The Honorary Consul (12 page)

       "He is not in town," Doctor Plarr said.

       "You have been to his office?"

       "No. I telephoned."

       He regretted immediately what he had said, for Colonel Perez was no fool. One ought never to volunteer information to a policeman. Doctor Plarr had watched more than once the cool and efficient way Perez went to work. On one occasion a man had been found stabbed on a raft of logs which had been floated down the Paraná from two thousand kilometers away. In Doctor Benevento's absence Doctor Plarr was summoned to a bend of the river near the airport where the logs were waiting for transshipment. At the bottom of a little slippery country path, where snakes rustled in the undergrowth, he reached a small wooden jetty—the so-called port for timber.

       A family had been living on the raft for a month. Doctor Plarr, stumbling across the logs behind Perez, admired the easy way in which the police officer balanced- he felt himself in constant danger of slipping when the logs sank underfoot and leaped up again. It must, he thought, be a little like standing on a horse as it cantered round a circus ring.

       "You spoke to his housekeeper?" Colonel Perez asked.

       Doctor Plarr was again annoyed at himself for his rash lies. He was Clara's doctor. Why had he not simply said that this was a routine medical visit to a pregnant wife? One He in the presence of a policeman seemed to multiply like bacilli. He said, "No. There was no answer."

       Colonel Perez considered his reply through a long silence.

       He remembered how rapidly and easily Perez had walked over the heaving trunks as though he were treading a firm city pavement. The logs covered half the width of the river. A group of people, diminished by distance, stood in the very center of the wide horizontal forest. Perez and he had to jump from one raft to another to reach them, and every time he jumped the doctor feared he would fall into the gap between the rafts, though the gap was usually less than a meter. His shoes became waterlogged as the trunks sank beneath his weight and rose again. "I warn you," Perez said, "it's not going to be very pretty. The family have been traveling on the raft for weeks with the body. It would have been much better if they had just pushed it into the water. We would never have known."

       "Why didn't they?" Doctor Plarr asked, with his arms stretched out as though he were walking a tightrope.

       "The murderer," Perez said, "wanted him to have a Christian burial."

       "He has admitted killing him then?" the doctor asked.

       "Oh, he admitted it to me," Perez replied. "You see—these are all my own people."

       When they reached the group—two men, a woman and a child with two officers—Doctor Plarr noticed that the police had not even bothered to take away the assassin's knife. He sat cross-legged beside the disagreeable corpse as though it were his job to guard it. He had an expression of sadness more than of guilt.

       Colonel Perez said, "I came to tell the Señora that her husband's car has been found in the Paraná not far from Posadas. There is no sign of a body, so we hope he may have escaped."

       "An accident? Of course you know—the Señora won't mind my saying it—Fortnum is rather a heavy drinker."

       "Yes. But there are other possibilities," Colonel Perez said.

       The doctor would have found it easier to play his part to the police officer or to Clara if he had been alone with either of them. He was afraid when he spoke that one or the other would detect something false in his tone. He asked, "What do you think may have happened?"

       "Any incident which occurs so close to the border may be political. We always have to remember that. You remember the doctor who was kidnapped in Posadas?"

       "Of course. But why on earth Fortnum? There's nothing political about him."

       "He is a Consul."

       "Only an Honorary Consul." Even the Chief of Police seemed unable to understand that distinction.

       Colonel Perez spoke to Clara, "We shall let you know, Señora, as soon as there is any news." He put his hand on the doctor's elbow. "There is something I would like to ask you, doctor." The colonel led Doctor Plarr across the verandah, where the dumbwaiter with its Long John glasses seemed to emphasize the remarkable absence of Charley Fortnum (he would certainly have invited them to take "a spot" before they left), and on into the deep shade of the avocado trees. He picked up one of the fallen fruit, examined it for ripeness with an expert's eye and put it in the back of the police car, laying it down carefully where the sun wouldn't strike. "A beauty," he said. "I like to eat them mashed in a little whisky."

       "What is it you want?" the doctor asked.

       "There is one thing which worries me a little."

       "You don't really believe that Fortnum has been kidnapped?"

       "It is one of the possibilities. It has even occurred to me that he might have been the victim of a silly mistake. He was with the American Ambassador, you see, in the ruins. The Ambassador obviously would be a more likely target. If that is the case the men must be strangers—perhaps from Paraguay. You and I would never make a mistake like that, doctor. I only say 'you' because you are nearly one of us. Of course there is always the possibility you might be indirectly concerned."

       "I'm not quite the kidnapping type, colonel."

       "I was thinking about your father across the border. You told me once that he was either dead or in prison. You might have a motive. Forgive the way I think aloud, doctor, but I always feel a little at sea when it comes to political crime. In politics crime is often the occupation of a 'caballero'. I am more used to crimes which are committed by criminals—or at least by violent or poor men. For money or lust."

       "Or 'machismo'," the doctor said, venturing to tease him.

       "Oh, everything here is 'machismo'," Perez said, and he smiled at the doctor's remark in so friendly a way that Plarr felt a little reassured. "Here 'machismo' is only another word for living. A word for the air we breathe. When there is no 'machismo' a man is dead. Are you coming back to the city, doctor?"

       "No. Now that I am here I may as well take a look at Señora Fortnum. She is expecting a baby."

       "Yes. She told me that." The Chief of Police had his hand on the door of the car, but at the last moment he turned and said in a low voice as though they were sharing a friendly confidence, "Doctor, why did you tell me you rang up the Consul's office and that there was no reply? I have had a man stationed there all the morning in case a call came."

       "You know what the telephone service is like in this city."

       "When a telephone is out of order one usually hears an engaged tone, not a ringing tone."

       "Not always, colonel. Anyway it may have been the ringing tone. I did not listen very carefully."

       "And yet you came all the way out to the camp?"

       "It was about time anyway that I visited Señora Fortnum. Why should I lie to you?"

       "I have to think of all the possibilities, doctor. Even a crime of passion is possible."

       "Passion?" the doctor smiled. "I am an Englishman."

       "Yes, it is unlikely—I know that. And in the case of Señora Fortnum... one would not suppose a man like you with all your chances would find it necessary... yet I have known crimes of passion even in a brothel."

       "Charley Fortnum is a friend of mine."

       "Oh, a friend... It is usually a friend one betrays, isn't it, in these cases?" Colonel Perez put a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "You must forgive me. I know you well enough, doctor, to allow myself a little speculation when I feel myself at a loss. As I do now. I have heard it said your relations with Señora Fortnum have been very close. All the same—I agree—I would not have thought they would require the elimination of her husband. And yet I still keep wondering why you lied to me."

       He climbed into the car. His revolver holster creaked as he eased-himself down in his seat. He leaned back to make sure that the avocado was not in a position where it would bounce and bruise.

       Doctor Plarr said, "I was not thinking, colonel, when I spoke, that was all. Lying to the police is almost an automatic reflex. And I was unaware you knew so much about me."

       "This is a small city," Colonel Perez said. "It is always safer to assume common knowledge when you sleep with a married woman."

       Doctor Plarr watched the police car out of sight and then went reluctantly back into the house. Secrecy, he thought, is part of the attraction in a sexual affair. An open affair has always a touch of absurdity.

       Clara sat exactly where he had left her. He thought: this is the first time we have been together with no sense of hurry, no rendezvous for her to keep at the Consulate, no fear that Charley will return accidentally from farming. She asked, "Do you think he is dead?"

       "No."

       "Perhaps it would be good for everybody if he were."

       "Not for Charley."

       "Yes. Even for Charley. He is so afraid," she said, "of getting old."

       "All the same I don't suppose he wants to die just yet."

       "The baby was kicking hard this morning."

       "Yes?"

       "Do you want to go to the bedroom?"

       "Of course." He waited for her to get up and lead the way.

       They never kissed on the mouth (that was part of the brothel training), and he followed her with a slow renewal of excitement. In a real love affair, he thought, you are interested in a woman because she is someone distinct from yourself; then bit by bit she adapts herself to you, she picks up your habits, your ideas, even your turns of phrase, she becomes part of you, and then what interest remains? One cannot love oneself, one cannot live for long close to oneself—everyone has need of a stranger in the bed, and a whore remains a stranger. Her body has been scrawled over by so many men you can never decipher your own signature there.

       When they were quiet and her head was lying against his shoulder in the same attitude taken by a peaceful lover, she began a sentence which he mistook for one he had too often heard, "Eduardo, is it true? Do you really...?"

       "No," he said firmly.

       He thought she was demanding the same answer to a banal question that his mother had constantly forced out of him after they left his father, the answer which each of his mistresses sooner or later had always Insisted on—"Do you really love me, Eduardo?" One merit of a brothel is that the word love is seldom if ever employed. He repeated, "No."

       "How can you be sure?" she asked. "Just now you sounded so certain he was alive, but even that policeman thinks he is dead."

       Doctor Plarr realized he had been mistaken and in his relief he kissed her close to the mouth.

       The news came over the radio from the local station while they were at lunch. It was the first meal they had ever taken together, and they were both of them ill at ease. Eating food side by side seemed more intimate to Doctor Plarr than the sexual act: The maid served them and disappeared between each course into the vast untidy regions of the ramshackle house, regions which he had never penetrated. First she served them an omelette, then an excellent steak which was far better than the goulash at the Italian Club or the tough beef at the Nacional. There was a bottle of Charley's Chilean wine which had more body than the cooperative wine from Mendoza. It was odd eating so formally and so well with one of Señora Sanchez' girls. It opened an unexpected vista into quite another sort of life, a domestic life equally strange to both of them. It was as though he had taken a boat down one of the small tributaries of the Paraná and suddenly found himself in some great delta like that of the Amazon, where all sense of direction can be lost. He felt an unaccustomed tenderness toward Clara who had made this strange voyage possible. They picked their words carefully, it was the first time there were words to pick; they had a subject of conversation—Charley Fortnum's disappearance.

       Doctor Plarr began to speak of him as though he were, after all, certainly dead—it seemed to him safer that way, for otherwise she might begin to wonder what was the source of his hope. Only when Clara spoke of the future did he change his tack in order to evade a dubious topic. Charley, he assured her, might yet prove to be alive. To navigate in this new Amazonian waste of deeps and shoals proved difficult—it made for a confusion of tenses. "It's quite possible he escaped from the car, and then if he was exhausted he might have been carried a long way by the current... He may have landed far from any village..."

       "But why was his car in the river there?" She added with regret, "It was the new Cadillac. He was going to sell it next week in Buenos Aires."

       "Perhaps he had some errand in Posadas. He was a man who might well..."

       "Oh no, I know he was not going to Posadas. He was coming to see me. He did not want to go to those ruins. He did not even want to go to the Governor's dinner. He was anxious about me and the baby."

       "Why? He had no reason. You are a strong girl, Clara."

       "I pretended sometimes to be sick so he would ask you to come and see me. It was easier for you that way."

       "What a little bitch you are," he exclaimed with pleasure.

       "And he took my best sunglasses, the ones you gave me. I shall never see them again now. They were my favorite sunglasses. They were so smart. And they came from Mar del Plata."

       "I will go to Gruber's tomorrow," he said, "and get you another pair."

       "It was the only one they had."

       "They can order another pair."

       "He borrowed them once before and nearly broke them."

       "He must have looked a bit odd in them," Doctor Plarr said.

       "He never cares what he looks like. And he saw very badly when he had been drinking." The tenses, present and past, swung to and fro like the arrow of a barometer moving irregularly between settled and unsettled weather.