Whether she would agree with his conception of his duty he could not tell. However intimate a marriage, one couldn’t prophesy the strength of political convictions in a crisis. He knew Feli’s opinion of revolution: that it was time Latin-American politicians grew up. Hardly fair on Gil Avellana, who could not get Vidal out any other way. Still, she herself had said that the proper time for him to marshal public opinion was before the last election, not long after it.
He went back to the house. The hall was still lively. From outside the window he was able to watch Pedro Valdés. For the first time he noticed that his geniality was very controlled. Even when he drank, the deep eyes were intent. Morote was not with him. From the lights in other windows he gathered that Juan had gone to bed and Avellana was in his study. The light in his own room was not on. Feli, then, was probably in the upstairs drawing room with Pilar.
He found her there, reading while Pilar placidly embroidered an altar cloth.
When they had said good night and were in the empty passage Miro asked: “Do you know where Morote is? I have to see him before he talks to Gil.”
“He has gone over to the village, I believe.”
“Alone?”
“Probably. It’s the last place to find Carrillo; and Pedro was still downstairs when I left. How did it go with Gil?”
“Badly. That’s why I wanted a word with Morote. But it’s difficult. I hoped he would be here, and that together we . . .”
“I’ll go down with you. With the great man in the village they will all be half drunk, and once you join them you’ll have to stay. And you won’t have a chance to talk unless I cut him out of the herd for you.”
“You’d better change, then,” said Miro, reluctant to take so startling a vision into whatever drinking den Morote was patronizing.
“Of course not! You don’t understand them. But you should change. Remind Morote of his everyday life, not this — unreality.”
He was startled by the word. Avellana and his intentions seemed very real indeed. But he saw what she meant. Reality for Morote was the squalor of the Barracas, the daily fight of the dock laborer to keep his children just above the starvation line. Obviously he recognized the necessity for political and economic planning. Yet the haze of smoke and ideas in Avellana’s study must often have seemed to him less effective than direct action.
Miro quickly changed from grandfather Avellana’s silks and baggy trousers, giving them a look of regret as they lay on the bed. His success was, he had no doubt, due to the ease with which he had learned to assume protective coloring; but there were limits. In national costume he was an imposter.
“It would be better if we are not seen,” he suggested.
Feli put on a dark cloak over her white and gold.
“Gil is bound to know tomorrow that we were there,” she said.
“Tomorrow we shall have gone. But I don’t want him to have a chance to interfere tonight. How Morote chooses to explain tomorrow is his business.”
They went out by the empty terrace and vanished into the darkness of the plain. At the end of the long avenue were a few very faint lights. The distant tinkle of a guitar was a surer sign that the village was awake. Then there was silence. The guitar had changed hands, for the two deep opening chords which again decorated the night had been slashed unmistakably by the broad thumbs of Morote.
On the way Miro explained to Feli as much as it was essential for her to know. There was no need to argue for or against Avellanismo.
“Did you guess he was planning revolution in a matter of weeks?”
“No. Papá has been very discreet. He knew that I would pass anything on to you.”
Miro squeezed the fingers which were linked with his.
“What I want to do is to stop it,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. Morote’s presence here — Well, it’s clear that one of Avellana’s weapons, if he has to use it, could be a General Strike. If I can persuade Morote that he has a lot to lose, we might all have more time to think.”
“But you loathe Vidal.”
“I come home and complain about him. It isn’t quite the same thing.”
In the little plaza, which was hardly more than a dusty crossing of lanes, Morote and a dozen peons sat at a candlelit table outside the tavern. Many more stood or squatted in the darkness. Though drink was flowing freely at the table and voices occasionally rose in a clatter of noise, the party seemed to have an undercurrent of melancholy. The infinite space of the Americas pressed too closely upon a couple of candles and one oil lamp in the shop.
The men at the entrance to the plaza moved aside to let the new arrivals pass. It was in a silence not quite of resentment, but of regret; what had promised to be an unforgettable night with the leader of the poor, whose name had been in newspapers, was bound to be changed for the worse by this man and woman from the benevolent but awkward world of the estancia.
Feli at once produced a different order of silence by giving her greetings in the Indian language. This was unexpected and inexplicable, especially since she spoke it a deal better than the mestizos of the estancia for whom Spanish was the language of every day. Then she was recognized. Feet shifted in the soft dust. The shadowed faces of women — though there had been no obvious communication with them — appeared at doors and windows. A whisper hissed across the plaza from mouth to mouth, its two last syllables like a ripple breaking on rock:
“La de Fonsagrada! La de Fonsagrada!”
Pablo Morote looked up and saw them, greeting them with a forced heartiness.
“Hola, friends! And what brings you down here?”
“To take a cup and listen to you,” Miro replied casually.
The tavernkeeper was already out of his shop with two stools. Miro shook a number of hands and sat down with Felicia.
He had wanted to bring Feli — the secret weapon — to bear, but it would never have occurred to him to take her down to the village if she hadn’t suggested it. And she was right. If he had come alone he would not have been able to detach Morote. Empty politeness, empty exclamations would have gone on hour after hour until he finally walked back to the house with everybody protesting that he shouldn’t go and everybody hoping to God he would.
But the atmosphere which Feli created was almost courtly. She did not interfere with conventional amusement. She merely took the dullness of convention out of it. This was not twentieth-century Guayanas; it was fifteenth-century Spain. Or was it, he wondered, fifteenth-century Guayanas? How Indian was Morote? What reality had the Fonsagradas’ influence? It seemed incredible that Juan, the boulevardier, could command the respect — and probably twice as much of it — which Feli was getting.
None of these men of mixed blood considered Feli as any sort of royalty to whom allegiance was due. But she was, he supposed, a personification of old stories, of superstitions, of folk history. In a near future — whether Avellana’s or Vidal’s — Guayanas would be integrated into one people among whom, as in Mexico, the proportion of white blood in an Indian or Indian blood in a white mattered to nobody. But meanwhile the conquerors still dominated, and the Fonsagradas were, in a way, all that remained of the conquered. So Feli’s presence was more exciting for them than even that of Morote. He himself did not count at all. He was merely an officer from San Vicente.
She leaned forward to applaud a singer, and let her cloak fall back. The sun on her forehead, which had been a mere delightful decoration, its native workmanship quite possibly unrecognized, took on an unmistakable meaning when combined with her frock. They saw that she was deliberately glorying in her descent.
A few minutes later she asked: “Give me a moment of your time, Don Pablo.”
It was an order from the priestess. The whole plaza wanted to obey. It looked as if Feli and Miro were going to be accompanied up the avenue and back to the house by a procession. Both of them were helpless. It was Morote who raised his hand and imposed common sense.
“I shall be back shortly, compañeros. No
thing more than a moment for the affairs of Doña Felicia!”
Miro detected that Morote, for all his courtesy, was suspicious. Well, he had reason to be. To be dragged off on Feli’s mysterious business, to be forced into watchfulness when he had been mellow with drink was hardly fair. As they walked away he wondered for the hundredth time at the contrast between the two Indian races which nobody could explain except by wild conjecture. One saw the fine-drawn, straight-nosed, golden face which both Feli and her father had preserved — as well as that trumpeter — what was his name? — ah, Menendez — and the dark, broad-nosed, Mongol face of Morote which could well have belonged to an Eskimo or a Japanese peasant. Yet there was no trace left of any social difference between them.
When the village was again only a glow in the night, but now, since more candles had been lit, a little brighter than before, Felicia said: “I am so sorry, Don Pablo. But it was urgent. We had to speak to you.”
“I have nothing to say, Doña Felicia,” answered Morote. “Speak to the Chief!”
“I have,” Miro said.
“Then what do you want with me?”
“We are by no means in accord, Don Gil and I.”
Morote at once realized the vital importance of his own curious intimacy with the general, and dropped his guard.
“But that was what I told them! Look, I said, what is the use of plans while we cannot be sure what Miro Kucera will do? And so the Chief has at last asked you what you want?”
“Don Pablo, do you know how my husband can be bought?” Felicia asked.
Morote shrugged his shoulders.
“Nor does anybody else,” she said.
“Good! That is what I suspect. At the same time — this is not in my power, but for example — wouldn’t you wish to be commander in chief?”
“Not in the least, friend! I shouldn’t last a year.”
“If the generals tried to remove you, they would have to reckon with me.”
“Thank you, Don Pablo. But that is not the way to run an army. We should arrive at a postition when every time an officer wanted a private talk with me he would be searched by a Morotista at the gate!”
Morote laughed. It was clear that this picture pleased him, and did not seem improbable.
“Well then, let us put it that you want nothing! So in what do you disagree with the Chief? I never feel that I have much influence with him, but I will do my best.”
“I do not agree or disagree with the Chief, or with President Vidal,” said Miro bluntly. “My duty is to obey orders. Start a revolution in San Vicente and I shall knock it on the head. I am not threatening you, Don Pablo. I know very well that your power is formidable. I am warning you because you are responsible for the lives of your workers as I am for those of my troops.”
“But in God’s name why fight for that little bastard who keeps the hair on his face because lower down he has no . . . pardon me, Doña Felicia! A manner of speaking! But if there are to be warnings, I tell you frankly that your troops will fraternize.”
“Very few, and they would be immediately disarmed without my having to order it. You can do nothing against the garrison, which will at once take over docks, railways and power — at any cost, Don Pablo. You will create widows and starvation. Your strike funds will be exhausted in a week. And the rest of the country will be so frightened that it will keep Vidal in power quite indefinitely. That is not fair to either of us.”
“Later then — you might lead us?” asked Morote, puzzled by the last remark.
“Never! I am a servant of the State. I do not lead; I obey. I have never played politics and I would not try now if you and I did not trust each other. You can’t bargain with me. You cannot bring Avellana to power without civil war. There remains Vidal. Don’t use your General Strike to support a revolution which will fail. Use the threat of it to bargain with Vidal. Sooner or later he will be in your hands.”
“Excuse me, my General. In yours.”
“Very well. Put it that I am the referee.”
“You will see that we get justice?”
“No. I said I was the referee. I enforce the rules. I do not decide the winner. We have had worse Presidents than Vidal. You cannot deny that he is creating wealth. What you want is that it should be distributed. Well, show your teeth, now or later, but don’t use them. Vidal will remember.”
“He can do his remembering in hell. Now you and I together —”
“Don Pablo, it would be an honor to command a militia of Morotistas; but after two years of it, which of us would have put the other against a wall? . . . A cigarette?”
Morote’s grin was white in the flash of the lighter. He did not deny the implication.
After a silence he asked Felicia bluntly: “What will Don Juan do?”
“He will support you — provided Avellana is successful.”
“He should be a priest. He thinks his blessing is enough.”
“I think it will be just enough.”
“To carry the Indians for Avellana?”
“No. To ensure that Avellana escapes with his life.”
The tone of her voice was unfamiliar. Miro knew the ring of her retorts, especially in political discussion, but this one had a quality of incisive, relentless calm. It was more than a declaration of loyalty; it was a threat — as unexpected by the enemy as by him.
“In any case neither you nor Don Juan have an interest in the Barracas,” said Morote sullenly.
“You have not invited me to visit them and talk.”
“And I’m not going to! I have enough trouble already. Now listen, Doña Felicia, and you, my General! I refuse to keep this conversation secret. I shall put it to the Chief that you are prepared to use troops against us.”
“Put it how the devil you like!” answered Miro genially. “But tell him you will do nothing.”
“Nothing? I don’t say that! But he cannot count on me to fight Fifth Division. Caray! I warned him that his revolution was in the air. And now the one man I trust in this country is against me.”
“Don’t you trust Don Gil?” Felicia asked.
“Yes and no. But better a Mussolini than no action at all! What I should like — Well, you say it is impossible. So, until we see each other again! Perhaps I shall know then whether to be grateful to you or not.”
Felicia strolled on with her silent husband. The intensity with which he had thrown himself into politics puzzled her. He was out of character.
“Your bluff worked, Miro — if it was a bluff.”
“Of course it was. Of course! You should know that. I won’t use the Division against them unless they fire on my men first. You should know that. Call it pity, if you like. Or common sense. What use is the Army if it is hated by half the people?”
His excitement showed her that the danger signals were flying. It was very seldom they appeared — nearly always when the calm, professional European soldier was in conflict with the part which day after day he acted effortlessly before a fascinated audience. What he never understood was that he prided himself on the wrong thing. It was his character, his inborn natural qualities which made him loved by her as well as by that damned Division, not his astonishing performance as the genial, flexible Latin.
“Couldn’t you avoid the whole trouble by letting Gil Avellana in?” she asked.
“I know that as well as he does.”
“But since you get on with him and prefer him to Vidal?” she persisted, ignoring his roughness.
“Feli, do you think I want to fight Juan?”
“You couldn’t. He wouldn’t be there.”
“And that is where they think I should be, too — nowhere. Climbing a mountain! Feli, I command the garrison of San Vicente.”
“You are really going to support Vidal?”
“No, I do not support him!” he exclaimed. “But Vidal is the legal President. What else can I do? Can’t any of you understand?”
When he presented his choice like that, it was clean-cut. To remi
nd him of Avellana’s policy was objectless. It wasn’t a choice between Avellana and Vidal. It was between Avellana and legality.
“I do,” she said, “and Morote did, though for him you put it differently.”
“Well, Avellana didn’t!” He suddenly dragged her off the avenue to a stone bench and table on the bank of the water channel. “Here — we were talking here! He called it ‘the honor of a mercenary.’”
For a passing moment she was frightened by her responsibility, but the mood of the last hour was in command of her. It was impossible to receive tribute as a Fonsagrada and feel that the mystique of Avellana, the solemn economics of Carrillo, the fanaticisms of Pedro Valdés had any ultimate reality. The conquerors as always were fighting among themselves, and the Fonsagradas let them fight until such time as chaos threw up some foul dictator like Orduñez — and then it took her grandfather to remove him. If the son-in-law of a Fonsagrada thought it his duty to set an example, he had the right.
Gill and his precious man of honor! How dared he split hairs with a phrase like the honor of a mercenary? The only way a sane woman could think of that indefinable masculine virtue was that honor was whatever her man said it was — provided he stuck to it and formed his conduct by it.
“You mustn’t read too much into his disappointment,” she said, forcing herself into caution.
“Disappointment? He was confident! He could afford to be, if a General Strike was going to bring the workers into the street. That’s why I put in my first attack against Morote. I must stop things going so far that I have to order your countrymen to fire on your countrymen.”
“Do you believe you can stop it dead without bloodshed?”
“That’s up to them. But I can trust the Division. There won’t be a shot fired without my order.”
“And afterwards? Have you thought about it?”
“Only about you, and if you would forgive me.”
If she would forgive him! Honor, emptiness, the preference for one conceited politician over another — what on earth did they matter and how could he think they did? She thanked heaven that she had hardly temporized, and had not — here, at the same place, in the same water-gleaming darkness — attempted the sort of arguments which Gil must have advanced. Far more than Guayanas and its wearisome ins and outs had been at stake. She linked her arms over his shoulders, carrying half her cloak with her. It was a passionate rather than protective gesture — a symbol of her unity with him, covering them both from all that was outside their marriage.
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