The Honorary Consul

  "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 honor 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 honor. The Escobars were worming their way toward it, and Señora 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 neighbor 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 rôle 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." Señora Plarr was weeping, and so, more decoratively, were Señora Vallejo and Señora 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, "Señor 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. Señora Fortnum, you must have had an anxious time." He explained to Charley Fortnum, "Señora 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?"

  "Told me what, Charley?"

  "Doctor Plarr is dead."

  "Yes. Colonel Perez came here. He told me."

  "The doctor was a good friend to you."

  "Yes, Charley. Are you comfortable like that? May I fetch you a pillow?" He thought that after all their love-making and deception it was ha
rd Plarr had not earned a single tear. The Long John had an unfamiliar taste, he had become so accustomed to Argentinian whisky. He began to explain to Clara that it would be best if for the next few weeks he slept alone. In one of the guest rooms. The plaster round his ankle made him restless, he said, and she must sleep well—because of the child. She said yes, of course, she understood. It would be arranged.

  Now as he shunted on his crutch away from the cemetery toward the hired car, a voice said to him, "Excuse me, Mr. Fortnum..." It was the young fellow Crichton from the Embassy. He said, "I wondered if I could come out to your camp this afternoon. The Ambassador has asked me... there are certain things he wants me to talk over with you..."

  "You can have lunch with us," Charley Fortnum said. "You will be very welcome," he added, thinking that anyone, even a man from the Embassy, would help to preserve him from the solitude he would otherwise have to share with Clara.

  "I am afraid... I would very much like to... but I have promised Señora Plarr. . . and Father Galvao. If I could come about four o'clock. I am catching the evening plane to B. A."

  ***

  When he got back to the camp Charley Fortnum told Clara that he was too tired to eat. He would sleep a bit before Crichton came. Clara made him comfortable—she had been trained to make men comfortable as much as any hospital nurse. He tried not to show that the touch of her hand irritated him when she arranged the pillows. He felt his skin tighten when she kissed his cheek and he wanted to tell her not to trouble. A kiss was worth nothing from someone who was incapable of loving even her lover. And yet, he asked himself, what fault was it of hers? You don't learn about love from a customer in a brothel. And because it was not her fault he must be careful never to show her what he felt. It would have been a lot simpler, he thought, if she had really loved Plarr. He could so easily picture how it would have been if he had found her heartbroken, the gentle way in which he would have comforted her. Phrases from romantic novels came to his head like "Dear, there is nothing to forgive." But as he played with the fancy he remembered she had sold herself for a gaudy pair of sunglasses from Gruber's.

  The sun through the jalousies striped the floor of the guest room. One of his father's hunting prints hung on the wall. A huntsman held a fox above the ravening hounds. He looked at the picture with disgust and turned his face away—he had never killed anything in his life, not even a rat.

  The bed was comfortable enough, but after all the coffin with the blankets had not really been very hard—better than the bed in his nursery when he was a child. There was a deep quiet here, broken only by an occasional footstep from the kitchen region or the creak of a chair out on the verandah. There was no radio to announce the latest news, no quarreling voices from an inner room. To be free, he discovered, was a very lonely thing. He could almost have wished the door to open, to have seen the priest come shyly in, carrying a bottle of Argentine whisky. He had felt an odd kinship with that priest.

  There had been no ceremony at the priest's funeral. He had been shoveled quickly away in unconsecrated ground, and Charley Fortnum resented that. If he had known about it in time he would have stood by the grave and said a few words like Doctor Saavedra, though he could not remember ever having made a speech in his life: all the same he could have found the courage in the heat of his indignation. He would have told them all, "The Father was a good man. I know he didn't kill Plarr." But his only audience, he supposed, would have been a couple of gravediggers and the driver of the police truck. He thought: at least I'll find out where they stowed him and I'll lay a few flowers there. Then he fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion.

  Clara woke him because Crichton had arrived. She found his crutch and helped him on with his dressing gown, and he went out on to the verandah. He lowered himself down beside the dumbwaiter and said, "Have a Scotch."

  "It's a bit early, isn't it?" Crichton asked.

  "It's never too early for a drink."

  "Well, a very small one then. I was saying to Mrs. Fortnum what a terribly anxious time she must have had." He put the glass down on a small table without taking any.

  "Cheers," Charley Fortnum said.

  "Cheers." Crichton took his glass up again with reluctance. Perhaps he had hoped to leave it untouched on the table until the canonical hour. "There are things the Ambassador wanted me to talk over with you, Mr. Fortnum. Of course I needn't tell you how very very worried we have all been."

  "I was a bit worried myself," Charley Fortnum said.

  "The Ambassador wants you to know we did everything in our power..."

  "Yes. Yes. Of course."

  "Thank God things turned out all right."

  "Not everything. Doctor Plarr's dead."

  "Yes. I didn't mean..."

  "And the priest too."

  "Well, he deserved what he got. He murdered Plarr."

  "Oh no, he didn't."

  "You haven't seen Colonel Perez's report?"

  "Colonel Perez is a bloody liar. It was the paras who shot Plarr."

  "There was a postmortem, Mr. Fortnum. They checked the bullets. One in the leg. Two in the head. They were not army bullets."

  "You mean the surgeon of the 9th Brigade checked them. You can tell the Ambassador this, Crichton, from me. I was in the next room when Plarr went out. I heard all that happened. Plarr went out to try to talk to Perez—he thought he might save all our lives. Father Rivas came to me. He said he had agreed to postpone the ultimatum. Then we heard a shot. He said, 'They have shot Eduardo.' He ran out."

  "And gave him the coup de grace," Crichton said.

  "Oh no, he didn't. He left his gun where I was."

  "With his prisoner?"

  "It was out of my reach. He had an argument with Aquino in the other room—and with his wife. I heard Aquino say, 'Kill him first.' And I heard his reply..."

  "Yes?"

  "He laughed. I heard him laugh. It surprised me because he wasn't a man who laughed. A shy sort of giggle sometimes. Not what you'd call a laugh. He said, 'Aquino, for a priest there are always priorities.' I don't know why, but I started to say an 'Our Father,' and I'm not a man who prays. I only got as far as 'thy Kingdom' when there was another shot. No. He didn't kill Plarr. He hadn't even reached him. They carried me past the bodies. They were ten feet apart. I suppose if Perez had been there he would have thought of rearranging them. To make the distance right for a coup de grace. Please tell the Ambassador that"

  "Of course I'll tell him what your theory is."

  "It's not a theory. The paras scored all three deaths—Plarr, the priest and Aquino. It's what they call good shooting."

  "They saved your life."

  "Oh yes. Or Aquino's bad aim. You see he had only his left hand. He came nearly up to the coffin I was on before he fired. He said, 'They've shot Léon.' He was too excited to keep the gun steady, but I don't suppose he would have missed a second time. Even with his left hand."

  "Why didn't Perez get your story?"

  "He didn't ask me for it. Plarr said once that Perez always has to think about his career."

  "I'm glad they got Aquino anyway. He was a murderer—or wanted to be."

  "He'd seen his friend shot. You have to remember that. They'd been through a lot together. And he was angry with me. I made friends with him and then I tried to escape. You know he fancied himself as a poet. He used to recite me bits of his poems and I pretended to like them, though they didn't make much sense to me. Anyway, I'm glad the paras were satisfied with three deaths. Those other two—Pablo and Marta—they were only poor people who got caught up in things.".

  "They had more luck than they deserved. They needn't have been caught up in things."

  "Perhaps it was love of a kind. People do get caught up by love, Crichton. Sooner or later."

  "It's not a very good excuse."

  "No, I suppose not. Not in the Foreign Service anyway."

  Crichton looked at his watch. Perhaps he was satisfied now that the proper hour had been reached. He raised his
glass. He said, "I suppose you'll be out of action for quite a while."

  "I haven't much to do here anyway," Charley Fort-num said.

  "Exactly." Crichton took another drink.

  "Don't tell me the Ambassador wants another report on the mate?"

  "No, no. We just want you to get well in your own good time. As a matter of fact the Ambassador is writing to you officially at the end of the week, but he wanted me to have a word with you first. After all you've been through, official letters always seem—well, so official. You know how it is. They are written to go on the files. Top copy to London. You have to be so—cautious. Someone at home might possibly look at the files one day."

  "What's the Ambassador got to be cautious about?"

  "Well, for more than a year, London has been pressing us for economies. Do you know they are cutting us down ten percent on official entertainment and we have to show chits now for the least expenditure? And yet these damn MPs keep on coming out and expect to be invited to lunch at least. Some of them even think they rate a cocktail party. Now you, you know, you've had a pretty long inning. If you were in the Service you would have passed the retiring age quite a while ago. In a way the office forgot about you—until this kidnapping came along. You'll be much safer—out of the front line."

  "I see. That's it. It's a bit of a blow, Crichton."

  "It's not as if you ever got more than your expenses,"

  "I could import a car every two years."

  "That's another thing—as an Honorary Consul you hadn't really the right."

  "The Customs here don't distinguish. And everyone does it. The Paraguayan, the Bolivian, the Uruguayan—"

  "Not everyone, Fortnum. We try to keep our hands clean at the British Embassy."

  "Perhaps that's why you'll never understand South America."