‘And if I asked you to go with me and recover the Punchao?’
‘I fear, señorita Teresa, that I could not refuse your request.’
I don’t think she had expected that reply.
‘Can you knock off work here any time?’ she asked.
‘Yes – if Hector can find an excuse.’
‘Very well. Then make your way to the little bit of a seepage where we landed and wait for me.’
‘Are you likely to be long?’
‘Get Hector to provide you with a car. I shall start tomorrow by horse. It will take me about two days to reach the village of Nueva Beria as it is called. I am going to return the wedding dress secretly, and then I shall find you.’
‘Good God, why take the risk?’
‘So long as no one sees me, it will all be a part of the miracle.’
‘And then?’
‘You and I recover the Punchao and take it to the headquarters of the Retadores. That is where I was going when I swam ashore.’
‘You haven’t a chance against Heredia’s secret police.’
‘I do, so long as Heredia’s thugs do not see me leave my cousin’s house and believe I am still there. I shall be dressed as a boy.’
‘Papers?’
‘All in order. I am not an archaeologist, but is there any reason why the channel of the little seepage where we went ashore should not have been artificial?’
‘None except that it wasn’t.’
‘Never mind that. You are looking for the chisel marks of the Maya. Keep looking until I turn up. Agreed?’
Well, it was not going to be as easy as she thought. Hector could provide a car and some reasonably impressive story, but as a foreigner I should attract the attention of the mayor – if the village was big enough to have one – and of the district police. The only safe solution was to lay in supplies and remain in hiding. We could presumably find an overland route to the site of the battle and the waterfall without swimming.
‘Suppose I arrive long after you?’ I asked. ‘Where are you going to be?’
‘I haven’t the least idea. Somewhere not far from the point where we took the car. We came to the road through pretty thick cover, you remember.’
She rode away into the darkness, leaving me full of doubt. My dominating fear was that the battlefield would not yet be clear of saleable loot, and yet we were proposing to enter it without being seen by scavengers or women searching for their dead.
Next day I rode down into Puerto Santa Maria, ostensibly to consult Hector about wholly imaginary chisel marks but really to put him in the picture. He thought that our private expedition would end in murder and rape and that as the weather was due to break we could never repeat our swim round the point with or without the added weight of the Punchao.
‘And if you recover it, where are you going to deliver it?’
‘The headquarters of the Retadores.’
‘Which is never the same from one week to the next. What would your Teresa think if you delivered it to me?’
‘I don’t know. Probably that you would hand it to Heredia or Juana and then we should be back at the beginning with a change of watchmaker, a bigger guard and quite enormously bigger lies from Juana.’
‘Can’t Teresa do this job alone?’
‘To be drowned or captured and shot?’
‘Ah, well, if you feel so strongly about it. And what do you propose to do if both of you get away with it?’
‘Return quietly to your dig if you leave the tent in place and say that your report of carved stones was just local nonsense.’
‘Where did we get it from?’
‘I leave that to you.’
Next day, Hector paid off the workmen and borrowed a car from the palace. Its number plate protected me from all police inspection. The driver dropped me in the dusk beyond the scattered houses of Nueva Beria. The calling of a wild cat reminded me that I was utterly alone. There was no other sound but the occasional, distant grumble of the sea as the wind, still uncertain, turned to the west. It occurred to me for the first time – there had been so much else to think about – that Teresa and I had scrambled ashore at the bottom of the tide.
I installed myself fairly comfortably in a hollow which allowed a glimpse of the end of the road and the roof of the cottage from which divinity had removed a wedding dress and was about to return it, or perhaps had already done so. The first light of dawn revealed nothing but a tumble of stone where the road ended. There was no telling what divine compassion had been up to, and nothing I could do except wait for the appearance of a boy.
All day there was no sign of Teresa or of any of the inhabitants of Nueva Beria. Evidently the end of the road was the end of civilisation. There must be a way to the beach of the battle but clearly it swung round behind one of the two promontories and joined the path by which our force had arrived. The mountain gun which had shelled and utterly defeated us must have come up this way. Either the path was almost invisible or we had been so anxious to reach fresh water that our late commander had decided to rest the column. I decided to search for this path, for it offered an escape route if ever Teresa and I met each other and recovered the Punchao. Provided this lonely and uncultivated spot was as empty as it seemed we could be away before dawn. Extreme care was all that was needed: to see before we were seen.
While the light lasted, I crawled cautiously up the slope of the southern hill from which I could look down on the battlefield. The Heredistas had lightly buried their dead and had thrown ours into the sea assuming that the tide would carry them away. It had, and then successive high tides had brought them back again. Nobody had bothered to bury them, for none of them belonged to Nueva Beria and the priests of the province were too busy with half-hearted denunciations of violence.
The wind began to moan down the little valley carrying the stench of the dead whom the tides had not reached. In the dusk, a woman was turning over the corpses to look at their faces. She had a puzzled child following her about. How had they got there? Following far behind our retreat, perhaps, refusing to be evacuated with the mob. At last she lay down and the boy said something which brought the tears again. I felt my own cheeks wet in sympathy. The solitary, searching woman would have torn the heart out of civil war.
The boy, I think, saw me but made no sign of it. Life and death to him were now intermingled. Was it a brother or his father for whom the woman was searching? The pair paid no attention to me as I slid down from another world. The waterfall splashed down in front of me and I passed through it. Digging with my hands I soon found the Punchao. Reflecting the faint light of the moon, its little stars also seemed to be weeping.
I climbed up the slope which we had all dashed down to drink and to cool our feet. A rougher track went straight on. Evidently it had been the route from another village to the sea before the road to Nueva Beria was built.
I went some way down it, following the tracks of the mountain gun which had been hauled back to the temporary camp of the Heredista main body. There was no point in going too far from the rendezvous agreed with Teresa, so I turned back, passing the head of the Valley of Death, and took position in thick cover not far from the point where we had waylaid the car. There I slept a little till sunrise woke me and then set out for a patch of tall grass from which I could see without being seen. Teresa came from the direction of Nueva Beria where she had spent a couple of nights in a tumble-down stable with her horse. When I showed myself, the first thing she said was that the Punchao had gone from the waterfall.
‘I know. I have it.’
I undid my shirt and showed it hanging on my chest in the place where Juana had intended it to be when she dined at Buckingham Palace – a most improbable destination considering that she would have been without a husband and Her Majesty would have had to pass a note to a secretary to find out where in the hell Malpelo was. In some ways Juana was still the movie actress, magnificent no doubt as a gracious hostess but as a guest in a foreign land too a
nxious to impress.
‘My horse is in Nueva Beria,’ she said. ‘Give me the Punchao and I shall be off at once.’
‘You knew where the headquarters of the Retadores was. But is it still there?’
‘I shall be told where it has gone. There must be someone left behind at their former camp who can tell me.’ ‘How will you identify yourself?’
‘I shall be recognised.’
‘Provided there is someone at the new camp who escaped from the massacre at the old.’
‘Of course there will be.’
‘What would he be paid if he buried you unobtrusively and took the Punchao straight to Heredia?’
‘None of us would be so foul.’
‘All angels, are you?’
‘You must not give it to Sir Hector.’
‘I have not decided.’
‘You shall not sell it back to Juana. Hand it over!’
She was so angry with me that she pulled a little .22 automatic out of the unfamiliar trouser pocket. I caught her wrist just in time before she could raise it and the bullet hit the ground between us.
‘Just what I needed,’ I said. ‘But do remember not to pull it out of your trouser pocket with the safety catch off. Now go back to your horse and your family and leave the rest to me. Whatever I do will be wrong but well-meaning.’
She burst into tears of frustration as I handed the pistol back to her. Her last words to me before striding away to recover her horse were:
‘Go to hell!’
I was getting weary of the Punchao. It was also extremely uncomfortable. I can only assume that women seldom wear anything of that weight. The more I thought about it, the less I knew what to do with it. I wanted to hand it over to the Retadores, but the chance of me reaching their headquarters was slim. I had first to find them and then produce the Punchao before I was stripped and shot. Hector was the only hope and I was by no means certain that I could trust him not to return it secretly to his mother-in-law. Of course I could always bury it again but the Retadores would be informed through my cook or Teresa that it was, or had been, in my possession.
By this time, I knew the road back to Puerto Santa Maria and decided to walk for three nights to avoid being stopped and questioned. On arrival it might be possible to discover a fishing-boat or light aircraft and get out of the country much as Teresa had got in. It was an appalling thought that on my chest I carried the hopes of permanent revolution together with Heredia’s emblem to prevent it.
Chapter Five
I had no trouble on the way and found my tent and the cook-house still in place. I thought it very likely that Teresa or my former cook would pay me a cautious visit while I was asleep – and I was certainly going to sleep for ten good hours – so I took the precaution of lifting the Punchao off my neck, wrapping it in the sweat-soaked shirt I had worn for four days, and hiding it in the thick, fleshy leaves woven round an old bird’s nest instead of burying it in the ground which they would carefully explore. The only way of reaching the nest was by climbing a weaker, smaller tree with crowded branches and by swinging like an incompetent ape to an overhanging branch of the vulture’s tree.
Nobody woke me or left any tracks. I am ashamed to say that in the clear light of morning I hoped that the Punchao would have disappeared. It hadn’t.
I walked down to the nearest village and called Hector to demand a meeting. He said that we should not hurry it. His wife, the formidable Carlota, had arrived on a visit to her father. Quite what she wanted he did not know, but it would be wise if he and I first met at, say, the museum. That would give us an excellent excuse for a private talk.
I was received by the permanent staff of the museum with profound respect. They felt a bit lonely and leaderless, for the curator had gone off to join the Retadores, a typical gesture of intellectuals. Yes, Don Hector was expecting me. There was a knife of unknown metal that he wished to discuss, which he believed had been found near Nueva Beria. I am inclined to think that archaeologists always have a high-sounding excuse ready for any activity.
I was escorted up to the curator’s office where Hector sat professionally with a scrap of flint on the end of a microscope.
‘Ah, Hawkins, just the chap I wanted,’ he said. ‘What do you think of this?’
‘What am I supposed to think of it?’
‘You found it in the rubble at the end of the road two metres below the original level and it is obviously worked.’
‘Well, I’m not sure what date that would make it, but they hadn’t got matches. I understand that Doña Carlota has arrived. How much does she know?’
‘Nothing but a four-line report of the battle in The Times. Nothing at all about the Punchao which was the chief reason for it. Nobody except that wretched girl knows yet that you recaptured it and there is no reason why she should be mentioned at all.’
‘Which side will your wife be on when she has the whole story?’
‘Her father’s, of course. She doesn’t approve of his methods but she would never agree to his being deprived of the Punchao.’
Before I had an opportunity to tell him of my adventures and that I had the Punchao, we heard the solemn footsteps of, apparently, all three of the assistant curators escorting Doña Carlota down the passage. The door was thrown open. She was evidently surprised to find me in her husband’s office.
‘Ah … Mr … er …’ she began. ‘Excuse me, but what is your name now?’
‘Edmond Hawkins, as it has always been, Doña Carlota.’
‘My husband tells me that you are now the only person who knows where the Punchao is.’
‘I wish I did, Lady McMurtrie. The Retadores captured it in their raid in the capital and displayed it when they were attacked. But after the battle the survivors apparently took it away with them.’
‘Why the hell does it matter so much to them?’ Carlota asked impatiently. ‘Anyway, it’s a horrid little country.’
I couldn’t entirely agree with her, remembering the courtesy with which all the people of Malpelo had treated me, except of course that porter of the London Retadores who was probably still in hospital. I wondered what account he had given of the broken window.
‘And a horrid little democracy, you would say?’
‘Look here, Mr Hawkins! I have a feeling that you and my husband know more than you are saying. Is there any reason why you cannot give the Punchao back to my father secretly? He would be immensely grateful and Hector and you would be the cat’s whiskers. Have you thought of that? What about a ranch on the Pacific as a reward?’
‘What about Juana?’
‘She will keep her mouth shut. You recovered the Punchao single-handed or with Hector, if you like. There is no reason why you need mention that the Punchao was ever in England. You and I have never met before.’
Well, that would take care of my future, but I did not jump at the solution. Nobody, not even Hector, knew that at that moment the Punchao was up a tree near the camp, and my instinct was that it should stay there until the position was clearer. I would not send a message to the Retadores that I had it and was eager to deliver it. I had to know more of the absolute integrity of my messenger and I was not prepared to let Heredia know that I had it. Hector? Well, if Carlota had not appeared when she did I should have told Hector all the truth and asked his advice. Anyway, I knew what it would be: to keep Heredia in power and to clip his wings if at all possible – a position by no means unknown to normal politicians in democratic parliaments everywhere.
Well, I was indecisive. I had continually in mind that poor woman searching among the dead for her vanished love, and then I would remember my pet dictator, the Father of his Country, who had at least given peace at the price of corruption. My duty – if I had one – was to bring Heredia down and restore the Punchao to its proper place as nothing more than a fascinating museum exhibit. At least I should have cleared my conscience of the first and only theft of my life.
For the time being, we left the fate of the P
unchao out of our conversation. Carlota would have made an admirable diplomat; she knew that when a seed was implanted it needed time to grow, and turned our conversation to the political aims of the Retadores. I gave her a truthful eyewitness account of the utter defeat of their troops which left the fate of the Punchao up in the air, giving both Carlota and Hector the impression that the Retadores had recovered it.
Eventually she returned to the presidential palace, leaving us alone. Hector gave a sigh of relief.
‘What I was just going to ask you when we were interrupted by my wife,’ he said, ‘is did you or didn’t you leave it behind the waterfall?’
‘When we escaped by swimming, I had to leave it. On my second visit, the battlefield was swarming with looters and I hadn’t a hope.’
That was my only deliberate lie.
‘That girl hasn’t got it?’
‘I don’t see how she could have done when she is under house arrest and the police are keeping an eye on her.’
I returned to my tent at the former dig and cooked myself a meal. I had settled down with the remains of a bottle and an excellent native cigar when I noticed a footprint which had certainly not been there when I left. I rushed to the bird’s nest. The Punchao had gone. Teresa or the cook had found it. My only deliberate lie had turned out to be something near the truth.
I realised that at last I was entirely free of any connection with the Punchao; Teresa had it and was convinced of her ability to deliver it to the Retadores. That had been my intention, too, but I was far from confident that I could carry it out. Then, should I leave Malpelo alone – politics, the civil war, the whole damned lot of them – and take the first plane to anywhere or, if my air passage were blocked by Heredia, sneak on board any available ship bound for any country and then go home and enjoy my ill-gotten gains while looking for a job.
It seems unbelievable to me now that I decided to stay on. There were, I think, two reasons. The first was my vivid memory of that poor woman searching the corpses of the Retadores for the man who had loved her. There was nothing I could ever do for her, but for the sake of her bewildered little son it had become my self-conceived duty to see that the Punchao never became the swastika of Heredia.
Face to the Sun Page 7
