The Honorary Consul (32 page)

       "And yet you will kill him if they don't give in?"

       "Yes. Just as you lie with another man's wife. There are ten men dying slowly in prison, and I tell myself I am fighting for them and that I love them. But my sort of love I know is a poor excuse. A saint would only have to pray, but I have to carry a revolver. I slow evolution down."

       "Then why...?"

       "Saint Paul answered that question, 'What I do is not that which I wish to do, but something which I hate.' He knew all about the night side of God. He had been one of those who stoned Stephen."

       "Do you still call yourself a Catholic, believing all that?"

       "Yes. I call myself a Catholic whatever the bishops may say. Or the Pope."

       Marta said, "Father, you frighten me. All that is not in the catechism, is it?"

       "No, not in the catechism, but the catechism is not the faith, Marta. It is a sort of times two table. There is nothing I have said which your catechism denies. You learned when you were a child about Abraham and Isaac, and how Jacob cheated his brother, and Sodom was destroyed like that village last year in the Andes. God when He is evil demands evil things; He can create monsters like Hitler; He destroys children and cities. But one day with our help He will be able to tear His evil mask off forever. How often the saints have worn an evil mask for a time, even Paul. God is joined to us in a sort of blood transfusion. His good is in our veins, and our tainted blood runs through His. Oh, I know I may be sick or mad. But it is the only way I can believe in the goodness of God."

       "It's much easier not to believe in a God at all."

       "Are you sure?"

       "Well, perhaps the Jesuits left one germ of the disease in me, but I have isolated it. I keep it under control."

       "I have never spoken aloud like this before—I don't know why I do now."

       "Perhaps because you think there is no more hope?"

       "Ted," the voice which Doctor Plarr was beginning to hate called from the inner room, "Ted."

       Doctor Plarr made no motion to rise.

       "Your patient," Father Rivas reminded him.

       "I've done all I can for him. What's the good of mending his ankle if you are going to put a bullet through his head?"

       "Ted," the voice came again.

       "He probably wants to ask me what vitamins Clara ought to give his baby. Or when he ought to be weaned. His baby! The dark side of God must be having a hearty laugh about that. I never wanted a child. I would have got rid of it if she had let me."

       "Speak lower," Father Rivas said, "even if you are jealous of the poor man."

       "Jealous of Charley Fortnum? Why should I be jealous?" He couldn't control his voice. "Jealous because of the child?—but the child's mine. Jealous because of his wife? She's mine as well. For as long as I want her."

       "Jealous because he loves."

       He was aware of the way Marta looked at him. Even Aquino's silence seemed a criticism.

       "Oh love! That's not a word in my vocabulary."

       Marta said, "Give me your shirt, Father. I want to wash it ready for the Mass."

       "A little dirt will not matter."

       "You have slept in it for three weeks, Father. It is not good to go up to the altar smelling like a dog."

       "There is no altar."

       "Give it to me, Father."

       Obediently he stripped off his shirt; the blue was faded by the sun and stained with the marks of food and the whitewash of many walls. "Do what you want," the priest said. "All the same it is a pity to waste our water. We may need all we have of it before the end."

       ***

       It was too dark to see and the Negro lit three candles. He carried one into the inner room, but brought it back and nipped out the flame. He said, "He is asleep." Father Rivas turned on the radio and the sad notes of Guaraní music came over the air—the music of a people who are doomed to die. There was a lot of static; it crackled like the machine guns of extinction. Up in the mountains beyond the river the summer was beginning to break up and the lightning quivered on the walls.

       "Put out all the pans and pails you have," Father Rivas told Pablo.

       The wind came in a sudden blast, the leaves of the avocados swept across the tin roof, and then again the wind dropped. "I shall have to wear a wet shirt at Mass," Father Rivas said, "unless I can persuade Marta that God does not mind a man's naked skin."

       Suddenly, as though someone were standing close at their elbow within the hut, a voice spoke to them, "We have been asked by police headquarters to read the following statement." There was a pause while the man found the right place. They could even hear the rustle of the papers he was carrying.

       "It is now known where the gang of kidnappers are holding the British Consul captive. They have been located in a certain quarter in the 'barrio popular' which..." The rain came sweeping down from Paraguay, beating on the roof, and drowned the announcer's words. Marta ran in, holding out a piece of damp cloth, the shirt of Father Rivas. She cried, "Father, what can I do? The rain..."

       "Hush," the priest said, and he turned the' radio louder. The rain passed over them toward the city, and the lightning lit the room almost continuously. Across the Paraná in the Chaco the thunder became audible, like a barrage which has lifted and moved on before an attack.

       "You have no longer any hope of escape," the voice continued slowly and ponderously, in an interval of static, speaking with extreme clarity like a teacher explaining a problem of mathematics to a class of children; Doctor Plarr recognized the voice of Colonel Perez. "We know exactly where you are. You are surrounded by men from the 9th Brigade. Before eight tomorrow morning you must send the British Consul out of the hut. He must come alone and walk unmolested into the cover of the trees. Five minutes afterward you must come out yourselves, one by one with arms raised over the head. The Governor guarantees that your lives will be spared and you will not be returned to Paraguay. Do not attempt to escape. If any man leaves the hut before the Consul has been delivered unharmed he will be shot down. No white flag will be respected. You are completely surrounded. I warn you that if any harm..." After that the static whined and shrieked through his words, making them unintelligible.

       "Bluff!" Aquino said, "only bluff! If they were out there Miguel would have warned us. That man can see an ant in the dark. Kill Fortnum and afterward we will draw lots to see who leaves first. How can they tell on a night like this who it is that leaves the hut—the Consul or another?" He threw the door open and called out to the Indian "Miguel!" Like an answer to his question a semicircle of floodlights flashed on—they flared from between the trees in an arc nearly a hundred yards across. Through the open door Doctor Plarr could see moths crowding away from him towards the lights to beat and shrivel against the reflectors. The Indian lay flattened on the ground, and the doctor's own shadow shot back into the hut and lay stretched there like a dead man on the floor. The doctor moved aside. He wondered whether Perez had seen him and identified him.

       "They do not dare shoot into the hut," Aquino said, "for fear of killing Fortnum."

       The lights went out again. In the silence between the thunderclaps they heard a rustle no louder than the movements of a rat. Aquino stood a. the edge of the doorway and turned his gun toward the darkness. "No," Father Rivas said, "it's Miguel." Another wave of water swept the roof and in the yard a pail was overturned and sent rattling away before the wind.

       The darkness did not last. Perhaps the lightning had blown a fuse which was now repaired. The men watching from inside the hut saw the Indian rise to his feet to run, but the lights blinded him. He began to turn in a circle with a hand over his eyes. A single shot was fired and he fell to his knees. It was as though the men of the 9th Brigade had no intention of wasting ammunition on someone of so little importance. The Guaraní knelt with his head bent, like a pious man at the elevation of the Host. He swayed from side to side—he might have been enacting part of a primitive rite. Then with immense effort he began to raise his gun in the wrong direction until it pointed at the open door of the hut. It seemed to Doctor Plarr, who watched flattened against the wall, that the parachutists were waiting with a cruel and patient curiosity to see what happened next. They were not going to waste another bullet. The Indian was no danger to them, for how could he possibly see to shoot in the glare of the lights? Whether he were dying or not was immaterial to them. He could lie there till morning came. Then the gun sailed a few feet through the air toward the hut. It fell out of reach and Miguel was still on the ground.

       Aquino said, "We must pull him in."

       "He is dead," Doctor Plarr assured him.

       "How can you tell?"

       The lights went out again. It was as though the men hidden in the trees were playing a cruel game with them.

       "This is your chance, doctor," Aquino said.

       "What can I do?"

       "You are right," Father Rivas said. "They are trying to tempt one of us to go out."

       "Your friend Perez might not shoot if you went out."

       Doctor Plarr said, "My patient is here."

       Aquino edged the door further open. The automatic rifle lay just out of reach. He put a hand out toward it. The lights flashed on, and a bullet struck the edge of the door as he banged it shut. The man in charge of the lights must have heard the squeak of the hinge.

       "Close the shutters, Pablo."

       "Yes, Father."

       With the glare of the lights shut out, they felt a sense of protection.

       "What shall we do now, Father?" the Negro asked.

       "Kill Fortnum at once," Aquino said, "and if the lights go out again we can make a run for it."

       Pablo said, "Two of us are dead already. It might be better, Father, if we surrendered. And there is Marta here."

       "But the Mass, Father?"

       "It seems to me I shall have to make it a Mass for the dead," Father Rivas said.

       "Say any sort of Mass you like," Aquino said, "but kill the Consul first."

       "How could I say the Mass after I had killed him?"

       "Why not if you can say a Mass when you intend to kill him?" Doctor Plarr said.

       "Ah, Eduardo, you are still enough of a Catholic to know how to turn the knife in the wound. You will be my confessor yet."

       "May I prepare the table, Father? I have the wine. I have the bread."

       "I will say it at the first light. I have to prepare myself, Marta, and that takes longer than laying a table."

       "Let me kill him while you say your prayers," Aquino said. "Do your work and leave me to do mine."

       "I thought your work was writing poems," Doctor Plarr said.

       "My poems have all been about death, so I am well qualified."

       "It is madness to go on," Pablo said. "Forgive me, Father, but Diego was right to try to escape. It is madness to kill one man and make sure that five of us die. Father..."

       "Take a vote," Aquino interrupted with impatience. "Let the vote decide."

       "Are you turning into a Parliamentarian, Aquino?" Doctor Plarr said.

       "Keep to a subject you know, doctor. Trotsky believed in a free vote inside the Party."

       "I vote for surrender," Pablo said. He put his hands over his face. The movements of his shoulders showed he was weeping. For himself? For the dead? For shame?

       Doctor Plarr thought: the desperadoes! That is what the papers would call them. A failed poet, an excommunicated priest, a pious woman, a man who weeps.

       For heaven's sake let this comedy end in comedy. None of us are suited to tragedy.

       Pablo said, "I love this house. I had nothing else but the house left when my wife and child died."

       Yet another father, Doctor Plarr told himself, are we never going to finish with fathers?

       "I vote for killing Fortnum now," Aquino said.

       "You told us they were bluffing," Father Rivas said. "Perhaps you are right. Suppose eight o'clock comes and we have done nothing—they still cannot attack us. So long as he is alive."

       "Then what do you vote for?" Aquino asked.

       "For delay. We gave them till midnight tomorrow."

       "And you, Marta?"

       "I vote with my husband," she said with pride.

       A loudspeaker—so close that it must have been set up among the trees outside—spoke to them, again in the voice of Perez. "The United States Government and the British Government have refused to intervene. If you have been listening to your radio you will know I am telling you the truth. Your blackmail has failed. You have nothing to gain by holding the Consul any longer. Send him out of the hut before 08.00 hours if you wish to save your own lives."

       "They insist too much," Father Rivas said.

       Somebody was whispering beside the microphone. It was unintelligible—a sound which grated like pebbles drawn back under a wave. Then Perez continued. "There is a dying man outside your door. Send the Consul out to us now, and we will try to save your friend. Are you going to leave one of your own people to die slowly?"

       No Hippocratic oath demands suicide, Doctor Plarr told himself. In his childhood his father had read him stories of heroism, of wounded men rescued under fire, of Captain Gates walking out into the snow. "Shoot if you must this old gray head" was one of his favorite poems in those days.

       He went abruptly into the inner room. He could see nothing in the darkness there. He whispered, "Are you awake?"

       "Yes."

       "How does your ankle feel?"

       "It's all right."

       "I will bring a light and change the bandages."