The Honorary Consul (20 page)

       "Oh," he said, "there is nothing really to tell."

       ***

       The evening plane to the north represented a hazard for a man like Doctor Plarr who liked to remain alone. Few strangers or tourists traveled by it. Among the passengers were usually local politicians returning from a visit to the capital, or expensive wives whom he had sometimes examined (they would have gone to Buenos Aires for a shopping expedition or a party, even for a hairdo because they didn't trust their local hairdresser). They would form a noisy group of familiars in the small two-engined plane.

       There was only the smallest chance of an undisturbed flight, and his spirits sank when, from just across the gangway, Señora Escobar greeted him, before he even saw her, with a parrot cry of pleasure. "Eduardo!"

       "Margarita!"

       He began resignedly to unbuckle his safety belt, so as to take the empty seat beside her.

       "No," she told him in a quick whisper, "Gustavo is with me. He is at the back talking to Colonel Perez."

       "Colonel Perez is here too?"

       "They are talking about the kidnapping. Do you know what I believe?"

       "No?"

       "I think the man Fortnum has run away from his wife."

       "Why would he do that?"

       "You must know the story, Eduardo. She is a 'putain'. She comes from that horrible house in Calle... but you are a man. You know very well the one I mean."

       He remembered that Margarita had always, when she wished to be a little coarse, employed a French term. He could hear her crying, in the carefully measured shadows of her room, made by the 'persianas' two thirds closed, "'Baise-moi, baise-moi!'" Never would she have allowed herself to use the equivalent Spanish phrase. She said, "I have not seen you for such a long time, Eduardo," with a sigh as carefully adjusted for the occasion as the shutters of her bedroom. He wondered what had happened to her new lover—Caspar Vallejo of the financial department. He hoped that there had been no quarrel.

       The roar of the engines saved him from the need to reply, and by the time the overhead warnings had been switched off and they were high above the khaki-colored Plata, which turned black as the evening darkened, he had a vague phrase ready on the tongue. "You know what it is like to be a doctor, Margarita."

       "Yes," she said, "I know—who better? Do you still see Señora Vega?"

       "No. I think she must have changed her doctor."

       "I would never do that, Eduardo—there are not so many good doctors as that. If I have not asked you to come to see me it is only that I have been disgustingly well. Why, here is my husband at last. Look whom we have here, Gustavo! Do not pretend you have forgotten Doctor Plarr."

       "How could I forget him? Where have you been all this long time, Eduardo?" Gustavo Escobar laid his hand heavily on Doctor Plarr's shoulder and kneaded it gently—he had the Latin-American desire to touch any man to whom he spoke. Even the knife-thrust in one of Jorge Julio Saavedra's stories could be interpreted as a way of touching. "We have missed you," he went on in the loud voice of a deaf man. "How often my wife has said 'I wonder why Eduardo never calls on us now?' "

       Gustavo Escobar had a large black moustache and abundant sideburns: his face, brick-red as laterite, resembled a clearing which has been hacked out of the bush, and his nose reared like the horse of a 'conquistador'. Escobar said, "I have missed you as much as my wife has. All those friendly little dinners we used to have..."

       Doctor Plarr, during the whole time that he had been Margarita's lover, had never been able to distinguish with certainty between his rough playfulness and his irony. Margarita had always assured him that her husband was a man of the most passionate jealousy—it would have hurt her pride to feel he did not really care. Perhaps indeed he did care, for she was at least one of his women, even though he had a great many. Doctor Plarr on one occasion had encountered him at Mother Sanchez' house where he was entertaining four girls at once. The girls, against all the rules of the house, were drinking champagne, good French champagne which he must have brought with him. No rules of the house were likely to be enforced against Gustavo Escobar. Doctor Plarr sometimes wondered whether he had ever been a client of Clara's. What sort of comedy would she have played for him? Perhaps abasement?

       "What have you been up to, my dear Eduardo, in Buenos Aires?"

       "I have been to the Embassy," Doctor Plarr shouted back at him, "and I have seen my mother. And you?"

       "My wife has been shopping. As for myself I had lunch at the Hurlingham." He continued to finger Doctor Plarr's shoulder almost as though he were considering whether to buy him for breeding purposes (he had a big 'estancia' on the Chaco side of the Paraná).

       "Gustavo is deserting me again for a whole week," Margarita said. "He always allows me to go shopping just before he deserts me."

       Doctor Plarr would have liked to turn the conversation to his successor, Caspar Vallejo, to whom the information she had given him ought more properly to have been addressed. It would have been reassuring to know that Vallejo was still a friend of the family.

       "What about joining me on the 'estancia', Eduardo? I can give you some good shooting."

       "A doctor is tied to his patients," Doctor Plarr said.

       The plane dipped in an air pocket and Escobar had to grasp the back of Plarr's seat.

       "Be careful, 'caro'. You will hurt your precious self. Better sit down."

       Perhaps it was the mechanical expression of his wife's solicitude which irritated Escobar. Or perhaps he took the warning as a reflection on his 'machismo'. He said with quite unmistakable irony, "You are tied to a very favorite patient at the moment, I believe, Eduardo?"

       "All my patients are favorite ones."

       "Señora Fortnum is having a baby, I believe?"

       "Yes. And so, I expect you know, is Señora Vega, but she doesn't trust me with a childbirth. She goes to Doctor Benevento now."

       "A discreet man Eduardo," Escobar said. He fumbled past his wife to the seat by the window and sat down. Almost as soon as he closed his eyes he appeared to be asleep, sitting bolt upright. He looked as one of his ancestors might have looked, asleep on the saddle, crossing the Andes; he rocked gently with the stride of the plane across the snowy summits of the clouds.

       "What did he mean, Eduardo?" his wife asked in a whisper.

       "How do I know?"

       He remembered that Escobar had always been a very heavy sleeper. Once, very early in their relationship, Margarita had told him, "Nothing ever wakes him except a sudden silence. Just go on talking."

       "What about?" he had asked.

       "Anything. Why not tell me how much you love me?" They had been sitting together on a sofa and her husband was sleeping in an armchair at the opposite end of the room, the back of the chair turned to them. Doctor Plarr couldn't even tell whether his eyes were closed. He said cautiously, "I want you."

       "Yes?"

       "I want you."

       "Don't sound so staccato," she said as she touched him. "He needs to hear the steady murmur of conversation."

       It is difficult to keep a monologue going while a woman makes love to you. In desperation Doctor Plarr had begun to recount the story of the Three Bears, beginning it in the middle, while all the time he watched with anxiety the powerful statuesque head above the chair back.

       "And then the third bear said in his gruff voice, 'Who has been eating up my porridge?' "

       Señora Escobar sat astride him as though she were a child playing ponies. "And so all three bears went upstairs and the little bear said, 'Who has been sleeping in my bed?' " He clutched Señora Escobar's shoulders, and lost the thread of the story, so that he had to continue with the first phrase which came into his head, "This is the way the postboy rides. Gallopy, gallopy, gallopy." When they were relaxed again on the sofa side by side, Señora Escobar—he had not been given enough time to think of her yet as Margarita—said, "You were speaking in English. What were you saying?"

       "I was telling you how much I wanted you," Doctor Plarr said warily. The postboy had been a game he had played with his father: his mother had no repertoire. Perhaps Spanish children had no games—or no childish ones.

       "What did Gustavo mean about Señora Fortnum?" Margarita asked again, bringing him back to the present and the plane which lurched in the wind currents above the Paraná.

       "I have no idea."

       "You would disappoint me terribly, Eduardo, if you really had anything to do with that little 'putain'. I am still very fond of you."

       "Excuse me, Margarita," he said. "I want to have a word with Colonel Perez." The lights of La Paz blinked below them—there was a white ruled line of lamps along the river with complete darkness on the other side, as though the lamps marked the edge of a flat world. Perez was sitting at the far end of the plane near the lavatory and the seat beside him was empty.

       "Any news, Colonel?" Doctor Plarr asked.

       "News of what?"

       "Of Fortnum."

       "No. Why? Were you expecting any?"

       "I thought perhaps the police might have some... Didn't the radio say you were looking for him in Rosario?"

       "If he had been really in Rosario they could easily have brought him into Buenos Aires by this tune."

       "And what about the call from Córdoba?"

       "That was probably a stupid attempt to confuse us. Córdoba is out of the question. I doubt if they could have even reached Rosario by the time of the call. It would have taken fifteen hours in the fastest car."

       "Then where do you suppose he is?" Doctor Plarr asked.

       "He is probably dead in the river or else he is hidden nearer home. What were you doing in Buenos Aires?" It was a polite question, not a police question. He was no more interested than Escobar.

       "I wanted to see the Ambassador about Fortnum."

       "Yes. What did he have to say?"

       "I interrupted his siesta, poor man. He said the trouble is that no one's really interested."

       Colonel Perez said, "I assure you I am. Yesterday I wanted to organize a thorough search of the 'barrio' popular, but the Governor thought it too dangerous. He does not want shooting if possible. Ours has been a very quiet province up till now except for a little trouble from those third world priests. He sent me off to Buenos Aires today to talk to the Minister of the Interior. I think the Governor hopes to delay matters. If he can postpone action long enough and we are lucky Fortnum's body may be found outside the province. No one can complain then that we acted imprudently. The blackmail will have failed. Everyone will be happy. Except myself. Even your government will be happy. I hope they will pay a pension to the widow?"

       "I doubt it. He was only an Honorary Consul. What did the Minister say?"

       "He is not afraid of shooting, that man. We could do with more like him. He advises the Governor to go ahead whatever happens and to use troops if necessary. The President wants everything settled before the General finishes his fishing. What else did your Ambassador say?"

       "He said if the papers made enough fuss..."

       "Why should they? Have you heard the afternoon radio? A BOAC plane has crashed. A hijacker let off his grenade this time. There are a hundred and sixty-seven death's—a hundred and sixty-seven Fortnums, and one of them a film star. No, Doctor Plarr, we have to admit that ours is a very small affair."

       "Do you want to give up then?"

       "Oh no—I have dealt all my life in small affairs, and I have always preferred to see them settled. Unfinished dossiers take up a lot of room. A smuggler was shot yesterday on the river, so we have been able to close his file. Somebody has stolen a hundred thousand pesos from a bedroom in the Naciónal—but we have our eyes on the man. And early this morning there was a small bomb found in the church of La Cruz. A very small bomb—for we are a very quiet province—and it was set to go off at midnight when the church was empty. If it had exploded, though, it might have destroyed the miraculous cross—and that would have been real news in 'El Litoral', even if not in the 'Nación'. Perhaps it may become news in any case. There are rumors already that Our Lady herself got down off her altar and defused the bomb with her own hands and the Archbishop has visited the scene. You know the cross was first saved—years before Buenos Aires even existed—when lightning killed the Indians who were going to burn it." The door of the lavatory opened. "You know my colleague Captain Velardo, doctor? I was telling the doctor about our new miracle, Ruben."

       "You may laugh, colonel, but the bomb did not go off."

       "You see, doctor, Ruben half believes."

       "I keep an open mind. Like the Archbishop. The Archbishop is an educated man."

       "I think the fuse was badly set."

       "And why was the fuse badly set? One has to go back to the source, colonel. A miracle is very much like a crime. You say the fuse was badly set, but how can we be sure that it was not Our Lady who guided the hand which set the fuse?"

       "All the same I prefer to believe we are kept in the air now by the engines—even though they are not Rolls Royce—rather than by divine intervention."

       The plane dropped again in a pocket of air and the warning lights went on, telling them to fasten seat-belts. Doctor Plarr thought that Colonel Perez looked a little uneasy. He went back to his seat.

2

Having sent out invitations by telephone from the airport Doctor Plarr waited for his two guests on the terrace of the Nacional. On a sheet of hotel notepaper he drafted a careful letter which he believed the Ambassador would have found sober and convincing. The city was beginning to wake up for the evening hours after the long siesta of the afternoon. A chain of cars drove by along the riverside. The white naked statue in the belvedere shone under the lamplight, and the Coca-Cola sign glowed in scarlet letters like the shrine of a saint. Through the darkness the ferry boat was screaming a warning from the Chaco shore. It was a few minutes past nine—far too early for most people to dine—and Doctor Plarr was alone on the terrace except for Doctor Benevento and his wife. Doctor Benevento sat taking little sips at an apéritif, as though he were suspiciously testing the tonic of a rival, while his wife, a severe and middle-aged woman who wore a large gold cross like some order of distinction, ostentatiously took nothing and watched the disappearance of her husband's aperitif with a false air of patience. It was a Thursday, Doctor Plarr remembered, and perhaps Doctor Benevento had come straight to the hotel from his weekly inspection of Mother Sanchez' girls. The two doctors ignored each other: after all the years which had passed since he arrived from Buenos Aires Doctor Plarr was still in the eyes of Doctor Benevento a foreign interloper.