One Damn Thing After Another (32 page)

The man at the table had laid down his pen, taken off his glasses, and lit a cigar.

“You have been here three days.” It was not quite clear whether this was a statement or a question, so she said nothing.

“Do you consider it as a punishment?” A trick question, plainly, but what was the trick?

“If I have done anything that seems to deserve punishment, I suppose one could call it that,” stumbling in Spanish over difficult conditional tenses.

“If it is a punishment, is that an injustice?”

“I don't know. Quisiera – I'd like you to tell me.”

“Would you regard it as severe punishment?”

“Well, I was deprived of my liberty, suddenly, with no warning.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“I feel that some explanation is due to me.”

“Yes? You need not feel afraid, to speak out.”

“I could make the point that there was no due process, but you know all that already.”

“Further?”

“I haven't been ill-treated in any way.”

“You mean, physically molested?”

“In no way.”

“You asked audience of Colonel Palmer.”

“That is correct. I explained my purpose to him.”

“Do you expect Colonel Palmer to intervene on your behalf?”

“No. Why should he? I don't expect him to intervene against me, either. As far as I know, he isn't interested in me either way.”

“Perhaps the French Embassy?”

“I don't know anyone in the French Embassy. I am French of course, but that doesn't mean much.”

“Or General Renard?”

“I scarcely know General Renard. He was kind enough to receive me. We talked for a little.”

“You are being given an opportunity to explain yourself. Have you nothing to say? I will take note of your observations; they will be conveyed to the authorities.”

“I'd like to be let out, of course, to go about my business. If my business is impossible, I'd like to be told so. Because then plainly I'm wasting my time, and the money of those who asked me to come here;”

“No more?”

“That seems to cover it, I think.”

“Most people would be eager to make protest, to show indignation, to make vociferous complaint.”

“I can't see much point in that. I'm not in the least an important person. I can't see that you'd be interested much, probably.”

“You do not ask who I am.”

“I have to suppose that your job is to take an interest in strangers, especially those who seem eccentric or unusual.”

“Are you the one or the other?”

“Not at all, but I suppose that most visitors don't think of going to ask interviews from important people like Colonel Palmer.”

“That will do.”

He got up, gathered his things, went through a communicating door to another office, where she could hear a typewriter clacking.

The other man had said nothing at all. He spoke now in a soft-voiced Spanish, without the Porteño accent.

“I am a doctor, Señora. I should like, if you have no objection, to give you a brief simple examination.”

“I have no objection.”

“Very good. Your health is normal? You have no unusual symptom? You have no chronic or seasonal disability, such as your usual doctor would be aware of? You follow no regular course of treatment? You have been in a hospital or clinic within the last three years? That is all very satisfactory. May I listen to you?” stooping to his bag on the floor, which she had not noticed. “Take your blood pressure? So. As usual, breathe quietly and regularly.”

“It is finished. It is for no special purpose. I shall make a little report – like this –” slipping out a memo pad and uncapping a pen, “for the authority, if desired. Stating that upon cursory examination your physical health appears to me good, and that according to my observations your psychological condition is equally sound and balanced. You have a reservation to make?”

“None.” He signed his name and tore the sheet off. He gave her a very slight, quiet smile.

“You would like to make your home in Argentina?” he asked politely.

“I haven't seen much of it yet. I should like to be rather better placed to do so.”

“We shall hope for that,” with formal courtesy.

She had not seen the Indian-man come in. He was standing there looking at her, lizard-face saying nothing. He held a few sheets of typescript.

“This is a summary of the questions put to you and the answers given. Further a brief statement, to the effect that you make no claim upon the help of the State, in accomplishing the purposes of your visit, which is set forth there, in that paragraph. The State, likewise, places no obstacle in your path – there – but takes no responsibility for the success or otherwise of your enterprise – there. Initial the copies and sign them, please. It is useless to ask me whether or no your attempt can be crowned with success: I do not know. Good. That is in order. If the physician has no more to ask you,” collecting the other piece of paper, “I shall reaccompany you.”

Arlette had thought, innocently, that she would be let go now. No such thing. She was brought back to her cell and wordlessly locked up in it. It is never any use asking Spaniards when such or such a thing is due to happen. Much the same, apparently, hereabouts.

It was, roughly, the middle of the night. How near the middle she could not tell: she had been deeply asleep and not dreaming. The old guard had awakened her by making a soft whistling noise that penetrated gradually. Her cell door stood open, but with his usual kindness he had not switched the harsh cell light on. She saw him in silhouette, from the corridor light. She felt like a Hopi Indian, Emerging into the Fourth World from those hollow reeds in which they had been preserved from the flood that had engulfed the Third World. The silhouette she saw was very likely the god, Masaw. He is the Guardian of the Fourth World.

She crept out of her warm nest, in her vest and knickers, and stood tousled and sleepy on the floor. “Come,” he said.

In the office stood a young man in his late twenties, good-looking and very smart in the uniform of a naval officer, with a lock of hair that fell forward on his forehead, like James Bond. He had his lips pursed in a tiny soundless whistle and a permanent half-smiling expression. On one of the metal-tube chairs he had arranged her Lanvin suit, and he was busy with it, shaking out creases and brushing with a clothes-brush. He looked at her with a quizzical kind of expression and said, “This will do very nicely. I beg your pardon; Lynch, Lieutenant Miguel Lynch. Have you stockings, Señora? And her shoes,” to the old guard. “Look, I suggest you have just a quick wash, comb your hair you know. Don't put on much make-up. Just enough, you know, to look pleasant.” He stood, watching her, while she woke herself up with cold water. He handed her a comb when she was ready for it; as she wanted pins for her hair he had each one ready. He was obviously used to girls, dressing. His half smile did not vary: he handed her her bra, her stockings, her skirt, jacket, shoes. He gave her shoulder a last flip with the clothes brush where there was a hair, and a scrap of fluff, and said, “There; you look very nice,” almost with gallantry. “You don't need a bag. Don't smoke; the General doesn't like it. Let's go, shall we?” She followed, without speaking, without thinking.

In the street he had a Mercedes car, black and shiny and official-looking, with a driver in plainclothes who wasn't Juan Manuel Fangio but looked, anyway from the back, not unlike. The car had white venetian blinds, and these were down. From inside she could see nothing of the streets, but the ride was not long. They got out at a large building, at a side door: it conveyed nothing to her.

At the door was a soldier with a submachine-gun, who saluted smartly: Lieutenant Lynch was a familiar figure. He led her up flights of bare-sounding wooden stairs.

“After eight, the lifts are cut off to save power.” They popped through a service door on to a carpeted passage.

“Nourri dans le sérail vous en connaissez les détours.”

“That's right,” with his ever-ready smile.

There was another sentry in the passage. They went through an anteroom, through a splendid ministerial office there for show – or press conferences – and what looked to be the aides-de-camp's room beyond. Lynch stopped at an inconspicuous door like that of a dressingroom or cloakroom, signed her to pause, slipped through it without knocking.

Arlette felt she was past caring. Plainly another general, or was it an admiral – there were presumably dozens of them, or what was the word ‘junta' about? Some goddam secret-police chief, for whom Palmer was only a front, very likely, commanding some bleak penal settlement in the Land of Fire to which she was presumably destined.

Lynch held the door open for her, and slid out deftly. A biggish room, barish. An officer sat writing at a plain wooden table. He did not raise his head, but said with colourless courtesy, “Sit down then, Señora.” He was reading down a typed report, annotating in the margin. The walls held shelving, and the shelving was full of files. The window was covered with a venetian blind. The desk lamp was an ordinary metal bureau lamp, the ceiling fixture standard office issue. This must be some secretarial filter, a staff captain commanding paperwork.

He scribbled his initials, pushed the file to one side, raised his head, and Arlette recognized the Chief of the State.

Remarkable people have remarkable heads. It is to be presumed that even if you were whipped out of your jail cell in the middle of the night – decidedly confused and perturbed and feeling none too bright – you would still recognize the extraordinary beauty of such a face as Chou en Lai or Sadat. You do not need to be a sculptor. Of most others you would probably say that you needed more time to improve the acquaintance. Arlette was never able to say whether or no General Valentin de Linares was a remarkable person, a mediocre one, or what. She was not given the time for more than the most conventional of masks, the sad, sallow and saturnine visage of ten thousand Spanish army officers. One
would be inclined, after, to add caricatural features that were not there at all (like a gold crucifix on a neck-chain and an Errol Flynn moustache), simply because the convention requires them.

He lost no time.

“I have interested myself in the business which, as you told General Renard, brought you here.” He did not look like Philip the Second, but had certainly some of the habits of the Prudent King.

“I have had, not without some trouble, this young man identified and interrogated.” Mm. What had happened to her in the last three days was unremarked upon. “I do not wish that any person seeking refuge here – and make no mistake, it is a shore of refuge – should be persecuted. Such a person, the purity of whose motives could be shown, has the right to freedom from interference by outside interests.”

These were very tedious, very boring remarks, thought Arlette. He looked suddenly at her.

“You gave Colonel Palmer an account of your business. You entertained General Renard with aspects of your personality. Tell me something of your ideas.” At this moment Arlette did not think him a mediocre personage, but that might have been sheer vanity.

“I think that men and women ought to be equal,” she said. When, after all, would she get another such opportunity? “And I don't mean the sort of crude feminism that abounds everywhere. I believe that no man, however gifted, is complete without a woman. It is a secret. One does not write the biography of Madame de Gaulle or Hendrickje Stoffels. Conversely, without a man, and I mean one man, a woman is not entirely sterile, but I do not believe she'll ever amount to anything much.”

The General's eyebrows had gone up a bit, but he smiled without condescension.

“You are not satisfied with the tale of Eve and the apple?”

“Hardly. It sounds to me a tale invented by men, who have always been adept at getting tales believed.”

“You are not satisfied with Christianity? You would prefer, perhaps, an Earth Mother?”

“God forbid. A man as a fertilization principle, what a barbaric notion. I hope to die in my faith, just like you. I admit to being a bit heterodox, that's all. A world run by men, General, has not done us very much good, so far. Or even further, since we're plainly in the last stages of decadence.” At that he nodded. “We might have just a ghost of a chance still. In the family, but not as it has been, either male- or female-dominated. That is not marriage which is only a union of the flesh, said Saint Somebody. I want a king and a queen upon the throne, and no more popes or ayatollahs.”

“It will be difficult to achieve,” said the general, seriously.

“Very. I've not got a lot of hope, but it's the only one we have.”

“And if it fails?”

“Then the end of the world is very close upon us.”

“When I think of it, as I do very frequently, I agree.”

“The Indians say, with atomic bombs. Conventionally likely. It doesn't matter much. We have tortured and abused the world we were given: the earth will revenge itself, and the air, and the sea.”

“As you say, it does not matter much. But have you thought, of the Last Judgment?” Philip the Second, the Prudent King, thought much of the Last Judgment. “Christ, as he told us, will come again but in majesty, to judge the living and the dead.”

“I think he'll spend some time – whatever time means – showing us the incredible obstinacy and stupidity with which we disregard most of what he said the first time, and the imbecility with which we misunderstood the rest.”

“He was, however, a man.”

“He could hardly be a hermaphrodite.”

“Why then, according to your reasoning, did he not marry and found a family?”

“Oh come, General! Our Father who art in heaven!”