by Howard Fast
“Young?” Barbara asked. “Neither are either of you, so stop behaving like children, and suppose we all have a cup of coffee. And not another word on the subject.”
“Mom,” Sam said, “I am a doctor, and I know something about age and bodily resistance, so—”
“Not another word,” Barbara said.
“Thin ice, Sammy,” Freddie said. “Drop it. Can we have that cup of coffee, Aunt Barbara?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Carson rang her doorbell on Green Street at six-thirty that same evening. He had come up from Los Angeles on the commuter flight to have dinner with her, and he found her in a high mood of exhilaration.
“Carson, dear Carson,” she said, “you have rescued me from a pit of despair. I don’t know how or why, but I’m alive again — guilty, but alive.”
“Guilty? Why guilty?”
“I’m having a tryst with a married man. My dear friend Clair Levy is dying of cancer. My nephew Freddie has messed up his life practically beyond repair, and my son thinks that I’m on my way to senility and should be put out to pasture, and I feel wonderful. Where shall we go for dinner?”
“Fourneau’s? I made reservations there.”
“Perfect. And now if you’ll sit down and read a newspaper or a magazine or a book or whatever your heart desires, I’ll go upstairs and do something with my hair, and I’ll be with you in ten minutes.”
In not much more than ten minutes, Barbara appeared and asked him, “How do I look?”
“Beautiful.”
“Let’s walk a little, and you’ll tell me more. We’ll walk downhill and then we’ll find a cab to take us back uphill. Do you know something, Carson, it is the strangest damn thing in the world, but after talking to Clair, I opened my eyes and the world was like something I had never seen before. What on earth do you suppose has happened to me?”
“Last week, you happened to me. Would it be too egotistical for me to suggest that I happened to you?”
“No, it would not be too egotistical. To have a strong, handsome man who looks at you as a woman — that is so good, Carson, even when it can lead to nothing.”
“Why? For heaven’s sake, why?”
“Carson, I live from day to day, and if we can be friends, good, loving friends, that’s all I could possibly ask.”
After dinner, they walked down to the Embarcadero. The Bay shimmered, darkly shrouded with the first fog, the current sliding toward the Golden Gate. Barbara and Carson paused and stared across the darkening water, silent for a while.
“It’s not that Clair is dying,” Barbara said at last; “it’s the opposite of that, a kind of triumphant life force that death can’t touch. I cried for a time after I left her, but then the tears were over and I found myself smiling at the memory of her. Do you know what I’m trying to say, Carson?”
“I think so.”
“It’s the reason why I am and why I do what I do, if that makes a shred of sense. I hate all the killers — war, disease, poverty, hunger — because they’re the enemies of life. That’s the essence of those damn bombs they build. They’re the toys of the death people, the power people.”
“Some of us are on your side, Barbara, believe me, and it’s cold down here by the water. On a night like this, there’s no place as cold and wet as San Francisco, and I’m tired.”
“Me too,” Barbara said. “Me too. Enough talk of death.”
He stayed with Barbara that night. Their lovemaking was easy and natural, with no sign of the impotence that had wreaked such misery in their marriage. In the morning, Carson took her to the airport. They were early. Barbara was always a half hour to an hour early at airports, always sure that if she was thirty seconds late, the plane would be gone. They had coffee at the airport restaurant, and Carson reminded her of Clifford Abrahams, the Reuters man in El Salvador. Carson had reached him by phone, and he had promised, with some pleasure, to meet Miss Lavette and to keep an eye on her.
“I don’t even know whether you’ve jotted down his name,” Carson said. “It’s your damn independence that frightens me.”
“Of course I jotted down his name. I’d remember it, anyway.”
“Tall, skinny fellow — skin and bones, very British. He’s a good writer and a good observer, and we use a lot of his stuff. But he tries too hard to hew a line down the middle. I’m sure you’ll bend toward the guerrillas.”
Barbara shrugged. “Maybe. I’m not really doctrinaire, Carson, even during my political campaigns; not like so many of the liberals I know. I see it and try to write about it.”
“Three weeks. Not a day longer.”
At the gate, Barbara embraced him and kissed him. “Bless you,” she said. “You’re the best thing that has happened to me in a long time.”
“I hope to God I’m not the worst. Take care, please.”
Ten
Barbara’s ticket was routed from San Francisco to Los Angeles on United Airlines. At Los Angeles, she would change to Taca Airlines, which would take her to San Salvador. She had brought with her a copy of her first novel, Driftwood, feeling that any bit of status she could add to the accreditation the Morning World had given her would be useful. It was more than thirty years since she had written Driftwood, and she thought it would be interesting to look through it again.
She remembered very vividly the last time she had glanced at the book, twenty-five years ago, waiting in a hotel room in Beverly Hills for Carson to join her and take her to dinner. It was a winter day, the rain coming down in sheets, cold and damp enough to match her own mood. She had been informed that same day that the screenplay for the filming of Driftwood, over which she had labored so agonizingly, would be tossed aside, another writer having been hired to rewrite the screenplay. Result, a state of utter despair, from which Carson had rescued her.
She closed the book and lost herself in her thoughts as the plane took off. A plump, pink-cheeked man, with gold-rimmed glasses, who was seated next to her, sighed and said, “I don’t mind being up there or down here. It’s the in-between that gets to me.”
To which Barbara shrugged and murmured that she didn’t think much about it either way. Carson, now and in the past, was in her thoughts. She had no desire to be jarred away from her memories. But a few minutes later, recalling the coldness of her response, Barbara turned to the plump man and said that she had flown so much that she had to assume an attitude of indifference.
“I’ve flown a lot of miles,” the plump man said, “but I never could work up indifference. Name’s Bill Donovan.”
Barbara nodded, without giving her own name in response.
“If you want me to shut up, mention it. I’ll shut up.”
“No, I’m sorry if you took it that way.” She pointed to the book on her lap. “My name — Lavette.”
“Interesting. I’m sure the real Lavette won’t mind.”
“Not if we don’t tell her.”
“True enough. And what do you do, Miss Lavette — since I presume you don’t write books. Or do you?”
“Well, as a senior citizen,” Barbara reflected, “I’m not called upon to do much. As a matter of fact,” she decided, “I peddle cosmetics.” She was becoming bored. She did not want to talk to anyone, and specifically this plump man sitting beside her. She wanted to think, to reflect on where she was going and whether it made sense and about how she would put together what she might see in El Salvador.
“Cosmetics. Changes the look of things, doesn’t it? In a way we’re in the same line.”
“Cosmetics?” Barbara asked indifferently.
“No, ma’am. Not cosmetics — guns. But you know, the end result can be the same. Changes the look of things.”
“What did you say?”
“Gotcha! Come on, it’s not so all-fired amazing. You peddle cosmetics. I peddle guns — large guns, small guns, ammunition, tanks, half-tracks. No planes. I stay away from planes. Another field entirely, and I’m not sure I’d like it.”
; “Forgive me,” Barbara said. “I think a certain amount of astonishment is called for. I never met a munitions dealer before.”
“Good heavens, there are lots of us. We don’t advertise, true. We don’t take commercials on TV, but there are over a dozen special trade journals devoted to our line of work. Now tell me something, Miss Lavette, taking the whole globe into consideration, not one nation or another but the world as a whole, just what would you say is the largest industry?”
“Agriculture, obviously.”
“Obviously. And the second largest?”
“No. I can’t believe that.”
“You’d better believe it,” Mr. Donovan said mildly. “Heavens to Betsy, have you ever considered how many guns there are, rifles, carbines, machine guns and hand guns, extant on this here planet Earth?”
“No, I never have.”
“More than two billion — that’s more than two thousand million — and they don’t stay put, and thousands more come off the assembly line each and every day. Lord knows, I don’t wish to frighten you, but don’t it make plain horse sense that if there’s so much of a product, it needs a few hands to move it around and buy and sell it?”
“Yes, I suppose that does make sense,” Barbara admitted. “And what are you up to now? Buying or selling?”
“I can tell you, ma’am, I am mighty glad you’re not one of them holier-than-thou citizens that throw up their hands in horror. You know, I don’t make the things. I just move them around a bit, and as for your question, I’m selling. You don’t travel south of the border of the good old USA to buy. No, sir. Only to sell.”
Fascinated now, Barbara wanted to know whether it was not illegal.
“Nope. Not one bit. Oh, I suppose if I tried to run merchandise out of the country, the way the IRA does, I’d be breaking the law. But I don’t sell to places like Northern Ireland, and I don’t sell to the Afghans and I don’t sell to guerrillas. No, ma’am. I do business with legal, established governments. Did it ever occur to you, ma’am, that when they do a big killing, like they do sometimes in Africa and sometimes down in South America, or sometimes in Vietnam or Indonesia or Cambodia, they pick up a hundred, maybe two hundred thousand pieces of small arms and what goes with it, and if it ain’t uniform, they don’t want it? Just the same as when a country brings in a new model. What do they do with the old? The New York City Police destroy maybe fifty thousand small arms each year. That’s waste. That stuff could fetch a fine price. You know, I used to work for the Pentagon, same line of work, but it was too confining.”
“Why on earth would the Pentagon sell arms?” Barbara asked. “Their yearly cry is that they don’t have enough.”
“That’s their problem, isn’t it? They want to poor-mouth, they got their reasons. All I know is that I sold maybe twenty, thirty million a year, and I was only one drummer. Lots of others.”
“But to whom?”
“Anyone had good use for them — South Korea, Pakistan, Morocco, Chile, Bolivia — you name it. But there I was, doing millions on a wage of forty-seven thousand a year. That’s why I put in for myself. Gives me an advantage, I’m not political. Of course, I don’t mess with the IRA or the PLO — much too hot, much too hot. But aside from such very hot spots, I don’t have political prejudice, and when push comes to shove, I can undersell the Pentagon if I have the goods. All I need is a three percent markup. That’s thirty thousand on a million, and I’ve done as much as twenty million a year. That, miss, is real money.”
For a few minutes, Barbara said nothing. Then, unable to resist the temptation, she asked, “Mr. Donovan, does your mother know what you do for a living?”
It made no impression. “My mama’s been dead these fifteen years,” Donovan replied, rather pleased that the lady sitting next to him took an interest in his mother.
In Los Angeles, Mr. Donovan disappeared, and Barbara changed over to Taca Airlines. They operated a fairly small plane, a 737, but very clean and apparently in good condition. She half-expected to see Mr. Donovan again, but he had gone his own way, intersecting Barbara’s life like a strange, half-mocking omen. She would remember him with a chill of horror — a fat, humorless little man, determined to underline the mediocrity of evil.
The Taca official who looked at her credentials and passport was very polite, bending backward to be charming. “The first correspondent from the Los Angeles Morning World. That is very fine thing. We feel that of all the states, California is the closest to our beautiful country.” He had stopped short of suggesting what she might write about his beautiful country.
On the plane, where she was the only woman, she found herself seated next to a well-groomed, good-looking man in his middle years, perhaps fifty, dark hair touched with gray, mustache, and a suit of brown Italian silk that must have cost upwards of a thousand dollars in one of the shops in Rodeo Drive. He introduced himself as Raoul Regana, remarking that he had four weeks of business here in Los Angeles, and was finally going home.
“To San Salvador?”
“Well, yes. I live in San Salvador, and eventually I will arrive there. But the airport is sixty-five kilometers — well, say forty-one miles outside San Salvador. Built in nineteen seventy-eight — the old airport was a sorry mess — but built, as I said, a good distance from the city by men with fine visions of progress. In a way, these fine visions are the curse of our little land, a fervent desire for progress, sometimes so fervent that we are years ahead of practicality. The beaches are splendid near the airport, the water at least ten degrees warmer than Southern California, and some resort hotels have been built. Alas, they are not well occupied. As the Irish say, these are the times of the troubles. Are you possibly a part of the Red Cross?” he asked, in deference to her age.
“Oh, no. I’m a correspondent for the L.A. Morning World.”
“Really? I would think—”
He clipped the sentence, and Barbara said, “You would think they’d send someone younger.”
“Forgive me. A thousand pardons.”
“Not at all. One of the advantages of my age is that I can strike up a conversation with anyone, while a young and attractive woman, unfortunately, would do so at her own risk. I have been a writer and a correspondent for many years — indeed, my first assignment predates World War Two. My name is Barbara Lavette. I dislike long flights where one sits next to a stranger in grim silence.”
“Then we shall have no grim silence.” He motioned to the stewardess, who apparently knew him. “May I offer you champagne?”
“Some ordinary white wine.”
“And I’ll have a perfect Manhattan,” he said, which Barbara translated in her mind as his statement that he was no ordinary inhabitant of an unhappy banana republic, but a very knowledgeable and sophisticated citizen of the international set.
“Do you have any trepidation about going home?” Barbara wondered.
“Ah, there speaks the voice of someone whose knowledge of my country comes from your media.”
“Not entirely. I have read a good deal — Anderson and Penny Lernoux and Richard Millett —”
“Yes. Biased, very biased. The Maryknoll influence.”
“Really?” Barbara never argued in such situations. Argument changed nothing, provided only a sop to the ego, and, worst of all, as she had learned long ago, cut off a source of information. “I never thought of it that way.”
“But you must, if you are to write the truth. If you will forgive a most personal question — are you Catholic?”
“Well, that is getting right to the root of things, isn’t it? I suppose you have a good reason for asking. More than curiosity, I trust?”
“Much more, Miss Lavette, believe me.”
“No, I’m not a Catholic. I don’t have very much religion, but I was born and raised an Episcopalian.”
“I ask only because,” he explained, “so many Catholics have very strange ideas and are not Catholic in any true sense. They have taken Communism into their bodies instead of the Ho
st. Maryknoll. You will never see El Salvador as it is if you listen to the Maryknoll. They are not Catholics. They are an abortion —”
“Which was why the nuns were murdered,” Barbara said softly. “Is that what you are saying?”
“Never, never so many lies as about that accident.”
“Yes, and I imagine that the killing of Father Grande and taking over his church was also an accident.”
“He was a spoiled priest, a Communist.”
“Yes, I suppose so, but then they took his church in Aguilares and turned it into a pigsty. And Archbishop Romero tried to go to the church, and as much as he pleaded that he only desired to remove the Sacred host, they would not let him pass. Then he persuaded the National Guard chaplain to go and remove the Host, but the soldiers stopped the chaplain and dragged the priest into the church, and forced him to watch while they shot the tabernacle to pieces and then ground the Host into the filth on the floor.”
“And you believe this?” Regana snorted.
“Should I?” Barbara asked. “I mean, one reads these things and one doesn’t know whether to believe or not. Consider the murder of Archbishop Romero. Was it connected?”
Regana studied her shrewdly. He was no fool, Barbara decided; he was not taken in. He was indexing her for the future, and perhaps she had overplayed the fool simply by referring to the incident.
“To believe what the Communists say —” He shrugged. “You believe and you become their tool.”
No more waves, Barbara told herself severely. She had made too many gaffes and she had said too much. Here was a man who obviously knew everything about his own land, and except for what she had read and heard, she knew nothing. He was equipped to play the devil’s advocate; she was not equipped to prosecute.
“Would you like another drink?” he asked, still smoothly polite.
“That would be nice. Yes.”
She made no more references to nuns raped or priests murdered, and gradually their small talk died away. All her indirect attempts to discover what kind of business had brought Mr. Regana to Los Angeles were of no avail, and she carefully refrained from pressing the point. Left to her own thoughts, she composed a story that would simply detail the essence of her two meetings on that same day, first with the arms dealer and now with this somewhat blood-chilling purveyor of a new kind of Catholicism, where priests and nuns were murdered, their death sentence based on their unwillingness to limit the practices of their religion to the rich. It would certainly be a most interesting story, and as yet she had not set foot on the soil of El Salvador. And as the story shaped itself, she felt a cold needle of fear. Until now, she had been on a sort of high, her spirits lifted hugely by the fact that she had been accepted back into the real world, where people work and are paid for their skills. It had partly returned her to youth, and the aches and pains were washed away in the excitement of the new project. Until now, she had not been afraid.