“Yes, I am married too,” Father Rivas said.
“But where I’m going there’s no marriage, or so you priests always tell us. It seems a bit of a waste when I’ve found the right girl so bloody late in the day. There ought to be visiting days in heaven, so as to give us something to look forward to from time to time. Like they have in prison. If there’s nothing to look forward to, it can’t be much of a heaven. You see I even get theological with the right measure of whisky. Where had I got to? Oh, the horses. You are quite sure we left out the old bastard’s horses?”
Doctor Plarr came in from the outer room; his feet made no sound on the earth floor, and neither man looked up. They were busy over the letter. He stood watching them in silence by the door. They looked to him like old friends.
” ‘Let the child go to the local school,’” Charley Fortnum dictated. ” ‘But if he’s a boy don’t send him on to that grand English school in B. A. where I went. I was never happy there. Let him be a real Argentinian like you are-not a half and half like me.’ Have you got that down, Father?”
“Yes. Had you not better say something to her about the change in the writing? She may wonder…”
“I doubt if she’d notice a thing like that. And Plarr can always explain to her how it was. My God, writing a letter is a bit like getting Fortnum’s Pride started on a rainy morning. One jerk after another. You begin to think the engine’s beginning to run and then it cuts again. Oh well, Father, write-‘Lying here, I think of you most of the time, and the baby too. At home you are always on my right side, and I can put my right hand on your stomach and feel the little bastard kick, but there’s no right side here. The bed’s too narrow. Quite comfortable, of course. I’ve nothing really to complain about. I’m luckier than most men.’” He paused, ” ‘Luckier…’” and took the bit between his teeth. ” ‘Before I knew you, my darling, I was a finished man. A man has to have some sort of ambition to live by. Even a millionaire wants to make another million. But before you lived with me there was nothing I could look forward to, except the right measure, of course. My mate was never exactly an exhibition crop. Then I found you and I had something I really wanted to do. I wanted to make you content and safe, and suddenly there was this child of ours. We were in business together. I didn’t expect to live long. All I wanted was to make sure that those first years were all right-the first years are important to the child, they sort of set a pattern. You mustn’t think though I’ve given up hope-I will find a way out of here yet in spite of them.’” He paused. “Of course that’s only a joke, Father. How can I escape? But I don’t want her to think I’m depressed. My God, Fortnum’s Pride did begin to work for a while, we nearly got out of that ditch, but I can’t manage any more now. Just write, ‘My darling girl, all my love.’ “
“Are you sure you have finished?”
“Yes. I think so. It’s damned hard work writing letters. To think sometimes on a library shelf you see ‘Collected Letters’ of somebody or other. Poor bugger. Two volumes of them perhaps. There is something I forgot. Just put it at the end. With a P. S. You see, Father, this is the first child she’s had. She hasn’t any experience. People say a woman knows by instinct. I doubt it though. Write this-‘Please don’t give the child sweets. They are bad for the teeth, they pretty well ruined mine, and if you are in doubt about anything at all ask Doctor Plarr. He’s a good doctor and a good friend.’ That’s all I can think of, Father.” He closed his eyes. “Perhaps I will manage something more later on. I’d like to add a word or two just before you kill me, the famous last words, but I’m too damned tired to think of any more now.”
“You must not give up hope, Seńor Fortnum.”
“What hope? Since I married Clara, I’ve always been afraid of dying. There’s only one happy way to die and that’s together, and even if you hadn’t interfered, I’d have been too old for it to happen that way. I can hardly bear it when I think she will be alone and frightened when her turn comes to die. I want to be there holding her hand and telling her it’s all right, Clara, I’m dying too, don’t be scared-it’s not all that bad dying. I’m crying now, you can see for yourself that I’m not a brave man. All the same it’s not self-pity, Father. I just don’t want her to be alone when she dies.”
Father Rivas made a gesture-it might have been an attempt to sketch a blessing in the air which he had forgotten how to give. “God will be there,” he said without conviction.
“Oh, you can have your God. Sorry, Father, but I don’t see any sign of Him around, do you?”
Doctor Plarr had walked back into the outer room in a state of unreasoning rage. It seemed to him that every word of the letter he had heard Fortnum dictate was a reproach aimed unjustly at himself. He was so absorbed in his anger that he strode straight toward the outer door until he felt the Indian’s gun pressing into his stomach and stopped. The child, always the child, he thought, a good friend, don’t give the child sweets, feel him kicking. He stood there with the gun stuck against his stomach and spat his bile upon the ground.
“What is the matter, Eduardo?” Aquino asked.
“I’m tired to death of being cooped up here. Why the hell can’t you trust me and let me go?”
“We need a doctor for Fortnum. If you went away from here you could not come back.”
“There’s no more I can do for Fortnum, and I’m in a bloody prison here.”
“You would not feel that way if you had been in a real prison. This is liberty to me.”
“A hundred square meters of dirt floor.”
“I was used to nine. So the world has grown a lot larger for me.”
“I suppose you can write your poems in any bloody hole, but I have nothing, nothing, to do. I’m a doctor. One patient is not enough.”
“I never write poems now. They were just part of the prison life. I wrote verses because they were easy to memorize. It was a way of communicating, that was all. Now I have all the paper I want and a pen and I cannot write a line. Who cares? I live instead.”
“You call this life? You can’t even walk as far as the town.”
“I never cared very much for walking. I have always been a lazy man.”
Father Rivas came in. “Where are Pablo and Diego?” he asked.
“On guard,” Aquino said. “You sent them out yourself.”
“Marta, take one of them with you and go into the town. It may be the last chance we shall have. Buy as many provisions as you can. Enough for three days. Easily portable.”
“What is worrying you?” Aquino asked. “You look as if you had heard bad news.”
“I am worried about the helicopter-about the blind man too. The ultimatum ends on Sunday night, and the police may be here long before then.”
“And afterward?” asked Doctor Plarr.
“We kill him and we make a run for it. We must have food to take with us. We shall have to keep away from towns.”
“Do you play chess, Eduardo?” Aquino asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“I have a pocket set.”
“Then for God’s sake let’s have a game.”
They sat on the dirt floor with the tiny board between them. Setting out the pieces Doctor Plarr said, “I used to play nearly every week at the Bolivar with an old man called Humphries. I was playing with him there the night you caught the wrong fish.”
“A good player?”
“He was better than me that night.”
Aquino was a slapdash player, moving too rapidly, and when Doctor Plarr hesitated over a move, he began to hum. “Do be quiet,” Doctor Plarr appealed.