‘Off we go then! Show me Pepe!’
Any intelligent dog would have taken me to Pepe’s village and her permanent home, but the ultra-intelligent Donna knew that we were hiding from danger. She led me for mile after mile through unknown country, still with the chop in her mouth, until I picked up a little stream which looked vaguely familiar and halted to look round. Yes, it was indeed familiar. We had crossed it on the way to the cave where we three and Teresa’s horse had spent the night. I petted and praised her to which she responded by waving her tail as much as to say quite undeservedly ‘How clever you are!’ I left the rest of the journey to her with confidence and was not surprised when she caught the scent of the missing couple and quickened her limping pace.
Teresa, still dressed as a boy, was lying down at the entrance to the cave.
‘Oh, thank God!’ she cried.
She kissed Donna before me – very rightly, but I noticed that I was a little jealous – and led us into the cave. Poor Pepe lay there, his leg broken below the knee and hot with fever. His first thought was of the Punchao.
‘You have it?’ he asked.
‘Yes. And safe. Forgive me, old comrade, if I do not tell you where it is. You have enough to bear. How did this happen? Are you wounded?’
‘No. A foolishness. I slipped into a crevice here, and the leg broke cleanly. The señorita would not leave me and so we sent Donna to find you.’
I felt the leg, but even the lightest touch made him squeal. The skin was not broken, but the whole wound was angry.
‘How long ago was this?’ I asked Teresa.
‘Three days ago – when we were scrambling down to the cave.’
‘Has he eaten?’
‘No. Neither of us. We were hurrying to meet you and knew you would have food wherever you were.’
Well, that’s as good a reputation to have as another.
I busied myself with the food I had brought. When it was grilled and ready, Pepe said that he could not eat and that Donna deserved to have his share.
‘Indeed she does,’ I told him. ‘And she shall share my portion with the señorita and you. I ate well last night.’
We gave Pepe a little bread dipped in gravy, but his stomach could not hold it.
‘Is there a doctor anywhere near whom we can trust?’ I asked him. ‘Remember that he will see at once that this is not a wound but an accident.’
‘There is a curandera who lives outside Ramales.’
‘Can I reach her without being seen?’
‘Yes, if you are careful, friend. She lives alone in a shack outside the village with her own little garden. We passed close to it.’
‘Her sympathies are with us?’
‘If she has any they will be with the poor.’
It was the village which Pepe had visited where a hungry Donna had stolen a hen. I had noticed such a shack and wondered at its isolation.
There was a bright half-moon and I reckoned that I could be there before dawn. I left Donna with Teresa and Pepe and started off for the little square of highly cultivated green standing half a mile or so above our patch. At the time, I had wondered at its isolation.
I reached it well before dawn and kept knocking at the door until at last the curandera appeared with a volley of curses which, if she had any power, would certainly have killed or castrated me on the spot. The door flew open, revealing a large woman of purest black, in some sort of nightgown. I wished her a formal and elaborate good morning and begged her not to curse me or send me away for I came on behalf of a friend who had broken his leg and would die if I could not bring help.
‘I believe you are the Russian who passed by here some days ago,’ she replied. ‘Go away!’
‘I am no Russian but an Englishman and I have been told by my friend Pepe that you are his only hope.’
‘And what do you want of a poor woman when it is known that all Englishmen are rich?’
‘In my home I may be, but here I am nobody.’
‘Then tell me what happened and do not lie or I shall know it.’
I saw then that whether or not her curses were effective I must treat her with the utmost respect.
‘Muy respectable señora,’ I began, and told her that there were three of us, two men and a woman, escaping from the battle and one of us had broken his leg far from anywhere.
‘Wounded, I suppose.’
‘No, I swear to you.’
‘And where is he going?’
‘That is in God’s hands. He has escaped one death and we call on your charity to help him escape from another.’
‘So what do you want from a poor black woman?’
‘Your pity, two splints and your care if you can give it without danger to yourself.’
The first segment of the sun appeared over the hill that I had crossed. She bowed to it and so did I.
‘Why did you do that?’ she asked.
‘Because I have held the Punchao del Dia in my hands.’
‘Wait! I must load my donkey.’
She returned to the house and shut the door. In five minutes she appeared again from the cultivated strip at the back with the donkey. Although a little beast, it was loaded with two splints, two pitchers of water from her own well and a sort of girth with a back rest. She locked up her house and we started off by a hardly perceptible path zig-zagging up through the bushes which was a much shorter route to the cave than that which I had followed.
We were greeted by a full-throated growl from Donna who launched herself downhill at the party. The curandera spoke four unintelligible words and Donna fell in quietly by the side of the donkey. I do not think she could have caught my scent, for the wind was the wrong way and the curandera and her donkey put up a very powerful scent between them – not of dirt but of the leaves and twigs crushed by our passage.
Teresa sprang up from the gravel of the cave.
‘What the devil have you brought?’ she asked.
‘The best doctor I could get. Did you expect her to arrive in a Hispano-Suiza?’ I was thinking of the high-powered medicos at the hotel on the Costa Brava in Spain.
‘God help him!’ she exclaimed.
‘This is the least of His servants, but He will. Señora, may I present to you the daughter of General Molinos.’
The old girl was immensely impressed by my courtesy the wrong way round. She swept a very creditable curtsey and told Teresa to have no fear.
She then washed the leg with cold water seeping from the rock and into which she threw a powder which evidently had some analgesic quality, for Pepe only occasionally gave a moan as she set and splinted the bone. We lifted him on to the donkey while Donna crouched at his good leg, regarding us with deep suspicion.
The curandera led us down her private path unseen until we reached her isolated cottage – isolated, I think, because her patients were sometimes wanted by the police. There she placed Pepe in what I might call her infirmary, a dark underground den in her garden with the entrance hidden among low, thick bushes. To judge by the little I knew of actual treatment in the Costa Brava hotel, his temperature had gone down. She had no thermometer, apparently trusting to her own sensitive fingers. Donna at any rate was satisfied and went to sleep beside her master’s primitive cot.
‘You two must stay here till dusk,’ she said.
‘Good! Can you telephone the capital for me?’
‘I do not understand the telephone. I will ask a friend to do it.’
That was awkward. I had no doubt that calls to the capital were monitored by Heredia’s police. I did not know that at the moment I was supposed to be returning from Mexico where I had gone to investigate a rumour that the Punchao was being offered for sale.
There was nothing for it but to take the risk. After all, it might not be known that I had been present at the defeat of the Retadores and had accompanied the party of mutineers whose bodies were now decorating the hillside. But a single captured prisoner who could still talk would leave no doubt that the mysteri
ous Englishman was me.
So Ramales was impossible but nothing was known against me in Nueva Beria. The inhabitants would only remember me as an English friend of Hector who had been working with him at the dig. I set off after dark and covered half the distance before weariness overtook my legs. I had not slept at all on the previous night and not much on any other.
Arriving early in the afternoon it occurred to me that the safest way of getting in touch with Hector was by telegram to the Museo Nacional. If he was not in his office then those respectful assistant curators would know where to find him and do my telephoning for me. So I went straight to the Post Office and put in an urgent telegram to Hector at the Museum:
COME TO OUR DIG SOONEST EDMONDO.
The tent, looking now a little battered, was still in place and a home for all the flies in Malpelo, so I squirted it out and waited there for Hector. He appeared on horseback in the evening, dismounted in the deepest excavation upstream and beckoned me to join him.
‘That tent might be bugged,’ he explained. ‘We aren’t living in the blessed nineteenth century any more. God, I am glad to find you alive!’
‘Any reason why I shouldn’t be?’
‘Nothing definite except that your Teresa has escaped from house arrest and was last heard of inviting government troops to mutiny. Now where were you?’
‘Over the frontier, I think.’
‘Well, that will do for the moment.’
He then told me how he had covered my disappearance by inventing the story of an appointment with the historical society of Panama while on the track of a rumour that the Punchao was going to be up for sale in Panama or Mexico. I could imagine that Carlota had asked emphatically why I had not said so before. At any rate, I was now on my way back.
While we lay on the cool grass I gave him the full story of what had really happened. He pulled out a half-bottle of the best French brandy from the palace cellars.
‘I foresaw that we were going to need this,’ he said. ‘My reaction to your story – immediate and so probably wrong – is that you should take anything larger than a rowing-boat and get out of this country. And if you see your Joan of Arc again, take her with you and drop her overboard. Now where is the Punchao?’
‘Probably still where I put it.’
‘Not talking, eh? Well, it can stay there until that bloody man, my dear father-in-law, is roasting in hell.’
‘I hope that meanwhile he is not having this conversation taped.’
‘Don’t worry about that. It’s impossible in the middle of nowhere. It will take a little while before he realises that if his Heredistas have not got the Punchao, then you have. Get out now before you can be interrogated!’
‘How? The frontier is closed tight by his army.’
‘That shouldn’t give you much trouble. And you can count on me to do whatever I can. Meanwhile, let me know where you are through my assistants as this time.’
He rode off, avoiding Nueva Beria. His quick journey from Puerto Santa Maria by a museum car was thanks to one of his assistants who had also arranged for a horse to meet him not far from the point where Teresa and I had stopped that friendly driver to take us to the capital to get married. It seemed to me to have been a dangerous proceeding excusable only by the necessity of answering my cry for help as soon as possible. But there it was. My only task now was to get over the frontier before I was stopped.
It seemed to me that my best bet was the sea, if I could bribe a fishing-boat like that which had carried Teresa to the coast. Or should I make a flying visit to the hotel where I had stayed, pick up my bag, take a taxi to the dock and be off on the first boat leaving for anywhere? My passport had not yet been confiscated. On the other hand, I disliked leaving Pepe and Donna with the curandera, to say nothing of Teresa. She had no future. The moment after Heredia’s police set eyes on my Joan of Arc she would be taken to the capital and quietly suffer the fate that dictators arranged for their opponents. No, that could not be allowed.
So I set off again on my weary way to Ramales, sneaking along on the unmistakeable tracks of the Retadores moving up to their position. Four days it took me till I was lying safely in the curandera’s cabbage patch. That one of the three was still in the infirmary was proved by a low growl from Donna. She had evidently been trained by Pepe not to make a sound loud enough to reveal their presence.
I stayed quietly where I was till a grey dawn – no splendour of the Punchao this time – and gently revealed myself to the curandera when she left the cottage to draw water.
‘What do you want, Englishman?’ she said.
‘Just to see how you all are.’
‘In another day he will be able to walk.’
‘And the Señorita Molino?’
‘Gone.’
I made no remark, and she took me down to see Pepe. Donna planted her paws on my shoulders with such a welcome that she nearly knocked me down. Her unnatural silence had not warned me to expect it. Pepe had his leg in plaster. His colour had returned. It was evident that only time was needed before the leg was as good as new.
‘Pepe, this is splendid,’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes. Another week and she will turn me loose on a crutch. But where shall I go? I cannot walk all the way to my village.’
‘If you have a good story, Señor McMurtrie will back it up. Now did the Señorita say where she was going?’
‘She said she was going to play polo.’
It took a few seconds for memory to recall the polo player. Of course! The polite Don Felipe Montes who had interrogated me in London! He might indeed be useful in Malpelo now that I was risking my life on his side to say nothing of my appendages such as teeth, joints and testicles.
‘Curandera de mi alma, do you have any knowledge of a certain Don Felipe Montes?’
‘I should say so, but I am told he is in London.’
‘And if he were in Malpelo where would I find him?’
‘I do not know, Señor Ingles, and if you ask no one would tell you.’
‘That is a pity. Well, I will be on my way.’
I pulled out my remaining money – still quite a lot for a fugitive – and gave her ten thousand pesos.
She shook her fine black head and said it was too much.
‘Nothing is too much for your kindness and trust, señora. All I ask of you is to see that our Pepe finds transport to his home.’
Leaving those two friends after embracing them both, I felt for the first time utterly alone with police and military howling for my blood. And where was Teresa? Dressed as a boy or as herself? At the head of a ragged band of fugitives or wandering from cave to cave or bush to bush for which she was entirely unfitted? If I knew the answer I could find her. But the answer was obvious. She was bound for the capital where the underground organisation of Retadores would make her disappear. And why so much anxiety for Teresa when I ought to be thinking of the Punchao? To hell with the Punchao! It could stay where it was till the tree died and revealed its secret to the next generation.
Then I must reach Puerto Santa Maria very quickly before Heredia could piece together his confusing intelligence report. My only hope would be that improbable fishing-boat or a permanent disguise in the city slums. A car then? There must be a number of them just asking to be stolen, but I was pretty sure to be stopped anywhere on the road which must still be picketed by police on the look-out for Retadores escaping from the destruction of their army. Horse, bicycle and foot were all too slow.
Wandering cautiously parallel to the river I came upon the ration truck with the remains of its cargo strewn about the grass, lopsided, abandoned, desolate as any other detritus of war. Evidently, the Heredistas had left it to be recovered later on when all military waste had been buried or collected. It looked abandoned among its scattered boxes and sacks and the deep muddy footprints of men and the straining horse. I let it slide down the hill and then started the engine. Perfect. Not a hiccup. I took the cap, tunic and papers of a dead Heredista who
should have been buried much deeper and we were away on the road to Nueva Beria and the capital.
I was waved through the first two road controls without difficulty; speaking as little as possible since my accent – as unmistakeable as that of the North American in England – could have led to questioning. My troubles began outside Puerto Santa Maria when I was ordered to get out and show my papers at the bridge over a river. I handed them over and before the corporal had a chance to look at them said that I was bursting for a shit and bolted for the latrine which, as a notice informed me, was just round the corner.
The luck of the Hawkins was in. The arrangements were primitive. I jumped into the first compartment, locked the door, scaled the dividing partition into the next stall and was away. I really do not know what an escaping criminal would do without public lavatories. I reckoned I would have a couple of minutes before the corporal got tired of waiting, hammered on the door, got no reply and suspected that he had been tricked. By that time I was back in the cab of my truck and over the bridge. I even recovered my papers which the corporal had left on his desk while hammering at the door. I threw cap and tunic into the river and walked away a free civilian looking as scruffy as any other.
Now where to go? It had to be one of the poorest districts, and while looking for it I arrived at the fishing quay. Every group of two or three boats had a police guard. To get on board clandestinely was impossible. I was amazed at the efficiency with which the landing of fish seemed to be controlled. Heredia had obviously disciplined the fish market. An inspector accompanied by two assistants was going from boat to boat checking invoices and taking notes of approximate catch. However, he might have his price if I could get him alone and I had enough money. I watched him talking to a fishing captain who was evidently alarmed at the presence of such a high-powered inspector looking as if he had just bought his uniform from an expensive naval outfitter.
I walked a little way up the quay and saw that this was the only boat in the group which had finished discharging and was ready for sea. I tried to recall a thought which had flickered through my head and been ignored as fanciful comment: that the inspector looked as if he had just bought his uniform from an expensive outfitter. He had, by God! I took a close look at the naval beard.
Face to the Sun Page 10
