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The Third Hour
Geoffrey Household
Dedicated
TO THE NOBILITY
of
MY WIFE
whose peers,
in this book,
I have imagined
Strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and said unto them … these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.
THE LIFE AND FORTUNE OF MANUEL VARGAS
I
THE LIFE
The train toiled southwards, a thin black lizard picking its way along the easiest slopes through a tumble of desert hills. The engineers who built that line had felt themselves to be the very prophets of an indefinite religion named Progress. Day by day they had fought with intractable material and known the pride of artists in their tunnels, their bridges, their tremendous bastions armoured to withstand the fury of torrents on unabsorbing ground. Day by day their bank balances piled up in Mexico City and New York. But even a world so supremely well ordered for their happiness did not satisfy them; they needed to link their temporary content to a universal purpose, to feel that they were fulfilling the intent of past generations and smoothing the path of the unborn. Since none of the religions to which they paid their various lip services had set up the mastery of nature as a virtue, they accepted the private faith of the nineteenth century. Their formless domestic god was Progress.
The little group of men lying inconspicuously upon the hillside had neither bank balances nor content nor any thought at all of the vanished engineers. To them the god Progress was only a word, and at that a word which they used in widely different senses. To General Lara, Progress was merely the slave of a greater and even vaguer deity whom he worshipped under the names of Communism or Liberty or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. To Manuel Vargas, El Camarero, Progress was meaningless; he occasionally used the word, however, in order to stir those under his command or in his employ to a more lively efficiency. To the ragged insurgents crouching under the cover of the rocks, Progress meant more money, more frequent meals and better horses. They were realists. The train that slowly approached their hillside had no more significance for them than a lizard which they were about to kill; indeed less, for a lizard could be eaten whereas there was little hope of looting the train.
“Another three minutes,” said Lara. “This time we will make an exhibition!”
It was the general’s favourite remark. Like any true craftsman contemplating his raw materials, he felt that the composition about to be created would be his finest. It was no mean art to paralyze heavily guarded government railways with a few pounds of dynamite, and Lara had invented his own technique. The permanent way and the locomotives, being in theory the property of the people and hard to replace, he spared; but his carefully planned attacks on the rolling stock were as devastating as a transport strike because the effects and the delays were incalculable.
Lara lifted an excellent pair of field glasses, looted from a romantic female archaeologist who had visited his camp and lost all but what she had hoped to lose, and studied the approaching train. It was a mile away and broadside on to them, about to enter the curve that would carry it direct under their position.
“They are expecting me,” he said, and handed the glasses to El Camarero.
The train ended in a heavy steel flatcar and a roomy caboose. The flatcar was armed, and stripped for action bare as the deck of a battleship. The barrel of a Krupp mountain gun pointed the length of the train, a harmless position which promised that it could instantly be swivelled to either flank. This formidable weapon was assisted by three machine guns. A bridge leading from the flatcar to the caboose showed that the train guard, though now hiding in their quarters from the merciless white sun, could swiftly man their improvised fighting deck.
“Better wait for the guard,” suggested El Camarero, handing back the glasses.
“What a thought! Blow them up and lose the gun? Never! I have never had a gun, Camarero.”
“We couldn’t carry it away.”
“No. But we might take it and shell the relief train. A surprise for them! A pretty little surprise!”
Lara watched the flatcar with frank and hungry admiration. His face had the innocence of a child peering into the window of a confectioner’s shop.
“Then try the third. It’s a tank car.”
“No. I should like to, but it would carry the locomotive with it. The eleventh! We will blow up the eleventh!”
The eleventh was a wealthy tourist on the Mexican Northern Railway, a comfortable, neatly painted visitor from the New York Central. This boxcar was a temptation in itself, and admirably placed to do the maximum of destruction. If the couplings held, it might well carry with it down the hillside numbers nine to fourteen, all of which were lightly loaded.
Lara’s explosives were cunningly placed. A frugal charge at the outer edge of the embankment would undermine the track and cause a slight subsidence of the metals. A second and heavier charge under the inner rail supplied the necessary lift to topple over the chosen wagon. The general’s art was far too delicate to be described as the dynamiting of trains. His few ounces of explosive were mere aids to the far greater forces of gravity and momentum.
The general peered between the rocks that covered his party, the keys of two detonators under his hand. He was almost pure Indian. Under a battered felt hat his face, hairless as that of a boy of twelve, was beautiful in its unconscious cruelty; the wide mouth, sensitive and expressive, the large eyes, intent and shining, had the natural ferocity of a carnivore. Yet it was not an animal face; its rich humour even, or perhaps especially, in the act of destruction made it entirely human and likeable.
Manuel Vargas, the immigrant from Spain, the man of culture and experience, was fond of his general. He liked his thoroughness and his frank good-fellowship; and he was fascinated by the incalculable quality of cruelty in this young and destitute leader, with his ragged shirt and trousers so crossed by the belt of his Mauser pistol, the belt of his .45 revolver, the belts of corresponding ammunition, the straps of water bottle and instruments that he needed a medieval squire to disarm him. To have Lara’s friendship was as stimulating as to keep a leopard for a pet.
The train crawled along the hillside, chasing the pilot engine that preceded it. Lara pressed his first key as soon as the two engines had passed. There was a muffled report and a puff of dust. The trucks rocked unsteadily, canting towards the slope as they clattered over the sinking rail. The eleventh car swayed into position and Lara pressed the second key. This time the craftsman had his work more immediately under his eye. A fan of flame, gravel and yellow smoke punched the tourist under his leading bogey and threw him off his balance. Number eleven crashed down the slope, dragging with it six of the adjoining trucks.
The lizard, thus cut in half, appeared to hesitate uncertainly. Its head stopped. Its tail began to run downhill, gathering speed as the weight of the flatcar and armaments took command. Lara’s men rose from the protective colouring of the bronze ground and watched with interest the unwilling flight of their opponents. They had expected a sharp exchange of shots before the guard discovered that nothing but an antiaircraft gun could throw a sh
ell into their eyrie and that a direct assault would cost more lives than it was worth. This unforeseen triumph, the seemingly inspired climax so often added by chance to an honest piece of work, confirmed his men’s trust in Lara’s daring. The caboose, the flatcar and three wagons raced towards the curve of the line while small figures crawled over them to reach and apply the hand brakes. The little band of rebels lit cigarettes and laughed like children, without pity or malice.
“They’ll upset on the bend!” shouted Lara delightedly. “The sons of bitches are going to upset!”
“They’ll stop in time,” answered El Camarero.
“I’ll bet my field glasses to your rifle they don’t!”
“Done!”
Manuel Vargas knew that he would lose. The lifeless half of the train was shooting down the line, and it was evident that the brakes had either broken or were insufficient. Only obstinate hope made him dispute the point with Lara; he had accepted the bet in a sudden rage with himself and his own impotence. His rifle, Eibar made, accurate and a link with Spain, was a sacrifice offered to the gods of the unexpected, a tribute to assure himself of his own sincerity in his civilised and desperate desire that the helpless troops should escape.
The tail of the train swayed outwards over the curve, increasing its angle as the inner wheels left the metals. It appeared to bank as deliberately and gracefully as an aeroplane, and slid silently out of sight. The thin and agonised shouts, the crashings and splinterings that reached their ears four seconds later seemed to have nothing to do with this peaceful flight into space.
“I have warned you already not to bet with me,” said the general. “I understand railways. When we have the People’s Republic I will be Minister of Communications.”
“If there are any,” El Camarero answered drily, handing over his rifle.
Lara slung it on his back, finding a suitable path for the leather among the maze of bandoleers, and laughed with pleasure. He felt kindly to the Spaniard whenever he scored off him, and generally repaid him by some act of feudal generosity. El Camarero was a good fellow—though a superior man who had no right to be fighting with the representatives of the people. One felt that he did not approve of all his general’s acts. Still, so witty, so courteous, and with such a head on him—one would regret it if at some time or other he had to be removed.
“Vámonos!” said Lara. “There will be loot after all! You can choose any weapon you like, Camarero!”
While the attention of the raiders was occupied, the train crew uncoupled the wagons derailed but not overturned by the explosion. The head of the train made off at full speed towards Durango, leaving its wrecked belly and tail to these devils who sat among the rocks. Lara and his men scrambled down the hillside to their first victim.
Number Eleven had burst open and scattered most of its riches among the cacti; it had apparently carried a mixed bag of goods shipped to Mexico City from Europe via New York, merchandise of price but little weight. Bales of English tweed dotted the torn slope. A crate of expensive toys had spilled out the wagons of a neat little train; they lay drunkenly on the bare earth, imitating their model with an exactitude that even the meticulous care of the manufacturers had not intended. A crushed case of perfumes lent to the cleanly cactus the magnificent reek of an imperial brothel, and a bidet of red Italian marble that had come to rest right side up confirmed the impression. Manuel Vargas was seized by a fit of laughter at the sight of this unseemly bathroom luxury and at once improvised a charming coplita upon the garden that wept for its lost fountain. It fell flat since neither Lara nor his men had any idea of the uses of a bidet. El Camarero improved their education by a short and vivid lecture.
They approached the tail of the train with needless caution. The flatcar seemed to have turned a somersault in the air and crashed upside down on to the caboose, reducing it to a heap of splinters as formless as a rubbish dump. There was none left who could be called alive. On those that still breathed Lara performed his only act of mercy of the day. Twenty bodies, spread-eagled on the hillside, impaled on cactus and crushed together in the dump, provided a satisfactory haul of weapons and ammunition that partly comforted the general for the loss of the mountain gun. He hummed El Camarero’s coplita, and allowed him the first choice of the scattered armaments.
On the pretext of examining the bodies on the hillside Manuel separated himself from his companions. The shock of this disaster was rising up into his conscious mind. He had tried to exorcise it with a bet, to forget it with obscene laughter; but the smashed bodies were difficult facts for a civilised person to blink. He was compelled to consider them. Manuel Vargas was a Spaniard and an adventurer; as either, he was rather less sensitive than the ordinary man to the liquids and machinery of the human body exposed by violent death. In his general experience, however, such death was the result of fair fight or admissible accident, and no matter for shame and disgust. That he now felt both was a vivid revelation of truth. He had been an adventurer more in search of himself than of sensation. Well—por Dios!—he had found himself!
Manuel Vargas was the son of a wholesale grocer at Valladolid. By the age of sixteen he had the high fantastical humour of a dweller among the unforgiving hills of Old Castilla, a taste for good Rioja and a fund of admirable stories about priests and nuns, most of which he fathered on to the innocent Jesuit in whose service he donned a nightgown and swung a censer; these duties he performed in order to keep the peace with his mother, an estimable woman in whom piety took the place of intelligence. His education had been catholic and classical; that is to say, he had learned nothing at all that was likely to make him any money, but had acquired a fine clear mind and the Latin virtue, unrecognised by any purely Anglo-Saxon school, of knowing that he was lying when he was.
His father had now given up groceries for fruit, having been accidentally introduced to the trade by one of his debtors whose only assets were four tons of oranges. He found that his resources allowed him to take the risks which perishable fruit demanded and his competitors, invariably working on insufficient capital, were unable to take; or, taking, were wiped out by a hot day or a fall in prices. By Manuel’s seventeenth birthday old Vargas was the biggest fruit dealer in three provinces, and eager to send his son, already a useful helper in the warehouse, to complete his commercial education in England; he worshipped the English merchants as models of honesty and acumen, and the universities he admired were London and Liverpool. Neither Oxford nor Cambridge, of which he had vaguely heard, could be compared in his mind to Salamanca; but the very names of London and Liverpool invested their degree of commerce with unequalled sanctity and power.
Manuel chose London; he had no particular reverence for the capital but it was the farther south of the two. What they had to teach him of the laws and practice of commerce he learned quickly and carefully, and he was impressed to the bottom of his soul by the exactitude of the great merchant houses—not that there were many delays or inaccuracies in old Vargas’s office, but Manuel was becoming drunk on English thoroughness as an occasional Englishman on the Spanish way of life. He admired, practised and developed a philosophy of the Efficient, distinguishing the false, which he considered to be merely speed under another name, from the true, which was a form of artistry.
It was in England too that Manuel began to understand the other half of the human world. Spain had given him little contact with women. From the age of fourteen he had enjoyed, of course, an occasional embrace when he had the money to pay for it. When he had none, he visited the brothels, as did his companions, simply for the sake of conversation with the girls. Thus he discovered at least that women also possessed human intelligence. He could never have guessed it from the girls of Valladolid, with whom his relations were limited to the audacious compliment and the conventional repartee, the pinch on the bottom followed by the slap in the face.
Manuel did not fly high for his education. He was in fact picking up shop g
irls at public dances in the pre-war days before they were recruited from a beggared middle class. He was attractive to women. The slight body of middle height, the soft voice, the velvety eyes that seemed to have been intended for brown and were actually grey, the foreign eagerness, all made of him a maiden’s dream to those fortunate young women; fortunate because their fantasies of Spain had nothing to do with the geographical reality, with old Vargas’s fruit warehouse, with work, marriage or childbearing or anything at all but a lovely romance compounded of reading and hearsay, to which Manuel’s mildly dishonourable intentions lent a temporary truth. By men he was disliked. His face was pudgy, his clothes vulgar, and his quiet manner such a reflection on the noisiness of youth that fathers and brothers unhesitatingly described him as a greasy dago.
The outbreak of war caught Manuel in London. He had no desire to return to Spain; indeed his first impulse was to join the British army. He was young and quixotic enough to wish to lend his sword—it was his own expression—to the country that had so freely offered him its daughters and its hospitality. He was nearly accepted, for the authorities were not too particular in demanding a birth certificate, and his adventures had been so good for his English that he could, while admitting a Spanish mother to account for his darker complexion, pass as an Englishman. But Manuel had acquired by painstaking practice the cockney “o,” believing it, because so difficult a sound, to be the very hallmark of idiomatic English, an embellishment of speech as racy and correct as the lisp of Madrid; it lurked invariably among the vowels of both his Berlitz teacher and his mistresses. For English ears it was odd to hear this unmusical diphthong from the London dialect decorating an otherwise cultured and imaginative flow of speech. The recruiting officer would readily have passed a slightly foreign accent—for the British Empire was large and he sincerely wished it had been larger—but he was puzzled by this incongruous “o.” He pressed his questions, and Manuel was rejected.
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