Thing to Love (40 page)

“Beauty? A word, friend, a word! Let them look at the sunset. This beauty stuff is a word, like Democracy and Communism. It
means whatever we want, and it is men who give it meaning. Don Gil, you will make a President after my heart. But I do not care if the Palace is not there for you to see. I care if Miro is not there to see it. For me, that is what gives it meaning. And the people, Don Pedro? You know very well that the poor bastards in the Barracas would sell the Palace for an extra bit of meat on Sunday. You can always ask the Russians to build you another. Or perhaps the North Americans, who will have to apologize for the incident. As architects, they are both somewhat uninspired; but in another hundred years the Palace will again be beautiful compared to the worse horrors they will have put up by then. . . . Do I get Miro's life, Don Gil? Yes or no?”

“No!”

“I see that I have been talking too long. It is four and half minutes since my last call to the
Frente Unido
. Order your staff out of the Palace, Don Gil.”

“Gil, this is a nightmare. For God's sake stop him!” Juan cried, jumping to his feet.

“I can't! There's not a gun which can touch him.”

Both of them were nearly wailing with anxiety. Felicia was amazed at the single-mindedness of men when they closed up their intelligence with blinkers and picked on one point which was momentarily essential.

“Don Gil is perhaps forgetting that it is very easy to stop him,” she said.

She smiled at Paco, though why he had needed to excuse himself at such length was beyond her. What, indeed, was the Palace compared to Miro? With superb impertinence she powdered her nose. It occurred to her that it might be the last time she ever did. Captain Salinas was not bluffing. She knew that as well as any of them. But presumably he meant to give them time to get out of the target area.

There was a moment's silence, of which she felt herself at last and entirely in command, until it was broken by Paco.

“Away from the window! All of you to the back of the room!”

The tiger snarl of the eight-inch shell was just audible before it
exploded. The glass of the great window fell into the room, and with it a shower of the black, well-gardened earth from the glacis, half a rosebush and a barrowload of blue salvias.

“That was a practice charge,” said Paco calmly, “as our military friends will realize. The next will be high explosive.”

But it was not altogether the threat that was going to save Miro. Felicia knew this as soon as Avellana's desperately searching eyes fell on the rose. It swung the balance, because the gesture cried out to be made, because he could not resist making it. The magnificent tradition of his ancestors, of Christian conquest, of generosity, of chivalry towards a woman in desperate need were taking command of his indecision. The temptation to be Avellana and to make a legend that would be told of Avellana was too great. He picked up the rose and handed it to her with exquisite grace.

“I think you will keep this all your life, Doña Felicia.”

He turned to Miro, the broken glass crunching under his feet.

“I require from you your word of honor that you will never bear arms against my government or against Guayanas.”

“I give you my word of honor, Excellency. If you will write out a statement for me to sign. . . .”

“That will be quite unnecessary.”

Felicia thanked her President with his own pride and within his assumed world, but still uneasily aware that it was confined to Gil, herself and her father. Pedro Valdés and Paco Salinas had remained, unmoved, in the twentieth century, and her uncompromising husband still upon the edge of some self-chosen eternity.

Paco had picked up his incongruous little table from the floor and was speaking:

“Too high, Alberto. . . . No, no, friend, it served very well. . . . Every four minutes again, until my launch is clear of the naval basin. You will then proceed by direct observation. Any attempt to fire on me and my passengers, or to detain us, and you will destroy your target.”

He turned to Avellana.

“Don Gil, I feel deeply that I cannot call you Excellency when I find that I have declared for Vidal. Also I must apologize to you in advance for what I shall be compelled to say about you when
my ship arrives in the United States. But, after all, you are free to return the compliment. For the sake of my officers and their future, I must take the
Frente Unido
, though God knows we are all weary of her. From what I know of Don Gregorio, he will undoubtedly sell her to some Africans. She has no value except as scrap, but one cannot feel one's sovereignty without a battleship. You will not lose by that. When you have made your peace with the North Americans — as Don Juan has always considered that you will — you can ask five times her value and get it. Miro, I have only a taxi in the courtyard, but it is at your service and that of Doña Felicia.”

“I am very grateful, Paco,” Miro replied formally. “But first I must ask His Excellency if he does not consider that the terms of surrender forbid my escape.”

“Miro! . . . Miro, for God's sake!” Juan and Felicia exclaimed together.

“It will of course release us at once from our promise to take no reprisals against Fifth Division,” Pedro Valdés said.

“The only conditions, Pedro, were that the former General Kucera surrender the Citadel and himself. That he did. Nothing was said about his fate. I am still most willing to have him shot if he thinks that honor demands it,” Avellana added with a half-smile, “but I am bound to disagree. There will be no reprisals. When such a man as Gregorio Vidal could command the loyalty of Fifth Division, it will be strange if I cannot. That, I think, is enough — when there is a four-minute limit on my eloquence. Juan, perhaps you would be good enough to escort your daughter and son-in-law to the naval basin?”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1953 by the Estate of Geoffrey Household

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

978-1-5040-0671-2

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