Thing to Love

By Geoffrey Household

As the republic of Guayanas teeters on the brink of civil war, the revolution depends on one man

When Miro Kucera arrived in Guayanas, the glorious army of the republic was little more than an expensively costumed joke. Born in Czechoslovakia, Kucera learned to fight under the tutelage of the Free French, and it took him less than a decade to make the Guayanan army the envy of Latin America. As President Vidal modernized the country, Kucera’s forces backed him up. But though they pledged allegiance to the president, their loyalty was to Kucera alone.
 
After years in power, Vidal finds that his hold on the country is slipping. An army of reformers is gathering in the shadows, and a coup is coming fast. When the rebellion begins, Kucera’s army will be the deciding factor. But after years preparing for war, will this leader be ready to fight a revolution?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504006712

Geoffrey Household

Geoffrey Household (1900–1988) was born in England. In 1922 he earned a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from the University of Oxford. After graduation, he worked at a bank in Romania before moving to Spain in 1926 and selling bananas as a marketing manager for the United Fruit Company. In 1929 Household moved to the United States, where he wrote children’s encyclopedia content and children’s radio plays for CBS. From 1933 to 1939, he traveled internationally as a printer’s-ink sales rep. During World War II, he served as an intelligence officer for the British army, with posts in Romania, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, and Persia. After the war, he returned to England and wrote full time until his death. He married twice, the second time in 1942 to Ilona Zsoldos-Gutmán, with whom he had three children, a son and two daughters. Household began writing in the 1920s and sold his first story to the Atlantic Monthly in 1936. His first novel, The Terror of Villadonga, was published during the same year. His first short story collection, The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories, appeared in 1938. Altogether, Household wrote twenty-eight novels, including four for young adults; seven short story collections; and a volume of autobiography, Against the Wind (1958). Most of his novels are thrillers, and he is best known for Rogue Male (1939), which was filmed as Man Hunt in 1941 and as a TV movie under the novel’s original title in 1976.

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CHAPTER I

[October 12]

FROM THE SENTINEL’S WALK above the western wing of the President’s Palace the reveille floated into the empty avenues and silent port of San Vicente. The fifths of the lone cavalry trumpet were sweet and unsubstantial, a fountain tinkling through the stone balconies and colonnades, until the call ended in two high and melancholy wails — militant as Roman tubas sounding over Spain, barbaric as a salute to the sun, while blood from the torn heart, audible in the still air, dripped from a priest’s bared elbows to the altar.

The archangel who had so worthily announced to the Pacific the coming of day unscrewed the mouthpiece of his trumpet and shook a compact gob over the parapet onto the terrace below, leaning through an embrasure to watch it fall. It was a rite of private superstition. If the gob reached the fourth row of flagstones, the new day presented itself well; if the fifth, it was to be a superlative day; if ever it should fairly reach the sixth — spray did not count — it would mean a new and glorious girl, or perhaps, more dully, promotion.

That morning it reached only the third. Trumpeter Corporal Pepe Menendez cursed his luck and endeavored to improve the omen by spitting heartily over the rampart. This unjustifiable attempt to coerce the gods landed, caught by a first puff of breeze, at the foot of the staff while his country’s flag was being hoisted. The eyes of the officer of the day, though professionally blank, were still able to distinguish circumstance from pomp. As he stood at the salute, an imperceptible wrinkling of his forehead lifted the cap peak high enough to see the red horsehair of the trumpeter’s helmet vanishing behind the parapet.

Pepe Menendez stood to attention upon his lonely height, hoping that the accident would be ascribed to a passing bird. He wondered whether or not to imitate the scream of a gull — having disputed with them the refuse of the foreshore, he could whistle their anger well enough to deceive anyone — but decided to leave ill alone. He took a melancholy pleasure in seeing the omen of the flagstones proved very possibly correct. At least he had not been practicing an empty rite.

Except for his comrades of the Presidential Guard, few were awake in San Vicente to hear the ethereal expertise of Trumpeter Corporal Menendez. A three-quarter sun, now visible above a dark steel line which might be cloud or the foothills of the distant Cordillera, struck at the blank modern avenues. Their eccentricities of cubes and octahedrons, lacking any stir of population, seemed to be without human object — mere abstract blocks designed by architects for the teaching of other architects. The scatter of pedestrians was going home from night shifts in the factories, not setting out for the day. The white ribbon of the quays between low warehouses and the high, black sides of silent ships were empty of all but the cloaked figures of police and customs officers. Outside the fashionable cafés quick shadows stooped along the tables and terraces, looking for bread, cigarette butts and the debris of delectable mollusks before the brooms of aproned waiters extinguished hope.

Separated from the uneasy feet of the trumpeter by the painted ceiling of his bedroom, Gregorio Vidal lay comfortably awake. It was the only period of the day when his agile brain could wander at ease and — if he wished — irresponsibly. He would have liked to extend it by shaving himself; but convention obliged the President of the Republic to be shaved by a valet. That meant conversation. Vidal was utterly unable to ignore the presence of another human being. This genial characteristic was his greatest strength as a politician, and created a heart for Vidalismo.

Vidalismo. To have a political philosophy called by one’s name, as Stalinism or Gaullism — that was a far cry from the student of economics, thirty years younger, for whom Socialism was going to change the face of the world. Well, it had. Who was it said we are all Socialists now? But what really was the content of Vidalismo? It was hard to see a creed — or a creed that anyone was likely to die for — in a mere administrative effort to reach a North American standard of affluence and industry without going bankrupt in the process.

He didn’t much like all that he was doing to his country, for he and his generation had been brought up in a kindlier San Vicente with a beauty of low horizontal lines enclosing plazas and avenues between which ran narrow streets fronted by white and yellow walls eternally crumbling in the sun and pierced by the black archways of courtyard, passage and warehouse. His modernization of industry and the capital, his necessary but unwelcome steel and concrete, were lumped together by his opponents under the name of the Coca-Cola Culture, loosely suggesting that Vidalismo had neither the sweet clarity of water nor the human mystery of wine. But they could say what they liked. He was determined.

Power? Did it corrupt? He did not think so. He, lying there in bed, was the same man who had so unexpectedly become Finance Minister after the revolution of 1950, whom the Chamber had appointed President in 1952, who had been elected and reelected by the people in 1955 and 1959. The exercise of power left one, as it were, no time for power, at any rate in the form of deliberate, conscious leadership. Prisons, police, censorship — very little of all that had been necessary. He had used the carrot rather than the stick. It was the democratic way, in fact the only way, to get things done in a country where effort, prolonged and precise, was uncongenial to the majority. Carrots were essential. The real difficulty was the shortage of men with the ability to collect them. It was unfair to describe Vidalismo as a club for contractors. Vidalismo sought out and rewarded energy. Vidalismo was the Managerial Society.

The inspiration was so invigorating that Gregorio Vidal sat up and rang the bell to begin his day. He was of course perfectly familiar with the term and its meaning, but it had never before occurred to him that policies which he had believed to be empirical fell so exactly into an up-to-date definition. He had no intention of changing his admirable trade-mark of Vidalismo, but it was highly satisfactory to have an established standard against which to measure it. The Managerial Society relieved him of some lonely doubts, as Concha Vidal could not. The Presidenta was most able, but she had no regard for general principles. His personnel manager, one might call her. He wondered what she would say if he did. The vigor of her language could be embarrassing.

This pleasant sense of being, after all, in good economic company remained throughout the Presidential toilet and breakfast with Concha. It even continued through a short Cabinet meeting, and added a genial sense of confidence to his interview with Major General Kucera. Vidal respected the commander of the San Vicente garrison, but uneasily. The reactions of soldiers who were too professional could be as disconcerting as those of trained accountants.

Physical difference, too, had something to do with it. Gregorio Vidal was small and distinguished, with a delicately pointed beard. He was aware of and cultivated his resemblance to the Spanish viceroys whose portraits — white hands, white faces upon black velvet — patterned the cool dusk of his office. Major General Kucera, on the other hand, was big and shapeless, though one had to grant him the muscular grace of a well-fed puma. In the presence of such calm and solidity, Vidalismo had often seemed a little too agile. The Managerial Society, however . . . Well, its confident business was to manage.

The soldier who filled the high-backed chair opposite his desk had such an air, such a Northern air, of being about to misunderstand the subtleties of government that Vidal found some little difficulty in coming to the point. Yet there Kucera waited, answering one meaningless courtesy with another and apparently able and willing to do so indefinitely. He was as improbable as a heavyweight boxer who has learned to fence.

We have not seen much of you in society recently, the President said. Very busy?

Just internal organization, Kucera answered lightly.

Any special reason?

No. We are breaking down the Brigade Group into smaller Combat Groups. It’s a possible solution of our communications problem. The better the division, the less likely I am to be able to supply it.

I see. Internal organization. Yes. Entirely within your province, my dear General. But when you used the phrase I thought you might be concerned with — well, morale.

Not in the least.

The general shook his head. There was a slight, pleasant smile in the corners of his massive mouth. It emphasized the sincerity of his answer, given without overconfidence or any suggestion of criticism.

There is, you know, some unrest, said Vidal casually.

Among the civilian population, yes.

Your officers?

You can’t expect your officers to belong to one party only, Don Gregorio.

The President doubtfully supposed not. He had intended Fifth Division to be out of politics and devoted to the service of the State whatever party was in power. Since he himself was in power that should have meant absolute loyalty to him. But it hadn’t quite worked out like that. The Division’s loyalty was to Kucera.

Twenty years earlier the Army of Guayanas had suggested, according to its employment, the male chorus of a cheaply produced musical comedy or a trigger-happy band of escaped convicts. Nothing on earth would have induced Vidal then to admit it, for the Glorious Army was a matter of faith, not of reason. But he well remembered the arrival of Vladimir Kucera in 1945 — a young Czech officer trained by a highly scientific army which had never had a chance to fight, blooded as a volunteer trooper in France, later commanding his Free French squadron of tanks in Africa and Italy and at last emigrating to Guayanas as a homeless man with the techniques of modern war as his only asset. He had been just the type of immigrant the country wanted, fitting into Vidalismo before it existed.

He had also fitted into the country. He improved his Spanish till the accent was barely noticeable and accepted the change of stress which altered the clumsy sound of Kúcera to the more Castilian Kucéra. When he became a citizen of the Republic, he was commissioned with the acting rank of major. Kucera was so obviously destined for the chief of somebody’s general staff that Vidal, when he became President, seriously considered establishing one. But what was a necessity for great States such as Argentina and Brazil was an absurd luxury for Guayanas. It would also have resulted in applications from every young officer of influential family to join the staff and remain in San Vicente.

The next best thing was to create the nucleus of a first-class professional Army, and to entrust the training and organization to this sympathetic expert. Miro Kucera got his Division, the command of the San Vicente garrison, and the rank of major general. His military superiors, as soon as they observed that he tactfully relieved them of a lot of routine and made little extra work, had no objection. Nor had Miro. He treated generals of the Republic, when every month or so he saw one of them, with punctilious military honors; but he took his orders direct from the President.

Your independent groups . . . ? Vidal asked. You are not expecting to meet atomic tactical weapons?

Not on our present budget, Miro Kucera replied. I am planning for the worst that could happen in the world in which we live. And that is an attack on two fronts with thirty-year-old tactics and air support slightly superior to our own. All I need to meet it are hard-hitting Combat Groups, able to fight and hold wherever they are — forest, llanos or mountain.

And you would like to carry this reorganization through the whole Army?

I might like it, Don Gregorio. But it would not be practical.

You think it would cause alarm across the frontiers?

I think it would cause a lot more among the generals.

They could be removed, Vidal announced, unable to resist an empty gesture of magnificence.

From the Army, no doubt. But not from politics.

The President played with the papers on his desk. Kucera was completely out of politics, and perhaps the only responsible figure in the whole country who had nothing to gain or lose by a change of government. He ought to have more to lose.

Suppose the enemy was internal, not external? Vidal asked.

My appreciation of that has to be military, Kucera answered with a first trace of stolidity. "My Division has been trained to fight on interior lines. If there are no interior lines . . ."

Vidal was well aware that the general knew what he meant and had avoided comment. This foreigner — that, after all, was what he was — might not have in his blood the feel of revolution, the acceptance of it as normal political practice, but he must sense the bubbling of the country — the quite unjustifiable bubbling — as clearly as anyone else.

"I see. Yes. A General Strike, for example. Well, those are my problems. Let us return to yours, my dear Miro. This regroupment. The question of equipment. Now we live, whether we like it or not, in the Managerial Society . . ."

Vidal paused. It was the first time he had tried out the phrase, and it was effective. The general looked impressed and interested.

That, to my mind, means: Find the expert; devolve all responsibility and trust him! I want this shortage of equipment cleared up, and not by a committee of the Ministry of Defense. I propose to co-ordinate the Army estimates under the control of a single executive.

If you have the right man . . . Miro began doubtfully.

I have. You.

Me? It would have to be very thoroughly worked out, Don Gregorio. My first impression is that a general in active command of troops should not be in control of expenditure. I have no time to worry with the defense budget and government auditors.

You would not be worried. I am offering you complete control of the Army contracts.

But the trust — God knows I’m complimented! — the trust is too great.

Vidal wondered if he had been sufficiently explicit. Yet Miro Kucera must have picked up enough finesse in fourteen years of life in Guayanas to understand that where energy was scarce it should be rewarded. His opponents might call that corruption if they liked. It was not. It was a means of buying action. True, in this case he was only trying to reinsure a loyalty which he had never yet had to buy; but the principle was the same.

There was no very definite reaction from the general. He would, he said, think it over. He considered that the reorganization of the whole army was not urgent. As for Fifth Division, he could assure the President that nothing more for the moment was needed. His colonels were still inexperienced in the use of all the material they had.

Miro Kucera, indeed, was thinking it over as he strode along the wide central corridor of the Palace between mirrors and potted palms. The vehement beat of his own steps surprised him as his booted feet left the carpets, hit the stone flags of the great terrace and carried him out of dusk into the crash of the sunshine, blazing from both the sky and the Pacific. Impassively he received the general salute of the Presidential Guard, then corrected himself and followed his normal, more friendly custom. He never passed a guard which had been turned out for him without a smile and a word. He did not inspect it. That would have been officious and a waste of time. He greeted it.

The courtesy was an effort. He was tingling with shame. He felt dirtied and embarrassed by Vidal’s implication that his loyalty would be more assured if he took a hidden commission on purchases for the army. It was not of course the first time that he had been offered a bribe. How could it be? But those attempts to influence him had come from armament and motor salesmen, from building contractors, from clothing manufacturers. None of them had managed to leave with him a taste of dishonor. Business morality did not affect him. It was out of his world.

As he settled himself into his staff car and was driven north along the new coast road to the Citadel, Miro helplessly tried to analyze the reason for his angry disgust. It was not as if there were any complications to be feared. The President and his agents would see to it that the commission was well hidden, unprovable, and so delicately credited to him in Zurich or New York that one could think of it as an irregular raise of pay — to be refused, of course, but with a laugh.

Then was it that his pride was injured by the suggestion that his loyalty could be improved? Perhaps it could. His unquestionable, hitherto unquestioned, duty was to the State, which had offered him a home, rewarded him, encouraged him to give a service that he loved to give. But the State, till the next election, was Vidal. So his offer could hardly be considered an insult, when the man justifiably needed his support and the Managerial Society believed in such incentives. Understanding all that, why should he feel he wanted a bath? He got the answer at last. It was not he who had been put up for sale, but his Division. And that was unforgivable. Fifth Division was a proud, professional body. It was trained to be out of politics, out of the Latin-American vicious circle. Its interest was in the art of war. His officers could not be bought.

He passed under the veranda into the even twilight of his office. His working life seemed to be a continual flight from one pattern of shade to another. Well, it had to be. Yet over that one point he was not and never could feel himself a Latin American. Patio, tree, colonnade — a townsman could pretty well live all his days without ever entering the sun at all or ever noticing that he did not. Miro, however, grew weary of these exquisitely patterned darknesses. He was a man of the light.

Anything in, Salvador? he asked.

Captain Salvador Irala, who had sprung to attention as his chief entered, relaxed with conscious grace.

The Captain General wishes to be informed how many mules equal one jeep.

For the love of God, what a question! Miro exclaimed. For what purpose, in what country? And are we to assume that the jeeps are fueled by mule or the mules are fed by jeep?

I don’t know, my General, answered Irala. The impact of science upon Don Jesús-María is always disconcerting. But I have drafted a reply for you to sign. You regret you have no statistics. You suggest very politely that for the glory of the Republic he should take the requisite number of mules and jeeps and experiment. You would be deeply grateful if he would communicate to you in due course the results of his research.

Your tact is incredible, Salvador. I would never have thought of that.

And this is a case just come in. Morale. Referred to you as garrison commander.

Women, gambling, officers improperly dressed in public places . . . the general grumbled. Processions. I am entirely unfitted to be a military policeman, and I wish they’d appoint somebody else and let us get on with training the Division.

But you must admit we should lose a lot of laughs.

Salvador, I cannot imagine why you became a soldier.

Because, my General, I am young. And when one is young, one looks for someone to follow, to love and — within reason — to respect. I felt that my devotion to the Managing Director of Transatlantic Insurance and the President of Caribbean Film Distributors, both of whom were eager to reward my ability with sacks of pesos, would be qualified. I therefore decided to remain in the Army.

Hm, well . . . said Miro, quite unable to make a proper Latin answer to this merry declaration of devotion. Well, I’m glad you did.

He took the file from Captain Irala and read the remarkable deal of paper which had been created since 6 A.M. that morning: a report of the guard commander; attestations of witnesses; and a letter from the lieutenant colonel of the Presidential Guard overflowing with patriotism and apologies.

This attempt of a Corporal Menendez to insult the national flag had certainly upset his commanding officer. The splendid and stirring matutinal ceremony had been desecrated, but the Most Excellent General was assured that the Regiment was sound at heart. Menendez had been recruited from the Barracas, and therefore would be a Communist sympathizer if not a member of the Party. In accordance with standing orders, Trumpeter Corporal Menendez was being escorted to the Citadel for preliminary questioning by the garrison commander before proceeding to full interrogation by Military Security and court-martial. The lieutenant colonel again presented his excuses, and assured the general that the guard asked no better than to wipe out with their blood the insult offered to the flag, to the Army of Guayanas, and to the nation.

It was Vidal’s personal order that within the Garrison of San Vicente all military charges affecting the security of the State should be investigated by the garrison commander. Fiery accusations of subversive activity had in the past too often led to bloodshed or excitable court-martial. It was a tribute to his common sense, Miro supposed, but a damned nuisance all the same. He must really talk to commanding officers in private and tell them that every time a drunken trooper declared his intention of cutting out the guts of the President, or swore — when he couldn’t reassemble his Hotchkiss — that the whole staff kept their whores on bribes from armament manufacturers, they should not consider it a Security case but deal with the offender rudely in the orderly room.

This, however, was serious. Conviction, under Chap. XII, Subsection D (2), which — as the lieutenant colonel had officiously reminded him — seemed to cover spitting on the flag, could carry the death sentence.

How many Communists would you say there are in Guayanas? he asked his A.D.C.

The police figures are fourteen thousand.

Oh, the police! Miro exclaimed contemptuously. What’s your own opinion?

Twelve hundred, my General, replied Irala promptly.

Miro looked up with a swift smile which invited his A.D.C. to go further.

Seven hundred, said the captain, are Negroes of the port who have got Marx mixed up with the millennium. Fifty are students at the university. It started when my brother threw a tomato at the Vice President of the United States. Why not? After all, you don’t get a chance to throw tomatoes at the United States very often. Then he got two hundred thousand pesos from Moscow just as an advance. They spent half of it on parties and the other half financed the teachers’ strike. There were some honeys among those teachers. My brother thought it would do them a world of good to have a couple of weeks off. But the damned fools couldn’t keep their mouths shut. So the police have got the lot of them down as Communists. That makes seven hundred and fifty. The remaining four hundred and fifty are former peons who now live in the Barracas, which is enough to turn anybody into a Communist.

The general thoughtfully considered his A.D.C.’s felicitous exaggerations. Humor delighted him, but it was his habit to subject it to close analysis. He usually laughed with his eyes.

One does not become a trumpeter of the guard, he said at last, unless one has respect for the Army.

Alternatively, suggested Irala, one might become a Communist as a natural reaction from so much empty ceremonial.

We’re not considering you, said Miro, but a very simple soldier. Probably more Indian than mestizo.

Shall we have him in, my General? Or make them all wait till after lunch?

Yes. Now. Better get it over.

Between his own troop sergeant and the R.S.M. of the Divisional Provost Company, Trumpeter Corporal Pepe Menendez marched up to the desk and made a sharp left turn to meet the formidable commander of the garrison. He was in such a blind state of panic that he might as well have been alone upon a mountaintop or in his grave; he was living entirely within the dark recesses of his own mind. General Kucera’s large face, with its pale, even tan, was to him an object as unconnected with a human being as the moon or a drumhead.

In his ordinary daily life anything was possible to Pepe Menendez: the wildest human motives, the most astonishing behavior of saints and devils, the activities of an Intervener-General whom he understood to be God. There were no limits to what Pepe Menendez could believe, on the rare occasions when he considered what was possible and what was not. Even his nightmares therefore — and this in its unreality was equivalent to one — were less reasonable than those of a man with some education or at least a tradition of education. It would not have surprised him had Kucera executed him, paraded his ghost and ordered it to trumpet eternally before the Father.

He heard the R.S.M. read the charge. It had nothing to do with the motives of his crime. Why should it? It was part of the curious and terrifying rite which was taking place over his body. He remained dumb in answer to the questions that were put to him. He was answering them in his mind, but it did not seem necessary or possible to speak aloud.

Miro knew the type. Whether one was dealing with a Slovak peasant or a Guayanas mestizo, one had to break through the inarticulateness of fear. Once that had been done, the only problem was to make the primitive European say enough to explain himself and the Guayaneño say so little that something definite could be gathered from the flood of words.

Are you married? he asked.

There was no reply.

Is your mother still alive?

His tone and smile implied that he had been a friend of the family when the trumpeter was in his cradle.

The general knew her? inquired Pepe Menendez faintly.

Everybody in your pueblo knew her, the general prevaricated. A most honorable woman!

She died five years ago.

I am sorry indeed, said Miro with solemn courtesy.

But my father is still alive, added the trumpeter as if to soften the grief of his hearers.

Where does he live now?

It was a safe bet. The trumpeter would not have joined the regular Army at the end of his compulsory military service if he could have followed his father on the land or in the family means of livelihood.

When my mother died, we went to live in the Barracas.

North of the port, the Barracas stretched along the coast where a hundred years of San Vicente rubbish had been tipped. On this melancholy level ground, which fell so sharply to a beach of garbage that in a westerly gale the Pacific surf crashed directly against the slope of the tip, an ownerless shanty town had grown up where in straw huts or shelters of flattened cans nailed to scraps of packing cases lived two hundred thousand souls on the verge of starvation. For this nauseating squalor Vidalismo was held responsible — not quite fairly, since similar suburbs of the helpless had grown up outside many of the capitals of Latin America. The Barracas were partly due to a rising birthrate; partly to the fact that peons who could not or would not make a living on the land flocked to the imagined wages of the factories.

Did you and your father have any work? the general asked.

"Sometimes they let my father sweep the docks.’

And how were you allowed the honor of enlisting in the guard?

The lance, my General . . .

There was no point in searching out the story behind that. Menendez might have learned to handle a lance as a boy on the llanos. Or he might have been paid some infinitesimal sum by a guardsman to polish equipment, and done it well. The more primitive they were, the more they loved and tended steel and found a cleanliness in death by steel. It was as if they had only recently graduated from obsidian to the knife, the machete and the lance.

Good! Miro agreed. Now tell me, Corporal, do you remember your oath? For what will you fight and, if need be, give your life?

For you, my General.

Yes, yes. But for what else?

The trumpeter corporal looked desperately at all the objects to his immediate front, and then met the amused eyes of Irala.

For the captain, he said helpfully.

Do you not know the name of your country?

Oh, yes, my General — Guayanas!

And would you die for Guayanas?

Oh, yes, my General, if you ordered it.

Captain Irala pulled at his short, black mustache to hide his laughter.

Your political opinions?

The trumpeter corporal was silent. He was under the impression that he had definite political opinions. He wanted a change of government. For what purpose he could not say. Before the representative of government in the person of the general his reasons seemed inadequate. But a change — that was very necessary.

Do you know what Communism is?

Yes, my General, the trumpeter replied eagerly — he felt he was on safe ground at last. It is what they are accused of, when they live in the Barracas and are against the Church and the police. But I have never had trouble with the law, my General. My General, the sergeant will tell you that I am a good soldier. I do not say we have not had words. One cannot always please a sergeant. That is why he is paid more. But you will speak for me, Verecundo, is it not true? he added, turning his head to the sergeant in appeal.

Eyes front! the sergeant roared. His embarrassment at this use of his Christian name gave a purple patina to his dark bronze face.

Miro permitted the party to stand at ease. It was obvious that truth was now on the way, but only to be reached in a less formal atmosphere. He wondered at the change in himself since he had learned how to handle this Army of primitive individualists. He would never be able to command European troops again.

Is it true that this man is a good soldier, Sergeant? he asked.

Up to now I had no reason to complain, the sergeant admitted.

Good! Now, Corporal, why did you spit upon the flag?

I spat upon the ground, my General, Menendez wailed.

At so solemn a moment?

I did not think.

That is no excuse. Why did you spit?

I do not know, my General.

Pepe Menendez closed down desperately upon his secret for a moment. To lose his dignity was worse than to be shot.

I believe anything. I see everything, said Miro impressively, his dark blue eyes fixed so fiercely upon the trumpeter that Pepe Menendez had not the slightest doubt that his thoughts were being read. And it does not seem to me ridiculous. Between comrades there is nothing you cannot say.

Well, it was like this, stammered the trumpeter finally, in a rush. The General knows that when one has blown there is a . . . a liquid in the trumpet, and it is . . . it is the custom to shake it out. Well, I shake it over the parapet, and . . . and according to where it falls . . .

Pepe Menendez faltered.

It is lucky or unlucky, Miro guessed. Go on, Corporal.

The trumpeter’s hand moved involuntarily to his chest. He let it fall. It was neither polite nor military to cross himself.

My General knows everything, he murmured. Only the third stone, only the third stone this morning. And that is bad. So I blew a little spit — so little that not the Blessed Virgin would have noticed it — to see if it would go farther. And God sent a great puff of wind. And even so, my General, it fell very far away from the flag. I swear I did not mean it, my General.

You are alone when you blow the reveille?

Always, my General.

You are on duty every morning?

For four months, my General.

Is the guard short of trumpeters, Sergeant?

No, Excellency. But this man Menendez is much better than any of the rest.

I see. Trumpeter Corporal Menendez, I shall recommend to your commanding officer that you be reduced to the ranks and dismissed from the guard, of which you have shown yourself unworthy. You will be transferred to the Divisional artillery, where your interest in projectiles and their ranges may be of more service to yourself and the State.

Pepe Menendez was marched out. There was a slight swagger in his movements. He did not altogether understand the sentence. But he had been treated as a man by the great Caudillo — the leader, his leader.

A sentence of Solomon, sir, said Irala, laughing. It will be all over the Division by this evening.

Well, I couldn’t dismiss the charge. One mustn’t let down the standards of the guard. They won’t be at all pleased with me as it is. But how the devil do they expect him to have a proper sense of dignity when he’s been blowing the reveille for four months without a break?

CHAPTER II

[October 20]

THE ALAMEDA WAS the social and political heart of San Vicente. Having reached accidental perfection, it had remained for seventy years without any rebuilding. Closing the vista at each end were the Chamber and the Palacio Municipal, ten minutes’ stroll apart. Between them, down the center of the avenue, ran a broad strip of garden, dominated by tall palms under which the chocolate-colored earth and the botanical experts of the Ministry of Agriculture had grown every spectacular evergreen of tropics and subtropics. On one side of this somber fairyland were the beribboned confectioners, the glittering shopfronts of jewelers and luxury grocers, the women’s shops, and the women themselves. On the other side were the men, the banks, the law courts, the headquarters of civil governor and police — both housed in the immensities of the Casa Consistorial — and the Club Ateneo. This separation of the interests of each sex applied only to the moneyed class. The mass of the public swarmed where it pleased.

The terrace of the Ateneo, raised two steps above the pavement and shaded by a deep awning, stretched for fifty yards along the Alameda. In the cool of the evening a well-spaced row of chairs and tables held all the influential masculine society of San Vicente — the senators, the bankers, the principal merchants and any big landowners who happened to be in town. All were well-dressed and almost