Thing to Love (37 page)

It was already deep twilight. He took two machine-gun crews from Ferrer's company on board his command vehicle and crossed the bridge with the escorting Saracen. There was no time to seek a stronger force and anyway it was enough. On the way to the San Vicente road he talked to his Headquarters and found that as usual the chief problem was the rounding-up of prisoners. That task was no longer necessary. He ordered them to be disarmed and dismissed into the emptiness of the llanos. Somewhere they must have a supply base, and they were harmless. Basilio had said that, too. One could only cling to the possibility that he was right.

At the junction with the Hermosillo—San Vicente road he looked anxiously for the tracks of the horses, hoping that they had cantered straight across the road in an instinctive rush for the freedom of the plains or that they had turned north to Hermosillo where the first of the Avellanistas might already have crossed by boat and occupied the town. But they had gone south, riding on the verges of the road. The lack of pursuit, the momentary relaxation, had been too much for the severely wounded, who till then had clung to a comrade or the horse's mane. He counted seven along their route.

The glare of a burning truck lit up the sky ahead and was then absorbed by the lights of the staging point and the flood-lit Red Cross over the Field Hospital. As they roared towards it Miro had an impression of a dark lane running obliquely from the road through the ambulances and transport.

At the entrance to it he stopped and jumped out, waving away in his bitter foreboding the medical staff who rushed up to him.
The flying llaneros, unthinking as their cattle, had charged the camp which vaguely threatened them, overturning the tents in their path and the dressing stations which had been set up for blood transfusion and urgent medical or surgical treatment. Orderlies, doctors, nurses, wounded of both sides, everyone on their narrow path had been lanced.

Near the center of the lane someone, regardless of the Convention, had resisted. Four of the llaneros lay dead on the ground. Beyond them a lance was stuck into the ground skewering a body much fatter than any of the genial surgeons whom Miro could remember. He walked over to it. The lance was through two bodies, one of them a woman's.

The sweat burst out all over him. He recognized the red hair spread out and the back of the glossy black head which had dropped in it. With the tears pouring silently down his cheeks he put his foot on Salvador's back and pulled the lance clear. It was the last service he could do for him.

But when, half embracing it, he had lifted the body, it was clear that his first thought had been wrong. The Luger in Salvador's hand was empty. The four dead were his. It was possible, knowing Salvador's character, to reconstruct the scene. When his trigger clicked instead of firing he would never have thrown himself uselessly and dramatically in front of his Agueda. He would have coolly turned and held her close. And the white arm which had been round his neck might have been a last eager response or a convulsive tightening as the lance went home so savagely that the flying horseman could not withdraw it.

CHAPTER XX

[
March 15
]

I
N THE ANIMATION
of the terrace of the Ateneo, Henry Pen-ruddock felt a hysteria of vivacity. The members had decided that the crisis was over although they knew very well that it was not. Their illusion that life ran in its accustomed groove was forgivable, for without a confining groove, without the compulsion of a balance of power, it could not run at all. And the balance was plainly evident. Atrocities, revenge, police persecution were not very likely when everyone could imagine the long guns of the Citadel feeling blindly for the sky. They could even go and watch them doing it, those nasty, phallic antennae thrust out towards the city by unseen men from thicknesses of steel and concrete.

The consul's own attitude to revolution had always reflected his dual allegiance. The contented exile shrugged his massive shoulders and admitted that revolution was effective, normally causing rather less disturbance in the life of a nation than a general election. The solid Englishman, however, could not help feeling quietly superior to these excitable Latins forever tampering with Constitutions, forever unable to allow them time to work.

This time he did not feel superior. The tragedy, the courage and the cruelty had profoundly moved him. Both processions
which he had watched during the week were too significant — though he was by no means sure of what — for anyone to disparage them. That neither could possibly have taken place in his own country did not give him his usual satisfaction. Political maturity was all very well, but this blazing vitality was the sign of a civilization on the march to the top.

He had seen a San Vicente absolutely inhibited. It was incredible. Not even a brick thrown. Not even a cheer for Avellana or General Kucera, unless a man had first looked round to see who his neighbors were. The city council watched from behind the velvet-curtained windows of the Ayuntamiento, giving no sign of approval or disapproval. The Palace and the Ministries were as dead as cold stores with no beef going in or out. And meanwhile the rear guard of Fifth Division rumbled along the Alameda and out to the Avenida Gregorio Vidal and on to the Citadel with its guns bouncing at the end of their trails and its grim men in the trucks and troop carriers ignoring the city they could conquer at the lift of a finger, their uniforms dark-stained, much-used, but never ragged.

Kucera himself rode in an open jeep, stiffly for him, looking straight in front of him, acknowledging only the salute of his own military police who were directing the traffic — an unanswerable gesture of contempt for the town. Penruddock wondered if the general had considered for a moment the possibility of assassination from rooftop or archway. At any rate he was right to ignore it. Not even a lunatic would have risked letting loose the smoldering anger of those unbeaten troops. By evening the whole Division was united in the Citadel awaiting the orders of the civil government. That, they said, was how Miro Kucera had put it. One of the ironical courtesies for which he was famous. The civil government had better give orders with which he could agree.

And then two days later the second procession: the entry of Gil Avellana. Youth at the helm and whatever-it-was at the prow. Not that the wildly cheering workers in the streets had been particularly youthful. Many were fathers of families trusting the promise that bread and vegetables would come down to a price they could afford, and those who were not had little bloom of
youth left on them. But the cavalcade — it was too gay and too traditional to be called anything else — seemed to have few participants over thirty beyond Avellana himself, generous, handsome in his national costume and riding a black horse. Behind him was that blasted fanatic, Pedro Valdés, at the head of a squadron of Twentieth Cavalry — it was said he couldn't collect enough of his hard-fighting Sixth Division to make a show. Then came a mob of llaneros dressed for fiesta. They smelled, but represented historical continuity. According to the Ateneo, there weren't many llaneros available either. The women volunteers followed, marching with decided panache but disapproved by a conventional San Vicente. They were all slung with arms, God help us, though no one had ever heard of a shot fired by them! That solemn and dangerous ass Carrillo led the university. There had been some naughty shouts of: “Where's his horse?” Morote's men, carrying the arms with which they had taken San Vicente and handling them extremely dangerously, were the toughest of the lot. The consul liked them — he had to admit it. He supposed it was because they had dignity.

And Juan, His Worship the Alcalde, pacing out from the Ayuntamiento as if all the ancient municipalities of Spain were watching him, and halting the procession to present Gil Avellana with the golden keys of the city! It had been a clever gesture, for Avellana was probably none too pleased at the Capital being administered without reference to him and without any exaggerated declaration of support.

The Alcalde detached himself gracefully from a group of politicians — all the easier since he had no portfolios to hand out — and joined Henry Penruddock at his table.

“I never knew that the Ayuntamiento of San Vicente had a set of golden keys,” said the consul as soon as Juan had been provided with a drink and was momentarily free of interruptions.

“It doesn't, Enrique. But I fear I shall have to go to the expense of providing some.”

“Where the devil did you get them?”

“Out of a confectioner's shop. Cardboard gilt. Used for decorating
cakes on civic occasions. I weighed them down with a heavy chain and the suggestion of impermanence was entirely lost on Gil. He would have been just as happy if I had offered him an illuminated copy of the Constitution or the works of Karl Marx bound in tooled Ledesma skin. Gil cannot resist a gesture, Enrique — his own or anyone else's. An excellent quality. Not only does it create the myths so useful to a politician, but it compels him to live up to them.”

“Didn't I see that girl of yours dressed up as a sergeant?”

“Vita is always somewhat exalted, but capable of selflessness and devotion. Seeing herself, as now she does, in a historical setting . . .”

“You intended it, then?”

“I was aware, Enrique, that when Gil was isolated and despairing in Los Venados he would quite certainly form some embarrassing and unworthy attachment. Deeply respecting Doña Pilar as I do, I did not wish her to be insulted by a rival who was not intolerably lovely and discreet. I must admit I hardly expected to see my Vita giving the step to a platoon of female students. But we live in times of enthusiasm and I am old-fashioned. To lift over the female figure and head four kilos of ammunition seems to me an unromantic beginning. On the other hand, to the youth of today, among whom apparently I must include Gil Avellana, it is possibly a charming and delicate preliminary. But you ask me if it was what I intended. Yes, in the sense that I was playing with possible futures — Vita's influence on Gil and Agueda's on Salvador. Then am I guilty, too, of Agueda's death? Perhaps, Enrique. But only those who are incapable of love complain of the price they must pay for it. She and Salvador will intercede for me.”

The consul's basket chair creaked as he moved his bulk uneasily. Love — well, it was a strong word. He supposed that he did, within reason. At any rate he felt a jolly affection for most of his friends. But for Juan he felt more than that. Very much more indeed. And Juan, in spite of his Panama-hatted temperament, was half destroyed already and would soon be all destroyed. There was so little he could do to help, privately or officially.
He wished to God that a second rescue might be as simple as the first, when he forced his old friend into making money by setting him up in what he insisted on calling patent medicines.

“What's the latest from the Citadel?” he asked.

“Accept our terms or come and get us.”

“And the terms?”

“They tell me nothing. All I know is that there have been raised voices in Gil Avellana's Cabinet.”

“I hope Doña Felicia —”

“She is at home, Enrique. We have now only one interest. But I would rather she hated me for years than that this should bring us together. Day by day I watch her beginning to understand what I have known all along to be nearly inevitable.”

“The Army wants his blood, too?”

“The Army especially. His only friend is that kindly old fool.”

Juan nodded towards a table where Don Jesús-María, now restored to his rank of Captain General, was sitting with Captain Paco Salinas. They made an unlikely pair. Henry Penruddock, knowing Jesús-María's harmless vanities, suggested that the reason was the striking contrast of their uniforms.

“Shall we go over?”

“I can't, Enrique. Any suspicion that I was trying to work on Jesús-María would harden Avellana's heart for good. You go. He may talk to you frankly.”

Juan vanished into the club and the consul rolled slowly along the line of chairs. He very much doubted if Don Jesús-María really had the generous feelings towards his conqueror which Juan ascribed to him. On the other hand the old boy, however incompetent he might be in the field, set great store by honor and military courtesy. Miro Kucera's first act on entering the Citadel had been to release his distinguished prisoners, whom he had, it was said, treated luxuriously well. Most of them had scattered at once to reorganize their commands. Don Jesús-María had remained to give his advice — as likely as not unasked — to Avellana.

After greeting Paco by a wave of the hand, Henry Penruddock said:

“I have not yet had an opportunity of congratulating you, Captain General, on your liberty.”

“Sit down, Señor Consul, sit down! Why does Great Britain no longer take an interest in us? And to think that in the days of my youth it was you who owned the country! But because you never intervened in our politics there was not a soul in Guayanas who did not like you.”

“Times change, Captain General. We are a little island doing the best it can on the edge of the Arctic, and soon it may be Guayanas we shall thank for not intervening in
our
revolutions.”

“Nonsense! You have no revolutions. You are the only great country where the Army has never played politics. Even in the United States it tries. And, thanks to them, a Communist Guayanas is now just possible!”

Most unfair, the consul thought. The Captain General was prejudiced. Washington didn't give a damn how Guayanas was governed; but it would fight at the drop of a hat for even a distant threat to the Panama Canal. The Americans were perhaps to blame for the speed with which they had bounded into the arena like some big-eyed, suffering movie star knocking out lions for the honor of Christianity. The Androcles approach seemed wiser, though it was late for it now.

What Avellana ought to do was to take a leaf out of Vidal's book and preserve Fifth Division as a counter to the red Army which might one day be led by Valdés. He hadn't a chance of that if he executed General Kucera; but he might easily win over the Division if he showed mercy. That wasn't the kind of thing which the Foreign Office would instruct him or the Ambassador to point out. Too obscure at a distance, though obvious on the spot. And, as Jesús-María said, the British had never intervened. Or if they had, it was a private venture by some old fool like himself who knew the country.

“Captain General,” said Penruddock cautiously, “in a moment I shall begin to think you agree with Kucera that the Army has no business in politics.”

“I will tell you this, my respected Consul! The officers of Fifth Division are gentlemen of honor whom any soldier would be proud
to command. If only the students and the llaneros had their discipline! But the extremes of our people have no sense of reality.”

“Nor has Miro!” Paco Salinas exclaimed. “If he had any sense he would have kept you all as hostages instead of playing at chivalry like a Quixote on half-tracks.”

“Miro has the logical mind which derives inevitably from our profession of arms, Captain Salinas,” replied Don Jesús-María, unruffled. “It is true that he could have held us as hostages. But what good is a hostage unless you are prepared to shoot him? Not even Pedro Valdés would believe for a moment that he was capable of anything of the sort. If his Colonel Chaves had been in command, he might well have built a pyramid and sacrificed one of us daily in sight of the besiegers. I trust he would forgive the exaggeration. In fact he and Nicuesa treated us until Miro's arrival with the courtesy of Miro himself.”

“I have heard that Kucera has offered a bargain,” said the consul suggestively.

“A bargain!” Paco Salinas snorted. “Miro wouldn't haggle a penny off the price of a cabbage!”

“You think so?” Penruddock asked, annoyed that Paco kept on interrupting his delicate diplomacy. “Ask Don Jesús-María how he brought down the price of his Saracens!”

“For himself, I mean, friend Enrique.”

The consul tried again.

“I am glad to hear that Avellana has consulted you on what answer to give, Captain General. The decision of the head of the Army, the revered guardian of its traditions, should be final.”

“Final? The devil! It's impossible to argue with Avellana. His ears are too full of vivas. There was I in the Cabinet. Do not fear the Division, I told them! I can work even with Rosalindo Chaves. I shall send him to the jungle frontier for five years, and by the end of that time you will have a new province. But no! But no! The commanders must answer for their crimes: Quebradas, the Escala, the murder of Ledesma — for which, my friends, the only proof is that all the statements that he was not murdered agree too exactly. War is war, I told them, and a court-martial will acquit. So it would, if I could prevent it being held till
the winter. Then they shall be tried by the civil courts, said Avellana. Well and good, but Vidal is still President. If he had resigned, the civil courts would know where they were. But since he has formed a government-in-exile which has been recognized by the United States . . .”