Face to the Sun

by Geoffrey Household

  At first light we were off again, and at last we could see where we were forced to go whether we liked it or not: a cove marked on the map, between two promontories with a sandy beach. We hailed it with joy – soft sand for aching feet, calm sea for weary bodies. Our commander, however, was uneasy, for there was no way out of the cove except by the little stream we had followed down. The track that we had left behind up crags and through forest would take time to trace but could not be mistaken. If we were caught in the cove and the promontories occupied, that was the end.

  A fishing-boat passed close in and appeared to drop something overboard. As the wash eddied away, we could see it was a human being swimming ashore with a leisurely overarm stroke and pushing a fish crate ahead. One of our party swam out to help and the two landed together. To our amazement, it was a young woman in a swimsuit propelling a minimum of clothes in the crate. We gathered round her eagerly, assuming that she carried orders from Headquarters though how the devil they could have known where to find us was a mystery. The major began to question her, suspecting that her arrival could be some ingenious trick of the Heredistas. She explained that security was so tight that she could find no way of secretly entering the country and so had hired the fishing-boat to drop her at the cove. She knew the position of the camp we had just left and boldly reckoned that she could get there on foot. She introduced herself as Teresa Molina Cisneros.

  The daughter of General Molina,’ the major exclaimed, adding that he had heard that after the execution of her father she had taken refuge in London.

  ‘Yes. I was there only a week ago. I wanted to do more for my country than the foolishness of newspaper articles. That would not avenge my father and give us freedom. Evidently I have had the luck to fall in with a patrol of Retadores. I have news for you to pass on to Headquarters.’

  It seemed to me that the voice was familiar but I had been thrown among too many strangers to place it. Its decisiveness was not unlike Carlota’s.

  ‘You know Heredia’s plan for the Punchao del Dia?’ the major asked.

  ‘To make it an emblem of his state, yes. A new swastika for the damned. The Presidenta took it with her to London and lost it. It was sold back to her and she returned with it to the palace.’

  ‘A moment, señorita!’ said the major.

  He placed his valise on a flat rock, opened it and unwrapping the Punchao held it above his head as the first segment of the sun rose from the sea. The assembled guerrilleros gave a collective gasp of wonder instead of a cheer. They had all heard of it, but only a few had seen it on a visit to the museum. There, between the dark cliffs of the promontories, it flashed like a tiny morning star, ready to be worshipped by the golden men who shared its colour.

  Heredia was no fool. I was prepared to accept the divine aura of the original which had so impressed the Conquistadores, but I doubted whether any sculptor or goldsmith could possibly have reproduced the subtleties which had once contributed to its perfection, and whether a mere model could be as essential to Heredia’s state emblem as he believed and the Retadores feared. Yet here on the crescent-shaped beach there could be no doubt of the Punchao’s power to impress. As an emblem, it would supply Heredia’s government with an aura of legitimacy which packets of votes manipulated at the polling booths could not.

  Teresa offered a personal gesture of reverence to this miniature of ancient glory, holding out her hand as if welcoming a guest from her childhood. At the same time, her eyes fell on me and her tone of voice changed to one I had already heard and now recognised.

  ‘So that bastard had it all along!’ she cried. ‘What is he doing here?’

  She seemed to have only one name for me.

  ‘May I remind you, Doña Teresa, that if I had it all along I must have at least decided to keep it out of President Heredia’s hands?’

  ‘You sold it back to the Presidenta!’

  ‘I did. I admit it. Together with some other jewellery.’

  The sentry on the high ground above the stream sent back a runner with the message that some of the Heredistas were in sight. We formed posts to cover the entrance to the beach and the deadly exposed climb to the protective promontories from which we could only be dislodged at the cost of murderous casualties among the attacking Heredistas.

  Their first wave came on carelessly. The survivors could only crawl away.

  The second wave charged us at the double. Those who were still on their feet huddled together in patches of dead ground and refused to come nearer. Here and there a man rose to his knees to shout defiance – a habit which seemed to go with Indian blood – and at least died gallantly. We ourselves suffered few casualties. It was the hell of a place, that narrow valley, for my first experience of war.

  The firing died down and the best the enemy could do was to call on us to surrender. It seemed to me that we were hopelessly outnumbered and that in the end we could do nothing else. My little beauty had picked up the Kalashnikov of one of the very few of us who had met cold steel and was savagely blazing away from thick cover. When I suggested that she was wasting ammunition, she nearly added ‘the bastard’ to her bag of mosquitos.

  At last there was silence except for occasional pot shots. I, utterly inexperienced in war, was inclined to believe that there was no longer any reason why I should not change position and stretch my legs. I was saved from that suicide by an almighty bang from the left front. The leg of my sympathetic major, trailing a strip of the priest’s black cassock, skidded in from the sky. They had brought up a mountain gun which steadily and inhumanely wiped out our posts. Our men charged it but met the same fate as the Heredistas.

  From our position there was a possible route into a little waterfall. It gave no real cover but if we squatted down and leaned back against the rock there was a chance that we should not be seen while the enemy was engaged in despatching the wounded. The Punchao appeared to have rescued itself, for the major had returned it to his valise which remained a little below his post. I could see the top of it above the grass whereas to the enemy it must have appeared as just another piece of baggage abandoned by the Retadores. I told Teresa that if the enemy would do us the favour of remaining more or less where they were I would try to reclaim it and drag it with us under the fall.

  ‘But we shall never see it again,’ she whispered.

  ‘Why not? At least we shall know where to look for it. Heredia will not.’

  ‘You think we can get away?’

  ‘After nightfall and by swimming, we have a chance.’

  Rather to my surprise, she agreed. It was not, I think, the danger of death which influenced her but the prospect of falling wounded into enemy hands. The civil war had no mercy on women captured in arms before they were killed or abandoned.

  I found no difficulty in crawling up to the valise but as soon as I tried to slide it down to the water the movement in the grass was spotted and drew a shot. Teresa immediately gave me covering fire – which was decidedly more dangerous – and I was able to reach the veil of falling water with the Punchao and myself intact.

  Teresa joined me after I had buried the valise under a slope of gravel and we sat side by side in the shade of the rockface with the water over our knees. It warmed up a little at midday but we still shivered. The Heredistas splashed downstream within feet of us but without looking closely at the fall.

  We waited till dark when all was quiet. It seemed that the enemy, after searching the sandy bay and killing the badly wounded, had retired, withdrawn their gun and camped somewhere on the reverse slope.

  I tied my shoes round my waist and followed Teresa into the water, swimming out to the north headland in the hope of getting round it to a possible landing place. So far as we could see there was none, and after resting on an isolated rock we struck out again along the coast to the north-west. Nowhere was there a landing place, but fortunately no sea was running. At last we came to another seepage of water from above and followed it up the cliff over giant pebbles, mostly on
hands and knees, to a rough path where we collapsed and waited for the dawn. When the sun at last poured down on us, Teresa spread out her swimsuit to dry and when I hesitated to discard shirt and trousers – males being rather more modest than females – told me sternly not to be a fool. We slept for five or six hours by which time all clothing was dry and we could face an empty and unknown world without immodesty. I was careful to avoid any comment on her extraordinary beauty.

  Empty and unknown I wrote, and so it seemed to us; but in fact it was merely the end of modern civilisation. Inland was something of a village with the outlying houses of small peasant proprietors. We watched the early morning movements out to the fields, wondering how on earth we were going to explain a young woman appearing from nowhere without any possessions but a swimsuit. I myself could pass as a peasant proprietor.

  ‘I think we shall have to use your experience as a thief,’ she said.

  ‘On whom, Doña Teresa?’

  ‘The woman from the cottage down there has just gone to work.’

  Burglary she was recommending. Well, at least I could pay for whatever I took. My captors had been ordered by the major to return my money. The notes had stuck together but were now dry.

  I went down to the cottage, skulking from bush to bush like a fox. The door was open, for the normal inhabitants of Malpelo were as honest in peace as they were predatory in war. I hunted through the few clothes and decided on a flounced confection of white lace in payment for which I left – at a guess – about ten times what it had cost and sneaked with my loot back to the hillside where I was received with laughter, the first I had heard from Teresa. She told me I had pinched the lady’s wedding dress, carefully preserved, and asked me how much money I had left in payment.

  ‘Ah, well,’ she said when I told her. ‘She’ll cry tonight and tomorrow but she’ll probably keep quiet about her loss unless she is broke – which they usually are, the poor dears – in which case she will put down the loss to the intervention of the Mother of God.’

  She slipped the frock on over her swimsuit. It was, of course, far too large but she created a tolerable fit by rolling up the bra to form a belt. ‘And now how do we reach Puerto Santa Maria?’ she asked.

  ‘Have you friends there?’

  ‘Of course. The police so far have nothing against me.’

  ‘Well, there must be a road from here to Santa Maria.’

  ‘What shall we say?’

  ‘We are going to be married in the Cathedral. You are already dressed for it. My clothes are in Santa Maria.’

  We spent another night fighting mosquitos – thank God it was the last – walking till we were clear of the village and in open fields. Soon after sunrise a car bumped along the road, putting on speed when it saw us. I waved a handful of peso notes at him which persuaded the driver to stop. Yes, we had trusted to a friend to drive us to Santa Maria but he had never turned up. The driver told us to jump in and wouldn’t take our money. I was now growing accustomed to arrest and hourly expected it, but nobody interfered with us. Teresa was dropped at the house of a relative where she was received with tears of surprise and joy. The car then went on to my hotel where I was greeted as one returned from the dead and had food and drink pressed upon me. All my possessions were still in my room. Among strangers of Spanish birth and culture one becomes a friend in a surprisingly short time.

  As soon as my arrival was known, I was summoned to the palace. Heredia was most courteous and thanked me for my attention to his wife. Naturally she had not said a word of the theft of the Punchao in London. As for me, I had been carried off by the raid of the Retadores and escaped. Heredia knew very well that I was omitting inconvenient parts of the truth but left it at that. Teresa was not mentioned by either of us.

  ‘Have you heard of the Punchao del Dia?’ Heredia asked.

  ‘Of course. But I know no more of it than your son-in-law has told me.’

  ‘At what point did you escape from the Retadores?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I could possibly show you on the map.’

  He pulled out a large-scale map of Malpelo.

  ‘There you are.’

  ‘I don’t know the country, so it is hard to tell, Your Excellency. I hid in the sea during a battle and when all was quiet again I swam along the coast until I hit a possible landing place. There I dried myself when the sun rose and hit a road – this one, I think – and was picked up by a passing car.’

  He let it go at that, for which I was thankful. The chap I wanted to see before I talked any more was Sir Hector.

  Hector turned up in the evening at my hotel and I ordered drinks for us in the privacy of my room, where I gave him the full story.

  ‘So if the Retadores can ever find the Punchao they can stick to it,’ he said. ‘There is no evidence against you or that young wild cat. What did you think of her?’

  ‘With profound respect – which, I’m afraid, is not returned.’

  ‘God, what guts! What is her story going to be?’

  ‘Simply that she came home because she refused to do nothing in London.’

  ‘Well, she may get away with house arrest only – on condition that Heredia never finds out that she knows where the Punchao is.’

  ‘And if he does find out?’

  ‘How much agony can she endure without confessing?’

  I was appalled at the thought of that exquisite body being torn apart.

  ‘Look here! I’m going to join the Retadores.’

  ‘Don’t be a damned fool, Edmond! Work with me as my assistant and wait for your chance. The Punchao will help. It won’t like getting wet.’

  News in a small and anxious Latin capital travels as swiftly by word of mouth as in print. Next morning it was generally known that Teresa Molino Cisneros was in town having swum ashore from a Costa Rican fishing-boat and taken refuge with her cousins. The car which carried us both to Santa Maria was soon traced and the driver, when interrogated, could only say that Teresa and I had been picked up together on the road. The police, of course, wanted my opinion on that. I said that we had met on the road, both looking for transport to Puerto Santa Maria and both thankful when the driver – very much a gentleman I added – had consented to take us. Yes, I had noticed that my fellow passenger was rather splendidly dressed, but had assumed that it was the custom when visiting the capital. After that bit of wide-eyed innocence the policeman closed his notebook.

  Sir Hector immediately put me to work, studying the line of an imaginary canal which had once led the tropical rains down to the Pacific. He thought it unlikely that there would be any questions from amateur or professional archaeologists, but provided me with convincing answers if there were. He gave me a foreman, three labourers, a cook and a tent and there I remained for a futile but enjoyable week.

  Once I rode down the hill to dine with Hector. Meanwhile the two shafts which we had dug to reach bedrock were visited during the night, presumably by the secret police. Hector had underrated the President’s interest. His Excellency was not in search of the Punchao, which he believed was now in the possession of the Retadores, but of the motives of his son-in-law and the unlikely appearance of Teresa Molino from the sea.

  Teresa knew where I was to be found through my cook. How Heredia managed to govern Malpelo at all when at least one in five of the inhabitants was an agent of the Retadores was a mystery – or would have been unless the loyalty of his army was secured by loot, rape and an unfailing trickle of American arms. Our dig was only a valley away from the hacienda of Teresa’s cousins where she had taken refuge. Whether Hector had chosen it from half a dozen other possible sites I do not know, but his probable reason was that she knew the exact hiding-place of the Punchao whereas I, having no map of the country in my head, was vague and would have to ask questions. He also, I fear, did not give a damn what happened to her.

  It was after supper and the men, after asking my permission and wishing me goodnight, had walked off to the taverna at the head of the v
alley when I heard the gentle beat of a horse’s hooves coming up from the sea. I slid off my chair into the long grass and waited. The lamp showed I was at home but not where I was; a reasonable precaution. When the unknown rider dismounted, I showed myself and asked what brought her.

  ‘To see if you are on anybody’s side beyond your own,’ she replied.

  ‘I am too ignorant of what the sides stand for, señorita,’ I replied. ‘When I think of Heredia’s methods of government, I am all for a revolution, but from what I have seen of your Retadores I doubt whether they are likely to be much better when in power.’

  ‘What would you do with the Punchao?’

  ‘After a reasonable interlude I would put it back in the museum with an armed guard.’

  ‘It must be destroyed.’

  ‘Don’t tell it so.’

  ‘You are absurd.’

  ‘Not absurd. Merely respectful. It hasn’t finished with me yet.’

  ‘Then the sooner you get out of Malpelo the better.’

  ‘I entirely agree, but I think I shall be lucky if I am allowed to get out before His Excellency has got the full story from a prisoner – if, that is, the dozens of prisoners can still talk. By the way, who knows that you have visited me?’

  ‘Nobody that I cannot trust.’

  ‘Then you are very lucky. I cannot trust anyone. There is Hector who is defending his mother-in-law. There is you who would cheerfully see me drawn and quartered if it would help to keep the Punchao out of Heredia’s hands. There is the British Consul-General who would gladly ship me home to be gaoled by British police. And, now I come to think of it, there is that unfortunate lass whose wedding dress I stole.’

  ‘You paid for it.’

  ‘That was a miracle and doesn’t count.’