Doctor Frigo (3 page)

My reception in his outer office did nothing to reassure me. The secretary, an imperious brown woman with a lot of gold inlays on her teeth, tapped the face of her watch accusingly to remind me that I was late and then motioned me to a wooden bench saying that I would now have to wait. To underline her displeasure she slapped some dossiers about her desk and then lit a cigarette. A telex machine chattered quietly in one corner of the office. There was a young white man operating it and every now and then he would groan aloud, though whether in boredom or disgust it was hard to tell. Some sort of argument seemed to be going on through the machine. The white man’s groans began to intrigue the secretary. A carefully thought-out joke was on her lips when the intercom buzzed on her desk. With an impatient wave she told me to go in.

The Commissaire Gillon I had seen at the hospital had been a concerned, sweating father in a beach shirt with an injured and querulous small boy. The Gillon I now faced was a composed senior official in an air-conditioned office. He is stocky and well muscled, in his forties. That day he was wearing a grey suit. He has steel-framed half-glasses, a pale healthy tan, short fair hair and good teeth. A handsome man with a retroussé nose and heavily lidded but lively eyes. He speaks Parisian French. He contrived to shake my hand and steer me into the chair facing him with a single economical arm movement.

‘Good of you to come at such short notice, Doctor.’ He was leaning back in his own desk chair by now. ‘Dr Brissac made no difficulties?’

‘None. I hope your son’s leg healed all right.’

‘Perfectly. Dr Massot changed the dressing for us. He’s our family doctor, you understand. I didn’t want to trouble you people again unnecessarily. You know Massot?’

He was talking about the private practitioner who looks after most of the white establishment in Fort Louis and is the owner of the expensive Clinique Massot.

‘Slightly. He sometimes makes use of the hospital services.’

Gillon’s faint smile suggested that my reply, though guarded, had insufficiently disguised my true feelings on the subject of Dr M. Through a gross error of judgement on the part of the hospital administration, Dr M had been appointed an honorary orthopaedic consultant. The fact that the post was unpaid had been taken by Dr M to mean that when he wanted to make use of our X-ray and Institut Pasteur facilities for any purpose in connection with his private patients or clinic he was always entitled to claim priority. He is often a nuisance.

The next question, though, was a little puzzling. ‘Has Massot ever spoken to you in any language other than French?’

‘Once or twice, yes.’ Dr M has smatterings of several
languages and likes to air them. He is said to make a good thing out of the Hotel Ajoupa where he is on call during the tourist season.

‘How is his Spanish?’

No professional etiquette required me to be guarded about that. ‘I found his German easier to understand, Commissaire. But then I don’t speak German myself.’

He grinned, picked up a green dossier from his desk and showed me the front cover with my name on it – CASTILLO Reye, Ernesto. The idle chit-chat – or what I had taken to be idle chit-chat – was over. Now I would find out why I was there.

His expression had become formal. ‘You understand, Doctor, that in our business the status and activities of foreigners in our midst must always be of interest and concern, even when they are valued medical men.’

‘Yes.’

‘But, of course, we can never be omniscient. We may observe what the subject does, how he behaves or misbehaves, who his friends and associates are, et cetera, et cetera. And from such information we can deduct much. But, unless we are dealing with those whom experience enables us easily to classify – crooks, prostitutes, petty adventurers – we cannot always know how a subject thinks, what he truly believes. In certain areas such knowledge may become important. Doctors, I imagine, sometimes have the same problem when it comes to diagnosis. Symptoms do not always tell you the truth.’

‘Neither do patients.’

He looked surprised. ‘They actually lie to you?’

‘Sometimes, though not often consciously. Mostly they lie to themselves. The doctor is merely invited to join the conspiracy. What was it you wanted to know about me, Commissaire?’

He gave me a wry look. ‘Quite right, Doctor. Laymen should not attempt to use medical analogies. A few questions then. Two years ago you became eligible for French
citizenship and could have begun the process of naturalization. This you evidently knew because you consulted a lawyer, Maître Bussy, about procedure. Indeed you went further. You prepared and supplied him with the necessary curriculum vitae. Then, only a month later, you informed him that you did not wish to proceed with the application. Why?’

‘My mother objected.’

‘Your
mother
! On what grounds?’

‘Perhaps objected is not the right word. She appealed to me as a good son not to abandon the country for which my father had died a martyr’s death.’

‘And you accepted that … that view?’

‘No. But she was in failing health and beginning to suffer physical pain. I had no wish to add emotional stress to the rest of her troubles.’

‘But your three sisters had already changed their national status.’ He was referring to the dossier. ‘Two are American by marriage, the third Mexican, also by marriage. Did your mother not appeal to them in the same terms?’

‘With women of my mother’s generation and upbringing it was always the sons who were counted upon. And in the case of an only son …’

‘But counted upon to do what? Return one day to his native land and avenge his father’s martyrdom?’

I thought for a moment before I answered that. On some subjects it is inadvisable to speak plainly, even to an intelligent and apparently unsentimental man like Gillon.

The truth is that, except to my mother and perhaps a few of his more starry-eyed associates, my father was never, in any real sense of the term, a martyr. He was no Martin Luther King, no Kennedy, not even a Lumumba. Oh yes, he could stir a crowd with his eloquence, he could even move some of them to tears; but there was nothing romantic, no underlying love in their regard for him. They might believe that he could better their lot, that he was committed to them and wholly their friend; they might applaud him
and shout their encouragement; but when he went in among them they would never press forward to touch him. In a crowd he was the one for whom both men and women would respectfully make way. He lacked the true demagogue’s essential quality, the ability to forget, and in doing so make others forget, that he was at heart a politician. The assassination of such a man may be a sensational event; but it is rarely the inauguration of a martyrdom.

However, I know that good sons are not supposed to speak in that way of dead fathers. Gillon might be a DST chef de brigade, but he was also, as I had reason to know, a devoted father and family man. There was no sense in antagonizing him needlessly, so I evaded his question.

‘My mother drew comfort over the years from the belief that my father’s death could, should and eventually would be avenged. It was never a belief that I shared.’

‘Did you ever tell her that?’

‘Whenever possible I avoided the subject. You might say I cheated. When I agreed two years ago not to renounce my patrial citizenship I’m sure she assumed that, in bowing to her wishes then, I was also accepting her vision of the political future. And I have no doubt that she was encouraged by those in her immediate circle to make this assumption.’

‘By her “immediate circle”, you mean, I take it, those members of your father’s party, the Democratic Socialists, living in exile?’

‘I mean those members of it – cranks, crooks and former place-seekers mostly – who had managed to hole up in southern Florida.’

‘Do you now have any contact with them?’

‘As little as possible, virtually none.’

‘No correspondence?’

‘From time to time they have sent me a rubbishy news letter they publish. I also have occasional requests for money. Those, too, I ignore.’

‘Your mother supported members of the circle with substantial sums.’

‘She did indeed. As you may know, the junta found it politically expedient to deal generously with my father’s estate. Exchange controls were relaxed in my mother’s favour when she settled in Florida. The exiles there battened on her for years. When her medical expenses became heavy, though, my brothers-in-law and I had to pay the bills. Her money had all been frittered away or just stolen. After she died the treasurer of a Cuban Committee there was kind enough to do a free audit. He advised us to take the result to the police and prosecute in certain cases.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘No, we only threatened. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford to add legal expenses to the medical ones already incurred.’

‘The American FBI and ourselves exchange information on an unofficial basis. Would it surprise you to learn that, according to a report received recently, you are the person designated by the Florida group as heir to the Party leadership and potential head of a provisional government?’

‘My sister Isabella wrote telling me of that, Commissaire. In fact the news coincided with a number of those requests for money that I mentioned. No, it didn’t surprise me. No nonsense put out by the Florida branch of the Party could do that. It saddened me, however, because I had to assume that my mother had given permission for the use of the Castillo name. But by that time she was dying and our name was all that she had left to give.’

‘You personally then have no belief in the future of your father’s Democratic Socialist Party, Doctor? You see no prospect of the present government’s eventual overthrow?’

‘Not if it’s left to that Florida gang. Whether they are in any way characteristic of the whole opposition in exile is another matter.’

‘What is your opinion?’

‘Commissaire, I don’t know enough to have an opinion.
I read the same news items about the other factions as everyone else. The one based in Cuba seems to be more or less what one would expect, that is Marxist. As for the Villegas group …’

I hesitated and he prompted me. ‘Well, what do you think of the Villegas Group?’

‘They’re based in Mexico as you know. According to my sister Isabella, and I have no other source of information there I can assure you, the Villegas group has strong ties with the urban guerrilla movement in the capital, the young militants who have been giving the Oligarchy so much trouble. That’s pure hearsay of course. The Florida lot doesn’t like the Mexico lot because they don’t seem to be short of money. There was some talk of Villegas being subsidized by the CIA. Again only talk. But that’s more or less standard, isn’t it? In Central America any political action group that isn’t begging its bread must be subsidized by the CIA. As far as the political spectrum is concerned, I gather, again from my sister, that the Villegas lot is left of centre.’

‘Not too far from where your father would have been in fact.’

‘I suppose not. Though I can’t see my father leading a band of devoted followers in exile from any position in the spectrum.’

‘You can’t, Doctor? He was after all a politician.’

‘My father liked political power, yes. But he also liked money. Accused of being a political opportunist he laughed and took it as a kind of compliment. If he had been driven into exile instead of murdered he would have gone back to practising law, or, if that had not been possible, into some profitable business. He had no stomach for long-drawn-out battles even when the banners waved for social justice. The ends he would fight for had always to be foreseeably attainable.’

He looked at me oddly for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears; then he shrugged. ‘I have been told
that you had a great affection for your father, Doctor. What you are saying now doesn’t sound very affectionate.’

Having now fallen into the trap I had successfully avoided earlier, I did my best to talk my way out.

‘My mother once used the very same words, Commissaire, when she was urging me yet again to avenge his murder.’

The ploy succeeded. His face stiffened. He did not like being identified, however remotely, with my mother.

‘From what I know of your countrymen,’ he remarked, ‘few of them would need urging in such a matter. Isn’t there something called
machismo
, a pride in manhood?’

‘Not only in my country, Commissaire. All over Latin America. But I agree. A lot of senseless murders are committed by men who believe that killing someone who has offended you somehow proves virility. I happen to believe that it doesn’t. The demoralizing effect of a French education perhaps.’

‘Perhaps.’ He paused, apparently considering that heresy. ‘Or is it,’ he went on, ‘that you have never succeeded in finding the guilty man, or men? The ones who planned the assassination, I mean.’

‘Would I sink still further in your estimation, Commissaire, if I told you that I have never really tried to find them?’

‘Lack of curiosity, Doctor?’

‘No. Whatever you may have been told, I am not that cold a fish. But I happen to have a respect for evidence. None that has ever come to light has been worth a sou. I think you must know that. Perhaps I should have looked harder for the truth, but I am not a trained policeman, nor am I an amateur detective with time on his hands.’

‘Do you think that real evidence still exists?’

‘It is possible that somewhere in the Defence Ministry, within sight of the very steps on which my father was killed, there are documents still preserved which positively identify those responsible. Especially if they were members
of my father’s own Party, of course. And even if they were Special Security Forces men acting on the junta’s orders there could still be documents to prove it. Bureaucrats are cautious men, reluctant to destroy records even when ordered to do so. No one can ever quite be sure that they will not one day prove valuable.’

‘I understand. The documents may exist but nobody is going to produce them out of the blue for you to see. And even if you knew where they were you would still have to know which bureaucrat had charge of them and what sort of bribe would be required. Am I right?’