Doctor Frigo (18 page)

‘I heard you the first time, Elizabeth. In fact, I wasn’t going to say any of those things. In fact, I was going to say that Delvert isn’t Napoleon the Third and I am neither the Emperor Max nor poor, mad Charlotte about to grovel before the Pope.’

She pretended not to have heard me, but she was getting angry herself now. ‘Of course,’ she said loudly, ‘if you wanted to find out who murdered your father, that would be one way.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘You could pretend to become a polichinelle, a puppet, pretend to make this noble political commitment.’ She swept across the room to the brandy bottle and twisted the cork out as if it were a Bonaparte neck she was wringing.

‘Pretend to join them heart and soul, Ernesto. Gain their confidence. Learn their secrets and then betray them.’ She splashed rather a lot of brandy into a beer glass. ‘Your mother’s ghost would be delighted I’m sure.’

‘Possibly. But Commandant Delvert wouldn’t.’

‘Delvert! He impresses you, doesn’t he?’

‘Somewhat, yes.’

‘Let me tell you something.’ She swallowed half the brandy at a gulp. ‘Let me tell you. Delvert will believe anything you choose to tell him that he wants to hear.’

‘I doubt if he would believe in a suddenly committed Doctor Frigo.’

‘Then why is he trying to persuade you to commit? That monster of conceit will believe anything that flatters his vanity. Why, he even believed me when I told him something he was hoping to hear.’

‘What was that?’

‘That I would think again about divorcing Raoul, of
course. I’m quite sure he believed me. He was obviously pleased with himself and his delicate tact.’

‘Why bother to lie?’

‘It made for a more agreeable evening. Why else should I bother?’

She went back to the brandy.

I went home earlier than usual.

Day duty at hospital.

Had phone message asking me to call Rosier at my earliest convenience – urgent. Ignored it.

This evening Elizabeth was casually apologetic about last night. Blamed all on Delvert and S-dec, but, to my relief, refrained from pursuing the vendetta.

No political discussion of any sort. Bed wholly delightful. Did I imagine last night?

No, I didn’t. Still a little sore mentally. I have become used to ‘Doctor Frigo’. The idea of his being replaced by ‘Doctor Polichinelle’ does not appeal to me.

Villegas arrived at Hospital only fifteen minutes late for his appointment. Doñna Julia did not accompany him.

Dr Brissac was on hand to pay his respects, which my patient received politely but without noticeable pleasure.

I stayed with him while they did the X-rays. When that was over I took him downstairs and ran an electrocardiogram. He was co-operative but plainly bored. By the time
I had spoken about the need to reduce his blood-pressure and gone over the test results with him – none of them was of significant interest – the X-rays were ready for me to see.

The diverticula showed up clearly, as the radiologist was quick to point out. It was then necessary for me to go through the farce of explaining what they were and how they should be dealt with and for the patient to pretend that he was hearing it all for the first time.

The only interest for me at that point was in seeing how good an actor he was. Very good, I finally concluded. The initial surprise and concern were not overdone, he asked the natural questions and was appropriately reassured by the answers. He complimented the radiologist on his skill. I mentioned the three proprietary names by which the broad-spectrum antibiotic ampicillin is usually known and asked him if he was allergic to any of them. He said he didn’t know. A well-judged performance.

I had other, more pertinent, questions to ask him now. A nod and a word of thanks to the radiologist secured his withdrawal.

For a moment or two Villegas and I stared at one another across the desk, then he thanked me somewhat effusively for my help. A remark of Delvert’s about charades of gratitude inspiring mutual trust came to mind, but I put it aside. S-dec had already slightly distorted my thinking on personal matters; I wasn’t going to allow it to interfere with my professional judgement.

I said: ‘To ask a patient how he is feeling when he has had no breakfast and a barium enema may sound like a stupid question, Don Manuel.’

He smiled, a little warily I thought. ‘So you are not going to ask it?’

‘I’d like to know how you feel generally, Don Manuel, apart from these abdominal inconveniences which we now understand.’

‘You’re the doctor, Ernesto.’ Again the wary look. ‘You
don’t object if I presume on my age to address you familiarly?’

‘Not at all, Don Manuel. I take it as a compliment.’

‘Well, then, Ernesto, you have examined me. What else can I tell you about myself?’

He was watching me quite intently now. It was the look I have come to know quite well: that of the man who is secretly worried about himself and hoping for reassurance. Seeing it on his face came as something of a shock.

‘I notice, Don Manuel,’ I said casually, ‘that you sometimes have a slight speech difficulty. Does that bother you often?’

‘Ah, so you did notice it. When?’

‘Last week when I examined you it became quite noticeable. It is less so this morning.’

‘That’s probably because this morning you and others have been doing most of the talking.’

I smiled. ‘I expect we have. But would you mind explaining that a little? When I saw you at the villa I had the impression that you experienced a difficulty with some words, that you were aware of it and that you could with a small effort overcome it.’

‘I sometimes can.’

‘I see. But after a while it seemed to me that you no longer made the effort. Was I right?’

‘No, it’s not like that.’

‘How is it then, Don Manuel?’

He thought for a moment. ‘When you were at school,’ he said then, ‘did you take part much in sports?’

‘The usual things, yes.’

‘Did you run in races?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you remember how it felt when you were near the end of a hard race and almost winning when there was another runner beside you who also thought he could win?’

‘I wasn’t a very good runner, but I think I know what you mean.’

‘You had to do what you had thought you could not do – call upon yourself for a further final effort.’

‘And win.’

‘Or lose, because the other runner had also made a further final effort with better success. It was a contest not only of innate physical ability and training, but also of will.’

‘I understand.’

‘But this much was predictable. Your chest might feel like bursting and your legs feel as if they were turning to water, but you either won or you came second.’ He paused to choose his words. ‘You did not collapse before the finish, you did not suddenly cease to run.’

‘And that’s what’s happening with the final effort we are discussing?’

‘Yes. I lose the ability to go on. I know clearly what I wish to say and I have the will to say it, but something happens here –’ he touched his face – ‘to prevent my doing so. An unpleasant tic that affects the tongue.’

‘I see.’ To give myself time to think I made a note on the pad in front of me. Under it was the dossier with my glib misinterpretation of the signs and symptoms I had observed at the villa. Pompously I had told Delvert that one shouldn’t make guesses based on insufficient data. Well, I had done just that. Now I had better try to retrieve the situation. It wouldn’t help the patient to tell him that I was appalled by my own incompetence.

‘When did this difficulty begin, Don Manuel?’

‘Three, four months ago, when we were still in Mexico City. I put it down to exhaustion at the time. There had been a lot of long and critical discussions with some rather exhausting personages. Knowing what you do of our affairs you can perhaps imagine.’

‘Yes. But you are not exhausted now, and these attacks have continued?’

‘I don’t think of them any more as attacks. This affliction has continued, yes. It has also increased slightly in intensity.
I may say that I have become quite skilful at concealing it.’

‘How, Don Manuel?’

‘By choosing the right moment to stop talking. I could conceal it from you, for instance, by stopping now.’

His speech was still fairly clear at that point. Some slurring of the labial consonants was noticeable but he had been speaking quickly.

‘I hope you won’t do that, Don Manuel.’

‘No. Since I am hoping that you can do something about it, that would be foolish.’

‘How often does this happen?’

‘Invariably, if I go on talking long enough.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Let us say that the race I am running this morning is over eight hundred metres. I am perhaps at the five hundred metre mark now. At seven hundred metres I shall, to use a Yanqui phrase, “run out of steam”. Do you understand?’

‘Please go on, Don Manuel.’

‘We shall be having guests at the villa later in the week. You may have heard.’

‘Yes.’

‘Doña Julia will be sending you an invitation to join us at some point. I hope that you will feel able to accept, Ernesto.’

‘With pleasure, Don Manuel.’ I hesitated. ‘May I take it that Don Paco has forgiven me my indiscretions and withdrawn his disapproval?’

He made an impatient gesture. ‘Paco behaves like a fool and has been told so. It was he who cancelled my appointment here last week. I wasn’t even consulted.’

‘I was aware of that, Don Manuel.’

‘These French don’t miss much, do they? Of course it was that aspect of the situation that so much concerned him. From the moment we came here he was frightened. He insisted on protection.’

‘But frightened of what?’

‘Of your association with French Intelligence, naturally.
He was afraid that they would leak too much to you and that you would draw wrong conclusions. He has always assumed, you see, against all the evidence, in contradiction of everything we know about you, that you were infected with what he calls the Florida virus.’

‘I don’t think I know about that particular disease.’

‘I think you do, Ernesto. That nonsensical conspiracy theory of your father’s death.’

‘Oh that.’

‘Yes, that.’

‘But if it was nonsensical, Don Manuel, what had he to fear? What was there to leak? It has been suggested to me, and quite recently, that Don Paco himself may have been involved in the plot against my father. In view of his recent behaviour that’s hardly surprising. If he wanted to protect himself against these idiotic allegations he chose an odd way of going about it.’

He looked at me almost compassionately. ‘Ernesto, he hasn’t been trying to protect himself. He’s been trying to protect me.’

For the past minute or two there had been a marked deterioration in the labials and increased salivation.

I said: ‘Don Manuel, who did organize the plot against my father?’

He answered without hesitation. ‘A Special Security Forces group headed by a Major Pastore who took his orders direct from a so-called “action” committee of the junta. That was all we knew for certain at the time. Later we had reason to believe that a member of the committee, a Colonel Escalon, took direct charge of the operation, not replacing Pastore but supervising him.’

‘You say “we knew” Don Manuel. Who is “we”?’

He sighed. ‘Ah that is where the sadness begins, Ernesto. The party had an intelligence section then, small but very effective and very secret. They had actually succeeded in penetrating the Special Security Forces at quite a high level.
For a month before your father’s death it was known that the attempt against him would be made.’

‘Known by you, Don Manuel?’

‘Known by me and a few others. Very few because it was necessary to protect our source in the SSF and because we hoped to learn more about the planning and especially the timing of it. In that unhappily we failed.’

‘But you knew that there was a plan.’

‘A few of us, yes.’

‘Yet none of you warned him.’

‘What were we to warn him against, Ernesto? Attending a function at the Nuevo Mundo and leaving by the front steps under the floodlights? We did not know enough to do that.’

‘And so no warning of any sort was given to him.’

He sighed again. ‘You must understand, Ernesto. There was a real need for secrecy. Yes, even from Don Clemente. We were never a monolithic party. Besides, there were factions and one of the stongest was the anticlerical.’

‘And those members of that faction who knew of the planned attempt decided that it should be allowed to proceed.’

‘To proceed but not to succeed.’ He leaned forward, his face working, tongue beginning to fibrillate. ‘That was the promise, Ernesto. An attempt that would fail, but in doing so bring additional support … sympathy to Don Clemente. So no compromise, no coalition with Church reactionaries needed in Assembly.’ He made a final effort. ‘All depended on us receiving more information … about junta’s plan so it could be properly made fail. That I pointed out again … again. Had business do New York for office. Three times delayed going … because information from inside SSF not been received. Then I could delay no longer and …’

At that moment he stopped speaking. His lower jaw moved twice, then he closed his mouth and looked at his watch. He kept his lips pressed hard together.

I also took note of the time. He had been speaking more or less continuously for seventeen minutes.

‘Is that how it usually happens, Don Manuel?’ I asked. ‘You are now experiencing this quivering of the tongue?’

He nodded.

‘Is Doña Julia aware of this difficulty you’re having?’

He reached across the desk for my note pad and I handed him a pen.

I think not
, he wrote,
I can be uncommunicative at times, and have learned also to husband my speech resources.
He paused then wrote again.
Can something be done? Is there a drug for this?

‘Of course something can be done,’ I said.

I could only hope that I was not lying.