Thing to Love (13 page)

“Who was in the helicopter when it took off?” Felicia asked her husband.

“The two officers of the guard, and the pilot. It was their only chance to get away.”

“It was essential, you think, to . . .?” Vidal began.

“Yes,” the general interrupted sharply. “It was a challenge to discipline. I couldn't allow it.”

“Of course, of course! An example more spectacular than court-martial. And yet what publicity we may have missed! To suppress a revolution without loss of life. Think of it!”

“But leaving a doubt of Fifth Division's loyalty?”

“Well, there is that. And there was no time for finesse. Two or three minutes more and I should have been on my way to — well, Lérida Airfield, I suppose, and then a quick transfer to a plane.”

“We underrated Don Gil's familiarity with modern science,” Miro said drily.

“No. But we forgot his imagination. Imagination is always troublesome in an enemy. There is always someone in a back room who can supply it with the facts on which to work. Friend Miro, you must excuse my momentary regret at the astonishing efficiency of your fire. Without loss of life, I said. It was the optimism of relief. Avellana is finished, but how many of his supporters are going to die before they realize it?”

“Julia Carrillo was in the plot,” Felicia said. “When Doña Concha was called out of the room, she knew why.”

“She did?” Concha exclaimed. “See if I don't ship the old bitch in a helicopter to Buenos Aires! Meanwhile I shall return
and take the chair at my committee as if nothing had happened.”

Felicia regarded her determined back view with new respect as she retreated down the passage. So that was the language used by this able and patient woman in the privacy of Don Gregorio's home! Her pleated black skirt swung as gallantly as on a girl. It was even possible to believe that she had a waist.

Left alone on the terrace, above the handful of troops now moving at ease among their vehicles, the three listened to the town. There appeared to be little movement. After the roar of the troop carriers and armored cars had died away, the noise of civilian traffic also faded as each individual driver pulled up near the comparative safety of an archway, a lane or a buttressed church. From the direction of the Casa de Radio-Difusión came some faint crackling which might be pistol-shots. Vidal looked his anxiety at Miro.

“One can't expect them to surrender without a gesture,” Miro said.

There was also some evidence of trouble in the Alameda. Cheering broke out and stopped. Calixto Irgoyen ran up the steps and handed his general a signal just received through the earphones of the command vehicle.

“The police were uncertain,” Miro said. “They have now decided to return to their allegiance.”

He dispersed the remainder of the squadron: a troop to the side streets east of the Glorieta, from which it could command the approaches from the Alameda; and two to the northern suburbs in case Morote should decide, after all, to test the strength of the government by a demonstration.

Whatever the disaffected units of the Army were doing in the provinces — Twelfth Cavalry had obviously secured Lérida Airfield — San Vicente was at peace. Telegraph, telephone and radio were safe. Police and civil governor, who might well have declared, if advisable, for Avellana, had been overawed by the loyalty of Fifth Division. The factories and the Barracas were quiet.

Vidal, an instinctive politician, was disconcerted by the unknown
influence which had kept them quiet. It was inexplicable, and hinted at a greater force than his own.

“But it is a marvel,” he murmured uneasily. “One would say we were in London, not San Vicente.”

The unnatural calm of the city began to dissolve. An automobile hooted and gave courage to others. The wavering call of a fish-woman, melancholy and penetrating as a seabird's cry, came from the little streets behind the Palace as she replaced her basket on her head and continued her interrupted round. Then, distant, too late but swiftly approaching, gathering to itself a raucous hideousness of mass hysteria, came the revolution.

“What the devil is that?” Miro asked.

The cheering, the shouts and the rhythmic roar of slogans were approaching the Glorieta from the south, from the new city with its ultramodern avenues which was the heart of Vidalismo. It was a most unexpected quarter.

“The university,” Vidal said.

“Now? But don't they know it's all over?”

It would indeed have been a master stroke if it had been delivered on time. Even though the plot to kidnap Vidal had failed, the rush of the students a quarter of an hour earlier might have rallied all Avellana's supporters in the town, neutralized the police and forced the garrison commander into the one position he was determined to avoid, where he must either shoot to kill or withdraw to the Citadel and await the orders of the new President.

“Julia!” Felicia exclaimed. “I should have let her go. She would have warned them. That was why she was here — to report!”

“They never saw what happened to the helicopter?” Miro asked incredulously.

“They may have hoped I was in it,” said Vidal.

The head of the procession came into sight, filling the wide avenue which led into the far side of the Glorieta opposite the Palace steps. Miro raised his field glasses. Some of the university staff, Carrillo's friends, were there, recovering their youth in action; but the main body of the crowd was composed of boys and girls between seventeen and twenty. To judge by the banners there
seemed to be a minority of Socialists, a handful of Communists, and a great mass of Avellana's Revivalists:
Down with the United States! Down with Vidal! Long live the Aristocracy of Labor! Viva Avellana!

The police, disorganized by the sudden authority of Fifth Division as well as by their own former hesitation, tried to head off the procession. An overzealous detachment from headquarters charged out with tear gas, forgetting that the breeze in San Vicente, though it blew always from the Pacific, was indifferent to the direction it trickled down any avenue which ran parallel to the sea. Choking and cursing, the police fell back leaving the way into the Glorieta open. The university poured through. The traces of gas, generously wetting their eyes, enhanced emotion.

As the straggling procession closed up and flowed into the square, the turrets of the armored cars in the eastern side streets traversed to cover the whole snake of excited bodies. To a soldier the threat might have been enough; but the students seemed only aware that there was nothing, no physical and visible obstruction, between them and the Palace.

Miro lowered his glasses and looked round for orders, but his President and commander in chief had gone. Well, after all, the first principle of the Managerial Society was to manage so that somebody else could take the blame.

What were these children and their teachers up to? They must surely realize that Fifth Division, though thin on the ground, was in complete control. Surely the young idiots must see that slogan and riot were futile against disciplined troops? They didn't seem to care that the military were out in support of the civil power. It flashed through Miro's mind that an angry university was like a regiment, so sure of its continuity and traditions that it was careless of present danger to individuals. But what would they do if he gave the order to fire? Well, he wasn't going to. It was not necessary. Even in a madhouse power and absolute confidence were respected.

He walked down the steps to the screaming advance guard of Guayanas's cultural elite, and boomed genially:

“What's up, friends? You have only to tell me what you want and we can talk.”

But the commanding figure, which would have halted police or military, accustomed to leadership and appreciative of gallantry, appeared to the students a little comic. They weren't afraid of a pair of boots and a uniform, not they! They were not yet of an age to realize that confidence was no trick, that somewhere behind it lay the inescapable fact of power.

They swarmed like black ants over the general, treating him not as an enemy but as a mere encumbrance to be pulled down, trampled on and ignored. The armored cars on the east of the Glorieta were helpless; they dared not fire on the Palace steps where their commander lay, and refrained from the brutality of massacring the broadside of the procession. Fifth Division discipline held, too, for the corporal's guard at the entrance to the Palace. They stepped forward, nervously pointing their weapons, nervously prepared to be overrun but not to take on themselves the responsibility of blasting civilians out of the way.

Felicia saw her husband go down under the contemptuous rush. The troop commander with a handful of his men was racing across the Glorieta, but still fifty meters away. She turned to the corporal and snapped the order familiar from so many evenings of crossing the Citadel's parade ground:

“From the hip — automatic — fire!”

The racket of the Sten guns echoed back from the walls and cavities of the Palace and was dulled by the mass of excited bodies at one moment on the level of the terrace and almost upon the five isolated soldiers; at the next, melting, thinning, tumbling: a waterfall of white shirts and dark trousers leaping down the Palace steps into the Glorieta and away.

Sharing the. steps with Miro were eleven dead, five of them girls, and a dozen bodies falling or wriggling from stair to stair like half-crushed insects. Those of the students who now and forever had become men fearlessly carried away or supported their wounded. As they passed the prostrate bulk of the general, two of them looked at him slowly and defiantly.

“Who gave that order?” Miro gasped, raising his head.

“I did,” Felicia answered.

He said nothing. After all, her eyes could see as clearly as his what she had done. And there it was. Done. What was the use of saying that, whatever happened to him, the demonstration should only have been manhandled — fiercely if they asked of it, firing over their heads if essential? All his officers knew that. If it had been one of them who had given the order he would have had him court-martialed, for panic love of a leader was no excuse. But love of a husband? In the darkness and pain which began to close on him, prohibiting such formal debate, only pity for her was left — pity for his Feli who loved and would never have any court-martial but her own to tell her whether her action was criminal or, for herself and him, heroically justifiable.

“Miro, the corporal hesitated,” she appealed, misjudging his silence. “His orders were to let no one pass. And you yourself had challenged.”

Well, at any rate that was the military way out. It need never be known that an order which was not an order at all had been given and obeyed.

Fighting unconsciousness as the troops lifted him, he found enough clear voice to tell the corporal that he had been within his rights.

CHAPTER VII

[
November 11
]

H
ENRY
P
ENRUDDOCK
strolled along the length of the Ateneo terrace with inscrutable geniality, stopping here and there for a word with friends, once bowing solemnly and delivering a speech of condolence.

But it was not mourning which overshadowed the usual discussions of money and politics. A few deaths were inevitable when revolution was mishandled. Mourning might alter the pitch of the voices but not the talk. Indeed conversation should have been lively as each member from the depths of his chair explained to his neighbor how he would have avoided Avellana's mistakes. There used to be — well, one could only describe it as a sense of public holiday. Somebody won. Somebody lost. The few dead — unless it had been a matter of destroying some bloody dictator like Orduñez — were eventually accepted as glorious dead, whichever side they belonged to.

But revolution had lost its sporting, amateur status. It was the good order which disconcerted them all. Vidal's supporters should have been demonstrating, and they were not. In the open space in front of the Palacio Municipal the beds of cannas and roses ought to have been trampled down by the crowd. There should have been rifles wildly waved, not the slung Sten guns of quiet
military avoiding publicity. Far back under the dark archways and in the thick belt of palms and evergreens down the center of the Alameda sections of infantry commanded the crossroads. Steel-helmeted, uninterested, their battle blouses spotted like jaguars, they were inconspicuous as outposts in a true forest.

He was disinclined to join friends at a table. The surface gaiety of San Vicente, which normally delighted him, seemed for the moment to lack depth— though perhaps that was not quite a fair criticism since for once there was this nasty feeling of depth below depth. When at last he did sit down at a table, the companion who in his present mood attracted him was a man at home in any depth at all.

Paco Salinas always gave the impression of having his feet firmly based in hell, as the only solid floor where one could be free of illusion. His mahogany face was so heavily lined that a straw would have vanished from sight if inserted between his cheek and upper lip. He lived on himself, hard and mercilessly, and was reputed to respect nothing but the remnant of his Spanish crew who had brought the
Frente Unido
to Guayanas and ever since had been responsible for training the insignificant naval force of the Republic.

“A fine old mess we have on our hands now,” said the consul, nodding to Captain Salinas over his glass. “I should have expected more discipline of Fifth Division.”

“With the intelligentsia dancing a
jota
on their Caudillo's guts?”

“All the same . . .”

“Enrique, there are times when I understand that clown Goering — may his soul, if he had one, rot in hell! He is said to have remarked that when he heard the word culture he reached for his gun.”

“The culture of our university is by no means excessive,” protested Henry Penruddock mildly.

“Hombre
, that's the trouble! Look! Here I watch and what goes on elsewhere I read of. And what is wrong with our world is the contempt of the half-educated for the educated. I speak to you as a neutral, for I am not educated at all. The Jesuits and the Naval Academy don't count. What I have, I have from life. And
I tell you that we who pay the taxes, we of Europe and the Americas, have created a half-world. Indolent! Despising skill! Despising a man when they see one, for there's nothing in their little books of science to tell them how to recognize him! What use is this froth without honor, without common sense and proud to be free of both? Friend Enrique, I have no gun to reach for. Unfortunately Fifth Division had. Tell me — who gave the order to fire?”

“I haven't heard that there was any. Would you expect it?”

“Yes. I cannot understand that blast of automatic fire when a volley of single shots would have been enough.”

“Perhaps Vidal lost his head and Miro is protecting him,” the consul suggested.

“Vidal? Vidal shouting
Fire!
is beyond imagination. He wouldn't order a baby to wipe her bottom. He'd get two bankers and the Minister of Hygiene to tell her it was advisable, or else.”

“I get the impression that you prefer Avellana.”

“Me? Not Jesus Christ would I prefer! I am loyal to the government. And if it changes I am still loyal to the government. A man who has once found himself alone with a band of bloodthirsty monkeys is not likely to risk it again. I draw my pay. I continue peaceably to teach Indians to tie knots. It is amazing to think that once in Peru they wrote and counted with knots. Mine would be incapable of counting two turds one upon another. On the other hand, they worship Mary and Joseph.”

“Well, I suppose it helps discipline,” said the consul.

“Quiá!
They are the eight-inch turrets, Mary aft and Joseph forward. The padre doesn't mind. For a cockroach of the most abandoned he has a good sense of history. In the grand caravels of Spain it would have seemed very natural to christen the swiveled brass bow-chaser Joseph and have the battery of Mary on the poop to sweep boarders off the half-deck. You should see our gunnery! Magnificent! My difficulty is to get the damned ship to sea for practice. What the engine room would like is for Vidal to set her in concrete and charge the public ten pesos a head to look at the paintwork.”

“I am glad you approve of it.”

Henry Penruddock had supplied the paint from surplus Admiralty stores and had not charged a tenth of the profit he reasonably might have taken. The
Frente Unido
amused him and he liked to keep the cost of her maintenance as low as possible. He was always welcomed on board by the two dozen Spaniards of her original crew who had sailored on after the rest of their companions had become farmers, fishermen and dock foremen. Captain Salinas was accustomed to offer him full honors as Her Britannic Majesty's consul general. It was good practice, he said, for the cadets.

“I do,
amigo
. And I want some more ammunition. Vidal will order it from my indent. And see that London does not send me something which has been in store since the Battle of Jutland.”

“We used all that in 1941,” said the consul shortly. Both officially and personally he felt it his duty to resent derogatory remarks about the British Navy.

“Rule Britannia!
Cierra España!
Liberty and Potatoes!” Salinas growled in a muted imitation of cheering. “Now you know what Spaniards have felt for the last sixty years! The Americans have more fleets than you have ships. It's fantastic! Be a little rude to them, and there's the Twenty-seventh Fleet over the horizon! And if the State Department says it is out catching mackerel, you'd better believe it. All is over, Enrique. Trafalgar and Lepanto — who won them and who cares? It's a mad life! And here are these students backing Avellana when he belongs to our grandfathers, not to them!”

“He does stand for social reform. You admit it's needed.”

“He's less likely to find the money than Vidal.”

“At least he won't spend it on making San Vicente look like a bastard out of Barcelona by Chicago.”

“Very good, Enrique! That will amuse my chief engineer! Where is Avellana? Does anyone know?”

“I should guess Morote does.”

“He won't get away by sea. There are pickets of Fifth Division on the quays and the police launches are out. And the United States? What sort of sermon shall we hear from the dearly beloved brethren?”

“If it interests you, come with me to Juan de Fonsagrada's house. You may find out.”

It occurred to Henry Penruddock that the captain's streak of bitter common sense, exaggerated though it was, might be a useful solvent. Truth was what this eager, enigmatic American visitor was after, and he might not get it from Juan's witty rotundities. As for himself, British consul and representative of trading interests, anything he said would be under suspicion from the start.

“From whom?”

“A journalist. And that's quite true. But it is curious that he should want facts and not a story. By what I hear I think Washington is likely to listen to him. He arrived this morning, and he has already been to Vidal, his Embassy and me. He insisted on seeing Miro Kucera, but the doctors wouldn't let him in. Now Juan has taken him over.”

“To put Avellana's case?”

“One never knows. Juan is deep in with Avellana. But with his darling daughter suddenly hot for Vidal . . .”

They crossed the Alameda into the recesses of the old city and rang the bell of the blank and secretive Fonsagrada gate. The consul could always tell from the porter's expression what was going on. Pancho's genial ape-face above the yellow-striped waistcoat was insinuating and confidential if Juan was giving one of his bachelor parties, immensely dignified if ushering guests into a formal dinner party, full of suppressed excitement if politics were in the air.

“What he'd like would be an execution in the courtyard,” Penruddock whispered as the two followed the porter through the house and into the patio.

“Of course he would,” replied Captain Salinas. “It's a dull life. At that level they have only three forms of excitement — bed, religion and bloodshed. But I won't tell that to your American.”

“He is probably convinced of it already. They tend to think us so much less civilized than we are.”

What this Andrew MacKinlay thought could not in any case be told from his face. But it was certain that he did think — quickly
and eagerly. Penruddock put him down as a New Englander, with one of their best universities behind him. He did not look at all the traditional newspaperman. He had the type of face which could belong to — well, a scientist with outdoor interests, or a tall farmer who had become an administrator. He spoke Spanish slowly and correctly. The consul hoped that Juan's champagne would enable him to forget the correctitude and show his undoubted quality.

He was certainly enjoying the peace and the low-branched beauty of the patio. Agueda, the red-haired pathologist, was playing housekeeper and serving drinks. Vita, that girl of black and luminous white — trying to compete with the blasted moon now, thought Penruddock jealously — was sitting with MacKinlay and Juan as if she were an adopted daughter. Another day the position might be reversed. Juan's establishment always had an air of the most casual, well-bred ease; it was utterly impossible to tell whether his two hostesses were genuine assistants or not. About all that any man could guess — and for that he would have to be pretty sensitive — was that they were there primarily for decoration. Juan was perhaps right to claim that he was doing no more than follow the fashion of deep-carpeted, spindle-chaired offices. The only difference was that their receptionists and secretaries knocked off with the rest of the staff, whereas working hours in the Fonsagrada house might be anything at all.

Juan obviously had realized that what his guest needed after a night in the air and a day crowded with visits was to relax. There was no hint of politics in the conversation. After introducing Paco Salinas, he sketched lightly for the American who he was and what he had done, involving them both in the flattering atmosphere of being part of history.

“He recalls to me the tremendous manhood of our ancestors,” said Juan. “Do you ever think of the English as we do of the
conquistadores?”

“It's hard to say,” MacKinlay replied. “In the last century, no. We were the men. They were the effete. Now, perhaps — Well, at least they make us wonder if we aren't missing something, though
that isn't quite what you mean, Don Juan. They worry us. England is like Spain in one thing. Just when you think you have them taped, they throw incalculable individuals at you. The Mother of Democracy, but . . .”

“You would think they had bought it on the Stock Exchange,” interrupted Paco Salinas. “Our towns had democracy while the precious Parliament of England was an Ateneo of illiterates in armor!”

MacKinlay glanced at the consul with a half-smile of reassurance.

“Don't bother about me!” Penruddock said. “When they go too far I just remind them of Drake and Henry Morgan.”

“And with relish!” Juan remarked. “Henry's secret ambition is to sail from San Vicente with a shipload of screaming nuns.”

“From what I have heard he would be gravely disappointed,” said Paco Salinas.

There was an instant's silence. All of them were conscious and thankful that they were not compelled to share the memories behind those calm eyes.

“What did you think of Vidal?” Juan asked his guest.

“May I speak frankly?”

“In my house all is off the record, as you call it.”

“Then I think Vidal is in the wrong country. He's familiar to us in the United States. A politician all through. We can absorb that sort of man and make good use of him. Since he can work the elections, we find it difficult to get rid of him, just as you do. But sooner or later we have him out. So it's hard for Americans to understand that down here it very often can't be done without bloodshed. And the word ‘revolution' doesn't help. To us it means something big, like our own Revolution, or the French or the Russian. But to you it only means a change of government by methods which aren't constitutional. If it hadn't been for the brutality of Fifth Division —”

“You never have to fire on a crowd in the United States?” asked Paco Salinas.

“Things shouldn't be allowed to get so tough.”

“What about your own Civil War?”

“Well, but you wouldn't suggest Vidal was a Lincoln, Captain Salinas?”

“Vidal is Vidal. What I do suggest is that Lincoln would have understood Kucera.”

“If I could only talk to him for five minutes! The public wants the truth and — I'd like to put the Administration on the right lines if I can.”