_Chapter thirteen_
The private elevator in the Presidencia was both carpeted andbullet-proof, as it had been in General Segura's day. But themagnificent bronze friezes of General Segura's capture of San Hermanohad long since been melted down to make medals, and in place of themartial friezes there now hung a series of water colors painted bygrade-school children in the small villages. Every year, Hall explainedto Jerry as the car climbed to the fourth floor, a committee of theRepublic's leading artists chose twenty water colors submitted by theschools for a place in this elevator. The students whose pictures werechosen received medals made from the bronze frieze which had originallyhung in their places.
Gonzales was waiting for them at the fourth-floor landing. "Are you allright?" he asked Jerry, and without waiting for an answer he took Hall'sarm and started to walk down the long gilded corridor toward the privatelibrary of the President.
The library was large, perhaps forty feet square, the four walls werelined with books from floor to ceiling. In one corner was an immensemahogany writing table, clean now except for a drinking glass packedwith sharpened pencils and a large yellow foolscap pad. When Tabio waswell, this table was always piled high with books, most of them openedand kept in place by an inkwell, a heavy watch, or another book. Todaythere were no books on Don Anibal's table; instead, almost as if inexplanation, a padded steel and aluminum wheel chair stood empty nearthe little corridor which led to the door of the President's bedroom.
"Please, sit down." Gonzales indicated two leather chairs.
"I'm in the way," Jerry said. "I don't belong here."
"I had to take her along," Hall said. "It was a matter of her life. Isthere some place where she can rest while we--while we talk?"
"Excuse me. I will make the arrangement." Gonzales stepped out of theroom.
"What's happening?" Jerry asked.
"I don't know. It looks bad. Whatever it is, don't cave in on me now. Itwon't do anyone any good."
"I'm all right now. But I'll probably have nightmares about today forthe rest of my life."
Gonzales returned to the library with a middle-aged maid in a simpleuniform. "Please, nurse," he said, "this lady will escort you to a quietapartment. You will find brandy and a bed. I hope you will forgive usand find comfort." His blue lips tried to smile at Jerry as she followedthe maid out of the library.
"You're not well," Hall said.
The blue lips tightened. "I'm a cardiac, you know. But it is not ofimportance. Simon Tabio will join us in a moment. It is very serious,_companero_."
"Don Anibal?"
"Yes. Simon will tell you about the new development. He is young, but heis very strong. He knows that Gamburdo is a traitor."
"Has he told Don Anibal?"
"The mere telling might kill him. We must have the proof before we tellhim."
"The proof?" Hall started to tell the ailing doctor about Androtten whenSimon Tabio entered the library.
"Ah, Simon. This is _Companero_ Mateo Hall."
"How do you do?" the boy said, in English. "I regret that we must meetunder such sad circumstances."
"_El habla castellano, chico_," Gonzales said.
"The sorrow weighs with equal weight in my own heart," Hall said.
"_Companero_ Hall was on the point of telling me some important newswhen you came in, Simon. I think you should hear it."
"I would like to hear it," Simon said.
"Do you know about Corbeta the Falange agent and Jimenez the C.T.E.radio operator being at the Gamburdo ranch with Ansaldo?"
"Yes. Segador has kept me informed."
"There was one other man at the ranch with them, a Nazi. An agent of theIbero-American Institute named Androtten. At least that was the name heused. He reached San Hermano on the same plane which brought Ansaldo andme." Hall told them of Jerry's accidental discovery and of the eventswhich followed and brought about the death of the Nazi. He told it invery few words, his eyes taking in the uncanny resemblance between Simonand his father.
"My father is very ill, senor. We must be able to prove your story forhim."
"He is my friend," Hall said. "He will believe me."
"He is very ill. I believe you, of course. But what proof have we for myfather that Androtten was a Nazi agent? If you know my father at allwell, senor, you must surely know his passion for the truth. And we mustremember that in his illness ..." The boy's voice trailed off tonothingness, and he turned away from his elders.
"I think," Gonzales said, gently, "I think that you had better tell_Companero_ Hall about what happened this morning."
Simon Bolivar Tabio dabbed at his reddened eyes with a whitehandkerchief. "They are killing him," he said, brokenly. He paused toswallow the painful lump in his throat, ashamed before the friends ofhis father for his weakness.
"There are many tears in San Hermano for Don Anibal," Hall said. "Youshould be proud of your own."
"This morning," Simon said, "Dr. Marina arrived here with a writtenmessage for my mother from Dr. Ansaldo. The surgeon refused to operatewithout the written permission of the entire Cabinet. He says in thenote that he refuses to predict how long my father can live without anoperation. He says that the operation must be performed immediately."
"It is murder," Gonzales said. "Every doctor in San Hermano who hasexamined Don Anibal swears that he is too weak to undergo an operationright now."
"He sent a copy of the note to each member of the Cabinet," Simon said."They refuse to discuss the question without my father's permission."
"The dirty bastard," Hall said.
"We were discussing you this morning," Gonzales said. "Lavandero andSimon and myself. We think that if we get no further actual proof, wewill have to place a great burden on your shoulders, _Companero_ Hall.Don Anibal trusts you."
"Do you want me to tell Don Anibal what I know?"
"Not immediately. It would be too great a shock. Don Anibal would demandproof even from you. But if he hears from you that you are here toinvestigate the Falange and then if, say tomorrow, you come backand tell him that you have run across some important information,perhaps ..."
"But have we time to break it to him in easy stages? Ishis--health--adequate?"
"It is a chance we are forced to take," Simon said. "My father's healthis not--adequate--for a sudden shock."
"You may be right. I have already notified Segador about Androtten.Perhaps by tomorrow he will have established Androtten's real identity."
"Then you will see my father now?"
"I will do anything you ask, _companero_."
"Excuse me, then." Simon left the library.
"Don Anibal is not going to live," Gonzales said when the boy left. "Noteven a miracle can save his life."
The doctor was tearing the stopper from a small vial of adrenalin. Heheld the open mouth of the vial to his nose and breathed deeply.
"Adrenalin?" Hall asked.
"It is nothing, _companero_. Say nothing to Simon, please." A corner ofhis blue underlip was growing purple in tiny spots. "I hear him now,Mateo."
The boy carried his shoulders proudly when he returned to the library."My father is sitting up in bed," he said. "He is preparing a radiospeech to the entire Republic."
Dr. Gonzales was incredulous. "Are you sure, _chico_?"
Simon touched his right eye with his index finger. "I have seen it atthis moment. My father is a great and a brave man. He says that weshould bring _Companero_ Hall in at once."
The door leading to Tabio's room was opened by an armed army sergeant."The President will see you now," he said.
Hall followed Simon and Gonzales through the small corridor which tookthem to the sick room. The shutters were opened, and the sun streamedinto the chamber, bathing everyone and everything in its gentle light.Anibal Tabio was sitting up in bed, his hand raised in a familiargesture as he dictated to a secretary who sat on a stool near hispillows.
"Neutrality," he was dictating, "neutrality is either abject surrenderto Hitler or an o
pen admission of complicity with the fascist Axis or asinful combination of both..."
The swarthy Esteban Lavandero was, as always, at Tabio's side, hisfierce Moorish face twisted with pain and love. He stood behind the girlsecretary, one black hairy hand resting on the carved headboard of theancient bed, his ears cocked for every word which came from Tabio's palelips.
Tabio's wife and two doctors in white coats stood on the other side ofthe bed. The prim white collar of her dark dress matched the streaks ofwhite in her long black hair. Her luminous _mestiza's_ eyes, swollenfrom quiet weeping, were now bright and clear, and when Anibal Tabiolooked to his wife after turning a particularly telling phrase in hisspeech her generous lips parted and she smiled at him the way she hadsmiled to reward his earliest writings three decades ago.
"The great North American martyr to freedom, Don Abraham Lincoln, a manof great dignity whose humor was the humor of the people from whoseloins he sprang, was a man who many years ago described such neutrality.Lincoln was not a neutral in the struggle between slavery and freedom.And when some fool insisted that most Americans were neutral in thisstruggle, Lincoln replied with the anecdote of the American woman whowent for a walk in the woods and found her husband fighting with a wildbear. Being a neutral, this woman stood by and shouted, 'Bravo, Husband.Bravo, Bear.'
"And then, Lincoln said ..."
"Don Anibal," one of the doctors said, gently, "I must implore you ..."The restraining hand of Tabio's wife made him stop.
"It is no use, doctor," Tabio smiled. "At a time like this, if aPresident can speak at all, he must speak to his people. Tonight youwill type my speech, and tomorrow you can bring the microphone rightinto this room, and right from my bed I shall talk to the people. If Iam to die in any event, it will not matter much. And if I am to live,doctor, the speech will not kill me."
Simon, who was standing next to Hall in the doorway, whispered thatTabio's eyes were too weak to distinguish them at that distance. Theystarted to walk toward the bed on their toes, and Hall, glancing atTabio sitting up in the old bed in a white hospital gown surrounded bythe burly Lavandero and his wife and son, was suddenly struck by thesimilarity of the scene which was before him and the Dore engraving ofthe death of Don Quixote. It was all there, even to the faithful SanchoPanza figure of Lavandero, and at that moment Hall knew why Spanishsavants had for hundreds of years written scores of books on the truesignificance of Cervantes' classic. Here were the two great impulses ofthe Hispanic world, the fragile, gentle, trusting dreamer of great newhorizons and at his side the broad-backed practical man of earth whothrew his strength into the effort of implementing the dreams and makingthem the new realities. Here was the visionary Juarez and the youngsoldier Porfirio Diaz, when the warrior was still a man untainted by hisown betrayal of a people's dream. Here was the romantic poet Jose Martiand one of his durable guerrilla generals, Maximo Gomez or AntonioMaceo, whose white and black skins, blended, would have yielded a skinthe color of Lavandero's. (Was it any wonder, then, Hall thought inthose fleeting seconds before Tabio recognized him, that Tabio as ayoung exile went to Cuba to write a biography of Marti while hisfaithful fellow-exile spent the same months in Havana writing an equallygood study of Maceo?)
At that moment Tabio saw Hall. "_Viejo!_" he said, happily. "Mateo Hall,a good friend and thank God never a neutral. Senorita, give him yourstool. Come, sit down, Mateo."
Hall took his hand, tenderly, for fear of hurting him. It was a thinhand, bony and fleshless; cold, as though Death had already touched it.
"_Viejo_," Tabio said. He might have been genially scolding a favoritechild. "Say something, old friend, and don't sit there staring at me asif I were already a corpse. Tell me about yourself, Mateo. We've come along way since Geneva and Madrid and the day they fished you out of theocean, eh?"
"It has been a long time," Hall said. "A very long time, Don Anibal. Acentury."
Tabio smiled. "Time is of no matter. It is the present and the futurewhich counts, eh, _viejo_?"
"Of course, _ilustre_."
"My family and my good friends are afraid that I am dying," Tabio said,smiling as if at some secret joke he wanted to share with Hall. "I am anold dog. An old prison dog. Tell them, _viejo_, tell them that our breeddoesn't die so easily, no?"
Hall could only nod and pat the sick man's hand.
"Do I sound like a dying man?"
Hall swallowed hard, managed to grin. "You? What nonsense, Don Anibal! Iwas at the Congress the other day. I watched you and listened to youspeak. It was a great speech, Anibal."
"It was not a great speech. But it was good because I spoke the truth.And do you know, Mateo, that the truth is better than any great speech?"Tabio was breathing with increased difficulty. He slumped back againstthe pillows, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the doctorsquicken, and he turned to them and winked. "Not yet," he smiled. Meekly,he allowed one of the doctors to hold a tumbler of colored liquid underhis mouth. He sipped some of it through a bent glass tube, then turnedto Hall again.
"Where were you sitting?" he asked.
"In the diplomatic box with Duarte and the Mexican Ambassador. Don't tryto talk to me, Anibal. Save your strength. I'll be here for a long time,and when you're out of bed and on your feet again, perhaps we can have areal visit and sit up all night talking as we used to talk."
"Mateo! You talk like a child. I will never be on my feet again. Butjust the same," and he winked impishly at his wife, "I'm a long way fromdying."
"Of course you are," Hall insisted.
"There, you see?" Tabio said to everyone in the room. "Mateo can tellyou. He knows how tough our breed is. Tell me, Mateo, is it true thatthe American Ambassador considers me to be the most violent Bolshevikoutside of Russia?"
Lavandero laughed, and Hall laughed, and when Tabio, laughing, turned tohis wife and son, they laughed too.
"He is such a pompous fool, that Ambassador. Oh, I am being terriblyundiplomatic, _viejo_, but to think of an old-fashioned bourgeoisreformer like me being compared to Lenin and Stalin! It is the height ofconfusion. But if you ever meet him you can tell him that I admireStalin and the Russian people. Your Ambassador and I were together at aState dinner the day the Nazis invaded Russia and he said that theSoviets would be crushed in a month and that he was glad. I told himthen that the Red Army would destroy the Nazi war machine and I told himthat before the war was over the United States would be fighting on theside of Russia and that therefore it was dangerous of him to say he wasglad so many Red Army soldiers were being killed. And you can tell himthat some day when I speak to Mr. Roosevelt again I will tell him whatthe American Ambassador to our country said openly in June of 1941."
"Please, Don Anibal," one of the doctors begged, "you must save yourstrength."
"For the speech," Lavandero added, quickly, motioning to Hall that itwas time for everyone but the doctors to leave the room.
Hall stood up, again patted the blue-veined hand of the President. Hewatched Tabio, pausing to gain strength, mutely protesting with glazedeyes the obvious stage directions of the doctors who ended this visit.
"I must go now, Don Anibal," Hall said, softly. "If you wish, I will beback tomorrow or the next day."
"Matthew," Tabio said, and he began to address Hall in English, "youwere in Spain. You saw. Tell them it does not matter if one man lives ordies. I have no fears for truth. I have come a long way on truth. Tellthem, _viejo_, tell them what a miracle truth is in the hands of thepeople. You have but"--the words were coming with great difficulty--"youhave but to make this truth known...."
Tabio's jaw sagged open. He fell forward against his knees. The doctorstook him by the shoulders and moved him into a prone position. His eyes,still open, stared at everything and nothing, glass now.
"_Carino mio!_" his wife sobbed, but at an unspoken order from one ofthe doctors Simon led his mother to a chair in the corner and kept herstill. Lavandero, Gonzales and Hall left the chamber for the library.
"What happened to Anibal?" La
vandero asked Gonzales.
The doctor shook his head. "It is the end," he said. "Don Anibal willnever speak again."
"You lie!"
"No, Esteban." He turned to Hall. "His last words were to you,_companero_."
"Christ Almighty!"
"For God's sake, tell me what happened to Anibal!"
"He fell into a coma. I think it is a stroke." Gonzales sat heavily inone of the leather chairs, began to fumble in his pocket for anotheradrenalin vial. His fingers began to become frantic in their impotence."I--I ..."
Hall caught his head as he started to collapse. He reached into thedoctor's pocket, found the adrenalin and used it.
"It is a stupid way to live," Gonzales said. "To have your life dependalways on your being a vegetable with a bottle. Thank you, _companero_.Just let me rest here for a few minutes."
Throughout all of this, Lavandero stood over Tabio's table, staring downat the jar of pencils with a dark, ugly face. He clenched openedclenched opened clenched his fists, his fingers working to no definiterhythm, and then he looked at his fists opening and closing and for afew minutes it seemed as if he looked upon his own hands with loathing.Then, straightening up, he put his hands in the pockets of his bluejacket and turned to Hall and Gonzales. "This is no time to planpersonal violence," he said. "It would be exactly what the fascistswanted."
"I am at your orders," Hall said. "I think you know that."
"I am counting on you."
"What do I do now?"
"Keep out of sight for a few hours. I think you should go to Gonzales'house. I'll get you an official car and a chauffeur."
"I'm not alone," Hall said. He told Lavandero about Jerry and the deathof Androtten.
"_Madre de Dios_, take her with you! And keep her hidden." The sweatpouring down his face betrayed Lavandero's excitement; his voice wascalm and steady. "I'll send an armed guard with you."
"I'll get the nurse," Gonzales said.
"No. Don't get up. Tell us where she is."
Lavandero had taken over. Later, Hall knew, the man would allow himselfto fly into a wild rage, but he would do it alone, where no one couldhear or see him. And Hall knew, also, that soon Lavandero would beengaged in a battle with Gamburdo and the fascists for control of thenation.