The Assignment (22 page)

An unknown person said on Dalgren’s behalf that the question of a meeting place for the conference and the nomination of delegates would be taken up immediately by the executive of the Citizens’ Guard.

Manuel talked to Danica.

“Call the station and tell them my speech is to be broadcast every five minutes from now on.”

“Yes.”

Her face was hard and tense.

“How shall we get the leaflets out?”

“I’ve fixed that. Better if you don’t know how.”

“It can’t take more than four minutes to read the proclamation. Do you think they’d have time to cut me off?”

“Depends on who is quickest to the phone.”

“How do you feel, by the way?”

“One breast hurts like hell.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It hurts all the same.”

Manuel Ortega was sitting at his desk. His heart thumped and his hands shook. He had to go to the bathroom although he had been there only five minutes earlier.

Fernández was chewing. Outside the world was white.

It was quarter past nine. Then it was twenty past nine. No one telephoned, not even Behounek.

Twenty-five past nine. He would go in ten minutes. He went to the bathroom. The steps of terror across the corridor. The Astra was like a lead weight against his heart.

Danica had switched on the radio. The announcer’s voice was fraught with routine solemnity: We are about to broadcast an important message. At exactly ten o’clock the Provincial Resident will speak to the people. We urge everyone to listen.

Music: brassy and shrill.

When he laid his hands flat on the desk, wet prints appeared on the brown blotter.

Fernández yawned and picked at his nails.

A drop of sweat fell from Manuel Ortega’s forehead onto General Larrinaga’s proclamation.

He wiped his hands on his trousers and large dark patches appeared on the material.

We are about to broadcast an important message. At exactly ten o’clock the Provincial Resident will speak to the people. We urge everyone to listen. We are about to broadcast an important message. At exactly ten o’clock the Provincial Resident will speak to the people. We urge everyone to listen.

He got up. Folded the proclamation and put it in his left inside pocket. Moved it over to the right one. Put on his
sunglasses. Picked up his hat. Said to Fernández: “The radio station.”

A woman in a white dress looked seriously at him. She said nothing and made no sign.

Manuel Ortega walked along the white corridor, down the white staircase, through the white hall, past the white counter and a policeman in a white uniform, drove through the white town. He looked straight ahead and thought about nothing whatsoever.

The same studio and the same announcer with red patches on his forehead and on his pale arms. The walls were wavy in the heat. Two technicians behind the glass wall. They had religious medals hanging on silver chains around their necks and they were talking to each other. One had hair on his chest and kept drinking out of a tin mug.

The lights dead like blind eyes. Fernández by the wall. The announcer saying: “When the on-the-air signal comes through, I’ll stay here and announce you and then I’ll go. What kind of music would you like afterward? A march?”

His heart thumped, heavily and unevenly, and the quivering in his diaphragm would not stop. He thought his voice had gone and he cleared his throat several times. The papers rustled in his hands.

Green light. The technicians behind the glass were still talking to each other, but they were looking at something in front of them. Red light. The announcer leaned over his shoulder and said easily:

“Hello. Hello. This is an important message to the people. Over to the Provincial Resident, Don Manuel Ortega.”

While he was saying this, Manuel Ortega stared at the green felt cloth. A sunflower seed lay just beside the microphone. He was now quite certain that his larynx had ceased to function and that his voice would break down into a hoarse and inaudible croak at the first word.

So he was surprised when he suddenly heard himself speaking, calmly and clearly and convincingly.

“This is Manuel Ortega. As your Provincial Resident it is my duty to create peace and security in the district. It is also my duty to give all citizens in this area every opportunity for a richer and more worthwhile life, materially and spiritually. This task I shall try to fulfill to the best of my ability. My predecessor, General Orestes de Larrinaga, was a great and broad-minded man. Before his death he composed the proclamation which I am now about to read to you. It is directed to all of you, without exception, and it lays down the principles for my and my successors’ work. This is General Orestes de Larrinaga’s message to you, written in his own hand.”

He read the seventeen paragraphs slowly and emphatically, the whole time in a state of unreality and isolation. The only things that existed were the letters and words and a little yellow spider which slowly, slowly crept diagonally across the paper.

The moment he read out the words “Orestes de Larrinaga, General, Provincial Resident,” he knew he must say something more. He extemporized: “To this I must add that I have a sworn certificate from the General’s daughter, Doña Francisca de Larrinaga, which attests to the genuineness of this document. I must also stress that a great deal of evidence points to the view that this proclamation was the reason for the death of the General. My personal view is that he was killed so that he would not have the opportunity of publishing the seventeen points that you have just heard. From this it follows that the organization accused of his death is in fact not guilty of that particular crime.”

He paused for a moment. The red light was still on.

“The government has given me the task of following up General de Larrinaga’s plans for peace and reforms. The tense and difficult atmosphere will shortly be dispersed—will be
dealt with at a peace conference. Details of this will be sent out in an extra communiqúe at midday today.”

All the colored lights had gone out.

Manuel Ortega remained sitting at the table with his head lowered. His hands on the green felt looked small and weak and ineffectual. The drops of sweat from his face fell onto the sheets of his script.

Fernández was sitting by the wall with his legs outstretched, indifferently picking at his teeth with a broken match.

The technicians behind the glass were gesticulating and talking excitedly to each other. Now and then they threw timid, curious glances at the man sitting at the green table.

Manuel raised his right hand, placed his thumb over the little yellow spider, and squashed it. Then he rose slowly, leaving the papers on the table.

The announcer came in. His face was excited. The heat spots on his cheeks flared angrily red.

“Well … I couldn’t make any final announcement,” he said. “We were cut …”

“When?”

“I couldn’t tell you the exact moment.”

Manuel Ortega took a paper out of his jacket pocket.

“This is an important announcement about the peace conference,” he said. “It’s to be put out at midday and after that every hour.”

“We must record it,” said the announcer nervously. “Nothing is to be broadcast direct from now on. That’s a new order.”

“Who gave this order?”

“The Military Governor, General Gami.”

The little gray car drove through the empty town, oozing its way through the dazzling heat. There were very few people about. The streets between the dusty rows of palm trees were deserted. On each side stood the great white blocks of apartments, their white shutters closed.

At the intersection of the Avenida and Calle del General
Huerta stood four men with the yellow armbands of the Citizens’ Guard. They looked like middle-aged family men. One of them raised his rifle and aimed it at the car. Manuel Ortega saw him and thought: Now I’m going to die. He heard a long gurgling gasp and knew that it came from himself.

“Don’t bother about stupidities like that,” said Fernández calmly. “It won’t be like that. He didn’t even bother to put the safety catch off his blunderbuss.”

In the back Gómez sat with his short machine gun on his knee. Manuel wondered where he had come from.

A white square with white monumental buildings, the white vestibule and counter and the patch on the floor where General Larrinaga had lain with his shattered chest and blood on his white uniform. The staircase and the white corridor and the white door of his fears. He dared not open it but turned and went through the other office, where there was nothing but a pile of statistical tables on the desk, and then on into the woman in the white dress.

“They cut us off,” he said.

“Yes, but not until the next-to-last sentence.”

Fernández rustled with his seeds.

The telephone rang.

“One moment—I’ll answer.”

She put her hand over the mouthpiece.

“It’s Dalgren’s secretary. Do you want to take it?”

He picked up the receiver. The girl connected him. Then Dalgren was there. His voice sounded very near, piercing, as if he were standing close to Manuel Ortega or had already stepped into his consciouness. It was dry and hard and rasping, like emery paper on rusty tin.

“Young man, you have made a devastating mistake. I cannot protect you any longer. I don’t even want to. You’ve dragged my old friend Orestes’s name in the mud. You’ve
betrayed us all. It would surprise me if you were still alive this time tomorrow.”

A metallic click and then dead, empty silence.

The conversation was over, and Manuel Ortega remained standing, holding the receiver, until Danica took it out of his hand.

He frowned and shook his head slightly as if he were trying to concentrate on some serious practical problem.

“They’re going to kill me,” he said.

“That’ll be two of us then,” said Fernández, unmoved.

He was standing with one foot in each room, his back to the doorpost.

“No,” said Danica Rodríguez with conviction. “They won’t kill you. I don’t expect they’ll even try. They daren’t.”

The telephone rang again.

“No, the Provincial Resident will not be available until after one o’clock.”

She picked up her bag from the floor and rose.

“Come on,” she said.

Behind them the telephone rang.

In his bedroom he sat down on the bed and waited. She left him but soon came back and shut the door behind her.

“Undress,” she said.

He obeyed. His suit was crumpled and damp, his underclothes soaking. She emptied his pockets and flung the clothes into a heap on the floor.

“Into the shower with you.”

He went.

“Lean forward. That’s right. Now your front.”

Slowly she poured two jars of water over him and he shuddered with cold. Part of his still functioning cell system registered a surprising detail: that she lifted the heavy vessels with such ease and composure.

“You’re strong,” he said.

“Yes, I’m a strong, healthy girl.”

She picked up a clean towel and began to dry him. Her movements were purposeful, swift, and precise.

“You’re fine today too,” she said. “One doesn’t think that about many the day after.”

She extracted a little glass vial from her bag, put a tablet in his hand, and said: “Swallow that now and drink a little water.”

In the bedroom she took off the bedspread and blankets and turned back the sheet.

“Get in.”

He did as he was told, and she spread the sheet over him. He lay on his side, facing the wall, and said: “There’s something wrong with me. I’m sorry.”

“Yes. You’re very tired and a little frightened. You’re beginning to feel worn out and you’re not used to it. And you’ve not had more than two hours’ sleep. Just think that you’ve actually achieved something today and be content with that.”

“You’re looking after me.”

“I’m not much good at looking after other people, nor myself, but sometimes one has to. Be quiet now and sleep, I’ll be here and Fernández is sitting in the room out there and Gómez is in the corridor. Nothing will happen anyway.”

“The revolver,” he said.

She got it and put it on the bedside table. The Astra. He stretched out his hand for it and put it under his pillow.

She lit a cigarette, walked over to the window, and stood peering through the slats as she smoked. Now and again she bit at the cuticle around her nails. Without turning around she said: “If you like, I’ll get undressed and get in with you. Bruises and all.”

When he did not reply she went over to the bed and saw that he was asleep. She walked up and down the room for a
while. Then she put her cigarette out in the ashtray and left the room.

“Yes,” she said to herself, “someone’s going to kill him.”

She heard the telephone ring as soon as she reached the corridor.

Outside in the square policemen in white uniforms drove away a crowd of shouting people who had gathered in front of the steps of the Governor’s Palace.

When he woke up, the sheet was stuck firmly to his body. It was Danica who woke him and it was she too who once again poured water over him in the shower. Then she left, and for a few minutes he felt rested and relatively calm. But he picked up the white terylene suit to look at it, he remembered Dalgren’s voice and then, as he dressed, it stayed with him all the time, dry and rasping and implacable.