“The new Ambassador wants to create a good impression,” Doctor Plarr said. “Art and history. He can’t be suspected of a take-over bid there. He wants to show a scholarly interest in our province, not a commercial one. The secretary of finance has not been invited, even though he speaks a little English. Otherwise a loan might have been suspected.”
“And the Ambassador-doesn’t he speak enough Spanish for a polite toast and a few platitudes?”
“They say he is making rapid progress.”
“What a lot you always seem to know about everything, Plarr. I only know what we read in El Litoral. He’s off to the ruins tomorrow, isn’t he?”
“No, he went there today. Tonight he returns to B. A. by air.”
“The paper’s wrong then?”
“The official program was a little inaccurate. I suppose the Governor didn’t want any incidents.”
“Incidents here? What an idea! I haven’t seen an incident in this province in twenty years. Incidents only happen in Cordoba. The goulash isn’t so very bad, is it?” he asked hopefully.
“I’ve eaten worse,” Doctor Plarr said without trying to remember on what occasion.
“I see you’ve been reading one of Saavedra’s books. What do you think of it?”
“Very talented,” Doctor Plarr said. Like the Governor he didn’t want any incidents, and he recognized the malice which remained alive and kicking in the old man long after discretion had died from a lifetime’s neglect.
“You can really read that stuff? You believe in all that machismo?”
“While I read it,” Doctor Plarr said with care, “I can suspend my disbelief.”
“These Argentinians-they all believe their grandfathers rode with the gauchos. Saavedra has about as much machismo as Charley Fortnum. Is it true Charley’s having a baby?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the lucky father?”
“Why not Charley?”
“An old man and a drunk? You’re her doctor, Plarr. Tell me a little bit of the truth. I don’t ask for a very big bit.”
“Why do you always want the truth?”
“Contrary to common belief the truth is nearly always funny. It’s only tragedy which people bother to imagine or invent. If you really knew what went into this goulash you’d laugh.”
“Do you know?”
“No. People always conspire to keep the truth from me. Even you lie to me, Plarr.”
“Me?”
“You lie to me about Saavedra’s novel and Charley Fortnum’s baby. Let’s hope, for his sake, it’s a girl.”
“Why?”
“It’s so much more difficult to detect the father from the features.” Doctor Humphries began to wipe his plate clean with a piece of bread. “Can you tell me why I’m always hungry, doctor? I don’t eat well, and yet I eat an awful lot of what they call nourishing food.”
“If you really wanted the truth I would have to examine you, take an x-ray…”
“Oh no, no. I only want the truth about other people. It’s always other people who are funny.”
“Then why ask me?”
“A conversational gambit,” the old man said, “to hide my embarrassment while I help myself to the last piece of bread.”
“Do they grudge us bread here?” Doctor Plarr called across a waste of empty tables, “Waiter, some more bread.”
The only Italian came shuffling toward them. He carried a bread basket with three pieces of bread and he watched with black anxiety when the number was reduced to one. He might have been a junior member of the Mafia who had disobeyed the order of his chief.
“Did you see the sign he made?” Doctor Humphries asked.
“No.”
“He put out two of his fingers. Against the evil eye. He thinks I have the evil eye.”
“Why?”
“I once made a disrespectful remark about the Madonna of Pompeii.”
“What about a game of chess when you have finished?” Doctor Plarr asked. He had to pass the time somehow, away from his apartment and the telephone by the bed.
“I’ve finished now.”
They went back to the little over-lived-in room in the Hotel Bolivar. The manager was reading El Litoral in the patio with his fly open for coolness. He said, “Someone was asking for you on the telephone, doctor.”
“For me?” Humphries exclaimed with excitement. “Who was it? What did you tell them?”
“No, it was for Doctor Plarr, professor. A woman. She thought the doctor might be with you.”
“If she rings again,” Plarr said, “don’t say that I am here.”
“Have you no curiosity?” Doctor Humphries asked.
“Oh, I can guess who it is.”
“Not a patient, eh?”
“Yes, a patient. There’s no urgency. Nothing to worry about.”
Doctor Plarr found himself checkmated in under twenty moves, and he began impatiently to set the pieces out again.
“Whatever you may say you are worried about something,” the old man said.
“It’s that damn shower. Drip, drip, drip. Why don’t you have it mended?”
“What harm does it do? It’s soothing. It sings me to sleep.”
Doctor Humphries began with a king’s pawn opening. “KP4,” he said. “Even the great Capablanca would sometimes begin as simply as that. Charley Fortnum,” he added, “has got his new Cadillac.”
“Yes.”
“How old’s your home-grown Fiat?”
“Four-five years old.”
“It pays to be a Consul, doesn’t it? Permission to import a car every two years. I suppose he’s got a general lined up in the capital to buy it as soon as he’s run it in.”
“Probably. It’s your move.”
“If he got his wife made a Consul, too, they could import a car a year between them. A fortune. Is there any sexual discrimination in the consular service?”
“I don’t know the rules.”
“How much did he pay to get appointed, do you suppose?”
“That’s a canard, Humphries. He paid nothing. It’s not the way our Foreign Office works. Some very important visitors wanted to see the ruins. They had no Spanish. Charley Fortnum gave them a good time. It was as simple as that. And lucky for him. He wasn’t doing very well with his mate crop, but a Cadillac every two years makes a lot of difference.”
“Yes, you could say he married on his Cadillac. But I’m surprised that woman of his needed the price of a Cadillac. Surely a Morris Minor would have done.”
“I’m being unfair,” Doctor Plarr said. “It wasn’t only because he looked after royalty. There were quite a number of Englishmen in the province in those days-you know that better than I do. And there was one who got into a mess over the border-the time when the guerrillas went across-and Fortnum knew the local ropes. He saved the Ambassador a lot of trouble. All the same he was lucky-some ambassadors are more grateful than others.”
“So now if we are in a spot of trouble we have to depend on Charley Fortnum. Check.”
Doctor Plarr had to exchange his queen for a bishop. He said, “There are worse people than Charley Fortnum.”
“You are in bad trouble now and he can’t save you.”
Doctor Plarr looked quickly up from the board, but the old man was only referring to the game. “Check again,” he said. “And mate.” He added, “That shower has been out of order for six months. You don’t always lose to me as easily as that.”
“Your game’s improved.”
Doctor Plarr refused a third game and drove home. He lived on the top floor of a block of yellow flats which faced the Paraná. The block was one of the eyesores of the old colonial city, but the yellow was fading a little year by year, and anyway he couldn’t afford a house while his mother was alive. It was extraordinary how much a woman could spend on sweet cakes in the capital.
As Doctor Plarr closed his shutters the last ferry was approaching across the river, and after he got into bed he heard the heavy thunder of a plane which was making a slow turn overhead: it sounded very low, as though it had lifted off the ground only a few minutes before. It was certainly not a long-distance jet overflying the city on the way to Buenos Aires or Asunción-in any case the hour was too late for a commercial flight. It might, Plarr thought, be the American Ambassador’s plane, but he had never expected to hear that. He turned off the light and lay in the dark thinking of all the things that could so easily have gone wrong as the noise of the engine faded, beating south, carrying whom? He wanted to lift the receiver and dial Charley Fortnum, but there was no excuse he could think of for disturbing him at that hour. He could hardly ask: did the Ambassador enjoy the ruins? Did the dinner pass off well? I suppose at the Governor’s you must have had some decent steaks? It wasn’t his habit to gossip with Charley Fortnum at that hour-Charley was an uxorious man.