"Then you were hurt?"
"I told her I knew a good doctor," she said and smiled and pulled the sheet off to show the bandage round her left knee.
"Clara, I must take it off and see..."
"Oh, it can wait," she said. "You love me a little?" She corrected herself quickly, "Do you want to make love to me?"
"Plenty of time for that. Lie still and let me take the bandage off."
He tried to be as gentle as possible, but he knew he must be hurting her. She lay quiet without complaint, and he thought of some of his bourgeois patients who would have persuaded themselves that the pain was unbearable; they might even have faulted from fear or to win his attention. "Good peasant stock," he said with admiration.
"What do you mean?"
"You are a brave girl."
"But that cut is nothing. You should see what men do to themselves in the fields when they cut cane. I have seen a boy with half his foot cut off." She asked casually, as though she were making polite conversation about a relative whom they had in common, "Is there any news yet of Charley?"
"No."
"Do you still think he may be alive?"
"I am pretty sure of it," he said.
"Then you 'have' had news?"
"I have talked to Colonel Perez again. And I have been to Buenos Aires today to see the Ambassador."
"But what shall we do if he comes back?"
"Do? I suppose what we are doing now. What else?" He finished retying the bandage. "We shall go on just as we always did. I shall come to see you at the camp, and Charley will go farming." It was as though he were describing some life which had been pleasant enough once, but in which he no longer quite believed.
"It was good seeing the girls again at Señora Sanchez'. I told them I had a lover. Of course I did not tell them who."
"I'm surprised they didn't know. Everybody in this town seems to know except poor Charley."
"Why do you call him poor Charley? He was happy. I always did what he wanted me to do."
"What did he want?"
"Not very much. Not very often. It was boring, Eduardo. I have not the words to tell you how boring it was. He was kind and careful of me. He never hurt me like you hurt me. Sometimes I say thank you to Our Lord and Our Blessed Lady that it is your child which is stuck in me here, not his. What sort of child would have come out if it had belonged to Charley? The child of an old man. I would have wanted to strangle it at birth."
"Charley would make a better father than I could ever be."
"He cannot do one thing better than you can."
Oh yes, he can, Doctor Plarr thought, he can die better, and that is quite something.
She put out a hand and touched him on the cheek—he could feel the nerves through her fingertips. She had never caressed him like that before. A face was part of the forbidden territory of tenderness, and the purity of the gesture shocked him as much as though a young girl had touched his sex. He withdrew quickly. She said, "Do you remember that time at the camp when I told you I was pretending? But, 'caro', I was not pretending. Now when you make love to me I pretend. I pretend I feel nothing. I bite my lip so as to pretend. Is it because I love you, Eduardo? Do you think I love you?" She added with a humility which put him on his guard as much as a demand, "I am sorry. I did not really mean that... It makes no difference, does it?"
No difference? How could he begin to explain to her the vast extent of the difference? "Love" was a claim which he wouldn't meet, a responsibility he would refuse to accept, a demand... So many times his mother had used the word when he was a child; it was like the threat of an armed robber, "Put up your hands or else..." Something was always asked in return: obedience, an apology, a kiss which one had no desire to give. Perhaps he had loved his father all the more because he had never used the word or asked for anything. He could remember only a single kiss on the quay at Asunción and that was the kind of kiss one man can give to another. It was like the formal kiss he had seen French generals give in photographs after they have presented a decoration. It claimed nothing. His father would sometimes pull at his hair or tap him on his cheek. The English phrase "Old fellow" was the nearest that he ever came to an endearment. He remembered his mother, as she wept in the cabin while the ship pulled into the current, telling him, "I have only you to love me now"; she had reached at him from her bunk, repeating "Darling, my darling boy," as Margarita had reached at him years later from her bed, before Señor Vallejo had come to take his place, and he remembered how Margarita had called him "the love of my life" as his mother had sometimes called him "My only boy." He felt no belief at all in sexual love, but lying awake in the overcrowded flat in Buenos Aires he had sometimes recalled, as his mother's footsteps creaked toward the privy, the illicit nocturnal sounds which he had heard on the estancia in Paraguay—the tiny reverberations of a muffled knock, strange tiptoes on the floor below, whispers from the cellar, a gunshot which rang out an urgent warning from far away across the fields—those had been the signals of a genuine tenderness, a compassion deep enough for his father to be prepared to die for it. Was that love? Did Léon feel love? Even Aquino?
"Eduardo," he came back from far away to hear her imploring him, "I will say anything you want. I did not mean to make you angry. What do you want, Eduardo? Tell me. Please. What do you want? I want to know what you want, but how can I know if I do not understand?"
"Charley is simpler, isn't he?"
"Eduardo, will you always be angry if I love you? I swear it won't make any difference. I will stay with Charley. I will come only when you want me just like at the house."
He was startled by the doorbell which rang and stopped and rang again. He hesitated to go. Why hesitate? Hardly a week passed without a telephone call or a ring at the door during the night. "Lie quiet," he said, "it is only a patient." He went into the hall and looked through the spyhole in the door, but no one was visible in the darkness of the stairhead. He felt he was back in the Paraguay of his childhood. How often his father must have called out before a bolted door as he called now, "Who is it?" trying to make the intonation sound firm.
"The police."
He unlocked the door and found himself face to face with Colonel Perez. "May I come in?"
"When you say 'Police' how can I refuse?" Doctor Plarr asked. "If you had said 'Perez' I might have told you, since you are a friend, to call tomorrow morning, at a better time."
"It was because we are good friends that I said 'Police' to warn you this is an official call."
"Too official for a drink?"
"No, it has not reached that point yet."
Doctor Plarr led Colonel Perez to his consulting room and brought out two whiskies of the Argentinian mark. He said, "I keep the little genuine Scotch I have for social visits."
"Yes, I understand. And your meeting with Doctor Saavedra tonight, that I suppose was purely social?"
"Are you having me watched?"
"Not until now. Perhaps I ought to have done so earlier. Someone on 'El Litoral' told me of your telephone call tonight, and of course the cables you left at the hotel interested me when they showed them to me. There is no such thing in this city as an Anglo-Argentinian Club, is there?"
"No. Did the cables go off?"
"Why not? There was no harm in them. But then there was the lie you told me yesterday... You seem to be very mixed up in this affair, doctor."
"You are right of course, if you mean I'm doing my best to have Fortnum released, but surely both of us are working for that."
"There is quite a difference, doctor. I am not really interested in Fortnum, only in his kidnappers. I would prefer the blackmail to be unsuccessful, because it would discourage others. You on the other hand want the blackmail to succeed. Of course—it is only natural—I would like to win the game both ways, to save Señor Fortnum. Are you alone here?"
"Yes. Why?"
"I was looking out of the window and I thought I saw a light go off in the next room."
"It wa
s a car passing by the river road."
"Yes. Perhaps." He drank his whisky slowly. Doctor Plarr had an odd impression that he was at a loss for words. "Do you really believe, doctor, these men can get your father released?"
"Well, prisoners have been released by the same method."
"Not in return for a mere Honorary Consul."
"Even an Honorary Consul is human—he has the right to live. The British Government would not want him murdered."
"It does not depend on the British Government, it depends on the General, and I doubt if the General worries much about any human life. Except his own, of course."
"He depends on American aid. If they insist..."
"Yes, but he already gives the Yankees something in return which they value a great deal more than an English Honorary Consul. The General has one great quality, like Papa Doc used to have in Haiti. He is anti-communist. Are you quite sure you are alone, doctor?"
"Of course."
"It was only... I thought I heard... well, never mind. Are you a communist, doctor?"
"No. I have always found Marx unreadable. Like most economics. But you really believe these kidnappers are communist? It is not only communists who are against tyranny and torture."
"Some of the men they want released are communist—or so the General claims."
"My father is not."
"Then you do really believe he is still alive?"
The telephone rang out at Doctor Plarr's elbow. He lifted the receiver unwillingly. A voice which he recognized as Léon's said, "Something has happened. We need you urgently. We have been trying all day..."
"It is so very urgent? I have a friend drinking with me."
"Are you under arrest?" the voice whispered up the line.
"Not for the moment."
Colonel Perez leaned forward, watching him, trying to hear.
"It is too late to telephone me. Yes, yes, I know. A little fear is quite natural under the circumstances, but the temperature of a child always runs high. Give her two more aspirin."
"I will call you again in fifteen minutes."
"I hope you will not find it necessary. Ring me up tomorrow morning but not too early. I have had a long day, I have been to Buenos Aires." He added with his eye on Colonel Perez, "I want to get to bed."
"In fifteen minutes," the voice of Léon repeated. Doctor Plarr put down the receiver.
"Who was that?" Perez asked. "Oh, forgive me, I get into the habit of asking questions. It is a police vice."
"Only a worried parent," Doctor Plarr said.
"I thought I heard a man's voice."
"Yes. The father. Men are always much more worried about their children than women. The mother is in Buenos Aires shopping. What were we talking about, colonel?"
"Your father. It is strange that these men included his name in their list. There are so many others who would be much more useful to them. Younger men. Your father must be quite an old man now. It almost looks as though they were paying for some help you could give them..." He finished his sentence with a vague gesture.
"What could I do for them?"
"All the publicity you are trying to arrange—it's useful to them. It is something they cannot do for themselves. They do not want to kill the man. His death would be a sort of defeat. And then—it occurred to me only today, I am a slow thinker—they knew what the papers never printed—the real program the Governor had made for the Ambassador's visit. It is funny how something so obvious escaped me for so long. They must have received information, confidential information."
"Perhaps. But not from me. I am not in the Governor's confidence."
"No, but Señor Fortnum knew and he might have told you. Or Señora Fortnum. It is not an unusual thing for a woman to mention to her lover when her husband is going to be away."
"You make me out a Don Juan with my patients, colonel. I might be afraid of a husband in England, but here the General Medical Council does not operate. I hope you have not been bothering Señora Fortnum?"
"I wanted to have a word with her, but she was not at the camp. This evening she visited the Sanchez house. Then she went to the Consulate, but she is not there now. I was a little anxious at first because Señor Fortnum's Land Rover was found by the road damaged—poor man, he has had two cars smashed in two days. I was glad to hear she had been with Señora Sanchez and that her injuries were only small ones. You have been attending a patient, doctor, I think? Your right sleeve is turned up."
Doctor Plarr pushed the telephone away from him. He was afraid it might speak to him again too soon. He said, "How observant you are, colonel. I did not trust Señora Sanchez as a doctor. Clara is with me here."
"And I was right too about your lies yesterday."
"An affair always involves a few lies."
"I am sorry to have interrupted you, doctor, but it was the lies which bothered me. After all we are old friends. We have even shared a few adventures in our time. Señora Escobar, for example."
"Yes, I remember. I told you I was leaving her and the coast was—nearly—clear. I never understood why in the end she preferred Vallejo to you."
"She did not trust my motives. The common fate of a policeman. You see Señor Escobar has a landing strip on his 'estancia' in the Chaco. Probably whisky and cigarettes come out of Paraguay by that route."
"A public benefactor."
"Yes, of course I would never have interfered with him. I hope those aspirins work. You will not want to be interrupted again." Colonel Perez drained his whisky and stood up. "You have relieved my mind a great deal. Of course I understand now why you would want Señor Fortnum released. A husband is of great importance in a love affair. He is a way of escape when an affair begins to get boring. No one would wish to leave a woman quite alone. Well, we shall have to try and save Señor Fortnum for you—and capture his kidnappers too. They will know what to do with them on the other side of the river."
Doctor Plarr went with him to the door. "I am glad you are feeling happier about me."
"Secrets always smell bad to a policeman, even innocent secrets. We are trained, like a dog with cannabis, to scent them out. Take my advice, doctor, you have really done enough now, so please do not interfere any more. We have always been friendly, but if you meddle in this affair, you must look out for yourself. I will shoot first and send a wreath later."
"You sound a bit like Al Capone."
"Yes. Capone too supported order in his own way." He opened the door and hesitated for a moment on the dark landing, as though something important had slipped his memory. "There is one more thing I ought perhaps to have told you earlier. I do have news of your father. From the Chief of Police in Asunción. Naturally we checked with him all the names that the kidnappers put on their list. Your father was killed more than a year ago. He tried to escape with another man—a man called Aquino Ribera—but he was too old and too slow. He could not make it and he was abandoned. You see—it is no good thinking there is anything you can do to help him now. Goodnight, doctor. I am sorry to bring you bad news, but at any rate I leave you with a woman. A woman is the best comforter a man can have."
The telephone began to sound again, almost as soon as the door closed.
Doctor Plarr thought: Léon cheated me. He has been lying to me all along in order to get my help. I won't answer the telephone. Let them get out of their own mess in their own way. Not for a moment did it occur to him that it might be Colonel Perez who had lied. The police were strong enough to speak the truth.
The bell rang and rang as he stood stubbornly in the hall, and then whoever was calling him gave it up. For all he knew this time it might have been one of his patients, and in the accusing silence he began to feel guilt for his egoism: it was like the silence after a suicide's cry for help. There was silence in the bedroom too. From Clara a little while ago had come an appeal. He had walked away from that too.
The small patch of marble floor on which he stood seemed like the edge of an abyss; he could not move one st
ep in either direction without falling deeper into the darkness of involvement or guilt. He stood and listened to the silence—in the flat where Clara lay, in the midnight street outside where a police car would now be moving home, in the 'barrio popular' where something must have happened among the huts of mud and tin. Silence, like a thin rain, blew across the great river into the world-abandoned republic where his father was lying dead in the deepest silence of all—"He was too old and slow. He couldn't make it and they abandoned him." He felt giddy on his ledge of marble parquet. He couldn't stand motionless for ever. Again the telephone rang and he moved back into his office.
Léon's voice spoke. "What has happened?"
"I had a visitor."
"The police?"
"Yes."
"You are alone now?"
"Yes. Alone."
"Where have you been all day?"
"In Buenos Aires."
"But we tried to get you last night."
"I was called out."
"And this morning at six."
"I couldn't sleep. I took a walk by the river. You said you wouldn't need me any more."
"Your patient needs you now. Go down to the river and stand near the Coca-Cola stall. We can see if anyone is watching. If the road is clear we will pick you up."
"I have just had news of my father. From Colonel Perez. Is it true?"
"What news?"
"That he made a break, but he was too slow, and you abandoned him."
He thought: if I detect one lie over the telephone—even a hesitation—I will put the receiver down, and I will never answer again.
Léon said, "Yes. I am sorry. It is true. I could not tell you before. We needed your help."
"And my father is dead?"
"Yes. They shot him at once. As he lay on the ground."
"You could have told me."
"Perhaps, but we could not take the risk."
Lean's voice reached him as though across an immeasurable distance, "Will you come?"
"Oh yes," Doctor Plarr said, "111 come." He put down the receiver and went into the bedroom. He turned on the light and saw Clara, her eyes wide open, watching him.
The Honorary Consul Page 18
