Doctor Frigo (22 page)

She took me out on to the terrace.

At first sight the seating arrangement there in the candlelight looked somewhat formal like that of a council of war – which I suppose it was in a way – with Villegas presiding. But as I approached with Doña Julia, the first impression of formality evaporated. The three tables which had been lined up in a row for the occasion had hexagonal tops inlaid with pop-art tiles, and the chairs in which the councillors sat were of decorated wrought iron, painted white, with scarlet cushions. Dishes of half-consumed canapés, full ashtrays and a couple of ice buckets with opened champagne bottles in them lent the occasion a festive air. The only man in the group not wearing a sports shirt was the priest who had on a sweat-stained white soutane with the skirt hitched up over his knees. It was more like the convivial session of a local tennis club committee, after hearing good news from the treasurer about the state of the club’s accounts, than a solemn council of war.

Both Villegas and Uncle Paco stood up to greet me. First, Don Manuel put his arm round my shoulders, beamed at
the company and presented me formally to them as Doctor Ernesto Castillo Reye. With that he sat down and left Uncle Paco to perform the individual introductions. It was at that moment that I saw Rosier smiling demurely at me from the other side of the tables.

I stood there like an idiot for a moment, then Paco grasped my elbow and led me past Villegas to the man seated on his left.

He was a handsome, virile-looking criollo with lean aristocratic features that seemed familiar. About fifty I thought. The hand that shook mine was dry and firm, the welcoming smile unforced and pleasant.

‘Don Tomás Santos Andino,’ intoned Uncle Paco; ‘our faithful ally and adviser on matters of constitutional law.’

Delvert had told me there would be a lawyer, but hadn’t seen fit to mention that the lawyer was also the current Minister of Education under the Oligarchy. He has held the post for the past four years and been responsible for the only progressive social enterprise of the period, the rural school system. Paco had referred to him as an ally rather than a comrade because, until the Oligarchy had decreed the abolition of party structures, Santos had been a Christian Socialist. Technically anyway; he is the sort of man who, while holding some strong convictions, can never be wholly at ease in any one party. In many ways an apolitical man; some might say that his presence there made him a traitor to the government he already serves.

‘Don Tomás also has considerable influence with the university and senior high school students of the capital,’ Uncle Paco added.

‘What he means, Doctor,’ explained Don Tomás impassively, ‘is that I can bring them out on the streets if that should be a useful thing to do, in the same way that Father Bartolomé can command his shanty town mobs.’

‘It is true, Ernesto.’ This was Villegas. ‘The governments of many other countries have discovered this already. The defence and interior ministries are no longer the only ones
with organized forces at their disposal. Those may be armed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they can dominate all situations. Ask your French friends. No. Today, ministries of education have become power bases also.’

‘Though not all,’ said Uncle Paco, ‘have postgraduate groups as lively and effective as those of Don Edgardo Canales Barrios.’ He permitted himself a chuckle as he moved me on. ‘I think, Ernesto, that you will know Don Edgardo better as El Lobo.’

El Lobo – the wolf – took no notice whatever of Uncle Paco or his joke. He was weighing me up and he took his time about it.

El Lobo is, I believe, twenty-eight. He looks younger. The body is plump, the head round, the cheeks sallow and puffy; but the forehead is almost unlined. He looks like an overgrown, bloated and dissolute child.

The skin of the lower jaw is slightly paler than the rest, possibly because of the recent removal of a beard; but even with it he would never have appeared wolf-like. Most of these clandestine sobriquets are chosen, of course, for their inappropriateness in order to mislead, though whether they often succeed in doing so I doubt. There can be few security policemen who do not by now suspect that a man named El Flaco, the slim one, may well be extremely fat. Still, there is nothing in the least lamb-like about El Lobo. His small contemplative eyes are those of an extremely dangerous fish. Is the prey immediately edible or must there be a quick kill first?

He did not offer to shake hands. He may be one of those persons who dislike casual physical contacts; but I think it more likely that he had sensed my instant antipathy. He could be used to such reactions, and may even enjoy them.

To break the silence I said, as if in reply to Uncle Paco: ‘Everyone has heard of El Lobo.’

The fish eyes still examined me. Was I worth eating or
might there be defensive organs, sharp spines perhaps, to contend with?

‘Your trouble, Doctor,’ he said slowly, ‘is that you have too soft a heart. I have thought so for some time.’

‘Oh?’

‘Those swindlers in Florida. You should have had the skin off their backs.’

He has a flat, expressionless way of speaking which makes it difficult to decide, when he uses what might be a figure of speech, whether or not to take it literally.

I skirted the difficulty. ‘Our Cuban friends told me the same thing. I explained to them that we would prefer to have the money.’

Uncle Paco laughed. ‘See how equivocal our Doctor Ernesto can be?’ he crowed to the others. ‘It might be his father talking.’

El Lobo joined in the murmur of amusement, but he gave me a barely perceptible wink. I hadn’t fooled
him.

‘Señor Roberto Rosier, I think you already know,’ Paco was saying now.

‘In another context, yes.’

Rosier grinned. ‘The Doctor and I met in Madame Martens’ picture gallery. We had a most constructive discussion, didn’t we, Doctor?’

‘Constructive you thought? Wide-ranging I would have said.’

‘And what, pray, was the subject of your discussion?’ This was lawyer Santos, leaning forward with a somewhat steely smile for us. ‘May we know? Don Roberto is an expert on many things but I had not thought that art would be one of them.’

‘Oh not art, Don Tomás.’ Rosier waved a hand airily. ‘Life and death, wasn’t it, Doctor?’

‘Among other things.’ I looked at Santos. ‘But mostly in terms of their values, Don Tomás, or rather their market prices in dollars and cents.’

I had spoken acidly and I saw Villegas give Santos an I-told-you-so
look which could have meant anything – ‘you see, pompous
and
tiresome’, if it referred to me, or, ‘he’s going to need watching’, if the subject was Rosier. I didn’t much care which it was. I just wished Uncle Paco would speed things up a bit.

‘Don Roberto,’ he was droning on relentlessly, ‘as our principal liaison officer with the consortium, is also a valued economic adviser. Prices, changing values and modes of access to markets, especially those controlled by foreign agencies, are his business. He deals with facts, figures, the fiscal realities of our struggle. Father Bartolomé on the other hand –’ I was being steered now towards the priest – ‘deals in souls and certain other, perhaps less spiritual, realities. He, too, is a man of power, but of a different, more immediate kind. A power complementary to that of El Lobo, would you say, Father?’

‘Only God deals in souls,’ said Father Bartolomé indistinctly.

In that flat, predominantly-Indian mestizo face the pipe he was sucking looked quite incongruous. It was one of those complicated European ones with an aluminium tube containing a nicotine filter in the stem and a perforated lid over the bowl.

I already knew a bit about Father Bartolomé. He is a so-called ‘worker priest’ whose huge popular following in the slums of the capital has been alleged, by some members of the Church hierarchy, to have been secured more by his munificence in the brothels and bars than to his pious socialism and rabble-rousing skills. His funds are said to be derived from a share in a protection racket operated at the expense of the small shop-owners in his ‘parish’.

‘Only God,’ he repeated dogmatically.

‘Quite so, Father.’ Uncle Paco managed to look like a bishop conceding a minor theological point. ‘But you deal with men made in the image of God.’

‘Not men,’ said Father Bartolomé; ‘merely animals with names.’

‘The phrase, Ernesto,’ Villegas put in harshly, ‘is actually your father’s. He first used it in the Assembly. Animals with names. It caused a sensation then, and much anger. Now, those to whom it referred, the underprivileged, use it proudly about themselves. Am I not right, Father?’

‘Yes.’ Father Bartolomé reached for his glass, drank deep and breathed heavily.

From a little over a metre away the smell was unmistakable. Father Bartolomé’s wine-glass contained island rum, undiluted, and he was very drunk.

‘Father Bartolomé is still tired from his journey,’ Paco explained calmly.

The priest made an effort to get to his feet, failed, leered at me and mumbled a Benediction. Out of a corner of my eye I could see El Lobo watching as if a snack-sized gobbet of raw flesh had just drifted down trailing blood.

‘Coffee for Father Bartolomé,’ Doña Julia ordered loudly.

She was surveying her drunken guest with an obvious loathing which surprised me. Her husband was, after all, planning a coup. It would have been sensible to treat the man, however odious he might be, who could put a screaming mob of thousands on the streets armed with petrol bombs, with a measure of tact. A quiet word to Antoine would have done. Father Bartolomé could then have been assisted to his room and left to finish the bottle in private. Uncle Paco had said she would make enemies. She had made one now. Father Bartolomé took umbrage.

‘Coffee is poison!’ he blared.

Paco scooped me away from the confrontation and returned me to Villegas.

‘Yes, Ernesto,’ my patient said amiably, ‘it
is
rather a lot to absorb all at once. Why not take your jacket and tie off? We are all friends here and so can be quite informal. Sit anywhere you please and have some wine.’

I was glad to take off my jacket and tie but uncertain where to sit. El Lobo promptly pulled in a chair that placed
me between him and Santos. The latter immediately began to cross-examine me about the French medical services in rural areas of the islands. Unfortunately he proved to be less interested in the system of dispensaries and mobile clinics, about which I know a good deal, than in the statistical basis and financial structuring of the service, about which I know little. I was relieved when Doña Julia announced that, as it had been decided by Don Manuel that we would dine al fresco, some rearrangement of the tables would be necessary.

Serving trolleys were wheeled in by the servants and all of us, except Father Bartolomé, stood up while more of the small hexagonal tables were set in an oval. I found myself reseated, at a table set for two, with El Lobo. Even Father Bartolomé would have been preferable. But El Lobo seemed pleased with the arrangement.

‘An old bore,’ he said, referring to Santos, ‘but able and useful. Didn’t you think so? Asked awkward questions.’

‘Only awkward for me. The hospital secretary would have had all the answers. But he’s an accountant, not a doctor.’

‘Go on, Doctor, say it.’

‘Say what?’

‘What you were thinking – that an ability to ask awkward questions is not necessarily an indication of usefulness.’

‘What I was thinking was that it was strange to find him in this company.’

‘We need a little respectability, Dcotor.’ He was having fun now.

‘You don’t find Don Manuel sufficiently respectable?’

‘Oh yes. For the bourgeois leader of a centre party in exile he has done remarkably well. If one did not know better one might almost be led to believe that the party actually exists.’

I did not quite know what to say to that. He smiled.

‘You have the same perplexed expression on your face now, my friend, as you had when you were listening to that little homily on the subject of student power. So authoritative
wasn’t it? Does he not know that you were in Paris during May of sixty-eight? I thought you showed remarkable restraint.’

‘How did
you
know?’ I asked.

‘Oh we know almost everything about you, Doctor. You would be surprised.’

‘Were you there yourself? In Paris I mean.’

‘As an interested observer only.’

‘Well I wasn’t an interested observer,’ I said. ‘I was in a casualty clearing station for most of the time helping to deal with fractured skulls and ruptured internal organs. Not all of them belonged to students, by the way. In fact, of the worst, remarkably few.’

‘The students took care of their own.’

‘Nonsense! You only observed what you wanted to see, Señor Lobo.’

‘Have it your own way, Doctor Frigo.’

‘I see you’ve been listening to Rosier.’

‘Not at all. I told you we knew all about you, Doctor. After all, you
are
the Crown Prince.’

I looked at him for a moment. ‘You’re overweight and flabby for your age,’ I said finally. ‘I recommend swimming. If we weren’t guests in this house I’d be tempted to start the treatment now by throwing you in that pool.’ I smiled. ‘And hope that it was empty.’

He laughed. It was a peculiar implosive sound like that of a breaking vacuum flask. ‘That’s better, Doctor. I was sure that we could arrive eventually at what Mister Rosier likes to call a meeting of the minds.’

‘You think we have?’

‘I’m sure of it.’ The fish eyes made another survey. ‘You interest me, Doctor. Such determined innocence. There must be so many things you don’t know about those of us who live in your native land.’

Delvert had said much the same thing.

‘I expect there are.’

‘Then I’ll make you an offer.’ He paused. ‘My intelligence
service is excellent. If it hadn’t been, what Segura calls our post-graduate group would have been dead and buried long ago. We have survived by knowing, and knowing a lot. Anything you want to know, about anyone here or anyone there, don’t waste time asking Paco. Even if he should happen to know he’ll lie. Ask me. I never lie, it’s against my nature. And don’t worry. It won’t cost you a thing.’