Thing to Love

by Geoffrey Household

  “They say that Yavera for the five o’clock —”

  “Then that’s where they want your money to go,” remarked Juan de Fonsagrada. “Try the favorite.”

  The bootblack grinned, and worked away at the consul’s other shoe.

  “And about the revolution? What do the caballeros think?”

  “What the devil do you want with a revolution?” demanded Fonsagrada genially. “Did we gain such a lot from the last?”

  “All the same it’s coming.”

  “How do you know?” the consul asked.

  “The price of fish has gone up.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “When I was Vice President,” Juan explained, “the first sign was in the food markets. Three weeks later — pouff! I had taken refuge in the Mexican Embassy with a crowd outside howling for my blood.”

  “Never, Don Juan!” protested the bootblack. “It was no more than a demonstration. You are the beloved husband of the Republic.”

  “Well, it was one hell of a row with my wife,” Fonsagrada said. “How many windows did you break?”

  “My friends and I were reasonable, Don Juan. We did no more than burn a tramcar.”

  The consul looked along the line of his fellow members, every one of whom dabbled in the profitable game of politics. He found it difficult to believe that any of these prosperous or ambitious gentlemen had at the moment definite plans; none of them looked stuffed with the unbearable secret of his future importance. There was certainly some unrest in the country, and there could be no doubt that Vidal was nervously tying down the safety valve; yet the point where pressure had built up was by no means as obvious as usual. He knew the faces of the Ateneo, and could translate at once the comings and goings of the groups.

  Guayanas was his home. Henry Penruddock had lived in San Vicente most of his life, and hoped to die in it — at leisure and after another thirty years, for his enjoyment of place and people showed no sign of flagging. He had started as a trader, not a career diplomatist. Coffee, mahogany, fruit, a sprinkling of precious stones and metals — nearly half the small trade of Guayanas with Great Britain had passed through his hands.

  During the war, when he was in his middle thirties, he had been appointed acting consul, and now as consul general was for all practical purposes in charge of British interests. His country’s official representation in San Vicente was erratic. Guayanas usually shared an ambassador with its southern neighbor. If married, he stayed down there across the frontier. The climate was cooler, and the servants less independent.

  The consul general paid his bootblack largely, who vanished immediately into the narrow streets behind the Ateneo without continuing along the line of shoes.

  “He hasn’t eaten yet today,” said Juan.

  “Sometimes I am surprised that they are content with a single tramcar,” Penruddock answered lazily.

  “If we had no poverty, we should lose the fullness of life that goes with it.”

  Henry Penruddock made half a motion of sitting up indignantly.

  “Must a full life contain the risk of unemployment and starvation?”

  “I don’t know, Enrique. I suspect it must. Does any man in the Welfare States of Europe enjoy a meal as much as that bootboy is going to do?”

  “You might as well say that a man enjoys a fine, new poppet more than his wife. But you can’t base social laws on enjoyment.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of basing any laws,” said Juan. “The administration to which I had the doubtful honor to belong was quite remarkable for its lack of legislation. I’m merely offering you the only possible defense of poverty — that it is a very disagreeable adventure, but still is an adventure. Vidal tells us that progress is also an adventure, but we should prefer it without poverty as well.”

  “Nothing much wrong but his methods.”

  “His methods are traditional, Enrique, and his corruption is the best we have ever had — streamlined, chromium-plated and leading to efficiency all round. His methods are not the real reason why we are tired of him — just a talking-point for chucking him out.”

  “For whom?”

  “Gil Avellana.”

  “You don’t take him seriously?” exclaimed the consul.

  “Why not?”

  “He sounds to me like a stage version of Perón.”

  “Perón would have had something — if he had ever paid the slightest attention to economists. And Gil does.”

  “Where’s his backing?”

  “He has no obvious majority, Enrique. But he does have 60 per cent of every individual. That means a bloodless revolution if he times it right.”

  “And the Ateneo?” the consul asked.

  “For the first time in the history of Guayanas, the Ateneo is being ignored. The issues are too big. Revolutions are becoming too important for professional politicians to control them.”

  “What about the police and the Army?”

  “Hats in the air, so long as it’s quick.”

  “There’s no doubt where your sympathies are.”

  “My sympathies, Enrique, are with the old gang. I prefer to have this country decently and humanely misgoverned by the Ateneo. But since it is now the fashion for politicians to be earnest, I prefer Gil Avellana to the rest.”

  “You and Doña Felicia are both of the same mind, I suppose?”

  “Of the same mind? My dear Enrique, I have brought up my daughter to think for herself.”

  “I meant,” said the consul placidly, “your distinguished son-in-law.”

  “Miro Kucera?” Juan exclaimed, turning to stare at his friend. “The last thing anybody wants is for Fifth Division to declare for Avellana! We can’t have those complicated fireworks of theirs going off. Nobody minds a few rifles.”

  “It was that escort at Felicia’s wedding which impressed me,” the consul went on. “How they love him!”

  “Not the escort, Enrique. After all it was a wonderful chance to show us all that armored cars can be just as gallant as horses. What frightened me was young Irala in tears.”

  Henry Penruddock raised his eyebrows.

  “You have a ponderous mind, Enrique, which plunges towards impropriety like a mating elephant. I have known young Irala since he was two. When he was thirteen, his sister’s governess entered the Convent of the Sacred Heart after some slight medical attention. When he was fifteen he would devote himself at children’s parties to the younger mothers. Irala was born without the slightest reverence for women, for his class, for any of the professions, or for his country. He reminds me of myself. There — following, I may say, some five years behind his precocity — goes Juan de Fonsagrada. That is why when I saw him weeping at Miro’s marriage to my daughter I realized the power of my son-in-law did not depend on an Armored Brigade.”

  “Frightened you, you said?”

  “Yes. The Caudillo who inspires loyalty and devotion — when he is of our race, we know how to win him and how to bring him down. In that long line of Ateneo chairs, Enrique, there is not a man who does not know it. By instinct. But a Caudillo who was born a foreigner?”

  “Caudillos,” said the consul, “are the pest of Spain and South America.”

  “You blame us because we are capable of love?”

  “Because you won’t set a limit to it. Anyway, Kucera isn’t likely to set himself up as a president-maker, and you’ve admitted it. What about your own followers in all this?”

  That was a question to which Juan de Fonsagrada was almost incapable of giving a serious answer. He cared profoundly for the interests of his own people, but his intellect refused to be engaged. Intellect, in any case, was too barren an instrument for politics. If he were to follow it blindly, he would have to come near to admitting — and in after-dinner conversation he sometimes did — that Communism would suit his own people, the Guayanas Indians, quite admirably. On the other hand, it wouldn’t suit anybody else.

  When he thought of the proletariat of Guayanas
, Juan de Fonsagrada’s mental image was not of dock workers and factory hands, or even of the cattlemen of the llanos and the agricultural peons, though all of them were of mixed blood. He thought of little family parties, hunched against the wind, moving across barren space to market with a tiny stock of barely saleable merchandise, or to church with a rich stock of misconceptions.

  Of these people, his people, the Fonsagradas had been the unacknowledged chiefs for four hundred years. They were directly descended in the female line from the last of the Indian caciques. The family face, golden and fine-drawn, still preserved the features of the Children of the Sun.

  But neither face nor descent would have kept the tradition alive if the Fonsagradas had not been active politicians. They had been leaders of the liberal party since Independence, with a tolerant, watchful liberalism, never very violent against the Church or the great landlords, but powerful enough to prevent any extensions of conservative power. Their policy had not been notably pro-Indian; they had merely made it impossible for their opponents ever to be anti-Indian. In secret — for the thought had not occurred to anybody else — Juan saw himself as an imperialist, very unwilling that his patient clients of copper and gold should be dragged into the arena of democracy.

  So what about his own people? At least Vidal was building schools, though half the money, if used to pay elementary teachers and run up adobe huts, would benefit the Indian provinces more than his classy air-conditioned liceos.

  Typical Vidalismo. Forcing the country into a spectacular run before it could walk with dignity! He preferred the policies of Gil Avellana; they might be visionary, but they were traditional.

  “My own people wait, Enrique.”

  “You sound very sinister.”

  “No. That is nothing new for them. They have no leader. I should have been born twenty years later. My old and dear friend, I am sad this evening.”

  “If you would drink whisky instead of that damned rum . . .”

  “It would remind me of my youth still more. Enrique, I realize that I am a typical Latin American of my class and generation.”

  “I don’t see much wrong with that.”

  “Because you look on us as a source of entertainment.”

  “That doesn’t prevent affection.”

  “I didn’t say it did. But permit me to be regretful. What I might have done, if I had not spent my estates in Paris and New York! Opera singers, Enrique! Voices! Ghosts of women, whose utmost gesture of humanity is to clasp hands upon a bosom which in the end is nothing but a too decorative organ pump.”

  “You should have tried ballet dancers,” said the consul.

  “I did, Enrique. Eighty thousand legs of cattle sold in order to cherish two. . . . And so in my prime to politics — for sport.”

  “At least it wasn’t for money.”

  “If it had been, I might have taken it seriously — and ended my career in stone upon a horse, waving my sword or perhaps a copy of the Constitution, here in this Alameda which you see before you. The only original thing that I have ever done in all my life is to take to trade in my fifties and start selling patent medicines.”

  “If you are in a mood to describe antibiotics as patent medicines . . .”

  “My dear Enrique, the Indians were using molds to cure wounds before Columbus.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It says so in my propaganda.”

  “Which you wrote.”

  “American advertising is too convincing for us. We need a touch of poetry in order to believe.”

  “Juan, I do not mind your taking trade as a joke,” said the consul very seriously. “Ever since I have known you, you have taken everything as a joke. But you must not endanger your dignity.”

  “My very dear Enrique, all my life I have adjusted my personality to its environment. Dignity has no longer any place in trade. Do you observe that our young men of good family, who are all occupied in selling each other something, can afford dignity? Certainly not! Very well. You have been good enough, though with some hesitation . . .”

  “I hadn’t realized you were so —”

  “Broke. Yes. That increased my obligation. You used your influence to obtain for an old friend some fabulously profitable agencies. And assured by you, the manufacturers, and even the doctors that these mysterious substances really do what is claimed for them, I, on my part, have lent to them my name. But it is also my duty to push sales. Am I at my age to rush feverishly in a sports car from bar to bar? No! That is too much to ask. Am I then to adopt the style of those British salesmen who, when I observed them from the seat of government, appeared to me to have been trained in a Bond Street funeral parlor? Again, no!”

  “There are no funeral parlors in Bond Street,” said the consul.

  “They probably call it something else. Turkish bathmen and bespoke embalmers. But, as I was saying when your passion for fact led you to interrupt me, Enrique, too formidable a dignity in my life or my publicity would be disloyal to my suppliers. On the other hand I cannot be expected to trot like an anxious knife-grinder between the secular and religious hospitals or to spend my evenings at a cabaret table, vainly appealing to the salesmen of my United States competitors that they should leave me enough wine and women for the entertainment of my faithful apothecaries. . . . I therefore endeavor, not without success, to emulate youth, while preserving the discretion of my age and position.”

  “There were some rhythms in that one,” Henry Penruddock said, “which reminded me of your great speech of resignation.”

  “Very likely. The Chamber, too, had accused me of a lack of dignity. Enrique, I have employed a most adorable red head.”

  “For God’s sake! Too conspicuous!”

  “Nonsense, my dear fellow! She is a Chilean. Diploma and all.”

  “What sort of diploma?”

  “Pathology — and I really cannot be expected to ignore it because of the color of her hair. The excitement which she inspires in my customers — or would indeed in you, Enrique — is purely a matter of my progressive internal organization.”

  “Well, so long as one of these gossip writers on the papers —”

  “He can’t. My dear Enrique, did you ever know a really glossy office, one of the glass-walled glories of Vidalismo, which did not deliberately employ pretty girls for the delectation of customers?”

  “I don’t think that’s the way they would like it put,” said the consul cautiously. “And anyway your ideas for the entertainment of clients go rather beyond —”

  “My Vita and my Agueda, like the stars of cabaret and the receptionists of advertising agents, arouse hopes which they have no intention of fulfilling. Can I help it if the customers break away from my parties in order to watch demonstrations in the laboratories?”

  “I think I’d better have a look at her on Saturday.”

  “Make it tonight, Enrique. On Saturday I am entertaining my dear daughter Felicia and her husband. It’s seldom I can get them to myself.”

  CHAPTER III

  [October 24]

  ONLY ONE OF the major general’s orders was rarely obeyed. True, it was not exactly an order. He had merely mentioned as a point of etiquette that it was not customary to pay military honors to the wives of officers. Nothing, however, could prevent the guard from presenting arms to Doña Felicia whenever she drove into the Citadel to fetch her husband.

  The motives of Fifth Division depended on the sum of the personal tastes of officers and men, and therefore could not be analyzed. The salutes which she acknowledged — always more gaily than she thought — were partly an affectionate tribute to her husband; partly they represented the satisfaction of the mestizos, who made up the vast majority of the Army, that the general should have married into the only ruling family which took pride in its Indian blood; and partly they were a gallant compliment to Doña Felicia herself.

  She was a woman in the full splendor of her thirtieth year — a little taller and a lot slimmer than most of
her contemporaries. She had the fine-drawn features of her father set upon a small head which carried, regardless of changing fashion, a luxurious chignon of black hair coiled at the back of her delicate neck. The immediate desire of any man — which, too, may have been reflected in the spontaneous crash of military courtesies — was to let loose that supersensual, that positively Biblical hair. The color of her skin could not be described in words without destroying it by too exact definition; but it had been done to perfection by the chief gardener of the municipality, who named a rose of his own breeding Rugosa Fonsagrada. The petals were honey-colored, flushed with pink. He never needed to explain the origin of the name to any citizen of San Vicente.

  But this had been nine years earlier. San Vicente had not seen so much of her since Juan de Fonsagrada had ceased, among shattered glass and the rape of matronly tramcars, to be an active politician. Since then, most of Felicia’s time had been passed between the Indian provinces and Europe, dissatisfied with both. Meanwhile, the line of chairs outside the Ateneo had speculated, with more imagination than sound gynaecology, upon the reasons why their town beauty waited for a husband. The appreciable number of younger members who had in their time proposed to her found it hard to admit that the inadequacy, if any, was their own.

  The fact was that she did not admire Guayanas as much as it admired her. She resented its lack of purpose; and this impatience was all the stronger because she loved her home — its closed and easy social life, its distances, its exasperating history which could not be disentangled from that of the Fonsagradas themselves. She never for a moment wished that she had been born a man; but she did wish, quite impersonally, that Juan had had a son instead of an only daughter.

  Felicia Kucera drove slowly across the immense parade ground of the Citadel, pulling up to allow a squad of recruits, their gray-green uniforms soaked with sweat, to march across her front. She was startled by the harsh command Eyes Left! and found herself staring into forty brown faces, cruel and rigid with fatigue, not one of them daring to smile.