheese. Ben leaned forward to offer Elissa a cigarette, but she shook her head warningly at the box where her grandmother sat. It was improbable that the old lady could see them from her wheelchair, but her presence was enough. He lit a cigarette for himself and sat back waiting for the next turn on the program. Pablo Huanu Blanco was next. According to Blas he was a strong contender. It seemed reasonable to assume that he could do better than six seconds.

  It took Ben a moment to appreciate the full significance of this train of thought, and then he recoiled from it. Was the spell of the festival that potent? It must be. He had witnessed one brief scene of it, and, from the evidence, was already growing numb to its agonies. If not for Chapin’s impending appearance, he might very well sit through the whole spectacle the way he could sit in a comfortable movie theater viewing on a screen the spectacle of flood victims being dragged from the water, of troops entering combat, of the beautiful blossoming of the smoke cloud produced by nuclear fission.

  That was the trouble. That was the secret of the spell. It was so easy to remove oneself from the agony, to witness it with the remote interest of the spectator. That was why the thought of Chapin now roused in him such resentment. Damn Chapin! And damn Nora and Klebenau as well! They refused to let you be a spectator. One way or another, they wanted you to bear the guilt for their suffering. There was no peace for anyone who fell into that kind of trap.

  The attendants had finished their work. The music stopped. Pablo Huanu Blanco appeared on the field, followed by the priests. A sturdy, well-muscled man, he walked to the gallows with the same aloof air as Miguel, but more slowly. And his left arm, carried high with the rope bound around it, was not extended rigidly. It was bent at the elbow and relaxed, the arm of a sleepwalker guarding himself against unseen obstacles in his path. Solitario, Ben thought. Alone in the world. Alone with his dream of the gods and the shiny automobile and the houseful of gaudy, useless junk they might deliver to him.

  “A little heavy, perhaps,” whispered Blas, “but look at his neck. The neck of a bull.”

  He was a little heavy. The priests lifted him with an effort, straining under his weight, and then he was up, clinging to the gallows. He fastened his rope to it with great deliberation and let himself down to almost its full length. At that point he stopped for an instant to touch the knife in his belt with his fingertips.

  “A bad sign,” said Barruguete grimly.

  He was wrong. Without further hesitation Pablo released himself to the noose and made it clear that he was prepared to do his utmost. Hanging limp, head down so that only the glossy black crown of hair showed, arms at rest, feet together, toes pointed at the ground, his body made a perfectly straight line against the poster advertising Golden Sword Beer.

  Ben licked dry lips, waiting for the first signs of struggle. He looked up at the clock. Six seconds. Seven. Miguel was already beaten, but only if Pablo lived to tell about it. As it was, he seemed intent only on dying.

  Then a foot moved. Now the other. The legs jerked spasmodically, sending the rope into pendulum motion. The motion seemed to bring the entire body into writhing life like a worm caught on a fishhook. It swung sideways, and the face could be seen swollen and livid with congestion, the mouth gaping. A hand, dark with the same congestion, looking as if a purple glove had been slipped over it, moved toward the knife. The fingers closed around the hilt. The knife seemed to be a leaden weight as it was drawn, raised inch by inch to the level of the chest, and remained immobile there. The body wheeled in a wide circle, legs kicking, riding an invisible bicycle.

  “If that arm falls—!” Blas whispered hoarsely.

  The arm wavered, drooped. Suddenly the whole body convulsed, and the knife went up and back, slashing into the rope. It was not a clean cut. A few strands remained, cruelly refusing to give way. Then they parted. Pablo fell to the ground like a sack and lay there inert.

  Ben swayed in his seat. Drained of all emotion he watched Dr. Mola running out on the field as hard as he could, coattails flying, black bag swinging. He kneeled beside the limp form. First the stethoscope, then the hypodermic. Digitalis, most likely. And still not a sound from the crowd, not an audible exhalation of breath, not a motion. Now the stethoscope again, probing, probing. A priest leaned over the hand clutching the knife. He bent back the fingers around the hilt with an effort, finally got the knife free. The doctor looked up at the priest, a smile on his face, and nodded. The priest turned to the crowd, raising the knife triumphantly over his head.

  It was the signal they had been waiting for. The crash of their applause came like a thunderclap followed by a howling storm. Ben found himself besieged on both sides. Blas was hammering his back with unrestrained joy, shouting, “Did you see it? Twenty seconds! Twenty seconds, I tell you! Did you see it?” and Barruguete was leaning across him to bellow delightedly at Blas, “What about position now, hey? What about the last man now, hey?” all enmity between them forgotten in this sharing of a rapturous experience.

  Below them two priests bore away Pablo, arms and legs dangling, one livid foot spasmodically twitching as evidence of the unconquerable life in him. When the other priests came up to the barrier, one holding high the knife, the other the severed piece of rope from the gallows, a squad of Civil Guardists hastily vaulted the barrier and made a protective convoy for them until they were out of
sight.

  “Do you know the value of that rope and knife?” Blas demanded of Ben. “Can you guess? There would be a battle for them on the field, if they were not properly guarded!”

  Barruguete sank back in his seat, breathing hard, struggling to gain control of himself. “A winner,” he said. “Surely a winner unless León Chicamayo can produce a miracle. The courage of him! The spirit! Mother of God, he handled the blade like Luis himself. And how easy it would be to yield at the last moment, to give up the struggle and surrender to inviting death. But no! All the manhood in him rose at the last instant to deny death its prey. What a performance. If only he will not drink himself out of shape for the next one.”

  “You mean he’ll be back?” said Ben. “He’ll go through this again next year?”

  “Undoubtedly. Unless he has suffered irreparable injury today or destroys himself with alcohol. That is the tragedy of awarding a large sum of money to the winner. It so often corrupts him. But if he can resist temptation he will always try the rope again. Quite understandable, is it not? When a man has once tasted riches and glory, who can blame him for wanting to savor them again and again?”

  “But only Luis has ever succeeded in winning twice,” Blas pointed out. “All the others, it seems, try once too often.”

  “Some day there will be another Luis,” said Barruguete. Then he nodded at the barrier where a figure was emerging. It was David Chapin, Ben realized with a sinking heart, but a David Chapin strangely unfamiliar in antia and noose. “That,” said Barruguete witheringly, “will not be the one. That one, I fear, does not look capable of any greatness on the gallows at all.”

  It would be hard to dispute this, Ben saw. Compared to the compact, dark-skinned contestants who had preceded him, Chapin made an incongruous appearance. It was not only the pale, hairy stringiness of his body that produced this effect, it was, even more, the way he moved and acted. A man used to wearing shoes does not walk barefooted with natural grace. Chapin walked with a flatfooted gracelessness, eagerly shambling toward the gallows as if he could not get to it fast enough. He looked like a naked Don Quixote. His shanks were painfully thin, his exposed buttocks flabby. His left arm, held high in the requisite position when he first entered, fell lower and lower with each step until the knot was dragging in the dirt. Someone behind Ben gasped audibly at that, and there were titters here and there among the crowd. An attending priest hastily ran forward and drew Chapin to an abrupt halt. He raised the offending arm so that the knot was clear of the ground and then sent Chapin on his way again.