The Honorary Consul Read online

  Doctor Plarr decided that it was better to keep out of the way until midnight. The Governor's party would have surely dispersed by that time, and Charley Fortnum would be well on his way home. I am not a man with 'machismo', Doctor Plarr reflected ruefully, though he could hardly imagine Charley Fortnum coming at him with a knife. He got up from the bench. The hour was late enough for the professor of English.

  He did not find Doctor Humphries, as he expected, at the Hotel Bolivar. Doctor Humphries had a small room with a shower on the ground floor with a window opening on the patio which contained one dusty palm and a dead fountain. He had left his door unlocked and this perhaps showed his confidence in stability. Doctor Plarr remembered how at night his father in Paraguay would lock even the internal doors of his house, the bedrooms, the lavatories, the unused guest rooms, not against robbers but against the police, the military and the official assassins, though they would certainly not have been deterred long by locked doors.

  In Doctor Humphries' room there was hardly space for a bed, a dressing table, two chairs, a basin and the shower. You had to fight your way through them as though they were passengers in a crowded subway. Doctor Plarr saw that Doctor Humphries had pasted a new picture on the wall, from the Spanish edition of 'Life', showing the Queen perched on a horse at Trooping the Color. The choice was not necessarily a mark of patriotism or nostalgia: patches of damp were continually appearing on the plaster of the room and Doctor Humphries covered them with the nearest picture which came to hand. Perhaps however his choice did show a certain preference for wakening with the Queen's face rather than Mr. Nixon's on the wall. (Mr. Nixon's face would surely have appeared somewhere in the same number of 'Life'.) Inside the small room it was cool, but even the coolness was humid. The shower behind the plastic curtain had a faulty washer and dripped upon the tiles. The narrow bed was pulled together rather than made—the bumpy sheet might have been hastily drawn over a corpse, and a mosquito net hung bundled above it like a gray cloud threatening rain. Doctor Plarr was sorry for the self-styled doctor of letters: it was not the kind of surroundings in which any one with free will—if such a man existed—would have chosen to await death. My father, he thought with disquiet, must be about the same age as Humphries now, and perhaps he survives in even worse surroundings.

  A scrap of paper was inserted in the frame of Humphries' looking glass—"Gone to the Italian Club." Perhaps he had been expecting a pupil and that was the reason why he had left his door unlocked. The Italian Club was in a once-impressive colonial building across the road. There was a bust of somebody, perhaps of Cavour or Mazzini, but the stone was pockmarked and the inscription no longer readable; it stood between the house, which had a stone garland of flowers over every tall window, and the street. Once there had been a great number of Italians living in the city, but now all that was left of the club was the name, the bust, the imposing facade which bore a nineteenth-century date in Roman numerals. There were a few tables where you could eat cheaply without paying a subscription, and only one Italian was left, the solitary waiter who had been born in Naples. The cook was of Hungarian origin and served little else but goulash, a dish in which he could easily disguise the quality of the ingredients, a wise thing to do since the best beef went down the river to the capital, more than eight hundred kilometers away.

  Doctor Humphries was seated at a table close to an open window with a napkin tucked into his frayed collar. However hot the day he was always dressed in a suit with a tie and a waistcoat like a Victorian man of letters living in Florence. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles; probably the prescription had not been revised for years, for he bent very low over the goulash to see what he was eating. His white hair was streaked the color of youth by nicotine, and there were smears of nearly the same color on his napkin from the goulash. Doctor Plarr said, "Good evening, Doctor Humphries."

  "Ah, you found my note?"

  "I'd have looked in here anyway. How did you know I was coming to your room?"

  "I didn't, Doctor Plarr. But I thought somebody might look in, somebody..."

  "I had been going to suggest we have dinner at the National," Doctor Plarr explained. He looked around the restaurant for the waiter without any anticipation of pleasure. They were the only clients.

  "Very kind of you," Doctor Humphries said. "Another day, if you'll let me have what I believe the Yankees call a raincheck. The goulash here is not so bad, one grows a little tired of it, but at least it's filling." He was a very thin old man. He gave the impression of someone who had worked a long while at eating in the hopeless hope of filling an inexhaustible cavity.

  For want of anything better Doctor Plarr, too, ordered goulash. Doctor Humphries said, "I am surprised to see you. I would have thought the Governor might have invited you... he must need someone who speaks English for his dinner tonight."

  Doctor Plarr realized why the message had been stuck into the looking glass. There could have been a last-minute slip in the Governor's arrangements. It had happened once, and Doctor Humphries had been summoned... After all there were only three Englishmen who were available. He said, "He has invited Charley Fortnum."

  "Oh yes, of course," Doctor Humphries said, "our Honorary Consul." He underlined the adjective in a tone of embittered denigration. "This is a diplomatic dinner. I suppose the Honorary Consul's wife could not appear for reasons of health?"

  "The American Ambassador is unmarried, Doctor Humphries. It's informal—a stag party."

  "A very suitable occasion one might have thought for inviting Mrs. Fortnum to entertain the guests. She must be accustomed to stag parties. But why does the Governor not invite you or me?"

  "Be fair, doctor. You and I have no official position here."

  "But we know a lot more about the Jesuit ruins than Charley Fortnum does. According to 'El Litoral' the Ambassador has come here to see the rums, not the tea or the maté crop, though that hardly seems likely. American ambassadors are usually men of business."

  "The new Ambassador wants to create a good impression," Doctor Plarr said. "Art and history. He can't be suspected of a take-over bid there. He wants to show a scholarly interest in our province, not a commercial one. The secretary of finance has not been invited, even though he speaks a little English. Otherwise a loan might have been suspected."

  "And the Ambassador—doesn't he speak enough Spanish for a polite toast and a few platitudes?"

  "They say he is making rapid progress."

  "What a lot you always seem to know about everything, Plarr. I only know what we read in 'El Litoral'. He's off to the ruins tomorrow, isn't he?"

  "No, he went there today. Tonight he returns to B. A. by air."

  "The paper's wrong then?"

  "The official program was a little inaccurate. I suppose the Governor didn't want any incidents."

  "Incidents here? What an idea! I haven't seen an incident in this province in twenty years. Incidents only happen in Córdoba. The goulash isn't so very bad, is it?" he asked hopefully.

  "I've eaten worse," Doctor Plarr said without trying to remember on what occasion.

  "I see you've been reading one of Saavedra's books. What do you think of it?"

  "Very talented," Doctor Plarr said. Like the Governor he didn't want any incidents, and he recognized the malice which remained alive and kicking in the old man long after discretion had died from a lifetime's neglect.

  "You can really read that stuff? You believe in all that 'machismo'?"

  "While I read it," Doctor Plarr said with care, "I can suspend my disbelief."

  "These Argentinians—they all believe their grandfathers rode with the gauchos. Saavedra has about as much 'machismo' as Charley Fortnum. Is it true Charley's having a baby?"

  "Yes."

  "Who's the lucky father?"

  "Why not Charley?"

  "An old man and a drunk? You're her doctor, Plarr. Tell me a little bit of the truth. I don't ask for a very big bit."

  "Why do you always want the truth?"
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  "Contrary to common belief the truth is nearly always funny. It's only tragedy which people bother to imagine or invent. If you really knew what went into this goulash you'd laugh."

  "Do you know?"

  "No. People always conspire to keep the truth from me. Even you lie to me, Plarr."

  "Me?"

  "You lie to me about Saavedra's novel and Charley Fortnum's baby. Let's hope, for his sake, it's a girl."

  "Why?"

  "It's so much more difficult to detect the father from the features." Doctor Humphries began to wipe his plate clean with a piece of bread. "Can you tell me why I'm always hungry, doctor? I don't eat well, and yet I eat an awful lot of what they call nourishing food."

  "If you really wanted the truth I would have to examine you, take an x-ray..."

  "Oh no, no. I only want the truth about other people. It's always other people who are funny."

  "Then why ask me?"

  "A conversational gambit," the old man said, "to hide my embarrassment while I help myself to the last piece of bread."

  "Do they grudge us bread here?" Doctor Plarr called across a waste of empty tables, "Waiter, some more bread."

  The only Italian came shuffling toward them. He carried a bread basket with three pieces of bread and he watched with black anxiety when the number was reduced to one. He might have been a junior member of the Mafia who had disobeyed the order of his chief.

  "Did you see the sign he made?" Doctor Humphries asked.

  "No."

  "He put out two of his fingers. Against the evil eye. He thinks I have the evil eye."

  "Why?"

  "I once made a disrespectful remark about the Madonna of Pompeii."

  "What about a game of chess when you have finished?" Doctor Plarr asked. He had to pass the timesomehow, away from his apartment and the telephone by the bed.

  "I've finished now."

  They went back to the little over-lived-in room in the Hotel Bolivar. The manager was reading 'El Litoral' in the patio with his fly open for coolness. He said, "Someone was asking for you on the telephone, doctor."

  "For me?" Humphries exclaimed with excitement. "Who was it? What did you tell them?"

  "No, it was for Doctor Plarr, professor. A woman. She thought the doctor might be with you."

  "If she rings again," Plarr said, "don't say that I am here."

  "Have you no curiosity?" Doctor Humphries asked.

  "Oh, I can guess who it is."

  "Not a patient, eh?"

  "Yes, a patient. There's no urgency. Nothing to worry about."

  Doctor Plarr found himself checkmated in under twenty moves, and he began impatiently to set the pieces out again.

  "Whatever you may say you are worried about something," the old man said.

  "It's that damn shower. Drip drip drip. Why don't you have it mended?"

  "What harm does it do? It's soothing. It sings me to sleep."

  Doctor Humphries began with a king's pawn opening. "KP4," he said. "Even the great Capablanca would sometimes begin as simply as that. Charley Fortnum," he added, "has got his new Cadillac."

  "Yes."

  "How old's your home-grown Fiat?"

  "Four—five years old."

  "It pays to be a Consul, doesn't it? Permission to import a car every two years. I suppose he's got a general lined up in the capital to buy it as soon as he's run it in."

  "Probably. It's your move."

  "If he got his wife made a Consul, too, they could import a car a year between them. A fortune. Is there any sexual discrimination in the consular service?"

  "I don't know the rules."

  "How much did he pay to get appointed, do you suppose?"

  "That's a canard, Humphries. He paid nothing. It's not the way our Foreign Office works. Some very important visitors wanted to see the ruins. They had no Spanish. Charley Fortnum gave them a good time. It was as simple as that. And lucky for him. He wasn't doing very well with his mate crop, but a Cadillac every two years makes a lot of difference."

  "Yes, you could say he married on his Cadillac. But I'm surprised that woman of his needed the price of a Cadillac. Surely a Morris Minor would have done."

  "I'm being unfair," Doctor Plarr said. "It wasn't only because he looked after royalty. There were quite a number of Englishmen in the province in those days—you know that better than I do. And there was one who got into a mess over the border—the time when the guerrillas went across—and Fortnum knew the local ropes. He saved the Ambassador a lot of trouble. All the same he was lucky—some ambassadors are more grateful than others."

  "So now if we are in a spot of trouble we have to depend on Charley Fortnum. Check."

  Doctor Plarr had to exchange his queen for a bishop. He said, "There are worse people than Charley Fortnum."

  "You are in bad trouble now and he can't save you."

  Doctor Plarr looked quickly up from the board, but the old man was only referring to the game. "Check again," he said. "And mate." He added, "That shower has been out of order for six months. You don't always lose to me as easily as that."

  "Your game's improved."

  2

  Doctor Plarr refused a third game and drove home. He lived on the top floor of a block of yellow flats which faced the Paraná. The block was one of the eyesores of the old colonial city, but the yellow was fading a little year by year, and anyway he couldn't afford a house while his mother was alive. It was extraordinary how much a woman could spend on sweet cakes in the capital.

  As Doctor Plarr closed his shutters the last ferry was approaching across the river, and after he got into bed he heard the heavy thunder of a plane which was making a slow turn overhead: it sounded very low, as though it had lifted off the ground only a few minutes before. It was certainly not a long-distance jet overflying the city on the way to Buenos Aires or Asunción—in any case the hour was too late for a commercial flight. It might, Plarr thought, be the American Ambassador's plane, but he had never expected to hear that. He turned off the light and lay in the dark thinking of all the things that could so easily have gone wrong as the noise of the engine faded, beating south, carrying whom? He wanted to lift the receiver and dial Charley Fortnum, but there was no excuse he could think of for disturbing him at that hour. He could hardly ask: did the Ambassador enjoy the ruins? Did the dinner pass off well? I suppose at the Governor's you must have had some decent steaks? It wasn't his habit to gossip with Charley Fortnum at that hour—Charley was an uxorious man.

  He turned his light on again—better to read than worry, and as he knew now what the ending would be without any possibility of mistake, Doctor Saavedra's book proved, a good sedative. There was little traffic along the river front; once a police car went by with the sirens screaming, but Plarr soon fell asleep with the light still burning.

  He was awakened by the telephone. His watch stood at exactly two in the morning. He knew of no patient likely to ring him at that hour.

  "Yes," he asked, "who are you?"

  A voice he didn't recognize replied, with elaborate caution, "Our entertainment was a success."

  Plarr said, "Who are you? Why tell me that? What entertainment? I'm not interested." He spoke with the irritation of fear.

  "We are worried about one of the cast. He was taken ill."

  "I don't know what you are talking about."

  "We are afraid the strain of his part may have been too great."

  Never before had they telephoned him so openly and at such a suspect hour. There was no reason to believe that his line was tapped, but they had no right to take the smallest risk. Refugees from the north were often kept under a certain loose surveillance in the border region since the days of the guerrilla fighting, if only for their own protection: there were cases of men who had been dragged home to Paraguay across the Paraná to die. There had been an exiled doctor in Posadas... Because he was a man of the same profession the doctor's example had been present often in Plarr's mind since the plans for the entertai
nment were first disclosed to him. This telephone call to his apartment could not be justified except in a case of great urgency. One death among the entertainers—by the rules they had set themselves—was to be expected and justified nothing.

  He said, "I don't know what you are talking about. You have the wrong number." He replaced the receiver and lay looking at the telephone as though it were a black and venomous object which would certainly strike again. It did two minutes later, and he had to listen—it might be an ordinary patient's call. "Yes—who are you?"

  The same voice said, "You have to come. He may be dying."

  Doctor Plarr asked with resignation, "What do you want me to do?"

  "We'll pick you up in the street in exactly five minutes. If we are not there, then in ten minutes. After that be ready every five minutes."

  "What does your watch say?"

  "Six minutes past two."

  The doctor put on a pair of trousers and a shirt; then he packed a briefcase with what might be required (a bullet wound seemed the most likely trouble) and ran lightly down the stairs in his socks. He knew the noise of the lift was audible through the thin walls of every flat. By two ten he was standing outside the block and at two twelve he went in again and shut the door. At two sixteen he was watching a second time in the street and a two eighteen he was back inside. Fear made him furious. His liberty, perhaps his life, seemed to lie in hopelessly incompetent hands. He knew only two members of the group—they had been at school with him in Asunción—and those who share one's childhood never seem to grow up. He had no more belief in their efficiency than he had when they were students; the organization they had once belonged to in Paraguay, the Juventud Febrerista, had effected little except the death of most of the other members in an ill-advised and ill-led guerrilla action.

  Indeed it was that very sense of amateurism which had persuaded him to become involved. He hadn't believed in their plans, and to listen to them was only a mark of friendship. When he questioned them about what they would do in certain eventualities the ruthlessness of their replies seemed to him a form of play acting. (They had all three taken minor parts in a school performance of 'Macbeth'—the prose translation did not make the play more plausible.)