“You would feel no shame now if you had no belief. And you need not say them to me aloud, Seńor Fortnum. Only make an act of contrition. In silence. To yourself. That is enough. We have so little time. Just an act of contrition,” he pleaded as though he were asking for the price of a meal.
“But I’ve told you, I’ve forgotten the words.”
The man came two steps nearer, as if he were gathering a bit of courage or hope. Perhaps he hoped to be offered enough cash for a piece of bread.
“Just say you are sorry and try to mean it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry for a lot of things, Father. Not the whisky though.” He picked the bottle up, scrutinized what was left and put it down again. “It’s a difficult life. A man has to have one sort of drug or another.”
“Forget the whisky. There must be other things. I only ask you to say-I am sorry for breaking a rule.”
“I don’t even remember what rules I’ve broken. There are so many damned rules.”
“I have broken the rules too, Seńor Fortnum. But I am not sorry I took Marta. I am not sorry I am here with these men. This revolver-one cannot always swing a censer up and down or sprinkle holy water. But if there was another priest here I would say to hurt, yes I am sorry. I am sorry I did not live in an age when the rules of the Church seemed more easy to keep-or in some future when perhaps they will be changed or not seem so hard. There is one thing I can easily say. Perhaps you could say it too. I am sorry not to have had more patience. Failures like ours are often just failures of hope. Please-cannot you say you are sorry you did not have more hope?”
The man obviously needed comfort and Charley Fortnum gave him all he could. “Yes, I suppose I could go about as far as that, Father.”
Father, Father, Father. The word repeated itself in his mind. He had a vision of his father sitting bewildered, not understanding, not recognizing him, by the dumbwaiter, while he lay on the ground and the horse stood over him. Poor bugger, he thought.
Father Rivas finished the words of absolution. He said, “Perhaps I will have a drink with you now-a small one.”
“Thank you, Father,” Charley Fortnum said. “I’m a lot luckier than you are. There’s no one to give you absolution.”
“I only saw your father for a few minutes once a day,” Aquino said, “when we walked around the yard. Sometimes…” He broke off to listen to the loudspeaker from the trees outside. The voice said, “You have only fifteen minutes left.”
“The last quarter of an hour has gone a bit too quickly for my taste,” Doctor Plarr commented.
“Will they begin to count out the minutes now? I wish they would let us die quietly.”
“Tell me a little more about my father.”
“He was a fine old man.”
“During the few minutes you had with him,” Doctor Plarr asked, “what did you talk about?”
“We never had time to talk of anything much. A guard was always there. He walked beside us. He would greet me-very formally and affectionately like a father greeting his son-and I-well, I had a great respect for him, you understand. There would always be a spell of silence-you know how it is with a caballero like that. I would wait for him to speak first. Then the guard would shout at us and push us apart.”
“Did they torture him?”
“No. Not in the way they did to me. The CIA men would not have approved. He was an Anglo-Saxon. All the same fifteen years in a police station is a long torture. It is easier to lose a few fingers.”
“What did he look like?”
“An old man. What else can I say? You must know what he looked like better than I do.”
“He wasn’t an old man the last time I saw him. I wish I had even a police snap of him lying dead. You know the kind of thing they take for the records.”
“It would not be a pleasant sight.”
“It would fill a gap. Perhaps we wouldn’t have recognized each other if he had escaped. If he had been here with you now.”
“He had very white hair.”
“Not when I knew him.”
“And he stooped badly. He suffered very much from rheumatism in his right leg. You might say it was the rheumatism which killed him.”
“I remember someone quite different. Someone tall and thin and straight. Walking fast away from the quay at Asunción. Turning once to wave.”
“Strange. To me he seemed a small fat man who limped.”
“I’m glad they didn’t torture him-in your way.”
“With the guards always around I never had a proper chance to warn him about our plan. When the moment came-he did not even know the guard had been bribed-I shouted to him ‘Run’ and he looked bewildered. He hesitated. That hesitation and the rheumatism…”
“You did your best, Aquino. It was no one’s fault.” Aquino said, “Once I recited a poem to him, but I do not think he cared much for poetry. It was a good poem all the same. About death of course. It began, ‘Death has the taste of salt.’ Do you know what he said to me once? It was as if he were angry-I do not know who with-he said, ‘I am not unhappy here, I am bored. Bored. If God would only give me a little pain.’ It was an odd thing to say.”
“I think I understand,” Doctor Plarr said. “In the end, he must have got his pain.”
“Yes. He was lucky at the end.”
“As for me I have never known boredom,” Aquino said. “Pain yes. Fear. I am frightened now. But not boredom.”
Doctor Plarr said, “Perhaps you have not come to the end of yourself. It’s a good thing when that happens only when you are old, like my father was.” He thought of his mother among the porcelain parrots in Buenos Aires or eating éclairs in the Calle Florida, of Margarita fallen asleep in the carefully shaded room while he lay wide awake watching her unloved face, of Clara, and the child, and the long impossible future beside the Paraná. It seemed to him he was already his father’s age, that he had spent as long in prison as his father had, and that it was his father who had escaped.
“You have ten minutes left,” the loudspeaker said. “Send the Consul out immediately and afterward one at a time with your hands raised…”
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 Para’s 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. Leon, 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.