The Honorary Consul (35 page)

       It was still giving careful instructions, when Father Rivas came back into the room. Aquino said, "The time is almost up. Better let me kill him now. It is not the job for a priest."

       "They may still be bluffing."

       "By the time we know for sure it may be too late. These paras are well trained by the Yankees in Panama. They move quick."

       Doctor Plarr said, "I am going out to talk to Perez."

       "No, no, Eduardo. That would be suicide. You heard what Perez said. He will not even respect a white flag. You agree, Aquino?"

       Pablo said, "We are beaten. Let the Consul go."

       "If that man passes through the room," Aquino said, "I shall shoot him—and anyone who helps him—even you, Pablo."

       "Then they will kill us all," Marta said. "If he dies we shall all die."

       "At any rate it will be a memorable occasion."

       "'Machismo'," Doctor Plarr said, "your damned stupid 'machismo'. Léon, I've got to do something for the poor devil in there. If I talk to Perez..."

       "What can you offer him?"

       "If he agrees to extend his time limit, will you extend yours?"

       "What would be the good?"

       "He is the British Consul. The British Government..."

       "Only an Honorary Consul, Eduardo. You have explained more than once what that means."

       "Will you agree if Perez..."

       "Yes, I will agree, but I doubt if Perez... He may not even give you time to talk."

       "I think he will. We have been good friends."

       A memory came back to Doctor Plarr of the back reach of the river, of the great horizontal forest, of Perez moving without hesitation from dipping log to dipping log toward the little group where the murderer awaited him. "They are all my people," Perez had said.

       "Perez is not a bad man as policemen go."

       "I am afraid for you, Eduardo."

       "The doctor is suffering from 'machismo' too," Aquino said. "Go on... get out there and talk... but take a gun with you..."

       "It's not 'machismo' I'm suffering from. You told me the truth, Léon. I am jealous. Jealous of Charley Fortnum."

       "If a man is jealous," Aquino said, "he kills the other man—or gets killed. It's a simple thing, jealousy."

       "Mine is not that kind of jealousy."

       "What other sort of jealousy is there? You sleep with a man's wife... And when he does the same..."

       "He loves her... that's the trouble."

       "You have five minutes left," the loudspeaker announced.

       "I'm jealous because he loves her. That stupid banal word love. It's never meant anything to me. Like the word God. I know how to fuck—I don't know how to love. Poor drunken Charley Fortnum wins the game."

       "One doesn't surrender a mistress so easily," Aquino said. "They cost a lot of trouble to win."

       "Clara?" Doctor Plarr laughed. "I paid her with a pair of sunglasses." Memories continued to return. They were like tiresome obstacles which he had to work around, a blindfold game with bottles, before he reached the door. He said, "There was something she asked me before I left home... I didn't bother to listen."

       "Stay here, Eduardo. You cannot trust Perez..."

       ***

       For a moment after he opened the door Doctor Plarr was dazzled by the sunlight, and then the world came back into sharp focus. Twenty yards of mud stretched before him. The Indian Miguel lay like a bundle of old clothes thrown to one side sodden with the night's ram. Beyond the body the trees and the deep shade began.

       There was no sign of anyone alive. The police had probably cleared the people from the neighboring huts. About thirty yards away something gleamed among the trees. It might have been a drawn bayonet which had caught the sun, but as he walked a little nearer and looked more closely, he saw it was only a piece of petrol tin that formed part of a hut hidden among the trees. A dog barked a long distance away.

       Doctor Plarr walked slowly and hesitatingly on. No one moved, no one spoke, not a shot was fired. He raised his hands a short distance above his waist, like a conjuror who wants to show that they are empty. He called, "Perez! Colonel Perez!" He felt absurd. After all there was no danger. They had exaggerated the whole situation. He had felt more insecure on the occasion when he followed Perez from raft to raft.

       He didn't hear the shot which struck him from behind in the back of the right leg. He fell forward full length, as though he had been tackled in a rugby game, with his face only a few yards from the shadow of the trees. He was unaware of any pain, and though for a while he lost consciousness, it was as peaceful as falling asleep over a book on a hot day.

       When he opened his eyes again the shadow of the trees had hardly moved. He felt very sleepy. He wanted to crawl on into the shade and sleep again. The morning sun here was too violent. He was vaguely aware that there was something he had to discuss with someone, but it could wait until his siesta was over. Thank God, he thought, I am alone. He was too tired to make love, and the day was too hot. He had forgotten to draw the curtains.

       He heard the sound of breathing; it came from behind him, and he didn't understand how that could be. A voice whispered, "Eduardo." He did not at first recognize it, but when he heard his name repeated, he exclaimed, "Léon?" He couldn't understand what Léon could be doing there. He tried to turn round, but a stiffness in his leg prevented him.

       The voice said, "I think they have shot me in the stomach."

       Doctor Plarr woke sharply up. The trees in front of him were the trees of the 'barrio'. The sun was shining on his head because he had not had time to reach the trees. He knew that he would not be safe until he reached the trees.

       The voice which he now knew must be Léon's said, "I heard the shot. I had to come."

       Doctor Plarr again tried to turn, but it was no use—he gave up the attempt.

       The voice behind him said, "Are you badly hurt?"

       "I don't think so. What about you?"

       "Oh, I am safe now," the voice said.

       "Safe?"

       "Quite safe. I could not kill a mouse."

       Doctor Plarr said, "We must get you to a hospital."

       "You were right, Eduardo," the voice said. "I was never made to be a killer."

       "I don't understand what's happened... I have to talk to Perez... You have no business to be here, Léon. You should have waited with the others."

       "I thought you might need me."

       "Why? What for?"

       There was a long silence until Doctor Plarr asked rather absurdly, "Are you still there?"

       A whisper came from behind him.

       Doctor Plarr said, "I can't hear you."

       The voice said a word which sounded like "Father." Nothing in their, situation seemed to make any sense whatever.

       "Lie still," Doctor Plarr said. "If they see either of us move they may shoot again. Don't even speak."

       "I am sorry... I beg pardon..."

       "'Ego te absolve'," Doctor Plarr whispered in a flash of memory. He intended to laugh, to show Léon he was only joking—they had often joked when they were boys at the unmeaning formulas the priests taught them to use—but he was too tired and the laugh shriveled in his throat.

       Three paras came out of the shade. In their camouflage they were like trees walking. They carried their automatic rifles at the ready. Two of them moved toward the hut. The third approached Doctor Plarr, who lay doggo, holding what little breath he had.

5

In the cemetery were a great number of people whom Charley Fortnum did not know from Adam. One woman in a long old-fashioned dress of black he assumed to be Señora Plarr. She held tightly to the arm of a thin priest whose dark brown eyes turned here and there, to left and right as though he were afraid of missing an important member of the congregation. Charley Fortnum heard her introduce him several times—"This is my friend Father Galvao from Rio." Two other ladies wiped their eyes prominently near the graveside. They might have been hired for the occasion like the undertakers. Neither of them spoke to Señora Plarr, or even to one another, but of course that might have been a matter of professional etiquette. After the Mass in the cathedral they had come separately up to Charley Fortnum and introduced themselves.

       "You are Señor Fortnum, the Consul? I was such a great friend of poor Eduardo. This is my husband, Señor Escobar."

       "My name is Señora Vallejo. My husband was unable to come, but I could not bear to fail Eduardo, so I brought with me my friend Señor Duran. Miguel, this is Señor Fortnum, the British Consul whom those scoundrels..."

       The name Miguel called up immediately in Charley Fortnum's mind the image of the Guaraní as he squatted in the doorway of the hut, tending his gun with a smile, and then he thought of the bundle of rain-soaked clothes past which the parachutists carried him on a stretcher. One of his hands in passing had dangled down and touched a piece of wet material. He began to say, "May I introduce my wife...?" but Señora Vallejo and her friend were already moving on. She held her handkerchief under her eyes—so that it looked rather like a yashmak—until her next social encounter. At least, Charley Fortnum thought, Clara does not pretend grief. It's a kind of honesty.

       The funeral, he thought, very much resembled two diplomatic cocktail parties he had attended in Buenos Aires. They were part of a series given for the departing British Ambassador. It was soon after his own appointment as Honorary Consul when he was still regarded with interest because he had picnicked with royalty among the ruins. People wanted to hear what the royals had talked about. This time the second party, with the same guests whom he had seen in the church, was held in the open air of the cemetery.

       "My name is Doctor Saavedra," a voice said. "You may remember we met once with Doctor Plarr—"

       Charley Fortnum wanted to reply, Surely it was at the house of Mother Sanchez. I remember you well with a girl. I was with María, the one whom somebody stabbed.

       "This is my wife," he said, and Doctor Saavedra bowed with courtesy over her hand; her face must have been familiar to him, if only because of the birthmark on her forehead. He wondered how many of these people knew that Clara had been Plarr's mistress.

       "I must go now," Doctor Saavedra said. "I have been asked to say a few words in honor of our poor friend."

       He moved toward the coffin, pausing on the way to shake hands and exchange a few words with Colonel Perez. Colonel Perez was in uniform and carried his cap in the crook of his arm. He had the air of being the most serious person present. Perhaps he was wondering how the doctor's death would affect his career. A lot depended, of course, on the attitude of the British Embassy. A young man, Crichton, who was a new face to Charley Fortnum, had flown up from B. A. to represent the Ambassador (the First Secretary being in bed with flu). He stood beside Perez close to the coffin. You could estimate the social importance of a mourner by his closeness to the coffin, for the coffin represented the guest of honor. The Escobars were worming their way toward it, and Señora Vallejo was almost near enough to put out a hand. Charley Fortnum with a crutch under his right arm stayed on the periphery of the smart company. He felt it was absurd to be there at all. He was an imposter. He only owed his position there because he had been mistaken for the American Ambassador.

       Also on the periphery, but far removed from Charley Fortnum, stood Doctor Humphries. He too had the air of being out of place and knowing it. His proper habitat was the Italian Club, his proper neighbor the waiter from Naples, who feared he had the evil eye. When he first noticed Humphries Charley Fortnum had taken a step in his direction, but Humphries had backed hastily away. Charley Fortnum remembered telling Doctor Plarr, in some long distant past, that Humphries had cut him. "Lucky you," Plarr had exclaimed. Those had been happy days, and yet all the while Plarr had been sleeping with Clara and Plarr's child was growing in her body. He had loved Clara and Clara had been gentle and tender to him. All that was over. He had owed his happiness to Doctor Plarr. He took a furtive look at Clara. She was watching Saavedra who had begun to speak. She looked bored as though the subject of the eulogy was a stranger who did not interest her at all. Poor Plarr, he thought, he was deceived by her too.

       "You were more than a doctor who healed our bodies," Doctor Saavedra said, addressing his words directly to the coffin which was wrapped in a Union Jack that had been lent on request by Charley Fortnum. "You were a friend to each of your patients—even to the poorest among them. All of us know how unsparingly you worked in the 'barrio' of the poor without recompense—from a sense of love and justice. What a tragic fate then it was that you, who had toiled so hard for the destitute, died at the hands of their so-called defenders."

       Good God, Charley Fortnum thought, can that be the story Colonel Perez is putting out?

       "Your mother was born in Paraguay, once our heroic enemy, and it was with a 'machismo' worthy of your maternal ancestors who gave their hearts' blood for Lopez—not seeking whether his cause were good or ill—that you walked out to your death from the hut, where these false champions of the poor were gathered, in a last attempt to save their lives as well as your friend's. You were shot down without mercy by a fanatic priest, but you won the day—your friend survived."

       Charley Fortnum looked across the open grave at Colonel Perez. His uncovered head was bowed; his hands were pressed to his sides; his feet were at the correct military angle of attention. He looked like a nineteenth-century monument of soldierly grief while Doctor Saavedra continued to establish by his eulogy—was it about that they had spoken together?—the official version of Plarr's death. Who would think to question it now? The speech would be printed verbatim in 'El Litoral' and a resume would surely appear even in the 'Nación'.