Days of Your Fathers (24 page)

‘Shall we cancel the whole deal?' he asked.

‘You mean you would buy the site back?'

‘It is my duty as a Grandee of Spain. I feel my honour is affected,' said Gil stiffly. ‘All I regret is that I cannot afford to compensate you for the work on the foundations.'

‘Let us leave that to our lawyers, my dear Count,' Kuchler replied, leaping at his opportunity. ‘Cash or a mortgage?'

‘Cash – I suppose.'

‘Then you will not find me unreasonable. And now, if you will pardon me, this room … I am unwell. I think I shall drive straight up to Madrid.'

There was nothing to do but wait for Jaime in the safety of his office. Gil felt utterly unable to face the outside world where questions would be unanswerable and silence equally disconcerting. Meanwhile he restlessly tidied up bottles, plates and glasses so that the room looked as though some small entertainment had decorously ended.

The Civil Guard roared back into the courtyard. From the window he saw Jaime playing his part imperturbably and demanding news, like any other mayor, from an officer who was giving nothing away. Two civilian figures, formal and well-dressed, appeared from nowhere – they might have arrived in the assault car of the Civil Guard or merely been waiting behind the Town Hall – and addressed the mayor with authority. He turned into the building with one on each side.

It was too late to escape. Anyway there was no handy frontier, and nothing less would do. Jaime ushered the visitors into his office, pretending surprise and satisfaction at finding Gil there. He introduced the two civilians. A Captain Somebody. A Lieutenant Somebody. Their men in the cafés had been a joke, but these two, who had never yet been seen in the town, were disturbingly professional. They were not at all aggressive; they were smooth with the certainty of power.

It was a hundred to one that the political unrest in Lazalaya would come up before the Cabinet, but Jaime was
magnificently unembarrassed. He seated himself at his desk with the two opposite, and burst into speech. He welcomed, he said, investigation at last by two such talented and distinguished officers. Ever since some absurd prank at the old nunnery had alarmed the Civil Governor – but not, he might point out, the high ecclesiastical authorities – he had hoped that Madrid would make direct enquiries.

‘And let us at once get rid of the irrelevant complication of my Vehicle,' he said. ‘The Conde de Villanueva will tell you what happened.'

‘It wouldn't start,' said Gil feebly.

‘Did you retard the spark?'

‘The spark? Jaime, in this day and age you have a lever to advance or retard the spark?'

‘Of course I do! She won't climb the hills without a retarded spark. For starting one must also retard it or she will backfire. Friends, I think you will agree that I cannot be held responsible because the Civil Guard panicked at a sound which all my town is accustomed to? As our glorious Generalissimo has said, local affairs should be left to the local authorities with the least possible interference by the State.'

‘So this disturbance was not intended to cover up the attempt on Villanueva property?' the captain asked with a slight smile which might have been relieved or ironical.

‘What attempt?'

‘Ten metres of the boundary wall are blown down.'

‘I will have it built up again. An accident!'

‘But who did it?'

‘Well, you know we don't like sending humble, decent men to prison. It's national policy.'

‘Not so much of national policy if you please, Don Jaime! We are as aware of it as you are.'

‘Patience, captain! I was on the point of explaining. The contractors who are building our hotel naturally have a store of explosives. Well, and we have a small community of fishermen. One should never be next to the other. To cut a long story short, they stole some explosives for use at sea. This was reported to me and I took the action which the
father of a family should take. “Friends,” I said, for I am accustomed to being obeyed, “who did this I do not know and I do not want to know. If the whole lot is destroyed at once, I will forget it.”

‘Well, it appears that they let it off close to the Villanueva wall, which was upwind, so that the hillside should not catch fire. That was sensible. A morning's work will repair the damage. But they chose for their explosion a moment when I was entertaining distinguished foreigners. As a result, our hotel, the valued, indispensable project which will give life to our town is in danger.'

‘You accept this story?' the Captain asked Gil.

‘Of course. I have no enemies.'

‘He has been congratulated by the Syndicate of Agricultural Workers,' added the mayor proudly.

‘And you are prepared to swear that there is no political unrest in Lazalaya?'

‘None. I am sure that all the reports of your agents will agree.'

The lieutenant, entering the conversation for the first time, remarked sourly that it was the only point on which they did agree. The captain, raising his eyebrows in astonishment that the reports of secret agents should be mentioned at all, gathered up his subordinate and left.

‘Thank God it wasn't about Jimenez and Mejias!' Gil exclaimed.

‘Don't worry! You see I have talent. Father Miguel will write to the Civil Governor about their pensions, and after him the Bishop.'

‘Damn their pensions! What's happened to them?'

‘Nothing! Nothing!' the mayor answered soothingly. ‘But administratively speaking it presents a problem. Did you notice the slaughterman's van at the side door when you arrived?'

‘I don't know. There was something.'

‘Well, that's how they left. He'll return their uniforms this evening. Lazalaya cannot afford new ones.'

‘Suppose he talks?'

‘Then he won't get the contract for the hotel.'

‘There isn't going to be a hotel, Jaime.'

‘And how is he to know that? Sometimes I think you left your intelligence in America.'

‘But it must all come out! Tomorrow at the latest!'

‘Then let it! Look! What has always been the defence of the humble? To make the authorities look fools, but in such a way that they cannot resent it. Gil, the town is proud of you.'

‘The police won't be.'

‘This is too serious for the police. The Civil Governor is bound to investigate the affair in person. Besides, he's in it up to the neck.'

‘I tell you, Jaime, he'll sit with his fingertips together and sacrifice the pair of us.'

‘Not if he can score one up for himself. Let's go over to the Moderno! It is time to calm the spirits of our fellow citizens.'

They certainly needed it. Lazalaya was buzzing with rumour, and the mayor's café table was immediately surrounded, as if it had been a roulette table, by those who were privileged to sit there and others who had at least the right to lean over their shoulders.

When the crowd had thinned down to a dozen intimate friends, Jaime told his story of the damage to the Villanueva wall. The tale instantly became fact. No doubt, with a slight change of emphasis, it was. Gil, listening with such admiration as he could manage and once again privileged to pay for drinks, considered that a few explosives had indeed been stolen and that Jaime, as his price for keeping quiet, blackmailed the culprits into setting them off against the wall.

At about eleven the disappearance of Jimenez and Mejias was reported to the newsroom. They had not returned to barracks and had apparently vanished into the air. Jaime, who had just received a gigantic omelette from the Moderno's kitchen, refused to be impressed. All he could say was that the missing constables had been on duty at the Town Hall when he went out to say goodbye to Kuchler's partner and that they had not been there when he returned.
He only hoped that no accident had happened, such as might be feared when an innocent town was under the threat of fire-arms in excitable hands.

Next morning, after one look at Lazalaya, Gil decided to remain at home. The women and the police had taken over. From every balcony and doorstep the high-pitched whispers criss-crossed the alleys with stories of confirmed murder and expected rape. The Civil Guard and mysterious strangers were sternly occupied and had at last a definite case for their notebooks. Jaime, in the intervals of replacing the old silencer on his Vehicle, was hounding on the search for Jimenez and Mejias and accompanying the police to improbable remoteness where, alive or dead, they might be found. There was no fish, because the fishermen had decided to remain at sea.

After three days it was at last with a feeling of relief that Gil received the writ of the Civil Governor. He packed a bag with such necessities as would, he thought, be permitted to a prisoner awaiting trial. Jaime, who was also in the police car and dressed in the black suit of thick cloth which he used for funerals and official visits, carried nothing but a packet of ham sandwiches presented, with a blessing, by Father Miguel.

They were escorted to the secretary's room, in which, sitting bolt upright against the wall, were two very obvious bodyguards. The personage closeted with Don Baltasar was plainly of Cabinet rank. He had a powerful, military voice which rumbled through the double doors. The high, legal tones of the Civil Governor sounded in contrast like the yapping of some small, conscientious dog.

There was at last a moment of comparative silence. The telephone in the secretary's room demanded their immediate presence. As soon as they entered the great office, the row broke out again. Gil recognised the Caesarian bald head and sturdy figure of the Director of Internal Security, responsible only to the Chief of State.

‘… and the Press! For the sake of the Ministry of Tourism we have been compelled to censor the despatch of a respected German correspondent. And all this because of
incapacity on the part of the Civil Governor who is utterly unable to explain the cause of the unrest!'

‘I am bound to depend on my police and yours, General, for information,' Don Baltasar retorted. ‘I have no more and no less than you. By the way, allow me to present the Conde de Villanueva and Don Jaime Caruncho, Mayor of Lazalaya.'

‘Delighted! … It is an intolerable position. Where are we? With the Mafia in Sicily? Either no one knows anything or everybody is afraid to talk. You there! You are the mayor. These Germans tell us you badly wanted this hotel. Well, you aren't going to get it. And I am much inclined to send in a battalion of troops to assist you in your administration.'

‘We shall do our best to be hospitable, my General, though the resources of our town are small,' replied Jaime with formal courtesy.

‘And you, Villanueva! Are you going to maintain in front of me all these lies about your wall?'

Whether or not Gil had told any lies – he thought that on the whole he had not, though God alone knew how many he had condoned – this was deliberately impolite and not to be borne from any upstart of a government employee, however exalted. He drew his steel at once.

‘I had considered,' he replied, ‘that it was only these absurd foreigners and the Civil Guard who made a habit of seeing revolutionaries under their beds. It is a shock to me that I must also include persons whom I, my fellow citizens and our beloved Leader are accustomed to trust.'

‘Your honour is as precious to me as my own,' the general answered with ironical formality. ‘I shall therefore appeal to it. You were present on the occasion when, according to the Ministry of Tourism, these Germans saw the floor and walls of the mayor's anteroom spattered with blood. Is it so or not?'

‘On my honour I saw no human blood whatever. But perhaps – it is only my suggestion – red wine had flowed too freely.'

‘May I enquire what this new accusation is?' asked Don Baltasar.

‘Two municipal police of Lazalaya have been murdered.'

‘I regret that I know nothing.'

‘It seems one could murder half the province without your Excellency's knowledge.'

‘That of course is so, if I am not given a copy of the report. The source of your information?'

‘My sources are the German Embassy and the Ministry of Tourism. The Mayor of Lazalaya here will confirm that an investigation is proceeding.'

‘The mayors of small towns are not always in touch with the wider world, General. Can you give me the names of these two victims?'

‘Alonso Mejias and Enrique Jimenez.'

‘Ah, indeed they are familiar,' said the Civil Governor. ‘A question of pensions. It may be necessary, I fear, to appeal to the Cabinet. The unflagging interest of the Chief of State in the spiritual welfare of the people, which of course you and I fully share …'

Don Baltasar rang for his secretary.

‘The Mejias-Jimenez file, please.'

‘Then you do know something?'

‘I had no knowledge that they were dead, General. Now, let me see! Ah, yes,' he went on, leafing through a file which seemed to Gil to have acquired a surprising number of documents in a short time. ‘These two policemen heard the irresistible call of religion a month before they were due to retire. It is regrettable that they should have deserted their post without orders. It complicates so abominably their pension rights.'

‘They aren't murdered?'

‘There is no mention of it in the file. It's the pension which has been referred to …'

‘Then where the devil are they?'

The Civil Governor lowered his eyes in mild disapproval of this military and overbearing language.

‘My dear General, upon a sudden impulse – who are we to question it? – these two simple devotees, perhaps
encouraged by their parish priest, perhaps alarmed by the recent disturbance of their long and meditative peace in municipal service, have taken their provisional vows and entered the Convent of the Little Brothers of St Macario.'

Chaplain to the Embassy

Padre Francisco was listening. The arc of the mountains encircled him on all sides but one, where shone the deserted sea. There was a fast, clear stream at his feet, and on the further bank a meadow, very green and studded with white boulders and jewelled with low flowers in the short grass. It was spring, and there were children in the meadow; one of them held a lamb by the forefeet and played that he was teaching it to dance. Men said there was a war in Spain, but Spain was beyond Galicia and Galicia beyond the mountains. No railway crossed the mountains, nor any way but one, and that unkindly to horse and man. Caladonga had its cove by the sea, but only the fishermen of the village ever landed there, for it offered no open entry to the passing craft.