Days of Your Fathers (16 page)

When all was comparatively quiet again and later risers had pulled the blankets over their ears, I tried to persuade the mule to accompany me downstairs and into the open. He didn't like it. He wouldn't have it. The treads were narrow and a hoof slipped. He backed cautiously onto the landing again.

‘That's fixed him,' Pepe said. ‘Now all we have to do is to run.'

I refused to risk damaging a valuable animal which had put its mistaken trust in his mother-in-law. If deserted it might impulsively decide to follow at any cost and break a leg or its neck or probably both. I reminded Pepe that we had set out with the intention of returning stolen goods.

‘But we can't just stay here!' he screamed in a whisper.

There was something in that. Front doors might open at any minute. A sense of humour was too much to expect so early in the morning. We should be shouted down by all the inhabitants of the building and, as news of the mule spread, by those of the neighbouring tenement houses as well.

On this top floor were two apartments, one occupied and one still to let. Between them a half flight of steps continued up to a little penthouse in which was a wooden door giving access to the flat roof and the washing-lines. I suggested that we should go up and see if there was anywhere to hide.

‘Suppose the mule comes too?'

Any fool could see it was impossible, I replied. The door
hammered on the opposite door and routed out a tenant who, at a guess, acted as part-time porter. Both of them started up the stairs, loudly debating about what could have tumbled down and giving us time to take refuge in a cupboard under the half-flight of steps, crouched among mops and buckets. The pair unbolted the roof door and saw at a glance that everything was standing up which should be. The side of the penthouse concealed the hole through which the mule had vanished, and naturally they were not looking for a hole since there was nothing which could have made one.

We remained where we were, panic-stricken through long minutes.

‘The empty flat!' Pepe suggested at last. ‘If we drop off the parapet, we'll land on the balcony.'

That was true enough, provided we did not go through it; so we tiptoed back to the roof, the landlord having left the door on the latch, but then were so flustered that we could not decide which balcony was the right one. In order to get our bearings we opened the door for a moment and looked down. It was like opening up a wasps' nest. At least six women were screaming at each other simultaneously.

The balcony of the empty flat held, though quivering as we hit it. The concrete balustrade was high enough to hide us if we squatted down and there we had to stay. The window which led into the flat was shuttered and locked.

I insisted that I was only an interested foreigner, that I would have nothing to do with forcible entry and that probably someone would come to inspect the flat during the day and let us out. Pepe replied that we might just as well add burglary to other crimes and that what bothered him even more than his diplomatic career was Barbara. If he didn't get home soon, she would assume he had been killed by her mother's mule and telephone the police.

He sat down by the shutter and began to cut away the lower slats with a pocket-knife. It was a long job; the builder's carpenter had been more conscientious than his masons. Meanwhile a small crowd gathered in the street, all talking at once, while women fluttered off to spread the
was smaller than a standard door and manifestly too low for the mule to pass through.

But he could and he did tackle the flight of steps. It was amazing how that great, satanic, black brute could step so daintily. Approaching from below, at an angle of forty-five degrees to the horizontal, his head and neck of course went through the door easily, and before we could shut it. He liked what he saw and he liked us. He stretched out his forelegs alongside his neck and gave a heave with his hind. The door frame shuddered in its plaster, and he was through. He was on the roof.

It was near sunrise. We could see the range of the Guadarrama and the distant, fortunate traffic on the road to Burgos. I hoped the mule would be patient and enjoy the view, but it was thirsty and smelling water it reared up with no more trouble than a black cat, forelegs upon the roof tank, prodigiously outlined against the dawn. We crept away and bolted the door behind us after removing a few tell-tale black hairs from the lintel.

We were just about to sneak down the stairs to liberty and were discussing in whispers whether we could get away with a story of having come up to visit a girl or whether no story at all would be necessary. With luck it wouldn't be; there was still no one about. And then a vast, muffled crash, without splinterings, crackings or any preliminaries, shook the top storey of that house in a single tremor.

‘God help us, he's gone through the roof!' Pepe exclaimed.

We waited. Nothing happened. It was the occupied flat into which the mule had fallen, but there was no protest from the tenant. Beneath us were only some faintly audible expletives from lower flats. The inhabitants were probably accustomed to any sort of thud echoing through the whole of that cheap, shockingly built tenement house. This one could have been caused by a wardrobe collapsing or father falling off a ladder and tearing the sink out by the roots.

But one could bet that such a thump would alarm the owner if he lived on his own palsied premises. Far down the bare well of the staircase someone burst out of a flat,
news to other tenements. A self-important fellow on the balcony immediately below us was conducting a conversation with two other balconies and the street.

‘What's happening?' Pepe asked me, struggling to loosen slats without doing violent and audible damage.

‘A lady in hysterics and a dressing gown is saying that she is a respectable woman and that her bed has hitherto remained inviolate. I suspect she was in somebody else's.'

‘I am not interested in local scandal.'

‘Yes, you are. She says that when she returned to her flat from an errand of mercy she found a mule in her bed. It was sleeping like a Christian with its head on her pillow. She thought it was the devil.'

‘Her theology seems a bit muddled.'

‘Well, one can see what she meant.'

‘Have they sent for the police?'

‘They have – and the Fire Brigade.'

‘How do they think it got there?'

‘The chap underneath is talking about a rain of frogs in his grandfather's day.'

‘A café talker! Irrelevant as always!'

‘No, he isn't. It's agreed all round that the mule dropped from the sky. Even if it could climb stairs, it could not get through the door. And the landlord swears that anyway the door was bolted.'

‘Why the hell wasn't it hurt?' Pepe asked, wrenching free another couple of slats.

I listened until I got the public verdict. The sturdy common sense of the people had arrived at the only possible answer. The mule had come down on a parachute. On the other hand no parachute had been found. The persistent and dogmatic voice on the balcony below said that parachutes were now superseded, that his wife's cousin had told him that the Americans were experimenting with antigravity.

‘Like monkeys,' someone answered obscurely.

‘It is the Russians who use monkeys. From the Americans one can expect nothing less than a mule.'

Pepe was inclined to be anti-American, so I passed this
on to him as evidence of their unassailable prestige. At the time it did not seem to register. He lay on his back and kicked the glass out of the pane behind the slats he had removed.

‘Crawl through that quick!' he ordered. ‘And mind broken glass!'

We padded through two empty rooms and opened the front door a crack. Not a face was turned in our direction. The passage and living room of the opposite flat were full of tenants, whispering to each other and trying to get a glimpse of the mule. It must have been still luxuriating on the squashed bed, weary of travel and possibly smiling in its sleep. Evidently no one had the courage to wake it up.

Silently shutting the door of the flat behind us, we mingled with the overflow and started to peer over shoulders. That was a mistake. The owner of the house spotted at once that we had no right to be there. It had not occurred to us that downstairs a policeman had already been posted to keep out the curious.

‘And where have you come from?' he demanded suspiciously.

‘Would you be good enough to tell me where I can find the proprietor of this building?' Pepe asked.

‘I am.'

Alongside the landlord was a young Spanish clerk, black-suited, trying to look experienced in such accidents.

‘And this gentleman?'

‘The local agent of my insurance company.'

‘Then it could not be more convenient,' Pepe said with the impressive, formal courtesy of the diplomatic service. ‘I am the official interpreter of the American Embassy. This is the Technical Officer. He speaks, unfortunately, little Spanish. Now, where can we talk freely?'

I was alarmed that Pepe should have deprived me of any control over whatever he was planning. However, the landlord's shabby, groundfloor flat to which he led us at least contained a much needed drink. Since we were in the respectable company of capital and insurance, the policeman in the hall ignored us.

‘As between allies we beg for the utmost discretion,' Pepe began. ‘Now, we understand that in the course of an experiment in the stratosphere some animal was prematurely released …'

‘I got it at last, and interrupted in English:

‘Ask him which animal!'

Pepe did so.

‘Ah, only the mule!' he exclaimed in a tone of relief. ‘The mule, yes! It was computerised for 41.63 North, 19.00 West. A cruiser is standing by.'

‘Where is that?' the insurance agent asked.

‘North of the Azores. In the circumstances an unacceptable error.'

‘But my roof!' the landlord complained. ‘One does not expect such carelessness from a great and honourable nation.'

‘That is the reason for our visit. If you and your agent will be good enough to call at the American Embassy at 11.30 precisely and ask for the Naval Attaché, the matter will be settled on the spot. All we require, as I said, is the utmost discretion.'

‘And what shall we do with the mule?'

‘To avoid questions and to give an appearance of normality the Minister of the Interior has suggested that the Fire Brigade should winch it down and hand it over to the police.'

I got up and shook hands all round.

‘Your car is waiting?' the landlord asked.

‘We do not leave a car in public places where it might arouse embarrassing curiosity,' Pepe replied.

Two streets away we found a bus and were home for breakfast. The next day's papers informed us without comment that a mule, inexplicably discovered on an isolated roof, had been tranquillised and removed by the Fire Brigade and eventually restored to its owner. The incident did not even make the front page. Of course not. Only the improbable is news. The impossible is not.

But I could not leave it at that. I spent several evenings haunting the Plaza de la Cebada until I came face to face
with that unmistakeable animal outside the same tavern and now between the shafts of a cart. Its proud possessor told me over his second litre that, by God, I was a friend and so he did not wish me to put my faith in rumours. It was quite untrue, he said, that his mule had strayed into the garden of the American Embassy and been launched into space, travelling twice round the world between midnight and dawn. No, not at all! For the sake of its smile and numerous accomplishments it had without doubt been stolen by a circus manager and escaped from the van – unhappy, loyal creature – into the nearest house.

And then a woman! Always a woman behind every commotion, true? Her husband was away, so she left the door open for her lover. And in walked Sebastiano.

The carter rose from the table, steadying himself with a hand upon my shoulder, unharnessed the mule and ordered:

‘
Aupa
, Sebastiano!'

The mule obediently performed a curret and pawed the air as if trained in the Spanish Riding School. I could at last understand its apocalyptic pose against the water tank.

‘So you see,' the carter went on, ‘she fled in panic slamming the door and my clever Sebastiano tried to cut his way out through the ceiling. That was enough to bring the roof down. Now it can be seen how they build houses for the poor!'

The police, I gathered, had tended to approve his theory though it was hardly more believable than Pepe's impromptu space fiction. I sympathised with them. Anyone possessed by Sebastiano was bound instinctively to be in favour of ascent from hell rather than descent from heaven.

Estancia La Embajada

The mound was so regular that I could have sworn it had been built by human labour; but standing on the summit, I found that it was no vast tomb which I had climbed; it was a neat, formal and miniature volcano with a passive crater in the centre where the black lava thrust its ridges and tumours through scanty turf. The hill stood on a plain of dark green pasture, some twenty square miles in extent, surrounded by steep slopes which, on the north, mounted to the snows and smoke-plume of Cotopaxi. The valley appeared to have a single owner, for it was well fenced and drained, and all the tracks converged upon a white-walled, red-roofed house marked on the map as ‘Estancia La Embajada' – Embassy Ranch. The herds of dairy cattle and the low clouds washing the sides of the bowl suggested that I was on some farmer's land in the Severn valley instead of a considerable estate ten thousand feet above the Pacific, with its own private volcano.

It was late afternoon when I got down from this savage infant of a hill. The landmarks of the cordillera were blotted out, and grey tentacles of mist were feeling for the bottom of the valley. I did not fancy the long ride back to Riobamba. The path wound along the edge of a crater lake which had startled both me and my mule in sunlight – it looked and smelt like one of the more unpleasant hazards on the course of
Pilgrim's Progress
– and was prohibitive when imagined under crawling vapour. I decided to ride over the
estancia
and ask for a bed.