Androtten demurred. His heart was not strong enough for cigars that
early in the morning, he explained. "In Java I was healthier than an
ox," he said. "But the damn Japanese ..." He let the rest of the
sentence remain unspoken.
Through the open window of the dining room, Hall saw Pepe's LaSalle
drive up to the Bolivar.
He excused himself with an "I'll be seeing you," and walked out to the
desk. He handed the cable blank to the day clerk. "Send it press rate
collect," he said.
Pepe had a message for Hall from Souza. Ansaldo had returned to the
Bolivar at 3:14 A.M., twenty-three minutes before Wilhelm Androtten.
They had both left calls to be awakened at eight in the morning.
"That all Souza said?"
"That is the complete message."
"Well, it's something, anyway." The papers said that Ansaldo was to
spend the morning at the bedside of President Tabio.
"Where to?"
"Gobernacion Building. But not right away. Drive somewhere where we can
have a coffee together. I'd like to talk to you first."
Pepe took him to a little workers' restaurant on the edges of the
business section of New San Hermano. It was evident that he had had
little sleep.
"Tired?" Hall asked.
The driver whistled, softly. "Like a corpse," he admitted.
An amused grimace distorted Hall's face. "What a corpse!" he said. "Why
didn't you tell the boys who followed the teachers and me from the cafe
last night to be better than the little dog?"
"You saw them?"
"I kept tripping over them all the way home."
Pepe thought it was very funny. "They pledged their lives to protect
yours, the bunglers. Reliable, but clumsy."
"I am not angry," Hall said. "I am grateful."
"For nothing," Pepe protested.
"Pepe, do you know why I came to San Hermano?"
The big Asturian shrugged his shoulders. "You never told me, or
Fernando. Miguelito and his friend said you have the mouth of a clam."
"Do you want to know why?"
"I never question friends. You are a friend."
Hall looked up at Pepe Delgado and wanted to tell him how much he
reminded him of the best of the men he had met in Spain, the best of the
officers and _milicianos_ who never, even in the heat of battle, forgot
the feelings and the sacred _dignidad_ of their fellow men.
"Mother of God!" Pepe laughed. "Don't look at me as if I were that girl
with the red hair."
"You are a good _companero_," Hall said. "In a few days, perhaps I can
tell you."
"I never ask questions of friends," Pepe said.
"I know. Did Souza tell you what I told him last night?"
"No. Only about when Ansaldo and Androtten came back."
"Can you reach Souza today?"
"Of course."
"Then listen. Tonight, he must find some excuse for moving me into the
room next to Ansaldo--if there is such a room. Do you think he can do
it?"
Pepe grabbed the check for the coffee, refused to relinquish it to Hall.
"This is my table," he said with quiet dignity. He also refused to
discuss his fee for driving Hall around San Hermano for days.
"_Manana_," he laughed. "But about the room. I think Fernando can
arrange it. The wife of the owner of the Bolivar is a member of the
Centro Asturiano. She is also a first cousin of Dr. Gonzalez."
"I hope he can do it," Hall said.
"_Hola!_" Pepe boomed. "_Que tal?_" He exchanged loud pleasantries with
a chauffeur who came in and sat down at a table in the corner.
"A Gallego," he explained to Hall. "But otherwise a pretty decent man."
"There are many decent Gallegos," Hall said.
Pepe whistled through his teeth, shook the limp and dangling fingers of
his right hand, and looked behind his back. Hall grinned. Pepe's gesture
was as old as Spain.
"Listen, Pepe," he laughed, "we have much to do. And all in a very short
time. I am going to see the Press Secretary in the Gobernacion. I am
requesting an interview with Gamburdo."
"Gamburdo is a _cabron_," Pepe said.
"I know. In my eyes he is an _hijo de la gran puta_. But for the present
I want Gamburdo and his friends to think that I am an admirer of the
_cabrito_. Clear?"
"I think I understand."
"Good. Tell all of this to Souza when you drop me at Gobernacion. When
can you see him?"
"I will try to see him at once."
"_Bueno._ Let's go, then."
In the car, Hall had a fresh idea. "This young Juan Antonio, the
teacher. Is he really a Communist?"
"Yes."
"Member of the party?"
"Of course. He writes for _Mundo Obrero_ regularly."
"Good. If you see him, ask him to go to the Communist headquarters and
from there to telephone a friend. From there, understand? Tell him to
call any friend. No, wait. Make it a friend in the office of _Mundo
Obrero_. I want him to denounce me to this friend as an admirer of
Gamburdo and an enemy of Tabio."
"But why?"
"I have an idea that Gamburdo has made some changes since he became
Acting President," Hall answered. "If he has, he's got some Cross and
Sword bastards listening in on all Communist phones."
"It is possible," Pepe said. "I will discuss your idea with Juan
Antonio."
"Talk him into it, Pepe."
Pepe stopped the car in front of the Gobernacion building. He promised
to meet Hall at the Bolivar in two hours.
Hall entered the polished marble corridors of the Gobernacion. There was
a popular song about this building. Hall thought of the words, written
by no known poet, and yet so well known in the nation that it had become
the unofficial anthem of the Hermanitos in the guerrilla armies which
had fought the Seguristas. Even today, after nearly three decades, San
Hermano youngsters learned the words from slightly older playmates when
they were barely old enough to play by themselves. Somehow, the kids of
the city sang a slightly less ribald version of the ballad of the
_edificio magnifico_ which cost the nation over twenty million pesos and
which, the song maintained, supported a village full of Don Augusto's
whores and bastards.
"I want to see the Press Secretary," Hall told an attendant in the right
department.
"So do I," the attendant laughed. "He resigned last week."
"Didn't anyone take his place?"
The attendant was a very old man. He leaned back in his chair and with
an eloquent look gave Hall to understand that he had completely lost
patience with the visitor. "_Chico_," he said, "no one could take Don
Pascual's place."
"Please, _viejo_, I am in a hurry. Is anyone trying to take Don
Pascual's place?"
"Ha!" The old man shifted in his chair. With withering scorn he raised
his arm and pointed a handful of gnarled brown fingers at a door marked
_Prensa_. There were many other men in San Hermano who pointed to things
with just that gesture. Hall recognized the gesture at once. He had seen
it for the first time in Geneva, when Anibal Tabio rose to make that
gesture toward the pile of captured Italian and German military
documents with which the Spaniards had tried to impress the League.
Hall smiled with compassion at the figure of the old man imitating the
gesture of his idolized President.
"Go in, go in," the old man said, petulantly. "Go in and see that burro
of a dolt who is _trying_ to take Don Pascual's place."
"And has this burro a name?"
"The burro has a name. It is Valenti. Now you made me say the
unspeakable name! Please, _chico_, in the name of my sainted mother and
the Educator, go away!"
The old man's attitude told Hall more about what Gamburdo had already
done to the Press Bureau than he could have learned in a week of routine
digging. He handed the old man a cigar and a box of matches and walked
through the door to Valenti's office. He found himself in a small
anteroom facing a dark-haired girl pecking genteely at the keys of a
typewriter with creamy fingers whose long nails were painted a deep
blood red. She was immaculately groomed and pretty.
"I would like to see Senor Valenti," he said.
"Your name, Senor?"
So you had voice training, too, he thought. "Matthew Hall," he said. "I
am a journalist from New York."
"How nice!" The secretary switched to English immediately. There was
only the slightest suggestion of an accent to her English, and over the
faint Spanish intonations she tried to impose the broad a's of something
resembling the Oxford drawl. "It is quite a relief to speak English
during office hours, really." She pronounced it as "re-ahl-y."
"Yours is a very good English, Miss ..."
"Vardieno," she said.
"Pick it up in school in San Hermano?"
Miss Vardieno made a mouth of disdain. "Heavens, no!" she said. "Dad
sent me to finishing school in the States. Stuffy old place, but
charming in its own Adirondack way. Besides, I could always sneak down
to town for a week-end when it became too boring."
"Of course," Hall smiled. "Nothing like good old New York to work off a
bore."
"And how! What brings you to this forsaken village?"
"Pan American Airways," he laughed. "There's a flight out of Miami every
two days they tell me."
The girl laughed with him. "O.K.," she said. "I asked for it. I'll find
out if Mr. Valenti can see you now." She pushed her chair back and got
up, pausing mid-way long enough to give Hall a fleeting look at her
breasts with a casualness she had never learned in the Adirondacks. But
Hall had eyes only for the pendant which dangled at the end of a thin
platinum chain. When she sat at her desk or stood erect, Miss Vardieno's
Cross and Sword emblem sank neatly below the neck line of her blue New
York dress.
"There are so many lovely sights in San Hermano," Hall sighed as the
girl walked into the private office.
She was in the private office for quite some time. Emerging, she had
regained her finishing-school poise. "I am so sorry," she said. "Mr.
Valenti is tied up in a conference that will last for hours. Our
Congress opens in five days, you know, and what with the situation being
what it is, Mr. Hall, it is the feeling of the Press Director that it
will be impossible for any writer to obtain an interview with Mr.
Gamburdo until after the Congress convenes."
Nice going, he thought. "An interview with the Vice-President? But how
did Mr. Valenti know that was what I wanted?"
"I don't know, Mr. Hall. I guess he just presumed. Every one wants to
interview Mr. Gamburdo these days. If it keeps up I guess he'll make the
cover of _Time_, don't you think?" She sat down and propped up a flower
sagging over the rim of the crystal vase on her desk. "Our pretty
tropical blooms are too darned delicate, don't you think?"
"Oh, yes," Hall said, thinking not of the broken blossom but of the
speed with which the text of his cable had reached Gamburdo's new Press
Secretary.
Miss Vardieno brushed an imaginary fleck of dust from her skirt. "Well,
anyway," she said in her best bored-with-it-all nuance, "he's going to
be a vast improvement over Tovarich Tabio."
"I'll be seeing you," Hall said.
"Don't be a stranger now," Miss Vardieno said. "It's such a relief to
speak English during office hours."
Hall closed the door behind him and started to whistle the ballad about
the graft that built the marble halls of Gobernacion's _edificio
magnifico_. "You're right," he told the old attendant. "Valenti can
never wear Don Pascual's _pantalones_."
The old man's dry cackle followed Hall down the swirling marble stairs.
Hall walked out to the Avenida de la Liberacion, looked in all
directions for the man who had followed him the night before. The yellow
straw hat was nowhere in sight. He turned his steps toward the
fashionable shopping district directly south on the avenue. If his
shadow were on him, he would flush him by walking down the broad, sunny
avenue.
The shopping district brought no sign of the "little dog." Hall shopped
the plate-glass windows, hoping to catch a tell-tale glimpse of anyone
who might be on his heels. He went into a department store, bought a
tropical dinner suit, and arranged to have it altered and delivered to
the Bolivar at five. Then, after selecting a maroon tie and a shirt, he
found a phone booth and called Fielding's office.
A Spanish-speaking secretary answered the phone. Fielding was in Alcala
at an auction, she said. "Please have him call Father Arupe's
secretary," Hall said.
The hot noon-day sun forced Hall to abandon his ideas of taking a
leisurely stroll to the Bolivar. He found a rickety cab and relaxed on
the dusty cushions. Fielding was the man he needed now, Fielding might
be able to make Androtten show his cards, Fielding might have some of
the answers about the new Press Chief and his brand-new secretary. And
if Souza could find out who owned the Renault Androtten and the little
dog used, maybe Fielding could tie the information into some of his own
data and come up with something. Then when the boys in Havana answered
that screwy letter perhaps they'd all have something to go by. In three
days at the outside there would be word from Havana. Three days of
waiting and accepting Souza and Pepe and even Fielding on faith.
At the Bolivar, the desk clerk told Hall that Pepe had called to say
that he was having some minor engine trouble and would be delayed for
about an hour. Hall noted the word "minor" and put it down to a delay in
reaching Souza or Juan Antonio. He ordered a jug of iced pineapple juice
sent up and went to his room. The long walk down the Avenida de la
Liberacion under the broiling sun had covered Hall with sweat. He
stripped and went to the bathroom. A slow gust of air hissed out of the
faucets when Hall turned the taps. He washed his face with cold water at
the basin while waiting for the pressure to force up the water to the
bath faucets.
But no water came. The hissing ceased, the faucets went bone dry. Hall
phoned the news down to the desk.
"I am so sorry, Senor," the clerk said. "But all the baths on your line
seem to have gone dry. The manager has sent for a plumber."
Hall stretched out on his bed and tried to relax.
The desk clerk phoned him back. "Can I send the plumber up?" he asked.
"Sure." Hall put on his pants and a pair of slippers. More than anything
else, at this moment, he wanted to wallow in a cold tub. The plumber,
who looked enough like Pepe Delgado to be his twin, had other ideas.
"It is very serious, Senor," he complained. "There will be no water from
these rotted pipes in a century." He banged the pipes with one tool and
twisted them with another, cursing them as he worked. "It is very
serious," he concluded. "I can do nothing on them today."
"Mother of God!" Hall said, and then he saw the sly smile on the
plumber's massive face.
"Even She couldn't get any water from these pipes," the plumber said.
"How am I going to bathe?"
"Who knows? Maybe the manager will give you another room where the bath
still works."
"Maybe. Well, thanks for trying."
"For nothing, Senor." The plumber picked up his tools and left.
Hall dressed and joined Pepe in the car. "What did the plumber say?"
Pepe asked.
"Enough. Let's have a quick lunch somewhere."
"Souza is changing your room tonight. He is also changing the rooms of
four other guests. They have no water either."
"Good work. Where are we eating?"
"When I stop the car you'll find out."
"Is the plumber your brother?"
"My cousin. I also spoke to Juan Antonio. He made that telephone call."
"Are you very hungry?" Hall asked. "I want to buy you half a steer."
"I could eat half a steer, _companero_. And I know where to get it,
too." He drove to an old garden restaurant near the beach. "Here they
serve the best meat in San Hermano. And at low prices, too."
Pepe did ample justice to a tremendous steak. He washed it down with a
quart of beer, chiding Hall for confining his luncheon to a simple
roast-beef sandwich. "Such food is all right for little children, Senor
Hall. But you are a man."
"Call me Mateo."
"You should eat like a man, _Companero_ Mateo."
"I don't feel like eating."
"Then go to a good doctor. Or take that red-headed woman into your bed
for a night. You'd eat in the morning, _chico_!"
Hall laughed. "I'd rather see a doctor," he said.
"A doctor?" Pepe grew serious. "Is anything wrong?"
"Who knows? This Dr. Gonzales you mentioned. Is he a medico?"
"Yes. Would you like to see him, _Companero_ Mateo?"
"Could we see him after lunch?"
"Now is the best time. He's surely taking a little siesta, and it is
better not to telephone. His daughter is at school all day. Come on,
I'll drive you over."
They got into the car and Pepe swung into a street with a trolley track
that led them to a middle-class suburb. He stopped in front of a gray
frame house similar to any doctor's house in an American town. A fat and
ancient Persian cat was sleeping in the shadiest part of the porch. Pepe
meowed at the cat. She opened a lazy eye, yawned, and went back to
sleep.
"The cat and her master always take their siesta at the same time," Pepe
explained. "It is a very intelligent cat." He opened the screen door.
"Is there no bell?"
"He disconnects the bell when he naps." Pepe led Hall into a cool,
shaded living room. There was no rug on the highly polished redwood
floor. The furniture was made by native craftsmen of bamboo and wicker,
although the designs reflected the functional modernism of the Bauhaus
school. It was the first modern furniture Hall had ever seen in South
America.
Pepe noticed Hall's interest. "The doctor has many peasant projects," he
explained. "He brought some Spanish refugees from Madrid to the country
to teach the peasants how to make good furniture. They have a big
co-operative shop in the southern province near the Little River. Sit
down in one of these new chairs. I'll get him."
Hall relaxed in one of the low-slung chairs while Pepe went to the rear
part of the house. "He's not on the couch in his office," Pepe said. He
went to the foot of the stairs leading into the foyer. "_Hola!_ It's
Delgado! _Hola!_ Don Manuel, it's Delgado!" His shouts would have roused
the dead. He turned around and winked to Hall. "_Abajo_ Anibal Tabio!"
he shouted. "_Viva_ Gamburdo! _Viva_ Segura! _Abajo_ Tabio!"
Upstairs there was the sound of a book or a heavy shoe dropping to the
floor. "Bandit!" someone shouted, and then a tall graying man in his
stockinged feet shuffled to the head of the stairs, rubbing his eyes and
cursing Pepe with a mock cantankerousness. "_Bulto_," he shouted. "Give
a man a chance to put on his shoes. Show some respect for my degrees!"
Pepe made a low, courtly stage bow. "Forgive me, Your Eminence," he
pleaded. "I am only a simple petitioner."
"_Momentico, companero._" The doctor went to his room for a pair of
huaraches.
"Doctor, I want you to meet _Companero_ Mateo Hall."
"_Companero_ Hall!" The doctor started to speak English. "It is so good
to finally meet you. Don Anibal gave me your book on Spain for Christmas
when it was printed. He spoke to me about you very highly. Please, sit
down. You will find these chairs very comfortable."
"Pepe has been telling me about your co-operative."
"It is not very large. Here, try this chair. It is my favorite."
Pepe reminded the doctor that Hall was in need of his professional
services. "Excuse my bad manners, doctor," he said, "but when you start
to talk about your projects ..."
"He is right," the doctor smiled. "Sometimes I do talk too much. I like
to talk, even when people don't really listen to me. Even in my sleep I
talk. About many things. Art. Weaving. World politics. The war."
"I like to listen," Hall said. "Where did you learn your English,
doctor?"
"My English?" The doctor leaned back in his chair, the smile of a man
enjoying a highly private joke on his face. "I am afraid, _companero_,
that I learned my English in the same sort of a place where you learned
your excellent Spanish. That is, in a dungeon built by the Kings of
Spain."
"In Spain?"
"No. I am not a Spaniard. My grandfathers were Spaniards, but my father
and I were born here." He pointed to a framed flag of the Republic which
hung on the wall over Hall's chair. "That flag hung in my cell in El
Moro for three years, and that flag was in my hands the day Segura's
death opened the prison gates to all of us." The doctor was not aware
that he was now speaking in Spanish.
"The doctor was in El Moro with Don Anibal," Pepe said.
"That is true," the doctor admitted. "Nearly every patriot on the
faculty and so many of the students were there, too. I had just taken my
degree in medicine but I was still at the University as an instructor in
biology when the arrests began. But don't think it was all tears and
terror. Don Anibal and his late cousin Federico formed the so-called
University Behind Bars. We had Chairs in Latin, English, biology,
history, art, literature--everything. The soldiers, who were with us,
smuggled in our books and papers. Later, when the Seguristas were out of
power, the students who were in prison were able to take their
examinations in the University of San Hermano, and the new Regents gave
them full academic credit for their studies at El Moro."
"He is a sick man, doctor," Pepe said. "Examine him first and talk to
him later."
"Pepe is right, _Companero_ Hall. I do talk too much."
"Nonsense. Any man who did three years in jail has a lot of talking to
catch up on when he gets out."
"Will the examination take very long?" Pepe asked. "I have to go back to
town. I can pick you up later."
"Have you an hour?" the doctor asked Hall.
"I have all day."
Pepe got up. "I'll be back in two hours," he laughed. He walked out to
the porch. They heard him meow at the cat. Then the cat screeched and
Pepe howled.
"A cat is never completely civilized," Dr. Gonzales said. "Poor Pepe
refuses to believe it. And now Grisita has scratched him again."
"Your wild beast!" Pepe roared. "She clawed me!"
"Come inside, and I'll fix it, Pepe."
"No, thanks. I've got iodine in my car."
Hall expected the doctor to be amused. Instead, a wave of profound
sadness gripped the man. He took out a pocket handkerchief and ran it
over his forehead. "What's wrong, doctor?"
"Not much," Gonzales said. "I just can't stand the way they spare me.
Since my illness it's been hell. For twelve years I was the National
Minister of public health education. Don Anibal appointed me when he was
Minister of Education. He created the job for me. Now I live on a
pension, and outside of the few hours I put in every week as a
consultant at the University and my handicraft projects, I do nothing.
Biologically I am now a vegetable. And my good friends, the people of
San Hermano ..."
"_Claro._ You mean they are too kind ..."
The doctor nodded. "But they are my friends," he said. "They do not do
this to hurt me. And now, what bothers you?"
"My back. I think that I may have strained it."
"I can examine you better in my office. It's in the next room."
"Thank you. But first, I'd like to talk to you about some other things.
I don't know what's going on, but I do know that something is wrong. I
knew Don Anibal in Geneva, and I know that if he were well, your country
would break with the Axis...."
The doctor sighed. "You are not alone," he said. "Don Anibal is a very
sick man. No one seems to know what is wrong, exactly. He is paralyzed
from the hips down, and he grows weaker every day. The mind is still
strong, but it must rest so much that none of us dare to tax Don Anibal
with worries other than his health. In the meanwhile, Gamburdo has taken
over."
"And Gamburdo? Is he honest?"
"Gamburdo is not a man of good will. He is a clever lawyer and a very
intelligent man. His family prospered under Segura, but the General
seduced a Gamburdo daughter, and that turned them against the
Seguristas. Gamburdo volunteered his services as a lawyer when Tabio and
the Republican junta was in jail. But this offer was a calculating
gamble. He knew that Segura's days were numbered; he knew that the
leaders of the junta would be the new government of the nation. He
joined the Party of Radical Socialism, but when he became its head, he
saw to it that, like himself, the party became neither radical nor
socialist."
"He was for Franco, you know," Hall said.
"I know. He was for Franco and the Falange and against Tabio. But he is
very intelligent. He managed to keep these things nicely hidden. When
Tabio was elected President and created the new government of national
unity, Gamburdo joined forces with Don Anibal--but only to destroy this
unity from within.
"This is the least of his sins. It seems that he has kept all the
Republican doctors from the Presidencia. The only doctors Gamburdo has
permitted are the reactionaries, the old servants of the Seguristas. We
tried to talk to Don Anibal, but you know him and his saintly faith in
the goodness of Man. I think that, deliberately, he has placed his life
in Gamburdo's hands as a lesson to all of his old friends in the need
for real unity. It is as if he means to prove to us, by getting well,
that unity is the most important issue in the nation today."
"And Dr. Ansaldo? Is he really good?"
"He has a great reputation. But it is a gamble for Gamburdo alone. If
Don Anibal recovers, Gamburdo and his friends will say that it was a
Spaniard who saved the President. If he dies--even a great Spanish
doctor could not save him. Either way, Gamburdo stands to gain."
In the office Hall took a chair facing the microscope on the doctor's
white enameled metal desk. He watched the doctor hunt through the
instrument cases along the wall. On a lower shelf, the doctor found his
stethoscope.
"Would you please remove your shirt?"
Hall shook his head. "No," he said. He gently took the stethoscope from
the doctor's hands, carefully folded it and put it away in a small
wooden box he found on the desk. "This is what I really came for,
doctor."
"My stethoscope?"
"Exactly." He explained to the doctor that with such instruments one
could easily hear through an average indoor wall. "I have a queer
feeling," he said, "that with your stethoscope I can perhaps get a hint
as to what is actually wrong with Don Anibal,--or, at least, in San
Hermano."
The doctor gave Hall his hand. "I won't ask you any questions," he said.
"But may I wish you luck?"
"Thank you."
"Now let me fix you a cold drink. I'm not very good in the kitchen, but
we'll see what we can both do."
Pepe returned with news for Hall about the change of rooms at the hotel.
Hall now had the room next to Ansaldo's sitting room. He also told him
that the Spanish Republican societies were planning an _homenaje_ for
Hall. "They formed a committee to arrange it with you, but I told them
that you didn't want to see them until next week."
"I hope you were pleasant," Hall said.
"Of course I was, Mateo. I just thought you didn't want too much noise
about you in San Hermano for the next few days."
"Maybe you're right, Pepe."
"What do you want to do now?"
"Take a bath. I'm going to a party at the American Embassy tonight. But
tomorrow I think we'll have a lot of work to do, _companero_."
"I wonder what happened to the little dog?"
"Maybe I'll know some more about him tonight."
"What have you got in the box?"
"Medicine."