Thing to Love (11 page)

“Yes. Very good. Very military. But perhaps — well — a little overwhelming,” Vidal murmured.

“You would prefer to let Avellana commit himself?”

“So long as you are confident, I would. It's not that I need evidence of guilt. I have enough already if I want to use it. Miro, you cannot understand this country as I do. You must remember San Vicente has a soul. It can go raving mad. It will chase a Fonsagrada through the streets and forget all about him two weeks later. But it will never forget or forgive a sudden show of such overwhelming military power as you propose. You and I, for all our lives, would be feared and distrusted. We must smother Avellana's revolution quickly, but we must not make it absolutely impossible.”

That was a subtle politician's point which no mere military appreciation would ever have considered at all. Again Miro found himself respecting his President. Clearly Gregorio Vidal had a lot more to him than the Managerial Society. He might even be easy to work with if he were compelled to be, in fact as well as name, commander in chief. But if he wanted to make a show of suppressing revolution easily and mercifully instead of brutally preventing it, there was going to be one difficult moment.

“You realize, Don Gregorio, that if I am not to station troops in the town until the Avellanistas have committed themselves, there will be at least ten minutes before I can surround them and regain control. During those ten minutes San Vicente and — if my suspicions are right — the Palace will belong to Avellana.”

“They will arrest me?”

“I am sure that is all. And so are you.”

“What shall I do?”

“My dear Don Gregorio,” said Miro, smiling, “there is no human situation which you cannot handle better than I. I should not dream of giving you advice. I know very well that your geniality and exquisite manners will prohibit any unpleasantness whatever. And while you are still showing your surprise and disillusionment, I shall arrive.”

“You will come yourself?”

“Of course. I am the garrison commander, and this is mutiny. I shall use a squadron of armored cars under Lieutenant Colonel Irigoyen. You know him, I believe. A steady, coolly daring officer who will go very far.”

“How are you to know? The Avellanistas will cut the wires, and anyway they will have the telephone exchange.”

“No difficulty at all. I will leave one transmitter in the hands of anyone you trust, and another under your desk which will send out a simple signal whenever you push the switch. Somehow Avellana seems to me the kind of man who forgets the advance of science.”

“He'd take us all back to the horse and cart if he could,” said Vidal bitterly. “And what the devil is wrong with skyscrapers and Coca-Cola anyway?”

That exasperated question was not at all easy to answer, Miro thought, as he returned to the Citadel. Yet it underlay the whole bitter political quarrel, this spiritual contest between chromium plate and the man in the saddle. You could uphold the right of the people, whatever the cost, to live as their contemporaries in richer countries. Or you could cut your imports, take over the land; risk the refusal of the United States to finance Socialist reform and create a self-sufficient, possibly contented Guayanas. And which was likeliest to bring a little security, a slightly higher standard of living to Juan's Indians in Los Venados and Morote's half-fed followers in the Barracas?

He felt that there was a symbol in this familiar road from San Vicente to the Citadel, by which he had promised that the armored
cars could reach the Palace in ten minutes. It certainly would not be good for them. But after all Felicia could reach the seafront in four and a half.

An untraditional road it was. The Avenida Gregorio Vidal had the blank desolation of modernity in the kindly subtropics. The escarpment of a smooth, heat-drenched headland, like a bronzed fist rammed down upon the table of the Pacific, was dominated and scarred by the seven purposeful kilometers. The rusty rock which had formed the surface of the headland was pimpled by pink, white-streaked boulders blasted out from the foundations. Cactus and brush thrust torn leaves through the scattered piles of gravel or died of their own contorted acrobatics among the drainpipes — for deep under the road ran the telephones, the power, the water and the petrol to serve the needs of twelve thousand men. In three or four years more the Avenida Gregorio Vidal would be a gracious ribbon of green and white decorating the hillside, its young trees refreshed whenever an orderly sergeant turned a cock in the Citadel. At the moment it was like a clean-picked skeleton carelessly bulldozed out of its grave.

From a distance only the palms of the Citadel were visible. The quarters and arsenals of Fifth Division were all of one story; the fortifications themselves showed only as low mounds of grass and rounded shapes of concrete. On the site had been a voluptuous hotel — which accounted for the palms and a swimming pool — built by Vidal's stockbroker as a wild speculation to attract foreign tourists. When the hotel failed, Miro could only agree that the site was exactly what he wanted. Its possibilities had been so delicately suggested that he could not even remember who had recommended it — a typical transaction of Vidalismo. But how much was paid and to whom was really no business of his. The position was formidable and the long, low hotel itself would do luxuriously well for Garrison Headquarters and the officers' messes.

The finished job had won the professional enthusiasm of even the foreign military attachés. Miro was congratulated on a fortress of really remarkable beauty, protecting the capital against any advance from the north and any attack from the sea. This, in
his eyes, had been of primary importance. Guayanas had no navy beyond the antique Spanish cruiser
Frente Unido
, and would not have had that if Captain Salinas, still to that day inevitably in command of her, had not taken refuge in San Vicente after an epic voyage from Spain in 1939.

Miro's uneasy preoccupation with politics and symbolism led him nowhere until he came to the plain white gate of the Citadel. Seeing it with the new eyes of anxiety, he realized how unlike it was to the architectural pageantry which Guayanas preferred. There should have been a monumental archway with an inscription celebrating the patriotism of President Vidal and a lurid quotation from — well, Juan's father on Independence Day, if not Juan himself, had no doubt said something suitable.

But
I
did this, he thought suddenly — and then at last was able to analyze the vague feeling of guilt which oppressed him. What he had made was a little section of that Czech frontier which his regiment had been forced to abandon, without fighting, in 1938.

Then was the Citadel honestly necessary? Had he been right? Or had he imitated an unsuitable standard of military efficiency just as Vidal was imitating the more flashy industrialism of the United States? Avellana would have used all this money for welfare, education and subsidies to the farmers. But that might well land him in an appalling unemployment problem. No, let these politicians live in their dreams. At least he, Miro, had created a reality, a thing of infinite value to the State however you looked at it — not the Citadel but Fifth Division.

His useful, satisfying life closed round him as soon as he entered his Headquarters. A busy morning of paper. An afternoon visit to the Cadet School — no siestas yet for them — and two inspections in the cool of the day. It was all routine, which could be carried out efficiently while forming a background for thought about the decisions he would have to take: pretended exercise, units to be employed, officers to be let into the secret. The most able were not always the most discreet.

When the day's work was over, he kept Salvador Irala with
him — or rather, as he gratefully recognized, Irala made no motion towards going.

“Salvador, what is your private opinion of revolution?” Miro asked, opening his personal built-in refrigerator which had belonged to the well-recompensed former proprietor of the hotel.

“A bore, my General.”

“Then why the devil do you put up with it, and what sort of government do you want?”

“Allow me — the ice should go in first. I want to be governed well and probably absolutely by a man I respect. I require him to pay lip-service to democracy, but so arrange the elections that he can remain in power as long as he believes he can serve. At the same time I reserve the right to throw him out when I get tired of him.”

“And are you tired of Vidal?”

“My General, when Vidal came to power I was tired of him already. And I was only eighteen. As I may have mentioned before, I am so made that to me all business tycoons are comic.”

“Would you say that attitude was common among the officers of Fifth Division?”

“We take nothing too seriously, my General.”

Then it was time they did, he thought. This casual virility was no different from that of a leaf-thatched lodge of naked warriors in the remote jungle. On the other hand it was healthily familiar, not faintly disconcerting like Feli's resentment of the Avellanistas which had grown impetuously for the last thirty-six hours. Her father's reading of her character could be right. She certainly had none of the tame submissiveness of a Pilar. She chose her side savagely, and was on the verge of calling Avellana a Communist. Well, thank God for her loyalty — and for the Division's! But, hell, theirs was disconcerting too! What on earth did he want?

“In fact, you expect me to do your thinking for you,” he snapped at Salvador.

“Sub-section 3 (
a
) dealing with the chain of command, my General, states that the commander in chief delegates his authority . . .”

“Suppose I suggested calling an officers' conference?”

“The result would be to split the Division neatly into two until we saw which side you proposed to take, yourself. Most of the other side would then come over to you.”

“But has the garrison no political opinions at all?”

“My General, when a moment ago you asked me somewhat regimentally . . .”

“I am sorry,” said Miro.

“It was very natural. When you asked me if you had to do our thinking for us, you underrated our devotion. A good Catholic, for example, may do a lot of thinking for himself. But he does not decide what he will believe. He decides how he will believe it. You have told us so often that the Army has no business in politics. We accept it. And so the side which General Kucera backs must be the right side.”

“General Kucera is at the orders of the legal government. He expresses no opinion.”

“Then that is all we need to know.”

“It's really enough?”

“If you don't think so, we will give our vivas for free elections.”

“It's no business of mine whether they are or not.”

“Very well! The government, right or wrong. No revolutions!”

“But I don't want to make a political stand at all.”

“You can't ask us to stand for nothing.”

“The propaganda is Vidal's business.”

“Then may I suggest that it should be clear? One cannot exchange shots shouting
Viva Coca-Cola!
One has to work up a reasonable anger.”

“What I want to avoid is reaching a point where one has to give vivas for anything at all,” said Miro. “The Division should be a machine, fast and silent. It hands back power to the government with the least possible disturbance, and returns to the Citadel.”

“The least possible disturbance . . .” Irala repeated thoughtfully. “That would mean plenty of work for the street cleaners, and nothing for the ambulances.”

“As I see it, there will be no extra work for street cleaners. The ambulances — well, it depends.”

“Is this discussion academic, my General? Or shall I get out
my typewriter and telephone Doña Felicia that you will not be home for dinner?”

“Neither, Salvador. For the moment I need only your genius for farce.”

Miro Kucera rapidly sketched for his A.D.C. Vidal's reading of the crisis, and his own intended action in support of the civil power. He was relieved to find that Irala, who had his ear to the ground and was a continually delighted connoisseur of rumor and scandal, was equally surprised that the Avellanistas were ready.

“Now, there's no difficulty in keeping a motorized battalion on the alert,” the general went on. “We're doing it all the time in brigade exercises and it won't arouse any suspicion. What's puzzling me is how to hold a squadron of armored cars for a whole week ready for action at five minutes' notice.”

“At La Joya, my General, did you tell Gil Avellana that you intended to support Vidal?”

“I told him that I should obey the orders of the legal government.”

“It astonishes me that they don't call the whole thing off after that.”

“Perhaps they will. But the President believes they will trust to speed and surprise. Obviously, I can't restore order if Vidal has vanished and people are dancing in the streets.”

“How about a competition for the Armored Car Regiment?” suggested Irala.

“What for?”

“Cars in the garage. Rations, ammo and blankets in store. Crews off duty but standing by. Squadron which can parade in full battle order in the shortest time wins a cup.”

“They'll try every damned sergeant major's trick. We'd get a squadron on parade, not fighting vehicles.”

“Not if I let it leak that you're going to pick cars at random, drive them across country to the range, and fire all guns. The competing squadron will bivouac for the night and go off duty after breakfast — say, seven-thirty, which is also zero hour for the next squadron. That gives us four days with a squadron ready for action at a moment's notice. But it won't look as if we meant
business, since we shall always have three squadrons either stripped down to the axles preparing for the competition or returning ammo and equipment to store. But is one squadron enough?”