“My name is Doctor Saavedra,” a voice said. “You may remember we met once with Doctor Plarr-“
Charley Fortnum wanted to reply, Surely it was at the house of Mother Sanchez. I remember you well with a girl. I was with María, the one whom somebody stabbed.
“This is my wife,” he said, and Doctor Saavedra bowed with courtesy over her hand; her face must have been familiar to him, if only because of the birthmark on her forehead. He wondered how many of these people knew that Clara had been Plarr’s mistress.
“I must go now,” Doctor Saavedra said. “I have been asked to say a few words in honour of our poor friend.”
He moved toward the coffin, pausing on the way to shake hands and exchange a few words with Colonel Perez. Colonel Perez was in uniform and carried his cap in the crook of his arm. He had the air of being the most serious person present. Perhaps he was wondering how the doctor’s death would affect his career. A lot depended, of course, on the attitude of the British Embassy. A young man, Crichton, who was a new face to Charley Fortnum, had flown up from B. A. to represent the Ambassador (the First Secretary being in bed with flu). He stood beside Perez close to the coffin. You could estimate the social importance of a mourner by his closeness to the coffin, for the coffin represented the guest of honour. The Escobar’s were worming their way toward it, and Seńora Vallejo was almost near enough to put out a hand. Charley Fortnum with a crutch under his right arm stayed on the periphery of the smart company. He felt it was absurd to be there at all. He was an imposter. He only owed his position there because he had been mistaken for the American Ambassador.
Also on the periphery, but far removed from Charley Fortnum, stood Doctor Humphries. He too had the air of being out of place and knowing it. His proper habitat was the Italian Club, his proper neighbour the waiter from Naples, who feared he had the evil eye. When he first noticed Humphries Charley Fortnum had taken a step in his direction, but Humphries had backed hastily away. Charley Fortnum remembered telling Doctor Plarr, in some long distant past, that Humphries had cut him. “Lucky you,” Plarr had exclaimed. Those had been happy days, and yet all the while Plarr had been sleeping with Clara and Plarr’s child was growing in her body. He had loved Clara and Clara had been gentle and tender to him. All that was over. He had owed his happiness to Doctor Plarr. He took a furtive look at Clara. She was watching Saavedra who had begun to speak. She looked bored as though the subject of the eulogy was a stranger who did not interest her at all. Poor Plarr, he thought, he was deceived by her too.
“You were more than a doctor who healed our bodies,” Doctor Saavedra said, addressing his words directly to the coffin which was wrapped in a Union Jack that had been lent on request by Charley Fortnum. “You were a friend to each of your patients-even to the poorest among them. All of us know how unsparingly you worked in the barrio of the poor without recompense-from a sense of love and justice. What a tragic fate then it was that you, who had toiled so hard for the destitute, died at the hands of their so-called defenders.”
Good God, Charley Fortnum thought, can that be the story Colonel Perez is putting out?
“Your mother was born in Paraguay, once our heroic enemy, and it was with a machismo worthy of your maternal ancestors who gave their hearts’ blood for Lopez-not seeking whether his cause were good or ill-that you walked out to your death from the hut, where these false champions of the poor were gathered, in a last attempt to save their lives as well as your friend’s. You were shot down without mercy by a fanatic priest, but you won the day-your friend survived.”
Charley Fortnum looked across the open grave at Colonel Perez. His uncovered head was bowed; his hands were pressed to his sides; his feet were at the correct military angle of attention. He looked like a nineteenth century monument of soldierly grief while Doctor Saavedra continued to establish by his eulogy-was it about that they had spoken together? - the official version of Plarr’s death. Who would think to question it now? The speech would be printed verbatim in El Litoral and a resume would surely appear even in the Nación.
“Except for your murderers and their prisoner I was the last, Eduardo, to see you alive. Your enthusiasms were so much wider than your professional interests, and it was your love of literature which enriched our friendship. The last time we were together you had called me to your side-a strange reversal of the usual role of doctor and patient-to discuss the formation in this city of an Anglo-Argentinian cultural club, and with your usual modesty you invited me to be the first president. My friend, you spoke that night of how best to deepen the ties between the English and the South American communities. How little either of us knew that in a matter of days you would give your own life in that cause. You surrendered everything-your medical career, your appreciation of art, your capacity for friendship, the love you had grown to have for your adopted land, in the attempt to save those misguided men and your fellow countryman. I promise you with my hand on your coffin that the Anglo-Argentinian Club will live, baptized with the blood of a brave man.” Seńora Plarr was weeping, and so, more decoratively, were Seńora Vallejo and Seńora Escobar. “I am tired,” Charley Fortnum said, “it’s time to go home.”
“Yes, Charley,” Clara said. They began a slow walk toward their hired car. Somebody touched Fortnum’s arm. It was Herr Gruber.
Herr Gruber said, “Seńor Fortnum… I am so glad you are here… safe and…”
“Nearly sound,” Charley Fortnum said. He wondered how much Gruber knew. He wanted to get back to the shelter of the car. He said, “How is the shop? Doing well?”
“I shall have a lot of photographs to develop. Of the hut where they held you. Everyone is going out there to see it. I don’t think they always photograph the right hut. Seńora Fortnum, you must have had an anxious time.” He explained to Charley Fortnum, “Seńora Fortnum has always bought her sunglasses at my shop. I have some new designs in from Buenos Aires if she would care…”
“Yes. Yes. Next time we are in town. You must forgive us, Herr Gruber. The sun is very hot and I have stood too long.”
His ankle itched almost unbearably in its plaster case. They had told him at the hospital that Doctor Plarr had done a good job. In a matter of weeks he would be driving Fortnum’s Pride again. He had found the Land Rover standing in its old place under the avocados, a little battered, with one headlight gone and the radiator bent. Clara explained it had been borrowed by one of the police officers. “I shall complain to Perez,” he had said, supporting himself against the car while he pressed his hands tenderly upon a wounded plate.
“No, you must not do that, Charley. The poor man would be in trouble. I told him he could take it.” It wasn’t worth an argument on his first day home.
They had driven him straight back from the hospital through a landscape which seemed like the memory of a country he had left forever-the byroad which went to the Bergman orange-canning factory, the disused rail track of an abandoned camp which had once belonged to a Czech with an unpronounceable name. He counted the ponds as he passed-there ought to be four of them-he wondered how he ought to greet Clara.
There was no real greeting apart from a kiss on the cheek. He refused to go and lie down on the excuse that he had been on his back too long. He couldn’t bear the thought of the large double bed which Clara must so often have shared with Plarr when he was out farming (because of the servants they would have been afraid to disarrange the bed in a guest room). He had sat with his foot propped up on the verandah beside the dumbwaiter. He had been away less than a week, but it seemed a long slow year of separation, long enough for two characters to grow apart-he poured himself out a shipmaster’s measure of Long John. Looking up at Clara over the right measure, he said, “Of course they have told you?”