Thing to Love (8 page)

“Doña Pilar, would you tell your husband that if he wants to talk to me I shall be at his disposal after dinner?” he said.

When at last they sat down to it, the evening meal lacked its usual vivacity. Yet the guests were the casual, changing mixture of every day, and several, mellow with alcohol, were in a mood to be entertaining. There were two cattlemen who had dropped in for the night on their leisurely journey to the railway; there were the estancia bailiffs, the accountants and their wives, the tutor of Avellana's boys who also acted as secretary, a tractor salesman, a local builder, and a traveling water diviner who was also an expert in pumps. It seemed odd to Miro that so many people could be influenced by the mood of a small nucleus.

But presumably the politicians were being watched with overwhelming curiosity. Beltrán Carrillo was obviously weary with smoke and argument. Juan was at his most exasperating, baiting a tired Morote with paradox and supplying the answers himself. Valdés and Feli chatted of common memories and acquaintances, continually breaking away to extend the radius of conversation, continually returning to each other when it proved difficult. And then, Miro supposed, his own presence added to the sudden silences. Everyone in Avellana's country must know, as he did not, some local, uncontrollable spurt of disaffection. His visit had for them a significance which he had not foreseen. Taking cautious soundings of the intentions of an alternative government was a very different thing from being trapped on the spot when revolution had ripened to the point of preparing manifestoes.

Gil Avellana himself seemed unaffected by any sense of strain, spreading ease and cordiality in his immediate vicinity. Miro damned him for a nuisance but could feel no resentment. He even applied to him his favorite epithet of approval: Don Gil was soldierly. The man was unaffected by when he ate or what. In spite of tiredness, he threw himself at his duty and managed to appear keen and interested. With that eager, animated dark face, that generous and powerful personality, it was understandable that he could fascinate enough of the landed as well as all the landless.

No doubt his character had been largely formed by the life of the high plains. Its casual hospitality and good-fellowship, its patient hours on horseback, conditioned a man — if he had some intelligence — to the outlook of a leader. Right through the history of the Americas they had always had magnificent fighting qualities, these riders of the grass and the mountain passes. What, he wondered, would be the movements of Twelfth Cavalry Division stationed at Lérida, the nearest town? Of their preference for Avellana there could be little doubt. Fine material, though one didn't know quite what to do with men who despised mechanical transport and wouldn't use their feet. Fifth Division was recruited from San Vicente and the coast.

But this wouldn't do at all. Silently dreaming of cavalry divisions was to add his own fit of abstraction to the strained behavior of the other guests; and he hadn't the excuse of tiredness. Miro leaned forward and encouraged his neighbors to make more noise. Having rounded them up, he joined the general conversation to that of Don Gil's group a little higher up the table. He felt like a senior officer trying to make a success of a guest night, but was pretty sure that it wasn't obvious to anybody but himself. Gil at once seized the opportunity to create the informal atmosphere of a café table, with Miro and himself at each end as the stars.

The reserve of the two men, due in any case to political caution rather than a lack of personal sympathy, melted. It was with a sense of continuing to collaborate in a difficulty that they drifted off together into the night when the table broke up.

“Doña Pilar has suggested that you expect my support,” Miro said.

“I know. Juan told me. My very dear Pilar, General, is inclined to see things in black and white. I hope you will believe me when I assure you that I asked you here simply so that we could get the feel of each other. I do not want your support and I should be disappointed if you gave it. I have the greatest admiration for your influence in the Army. Try to keep it out of politics. All I do ask is your neutrality.”

“To disassociate myself completely?”

“Yes. But even that is too strong. To remain in ignorance. I shall not cause you any embarrassment.”

They had been pacing slowly down the avenue of young trees. Avellana turned off over the soft dust, through which deep-rooted grasses were beginning to show, to the bank of the irrigation channel. Above the black water were a stone bench and a stone table upon which a few drinks had been set out. Typical of him, Miro thought. As soon as he knew that the game was on, he had acted quickly and with an accurate guess at what was most likely to please his opponent.

“Brandy?” Don Gil suggested.

“Thank you. Yes.”

Miro sipped his drink.

“As if, more or less, I were a foreign expert?” he asked.

“My friend and General,” Avellana laughed. “How on earth can I ever consider you a foreign expert? You are ours. And the dress which you are so elegantly wearing is yours. You are my fellow countryman and the partner of all of us. Expert, if you like, but not foreign.”

“I should enjoy working with you, Don Gil.”

“I count on that. You needn't sound regretful. Sooner or later it will happen.”

But how? That was the question which had put the regret into Miro's voice. For Avellana's sake he tried to explain himself, aware that it was the one subject where his gift for clarity was likely to fail him — especially before this brilliant man, this
confident figure of romance, standing so informally over him with one foot on the end of the bench.

“I have to see details,” he began almost apologetically. “I must have a picture made up of little realities. It was like that in France. It's still like that when I plan an operation. I haven't your kind of imagination, and the only way I can force it to work is by visualizing the smallest details of my own actions. I don't ask myself what I shall
do
under given circumstances. I try to work out where I shall be, what papers or signals will be on my desk, whether I shall have had enough to eat, what boots I shall be wearing and why. That brings, somehow, the future into the present. So I want to know what I shall be doing while I — well, remain in ignorance. I have a lot of sympathy with your plans for Guayanas. And with you. As you know. But if I am to give you any guarantee of what I will or won't do, I must see what my surroundings will be at the time.”

“Take a week's leave with Doña Felicia. I know she has always wanted to look into the crater of El Tigre. It's not a difficult climb. But you would be completely out of touch.”

“How will I know when to go?”

Avellana hesitated.

“We can discuss that when — when the time comes.”

“I see. Well, I am climbing a volcano with Feli. I am silent. I cannot share her enthusiasm. My conscience . . . sense of duty . . . whatever you like to call it . . . the thing which makes me a soldier . . . would be discontented.”

Miro Kucera sat astride of the stone bench, his left arm on the table and his big head supported on his hand. His eyes looked past Avellana as if a high peak were visible beyond the darkness.

“Then try duty,” Avellana replied, impressed and a little puzzled. “You need no excuse to visit the fortifications on the northern frontier. Report on them! I'm not satisfied with them. It would be one of the first jobs I should ask you to do.”

“Good! A tour of inspection. You'll probably have control of telegraph and telephone. So I am out of action. Even if I
wanted to interfere, I could only do so through the Divisional signals of the cavalry.”

Miro waited for comment, but there was none.

“There I am,” he went on. “With the approval of Don Jesús-María. I should have to get that. And I should want to know where the water and petrol points are on the other side. They must be pretty far back. Our military attaché ought to know. Air strength negligible at present. Yes, there I am. Trying to create a mobile defense when the Chamber is certain to prefer expensive holes in the ground. But what orders did I give the San Vicente garrison before I left?”

“No orders, Don Miro,” said Avellana patiently.

“Let's assume it! Then we have another picture in the void. You do see how my clumsy method works? I drive out of the Citadel to the north. I know revolution is very close. And I have given no orders to my staff and colonels. I couldn't do it. Have you any other suggestions?”

Gil Avellana said heartily that he had not. There was a touch of exasperation in his cheerfulness.

“Then we have got somewhere. I cannot disassociate myself. It would be treachery to the Division I have trained.”

“Then take as active part as you like, my dear friend!”

“On which side?”

“Don Miro, we are not scoring points in a university debate,” Avellana appealed.

“No. I am sorry to sound like that. It isn't a question of scoring. But the main points — they must be made clear. For myself as well as you.”

Avellana sat down. By the simple act he seemed to transform himself from leader into partner.

“I will give them to you with military simplicity,” he said. “Our population, like that of all the world, is rising fast. The land is our only certain source of wealth: our tropical seaboard, our high valleys where the mere building of an earth dam will feed a village, the empty immensities of the llanos in the north. This land — develop it, settle it, distribute it, and Guayanas could double its numbers without fear. They would not have a high
standard of living, but they would be contented, healthy and well-fed. That is my policy! The State must have power to tax mercilessly, to expropriate where it cannot persuade and to direct labor. This pleases me no more than you, but you will agree that it is inevitable. I promise you that I will try to make my administration as liberal and humane as your command.

“Against this, what does Vidal offer? Industrialization. Raise the standard of living for the small middle class! Hope that the demand for goods and services will spread, slowly carrying prosperity throughout the country! I do not say it could not happen. I do say that meanwhile we shall have the Barracas. We shall have to tolerate and forget a proletariat whose wages never keep up with inflation. And to me, since I cherish the distinguished individuality of my people, even worse than their starvation is their spiritual death.”

“Vidal's values are all wrong,” said Miro bluntly, “but I can't prove they are. I feel that I speak from prejudice like any other ignorant citizen. When you ask me to be more than that—”

“But
you
can't hesitate,” Avellana interrupted. “You have worked with Vidal and the scum which supports him. You know what they live for.”

“Yes. Yet San Vicente is booming. Administration is up to an international standard. The interior is being developed.”

“With United States capital.”

“Will you be able to do without it? At least Vidal has a definite policy. The Ateneo governments did not.”

“I would prefer what you call an Ateneo government,” said Avellana slowly. “But you spoke of values, Don Miro. Perhaps our minds can meet there. I see that men matter to you more than measures. You have heard too much talk of social justice and economic planning to be impressed. Then judge
me
, my tastes and my example! What I have done here on a small scale to give the peon health, education and land, the country can do on a large scale and better.

“You belong to us, as I told you before. Our food, our climate, our customs — they have even changed your face. So you understand the ideal of the man of honor which we have inherited
from Spain. It is in all of us, from the dock laborer and the peon to the fat fools on the terrace of the Ateneo. But it has — continually — to be kept before our eyes. Vidalismo tries to hide that ideal. It threatens the man of honor. If he is to be allowed any positive virtue at all, it is ‘togetherness,' as the Yankees call it. A very desirable quality in hens! I want apartness. I want every individual to be respected for what he can contribute, not for the tameness with which he conforms.

“I believe I could change the values of this country — a single man who sees clearly the sort of community it ought to be and on what he must build. If you doubt it think for a moment why Fifth Division adores you. Not because of inspections of toenails, General, not because of discipline and fair court-martial and grants and refusals of leave and money. It is because you are a leader, because you love them and they know it, because you have not a thought for yourself. So your standards, your objectives, your values become theirs. May I do the same for Guayanas?”

“I can only answer your question with another,” said Miro. “Isn't one of the first virtues of your man of honor loyalty?”

The sound of his own uncertain voice, for a moment harsh with emotion, irresistibly brought back a memory from twenty years earlier when he had said good-by to the Czech chief of staff and his former country.

“If the object is worthy, yes.”

“It's a poor sort of loyalty, Don Gil, which depends on whether one approves of policies.”

“But it doesn't belong in the same world as Vidal and his gang,” Avellana exclaimed, losing his self-possession. “He would not even expect loyalty from you. He has not made you rich. You talk of yourself, you, Major General Vladimir Kucera, as if you were an office boy!”

“Perhaps. Yes. Yes, it may be as simple as that.”

“Oh, for God's sake, Don Miro! The office boy can't be loyal to a pretentious crook! Any magistrate will explain that to him. He has a higher duty.”

“In my case — to Guayanas?”

“Yes.”

Miro got up. It was as if he had been trying to defend a position when he knew exactly where the enemy was but couldn't get in touch with his own forward troops. But at last he was sure of himself.