The Honorary Consul (21 page)

       Humphries was the first of his guests to arrive. He was tightly buttoned in a dark suit and his forehead was wet in the humid night. His temper was not improved when a bold mosquito, immediately he sat down, attacked his ankle through a thick gray woolen sock. The professor of English struck angrily out and complained, "I was just leaving for the Italian Club when I got your message," as if he resented being deprived of his usual goulash. He looked at the third place at table and asked, "Who's coming?"

       "Doctor Saavedra."

       "In God's name why? I can't understand what you see in that fellow. A pompous ass."

       "I thought his advice might be useful. I want to draft a letter to the papers from the Anglo-Argentinian Club on behalf of Fortnum."

       "You are fooling me. What club? It doesn't exist."

       "You and I are going to found the club tonight. Saavedra, I hope, will be the president, I will be the chairman. I thought you wouldn't mind taking on the job of honorary secretary. There won't be very much to do."

       "This is sheer madness," Humphries said. "As far as I know there's only one other Englishman in the city. Or there was. I'm convinced Fortnum's absconded. That woman of his must have been costing him a great deal of money. Sooner or later we shall hear that the accounts at the Consulate are in the red. Or more likely we shall hear nothing at all. Those Embassy fellows in B. A. are sure to hush things up. For the honor of their so-called service. One never gets at the truth of anything." It was his perpetual and quite genuine complaint. Truth was like a difficult sentence which his pupils never succeeded in getting grammatically right. Doctor Plarr said, "At least there's no doubt about the kidnapping. That's true enough. I've talked to Perez."

       "Do you trust what a policeman says?"

       "This policeman, yes. Look, Humphries, be reasonable. We have to do 'something' for Fortnum. Even if he did fly the Union Jack upside down. The poor devil has only three days left to live. The Ambassador today—he doesn't want it known—suggested we ought to write some sort of tribute to the papers. Anything to stir up a little interest. From the English Club here. Oh, yes, yes, you've already said it. Of course there's no such club. Coming back on the plane I thought it would be better to call the club the Anglo-Argentinian. In that way we can use Saavedra's name and we have more chance of making the B. A. papers. We can talk about the good influence Fortnum has always had on our relations with Argentina. We can speak of his cultural activities."

       "Cultural activities! His father was a notorious drunkard and so is Charley Fortnum. Don't you remember the night we had to haul him back to the Bolívar? He couldn't even stand up. All he has done for our relations with Argentina is to marry a local whore."

       "All the same we can't just let him die."

       "I wouldn't raise my little finger," Humphries said, "for that man."

       Something was going on inside the Nacional. The 'maître d'hôtel', who had come out on the terrace to breathe the air before the night's activities began, was hurrying back to the dining room. A waiter, who was halfway to Doctor Benevento's table, turned tail in response to a signal. Through the French window of the restaurant Doctor Plarr saw the pearl-gray gleam of Jorge Julio Saavedra's suit as the author paused to exchange a few words with the staff. A woman from the cloakroom took his hat, the waiter took his cane, the manager came hurrying from his office to join the 'maître d'hôtel'. Doctor Saavedra was explaining something, pointing here and there; when he came out on the terrace, they escorted him in a phalanx toward Doctor Plarr's table. Even Doctor Benevento rose a few inches in his seat, as Doctor Saavedra pigeon-toed by in his gleaming pointed shoes.

       "Here comes the great novelist,". Humphries sneered. "I bet none of them has read a word he ever wrote."

       "You are probably right, but his great-grandfather was Governor here," Doctor Plarr said. "In Argentina they have a strong sense of history."

       The manager wanted to know whether the table was placed in a position satisfactory to Doctor Saavedra; the 'maître d'hôtel' whispered in Doctor Plarr's ear news of a special dish which was not marked on the menu—some salmon had arrived that day fresh from Iguazu; there was also a 'dorado' if Doctor Plarr's guests would prefer that.

       When the staff had departed one by one, Doctor Saavedra said, "They make a ridiculous fuss of me. I was only telling them I was going to set a scene in my new novel in the restaurant of the Nacional. I wanted to explain where I wanted my character to be seated. I had to see exactly what would lie in his view at the moment when Fuerabbia, his assailant, enters armed from the terrace."

       "Is it a detective story?" Humphries asked with malice. "I like a good detective story."

       "I trust I shall never write a detective story, Doctor Humphries, if by a detective story you mean one of those absurd puzzles, which are the literary equivalent of a jigsaw. In my new book I am concerned with the psychology of violence."

       "Gauchos again?"

       "No, not gauchos. This is a contemporary novel—my second venture into politics. It is set in the time of the dictator Rosas."."I thought you said it was contemporary."

       "The ideas are contemporary. If you were a writer, Doctor Humphries, instead of a teacher of literature, you would know a novelist has to stand at a distance from his subject. Nothing dates more quickly than the immediately contemporary. You might as well expect me to write a story about the kidnapping of Señor Fortnum." He turned to Doctor Plarr. "I had some difficulty in getting away tonight, something unpleasant happened, but when my doctor calls I have to obey. What is it all about?"

       "Doctor Humphries and I have decided to found an Anglo-Argentina Club."

       "An excellent idea. What activities...?"

       "Cultural of course. Literary, archaeological. We want you to be president."

       "I am honored," Doctor Saavedra said.

       "One of the first things I would like the club to do is to make an appeal to the press on the subject of Fortnum's kidnapping. If he had been here he would certainly have been a member."

       "How can I help you?" Doctor Saavedra asked. "I have hardly spoken to Señor Fortnum. Just once at Señora Sanchez'..."

       "I have brought a rough draft—a very rough draft. I am no writer—except of prescriptions."

       Humphries said, "The man has absconded. That is all there is to it. He probably arranged the whole affair himself. Personally I refuse to sign."

       "Then we shall have to do without you, Humphries. Only your friends—if you have any—may wonder, when the letter's published, why you are not a member of the Anglo-Argentinian Club. They may even think you were blackballed."

       "You know there's no such club."

       "Oh yes, there is, and Doctor Saavedra has agreed to be our president. This is the first club dinner. And we have a very good salmon from Iguazu. If you don't wish to be a member, go away and have some goulash at your Italian joint."

       "Are you trying to blackmail me?"

       "In a good cause."

       "Morally you are no better than the kidnappers."

       "No better—all the same I would rather they didn't kill Charley Fortnum."

       "Charley Fortnum's a disgrace to his country."

       "No signature. No salmon."

       "You give me no alternative," Doctor Humphries said, undoing his napkin.

       Doctor Saavedra read the letter with care. He laid it down beside his plate. "If I might take this home and work on it," he said. "It lacks—you must not mind my criticism, it comes from a professional conscience—it lacks the sense of urgency. It reads as coldly as a company report. If you would leave the letter in my hands I will write you something with color and dramatic effect. Something the press would have to print on its own merits."

       "I want to cable it tonight to 'The Times' in London and get it into tomorrow's papers in Buenos Aires."

       "A letter like this cannot be hurried, Doctor Plarr, and I am a slow writer. Give me till tomorrow and I promise you the result will be worth waiting for."

       "The poor devil may have only about three days to live. I'd rather cable my rough draft tonight than wait till tomorrow. Over in England it's already tomorrow."

       "Then you will have to do without my signature. I'm sorry, doctor, it would be wrong for me to put my name to the letter as it stands now. No one in Buenos Aires would believe I had a hand in it. It contains—forgive me—some terrible cliches. Just listen to this..."

       "That is why I wanted you to rewrite the letter.

       Surely you can do it now. At the table."

       "Do you believe writing is as easy as that? Would you do a delicate operation, on the spur of the moment, on this table? I will sit up all night if necessary. The quality of the letter I write you will more than make up for the delay, even in translation. By the way who is going to translate it—you or Doctor Humphries? I would like to check the translation before you send it abroad. I trust your accuracy, of course, but it is a question of style. In a letter like this we have to move the reader, to bring home to him the character of this poor man..."

       "The less you bring home his character the better," Humphries said.

       "As I see it, Señor Fortnum is a simple man—not very wise or intelligent—and suddenly he finds himself close to violent death. Perhaps he has never even thought of death before. It is a situation in which such a man either succumbs to fear or he grows in stature. Consider the case of Señor Fortnum. He is married to a young wife, a child is on the way..."

       "We have no time to write a novel on the subject," Doctor Plarr said.

       "When I met him, he had drunk a little too much. I found his company embarrassing until I saw, behind the superficial gaiety, a profound melancholy."

       "You are not far wrong there," Doctor Plarr said with surprise.

       "He was drinking, I think, for the same reason that I write—to escape the darkness of his own spirit. He confided to me that he was in love."

       "In love at sixty!" Humphries exclaimed. "He ought to have got beyond all that nonsense."

       "I have not got beyond it," Doctor Saavedra said. "If I were beyond it, I would no longer be able to write. The sexual instinct and the creative instinct live and die together. Youth, Doctor Humphries, lasts longer in some men than you, from your personal experience, may suppose."

       "He just wanted to keep a whore handy. Do you call that love?"

       "If we could get back to the letter..." Doctor Plarr said.

       "And what do you call love, Doctor Humphries? An arranged marriage in the Spanish tradition? A large family of children? Let me tell you I have loved a whore myself. A whore can have more generosity of spirit than you will find in the bourgeoisie of Buenos Aires. As a poet I have been helped better by a whore than by any critic—or professor of literature."

       "I thought you were a novelist, not a poet."

       "In Spanish we do not confine the term poet to those who write metrically."

       "The letter," Doctor Plarr interrupted. "Let us try to finish the letter before we finish the salmon."

       "You must let me think quietly—the opening sentence is the key to the rest. One has to strike the right tone, even the right rhythm. The right rhythm in prose is every bit as important as the right meter in a poem. This is a very good salmon. May I have another glass of wine?"

       "You can drink the whole bottle if you will write the letter."

       "What a fuss to make about Charley Fortnum," Doctor Humphries said. He had finished his salmon, he had drained his glass, he had nothing to fear. "You know there's another possible motive for his disappearance—he doesn't want to stand father to another man's child."

       "I want to begin the letter with a character study of the victim," Doctor Saavedra said, ballpoint in hand, a little salmon shaking on his upper lip, "but somehow Señor Fortnum refuses to come alive. I have had to cross out almost every other word. In a novel I could have created him in a few sentences. It is his reality which defeats me. I am hamstrung by his reality. When I write down a phrase it is as though Fortnum himself put a hand on my wrist and said, 'But this is not how I am at all.'"

       "Let me pour you another glass."

       "There is another thing he says to me which makes me hesitate. 'Why are you trying to send me back to the kind of life I used to lead, a Life sad and without honor?'"

       "Charley Fortnum never worried much about honor," Doctor Humphries said, "so long as there was enough whisky around."

       "If you could look deep enough into anyone's character, even perhaps your own, you would find the sense of 'machismo'."

       It was past ten o'clock and guests were beginning to drift across the terrace for dinner. They moved along separate routes, passing on either side of Doctor Plarr's table, like migrating tribes passing a rock in the desert, and they carried their children with them. A baby, which might have been an idol of wax, sat upright in a pram: a pale-faced child of three staggered from fatigue across the marble desert dressed in a blue party dress, her little ears pierced for gold rings; a boy of six drummed his way, yawning at every step, along the terrace wall. One had the impression that they had crossed a whole continent to arrive here. No doubt at dawn, the grazing exhausted, they would pack up and move to another camping ground. Doctor Plarr said impatiently, "Give me back my letter. I want to send it as it is."

       "In that case I cannot put my name to it."

       "And you, Humphries?"

       "I won't sign. You can't threaten me now. I've finished my salmon."

       Doctor Plarr took the letter and tore it in two. He put some money on the table and rose.