Thing to Love (25 page)

“That is the affair of the commander in chief,” Miro answered
— and then, more warmly: “Your quarters will be ready now, and I hope you will do me the honor to dine with me. Believe me, Don Jesús-María, you will be as welcome as you always were in the Citadel.”

“Ah, Miro! Miro! Only two weeks ago!”

“Why did you do it? It was not for Avellana.”

“Affection, Miro. An old man's affection for his Army and you and your Division. I saw that Ledesma's revolt would make it impossible for you to move. I hoped you would feel that
fuerza maior
at last relieved you of all responsibility. That you would lead out your — your machine — against the whole Army and Air Force — well, it was unbelievable.”

Unbelievable? Why? That was what he was for, what the Division was for. The train of circumstance had been brutally fast for them all, but there was no point in it at which he could have done anything else but what he did. Gil Avellana — the only man of the whole lot who believed in a principle and acted on it — had seen quite clearly what the result of his illegal course must be, and accepted the challenge.

Miro could not respond to the slight quivering of the white mustache, the worn, steady eyes which would not even blink to hold back a tear. Pride and emotion — how did they mix the two so easily?

“I warned you that my duty was plain to me,” he replied.

“Your sense of duty has been expensive, Miro. The university . . . And here at Cruzada, what? Two thousand casualties, or is it three? And five hundred men killed and burned in the Quebradas Pass.”

“The Quebradas Pass?”

“Do you have to tell
me
it was an accident?”

“I have no news. You must admit, Don Jesús-María, that I have no telephone to Twelfth Cavalry.”

“Miro, the money and a visaed passport were found on the body of the engine driver. He lost his nerve and jumped too late. And it must have been you who gave the order to Vidal.”

“The line had to be blocked. What happened?”

“He loosed a freight train down the slope when two squadrons
and a Regiment of Artillery were coming up. Both trains went over the edge and finished three hundred meters below. That was not necessary to put down revolution, Miro. That is no way to fight.”

“And Cumana, where my troops were helpless under your air attack — is that a way to fight?”

“Let's not split hairs, son! Excuse my freedom — at my age one does not accustom oneself easily to the changed circumstances of old friends. You complain of Cumana? I might as well say that your splendid Armored Brigade murders the defenseless. No, no, Miro, we have both fought, I hope, with such chivalry as science in these days allows. But sabotage and on that scale! No one will understand.”

Miro escorted Don Jesús-María to the door in a sudden, silent embarrassment, for the guns above the hamlet had begun to crash and roll like some monstrous pack of hounds unleashed for the kill. In the last hour before darkness he had brought up the unlimited ammunition captured from the enemy and added to his own as much of their heavy artillery as he had the men to serve. The brutality of the bombardment of Sixth Division made it impossible to look in the face the commander whose inefficacy was responsible for it. But in the end, this merciless shelling would save lives. The morale of Sixth Division had to be broken before its command received the summons, flowery and courteous as he and his staff could make it, to surrender.

Salvador Irala returned from his temporary job as catering manager for distinguished prisoners.

“How are they?” Miro asked.

“Ghosts, my General. Nothing fits for them.”

“What the devil did they expect?” he asked in exasperation.

“Some hard fighting like yesterday. And then, when we saw that our position was hopeless, a truce.”

“You have heard what happened in the Quebradas Pass? Don Jesús-María considers it was not war.”

“His opinion on war is not of overwhelming interest to us, my General. One might as well consult Colonel Chaves on politics.”

“We may come to that, too, Salvador.”

“Excellent — if he does not insist that an intellectual like myself should have the Ministry of Education when I want the Washington Embassy.”

Miro turned his usual stare on the incorrigible A.D.C. What he implied so lightheartedly was a vision of a quite possible future — not necessarily Rosalindo's, but well within the pattern of a Latin-American military dictator handing out the jobs.

“Any other news on its way to me?”

“Q has just heard that the
Santa María
is anchored off Viera.”

“Get me Colonel Chaves on the land line.”

Before Miro could say a word, Chaves was begging his permission to attack. If the barrage were stopped or lifted, there were two positions he could take before the last of the dusk.

“No, Rosalindo. They are not worth another life.”

“By God, they are! I'll teach 'em to make a revolution against Fifth Division.”

“I think we have made the point clear.”

“As you wish, Chief. Then what orders?”

“Do you want anything unloaded from the
Santa María?
She is in.”

“Not I! They go to war in luxury, our friends! I have Pedro Valdés's cook and his mess truck. A pity you can't smell our dinner cooking down the telephone!”

“Is the cook willing?”

“He'd better be. If you want to discharge the
Santa María
I'll requisition labor from Cruzada.”

“I'll decide later. It seems hardly worth it. We're short of nothing but shell for the armor.”

“What about Twelfth Cavalry, Chief? Are they doing good business selling manure?”

“Mario has been halfway to Cumana. No sign of movement.”

“Suppose they advance to San Vicente and blow the Jaquiri Bridge behind them? Don Gregorio is going to wet his pants.”

“Avellana will wet his worse if there's nothing in the Quebradas Pass between us and Siete Dolores.”

“We'll force the Pass anyway.”

“No, it would cost half what is left of us. And my nerves won't
stand any more armor in single file. As soon as Sixth surrenders, you and I will sit at Cumana while Mario goes round by Los Milagros into Siete Dolores. Have you got the mission there?”

“Just arrived, Chief. Where did you get the white sheet from? Pinch it off a Cruzada hotel?”

“Mess tablecloth, Rosalindo. Use your loudspeaker and send them over from any of the forward positions. There'll be dead silence in another seven minutes.”

When the silence came it was of a whole world blessedly and startingly deprived of man. The tumbled ground where Sixth Division clung to its folds and foxholes had lost all detail. It just showed as a low, straight, blue-black cloud between darkness and the last red stripe of sunset. One could imagine beyond it the trees, the sea and the last of life. Continuity as well as noise had ended.

For Miro the peace broke his determined control of utter tiredness. The speed of reasoning, the accuracy of command stopped dead, returning the human computer to the earth from which it had been built. Victory was unimportant, and emptier still the hearty usefulness of his conversation with Rosalindo. The singing of his ears, the slight raising of the hair at the back of his neck stopped as he wondered if Rosalindo could possibly be feeling the same. But of course he did, and perhaps more keenly. Could one allow mystic vision to the tiger? With certainty, for it was not rotten with human doubts. If it were the pure in heart who should see God, what could be purer than a tiger?

Around his Headquarters the sounds of the military evening came to life — the clink of cooking vessels, the conventionally exasperated growl of the usual adjectives, the ratlike clickings and scufflings of the Signals Office, the raised voice of a sergeant. A brief snarl of machine-gun fire, from low ground somewhere far out to the right, returned his mind instantly to its picture-making of the map, of commanders, of units connected to the enemy by bright threads of fire and to their supports by paths of darkness.

He went over to the palm-thatched, open shed which was doing duty as a mess. Insects were slapping against the paraffin lamps.
His orderly, with the native eagerness to be a generous and understanding host, was doing his best to back up Salvador in entertaining Don Jesús-María and his chief of staff. They sat down to dinner, and Miro thanked heaven for the habit, ingrained in all of them, of effortless chat. One neutral subject succeeded another without awkwardness. They didn't even show self-consciousness — though Miro was sure that they all felt it — when the conversation turned to the proper covering for children's soft toys in a tropical country.

A dispatch rider roared up to Headquarters, the dust of his passage misting the darkness beyond the lamps of the mess. Salvador, going out unobtrusively, returned with a letter. Miro read with utter astonishment, which he did not attempt to conceal, the answer to his summons to surrender.

Pedro Valdés, elected to the Command of Sixth Division and confirmed in his appointment by President Avellana, has the honor to inform Major General Kucera that he is not empowered to enter into any discussions or to accept any conditions which will betray the future and the ideals of Guayanas and its armed forces. Where the Division stands, there it dies.
Viva Avellana!

A codicil signed by the senior officers of the Division confirmed that their commander had been killed and that Pedro Valdés had been elected in his place. Some of the signatories Miro knew. They were strutting, turkeycock professionals — most unlikely to accept an amateur as their commander, though they might have inspired his literary style.

Jesús-María's honorable old face preserved a studied detachment which showed that he was bursting with curiosity. Miro suggested that he might like to take coffee and a cigar at the Command Post, and there in privacy showed him Valdés's reply.

“What the devil does it mean?” Miro asked. “Elected? Not unless the electors were surrounded by Valdés's own men! Is he playing the political commissar?”

“He was to be Avellana's representative in the field. In any emergency it was understood he would be consulted,” Jesús-María replied. “He also raised a volunteer battalion of his own in
Vergara. You met it in the first action when the speed of its advance compelled you to retreat on Cruzada.”

“Talk to my officers, Don Jesús-María, and you will find that I intended to retreat on Cruzada whatever I met and whenever I met it.”

“No doubt, no doubt, Captain General,” Jesús-María replied courteously. “But you will admit that the battalion was well-handled.”

“Of course. Enthusiasm in attack — one expects it at the first brush of a campaign. But now, when the position is hopeless? How can Valdés gain the trust of the Division and persuade them there is any point in fighting?”

“They have more to fight for than a Caudillo, Captain General.”

“Good! Then put it they are fighting for Avellana's Utopia! But without food and ammunition they cannot. And no one but an amateur would think they could.”

“It has been done.”

“In the days of horse and lance, yes. But now when war is over, it is over.”

“I hope so. I hope so. But you must not forget that the people have faith in Avellana.”

“Then let them see that he is elected!” Miro answered bitterly. “For me it is all the same.”

And indeed, for him personally, it was. When Jesús-María, still with his bumbling air of patronizing, ecclesiastical grief, had returned to his quarters, Miro realized with complete finality that whether the next government of Guayanas was of Vidalistas or of Avellanistas, there was no future for him. The Army must be remade by officers who had not inspired the extremes of loyalty and hatred.

In a revulsion against more useless waste of lives and material, he called up Rosalindo Chaves and ordered him not to attack at dawn. The Armored Brigade would make a fast-moving reconnaissance of the enemy positions in full daylight. If the enemy attempted any foolhardy offensive meanwhile, it was to be checked and punished in overwhelming force.

A night's sleep, at last full and deep, persuaded Miro that most of his vague forebodings had been due to the exhaustion of his nerves. The alternatives of Caesarism or retirement no longer seemed so stark and unavoidable. There might be a hundred compromises between, and if the politicians wanted to discover them they would. His own business was to soldier on successfully and to obey.

The plain blazed with the sun he loved. Breakfast was good, and so was the news. Twelfth Cavalry was in full retreat up the Quebradas Pass. The ambulances were already on their way to the Jaquiri Bridge and the hospitals of San Vicente and the Citadel. Ferrer's column had fought or bulldozed its way through the rubbish of Fourth Division, more refugees than soldiers, and relieved the half-regiment of Saracens. He had no enemy in the field but that lunatic, half-communist “Valdeski,” leading to destruction — damn him! — the only infantry in Guayanas at all comparable to his own.

The picture, however, was far from clear in spite of the immense superiority of the armored reconnaissance. Mario Nicuesa didn't like probing valleys, and it looked as if the enemy knew he didn't. There was stiff resistance at scattered strongpoints; it gave the impression of an obstinate rear-guard action to delay the mopping-up while Valdés retreated into the coffee and the forest. That this had actually happened on Sixth Division's left was certain. There it had vanished, abandoning all heavy equipment and guns. The typical gesture of a charlatan! Gallantly refuse to surrender, but commit your men to a position where finally they would be begging to be brought in and fed by patrols of military or civil police! Well, if that was what they were up to, the sooner they had a taste of it, the better. Miro dispatched a strong force to Cruzada, for there was little to prevent Pedro Valdés from moving along the line of the Breakfast Tram and the coffee paths to take the little town — a futile gesture which could do no conceivable good but might occur to an amateur. Then he ordered Chaves to advance the whole line up to the edge of the escarpment.