"If they would leave us alone..." Pablo complained.
"They want to break our nerve," Aquino said.
Father Rivas left them abruptly. He carried his revolver with him.
***
Charley Fortnum lay on the coffin. His eyes were open and he stared up at the mud roof. "Have you come to liquidate me, Father?" he asked.
Father Rivas had a look of shyness or perhaps shame. He moved a few steps into the room. He said, "No. No. Not that. Not yet. I thought there might be something you needed."
"I still have some whisky left."
"You heard their loudspeaker. They will be coming for you soon."
"And then you will kill me?"
"Those are my orders, Señor Fortnum."
"I thought a priest took his orders from the Church, Father. Oh, I forgot. You don't belong any more, do you? All the same you were saying a Mass. I'm not much of a Catholic, but I didn't feel inclined to attend it. It's not exactly a holiday of obligation. Not for me."
"I remembered you at the altar, Señor Fortnum," Father Rivas said with awkward formality, as though he were addressing a bourgeois parishioner. The phrase came from a language which had grown rusty during the last years.
"I'd rather you forgot me, Father."
"I shall never be allowed to do that," Father Rivas said.
Charley Fortnum noticed with surprise that the man was close to tears. He said, "What's the matter, Father?"
"I never believed it would come to this. You see—if it had been the American Ambassador—they would have given way. And I would have saved ten men's lives. I never believed I would have to take a life."
"Why did they ever choose you as a leader?"
"El Tigre thought he could trust me."
"Well, he can, can't he?"
"I don't know now. I don't know."
Does a condemned man always have to comfort his executioner? Charley Fortnum wondered. He said, "Is there anything I can do for you, Father?"
The man looked at him with an expression of hope, like a dog who thinks he has heard the word "walk." He shuffled a step nearer. Charley Fortnum remembered the boy at school with protuberant ears whom Mason used to bully. He said, "I am sorry..." Sorry for what? For failing to be the American Ambassador?
The man said, "I know how hard it must be for you. Lying there. Waiting. Perhaps if you could prepare yourself a little... that might take your mind off..."
"You mean confess?"
"Yes." He explained, "In an emergency... even I..."
"But I'm no good as a penitent, Father. I haven't confessed in thirty years. Not since my first marriage anyway—which wasn't a marriage. You'd better look to the others."
"I have done all I can for them."
"After such a long time... it's impossible... I haven't enough belief. I would be ashamed to speak all those pious words, Father, even if I remembered them."
"You would feel no shame now if you had no belief. And you need not say them to me aloud, Señor Fortnum. Only make an act of contrition. In silence. To yourself. That is enough. We have so little time. Just an act of contrition," he pleaded as though he were asking for the price of a meal.
"But I've told you, I've forgotten the words."
The man came two steps nearer, as if he were gathering a bit of courage or hope. Perhaps he hoped to be offered enough cash for a piece of bread.
"Just say you are sorry and try to mean it."
"Oh, I'm sorry for a lot of things, Father. Not the whisky though." He picked the bottle up, scrutinized what was left and put it down again. "It's a difficult life. A man has to have one sort of drug or another."
"Forget the whisky. There must be other things. I only ask you to say—I am sorry for breaking a rule."
"I don't even remember what rules I've broken. There are so many damned rules."
"I have broken the rules too, Señor Fortnum. But I am not sorry I took Marta. I am not sorry I am here with these men. This revolver—one cannot always swing a censer up and down or sprinkle holy water. But if there was another priest here I would say to hurt, yes I am sorry. I am sorry I did not live in an age when the rules of the Church seemed more easy to keep—or in some future when perhaps they will be changed or not seem so hard. There is one thing I can easily say. Perhaps you could say it too. I am sorry not to have had more patience. Failures like ours are often just failures of hope. Please—cannot you say you are sorry you did not have more hope?"
The man obviously needed comfort and Charley Fortnum gave him all he could. "Yes, I suppose I could go about as far as that, Father."
Father, Father, Father. The word repeated itself in his mind. He had a vision of his father sitting bewildered, not understanding, not recognizing him, by the dumbwaiter, while he lay on the ground and the horse stood over him. Poor bugger, he thought.
Father Rivas finished the words of absolution. He said, "Perhaps I will have a drink with you now—a small one."
"Thank you, Father," Charley Fortnum said. "I'm a lot luckier than you are. There's no one to give you absolution."
***
"I only saw your father for a few minutes once a day," Aquino said, "when we walked around the yard. Sometimes..." He broke off to listen to the loudspeaker from the trees outside. The voice said, "You have only fifteen minutes left."
"The last quarter of an hour has gone a bit too quickly for my taste," Doctor Plarr commented.
"Will they begin to count out the minutes now? I wish they would let us die quietly."
"Tell me a little more about my father."
"He was a fine old man."
"During the few minutes you had with him," Doctor Plarr asked, "what did you talk about?"
"We never had time to talk of anything much. A guard was always there. He walked beside us. He would greet me—very formally and affectionately like a father greeting his son—and I—well, I had a great respect for him, you understand. There would always be a spell of silence—you know how it is with a caballero like that. I would wait for him to speak first. Then the guard would shout at us and push us apart."
"Did they torture him?"
"No. Not in the way they did to me. The CIA men would not have approved. He was an Anglo-Saxon. All the same fifteen years in a police station is a long torture. It is easier to lose a few fingers."
"What did he look like?"
"An old man. What else can I say? You must know what he looked like better than I do."
"He wasn't an old man the last time I saw him. I wish I had even a police snap of him lying dead. You know the kind of thing they take for the records."
"It would not be a pleasant sight."
"It would fill a gap. Perhaps we wouldn't have recognized each other if he had escaped. If he had been here with you now."
"He had very white hair."
"Not when I knew him."
"And he stooped badly. He suffered very much from rheumatism in his right leg. You might say it was the rheumatism which killed him."
"I remember someone quite different. Someone tall and thin and straight. Walking fast away from the quay at Asunción. Turning once to wave."
"Strange. To me he seemed a small fat man who limped."
"I'm glad they didn't torture him—in your way."
"With the guards always around I never had a proper chance to warn him about our plan. When the moment came—he did not even know the guard had been bribed—I shouted to him 'Run' and he looked bewildered. He hesitated. That hesitation and the rheumatism..."
"You did your best, Aquino. It was no one's fault." Aquino said, "Once I recited a poem to him, but I do not think he cared much for poetry. It was a good poem all the same. About death of course. It began, 'Death has the taste of salt.' Do you know what he said to me once? It was as if he were angry—I do not know who with—he said, 'I am not unhappy here, I am bored. Bored. If God would only give me a little pain.' It was an odd thing to say."
"I think I understand," Doctor Plarr said. "In
the end, he must have got his pain."
"Yes. He was lucky at the end."
"As for me I have never known boredom," Aquino said. "Pain yes. Fear. I am frightened now. But not boredom."
Doctor Plarr said, "Perhaps you have not come to the end of yourself. It's a good thing when that happens only when you are old, like my father was." He thought of his mother among the porcelain parrots in Buenos Aires or eating éclairs in the Calle Florida, of Margarita fallen asleep in the carefully shaded room while he lay wide awake watching her unloved face, of Clara, and the child, and the long impossible future beside the Paraná. It seemed to him he was already his father's age, that he had spent as long in prison as his father had, and that it was his father who had escaped.
"You have ten minutes left," the loudspeaker said. "Send the Consul out immediately and afterward one at a time with your hands raised..."
It was still giving careful instructions, when Father Rivas came back into the room. Aquino said, "The time is almost up. Better let me kill him now. It is not the job for a priest."
"They may still be bluffing."
"By the time we know for sure it may be too late. These paras are well trained by the Yankees in Panama. They move quick."
Doctor Plarr said, "I am going out to talk to Perez."
"No, no, Eduardo. That would be suicide. You heard what Perez said. He will not even respect a white flag. You agree, Aquino?"
Pablo said, "We are beaten. Let the Consul go."
"If that man passes through the room," Aquino said, "I shall shoot him—and anyone who helps him—even you, Pablo."
"Then they will kill us all," Marta said. "If he dies we shall all die."
"At any rate it will be a memorable occasion."
"'Machismo'," Doctor Plarr said, "your damned stupid 'machismo'. Léon, I've got to do something for the poor devil in there. If I talk to Perez..."
"What can you offer him?"
"If he agrees to extend his time limit, will you extend yours?"
"What would be the good?"
"He is the British Consul. The British Government..."
"Only an Honorary Consul, Eduardo. You have explained more than once what that means."
"Will you agree if Perez..."
"Yes, I will agree, but I doubt if Perez... He may not even give you time to talk."
"I think he will. We have been good friends."
A memory came back to Doctor Plarr of the back reach of the river, of the great horizontal forest, of Perez moving without hesitation from dipping log to dipping log toward the little group where the murderer awaited him. "They are all my people," Perez had said.
"Perez is not a bad man as policemen go."
"I am afraid for you, Eduardo."
"The doctor is suffering from 'machismo' too," Aquino said. "Go on... get out there and talk... but take a gun with you..."
"It's not 'machismo' I'm suffering from. You told me the truth, Léon. I am jealous. Jealous of Charley Fortnum."
"If a man is jealous," Aquino said, "he kills the other man—or gets killed. It's a simple thing, jealousy."
"Mine is not that kind of jealousy."
"What other sort of jealousy is there? You sleep with a man's wife... And when he does the same..."
"He loves her... that's the trouble."
"You have five minutes left," the loudspeaker announced.
"I'm jealous because he loves her. That stupid banal word love. It's never meant anything to me. Like the word God. I know how to fuck—I don't know how to love. Poor drunken Charley Fortnum wins the game."
"One doesn't surrender a mistress so easily," Aquino said. "They cost a lot of trouble to win."
"Clara?" Doctor Plarr laughed. "I paid her with a pair of sunglasses." Memories continued to return. They were like tiresome obstacles which he had to work around, a blindfold game with bottles, before he reached the door. He said, "There was something she asked me before I left home... I didn't bother to listen."
"Stay here, Eduardo. You cannot trust Perez..."
***
For a moment after he opened the door Doctor Plarr was dazzled by the sunlight, and then the world came back into sharp focus. Twenty yards of mud stretched before him. The Indian Miguel lay like a bundle of old clothes thrown to one side sodden with the night's ram. Beyond the body the trees and the deep shade began.
There was no sign of anyone alive. The police had probably cleared the people from the neighboring huts. About thirty yards away something gleamed among the trees. It might have been a drawn bayonet which had caught the sun, but as he walked a little nearer and looked more closely, he saw it was only a piece of petrol tin that formed part of a hut hidden among the trees. A dog barked a long distance away.
Doctor Plarr walked slowly and hesitatingly on. No one moved, no one spoke, not a shot was fired. He raised his hands a short distance above his waist, like a conjuror who wants to show that they are empty. He called, "Perez! Colonel Perez!" He felt absurd. After all there was no danger. They had exaggerated the whole situation. He had felt more insecure on the occasion when he followed Perez from raft to raft.
He didn't hear the shot which struck him from behind in the back of the right leg. He fell forward full length, as though he had been tackled in a rugby game, with his face only a few yards from the shadow of the trees. He was unaware of any pain, and though for a while he lost consciousness, it was as peaceful as falling asleep over a book on a hot day.
When he opened his eyes again the shadow of the trees had hardly moved. He felt very sleepy. He wanted to crawl on into the shade and sleep again. The morning sun here was too violent. He was vaguely aware that there was something he had to discuss with someone, but it could wait until his siesta was over. Thank God, he thought, I am alone. He was too tired to make love, and the day was too hot. He had forgotten to draw the curtains.
He heard the sound of breathing; it came from behind him, and he didn't understand how that could be. A voice whispered, "Eduardo." He did not at first recognize it, but when he heard his name repeated, he exclaimed, "Léon?" He couldn't understand what Léon could be doing there. He tried to turn round, but a stiffness in his leg prevented him.
The voice said, "I think they have shot me in the stomach."
Doctor Plarr woke sharply up. The trees in front of him were the trees of the 'barrio'. The sun was shining on his head because he had not had time to reach the trees. He knew that he would not be safe until he reached the trees.
The voice which he now knew must be Léon's said, "I heard the shot. I had to come."
Doctor Plarr again tried to turn, but it was no use—he gave up the attempt.
The voice behind him said, "Are you badly hurt?"
"I don't think so. What about you?"
"Oh, I am safe now," the voice said.
"Safe?"
"Quite safe. I could not kill a mouse."
Doctor Plarr said, "We must get you to a hospital."
"You were right, Eduardo," the voice said. "I was never made to be a killer."
"I don't understand what's happened... I have to talk to Perez... You have no business to be here, Léon. You should have waited with the others."
"I thought you might need me."
"Why? What for?"
There was a long silence until Doctor Plarr asked rather absurdly, "Are you still there?"
A whisper came from behind him.
Doctor Plarr said, "I can't hear you."
The voice said a word which sounded like "Father." Nothing in their, situation seemed to make any sense whatever.
"Lie still," Doctor Plarr said. "If they see either of us move they may shoot again. Don't even speak."
"I am sorry... I beg pardon..."
"'Ego te absolve'," Doctor Plarr whispered in a flash of memory. He intended to laugh, to show Léon he was only joking—they had often joked when they were boys at the unmeaning formulas the priests taught them to use—but he was too tired and the laugh shriveled in h
is throat.
Three paras came out of the shade. In their camouflage they were like trees walking. They carried their automatic rifles at the ready. Two of them moved toward the hut. The third approached Doctor Plarr, who lay doggo, holding what little breath he had.
5
In the cemetery were a great number of people whom Charley Fortnum did not know from Adam. One woman in a long old-fashioned dress of black he assumed to be Señora Plarr. She held tightly to the arm of a thin priest whose dark brown eyes turned here and there, to left and right as though he were afraid of missing an important member of the congregation. Charley Fortnum heard her introduce him several times—"This is my friend Father Galvao from Rio." Two other ladies wiped their eyes prominently near the graveside. They might have been hired for the occasion like the undertakers. Neither of them spoke to Señora Plarr, or even to one another, but of course that might have been a matter of professional etiquette. After the Mass in the cathedral they had come separately up to Charley Fortnum and introduced themselves.
"You are Señor Fortnum, the Consul? I was such a great friend of poor Eduardo. This is my husband, Señor Escobar."
"My name is Señora Vallejo. My husband was unable to come, but I could not bear to fail Eduardo, so I brought with me my friend Señor Duran. Miguel, this is Señor Fortnum, the British Consul whom those scoundrels..."
The name Miguel called up immediately in Charley Fortnum's mind the image of the Guaraní as he squatted in the doorway of the hut, tending his gun with a smile, and then he thought of the bundle of rain-soaked clothes past which the parachutists carried him on a stretcher. One of his hands in passing had dangled down and touched a piece of wet material. He began to say, "May I introduce my wife...?" but Señora Vallejo and her friend were already moving on. She held her handkerchief under her eyes—so that it looked rather like a yashmak—until her next social encounter. At least, Charley Fortnum thought, Clara does not pretend grief. It's a kind of honesty.
The funeral, he thought, very much resembled two diplomatic cocktail parties he had attended in Buenos Aires. They were part of a series given for the departing British Ambassador. It was soon after his own appointment as Honorary Consul when he was still regarded with interest because he had picnicked with royalty among the ruins. People wanted to hear what the royals had talked about. This time the second party, with the same guests whom he had seen in the church, was held in the open air of the cemetery.
The Honorary Consul Page 26
