Part 7

Hall entered the polished marble corridors of the Gobernacion. There was a popular song about this building. Hall thought of the words, written by no known poet, and yet so well known in the nation that it had become the unofficial anthem of the Hermanitos in the guerrilla armies which had fought the Seguristas. Even today, after nearly three decades, San Hermano youngsters learned the words from slightly older playmates when they were barely old enough to play by themselves. Somehow, the kids of the city sang a slightly less ribald version of the ballad of the _edificio magnifico_ which cost the nation over twenty million pesos and which, the song maintained, supported a village full of Don Augusto's whores and bastards.

"I want to see the Press Secretary," Hall told an attendant in the right department.

"So do I," the attendant laughed. "He resigned last week."

"Didn't anyone take his place?"

The attendant was a very old man. He leaned back in his chair and with an eloquent look gave Hall to understand that he had completely lost patience with the visitor. "_Chico_," he said, "no one could take Don Pascual's place."

"Please, _viejo_, I am in a hurry. Is anyone trying to take Don Pascual's place?"

"Ha!" The old man shifted in his chair. With withering scorn he raised his arm and pointed a handful of gnarled brown fingers at a door marked _Prensa_. There were many other men in San Hermano who pointed to things with just that gesture. Hall recognized the gesture at once. He had seen it for the first time in Geneva, when Anibal Tabio rose to make that gesture toward the pile of captured Italian and German military documents with which the Spaniards had tried to impress the League.

Hall smiled with compassion at the figure of the old man imitating the gesture of his idolized President.

"Go in, go in," the old man said, petulantly. "Go in and see that burro of a dolt who is _trying_ to take Don Pascual's place."

"And has this burro a name?"

"The burro has a name. It is Valenti. Now you made me say the unspeakable name! Please, _chico_, in the name of my sainted mother and the Educator, go away!"

The old man's attitude told Hall more about what Gamburdo had already done to the Press Bureau than he could have learned in a week of routine digging. He handed the old man a cigar and a box of matches and walked through the door to Valenti's office. He found himself in a small anteroom facing a dark-haired girl pecking genteely at the keys of a typewriter with creamy fingers whose long nails were painted a deep blood red. She was immaculately groomed and pretty.

"I would like to see Senor Valenti," he said.

"Your name, Senor?"

So you had voice training, too, he thought. "Matthew Hall," he said. "I am a journalist from New York."

"How nice!" The secretary switched to English immediately. There was only the slightest suggestion of an accent to her English, and over the faint Spanish intonations she tried to impose the broad a's of something resembling the Oxford drawl. "It is quite a relief to speak English during office hours, really." She pronounced it as "re-ahl-y."

"Yours is a very good English, Miss ..."

"Vardieno," she said.

"Pick it up in school in San Hermano?"

Miss Vardieno made a mouth of disdain. "Heavens, no!" she said. "Dad sent me to finishing school in the States. Stuffy old place, but charming in its own Adirondack way. Besides, I could always sneak down to town for a week-end when it became too boring."

"Of course," Hall smiled. "Nothing like good old New York to work off a bore."

"And how! What brings you to this forsaken village?"

"Pan American Airways," he laughed. "There's a flight out of Miami every two days they tell me."

The girl laughed with him. "O.K.," she said. "I asked for it. I'll find out if Mr. Valenti can see you now." She pushed her chair back and got up, pausing mid-way long enough to give Hall a fleeting look at her breasts with a casualness she had never learned in the Adirondacks. But Hall had eyes only for the pendant which dangled at the end of a thin platinum chain. When she sat at her desk or stood erect, Miss Vardieno's Cross and Sword emblem sank neatly below the neck line of her blue New York dress.

"There are so many lovely sights in San Hermano," Hall sighed as the girl walked into the private office.

She was in the private office for quite some time. Emerging, she had regained her finishing-school poise. "I am so sorry," she said. "Mr. Valenti is tied up in a conference that will last for hours. Our Congress opens in five days, you know, and what with the situation being what it is, Mr. Hall, it is the feeling of the Press Director that it will be impossible for any writer to obtain an interview with Mr. Gamburdo until after the Congress convenes."

Nice going, he thought. "An interview with the Vice-President? But how did Mr. Valenti know that was what I wanted?"

"I don't know, Mr. Hall. I guess he just presumed. Every one wants to interview Mr. Gamburdo these days. If it keeps up I guess he'll make the cover of _Time_, don't you think?" She sat down and propped up a flower sagging over the rim of the crystal vase on her desk. "Our pretty tropical blooms are too darned delicate, don't you think?"

"Oh, yes," Hall said, thinking not of the broken blossom but of the speed with which the text of his cable had reached Gamburdo's new Press Secretary.

Miss Vardieno brushed an imaginary fleck of dust from her skirt. "Well, anyway," she said in her best bored-with-it-all nuance, "he's going to be a vast improvement over Tovarich Tabio."

"I'll be seeing you," Hall said.

"Don't be a stranger now," Miss Vardieno said. "It's such a relief to speak English during office hours."

Hall closed the door behind him and started to whistle the ballad about the graft that built the marble halls of Gobernacion's _edificio magnifico_. "You're right," he told the old attendant. "Valenti can never wear Don Pascual's _pantalones_."

The old man's dry cackle followed Hall down the swirling marble stairs. Hall walked out to the Avenida de la Liberacion, looked in all directions for the man who had followed him the night before. The yellow straw hat was nowhere in sight. He turned his steps toward the fashionable shopping district directly south on the avenue. If his shadow were on him, he would flush him by walking down the broad, sunny avenue.

The shopping district brought no sign of the "little dog." Hall shopped the plate-glass windows, hoping to catch a tell-tale glimpse of anyone who might be on his heels. He went into a department store, bought a tropical dinner suit, and arranged to have it altered and delivered to the Bolivar at five. Then, after selecting a maroon tie and a shirt, he found a phone booth and called Fielding's office.

A Spanish-speaking secretary answered the phone. Fielding was in Alcala at an auction, she said. "Please have him call Father Arupe's secretary," Hall said.

The hot noon-day sun forced Hall to abandon his ideas of taking a leisurely stroll to the Bolivar. He found a rickety cab and relaxed on the dusty cushions. Fielding was the man he needed now, Fielding might be able to make Androtten show his cards, Fielding might have some of the answers about the new Press Chief and his brand-new secretary. And if Souza could find out who owned the Renault Androtten and the little dog used, maybe Fielding could tie the information into some of his own data and come up with something. Then when the boys in Havana answered that screwy letter perhaps they'd all have something to go by. In three days at the outside there would be word from Havana. Three days of waiting and accepting Souza and Pepe and even Fielding on faith.

At the Bolivar, the desk clerk told Hall that Pepe had called to say that he was having some minor engine trouble and would be delayed for about an hour. Hall noted the word "minor" and put it down to a delay in reaching Souza or Juan Antonio. He ordered a jug of iced pineapple juice sent up and went to his room. The long walk down the Avenida de la Liberacion under the broiling sun had covered Hall with sweat. He stripped and went to the bathroom. A slow gust of air hissed out of the faucets when Hall turned the taps. He washed his face with cold water at the basin while waiting for the pressure to force up the water to the bath faucets.

But no water came. The hissing ceased, the faucets went bone dry. Hall phoned the news down to the desk.

"I am so sorry, Senor," the clerk said. "But all the baths on your line seem to have gone dry. The manager has sent for a plumber."

Hall stretched out on his bed and tried to relax.

The desk clerk phoned him back. "Can I send the plumber up?" he asked.

"Sure." Hall put on his pants and a pair of slippers. More than anything else, at this moment, he wanted to wallow in a cold tub. The plumber, who looked enough like Pepe Delgado to be his twin, had other ideas.

"It is very serious, Senor," he complained. "There will be no water from these rotted pipes in a century." He banged the pipes with one tool and twisted them with another, cursing them as he worked. "It is very serious," he concluded. "I can do nothing on them today."

"Mother of God!" Hall said, and then he saw the sly smile on the plumber's massive face.

"Even She couldn't get any water from these pipes," the plumber said.

"How am I going to bathe?"

"Who knows? Maybe the manager will give you another room where the bath still works."

"Maybe. Well, thanks for trying."

"For nothing, Senor." The plumber picked up his tools and left.

Hall dressed and joined Pepe in the car. "What did the plumber say?" Pepe asked.

"Enough. Let's have a quick lunch somewhere."

"Souza is changing your room tonight. He is also changing the rooms of four other guests. They have no water either."

"Good work. Where are we eating?"

"When I stop the car you'll find out."

"Is the plumber your brother?"

"My cousin. I also spoke to Juan Antonio. He made that telephone call."

"Are you very hungry?" Hall asked. "I want to buy you half a steer."

"I could eat half a steer, _companero_. And I know where to get it, too." He drove to an old garden restaurant near the beach. "Here they serve the best meat in San Hermano. And at low prices, too."

Pepe did ample justice to a tremendous steak. He washed it down with a quart of beer, chiding Hall for confining his luncheon to a simple roast-beef sandwich. "Such food is all right for little children, Senor Hall. But you are a man."

"Call me Mateo."

"You should eat like a man, _Companero_ Mateo."

"I don't feel like eating."

"Then go to a good doctor. Or take that red-headed woman into your bed for a night. You'd eat in the morning, _chico_!"

Hall laughed. "I'd rather see a doctor," he said.

"A doctor?" Pepe grew serious. "Is anything wrong?"

"Who knows? This Dr. Gonzales you mentioned. Is he a medico?"

"Yes. Would you like to see him, _Companero_ Mateo?"

"Could we see him after lunch?"

"Now is the best time. He's surely taking a little siesta, and it is better not to telephone. His daughter is at school all day. Come on, I'll drive you over."

They got into the car and Pepe swung into a street with a trolley track that led them to a middle-class suburb. He stopped in front of a gray frame house similar to any doctor's house in an American town. A fat and ancient Persian cat was sleeping in the shadiest part of the porch. Pepe meowed at the cat. She opened a lazy eye, yawned, and went back to sleep.

"The cat and her master always take their siesta at the same time," Pepe explained. "It is a very intelligent cat." He opened the screen door.

"Is there no bell?"

"He disconnects the bell when he naps." Pepe led Hall into a cool, shaded living room. There was no rug on the highly polished redwood floor. The furniture was made by native craftsmen of bamboo and wicker, although the designs reflected the functional modernism of the Bauhaus school. It was the first modern furniture Hall had ever seen in South America.

Pepe noticed Hall's interest. "The doctor has many peasant projects," he explained. "He brought some Spanish refugees from Madrid to the country to teach the peasants how to make good furniture. They have a big co-operative shop in the southern province near the Little River. Sit down in one of these new chairs. I'll get him."

Hall relaxed in one of the low-slung chairs while Pepe went to the rear part of the house. "He's not on the couch in his office," Pepe said. He went to the foot of the stairs leading into the foyer. "_Hola!_ It's Delgado! _Hola!_ Don Manuel, it's Delgado!" His shouts would have roused the dead. He turned around and winked to Hall. "_Abajo_ Anibal Tabio!" he shouted. "_Viva_ Gamburdo! _Viva_ Segura! _Abajo_ Tabio!"

Upstairs there was the sound of a book or a heavy shoe dropping to the floor. "Bandit!" someone shouted, and then a tall graying man in his stockinged feet shuffled to the head of the stairs, rubbing his eyes and cursing Pepe with a mock cantankerousness. "_Bulto_," he shouted. "Give a man a chance to put on his shoes. Show some respect for my degrees!"

Pepe made a low, courtly stage bow. "Forgive me, Your Eminence," he pleaded. "I am only a simple petitioner."

"_Momentico, companero._" The doctor went to his room for a pair of huaraches.

"Doctor, I want you to meet _Companero_ Mateo Hall."

"_Companero_ Hall!" The doctor started to speak English. "It is so good to finally meet you. Don Anibal gave me your book on Spain for Christmas when it was printed. He spoke to me about you very highly. Please, sit down. You will find these chairs very comfortable."

"Pepe has been telling me about your co-operative."

"It is not very large. Here, try this chair. It is my favorite."

Pepe reminded the doctor that Hall was in need of his professional services. "Excuse my bad manners, doctor," he said, "but when you start to talk about your projects ..."

"He is right," the doctor smiled. "Sometimes I do talk too much. I like to talk, even when people don't really listen to me. Even in my sleep I talk. About many things. Art. Weaving. World politics. The war."

"I like to listen," Hall said. "Where did you learn your English, doctor?"

"My English?" The doctor leaned back in his chair, the smile of a man enjoying a highly private joke on his face. "I am afraid, _companero_, that I learned my English in the same sort of a place where you learned your excellent Spanish. That is, in a dungeon built by the Kings of Spain."

"In Spain?"

"No. I am not a Spaniard. My grandfathers were Spaniards, but my father and I were born here." He pointed to a framed flag of the Republic which hung on the wall over Hall's chair. "That flag hung in my cell in El Moro for three years, and that flag was in my hands the day Segura's death opened the prison gates to all of us." The doctor was not aware that he was now speaking in Spanish.

"The doctor was in El Moro with Don Anibal," Pepe said.

"That is true," the doctor admitted. "Nearly every patriot on the faculty and so many of the students were there, too. I had just taken my degree in medicine but I was still at the University as an instructor in biology when the arrests began. But don't think it was all tears and terror. Don Anibal and his late cousin Federico formed the so-called University Behind Bars. We had Chairs in Latin, English, biology, history, art, literature--everything. The soldiers, who were with us, smuggled in our books and papers. Later, when the Seguristas were out of power, the students who were in prison were able to take their examinations in the University of San Hermano, and the new Regents gave them full academic credit for their studies at El Moro."

"He is a sick man, doctor," Pepe said. "Examine him first and talk to him later."

"Pepe is right, _Companero_ Hall. I do talk too much."

"Nonsense. Any man who did three years in jail has a lot of talking to catch up on when he gets out."

"Will the examination take very long?" Pepe asked. "I have to go back to town. I can pick you up later."

"Have you an hour?" the doctor asked Hall.

"I have all day."

Pepe got up. "I'll be back in two hours," he laughed. He walked out to the porch. They heard him meow at the cat. Then the cat screeched and Pepe howled.

"A cat is never completely civilized," Dr. Gonzales said. "Poor Pepe refuses to believe it. And now Grisita has scratched him again."

"Your wild beast!" Pepe roared. "She clawed me!"

"Come inside, and I'll fix it, Pepe."

"No, thanks. I've got iodine in my car."

Hall expected the doctor to be amused. Instead, a wave of profound sadness gripped the man. He took out a pocket handkerchief and ran it over his forehead. "What's wrong, doctor?"

"Not much," Gonzales said. "I just can't stand the way they spare me. Since my illness it's been hell. For twelve years I was the National Minister of public health education. Don Anibal appointed me when he was Minister of Education. He created the job for me. Now I live on a pension, and outside of the few hours I put in every week as a consultant at the University and my handicraft projects, I do nothing. Biologically I am now a vegetable. And my good friends, the people of San Hermano ..."

"_Claro._ You mean they are too kind ..."

The doctor nodded. "But they are my friends," he said. "They do not do this to hurt me. And now, what bothers you?"

"My back. I think that I may have strained it."

"I can examine you better in my office. It's in the next room."

"Thank you. But first, I'd like to talk to you about some other things. I don't know what's going on, but I do know that something is wrong. I knew Don Anibal in Geneva, and I know that if he were well, your country would break with the Axis...."

The doctor sighed. "You are not alone," he said. "Don Anibal is a very sick man. No one seems to know what is wrong, exactly. He is paralyzed from the hips down, and he grows weaker every day. The mind is still strong, but it must rest so much that none of us dare to tax Don Anibal with worries other than his health. In the meanwhile, Gamburdo has taken over."

"And Gamburdo? Is he honest?"

"Gamburdo is not a man of good will. He is a clever lawyer and a very intelligent man. His family prospered under Segura, but the General seduced a Gamburdo daughter, and that turned them against the Seguristas. Gamburdo volunteered his services as a lawyer when Tabio and the Republican junta was in jail. But this offer was a calculating gamble. He knew that Segura's days were numbered; he knew that the leaders of the junta would be the new government of the nation. He joined the Party of Radical Socialism, but when he became its head, he saw to it that, like himself, the party became neither radical nor socialist."

"He was for Franco, you know," Hall said.

"I know. He was for Franco and the Falange and against Tabio. But he is very intelligent. He managed to keep these things nicely hidden. When Tabio was elected President and created the new government of national unity, Gamburdo joined forces with Don Anibal--but only to destroy this unity from within.

"This is the least of his sins. It seems that he has kept all the Republican doctors from the Presidencia. The only doctors Gamburdo has permitted are the reactionaries, the old servants of the Seguristas. We tried to talk to Don Anibal, but you know him and his saintly faith in the goodness of Man. I think that, deliberately, he has placed his life in Gamburdo's hands as a lesson to all of his old friends in the need for real unity. It is as if he means to prove to us, by getting well, that unity is the most important issue in the nation today."

"And Dr. Ansaldo? Is he really good?"

"He has a great reputation. But it is a gamble for Gamburdo alone. If Don Anibal recovers, Gamburdo and his friends will say that it was a Spaniard who saved the President. If he dies--even a great Spanish doctor could not save him. Either way, Gamburdo stands to gain."

In the office Hall took a chair facing the microscope on the doctor's white enameled metal desk. He watched the doctor hunt through the instrument cases along the wall. On a lower shelf, the doctor found his stethoscope.

"Would you please remove your shirt?"

Hall shook his head. "No," he said. He gently took the stethoscope from the doctor's hands, carefully folded it and put it away in a small wooden box he found on the desk. "This is what I really came for, doctor."

"My stethoscope?"

"Exactly." He explained to the doctor that with such instruments one could easily hear through an average indoor wall. "I have a queer feeling," he said, "that with your stethoscope I can perhaps get a hint as to what is actually wrong with Don Anibal,--or, at least, in San Hermano."

The doctor gave Hall his hand. "I won't ask you any questions," he said. "But may I wish you luck?"

"Thank you."

"Now let me fix you a cold drink. I'm not very good in the kitchen, but we'll see what we can both do."

Pepe returned with news for Hall about the change of rooms at the hotel. Hall now had the room next to Ansaldo's sitting room. He also told him that the Spanish Republican societies were planning an _homenaje_ for Hall. "They formed a committee to arrange it with you, but I told them that you didn't want to see them until next week."

"I hope you were pleasant," Hall said.

"Of course I was, Mateo. I just thought you didn't want too much noise about you in San Hermano for the next few days."

"Maybe you're right, Pepe."

"What do you want to do now?"

"Take a bath. I'm going to a party at the American Embassy tonight. But tomorrow I think we'll have a lot of work to do, _companero_."

"I wonder what happened to the little dog?"

"Maybe I'll know some more about him tonight."

"What have you got in the box?"

"Medicine."

Pepe snorted. "_Mierda!_" he laughed. "What you really need is ..."

"I know," Hall said, sharply. "That girl with the red hair."

"Excuse me," Pepe said. "I am not a doctor."

"You are too modest, _ilustre_."

"Have a good time tonight. I'll be waiting for you in the morning. Or, if you change your mind, leave word with Fernando."

"Good. Until tomorrow, then." Hall got the key to his new room from the clerk, as well as the packages he had ordered earlier in the day.

The new room was larger than the other one. His clothes and bags had already been moved in, and the chambermaid had made a creditable effort to put them away as Hall had previously done. Hall went to the window, saw that it looked out on the Plaza. He adjusted his window shutters for privacy. The wall between his room and Ansaldo's sitting room had only a bureau against it. Hall moved the chest slightly to one side, made room for a small, solid chair. Then he took his bath.

He was shaving when he heard Ansaldo return to the Bolivar. He wrapped a towel around his middle, put the plastic prongs of the stethoscope in his ears, and sat down on the little chair facing the wall. The hearing end of the stethoscope picked up only footsteps. The sounds told their own story. The man in the next room was walking to the window, then opening the shutters, then sitting on the couch. There were other footsteps, lighter and less pronounced. Perhaps another person in the room was wearing soft slippers or going barefooted, like Hall himself.

"Are you tired, _ilustre_?" It was Marina.

"No. Why should I be tired?" Ansaldo.

Marina giggled.

"Did you find out?" Ansaldo asked.

"Not yet, _ilustre_. What was it like to examine Tovarich Tabio?"

Ansaldo laughed. "Let me take care of the Tovarich, please. And don't act too happy at the Embassy tonight."

"I am not a fool, _ilustre_. Didn't the Caudillo himself personally decorate me for bravery?"

"Now you are being a boor. I detest boors."

"I am sorry, _ilustre_."

"Try to find out if they are coming in tonight."

"They would not be coming by Clipper," Marina said. "Too dangerous."