by Jack Tollers
Chapter Three
Friends
After lunch Jimmy went to the library and sat down on an old ravaged sofa where he usually read, while Peter made for the guestroom. The sun was beaming on a white linen bedspread and the fire-place had no fire, for Manuel had justly thought it unnecessary. It was a small whitewashed room that looked northwards, very sunny in the afternoon and with a small Constable reproduction hanging on one of the walls as the only decoration. Peter opened the French windows that gave on to a small balcony and smoked a cigarette, leaning on the railing, alone with his thoughts while he watched Manuel cleaning up the table where they had been singing. Eventually he lay down on the bed, fully dressed. It was just as he was beginning to feel drowsy that he remembered his mother. Better call her now, he thought.
‘Hello, mother?’ His voice sounded a bit diffident, even to himself.
‘Peter! Where are you?’ the wailing voice came clearly across the line, ‘I thought you wouldn't have leave this weekend—’
‘No, but I'm out this time... I've come straight to Jimmy's house and will probably go home for lunch tomorrow. What do you think?’ He stood up clutching the phone, his eyes fixed on Constable’s Suffolk water mill. ‘Well,’ sighed Peter's mother resignedly, ‘I'll cook some spaghetti if you like—’
‘That'll be wonderful, mother’, Peter said hastily. He had heard the sigh. ‘I'll be there by midday, big kisses and hugs and all that.’
He rang off before the old lady started on anything else and fell back on his bed with mixed feelings, a bit of a traitor but unmistakably relieved too. He loved his mother all right, but home was somewhat lonely, what with her being a widow and Peter having no brothers or sisters—the Cayol family was indeed a small one. And also his home was quite a long way away from downtown Buenos Aires where most of the parties took place. In every way the Elizalde's house was a more promising prospect.
A faint curious beep indicated that someone was calling from inside the house. Peter stretched out his arm to the phone while he fumbled with a cigarette pack and matches.
‘Hello?’
‘Look Peter, do you know what I'm reading just now?’
A one handed Peter lighted a match to a cigarette and lay down comfortably on the pillows, an ash tray at his elbow and a beautiful view through the French windows of an old oak tree that screened the other buildings around the house.
‘No, I don't. Last time we talked about books you were into Castellani, wasn´t it?’
‘No, no. Listen. Have you seen Napoleon's Spectre?’
‘Er, yes, I have seen it in the library. And I actually read it also, if you want to know.’ Peter smiled at the ceiling enjoying the fact that for once he had read something that his friend hadn't.
‘Do you know who translated it?’
‘Yes, well, as a matter of fact I happen to know that. It was Julio Irazusta. Argentine historian. Born in the province of Entre Ríos. Author of a life of Rosas reflected by his correspondence. Educated in England. Actually a friend of Santayana if you want to know.’
Peter was well read, and Jimmy knew it: since their childhood they had both read the same books and had talked about them again and again; but this bit of learning came upon him as a surprise.
‘How do you happen to know all that?’
‘Well, you know how it is. All we know about anything is because we read it somewhere or else we saw it somewhere or at least somebody told us. In this case, somebody told me... I think it was Thomas.’ Thomas was an older friend of both boys who had taught them many things over the past two years whetting their literary appetites. ‘So now my good friend, do you think I can resume my siesta?’
‘Uh, all right. But I was thinking that... well... thinking about Liddel Hart and Irazusta and Napoleon... you see... well...’
There was a pause in the line.
‘That's why I left my military career. Definitely. It's like Charles Ryder's affair with the Army. It's over. I'm fed up with this story of looking smart in time of peace and getting killed in a war for nothing.’
Peter sat upright on the end of the bed, clutching at the tube with white knuckles.
‘I don't think I quite underst—’
‘Well it's easy. It's enough with a couple of years in the—’
‘You know very well—’
‘.... there are too many Hoopers around. Modern armies are only one more professional arrangement. You could just as well fight for another country. Your modern soldier is not much better than the next mercenary... They pay you for being a patriot... it's obscene, like a priest on a salary.’
‘Well, for that matter, do you think priests don't have salaries?’
‘I know, I know... more often than not. But listen, it's like the old sophists who received wages for their words, or like the merchants at the temple trading in sacred places.’
‘I don't quite see—’
‘I mean, the Army hasn't vocations because it does not have a true vocation itself, and it hasn't a proper calling because it serves the State, not the country... and if you get caught up in a muddle like that one, you'll probably end up dying miserably for nothing. It just isn't worth it... I'm sure it isn't worthwhile... I mean, do you follow me?’
Peter remained silent, wondering what on earth had happened to his friend. He couldn't figure it out. And he was beginning to get angry.
‘I'm afraid your mind seems—’
‘Listen, I used to think—’
‘...in a muddle. We always knew what we were in for when we signed up, nearly four years ago, remember?
‘That was centuries—’
‘You can't back down four years later on the well known fact that we live in a world that doesn't quite come up to our ideals... What the devil is wrong with you?’—he was standing up again, walking around with small steps as far as the telephone cord would let him.
‘All right, all right. You think I'm in a muddle. I'll tell you some—’
‘Yup, some mudd—’
‘...I was in a muddle before reflecting seriously about my vocation. I haven't, repeat, have not a mercenary's vocation—’
‘I just can't believe my—’
‘I'm out. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself because it's been a long time for me at Military College, and I was so... enthusiastic about it all. But it's over. Game over. I'm through with an Army that will not let Irazusta lecture us—’
‘What the hell has that got to do—’
‘... an Army that only thinks of the country as a State... I ask you. Of all things... I mean, I'm fed up.’
‘Because of that damned Irazusta lecture... You must be out of—’
‘... and then, when we finally graduate, we’re expected to sign a contract! Ha! So then we're considered professionals... And the fact is that you and I know that it's an amateur Army anyway, conducted by the so called professionals who don't care a damn about this country or for anything else for that matter, except getting promoted. And you and I know that the whole thing only works to the extent that real military people, people with a vocation, with ideals, keep the machine going... And then they don't get promoted.’
‘Oh I... I mean, I don't happen to think it always works like that, I mean, not—’
‘So the valiant soldier sows and down comes the counterfeiter to reap... and it cannot go on like this for much more, this artificial, mendacious, hypocritical state of things. And I'm telling you, I will not go along with it... You can count me out.’
‘Well a fat lot of—’
‘I will not give up my life to such a bastard, such a whore.’
‘Hey, hey, hold, hold it, wait a minute my friend! Hold your tongue will you?’
But Jimmy had already disconnected. Peter replaced the phone on the crib with a bang and sighing let himself fall on the bed reflectively looking up at the ceiling. But very soon he was fast asleep.