The Captain and the Enemy (11 page)

I read my own letter with a certain nostalgia. It began ‘Whenever I get into bed’ (I was surprised how close that phrase was to what the Captain had written) ‘I put my hand out and try to imagine that I am touching you where it pleases you most …’

Well, I thought, my letter certainly wasn’t poetry – it was meant, however crude the expression, to excite myself and Clara too. In my own way I had written as sincerely as the Captain, perhaps even more sincerely. I had left nothing out for the sake of good taste. I had written to please the two of us, and to hell with good taste.

But why, I asked myself, do I feel so angry with the Captain? And I realized that what I felt now was a sense of shame when I compared the two letters. Was it because I no longer wanted to put my hand out to touch Clara when I went to bed and I no longer troubled even to write to her. I had left her – or rather we had left each other – a
few
weeks after I wrote that letter. In my experience love was like an attack of flu and one recovered as quickly. Each love affair was like a vaccine. It helped you to get through the next attack more easily.

I read the Captain’s letter a third time. ‘I miss you every hour of the day.’ That sentence at least could not possibly be true, but why did the Captain persist in penning such sentimental lies when there was no benefit to be gained from them since he was far away in Panama and she was stuck in her Camden Town basement? For how many years had he been writing just such deceptive letters while I had only written my exaggerations for a matter of months. Who was the greater liar? Surely it was the Captain, who had been imprisoning Liza with his lies and robbing her of liberty as the price of her loyalty?

My irritation against the Captain remained, until I began to ask myself, is it only my envy speaking, the envy of someone who has never felt real love for anyone?

A message came. I went to the hospital. Liza had lapsed into a coma and she died the next day. There was nothing left to do but bury her. She had left no will: if she had money it was in some unknown account. I told myself that I owed her nothing when I had paid the necessary bills, and a few days later I sent a telegram to Carver at the mysterious sounding Apt and signed it Liza. Surely, I told myself, it was kinder to break the news myself to the Captain. The telegram read ‘Jim has left for Panama. He will explain. Time of arrival, flight number, etc. Love.’ I crossed out the word ‘Love’. She was unlikely to use the word.

I was tired of hack journalism. My desire to be a writer revived. I even picked up and corrected this history which
I
had written of my childhood. One day it might find a publisher. The end I could not foresee, but at least I think I can bring the story up to date, and this I have done. I shall continue it as I would a journal and who knows what conclusion I may give it when I find myself with the Captain in that unknown territory of Panama.

(1)

I DECIDED TO
follow the Captain’s advice to Liza and I bought my ticket to Panama via Amsterdam. It would have been much easier and quicker for me, and no more expensive, to go by New York, but I thought it better to obey his instructions. He had talked of difficulties, whatever that might mean, and the word worried me a little through all the long journey: after the descent at Caracas, and during the interminable stop at Curaçao I stayed in the plane, working on this old book of mine to bring it up to date. I was disinclined to descend even for an hour into the unknown.

It was a twelve-hour journey in all from Amsterdam: there had been ice on the city canals when I arrived and there was snow on the fields outside when I left, and after that we moved steadily through the darkness towards the sun.

If it were possible for the Captain to read what I am writing now he would learn how much I have continued to wonder about him – he is to me an eternal question-mark never to be answered, like the existence of God, and so, as all theologians do, I continue to write in order to turn the question over and over without any hope of an answer. Now on this journey I hardly looked at anything but the manuscript on my lap and I left the earphones on the seat beside me when a film was being shown, for I needed silence to think, I needed it with a kind of greed.
The
silent images did not disturb my thoughts, for they were always the same whenever I happened to look up at the screen: bearded men on horseback gunning down bearded men on foot and riding furiously on.

A liar and a crook, those were the names the Devil had come close to calling the Captain, without any trace in his voice of condemnation, as though he were describing, with scientific precision, an interesting form of human life, and yet it was on this liar and this crook that Liza and I had depended for years, and not once had he ever finally failed us. He was the nearest thing I had known to what I thought of as a father, even though I had never been conscious of needing a father and I believed I had done reasonably well without one. It was certainly not towards a father that I was flying now – it was towards a team of mules laden with gold riding along a rough track from the Pacific, it was towards adventure, and my mind, as the plane crossed the Atlantic coast of Panama, over the thick impenetrable forest of Darién, went back to the only other adventure which I could remember happening in my life. I felt again the same excited suspense which I had experienced as a boy when I waited outside the Swiss Cottage for the Captain to reappear: I was again staring at the logs in the timber yard beside the canal while the plane carried me, like the raft I had then planned to use, towards the Pacific ocean, where the city of Valparaiso must be standing with its feet in the sea and bearded sailors drank in bars. Now I was on my way to join them. It was as though I were reliving my life backwards towards that childhood dream on the day when I escaped from being an Amalekite for ever.

Then suddenly the plane slanted down towards a flat
blue
liquid plain which I knew must be the Pacific. The forest yielded to the ruins of that old Panama which the pirate Morgan had destroyed and a few moments later the plane was rolling smoothly along the tarmac towards buildings which resembled any airport anywhere.

When I had passed through immigration and customs I looked around for the Captain, but there was nobody resembling him to be seen. My suitcase was heavy and I put it down. Not many passengers had got out at Panama (the plane went on to Lima) and soon I was quite alone in the hall, and I felt abandoned. Had my telegram to Apt not arrived? Or perhaps – it was only too likely – the Captain in the meanwhile had moved on elsewhere.

A good ten minutes must have passed as I stood there wondering what to do and where to go. I had begun to realize what a fool’s journey it was that I had chosen, when a new figure appeared in the hall and after a little hesitation moved slowly towards me. I had time as he approached to think that I had never seen a taller and a thinner man. His trousers were like a second skin. He was narrow as well – narrow shoulders, narrow hips – even his eyes were too close together. He was like a caricature in a newspaper serial.

When he reached me he asked, ‘Are you called Jim?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your plane,’ he said in a tone of accusation as though I had been the pilot, ‘was twelve minutes early.’ I was to learn later how very careful he was about exactitude, especially with numerals. I don’t believe he would even have trusted a computer to calculate so correctly. Anyone else would surely have said ‘ten minutes early’.

‘Yes.’ I felt it necessary to apologize, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘My name is Quigly. I have been asked to meet you.’

There was a very slight American twang to his speech, a sort of echo from a distant land, something he might have picked up after too long a stay away from his native country, wherever that might be.

‘Where,’ I asked him, ‘is the Captain?’

‘What captain?’ Before I could answer he added, ‘Mr Smith told me to say he was sorry not to be here, but he had to go away for a while. He has booked a room for you.’

‘Mr Smith?’

‘He told me that he had received a telegram saying that you were coming.’

I assumed correctly that the Captain had changed his name once again, and this time to Smith. It seemed a rather humble name after Victor, Claridge or even Carver. I hoped for my own sake that he had not come down in the world.

‘Will he be away long?’

‘That I can’t say. Two or three days? Two or three weeks?’ (Figures again.) ‘Mr Smith is a very busy man.’

‘Do you work with him?’

He seemed to share the Captain’s dislike for questions, for he made no answer to mine.

‘If that’s all your luggage we can be off.’

‘Where to?’

‘The Continental Hotel. You had better take your meals there. Mr Smith has arranged a credit.’

I can well understand the reason why my thoughts went nervously back to a suitcase containing two bricks, but the Continental proved a more important hotel than the Swan Inn and Mr Smith’s reputation was certainly
even
higher, for I was greeted like a valued guest. In the lift to the fourteenth floor the receptionist inquired after both my journey and my health. Mr Quigly all the while remained silent. Outside the door of my room sat a young man who carried a revolver holster on his belt. ‘This is your bodyguard,’ Mr Quigly said in a voice which seemed to me to mark a certain disapproval.

‘Why a bodyguard?’

‘I understand that it was the wish of Colonel Martínez.’

‘Who on earth is Colonel Martínez?’

‘Oh, I leave that to Mr Smith to explain. I know nothing about such things.’

Then a dispute arose concerning a key which didn’t fit my lock. We each of us tried it in vain.

‘They’ve given me the wrong key or you the wrong room,’ Mr Quigly said. He told the bodyguard, speaking in a Spanish simple enough for me to understand, ‘Go and tell them. Find out which is the right room.’

The man replied that it was for Mr Quigly to go. He had his orders. The name Colonel Martínez cropped up again. He had to wait here. With Señor … Señor … He was my bodyguard. He had been told not to leave Señor … He was obviously at a loss for the name.

I tried to convey in the little Spanish which remained to me from the Captain’s lessons that I was prepared to go myself. I could see that they were both unhappy at the idea, and in the end all three of us descended from what had been numbered for superstitious reasons the fourteenth floor.

The mistake proved not to be the wrong key but the wrong room. The tag with the number had somehow
come
loose and been mislaid. An exactly similar room on an exactly similar corridor the floor below, number fourteen, superstition again, proved to be mine, and Mr Quigly exclaimed at the sight of the interior: ‘Of course he’s given you his own room. There’s the stain on the carpet where I remember he spilt his drink. I suppose he wanted to keep the room safe from strangers in his absence.’

It was certainly large enough to house the two of us, I thought, if I used the sofa as a bed. Indeed I was surprised by the luxury of the room which seemed quite out of keeping with the Captain’s character, though perhaps in the days when he called himself a colonel …

There was a bar and a refrigerator full of small bottles, and seeing these I suggested we might all have a drink. The bodyguard refused, perhaps for professional reasons as a taxi driver would, but Mr Quigly promptly accepted. With a drink in his hand he seemed to become a little more human. He settled himself on the sofa while the bodyguard remained standing like a sentry near the door. I felt more imprisoned than protected.

Mr Quigly drank his little bottle of whisky neat, but he didn’t speak. He just licked his lips in a ruminating way. I went to the window and looked out over a great curve of the unknown city. I saw little but skyscraping buildings which seemed to compete with each other for height, and among them I counted four banks, and to make conversation I remarked to Mr Quigly, ‘We seem to be in the banking quarter.’

‘The whole city,’ Mr Quigly said, ‘is a banking quarter – except the slums. I believe that there are a hundred and twenty-three international banks.’ Exact numbers again.
A
long silence followed. I finished my own drink before I broke it. ‘This must be a very expensive hotel, Mr Quigly.’

‘There are no cheap hotels in Panama,’ Mr Quigly replied with what I took to be pride rather than criticism.

I thought of the Captain’s large cheque which had brought me here and his habitual phrase about the mule train. ‘The Captain, I mean Mr Smith, must be doing pretty well,’ I said.

‘Don’t ask
me
how he is doing. I wouldn’t know. Ask Mr Smith,’ and Mr Quigly gave a precautionary nod towards the bodyguard. ‘I know very little of Mr Smith’s activities.’

‘And yet he asked you to look after me.’

‘We are friends,’ Mr Quigly replied, ‘but not close friends. I can be of use to him occasionally and he appreciates that. I feel sure that in time our friendship will grow, for we have interests in common.’

‘Mules?’ I asked him.

‘What on earth do you mean by mules?’

‘Oh forget it,’ I said. ‘Have you any idea when he’s returning?’

‘None. But you have no need to worry. I told you – he has arranged a credit for you at the desk. As long as you remain in the hotel you need spend nothing. Just sign a chit.’

A great many years had passed since I last saw the Captain, but I remembered again that other chit which he had signed after the smoked salmon and the orangeade.

‘And now,’ Mr Quigly said, ‘you must excuse me. I have to be off. Business calls. You will find my telephone number on this card and you can ring me if you have any
problem
.’ He held out his long cold fingers for a shake, a quick dry shake, and I was alone with my bodyguard.

Luckily he proved to know a little English and this I could supplement with my own small amount of Spanish, and we both of us in the hours we spent together soon improved our linguistics. This was fortunate for during the next few days he proved to be a very close companion. I liked him a good deal more than I had liked Mr Quigly. We took our meals in common in the hotel restaurant where the waiters dressed as sailors served seafood and the walls were decorated with ropes. The fact that Pablo carried a gun seemed to arouse no more curiosity than the sailor suits; the revolver might have been part of the same romantic decor which, I thought, suited the Valparaiso of my childish dream. It was on our second day that I felt our companionship could afford a frank question. ‘Pablo,’ I asked him over my glass of Chilean wine, ‘why are you guarding me?’