Thing to Love (12 page)

“I think so, Salvador. The Palace is what matters. The police can do the rest so long as they have the support of a troop here and there. Thank you. It seems a brilliant idea if we can work it out. I shall brief Lieutenant Colonel Irigoyen and squadron commanders myself.”

“Yet I cannot believe, my General, that the Presidential Guard will arrest Vidal. It has a tradition, tiresome though it is.”

“The guard is the only key to a bloodless revolution, Salvador.”

“Suppose Avellana doesn't attempt to subvert them, but puts them in a position where they dare not use force?”

“Morote? All in the streets?”

“They'd fire on Morote all right. The officers of the guard, my General, are, as you know but have never said, the more halfwitted sons of the duller members of the Ateneo. They still think it their duty to fire on the poor. In the rest of the world it is more fashionable to fire on the rich. Unfortunately the rich do not march in procession. I wonder what Avellana has up his sleeve.”

“Whatever it is,” said Miro, “it will be too late.”

CHAPTER VI

[
November 9
]

J
ULIA
C
ARRILLO
was even more intolerable than usual. Her flat, monotonous voice went on and on. She must, Felicia thought, have deliberately trained it in imitation of earnest foreigners met during her cultural expeditions to Europe and the United States, for it was impossible for any Latin-American woman to be born with such a voice.

The Women's Committee for the Purchase of Infantile Literature was sitting, under the chairmanship of Doña Concha Vidal, in a ground floor conference room of the President's Palace. Its object was excellent: to collect, by gifts and private subscription, the very simplest of books for the elementary schools, books intended to show the children that there was actual entertainment in reading — a fact which they could hardly guess from the dog-eared primers of the Ministry of Education.

Nobody but Julia Carrillo would have thought it possible or desirable to keep the Church out of the distribution and selection. The Church might or might not attempt to overweigh the tiny library service with stories of six-year-old saints and seven-year-old visionaries, but what on earth did it matter? And what did Julia Carrillo know of those bright, brown eyes, so eager to learn, so continually frustrated, looking out through dripping leaves or
blown dust from the doorways of the villages? Their priest, ignorant, primitive, but loving, at least knew who could profit by what.

System, system — Guayanas was still years away from being able to use these solemn systems. Blast the woman! Felicia wished Concha would shut Julia up. But Concha listened with a fixed and courteous smile. She was a born chairwoman of committees. If she disagreed — and she certainly did — with the Señora Carrillo, the best thing was to let her go on talking. That ensured that even if Julia had been right ten times over not a soul would vote for her except the “lady-in-waiting.” The “lady-in-waiting,” as they nicknamed her, was also a professor's wife, and Julia's slave, secretary and disciple. She always reminded Felicia of a small and officious cock accompanying its formidable hen. She scratched around among conversation, kicking up bits and pieces for Doña Julia to eat.

Middle-class, outdated intellectuals! . . . Felicia rebuked herself for snobbery. Well, was it exactly snobbery? After all she herself had taken on board all the Spanish and European literature that the university could teach her and was considered, she knew, a dangerously advanced female. But yammering in a void, when action, quiet and firm, was what Guayanas needed . . . ! Anybody who could take it efficiently was welcome. Even Vidal. Even the Church. The Fonsagradas had always known the right way to treat the Church — as a potentially very able department of State. When it was lazy and corrupt, you threatened. When you had it buzzing and intriguing and stinging itself, you calmed it down and handed out grants. The futility of this professional female's burblings about biology! What the village priest knew or believed or misbelieved of evolution was of no conceivable interest to the committee. What he knew of the capacities and needs of the children was more than anybody else did.

Julia Carrillo shut up at last.

“I am sure we have all been fascinated, but . . .” Concha began.

Felicia let the too emphatic, but now — thank God! — musical voice slide over her. Concha's tact could be trusted. She certainly was not decorative, but she was a forceful consort for a
President. Rumor had it that she beat him. Surely a lie — though there was no doubt that she was the more robust and outspoken of the two. Politically, the little man needed her; in private, someone like Pilar Avellana would have been a better wife for him; but Pilar steering a committee was unthinkable.

The door of the conference room opened. A captain of the Presidential Guard, looking as inhumanly perfect as if he had just been unwrapped from a box of nineteenth-century toy soldiers, entered and saluted.

“His Excellency presents his excuses and requests for a moment the gracious attendance of the Presidenta.”

It was unprecedented on the part of Gregorio Vidal to interrupt his wife at her business. Concha rose with dignity, with indeed an air of setting an example of obedience to all good citizens. Only her thick, black eyebrows, though trimmed to the softness of velvet, betrayed what she was thinking by microscopically erecting themselves. If the
mayordomo
had come with the message, she might very well have dismissed him with the remark that she would be ready in half an hour, but that was difficult when the authority of the President was reinforced by so military an apparition.

There was a buzz of conversation as soon as the Presidenta had left the room. Felicia noticed that Julia Carrillo did not join in. She seemed distraite and ignored the chirruped offerings scratched up by her lady-in-waiting. Since they were both incompetent actresses, something was probably worrying them. If it hadn't been for Concha's summoning, Felicia would have been prepared to bet that Doña Julia was unsettled by some intimate accident. She was quite incapable of taking minor embarrassments in her stride.

Were politics suddenly boiling over? Miro had said little since La Joya. He seemed to have turned into an immensely affectionate machine for listening. Though bursting with curiosity, she had asked no direct questions. She did not at all want to be put in a position where it would be worthwhile for Juan to cross-examine her. By merely driving her into a temper (which the old beast
could do with the utmost politeness and an air of desolated surprise) he could learn something.

What did Vidal want Concha for? Could it be that he had found himself in some delicate situation with a woman which was political rather than emotional? Had Pilar walked into the Palace with some brilliant self-conceived idea of planting a bomb on him, or, softly maternal, informing him that the Blessed Virgin had told her that he ought to go? Fantasy, even for Guayanas at its most excitable . . . And yet . . . Politics, women! The association inspired Felicia with the conclusion, instantly and obviously true, that the restraint of Julia and the lady-in-waiting was not due to any failure of textiles or elastic, but to the fact that they both knew very well why Concha had been summoned.

Ten minutes passed quickly. The committee gossiped with a lot more animation than it ever showed in the discussion of business. Otherwise the exquisite Palace was silent. The tall chairs around the table glowed with the ancient red of their Spanish leather in the clear dusk of the room, and with brown where the needlepoints of sun, evading the Venetian blinds, exposed their age. The traffic on the coast road was faintly audible, and the droning rattle of a helicopter penetrated the thick stone walls. It seemed very close.

The hum of traffic grew louder and changed into a sound which was far too familiar to Felicia to be mistaken. It was the roar of the Saracens. Direction was hard to judge in the padded, paneled seclusion of the conference room, but the armored cars seemed to be coming down the coast road. Then there was no doubt about it. They had wheeled into the Glorieta in front of the Palace. She could hear the engines ticking over and, above them, a sharp verbal order.

Somebody near the window pulled up a few inches of the Venetian blind. Since the room faced the sea, only one of the cars, on the extreme left of the line, was visible. Its gun was traversing to the right and upwards, apparently covering the roof of the Palace. But the committee's attention was more urgently drawn to the passage beyond the closed doors. Army boots rushed over the
carpets and clinked over the stone flags before thundering up the staircase at the end of the corridor.

The more excitable supporters of Infantile Literature were on their feet. The more cautious remained uneasily seated. No one had any doubt what was happening. The Army was in politics again. Yet under the suppressed screams and the agitated movement was an underlying calm. Feminine common sense was not in the least affected by the conventional reaction of feminine hysteria. Former experience assured them that all this turmoil in the Palace would be over very quickly — whatever might happen in the streets — and that the conference room was by far the safest place to be. Nobody but Felicia and Julia Carrillo made any attempt to leave it.

Posted at the main entrance were a corporal and four men of Fifth Division. The detachment of the Presidential Guard which had been on duty was being marched off by an officer and two N.C.O.'s. Felicia could not help feeling a twinge of pity at so cold a contrast between past and present. Those glorious males, equipped with steel and serene leather and nodding horsehair for some formal minuet of war, towered above the gray-green figures, shapeless with webbing and magazines, which shepherded them impassively to their quarters.

“The general?” Felicia asked.

“With His Excellency,” replied the corporal.

“Your orders?”

“No one is to leave or enter,
mi Señora.”

Felicia nodded towards Julia Carrillo, who had taken advantage of the corporal's moment of overrespect to his general's wife to slip past and make for the steps.

“Stop her!”

At the command to halt, Julia froze as effectively as if she had been trained by General Kucera. Behind her were the detestable Sten guns of that brutal guard at the door. Ahead were armored cars and a detachment of infantry which they had carried. All seemed completely at ease and quite unconcerned about her, but there were enough weapons pointing in the general direction of
the steps for her to have an impression of uncountable black holes like round spots on a foulard silk.

“Put her back inside the third door on the left,” Felicia advised.

The corporal ran down the steps to the arrest — or rescue — of the petrified Julia. Meanwhile Felicia discreetly disappeared. She did not wish Julia to know that she had told the corporal what to do with her. And in any case it was only a suggestion, not an order.

When Julia had been escorted down the passage, Felicia remained just inside the entrance hall. Outside, the troops preserved the silence of easy discipline, broken only by the low voices of officers and sergeants inspecting their vehicles for possible damage. Two lorry loads of infantry rolled into the Glorieta, received a written order, and roared off in the direction of the Alameda.

The beetle-buzzing of the helicopter began again. It was now rising. It couldn't be more than three or four minutes since it had landed. She heard her husband's voice coming from the Palace roof. She never knew that he could unleash such tremendous carrying power. He must have learned the accomplishment in his Czech military school and possibly never used it since.

“Calixto, bring down that helicopter!”

She was oddly astonished that the sequence should be as exact as on the range — Irigoyen to the troop commander to that car on the left of the line which they had seen from the conference room. Two coughing cracks responded as precisely as if the order had been finally repeated by a human being instead of a slender tube with slots and funnel on the end of it.

It looked as if the gun had missed. She guessed that the crew had fired with spit-and-polish smartness instead of taking time for more deliberate aim. The barrel of the gun moved slightly upwards. There were four more of those violent coughs, and a quickly suppressed unanimous exclamation from the troops. Somewhere out of sight, probably on the seafront, there was a splintering crash — metal to ground, and metal on metal.

Miro raced through the entrance hall without seeing her, and
halfway down the steps. He was ordering a guard on the wreckage of the helicopter and the immediate presence of a civil magistrate.

Gregorio and Concha Vidal followed him. They were pale and excited, but Felicia had the impression that they were struggling with anger rather than fear. The little President stood at the head of the steps, framed by the columns of the lovely portico and undoubtedly gathering to himself an added elegance from the imperial history behind him and the presence of his loyal troops in front.

Lieutenant Colonel Calixto Irigoyen stepped forward and shouted:

“Viva Vidal! Viva el gran Presidente!”

Vidal's response to the cheering was perfect. He smiled his pleasure, and raised his hand deprecatingly. This was not, he implied, the moment for enthusiasm.

Felicia was in two minds whether or not to return to the conference room. Her position as an onlooker embarrassed her. She was reluctant to be closely identified with Miro in action: to be, as it were, a too persistent camp follower. The feeling was akin to her shyness in face of salutes at the Citadel. But as she hesitated between the potted palms and the sentries, Doña Concha discovered her, embraced her and presented her, with a word of explanation, to Miro.

The confusing sequence of events became clear, though the explanations were more exclamatory than revealing. Vidal had been courteously and firmly arrested by the captain and lieutenant of the morning guard. The men had not been involved at all — had continued to stand, stiff, decorative and unthinking as their lances and red horsehair, at their posts outside the Palace. The helicopter had come down on the flat roof of the Palace. Gregorio and Concha were to have been put on board, and would have been put on board if it hadn't been for some device of Miro's by which the President at the moment of his arrest had been able to give the alarm at the Citadel.

If the helicopter had arrived before Miro and the squadron, the success of the revolution would have been certain and bloodless.
No one could dispute the story that Gregorio Vidal, faced with a determined rising of the people, had feared for his safety and taken off with his wife. True, there hadn't yet been any rising of the people, but who, afterwards, would look too closely at a matter of minutes one way or the other? It was probable that the Avellanistas were already inside the Casa de Radio-Difusión, and Avellana himself near at hand, ready to mount the steps of the Palace as soon as it was announced by radio that the President had fled.