The Honorary Consul (11 page)

       "What?"

       "Oh, just something. I did not know what."

       She walked contentedly beside him, following whatever direction he chose to take. He felt disturbed by the easy way that things were happening. He remembered the stupid conflict in his mind when he wanted to turn his car back toward the camp, and the number of occasions, during the last week, when he had lain awake, wondering what was the right move to make in order to see her again. He ought to have known it would be no more difficult than leading her to her cell at Señora Sanchez' house.

       She said, "I am not frightened of you today."

       "Perhaps because I have given you a present."

       She said, "Yes, it could be that. A man would never bother to give a present to someone he did not like, would he? And the other day I thought you did not like me. I thought you were my enemy."

       They came to the bank of the Paraná. A small bastion jutted into the river, fringed with white pillars, making a tiny temple for a naked statue of classical innocence which faced the water. The ugly yellow block of flats where he lived was hidden by the trees. The leaves were like the lightest of feathers; they gave an illusion of coolness because they seemed to be always in motion—a breath of air undetectable on the skin was enough to set them waving. A heavy barge moved past them up the river, coughing against the current, and the usual black plume of smoke lay across the Chaco.

       She sat and stared at the Paraná when he looked at her all he could see was his own face reflected in the mirror-glass. He said, "For God's sake take off those spectacles. I don't want to shave."

       "Shave?"

       "I look at myself like that twice a day—that's quite enough."

       She took them off obediently and he saw her eyes, which were brown and expressionless and indistinguishable from all the Spanish women's eyes he had ever known. She said, "I do not understand."

       "Oh, forget what I said. Is it true that you are married?"

       "Yes."

       "What does it feel like?"

       "I think it's like wearing another girl's dress," she said, "which doesn't fit."

       "Why did you do it?"

       "He wanted to marry. Something to do with his money when he dies. And if there's a child..."

       "Have you started one?"

       "No."

       "Well, it must be better than life at Mother Sanchez'."

       "It is different," she said. "I miss the girls."

       "And the men?"

       "Oh, I am not bothered about them."

       They were alone on the long parade beside the Paraná: for men it was the hour of work, for women of shopping. Everything here had its proper hour—the hour for the Paraná was evening, and then it was the time for young true lovers, who held hands and didn't speak. He said, "When do you have to be home?"

       "The 'capataz' is picking me up at Charley's office at eleven."

       "It is nine o'clock now. How will you fill in the time?"

       "I will look at the shops and then I will have a coffee."

       "Do you never see any of your old friends?"

       "The girls are all asleep now."

       "You see those flats there beyond the trees?" Doctor Plarr asked. "I live there."

       "Yes?"

       "If you want coffee I can give you coffee."

       "Yes?"

       "Or orange juice," he said.

       "Oh, I do not really like orange juice. Señora Sanchez said we must keep sober, that was all."

       He asked, "Will you come with me?"

       "It would not be right, would it?" she asked, as though she were seeking information from someone whom she knew and trusted.

       "It was right at Mother Sanchez'..."

       "But I had my living to earn there. I sent money home to Tucumán."

       "What happens now?"

       "Oh, I send money to Tucumán just the same. Charley gives it to me."

       He stood up and put out his hand. "Come along." He was prepared to be angry if she hesitated, but she took his hand with the same shallow obedience and followed him across the road, as though the distance were no greater than across the little patio at Mother Sanchez'. The lift, however, made her hesitate. She told him she had never been in a lift before—there were few houses in the city which stood more than two stories high. She tightened her hand in excitement or fear, and when they reached the top floor she asked, "Can we do that again, please?"

       "When you go."

       He led her straight to his bedroom and began to undress her. A catch of her dress stuck, and she took the work out of his hands. All she said, while she lay naked on the bed waiting for him to join her, was, "Those sunglasses cost you much more than a visit to Señora Sanchez," and he wondered whether she thought of them as a payment in advance. He remembered how Teresa would count the peso notes and afterward lay them on a ledge below her saint's statue as though they were the result of a collection in church. They would be divided later in the correct proportion with Señora Sanchez: the personal gift always came later.

       As he joined her he thought with relief: this is the end of my obsession, and when she cried out, he thought: I'm a free man again, I can say goodnight to Señora Sanchez as she knits in her deck chair and I can walk back along the river with a sense of lightness which wasn't mine when I left home. The last number of the 'British Medical Journal' lay on his desk—it had remained a whole week in its wrapping, and he was in the mood for reading something in a style even more precise than a story by Borges, and of greater practical value than a novel by Jorge Julio Saavedra. He began to read an article of startling originality—or so it seemed to him—on the treatment of calcium deficiency by a doctor called Caesar Borgia.

       "Are you asleep?" the girl asked.

       "No," but all the same he was surprised when he opened his eyes and saw the sunlight between the slats of the blind. He had thought it was night and that he was alone.

       The girl caressed the inside of his thigh and ran lips down his body. He felt no more than a mild interest, a curiosity to see if she were capable of arousing him a second time. Perhaps that was the secret of her success at Mother Sanchez'—she gave a man double his money's worth. She climbed on to his body and cried out an obscenity, taking his ear between her teeth, but the obsession had died with his desire, and he felt depressed at the void it left behind. For a week he had lived with one idea and now he missed the idea as a mother might miss the crying of an unwanted child. I never really desired her, he thought, I only desired my idea of her. He would have liked to get up and go, leaving her alone to make the bed and afterward find another customer.

       "Where is the bathroom?" she asked. There was nothing to distinguish her from the others he had known except that she played her comedy with more spirit and invention.

       He had dressed when she returned, and he watched impatiently while she put on her clothes. He was afraid she would ask him for the coffee he had promised and linger a long time over it. It was his hour for visiting the 'barrio popular'. The women by now would have finished their first chores and the children would have returned from carrying water. He asked, "Do you want me to drop you at the Consulate?"

       "No," she said. "I had better walk. The 'capataz' may be there waiting."

       "You have not done much shopping."

       "I will show Charley the sunglasses. He will never know how much they cost."

       He took a ten-thousand-peso note from his pocket and held it out to her. She turned it over as if to make sure of the amount. She said, "Nobody ever gave me more than five thousand afterward. Generally it was two. Mother Sanchez did not like us taking more. She was afraid it meant we had been hustling. She was wrong. Men are odd that way. If they can do nothing they always give you more."

       "As if any of you cared," he said.

       "As if we cared."

       "A Lenten visitor."

       The girl laughed. She said, "It is good to be able to talk free again. I cannot talk free to Charley. I think he wants to forget all about Señora Sanchez." She handed him back the note. "It would not be right," she said, "now I am married. And I do not need it. Charley is generous. And the sunglasses cost a lot." She put them on, so that again he saw his own face staring back at him, in miniature, as though he were a doll looking out of a doll's house window. She asked, "Shall I see you again?"

       He wanted to say, "No. It's all finished now," but common politeness—and the relief he felt because she had forgotten the coffee—made him reply formally, like a host to a guest whom he doesn't really want to encourage to call again. "Of course. One day when you come into town... I'll give you my telephone number."

       "You need not give me a present every time," she assured him.

       "And you needn't play a comedy," he said.

       "Comedy?"

       He said, "I know there are always men who want to believe you are finding the same pleasure that they do. Naturally at Mother Sanchez' you had to play a part to earn your present, but here you see—you need not act any longer. Perhaps you have to act with Charley, but not with me. You don't have to pretend anything at all with me."

       "I am sorry," she said. "I did something wrong?"

       "It always used to annoy me," Doctor Plarr went on, "in that house of yours. A man is not nearly so stupid as he seems to you. He knows he has come to get a pleasure and not to give it."

       She said. "All the same I think I pretended very well because I got bigger presents than the other girls." She wasn't annoyed. He could tell that she was accustomed to this sadness after coition. He didn't differ, even in that, from the other men she had known. And this void, he thought—is she right? is it no more than the temporary 'tristitia' most men feel when they leave a brothel behind?

       "How long were you there?"

       "Two years. I was nearly sixteen," she said, "when I arrived. The girls gave me a cake with candles on my birthday. I had never seen one before. It was very pretty."

       "Does Charley Fortnum like you to pretend like that?"

       "He likes me to be very quiet," she said, "and very tender. Is that what you would have liked too? I am sorry... I thought... You are so much younger than Charley, so I thought..."

       "I would like you to be yourself," he said. "Be as indifferent as you like. How many men have you known?"

       "How could I remember that?"

       He showed her the way to work the lift, and she asked him to come down with her—she was still a little afraid of it, even though it excited her. When she pressed the button and it began to descend she gave the same jump she had given in Gruber's shop. At the door she admitted to him that she was afraid of the telephone too. "And your name—I have forgotten your name."

       "Plarr. Eduardo Plarr." He tried her name for the first time aloud. "You are Clara, aren't you?" He added, "If you are afraid to use the telephone, 'I' shall have to telephone to you. But perhaps Charley will answer."

       "He usually drives around the camp before nine. And Wednesdays he is nearly always in town—though he likes me to come with him."

       "Oh well," Doctor Plarr said, "we shall find a way." He didn't bother to see her into the street or watch her go. He was a free man.

       And yet, inexplicably, the same night, while he was trying to sleep, he thought with regret that he had a clearer memory of her stretched out in Charley Fortnum's bed than he had of her in his own. An obsession may sleep awhile, but it doesn't necessarily die, and in less than a week he wanted to see her again. He would have liked to hear her voice, however indifferent it might sound on the telephone, but the telephone never rang with any message of importance.

PART THREE

1

Doctor Plarr did not arrive home from the hut until nearly three in the morning. Because of police patrols Diego took a circuitous route and dropped him near the house of Señora Sanchez, thus giving him an excuse, if one were needed, for being out on foot in the early morning. There was one awkward moment when he climbed the stairs and a door on the floor below him opened and a voice demanded, "Who is that?" He called down, "Doctor Plarr. Why are children born at unconscionable hours?"

       Although he lay down on his bed he hardly slept at all. Nevertheless he got through his morning's work with more than usual expedition and drove out to Charley Fortnum's camp. He had no idea of the kind of situation with which he might have to cope, and he was in a tired, nervous and angry mood, expecting to find a hysterical woman awaiting him. While he lay sleepless in bed he had considered the possibility of disclosing all to the police, but that would be to condemn Léon and Aquino to almost certain death, probably Fortnum as well.

       It was a heavy sun-drenched midday when he arrived at the camp and a police jeep stood beside Fortnum's Pride in the shade of the avocados. He walked into the house without ringing, and in the living room he found the Chief of Police talking to Clara. She was not the hysterical woman he had anticipated but a young girl sitting stiffly on the sofa as though she were receiving orders from a superior. "... all we can," Colonel Perez was saying.

       "What are you doing here?" Doctor Plarr asked.

       "I have come to see Señora Fortnum, doctor, and you?"

       "I have come to see the Consul on business."

       "The Consul is not here," Colonel Perez said.

       Clara gave him no greeting. She seemed to be waiting without a will of her own, as she had often waited in the patio of the establishment, for one of many men to lead her away—hustling being forbidden by Mother Sanchez.