The Honorary Consul Read online

  "Did Charley ever say why he married you?" he asked.

  "I told you. It was a question of money when he died. And now he's dead."

  "Perhaps."

  "Would you like to have more ice? I can call María. There is a bell, but Charley always rings it."

  "Why?"

  "I am not used to bells. All these electric things—they frighten me."

  It amused him to watch her sitting upright at the end of the table like a hostess. He thought of his mother in the old days on the estancia when he had been brought in by his nurse for the dessert—she too had often served an avocado ice. She had been far more beautiful than Clara—they were not to be compared—but he remembered all the aids which she had bought for beauty in those days; they stood two deep on the long dressing table that stretched from wall to wall. He wondered sometimes whether even in those days his father had not taken second place to Guerlain or Elizabeth Arden.

  "What was Charley like as a lover?"

  Clara did not bother to answer. She said, "The radio... we ought to listen. There may be news."

  "News?"

  "News of Charley, of course. What are you thinking about?"

  "I was thinking of the long afternoon we can spend together."

  "He might turn up."

  Taken off his guard he said, "He won't turn up."

  "Why are you so sure that he is dead?"

  "I'm not sure, but if he is alive he will go to a telephone before he does anything else. He will not want to surprise you—and the baby."

  "We ought to listen all the same."

  After getting Asunción first he found a local station. There was no news. Only a sad Guaraní song came over the air and the music of a harp. She said, "Do you like champagne?"

  "Yes."

  "Charley has some champagne. He was given it once in exchange for Long John Whisky—real French champagne, he said."

  The music stopped. A voice announced the station and the news bulletin, and news of Charley Fortnum took first place. A British Consul—the speaker left out the qualifying and diminishing adjective—had been kidnapped. There was no mention of the American Ambassador. Somehow Léon must have communicated with his contacts. The omission lent Charley a certain importance. It made him sound worth kidnapping. The authorities, so the speaker said, believed the kidnappers were Paraguayan. It was thought that the Consul might have been taken across the river and the kidnappers were making their demands through the Argentine government in order to confuse the trail. Apparently they had demanded the release of ten political prisoners who were held in Paraguay. Any police action in Paraguay or Argentina would endanger the life of the Consul. A plane to Havana or Mexico City must be arranged for the prisoners... There were the usual detailed conditions. The announcement had been made only an hour ago by a telephone call from Rosario to the 'Nación' in Buenos Aires. The announcer said there was no possibility that the Consul was held in the capital, for his car had been found near Posadas more than a thousand kilometers away.

  "I do not understand," Clara said.

  "Keep quiet and listen." The announcer went on to explain that the kidnappers had chosen their time with some skill, for General Stroessner at the moment was on an unofficial holiday in the south of Argentina. He had been informed of the kidnapping and he was reported to have said, "That is no concern of mine. I am here for fishing." The kidnappers had given the Paraguayan government until Sunday midnight to agree to their terms by an announcement on the radio. When that time expired they would be forced to execute their prisoner.

  "But why Charley?"

  "It must have been a mistake. There's no other explanation. You mustn't worry. He will be back home In a few days. Tell your maid you wish to see no one—I expect there will be journalists coming out here."

  "You will stay?"

  "I'll stay for a while."

  "I do not think I want to make love."

  "No. Of course. I understand." They moved together down the long passage hung with sporting prints, and Doctor Plarr paused to look again at the narrow stream shaded by willows situated in that small northern island where his father had been born. No general went fishing with his colonels in streams like those. He carried the thought of his father's abandoned home into the bedroom. He asked, "Do you ever want to go back to Tucumán?"

  "No," she said, "of course not. Why do you ask me that?"

  She lay on the bed without taking off her clothes. It was cool as a sea cave in the shuttered air-conditioned room.

  "What does your father do?"

  "He cuts cane," she said, "in the season, but he is getting old."

  "And out of season?"

  "They live on the money I send them. They would starve if I died. I will not die, will I? with the baby?"

  "No, of course not. Have you no brother or sister?"

  "I had a brother, but he went away—no one knows where." He sat on the edge of the bed and her hand touched his for a moment and withdrew. Perhaps she was afraid he would take her gesture for a comedy of tenderness and resent it. "He went away," she said, "to cut cane one morning at four o'clock and then he never came back. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he just went away."

  He was reminded of his father's disappearance. Here they lived on a continent, not on an island. What a vast area of land, with ill-defined frontiers of mountain, river, jungle and swamp, there was to lose oneself in—all the way from Panama to Tierra del Fuego. "Your brother never wrote?"

  "How could he? He did not know how to read or write."

  "But you can."

  "A little. Señora Sanchez taught me. She liked her girls to be educated. And Charley has helped me too."

  "You had no sister?" he asked.

  "Yes. She had a baby in the fields and strangled it and then she died."

  He had never asked about her family before. He could think of no reason for questioning her now, unless perhaps he was seeking to discover what lay behind his obsession. Was there some characteristic in which she differed from the other girls he had seen at Señora Sanchez' house? Perhaps if he discovered the nature of the difference, the obsession would be killed like a trauma at the end of analysis. He would have strangled the obsession as her sister had strangled her child. He said, "I am tired. Let me lie down beside you for a bit. I need to sleep. I was up until three this morning."

  "What were you doing?"

  "I was seeing a patient," he said. "Will you wake me when it begins to get dark?"

  The air conditioner humming by the window sounded like a natural summer sound, and once through his sleep he seemed to hear a bell ringing—the big ship's bell which hung on a rope from the eaves of the verandah. He was half aware that she had got up and left him. He heard distant voices, the sound of a car starting, and then she was back, lying beside him, and he slept again. He dreamt, as he hadn't dreamt for some years, of the estancia in Paraguay. He was lying in his child's bunk at the top of a ladder, he listened to the noise of keys which were turned and bolts which were pushed to—his father was making the house secure, but he was afraid all the same. Perhaps someone had been locked in who should have been locked out.

  Doctor Plarr opened his eyes. The raised edge of the bunk became Clara's body set against his own. It was dark. He could see nothing. He put his hand out and touched her and he felt the baby move. He put his fingers up to her face. Her eyes were open. He said, "Are you awake?" but she didn't answer. He asked, "Is something wrong?"

  She said, "I do not want Charley back, but I do not want him to die either."

  He was astonished by this expression of emotion. She had shown none at all, as she sat and listened to Colonel Perez, and, when she had spoken to him after Perez left, it was of the Cadillac and of the lost sunglasses from Gruber's.

  She said, "He was good to me. He is a kind man. I do not want him to be hurt. I only want him not to be here."

  He began to comfort her with his hand as he would have comforted a frightened dog, and gently, without intention, they c
ame together. He felt no lust, and when she moaned and tightened, he felt no sense of triumph.

  He wondered with sadness, why did I ever want this to happen? Why did I think it would be a victory? There seemed to be no point in playing the game since now he knew what moves he had to make to win. The moves were sympathy, tenderness, quiet, the counterfeiting of love. He had been drawn to her by her indifference, even her enmity. She said, "Stay with me tonight."

  "How can I? Your maid would know. You can't trust her not to tell Charley."

  "I could leave Charley."

  "It's too soon to think of that. First we have to save bun—somehow."

  "Yes, of course, but afterward..."

  "You were anxious about him just now."

  "Not about him," she said. "About me. When he is here I can talk about nothing—only the baby. He wants to forget that Señora Sanchez ever existed, so I can never see my friends because they all work there. What good am I to him? He does not want to make love to me any more because he is afraid it will do something to the baby. Do what? Sometimes I long to tell him—it is not yours anyway, so why do you bother about it?"

  "Are you sure it isn't his?"

  "Yes. I am sure. Perhaps if he knew about you he would let me go."

  "Who were those people who came to the house just now?"

  "Two journalists."

  "Did you speak to them?"

  "They wanted me to make an appeal to the kidnappers—for Charley. I did not know what to say. I knew one of them—he used to have me sometimes when I was with Señora Sanchez. I think he was angry about the baby. Colonel Perez must have told him about the baby. He said the baby was news. He always thought I liked him more than the other men. So I think his 'machismo' was hurt. These men always believe you when you pretend. It suits their pride. He wanted to show his friend, the photographer, that there was something special between us, but there was nothing. Nothing. I was angry and I began to cry, and they took a picture. He said 'Fine. O. K. Fine. That's what we want. The sorrowing wife and mother-to-be,' he said, and they drove away."

  It was not easy to interpret her tears correctly. Were they tears for Charley, tears of anger, tears for herself?

  "What a funny beast you are, Clara," he said.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "You were acting again just now, weren't you?"

  "What do you mean? Acting?"

  "When we made love."

  "Yes," she said. "Of course I was acting. I always try to do what you like. I always try to say what you like. Yes. Just like at Señora Sanchez. Why not? You have your 'machismo' too."

  He half believed her. He wanted to believe her. If she were speaking the truth there might be something still to discover, the game was not over yet.

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "I have been wasting a lot of time here, Clara. There must be something I can do to help Charley."

  "And me? What about me?"

  "You had better take a bath," he said, "or your maid might smell the sex."

  2

  Doctor Plarr drove back to the city. He told himself it was necessary to do something about Charley Fortnum immediately, but he had no idea what. Perhaps if he stayed quiet everything might be put in order in the accustomed way—the British and American Ambassadors would bring the right diplomatic pressure to bear, Charley Fortnum would be found deposited some early morning in a church and go home—home?—and ten prisoners in Paraguay would be given their liberty—it was even possible his father might be among them. What else could he do but leave things to sort themselves out? He had already lied to Colonel Perez, he was implicated.

  Of course, to salve his conscience, he might make an emotional appeal to Léon Rivas to let Charley Fortnum go—"in the name of our old friendship." But Léon was a man under orders and in any case Doctor Plarr had no clear idea of where to find him. In the 'barrio' of the poor all the marshy tracks resembled one another, there were the same avocado trees everywhere, the same huts of mud or tin, and the same potbellied children carrying petrol tins of water. They would look at him with their blank eyes which were already infected by trachoma and reply nothing to any question. It might take him hours, even days, to find the hut where Charley Fortnum was hidden, and what good would his appeal do in any case? He tried unsuccessfully to reassure himself that Léon was not a man to commit murder, nor was Aquino, but they were only instruments—there remained El Tigre, whoever he might be.

  He had heard of El Tigre for the first time one evening when he had passed Léon and Aquino sitting side by side in his waiting room. They were just two strangers among the other patients and he hadn't given them a second look. All who waited there were the responsibility of his secretary.

  His secretary was a pretty young woman called Ana. She was dauntingly efficient and the daughter of an influential official in the public health department. Doctor Plarr sometimes wondered why he had never been tempted to make love to her. Perhaps he hesitated because of the white starched uniform which she had adopted of her own wish—it would creak or crackle if one touched her: she might have been connected to a burglar alarm. Or perhaps it was the importance of her father, or her piety, real or apparent, which deterred him. She always wore a small gold cross round her neck, and once, when he had been driving through the square by the cathedral, he had seen her emerge with her family from Sunday Mass carrying a missal bound in white vellum—it might have been a first Communion present, for it closely resembled the sugar almonds which are distributed on such occasions.

  The evening when Léon and Aquino came to see him, he had dealt with all the other patients before it became the turn of the two strangers. He had not remembered them because there were always new faces waiting his attention. Patience and patients were words closely allied. His secretary came with a crackle to his side and put a slip of paper on the desk. "They want to see you together," she said. He put back on the shelf a medical book he had been consulting in front of a patient—for some reason patients gained confidence if they could see a colored picture, an aspect of human psychology which American publishers knew well. When he looked back the two men were standing side by side in front of his desk. The smaller, who had protruding ears, said, "It is Eduardo surely?"

  "Léon," Plarr exclaimed, "it is Léon, Léon Rivas?" They embraced with a certain shyness. Plarr asked, "How many years...? I haven't heard from you since you sent me that Ordination card. I was sorry I could not come to the ceremony—it would have been unsafe for me."

  "That is all over anyway."

  "Why? Have they thrown you out?"

  "I am married for one thing. The Archbishop did not like that."

  Doctor Plarr hesitated.

  Léon Rivas said, "I am very lucky. She is a fine woman."

  "Congratulations. Who in all Paraguay did you find willing to celebrate the marriage?"

  "We made our vows to each other. You know a priest at a marriage is never more than a witness. In an emergency... this was an emergency."

  "I had forgotten things were so easy."

  "Oh, I can assure you not so easy. It needs a lot of thought. That sort of marriage is more irrevocable than in a church. Don't you recognize my friend?"

  "No... I don't think so... no..." Doctor Plarr tried to strip away the thin beard and identify some schoolboy face which he might have known years ago in Asunción.

  "Aquino."

  "Aquino? Why of course it's Aquino." Another embrace: it was like a military ceremony, a kiss on the cheek and a decoration awarded for a dead past in a devastated land. He asked, "What are you doing now? You were going to be a writer, weren't you? Are you a writer?"

  "There are no writers left in Paraguay."

  "We saw your name on a parcel in Gruber's shop," Léon said.

  "So he told me, but I thought you were police agents from over there."

  "Why? Are you watched?"

  "I don't think so."

  "We have come from over there."

  "Ar
e you in trouble?"

  "Aquino has been in prison," Léon said.

  "They let you out?"

  "The authorities did not exactly invite me to go," Aquino said.

  "We were lucky," León explained. "They were transferring him from one police station to another, there was a little shooting, but the only man who was killed was the policeman we were going to pay. He was shot by his own side, by accident. We had given him only half the money in advance, so we got Aquino cheap."

  "Are you going to settle here?"

  "Not settle," Léon said. "We are here to do a job. Afterward we shall go back."

  "You are not patients then?"

  "No, we are not patients."

  Doctor Plarr appreciated the dangers of a frontier. He got up and opened the door. His secretary was standing beside the filing cabinet in the outer office. She inserted a card here, a card there. Her cross swung to and fro as she moved, like a priest's censer. He closed the door. He said, "You know, Léon, I'm not interested in politics. Only medicine. I am not like my father."

  "Why are you here and not in Buenos Aires?"

  "I was not doing very well in Buenos Aires."

  "We thought you might want to know what had happened to your father."

  "Do you know?"

  "I think we may soon be in a position to find out."

  Doctor Plarr said, "I had better make notes about your condition. I'll put down low blood pressure for you, Léon, a suspicion of anemia... Aquino—perhaps your gall bladder... I will put you down for x-rays. You understand my secretary will expect to see what diagnosis I make."

  "We believe your father may be alive still," Léon said. "So naturally we thought of you..."

  There was a knock on the door and the secretary came in. She said, "I have finished all the cards. If you would let me go now..."

  "A lover waiting?"

  She said, "Today is Saturday," as though that ought to explain everything.

  "I know that."

  "I want to go to Confession."

  "Oh," Doctor Plarr said, "of course, I am sorry, Ana. I forgot. Of course you must go." His lack of desire for her irritated him, so he deliberately found an occasion to vex her. "Pray for me," he said.