The Panama Portrait

by Stanley Ellin

  “From my part of the United States, it is.”

  “That would be New York? I know a little about it from what I have read and what I have seen at the cinema. In the cinema, at least, it looks like a frightening place.”

  “It can be frightening outside the cinema, too. But maybe I’m not the one to judge. You see, most of my life was spent in the state of Kansas out west. In a small town called Aurelia.”

  “What a pretty name. If your town is like its name it must be charming. Why did you leave it?”

  At lunch Nora Chapin had asked him that question, and he had told her the unvarnished truth. Like Port Buchanan, Aurelia had its peculiar stench, but it was not from guano which, in this faraway land, smelled like money. In Aurelia all one knew was the sour smell of failure. The town had once grown and flourished, it had been on its way to becoming a thriving city, then suddenly one day it had stopped flourishing and had withered around the edges. Now it existed like a plant which had survived drought but would never blossom again.

  And his own home, too, was musty with that smell. His father ran a printing shop, and where once he had fine visions of the future, now he was imbued with the same querulous sense of defeat that afflicted the town. Most of the local population would have said that the Smiths did all right for themselves, but the proprietors of the biggest printing shop in town lived too close to the small, rich handful on top to take solace in the opinions of those on the pile below. In a place like Aurelia it can sometimes be more bearable to be really poor than almost rich. It was the knowledge that they lived outside the best neighborhood, that their car was always a year older than those garaged only a block away, that they were allowed to enter the country club now and then only by the kind invitation of its aristocracy that gnawed the Smiths like a canker.

  Ben came to see and understand this, both because he had the capacity to, and because in college and the army he got the necessary distant view of it. He spent most of his army hitch helping run a camp newspaper within a day’s ride of his home, but more and more found excuses for not visiting the family during his leaves. There was no joy in that house. What had happened to his father and mother was now happening to his two older brothers, the partners in the printing shop, and when the time came he fled from them all as far and fast as he could. New York might be a big and frightening place compared to Aurelia, but at least it offered an ambitious man a chance to put up a fight for himself. It was a battleground, not a cemetery.

  This was what he had told Nora, but what he could not bring himself to tell Elissa Bambas-Quincy. It made too mean a picture. Nora had sympathized, but that was the kind of woman she was. Despite her innocent face, there was a sort of gross earthiness about her. She knew the shabby side of life at first hand and accepted it casually. The ethereally beautiful Infanta beside him was a different breed altogether.

  So he passed lightly over the subject of Aurelia, Kansas, and his early days in it, pointing out truthfully enough that sooner or later every man worth his salt must leave his home to go forth and conquer the world. He knew that much of what he had to say about himself was flagrantly boastful, but Elissa’s wide-eyed regard of him as he spoke brought all his male vanity bubbling to the surface and there was nothing he could do about it. He was as badly smitten as he had ever been in his life.

  When the dinner was over the ladies departed elsewhere, following the wheelchair out of the room in a sedate procession, while the gentlemen remained at the table over cigars and brandy and the kind of talk, as Dr. Mola had put it, to which they add savor. There was a subtly different air in the room now. While no one actually removed his jacket and loosened his tie, all gave the impression of having done so.

  “Well, gentlemen,” said Dr. Mola. He patted various pockets with mock concern and finally drew from one a slip of paper which he flourished in the air. “I am sure you are all interested in the list of participants in the festival. By chance I have it with me.”

  “By chance,” said Bambas-Quincy, and joined in the general laughter at this. “What the devil, Felix, you know we’ve been waiting on tenterhooks to hear what the competition will be like. There are five this year, is that right?”

  “Four,” said the doctor. He referred to the list. “Juan Chicamayo, León Chicamayo—”

  “He made a damned good show last year,” said Ian Kipp. “The same one, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “Also Pablo Huanu Blanco and—” he paused significantly “—Miguel Tercero.”

  “Ah, that one has courage,” said Barruguete. “His grandfather and father died on the rope, and now he risks his own neck.”

  “A luckless family,” said the chinless Florian Fontanas-Todd with contempt. “I wouldn’t risk a penny on his chances.”

  “Courage makes good fortune,” said Barruguete. “Consider that, and forget primo and secundo. Tercero may fool you.”

  “But you have only four names,” Bambas-Quincy said to the doctor. “There were supposed to be five.”

  “That’s right,” said Jerome. “I thought we had someone from Port Buchanan to compete against the Indians this year.”

  “We have him no longer,” said the doctor. “No sooner did I grant him his Certificate of Participation than Father Bibieni approached him. Need I describe the veritable campaign of intimidation that followed?”

  “Hardly,” said Barruguete. He grimaced. “My friends, this is no longer funny. I tell you, that priest is obsessed with the idea that it is a sin to risk one’s life for a cause.”

  “Not that I disagree,” said Ian Kipp, “but you can’t really expect him to find an old heathen like Ajaxa much of a cause, can you?”

  “Perhaps the root of the problem lies even deeper,” remarked the doctor. “In my opinion, Father Bibieni’s obsession stems from a physical condition for which I have been treating him recently. It is a common condition, but none the less highly distressing. May I tell you in strictest confidence, gentlemen, that he is painfully costive. Consider the significance of this. Bowels which resist the strongest physic make one thoroughly wretched. He becomes embittered, antagonistic to the world. What follows? The bitterness becomes a philosophy. The patient sees it as good, and everything else as bad. It is as simple as that. A man suffers from congested bowels, and the whole world must suffer with him.”

  “And I say it is even simpler,” growled Bambas-Quincy. “This man is a tool of the infamous Party of the Resistance. It would not surprise me to find that he was in their pay. His loud sermons against them and the nadaistas are only to conceal his true role.”

  “It would take a long stretch of the imagination to believe that,” said Jerome. “He’s just another fanatic, that’s all.”

  “But with what a dreary fanaticism,” said Barruguete. “He equates a public display of valor with the suicide of a coward in a dark corner. To him this rare demonstration of male courage in a decadent world is tragic. He cannot comprehend that the only real tragedy is for a man to exercise his courage in private with no witness to appreciate it. There is a fate I would not wish my worst enemy.”

  “True enough,” said Kipp. “You take some of those fellows who like to be thrown in jail or shot for a so-called principle. They’d come off it soon enough if they knew no one would hear about it.”

  Ben thought back to Juliana Aguilar’s embittered speech. “But is there really a principle involved here?” he asked. “If so, why does a cash prize have to be offered?”

  Florian Fontanas-Todd shrugged scornfully. “Even Indians can become effete. It’s been a long time since any Axoyacs were moved to courage solely by the example of Ajaxa. Now it takes chicha and money to help them remember their ancestors.”

  “But never on the gallows,” protested the doctor. “You give the impression that a man may put his rope on the gallows in a state of intoxication. He would never dare. Do you know how long he would survive that way?”

  “As far as that goes,” said Ben, “how long can he survive even
when he’s in the best possible condition?”

  The doctor rested his elbows on the table and pressed his fingertips together. He was clearly in his element now. “How long can he survive? A delicate question. Most delicate. You see, I am not permitted to cut down a victim of the gallows for auscultation—that is, to sound for the heartbeat—for at least fifteen minutes after his body has ceased to move. It is a law of the ceremony that no one may approach the gallows until the contestant who fails to cut himself down is dead, and the period of fifteen minutes was long ago fixed upon as time enough to assure death. My examinations are, therefore, sometimes sub rosa, because in several cases of apparent death I have detected a distinct heartbeat. Weak, but distinct. Of course, one does not make this information public. The Indians want to believe that the man who fails on the gallows dies on them, and it would be folly to disillusion them. As much folly here, as I once explained to my old friend, Mr. Kipp, as it would be in England where hanging is the legal means of execution. The public there likes to believe that once the trap is sprung, death promptly ensues. That is hardly ever the case, but why concern the public with the matter? I believe the same would apply to certain states in your own country where hanging is still a legal practice.

  “But that’s a different form of hanging, isn’t it?” said Ben.

  “Yes, all your Anglo-Saxon hangings are, in reality, attempted neck breakings. A large knot is set at the proper angle to the jaw, and, under the weight of the falling body, is supposed to fracture the spinal column and rupture the spinal cord. But sometimes it does not work too well. Then you have a simple case of strangulation, or, as has happened more than once, decapitation. All that is far removed from what our own festival offers. The aim here is not to kill, but to challenge one to live. Surely the most intriguing aspect of the festival is the chance it gives a man to cut himself down.”

  “As we all may from whatever invisible rope we hang by,” said Barruguete. “There you have the powerful significance of the festival. Life is a series of cruel dilemmas which are the ropes that would hang us. Courage is the knife in our hands. To raise it while we are in the throes, to sever those murderous strands—that is the eternal drama of humanity.”

  The statue of Ajaxa in the throes loomed unpleasantly large before Ben. “But how long would it take before someone at the festival couldn’t raise the knife at all? Doesn’t shock disable him almost immediately?”

  “Yes, I understand what you mean,” said the doctor. “However, ‘almost immediately’ is a relative term. There are some who enter a state of shock in a few seconds. Others may resist it for almost half a minute. The record was established by the peerless Esteban de la Horca some forty years ago. He was suspended thirty-four seconds before he cut himself free and was declared champion of the festival. Unfortunately, he died within the week of the hypostatic pneumonia which occasionally attacks those who remain too long on the gallows.”

  “So even the winners can die at it,” said Ben.

  “Oh, yes. Or they may suffer such damage to the medullary center of the brain that they enter a permanent state of idiocy. Over the years I have attended several such cases. I hope I do not sound inhumane when I say that death has always seemed to me preferable to such a condition.”

  “The Axoyacs don’t think so,” Jerome commented. “As far as they’re concerned, those poor drooling hulks are living right up there with the gods. They take better care of them than they do of their own children.”

  Ben discreetly withheld his comment on that and helped himself to a stiff drink. He offered it as a silent toast to Luis de la Horca. Now he fully understood what the crowd at The Sun and Moon felt about that little man with the ropelike abrasions around his throat.

  “Who can comprehend the gods?” said Barruguete. “What a joke it will be on us if the Indians are right, and the rope is the only sure way of obtaining immortality. Consider Ajaxa. Would prayers be offered to him and statues raised in his honor if it were not for the rope?”

  “Ah yes, Ajaxa,” said the doctor. “You have seen the statue?” he asked Ben.

  “Yes.”

  “A most interesting study, is it not? But you must understand that in scientific terms it is quite inaccurate. One suspects that the sculptor intended to overwhelm the beholder rather than inform him. That is the great flaw in the artistic approach. When it concerns such a subject as this, I find it unforgivable.”

  “But please remember,” said Barruguete, “that Domingo Quetzan, the sculptor, was an Indian, a raw primitive, and a notoriously unstable man. I find it unforgivable to credit him with the artistic approach. He was an accident of nature, not an artist.”

  “Whatever he was,” said Ben, “that statue looks almost too real to suit me. How is it inaccurate?”

  “By its confusion of the stages of strangulation,” said the doctor. “And despite the opinions of my literary friend here, I do not believe that this was done out of Quetzan’s ignorance. I am convinced that he portrayed as simultaneous the most dramatic phases of three separate and distinct stages of strangulation with deliberate intent. But in doing that, he created a physical anomaly.”

  “How?” said Ben.

  “A good question. To answer it, permit me to define the three stages I referred to. First there is the stage of dyspnea. Carbon dioxide accumulates in the lungs, and in struggling to expel it the man breathes so violently that the straining of the diaphragm is clearly visible. Then comes a period of convulsions. At this point, vital brain centers are paralyzed by lack of oxygen. The body is racked by a succession of spasms. It now passes out of intelligent control. It becomes merely an organism blindly trying to maintain a last spark of life.”

  “The dance,” commented Florian Fontanas-Todd.

  “That is what it is called in the argot of the festival,” the doctor advised Ben. “Now, finally we reach the phase of apnea which assures total unconsciousness. It is during this phase that a strange phenomenon may occur. That is, an ejaculation of semen as if the man had attained full sexual excitation. Occasionally there may also be a discharge of feces and urine, but not very often. The act of ejaculation occurs in many more cases. Why do I call it strange? In medical terms after all, it is not surprising to find the sexual nervous system operating this way under stress. But to me there is something mystical in the way the last act of the dying organism is one which is the essence of life itself. It is as if this being, halfway in the grave, is still valiantly trying to perpetuate itself. I am not a religious man and I am hardly in sympathy with the grotesque religion of the Indians, but I can understand their awe of this weird physical manifestation of life in death.” He mused over it for a moment. “Well, now do you see my objections to the statue? Its stages are all mixed together illogically. The diaphragmatic strain, the convulsive attitude, the sexual phenomenon—all are evident at one and the same moment. Add to that fact that once a man has fully entered the second stage he cannot possibly raise the knife to the rope, and you have an image that is useless as anything but a work of art.”

  Jerome groaned loudly. “There speaks the true man of science.”

  “He does, indeed,” said Barruguete. “My dear doctor, to dismiss art so lightly—”

  “You have my apologies for that,” said the doctor stiffly. “Unfortunately, while some may depart from the festival to make statues and write books about it, others must remain to perform autopsies. Would you care to assist me at that function next week? It may provide inspiration for a whole series of books.”

  “Autopsies?” said Ben. “Wouldn’t the Indians object to that on religious grounds?”

  Everyone smiled at this, even the doctor and Barruguete who had been regarding each other with some coolness.

  “Such objections are easily overcome,” said the doctor. “After all, I am the one to determine whether a man receives his Certificate of Participation, and it is my policy to obtain from every contestant a document granting me the right to perform an autopsy in the event
of his death. If he refuses to sign the document—” the doctor put on a sad face “—what can I do but assume that he is trying to conceal some deep-seated physical weakness? It would be a betrayal of my medical oath to give anyone like this a certificate. I have very little trouble in that direction, I assure you.”

  “Damned if I know why we have to keep hammering away at these post-mortems,” said Ian Kipp with open distaste. “The festival’s a sporting event, isn’t it? It offers every man who puts his rope on the gallows a sporting chance. Let’s think about the winners for a change. Losers are always a sad lot, no matter what they lose at.”

  “You are right,” said Dr. Mola good-humoredly. “And if I may change the subject altogether, there is a question my wife has urged me to ask Mr. Smith. I dread to think of the consequences should I fail her. All women suffer from incurable curiosity. They can be quite dangerous in its advanced stages.”

  “A question about what?” Ben asked. He found it hard to believe that the remote and silent Mrs. Mola had even noticed his existence.

  “About that artist, Chapin. My dear wife saw you at lunch with him in the hotel this afternoon, and hoped, perhaps, that you knew his reasons for visiting Santo Stefano. He is a veritable man of mystery to the ladies. They will unearth his secret, or die in the attempt.”

  “Or,” gibed Bambas-Quincy, “have you do it for them.”

  “It’s easily unearthed,” said Ben. “He’s here because his agent seems to have some business here, and he and his wife came along for the ride. As for what the agent’s business is, I haven’t the least idea. I asked him about it, and he told me in plain language that it was none of my affair. Which, I suppose, it wasn’t.”

  “Mr. Max Klebenau is reputed to deal in art,” remarked Barruguete. “Some day when he and certain pre-Columbian treasures in our museum disappear together, his business will be made clear.”

  “No, he seems honest enough,” said Ben. “Highly secretive but reasonably honest. That’s the way it looks to me.”