The Honorary Consul (28 page)

       "What are you doing out here, Aquino? I told you to stay and watch the prisoner."

       "The helicopter has gone. What can he do? He is only writing a letter to his woman."

       "You gave him a pen? I took away his pen myself when he was brought in."

       "What harm can a letter do?"

       "They were my orders. If you all start disobeying orders there is no safety for any of us. Diego, Pablo, get outside again. If El Tigre were here..."

       "But he is not here, Father," Aquino said. "He is somewhere in safety eating well and drinking well. He was not at the police station either when you rescued me. Is he never going to risk his own life like he risks ours?"

       Father Rivas pushed him to one side and went on into the inner room. Doctor Plarr found it hard to recognize the boy who had explained the Trinity to him. In the innumerable lines of premature age which crisscrossed the face he thought he could detect a tangle of agonies, like a tangle of fighting snakes.

       ***

       Charley Fortnum was propped on his left elbow. His bandaged leg stuck out over the side of the coffin, and he wrote slowly, painfully; he didn't look up. Father Rivas said, "Whom are you writing to?"

       "My wife."

       "It must be difficult to write like that."

       "It's taken me a quarter of an hour to do two sentences. I asked your man Aquino to write for me. But he refused. He's been angry with me ever since he shot me. He won't talk to me any more. Why? You would think I'd done him an injury."

       "Perhaps you have."

       "What injury?"

       "Perhaps he feels betrayed. He did not believe you had the courage to trick him."

       "Courage? Me? I haven't the courage of a mouse, Father. I wanted to see my wife again, that's all."

       "Who is going to give her this letter?"

       "Doctor Plarr, perhaps. If you let him go after I am dead. He can read it aloud to her. She doesn't read very well and my handwriting is bad at the best of times."

       "If you like I will write the letter for you."

       "Thank you a lot. I'd be grateful if you would. I'd rather it was you than anyone else. A letter like this is a sort of secret. Like a confession. And after all you are a priest."

       Father Rivas took the letter and sat down on the floor beside the coffin.

       "I've forgotten what I wrote last."

       Father Rivas read, " 'Do not worry, my darling, about being alone with a child. It is better for him to be alone with a mother than with a father. I know that well. I was left alone with my father and it was never any fun. Always horses, horses...' That is all. You have written nothing after 'horses.' "

       "In the situation I'm in," Charley Fortnum said, "I suppose you think I ought to find some way to forgive. Even my father. Perhaps he wasn't such a bad chap after all. Children hate too easily. Better leave out that stuff about the horses, Father."

       Father Rivas drew a line through the words.

       "Put instead—but what? I'm damned unused to writing anything personal, that's the trouble. Give me a drop of whisky, Father. It may help the brain to tick, what there is left of it—my brain, I mean."

       Father Rivas poured him out a drink.

       "I prefer Long John," Charley Fortnum said, "but this stuff you've brought me is not all that bad. If I stay here long enough I'll get quite a taste for Argentinian whisky, but it's more tricky than real Scotch to know the right measure. You wouldn't understand what I mean, Father, but every drink has its right measure—not water, of course. Water's not meant for drinking. It rusts the inside or gives you typhoid. It's not good for man or beast except those bloody horses. Is it any good asking you to have a small one with me?"

       "No. I am, as you would say, on duty. Do you want to go on with your letter?"

       "Yes, of course. I was just waiting a while to let the whisky work. You've cut out that bit about the horses, haven't you? What ought I to say next? You see I want to talk to her quite simply, as if we were alone together, on the verandah, at the camp, but words never come easily to me—not on paper, I mean. I expect you understand. After all you are married too in a way, Father."

       "Yes, I am married too," Father Rivas said.

       "But where I'm going there's no marriage, or so you priests always tell us. It seems a bit of a waste when I've found the right girl so bloody late in the day. There ought to be visiting days in heaven, so as to give us something to look forward to from time to time. Like they have in prison. If there's nothing to look forward to, it can't be much of a heaven. You see I even get theological with the right measure of whisky. Where 'had' I got to? Oh, the horses. You are quite sure we left out the old bastard's horses?"

       Doctor Plarr came in from the outer room; his feet made no sound on the earth floor, and neither man looked up. They were busy over the letter. He stood watching them in silence by the door. They looked to him like old friends.

       " 'Let the child go to the local school,'" Charley Fortnum dictated. " 'But if he's a boy don't send him on to that grand English school in B. A. where I went. I was never happy there. Let him be a real Argentinian like you are—not a half and half like me.' Have you got that down, Father?"

       "Yes. Had you not better say something to her about the change in the writing? She may wonder..."

       "I doubt if she'd notice a thing like that. And Plarr can always explain to her how it was. My God, writing a letter is a bit like getting Fortnum's Pride started on a rainy morning. One jerk after another. You begin to think the engine's beginning to run and then it cuts again. Oh well, Father, write—'Lying here, I think of you most of the time, and the baby too. At home you are always on my right side, and I can put my right hand on your stomach and feel the little bastard kick, but there's no right side here. The bed's too narrow. Quite comfortable, of course. I've nothing really to complain about. I'm luckier than most men.'" He paused, " 'Luckier...'" and took the bit between his teeth. " 'Before I knew you, my darling, I was a finished man. A man has to have some sort of ambition to live by. Even a millionaire wants to make another million. But before you lived with me there was nothing I could look forward to, except the right measure, of course. My maté was never exactly an exhibition crop. Then I found you and I had something I really wanted to do. I wanted to make you content and safe, and suddenly there was this child of ours. We were in business together. I didn't expect to live long. All I wanted was to make sure that those first years were all

       "Are you sure you have finished?"

       "Yes. I think so. It's damned hard work writing letters. To think sometimes on a library shelf you see 'Collected Letters' of somebody or other. Poor bugger. Two volumes of them perhaps. There is something I forgot. Just put it at the end. With a P. S. You see, Father, this is the first child she's had. She hasn't any experience. People say a woman knows by instinct. I doubt it though. Write this—'Please don't give the child sweets. They are bad for the teeth, they pretty well ruined mine, and if you are in doubt about anything at all ask Doctor Plarr. He's a good doctor and a good friend.' That's all I can think of, Father." He closed his eyes. "Perhaps I will manage something more later on. I'd like to add a word or two just before you kill me, the famous last words, but I'm too damned tired to think of any more now."

       "You must not give up hope, Señor Fortnum."

       "What hope? Since I married Clara, I've always been afraid of dying. There's only one happy way to die and that's together, and even if you hadn't interfered, I'd have been too old for it to happen that way. I can hardly bear it when I think she will be alone and frightened when her turn comes to die. I want to be there holding her hand and telling her it's all right, Clara, I'm dying too, don't be scared—it's not all that bad dying. I'm crying now, you can see for yourself that I'm not a brave man. All the same it's not self-pity, Father. I just don't want her to be alone when she dies."

       Father Rivas made a gesture—it might have been an attempt to sketch a blessing in the air which he had forgotten how to give. "God will be there," he said without conviction.

       "Oh, you can have your God. Sorry, Father, but I don't see any sign of Him around, do you?"

       Doctor Plarr had walked back into the outer room in a state of unreasoning rage. It seemed to him that every word of the letter he had heard Fortnum dictate was a reproach aimed unjustly at himself. He was so absorbed in his anger that he strode straight toward the outer door until he felt the Indian's gun pressing into his stomach and stopped. The child, always the child, he thought, a good friend, don't give the child sweets, feel him kicking. He stood there with the gun stuck against his stomach and spat his bile upon the ground.

       "What is the matter, Eduardo?" Aquino asked.

       "I'm tired to death of being cooped up here. Why the hell can't you trust me and let me go?"

       "We need a doctor for Fortnum. If you went away from here you could not come back."

       "There's no more I can do for Fortnum, and I'm in a bloody prison here."

       "You would not feel that way if you had been in a real prison. This is liberty to me."

       "A hundred square meters of dirt floor."

       "I was used to nine. So the world has grown a lot larger for me."

       "I suppose you can write your poems in any bloody hole, but I have nothing, nothing, to do. I'm a doctor. One patient is not enough."

       "I never write poems now. They were just part of the prison life. I wrote verses because they were easy to memorize. It was a way of communicating, that was all. Now I have all the paper I want and a pen and I cannot write a line. Who cares? I live instead."

       "You call this life? You can't even walk as far as the town."

       "I never cared very much for walking. I have always been a lazy man."

       Father Rivas came in. "Where are Pablo and Diego?" he asked.

       "On guard," Aquino said. "You sent them out yourself."

       "Marta, take one of them with you and go into the town. It may be the last chance we shall have. Buy as many provisions as you can. Enough for three days. Easily portable."

       "What is worrying you?" Aquino asked. "You look as if you had heard bad news."

       "I am worried about the helicopter—about the blind man too. The ultimatum ends on Sunday night, and the police may be here long before then."

       "And afterward?" asked Doctor Plarr.

       "We kill him and we make a run for it. We must have food to take with us. We shall have to keep away from towns."

       "Do you play chess, Eduardo?" Aquino asked.

       "Yes. Why?"

       "I have a pocket set."

       "Then for God's sake let's have a game."

       They sat on the dirt floor with the tiny board between them. Setting out the pieces Doctor Plarr said, "I used to play nearly every week at the Bolivar with an old man called Humphries. I was playing with him there the night you caught the wrong fish."

       "A good player?"

       "He was better than me that night."

       Aquino was a slapdash player, moving too rapidly, and when Doctor Plarr hesitated over a move, he began to hum. "Do be quiet," Doctor Plarr appealed.

       "Ha ha. I have got you, have I?"

       "On the contrary. Check."

       "I can soon cure that."

       "Check again. And mate."

       He won two games in succession.

       "You are too good for me," Aquino said. "I ought to take on Señor Fortnum."

       "I have never seen him play."

       "You are a great friend of his?"

       "In a way."

       "And of his wife?"

       "Yes."

       Aquino lowered his voice. "That baby he is always talking about—is it yours?"

       Doctor Plarr said, "I am sick to death of hearing about that baby. Do you want another game?"

       As they were putting out their pieces they heard the sound of a rifle shot, very far off. Aquino seized his gun, but there was no repetition. Doctor Plarr sat on the floor with a black rook in his hand. It grew damp with sweat. Nobody spoke. At last Father Rivas said, "Only someone shooting at a wild duck. We begin to think everything has to do with our affair."

       "Yes," Aquino said, "even the helicopter might have belonged to the city council if you can forget the military markings."

       "How long is it before the next radio news?"

       "Another two hours. There might be a special announcement though."

       "We cannot leave the radio on all the time. It is the only radio in the 'barrio'. Too many people know about it already."

       "Then Aquino and I might as well have our game," Doctor Plarr said. "I will give you a rook."

       "I do not want your rook. I will beat you in a straight match. I am out of practice, that is all."

       Over Aquino's shoulder Doctor Plarr could see Father Rivas. A small and dusty object, he looked rather like a shrunken mummy dug out of the ground, together with a few treasured possessions which had been buried with him—a revolver, a tattered paper volume. Was it a missal? Doctor Plarr wondered. A book of prayers? With a sense of extreme boredom he repeated his old refrain, "Check and mate."

       "You play too well for me," Aquino said.

       "What are you reading, Léon?" Doctor Plarr asked. "Do you still read your breviary?"