The Honorary Consul (25 page)

       "Perhaps I did."

       He had once known a man in Buenos Aires who was illegitimate. The man's mother died without telling him the name of his father. He searched through his mother's letters, he asked questions of her friends. He even examined bank records—his mother had an income which must have come from somewhere. He was not angry, nor shocked, but the desire to know who his father was vexed him like an itch. He explained to Doctor Plarr, "It is like one of those little picture puzzles with quicksilver. I cannot get the eyes in the right place, and yet I cannot put the puzzle down." Then one day he learned his father's name: that of an international banker who had been dead a long time. He said to Plarr, "You cannot imagine how empty I feel now. What is there left to interest me?" It is that kind of emptiness, Doctor Plarr thought, which I am experiencing now.

       "Come and lie down, Eduardo."

       "No. I must go out."

       "Where?"

       "I am not sure. It is something to do with Charley.

       "Have they found his body?" she asked.

       "No, no, nothing like that." She had half thrown the sheet off and he tucked it around her. He said, "You will catch cold from the air-conditioner."

       "I will go back to the Consulate."

       "No, stay here. I shall not be very long." In solitude, one welcomes any living thing—a mouse, a bird on the sill, Robert Brace's spider. In complete loneliness even a certain tenderness can be born. He said, "I am sorry, Clara. When I come back—" but he could not think of anything which was really worthwhile to promise her. He put his hand over her stomach and said, "Look after it. Sleep well." He turned the light out so that he could no longer see her eyes watching him—puzzled, as though his actions were too complicated for any girl from the establishment of Señora Sanchez to understand. On the stairs (the lift might have been heard by his neighbors) he tried to remember what that question of hers had been which he had never answered. It could not have been very important. The only questions of importance were those which a man asked himself.

PART FIVE

1

Doctor Plarr came back from the inner room and said to Father Rivas, "He will do well enough. Your man couldn't have aimed better if he had intended it. He hit the Achilles tendon. Of course, it will take time to mend. If you give him time. What happened?"

       "He tried to escape. Aquino fired at the ground first and then at his legs."

       "It would be better if he could be taken to hospital."

       "You know that is impossible."

       "All I can do is to strap him up. His ankle ought to be put in plaster. Why don't you give up the whole affair, Léon? I can keep him in my car for three or four hours to give you the time to disappear, and I'll tell the police I found him by the road."

       Father Rivas did not trouble to reply. Doctor Plarr said, "It is always the same when one thing goes wrong—it is like an error in an equation... Your first error was mistaking him for the Ambassador and now this follows. Your equation will never work out."

       "You may be right, but unless we receive orders from El Tigre..."

       "Get your orders then."

       "Impossible. After we announced the kidnapping all contact was broken. We are on our own here. In that way if we are captured, we cannot talk."

       "I have to go. I must get some sleep."

       "You will stay here with us," Father Rivas said.

       "That's not possible. If I'm seen leaving in daylight..."

       "If your telephone is tapped they will know you are an accomplice of ours already. If you go back they may arrest you and your friend Fortnum will be left without a doctor."

       "I have other patients to consider, Léon."

       "But they can find other doctors."

       "If you get your way... or you kill him... what happens to me?"

       Father Rivas indicated the Negro called Pablo in the doorway. "You were abducted and kept here by force. It is the simple truth. We cannot allow you to leave now."

       "Suppose I just walk through that door?"

       "I will tell him to shoot. Be reasonable, Eduardo. How can we trust you not to lead the police here?"

       "I'm no police informer, Léon, in spite of the trick you played on me."

       "I wonder. A man's conscience is not a simple thing. I believe in your friendship. But how do I know you would not persuade yourself you had to return for the sake of your patient? The police would follow you, and your Hippocratic oath would condemn us all to die. And then there is that sense of guilt I think you feel. They say you sleep with Fortnum's wife. If it is true, trying to atone for that might demand all our deaths."

       "I am not a Christian any longer, Léon. I don't think in those terms. I have no conscience. I am a simple man."

       "I have never met a simple man. Not even in the confessional, though I used to sit there for hours on end. Man was not created simple. When I was a young priest, I used to try to unravel what motives a man or woman had, what temptations and self-delusions. But I soon learned to give all that up, because there was never a straight answer. No one was simple enough for me to understand. In the end I would just say, 'Three Our Fathers, Three Hail Marys. Go in peace.' "

       Doctor Plarr moved impatiently away. He looked once again at his patient. Charley Fortnum was sleeping quietly enough—a drugged contented sleep. They had collected some extra blankets from somewhere to make the coffin bed more comfortable. Doctor Plarr came back into the outer room and stretched on the floor. It seemed to him he had passed a very long day. It was difficult to believe he had taken tea only the afternoon before at the Richmond in the Calle Florida and watched his mother eat her éclairs.

       The image of his mother remained with him when he fell asleep and she talked to him in her usual vein of complaint, telling him how his father would not rest like a respectable man of property in the interior of his coffin. They had constantly to shuffle him back inside, and that was no way for a caballero to enjoy his eternal peace. Father Galvao was on the way from Rio de Janeiro to see what he could do to persuade him to rest tranquil.

       Doctor Plarr opened his eyes. The Indian Miguel lay asleep on the floor beside him, and Father Rivas had taken Pablo's place in the doorway with a gun across his lap. A candle stuck in a saucer cast a shadow of his ears on the wall behind. Doctor Plarr was reminded of the dogs his father would make for him on the nursery wall. For a while he lay awake looking at his old schoolmate. Léon, Léon dog ears, Father dog ears. He remembered Léon saying, in one of those long serious conversations which they used to have at fourteen, that there existed only half a dozen careers worth a man's while to follow: a man should be a doctor, a priest, a lawyer (always, of course, on the right side), a poet (if he wrote well enough), or a manual worker. He couldn't remember now what the sixth career was, but it certainly wasn't a kidnapper's or an assassin's.

       He whispered across the floor, "Where are Aquino and the others?"

       "This is a military operation," Léon said. "We have been trained by El Tigre. We set our outposts, and we keep our watches at night."

       "And your wife?"

       "She is in the town with Pablo. This hut belongs to him, and he is known there. It is safer that way. You need not whisper. An Indian falls asleep, at any moment, whenever he is not required. The only sound which can wake him is hearing his name—or a noise that may be dangerous. Look at him, lying quietly there while we talk. I envy him. That is real peace. Sleep is meant to be like that for all of us, but we have lost the animal touch."

       "Tell me about my father, León. I want the truth." He had no sooner said it than he remembered how Doctor Humphries always demanded the real truth, even from the Neapolitan waiter, and got only a dusty answer.

       "Your father and Aquino were in the same police station a hundred kilometers southeast of Asunción. Near Villarica. He had been there fifteen years, and Aquino only ten months. We did our best, but he was old and sick. El Tigre was against our trying to save your father, but we outvoted him. We were wrong. Perhaps your father would be alive now if we had listened to El Tigre."

       "Yes. Perhaps. In a police station. Dying slowly."

       "It was a question of seconds. A quick dash. He could have done it easily in the days when you knew him, but fifteen years in a police station—you decay there more quickly than in a prison. The General knows there is comradeship in a prison. And so he plants his victims out in separate pots with insufficient earth, and they wither with despair."

       "Did you see my father?"

       "No, I was sitting in the escape car with a grenade ready in my lap. Praying."

       "Do you still believe in prayer?"

       Father Rivas made no reply and Doctor Plarr fell asleep.

       It was daylight when he woke and he went at once into the inner room to look at his patient. Charley Fortnum watched him come in. "So you really are one of them," he said.

       "Yes."

       "I don't understand you, Ted. What has all this got to do with you?"

       "I've told you often about my father. I thought these men might help him."

       "You were my friend—and Clara's."

       "I'm not responsible for their mistake. How does your ankle feel?"

       "I've suffered much worse from toothache. You've got to get me out of here, Ted. For Clara s sake."

       Doctor Plarr told Fortnum of his visit to the Ambassador. He realized, as he spoke, that it was an encouraging story. Charley Fortnum took the details slowly in. "You really got to the old man himself?"

       "Yes. He's doing his best."

       "Oh, they'll be relieved in B. A. when I'm dead. I know that well enough. They won't have to sack me then. An ungentlemanly act. They are all such bloody gentlemen there."

       "Colonel Perez too is doing all he can. It won't be long before they find this place."

       "It will come to the same thing if they do. Do you suppose these fellows will ever let me get out of here alive? Have you spoken to Clara?"

       "Yes. She's all right."

       "And the baby?"

       "Nothing to worry about."

       "I tried to write her a letter yesterday. I wanted her to have something she could look at afterward, though I doubt if she would be able to make much out of it.

       She still finds reading pretty difficult. I thought that somebody might read it aloud to her—perhaps you, Ted. Of course that meant I couldn't say all I felt for her, but I thought if the worst happens you would let her know."

       "Know what?"

       "How I feel. I know you are a cold fish, Ted. I've often called you that. I sound sentimental to you, but I've come to think about a lot of things lying here—I've had the hell of a time to fill in. It seems to me that all the prime of life—well, they were pretty empty years, without any purpose, just growing that bloody weed mate to earn some cash—cash for what, for who? I wanted someone I could do something for—not just make a living for myself. There are people who fall back on cats and dogs, but I never cared much for them. Nor horses either. Horses! I could never stand the bloody brutes. All I had to fall back on was Fortnum's Pride. I used to pretend to myself she was alive. I'd give her gas and oil and listen to her innards, but I know she was less real than one of those dolls which make wee-wee. Of course there was my wife for a while, only she was always so damned superior—there wasn't anything I could ever do for her which she couldn't do better for herself. I'm sorry. I'm talking too much, but you seem closer to me than anyone else because you've met Clara."

       "Talk all you want. There's nothing else we can do in the situation we are in. I'm as much a prisoner here as you are."

       "They won't let you go?"

       "No."

       "Then Clara—she's got no one?"

       Doctor Plarr said with irritation, "She can look after herself for a day or two. It's a lot easier for her than for you or me."

       "They won't kill 'you'."

       "No, they won't kill me if they can help it."

       "You know there was a time before I met Clara when I thought I'd found somebody I could love. She was a girl at Mother Sanchez' too. She was called María, but she was bad, that one."

       "Somebody knifed her."

       "Yes. Fancy you knowing. Well, it was a little while after that when I saw Clara. I don't know why I hadn't noticed her before. I'm not a good judge of women, I suppose, and María—well, she sort of dazzled me. Clara wasn't beautiful in that way, but she was honest. I could trust her. To make someone like Clara happy is a kind of success, isn't it?"

       "A modest sort of success."

       "Yes, 'you' can say that, but I'm used to failing, and I can't set my sights very high. If things had gone better, who knows... I quit drinking for nearly a week when they made me an Honorary Consul, but of course that didn't last. I've still got the letter they sent me from the Embassy. I'd like you to give it to Clara if I don't get out of here. It's in the top left-hand drawer of my desk in the Consulate. You can pick it out easily because of the Royal Arms on the flap. She can keep it to show the child one day." He tried to shift his position on the coffin and winced.

       "Did that hurt?"

       "Only a stab." He gave a low laugh. "When I think of my wife and Clara—my God, how different two women can be. My wife told me once she'd married me out of pity. Pity for what? She was like a man in the house—knew every damn thing about electricity. She could even fix a washer on a tap. And if I ever had a little one over the right measure she had no sympathy at all. Of course it wasn't reasonable to expect much from her. She was a Christian Scientist and even cancer didn't exist in her eyes, though her father died of it, so you could hardly expect her to believe in a hangover. All the same she needn't have talked so bloody loud when I had one. Her voice went through my head like a drill. Now Clara—Clara's a real woman, she knows when to be silent, God bless her. I'd like to keep her happy till the end."