“Did Charley ever say why he married you?” he asked.
“I told you. It was a question of money when he died. And now he’s dead.”
“Perhaps.”
“Would you like to have more ice? I can call María. There is a bell, but Charley always rings it.”
“Why?”
“I am not used to bells. All these electric things-they frighten me.”
It amused him to watch her sitting upright at the end of the table like a hostess. He thought of his mother in the old days on the estancia when he had been brought in by his nurse for the dessert-she too had often served an avocado ice. She had been far more beautiful than Clara-they were not to be compared-but he remembered all the aids which she had bought for beauty in those days; they stood two deep on the long dressing table that stretched from wall to wall. He wondered sometimes whether even in those days his father had not taken second place to Guerlain or Elizabeth Arden.
“What was Charley like as a lover?”
Clara did not bother to answer. She said, “The radio… we ought to listen. There may be news.”
“News?”
“News of Charley, of course. What are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking of the long afternoon we can spend together.”
“He might turn up.”
Taken off his guard he said, “He won’t turn up.”
“Why are you so sure that he is dead?”
“I’m not sure, but if he is alive he will go to a telephone before he does anything else. He will not want to surprise you-and the baby.”
“We ought to listen all the same.”
After getting Asunción first he found a local station. There was no news. Only a sad Guaraní song came over the air and the music of a harp. She said, “Do you like champagne?”
“Yes.”
“Charley has some champagne. He was given it once in exchange for Long John Whisky-real French champagne, he said.”
The music stopped. A voice announced the station and the news bulletin, and news of Charley Fortnum took first place. A British Consul-the speaker left out the qualifying and diminishing adjective-had been kidnapped. There was no mention of the American Ambassador. Somehow Léon must have communicated with his contacts. The omission lent Charley a certain importance. It made him sound worth kidnapping. The authorities, so the speaker said, believed the kidnappers were Paraguayan. It was thought that the Consul might have been taken across the river and the kidnappers were making their demands through the Argentine government in order to confuse the trail. Apparently they had demanded the release of ten political prisoners who were held in Paraguay. Any police action in Paraguay or Argentina would endanger the life of the Consul. A plane to Havana or Mexico City must be arranged for the prisoners… There were the usual detailed conditions. The announcement had been made only an hour ago by a telephone call from Rosario to the Nación in Buenos Aires. The announcer said there was no possibility that the Consul was held in the capital, for his car had been found near Posadas more than a thousand kilometres away.
“I do not understand,” Clara said.
“Keep quiet and listen.” The announcer went on to explain that the kidnappers had chosen their time with some skill, for General Stroessner at the moment was on an unofficial holiday in the south of Argentina. He had been informed of the kidnapping and he was reported to have said, “That is no concern of mine. I am here for fishing.” The kidnappers had given the Paraguayan government until Sunday midnight to agree to their terms by an announcement on the radio. When that time expired they would be forced to execute their prisoner.
“But why Charley?”
“It must have been a mistake. There’s no other explanation. You mustn’t worry. He will be back home In a few days. Tell your maid you wish to see no one-I expect there will be journalists coming out here.”
“You will stay?”
“I’ll stay for a while.”
“I do not think I want to make love.”
“No. Of course. I understand.” They moved together down the long passage hung with sporting prints, and Doctor Plarr paused to look again at the narrow stream shaded by willows situated in that small northern island where his father had been born. No general went fishing with his colonels in streams like those. He carried the thought of his father’s abandoned home into the bedroom. He asked, “Do you ever want to go back to Tucumán?”
“No,” she said, “of course not. Why do you ask me that?”
She lay on the bed without taking off her clothes. It was cool as a sea cave in the shuttered air-conditioned room.
“What does your father do?”
“He cuts cane,” she said, “in the season, but he is getting old.”
“And out of season?”
“They live on the money I send them. They would starve if I died. I will not die, will I? with the baby?”
“No, of course not. Have you no brother or sister?”
“I had a brother, but he went away-no one knows where.” He sat on the edge of the bed and her hand touched his for a moment and withdrew. Perhaps she was afraid he would take her gesture for a comedy of tenderness and resent it. “He went away,” she said, “to cut cane one morning at four o’clock and then he never came back. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he just went away.”
He was reminded of his father’s disappearance. Here they lived on a continent, not on an island. What a vast area of land, with ill-defined frontiers of mountain, river, jungle and swamp, there was to lose oneself in-all the way from Panama to Tierra del Fuego. “Your brother never wrote?”
“How could he? He did not know how to read or write.”
“But you can.”
“A little. Seńora Sanchez taught me. She liked her girls to be educated. And Charley has helped me too.”
“You had no sister?” he asked.
“Yes. She had a baby in the fields and strangled it and then she died.”
He had never asked about her family before. He could think of no reason for questioning her now, unless perhaps he was seeking to discover what lay behind his obsession. Was there some characteristic in which she differed from the other girls he had seen at Seńora Sanchez’ house? Perhaps if he discovered the nature of the difference, the obsession would be killed like a trauma at the end of analysis. He would have strangled the obsession as her sister had strangled her child. He said, “I am tired. Let me lie down beside you for a bit. I need to sleep. I was up until three this morning.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was seeing a patient,” he said. “Will you wake me when it begins to get dark?”
The air conditioner humming by the window sounded like a natural summer sound, and once through his sleep he seemed to hear a bell ringing-the big ship’s bell which hung on a rope from the eaves of the verandah. He was half aware that she had got up and left him. He heard distant voices, the sound of a car starting, and then she was back, lying beside him, and he slept again. He dreamt, as he hadn’t dreamt for some years, of the estancia in Paraguay. He was lying in his child’s bunk at the top of a ladder, he listened to the noise of keys which were turned and bolts which were pushed to-his father was making the house secure, but he was afraid all the same. Perhaps someone had been locked in who should have been locked out.
Doctor Plarr opened his eyes. The raised edge of the bunk became Clara’s body set against his own. It was dark. He could see nothing. He put his hand out and touched her and he felt the baby move. He put his fingers up to her face. Her eyes were open. He said, “Are you awake?” but she didn’t answer. He asked, “Is something wrong?”