“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, Leon. 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 neighbouring 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, “Leon?” He couldn’t understand what Leon 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 Leon’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, Leon. 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 Leon 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 shrivelled in his throat.
Three Para’s 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 Seńora 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 Seńora 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 Seńor Fortnum, the Consul? I was such a great friend of poor Eduardo. This is my husband, Seńor Escobar.”
“My name is Seńora Vallejo. My husband was unable to come, but I could not bear to fail Eduardo, so I brought with me my friend Seńor Duran. Miguel, this is Seńor 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 Seńora 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.