The Panama Portrait

by Stanley Ellin

“A study of the fisheries industry,” said Ben drily. “With emphasis on the annual catch of nonpolitical rock lobsters.”

  “I’d like to see anything nonpolitical below the Rio Grande. As for Juliana’s possible connection with those guerillas—mind you, I said possible—the best thing is to put it out of your head. Forget about it for Nora’s sake. All she needs now is to have the police move in on Juliana.”

  “Even though a woman is still in a state of shock after being threatened with rape and murder on the highway?”

  “Since it was no worse than a threat, she’ll soon recover. I would say that Nora’s welfare is the first consideration.”

  “Maybe to you, Klebenau, not to me. You see, I expect to marry the woman.”

  “Marry her? Bambas-Quincy’s daughter?”

  “According to the signs and portents, yes.”

  “But how long have you known each other? You’ve hardly had time to shake hands.”

  “That’s my affair, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course, it is. Well, I suppose congratulations are in order. Still, I beg you not to make an issue of that business last night. It would affect Nora, it would affect my chances of finding the Gauguin, it might even affect David. Will you let it go at that?”

  “For the time being. Not that I see what it has to do with Chapin.”

  “Oh, don’t be obtuse. Those people up there in that house detest him. You happen to be very much persona grata here. Do you think they’d invite you to commit suicide tomorrow and sit there gloating while you did it?”

  “Chapin wasn’t invited to do anything, Klebenau. And if anyone’s responsible for what may happen to him tomorrow, it’s you. They wanted him out of the country. You’re the one who kept him here.”

  Klebenau recoiled. He started to raise a hand in protest and then let it fall. “I know that,” he said piteously. “Don’t you think I know that? That’s why you’ve got to help me, Smith. These people like you. When you came into that room, Bambas-Quincy did everything but kiss you. And you’re marrying his daughter, which makes you one of the family. He’ll listen to you, Smith. Tell him whatever you want, but get him to keep David away from that murderous festival.”

  Anger and guilt rose together in Ben, feeding each other. “Do you know what you’re asking? Do you know what it could mean to me if I interfere?”

  “Smith, a man’s life is at stake.”

  “Only because he wants it to be. I might see it your way if the conditions were different, Klebenau, but they’re not.”

  It was cool under the trees, but Klebenau’s haggard face and shining bald head were dripping with sweat. “Then do me one small favor. Just one. I’ve got the car here. Drive with me to Chicamayo and get a taste of what you’re going to see tomorrow. I won’t say anything more after that. I’ll leave it entirely up to you.”

  For all his resolution, Ben found himself rapidly weakening under this assault. It was not what Klebenau had to say that moved him, he knew; it was the way it was said. It was a demonstration of abject humility. Up to now the man had always set his teeth on edge with his expansive manner, his florid air of self-assurance. Now all he saw before him was a panicky, conscience-ridden figure of despair. It might have been an edifying sight, this process of deflation, if the reasons for it were not quite so grim.

  There was really nothing to keep him from going with Klebenau to the village, he decided. At the table after breakfast Dr. Mola had explained that Elissa was under heavy sedation and would sleep most of the day away. “And,” the doctor had added reassuringly, “there is no need for concern, my dear friend. I have attended her from birth, and while she has an extremely delicate nervous system, she has a sound constitution. When she awakes she should have largely recovered from her experience.”

  So there was certainly time enough to pay Chapin a visit. If nothing else, Ben told himself, it would be an act of grace to soothe his own conscience. Beyond that he was determined to stay clear of the whole affair. He would take a leaf from Guzman’s book. Klebenau would get his sympathy and no more.

  He entered the car, not overly concerned with being seen in Klebenau’s company by some card-playing guests in the patio nearby. The regard he was now held in by the Bambas-Quincys granted him that much freedom at least. Beside him, Klebenau took a parting look at the fortresslike dimensions of the house and the sweeping expanse of grounds around it. “Well,” he said heavily, “it looks as if you’ve done all right for yourself,” and Ben, piqued by the implications of the remark but aware that it was no more than the happy truth, let it pass unanswered.

  From a distance, Chicamayo had suggested a toy village. Close up, it was simply another demonstration of man’s endless ability to foul his nest. Mud-colored huts lining narrow lanes. Piles of refuse in which scrawny pigs hungrily grunted and rooted. Dust so thick in the air as to obscure the sunlight. Flies swarming and crawling everywhere. And around this brown scar on the broad green plain a wide perimeter of parked cars and buses, smoldering camp fires, tents and makeshift shelters, temporary homes for those who had come from a distance to witness the ceremonies. The far edge of the perimeter was evidently regarded as a race track by a horde of black-jacketed motorcyclists, and it racketed with the continual nerve-racking whine and roar of hard-driven machines.

  In the village, every alley was a marketplace. Venders squatted shoulder to shoulder under tattered canopies, their wares laid out on the ground. Fruit, gangrenous-looking cuts of meat, frijoles, beer, chicha sold by the gourdful, ice cream, sweets, and, of course, souvenirs, among them the inevitable plastic noose, were all there to be joyously haggled over by tightly packed crowds who made the way almost impassable. And, Ben saw, those who were not intent on shopping seemed to have settled on Luis de la Horca’s hut as the main attraction of the place. He and Klebenau had to battle their-way like football players through the mob of worshipful sightseers blocking the door. It was The Sun and Moon all over again.

  Luis’ hut was to the others around it as the Bambas-Quincy estate was to the other homes around the lake. Most of its glories, however, belonged to the past. Its thatched roof sagged, its mud walls were cracked and scabrous, and beside it lay the rusted remains of a once elegant car that had been picked clean.

  There were two rooms in the hut, separated by a curtained doorway, and the room Ben entered looked as if the gaudiest contents of a whole department store had been dumped on the dirt floor and left to rot. Heavy overstuffed furniture in the final stages of disrepair; a refrigerator, useless since the village had no current to run it, its door sagging open on broken hinges; ornate electric lamps, also useless; at least half a dozen clocks of every size and shape; glazed statuary of pretty French shepherds and shepherdesses simpering at each other; the battered remains of a mechanical train set; every conceivable gimcrack was there on display like the contents of a junk shop. Ben had always been a little nettled by Victor Bambas-Quincy’s contemptuous use of the word aborigine when referring to the Axoyacs. Now he found himself almost in sympathy with the man. The one object that did not look grotesque in that room was the well-worn metate, the grinding stone used for making corn meal, which stood beside the fireplace. Everything else in sight was as worthless and misplaced as the wreckage of the car outside.

  Tito Aguilar came through the curtained doorway with an angry expression on his face. When he saw who it was, the anger faded. “Those idiots in the street,” he told Ben apologetically. “They think that because this is Luis’ house they can walk in without invitation. Impossible people. An hour ago the Civil Guard tried to drive them away but it was useless.” He turned to Klebenau. “Did you speak to Guzman? Does he intend to take action?”

  “Yes,” said Klebenau sourly, “I spoke to him. No, he does not intend to take action. Before he opened his mouth he made sure to know which way the wind was blowing so that he could blow with it. That’s why Bambas-Quincy wanted the meeting at his place. So he could be positive his bureaucratic, murdering littl
e friend wouldn’t show signs of weakening.”

  “Then what remains to be done?”

  “Only one thing. I’d like Smith here to get a picture of what’s going to happen tomorrow. It may move him to use some persuasion on Bambas-Quincy. From what I saw and heard this morning, the great man has an extraordinarily high regard for him.”

  “Whether he does or doesn’t,” said Ben, “I’ve made it plain that I’m not getting mixed up in this business. It’s not my business, or, for that matter, Bambas-Quincy’s. Chapin hasn’t been dragged into this kicking and screaming, damn it. He walked in with his eyes open, and any time he wants to, he can walk right out again. He’s the one who needs persuading.”

  “But you agree with Max that he was wrong to enter the festival?” said Tito.

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know.” Tito shook his head disconsolately. “One minute I think one thing, the next minute another. Do you know what I mean? One minute I think with horror: but this could be the end of a great artist, a pure spirit, and what a barbarous end. How cruel and futile it will be, and to what purpose? The next minute I think: but surely he will survive—he is being instructed now in how to survive—and then his experience may prove that Luis is right!”

  “About what?”

  “The rope. The release of the body to the rope. It is a mystical experience, Luis says. When he describes it, you almost feel you are enduring it yourself. First the sound of your heartbeat growing steadily louder like a drum, until you are a drum being struck by a mighty fist. Then a vision of flames which become strange images beckoning to you, calling your soul from your body. And finally your soul leaves your body and rises higher and higher to where the gods are waiting and where creation begins with a little clay in the hand of a god. You are before the gods, Luis says, you are there as an equal, and one of them holds out clay in his hand so that you may take it and join him in the act of creation which is the work of the gods, and another holds out a knife if you wish to return to the little world you came from. So you seize the knife and that is all.”

  “Why the knife?” asked Ben, interested despite himself.

  “Because something within you makes you choose it. Some force you cannot resist.”

  “Which, along with everything else in that so-called vision,” said Klebenau wearily, “are the natural human reactions to strangulation.”

  “Perhaps,” said Tito. “I wish I could be as sure about it as you, Max.”

  “You could be, if you wanted to be rational about it.”

  “Scientists are rational. I am a poet, not a scientist. That means that I am never duped into believing that being rational means knowing the truth. At a time when your rational scientists were explaining that the earth was flat and that the sun circled it, poets and artists were creating eternal truths.

  “Not that I will deny it is a little better today. Now, when scientists explain the mechanical laws of the universe, I think they are telling the truth. But is the truth about water simply a chemical formula? Where is the scientist to explain who made the universal laws? And why were they made? And what does the almighty lawmaker want from us? What does he want from me? Can anyone answer that rationally? Yet, there must be an answer.”

  “Why?” demanded Klebenau. “Can a blob of paint on one of David’s canvases comprehend the force that put it there?”

  “What an invidious comparison. We are animate, intelligent. A blob of paint is not.”

  “We’re intelligent enough to know that we’re part of a canvas. Beyond that, nothing. We were never intended to know more.”

  “Ah, you say intended. So you admit that the universe may have a purpose, a grand design.”

  “In the same way as David’s painting. But ask him why this design, why this line here and color there, and he, the creator himself, can’t tell you. It felt right. It was necessary. Press him harder and he’ll talk about spatial values, about conflicting lines, about advancing and receding colors, but all that is the rationalization of the completed work. The process of creation itself remains as much a mystery to him as to anyone. It’s a compulsion, a blind force beyond intellect. So is the process of creation behind the universe, and no miracle preached by a drunken Indian is going to change that.”

  Klebenau turned to Ben. “That’s what I want you to see, Smith, how the miracle is worked here. If it unsettles your stomach a little, all the better. It’ll mean that you still aren’t completely at home with the Santo Stefano way of life.”

  The room on the other side of the doorway was a windowless cell, bare of furniture, poorly lit by wicks floating in clay dishes of oil. Against one wall were huddled some Indians—from the look of them, the elders of the tribe—with their eyes fixed unblinkingly on Chapin and Luis and a young assistant who were preparing to practise an exercise. The center of the opposite wall was adorned by a large, garishly colored photograph of the statue of Ajaxa, and on either side of it hung a wooden plaque on which was mounted the noose of a rope and a thin-bladed knife. The effect, as a whole, was that of altar and trophy room combined.

  “This room is the cofradía,” Tito explained to Ben in an undertone. “It is very sacred. The Indians who belong to the church place the saint of the village on the wall, but most, like Luis, worship Ajaxa. Those who enter the festival dedicate the rope and knife to him. They are never used again. Now watch. David is being shown how to draw the knife and cut the rope. It must be done properly. If the first stroke misses, there is no second chance.”

  Chapin was undergoing a hard schooling. A noose was already fixed around his throat, and Ben observed that there was no hangman’s knot in it but a smooth joining of the ends as if they had been woven together. A short length of rope dangled from the noose, and to it Luis tied a length of fresh line that lay coiled on the floor. The line was then worked through a pulley that hung suspended from a beam overhead. Chapin took a position at attention beneath the pulley, and Luis and his assistant took a grip on the rope preparatory to hauling their pupil aloft. As he stood there, Chapin’s hand started to wander toward the hilt of the knife thrust into his belt, and Luis struck the offending hand away.

  The silence that ensued hummed in Ben’s ears. Then suddenly Luis barked a command, and he and the assistant bore down on their end of the rope. Chapin’s body seemed to elongate. His mouth gaped, his face contorted. His body now rose perceptibly, and the instant his toes were clear of the ground he swept the knife from his belt and swung it in an arc overhead, slashing the rope as if it were packthread. So furious was the sweeping stroke that it sent him staggering back against the wall where he slumped on hands and knees gasping for breath.

  “Otra vez,” Luis said sharply, “otra vez,” and roughly hauled his pupil into an upright position. As Chapin stood there swaying drunkenly, the assistant was already knotting a fresh length of rope to the severed end of the noose.

  The room was stifling hot, reeking of oil fumes. If he remained there another minute, Ben knew, he’d be in worse shape than Chapin, and without benefit of hanging. He lurched through the curtained doorway, Klebenau behind him, and breathed gratefully of the fresh air outside the cofradía.

  “Well?” said Klebenau.

  “Well what? What do you want me to say, Klebenau? That it’s enough to turn anybody’s stomach? All right, it is. It always is when a man makes an obscene spectacle of himself. I’d feel the same way watching a penitente skinning himself with a whip. That doesn’t mean I’m obligated to stop him from doing it.”

  “Smith, this isn’t a case of drawing blood with a whip. This is life or death.”

  “Well, he didn’t do badly at it, did he? If he doesn’t do any worse tomorrow, all he’ll have to worry about is a sore throat.”

  “You can’t mean that.” Klebenau pointed a finger at the unseen crowd clamoring around the house. “My God, you sound like one of them!”

  Tito appeared through the doorway. “Luis is much concerned,” he said
gloomily. “He feels David draws the knife too quickly. It seems that one cannot comprehend the true meaning of the rope unless he releases himself to it for at least a little while. Yet, when David restrains himself from drawing the knife at once he becomes very clumsy. Several times he has failed to grasp it at all. Other times he has struck the rope with the flat of the blade. Who can blame him? The Indians who enter the festival work a whole year in preparation for it. They practice handling the knife continually. They exercise their bodies by running fifteen or twenty miles over these mountains every day. How well can a man prepare himself in a few hours?”

  Ben saw that Klebenau was regarding him intently. If there were accusation or malice in those eyes, it would have been easy to turn away from them. But no. Klebenau knew when the case had been swung in his favor. He knew all he had to do to win it was look like a lost dog pleading for kindness.

  “All right,” Ben told him angrily, “I’ll talk to Bambas-Quincy. It won’t do any good, but I’ll talk to him about it. I’ll tell him Chapin is mentally deranged, he doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for. That’s pretty near the truth, isn’t it?”

  “That he is deranged?” said Tito. “No, no, he well knows what he is doing.”

  “I doubt it. Anyhow, whether he does or he doesn’t, a plea of insanity might impress Bambas-Quincy and his friends. I can’t imagine anything else would.”

  “But it discredits David,” Tito protested. “It plays into the hands of these people. They are not stupid. It would be a triumph for them to publicize that an artist like David is insane. It would justify their way of life and make all others meaningless.” He placed a conciliatory hand on Klebenau’s arm. “Why do you look at me that way, Max? There is a great principle involved here. Whenever we talked about it before, you always agreed that the artist must be upheld at all costs.”

  “Not at the cost of his life.”

  “But what would life mean to David if he is stripped of his dignity and honor? If he is made to appear a madman before the world?”