The Last Western (37 page)

The governor shouted something and Cardinal Torres replied in English, “A little patience, my dear Luis. It is not that important.”

As the door of the limousine opened, Willie could hear the governor shout something back angrily.

“They want to brief you immediately,” said the cardinal, getting in after Willie. “Mr. Felder, I believe? Yes, come in please. May I introduce generals Caldas and Hilar.”

Two generals, quite young, one of them wearing dark glasses, turned their heads slowly from the front seat.

“I baptized them, and now they are generals, Excellency,” said Cardinal Torres. “See how sad they are. Are men in America so gloomy, Mr. Felder?”

The black limo headed for the city.

Felder, sitting on the cardinal’s right, said something that Willie could not understand, though he thought he heard the word
worms
.

“Excuse me, Mr. Felder?” said the cardinal, leaning away from Willie.

“The worms crawl in,” Felder crooned, “the worms crawl out.”

The cardinal chuckled and turned to Willie.

“Mr. Felder jokes. It is good to joke in times of sorrow. How is my old friend Cardinal Goldenblade?”

“Fine,” said Willie, trying to see Felder’s face beyond the high-domed, whimsical figure beside him.

“A splendid man, though not sensitive to ritual in the least. I recall once in Miami Beach, a lovely city, if a bit gauche, Cardinal Schell and I—you know him of course—thought it would be nice to celebrate under the stars, atop the Fontainebleau. Something very
intime
. Karl and I were at Innsbruck for a summer, and we asked Earl to join us.” The cardinal chuckled at the pleasure of the memory. “Earl, of course, whose tastes run more to—”

“Where is de ape?” Felder said suddenly, and Willie knew now that no miracle had happened.

“The ape?” one of the generals said.

“He speak of the zoo,” the other said.

“The zoo is closed during the emergency, senhor,” said the general with the dark glasses.

“Land of de antique ape,” said Felder. “Ancient ape look for talk. No talk, no banana.”

“Mr. Felder,” said Cardinal Torres genially. “You have the private humor. Very amusing. You are in the employ of His Excellency, I believe?”

Willie could see Felder now. Whatever it was he had in his face before was gone, and instead there was only an insane smile, like something that had been painted on.

“New ape require new banana,” said Felder, grinning at the cardinal. “You have de banana?”

Cardinal Torres turned to Willie. “Very amusing man. A paradoxist. I hear the early Eliot somewhere in the humor.”

“Old ape,” said Felder.

Both generals and the driver were straining now to see Felder’s face.

The sunglassed general asked the cardinal in Portuguese if Felder did not speak in a code, and also, what was the weapon the man carried in the holster about his neck?

In Portuguese the cardinal said Felder was drunk or crazy or both and that he was a known eccentric in the United States. As for the weaponry, Mr. Felder’s holster contained the world’s most expensive camera.

“He is a little—he has had a little to drink,” said Willie very quietly to the cardinal.

Cardinal Torres lifted a bejeweled hand. “It is quite understandable, dear Bishop. These are days of stress. The poor man. Ah, the smell of bougainvillea. You have come to our beautiful country, and behold, the flowers blossom.”

There were no blossoms visible along the roadside, but the fragrance in the car was very strong. The driver lowered the windows a little.

General Sunglasses turned to Willie. “Your reputation has preceded you, Excellency. We have scheduled you for a nationwide television appearance this evening. You will be briefed on the essentials. We are hoping that you will be able to persuade the counter-counterrevolutionaries to put down their arms so that Angola can return to normal once more.”

“That is why I have come—to talk on TV?” said Willie.

The cardinal said, “That is the reason given us by our Roman visitor, Monsignor Nervi. Surely you know Giorgio? He still says private Masses in little crypts.”

“To come all this way just to talk on television,” said Willie.

General Sunglasses said, “His Excellency perhaps does not understand the nuances. His Excellency is symbol and hero here in our country. When he tell the insurgents to stop, they listen. Angola return to normal.”

“Good old normal Angola,” said Felder happily, his smile even more dazzling than before. “De old oil go back to Portugal and de old coffee and de old tobacco. Everyting back to de old Portugal, home of de Lady of Fatima, where de ape is day-ed.”

Both generals spoke rapidly to the cardinal in Portuguese. The cardinal smiled and said reassuring words to them and repeated that Felder was an eccentric. Then the cardinal turned to Willie.

“Mr. Felder, of course, is in no way a spokesman for His Excellency. He is just a helpful private citizen, a loyal son of Mother Church.”

“That’s right, Beatitude,” drawled Felder, slipping into another identity. “Felder just another son trying tuh do a job for ole mama. Shucks, Felder jes a happy fly-ah. Come ovah to lotus lan’ of Angolah, gaze at de flo-rah.”

The generals were whispering to themselves; the driver’s eyes shifted back and forth from the road to the mirror. Felder caught his glance and waved, babylike, into the mirror.

Willie watched Felder but did not care so much, thinking only that he had come all this way to make words on television.

“You and ah,” said Felder to no one, “we gonnah settle down and cahve us a new simian.”

“
So
amusing,” said Cardinal Torres.

One of the generals wrote furiously in a tablet.

The city began to form around them and Willie now saw the lesson plan—the barbed wire and the tanks and the gun placements and the soldiers looking gray and powdery as shadows.

Luanda had been shelled for a week, and it was now like that part of Baltimore near the Edgar Allan Poe Motor Lodge that he had just left. Once they burned and exploded, he thought, all cities looked alike, the final conclusion of the lesson always being the same.

He saw then the fleeting faces of children, black and small, and for a moment he was with them and not with the people in the car.

At the elegant Hotel Christopher, preserved among the ruins, Governor Borges summarized conditions for Willie.

The rebels (counter-counterrevolutionaries), mounting their insurrection six months ago, had managed to seize about a third of the country. They had support, Governor Borges said, among two classes of people, the illiterate poor and the overeducated university types, “many of whom we have jailed.” Lately, the rebels had got new arms.

“The shelling,” the governor said, “is quite sophisticated. You saw the results on the way in from the airport. The arms come from monist or Marxist factions in the Orient and Latin America.”

Borges stood near a map of the long country, pointing now and then to rebel strongholds. He was a swarthy thick-set man in a green and gold uniform.

“Who are the rebels?” Willie asked.

The governor turned to General Sunglasses, who took up the briefing.

“As the governor has just said, the raw material, so to say, is the poor people of Angola, but the leaders are coming from the outside. Some come from China, some from districts of Latin America as the Governor said. They wish to make this a monist state, understand Excellency? They wish to make this ancient domain of Mother Portugal into a separate country, slave atheist state.”

“Bloody cheek!” said Felder from his chair in the back of the room.

“Excuse me, Senhor Felder?” said Governor Borges. The generals whispered something into his ear.

“Please go on with the sermon, your highness,” said Felder. “Ah was just agreein’ with the point of view being expressed so—elahquently.”

Governor Borges, Cardinal Torres, the generals and a CIA agent named Harvey L. Cooter spoke quietly among themselves.

Joto went to Felder, said something to him, and Felder got up.

“I’ll be back, Bishop Will,” said Felder bowing. “Ah got to bathe and anoint mah-self for de ordeal ahead. Y’all proceed with de acquisition of de ape. Don’t succumb to the first biddah.”

Willie started to go, but Joto waved him back. Truman sat down beside Willie and gave him the stay sign.

Meanwhile Cardinal Torres had summoned several black bellboys to his side.

“Go prepare the Vasco da Gama Suite for Mr. Felder so that he might rest.”

Felder turned around. “Why, that’s exceedin’ kind of Yoah Holiness. Ah’m gonnah summon mah counsel an cut you intuh mah will.”

The cardinal turned to Willie, eyes glinting. “Such a funny, funny gentleman.”

General Sunglasses resumed the briefing.

“The message we hope you will be able to give the people tonight is peace. We mean especially those people who are confused and are wavering in their allegiance to Mother Portugal. Many, many thousands of people have been killed—slain by the vermin, that is, the rebels. The people are bewildered by events. The JERCUS nations do not wish to act in the crisis. The United Nations, as Your Excellency surely knows, has not been able to intervene because of the veto of the United States and China in the Security Council. Therefore, our only hope for peace lies in moral persuasion. That is what we hope you can provide.” With this, the young general held out his hands like a small boy praying before a shrine.

Then Mr. Cooter of the CIA took the floor.

“Most of the people in your rebel section of the country are Catholic,” said Mr. Cooter, a cum laude graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “They are very strong, devout, obedient Catholics. If they knew the leaders of the counter-counterrevolutionary movement were atheistic monists, devoted to the overthrow of the church, the Virgin of Fatima and all the angels and saints of God, then of course they would have no dealing with them. But they are your ignorant poor.

“Now,” said Cooter, glancing at a note he had written himself earlier that day in the consulate, “now this faith aspect should be appealed to. It should be stressed that to join the monist rebels is in fact to leave the church. Not that we in the CIA would presume to tell you, Your Excellency, what to say—and not that the CIA would ever meddle in the internal affairs of another country. No,” said Mr. Cooter very sincerely, “we do not presume any of that. But we do think that it is our duty to our country and to our faith as well to point out this religious dimension of the problem. I believe Monsignor Nervi has more to say on that. Thank you and good hunting.”

Monsignor Nervi, a very frail man with blue lips, came from Rome, where for forty years he had written many documents for the pope and had long ago dropped from his vocabulary the first person singular pronoun.

“We anguish over the thought of so much bloodshed and carnage. Our spirit is cast into deep sorrow at the spectacle of this war that has brought to our beloved Angola so much needless suffering. We pray to the eternal Father that peace may be speedily restored and that the ancient and honorable ties between our august see and our African flower might soon be renewed.”

Willie could hear guns booming far away. He could hear the words that were spoken, too, but not so well as the guns. The shells were exploding somewhere on the edge of the city. He could see the children again.

The cardinal ushered the group to the Magellan Room, a magnificent glassed-in banquet room at the top of the hotel that overlooked the city of Luanda and the blue hills.

Champagne was served and Cardinal Torres proposed a toast.

“To peace and prosperity among all nations and to the arts, without which we are ever at war and ever in poverty.”

The group turned to Willie for a return toast but he could think of nothing to say.

As they sat down to dinner—breast of pheasant, lobster, roast of lamb—Willie could see the evening coming down on the hills, and the guns firing now were like tongues of flame.

He could not eat.

“Tell me, Excellency,” said Cardinal Torres. “What of the new mime liturgies at Woodstock? Are they successful, do you think?”

The mouths opened quickly, speaking words of flame, then vanished into night.

“Would you be interested in seeing one of our fado ballet liturgies? Very charming in my opinion, though of course Monsignor Nervi would think them suggestive.”

Monsignor Nervi, seated across from Willie, worked at the breast of pheasant with his blue hands, and Willie saw that his face was blue and had the translucence of paper, and it came to his mind that this man was made of paper—were not the veins like the watery veinlike markings found on paper?

Suddenly Willie remembered the name of the priest Archbishop Looshagger had sent to Angola long ago. He turned to Cardinal Torres.

“Father Rafferty—where is he now?”

Cardinal Torres put down his fork. His face was suddenly pale.

“What do you know about him?” he said in a whisper.

“Archbishop Looshagger in Baltimore wanted to know about him. They are old friends.”

“He was with them,” the cardinal said, indicating the hills with a rolling movement of his eyes. “He chose violence and terrorism. And now violence and terror have chosen him.”

“He is dead?”

“Executed last month for treason.” The cardinal smiled brightly as the governor raised a glass. He said through the smile, “Do not mention the name again.”

There were more toasts but the guns spoke again so that the words could not be heard, and the politicians and the generals were laughing and Willie could not eat, hearing the other words and the other thoughts in the hills.

In the Vasco da Gama Suite
Willie found Herman Felder in much worse condition than before. Walking about with staring eyes, Felder was like a zombie, appearing neither to see nor hear anyone around him.

“Two strong hypos,” said Joto. “Nothing happen.”

Truman, Willie noticed, was whimpering.

Willie gave him the sign of brotherly love and Truman returned it but continued to whimper.