Thing to Love (5 page)

“Scientists always seem to be washing something,” Miro remarked.

“Her stockings,” said Juan. “Remember the words of our great President Vidal: Though entering the modern world with the colossal strides to be expected of our brilliant people, we must still cherish individual initiative.”

Juan led them up into the house, across the entrance hall and down again by falling terraces of green-lichened stone into the patio. It was a wild, informal oblong of shrubs and low palms, climbers and flowers, heavily leaved overhead as tropical forest. Even the carved sill of the fountain and its surrounding flags showed flecks of green upon the gray stone.

Felicia adored the place — almost unconsciously, for it was a part of her. One of her earliest memories was of helpless, screaming temper when she was dragged back from it to her nursery. Miro, too, was fascinated by the patio, for its uncompromising rejection of geometry, its disguising of deliberate intention, reflected the character of his father-in-law; but for himself he would have preferred one open space in which to enjoy, by contrast, the cruelty and simplicity of the sun.

As the three entered the patio, a tall figure rose from a chair in the shadows, merging for an instant with the parallel shafts of trees and shrubs, then silently crossing the fountain terrace with three or four strides of peculiar lightness. Gil Avellana was a dark, rather hatchet-faced man in his middle thirties, obviously of pure Spanish ancestry and dressed in the national costume of Guayanas. The short, embroidered jacket and baggy trousers seemed entirely natural, as if he had just ridden in from the country to San Vicente — but in 1929, not 1959.

Day had turned to deep dusk in the few minutes between the ringing of the new electric bell and their arrival at the fountain. Juan switched on the patio lamps. The light, diffused though it was by leaves and pools of shadow, left his formidable guests too suddenly face to face.

The general liked Avellana, as a casual friend of the family infrequently met. Behavior could, therefore, be natural. But in spite of Don Gil's ease of manner he felt a sense of strain. Perhaps both of them had been standing too upright while exchanging their casual courtesies. It was visible to Feli. She quickly engaged Avellana in a rush of gossip about common acquaintances, diminishing him to the size of any other landowner who had, very properly and conventionally, taken to politics.

Miro relaxed in his chair with the sense of slightly amoral well-being which he always felt in his father-in-law's house. Juan himself served the drinks from a table as lavishly provided as a hotel bar. But there was nothing conspiratorial in that. He always avoided, if he could, the formality of having servants in the patio.

While Feli's dear contralto voice rippled from subject to subject, Miro was able to listen and to consider what he really thought of Avellana. Certainly the man had all the surface virtues which Miro most admired in his adopted country: frankness, grace, generosity. Judging him as a possible President of Guayanas, he could not withhold respect as well as liking. They had, he suspected, a common sense of values, though he was aware that he might be reading too much into gallant bearing and steady eyes which were on a level with his own.

Inevitably he assessed men as possible soldiers. He granted to Gil Avellana brains, courage and reliability, besides that quality of cherishing the individual which was at the heart of leadership; but there was too much imagination in the parcel, very possibly at the expense of solid industry. He would have to be put in harness with some stolid pen-driver to work out Movements and Rations.

At that point Miro Kucera checked his instinctive summing-up, aware of its absurdity. The man was a politician, not a soldier, and God only knew what qualities politicians needed! Vidal, for example, had most of them. A first-rate administrator, too. No doubt of that. But as a battalion commander he would be distrusted and disliked by his officers. Because he was efficient, he might have their loyalty. Never their devotion. Gil Avellana might very well be able to command both.

“That was an admirable cartoon of you in the
Noticias
, Gil,”
Juan was saying.
“Don Quixote Charging the Skyscrapers.”

“At least it admits that I have ideals.”

“The general feeling is that you wouldn't go around in fancy dress if you hadn't.”

“A very good reason for my fancy dress, as you choose to call it. Advertisement? Very well. But it's an advertisement for a way of life. Why should we all wear it in Siete Dolores and on the llanos and not here?”

“My father,” said Juan, “used to change into frock coat and top hat at the Ateneo. That was a symbol, too. Progress, railways, education, top hats. For a good liberal, they all went together. I remember a cartoon of him trying to put on a stiff shirt over a feather headdress.”

“What did he think of it?” Felicia asked.

“It annoyed him thoroughly. But he couldn't say so, since Freedom of the Press was another frock-coat virtue. He informed the Ateneo — he had a remarkably ecclesiastical manner for a freethinker — that it was a sign of political maturity to make fun of what we love.”

“Up to a point,” said Gil Avellana sharply. “But it's a grave mistake to make fun of what we hate. The general does not make fun of inefficiency.”

“As a matter of fact I do,” Miro answered. “But then I don't really hate it. I expect it. It's the base from which training starts. Ten years ago I was too impatient, but now I am one of you — except that I should feel a sham in national costume.”

“Why? It's very practical for anyone who spends his day on horseback. And you have a good seat, I know.”

“In a jeep, Don Gil, or an office chair?”

“Nonsense! I saw you on Independence Day. Wasn't he magnificent on that black charger, Felicia?”

“He was very stiff next morning,” Felicia laughed.

“You wouldn't feel a sham,” Avellana insisted. “We should all take it as a compliment. I'll lend you a treasure of a costume when you come to stay with me. It was my grandfather's. It should just fit you.”

“Is that an invitation?” Felicia asked.

“My dear, there is always an open invitation to you and your husband. Why not come up to La Joya next weekend?”

Miro realized that Gil Avellana had been carried away by his natural instinct for hospitality. That was what made the man so likable. His sincerity might at any moment overcome calculation. Well, mightn't it be allowed to? If a purely social relationship were to be developed, it would be much easier to begin it now rather than at a possible time of crisis.

The moment of silence while neither he nor Felicia answered was perceptible, though not long enough to be embarrassing.

“Don't think I want to compromise you,” Avellana said quickly. “It wasn't in my mind at all. Look! Before you answer, I must tell you who will be at La Joya. Juan, I hope, and certainly Pedro Valdés, Professor Carrillo and Morote.”

“Morote?” Miro exclaimed. “I thought you were very far to the right of him in politics.”

“So far to the right that I come round the circle to the left,” said Avellana. “What I want is social justice. So does Morote. So do you.”

“Within the Army.”

“Can you separate the Army from the people?”

“One is my business and the other isn't.”

“As a politician I thank heaven for that!” said Avellana, smiling. “Do you know that Morote would follow you anywhere?”

“But that's absurd! Sometimes I feel I am not one of you at all, Don Gil. You are all so impressed by such little things.”

“What was the little thing which impressed Morote? He has told me just enough to make me guess the rest wrong.”

“I don't see why you shouldn't know. He came to see me when the Citadel was building. Privately, of course. At my house.”

Miro exchanged glances with Felicia. It was she, really, who had persuaded Morote to speak frankly. She had treated him as an intellectual — which he wasn't — and convinced him that they were all in the same vague camp of good will. God knew whether that ancestry of hers hadn't counted too! Morote was at least three-parts Indian.

“There was serious trouble about overtime,” Miro went on.
“Pablo Morote couldn't get any sort of honest dealing out of the contractors. He was being forced to call a strike with the probability that the dockers and railwaymen would come out in support. And that meant — or so he thought — that the government would arrest the leaders. I didn't see how they could. But Morote reminded me that the Emergency Act of 1952 had been allowed to lapse but had never been repealed. Both sides were ready for a showdown. With violence, if necessary.”

“You might have had to fire?”

Miro avoided the question.

“They were all working very well and cheerfully. And they had a first-class case for overtime. Legally, there was a shade of doubt. Contractors after all know how to draw contracts. But it was the principle of the thing. A few pesos.”

“What did you do?”

“Faulted the concrete,” he laughed. “It was on the borderline anyway. And I had absolute powers as an inspector. What happened was exactly what I expected. So I told the crook that the munificent bribe which he could afford to offer me would be paid to his labor . . . Or else. It wasn't very much when distributed as overtime. But it created a precedent and saved Morote's face.”

“The men knew?”

“No. But Morote had to. His advice has been a great help to me ever since. About his people. What they thought and how they thought. One doesn't like to depend entirely on the reports of civil police.”

“You have your own agents then?” Gil Avellana asked with a dryness of tone which seemed to hide either surprise or uneasiness.

“Neither agents nor the funds for them. But I am easily accessible.”

“Permit me to say what I think of you. You are very much of an aristocrat.”

Miro laughed.

“It's true my father was a big landowner,” he said. “But he was middle class of the middle class.”

“I meant it in the Spanish sense — that you treat all men as if they had your own self-confidence.”

“I have learned that here. For six generations, Don Gil, the Kuceras were valets and stewards. Czechs — under the Hapsburg Empire — were in one way rather like the Basques. The most trustworthy servants of the nobility were as likely as not to be Czechs. One generation of landowning does not overcome such a background. My heredity — if there is such a thing — is to serve and obey. I am not sure that I understand your mystique of aristocracy.”

“My mystique, as you call it, is for people who feel a truth without being able to analyze it. Look! If I were trying to explain it to a North American, I should ask him: What are the qualities which fascinate you in the “western”? Simplicity of character. Independence. Individual standards rather than mass standards. Honesty. Uncalculating hospitality. I am not holding up the poverty and violence of a cattleman's life as anything to be cherished. I am merely saying that I, as a traditional Latin American, would find it easier to talk to him than to the average wage-slave of a modern city, and far easier to respect him. For want of a better word, I call his qualities aristocratic.

“Such qualities have nothing to do with political democracy. They can exist with it or without it. But they have a great deal to do with social equality, and they are part of our Spanish inheritance. Without them, we are doomed to become North Americans, revering status and social conformity rather than character.

“The people feel that this is happening, whether they like it or not. I try to express what they feel. I shall not get their support by lecturing to them on economics. They know that Vidal is creating an industrial proletariat. Nobody likes that, least of all a people — primitive, if you like — with a natural sense of the dignity of the individual. At the same time Vidal forces on us an elite of great wealth and no morality. That is why I emphasize nobility of character. The peon has it, and Vidal's managers do not.”

“Wealth is justified by taste, Gil, not morality,” Juan protested.

“Your standards are entirely European and smell horribly of the nineteen twenties, Juan. They might be a debating point again in fifty years' time. For the moment they are irrelevant to the question we have to solve: Is it or is it not my social duty — today
— to produce, to consume, to make as much difference as possible between myself and people who have less money? In North America with its infinite gradations of social class that is more a passing phase than a problem. Here it is very much a problem. Vidal has forced us through what economists call the industrial takeoff. He has the Barracas in exchange for it. He has given us a new sort of poverty without pride. His cure is to hope, and to bankrupt Guayanas by accepting international charity.

“Now for our own policy: Halt industrialization! We cannot afford the imports to create Vidal's state. Guayanas is a small country. It hasn't the limitless possibilities, the infinite credit of Brazil. We shall slow down the process by high interest rates, heavy profits tax and a generous minimum wage. Putting the engine into reverse will create unemployment, but we shall be ready for it. No chromium-plated desks and Coca-Cola for us! Pumps, tractors and the people back to the land, which at last will be theirs!”

“And God help the Ateneo!” Juan added.

“The Ateneo represents the Latin America that was. You know as well as I do that when the Ateneo has become too incompetent or too tyrannical, we have always taken action — the Fonsagradas, the Avellanas, the Valdéses. We imposed whatever the country needed at the moment: democracy or clericalism or simply financial integrity. Now we are going to impose a very large dose of Socialism — from the top, not from the bottom. The older landowners will be terrified. But we are the traditional leaders, and they would rather follow us than hang on in terror of being expropriated without compensation.”