Mask of the Andes

2

Alejandro Ruiz moved through the slow surf of his guests like a dreadnought looking for a place to beach itself. He was accustomed to people coming to him, but this evening his wife had insisted that he must circulate.

‘You make me sound like a red corpuscle,’ he had protested.

‘Not red, my dear. You would have to be blue.’

Their exchange of humour had the usual heaviness of domestic sarcasm, but this evening there had been no real sourness between them. Both of them were so pleased to have Francisco home again with them that their lack of patience with each other, and their occasional deep bitterness, had been put aside. Alejandro was happy to play host to his friends at this party in honour of Francisco, but he was not happy to be told to remain on his feet all evening like his own butler. Especially since there were some guests, not friends, for whom, in normal circumstances, he would never rise to his feet.

Carmel, looking about her as she stood in the big living-room, felt she could have been in Seville. She had spent a month there two years ago when she had thought she was falling in love with a film director who had proved to be in love with bull-fighters. It had been an unsatisfactory month and a further part of her education in men, but she had enjoyed the Seville social scene, though she would not have wanted to belong to it permanently. This was a smaller Seville and suggested a much older one. But that impression came only from the men; the women, rebelling in their own way, in fashion, looked as smart and modern as any she had seen in Europe. No see-through dresses or precipitously plunging necklines, but then aristocrats never went in for those attention-getters anyway. And these people, though they held no titles, looked upon themselves as aristocrats.

She had left off her own see-through blouses in favour of the only modest dress she owned, a black Givenchy that was her all-purpose model. She saw her brother looking approvingly at her and she moved to join him. ‘It’s my papal audience dress.’

‘Did you get to see him?’

‘No. Mother wanted me to go with her last year, but it seemed too hypocritical. I haven’t been to Mass in, oh, I don’t know how long.’

‘How about coming tomorrow morning? I’m saying early Mass at the cathedral.’

‘I’ll see. What time?’

‘Six o’clock.’

‘Oh my God, you’re joking! If I’m ever up at six, it’s only because I haven’t been to bed the night before.’ Then she saw the disappointment, which he had tried to hide, in his face. She pressed his arm. ‘All right, darling. I’ll try to be there. I’ve never heard you say Mass. I don’t think Mother has forgiven me for that.’

‘I’m not the best of performers,’ he said, trying to get rid of the shadow of their mother. ‘Some fellers are real showmen. Don’t expect a spectacular.’

Then a woman, a year or two older than Carmel, came through the swirl of guests towards them. She was not strictly beautiful, except for her eyes which were dark and had extraordinarily long lashes, but there was something about her that held one’s attention while more beautiful women in the room passed by. This one would never need a see-through blouse, thought Carmel. She was not sure what the other woman had: perhaps it was her air of serenity, but it was a serenity that suggested control rather than the passivity that some of the older women in the room had. Hidden in the woman was some passion, for love or truth or justice, for something. She would not take life for granted and that, too, set her apart from so many of the other women at the reception.

‘Carmel, this is Dolores Schiller.’ McKenna’s face had lit up as the woman had approached them. Carmel noticed it, but put it down to her brother’s relief at being interrupted; she knew now that their mother was always going to be a difficult subject between them. ‘She is the mission’s biggest supporter.’

‘What I give the mission is a pittance.’ Her voice was so soft that Carmel, in the hubbub of other voices, had to lean forward to hear her.

‘I meant your moral support,’ said McKenna. ‘Everyone else here thinks I’m wasting my time or I’m just a nuisance.’

‘Are you a newcomer like me?’ Carmel asked.

Dolores Schiller smiled. ‘One side of the family has been here as long as the Ruiz. But my grandfather interrupted the sequence – he was a German and a rather lowly one, I’m afraid. He was a socialist journalist, something the family did not discover till after he and my grandmother were married. They had eloped, which no one ever did in San Sebastian society, not in those days.’

Then Taber, looking uncomfortable in a black tie and dinner jacket, loomed up beside them. His red hair had been slicked down with water when he arrived, but now it was once again beginning to rebel against its combing.

‘You look absolutely elegant,’ said Carmel. ‘But where’s your tweed cap?’

‘If you think I look elegant, you’re either astigmatic or you have no taste,’ said Taber with a grin. ‘When I approach Savile Row back home, they throw up the barricades. I’m on their black list.’

McKenna introduced him to Dolores Schiller, who said, ‘I’ve heard about you, Senor Taber, from Hernando Ruiz. He admired your remark the other day, about the Indians’ patient tolerance of us criollos.’

‘I’m surprised he did,’ said Taber. ‘It was an unintentional insult to all the Ruiz. Fact is, I’m surprised I was asked to come this evening.’

‘The Ruiz have a certain tolerance of their own. Mainly because of Senora Romola.’

An elderly couple drifted by, the man tall and straight-backed, white-haired and with a military moustache, the woman with blue-rinsed grey hair and an expression of such superiority that Carmel wondered if she spoke even to her husband. They bowed to Dolores Schiller, who put out a hand to them.

‘Doctor and Senora Partridge—’ She introduced them to the McKennas and Taber.

‘Howdyoudo.’ It was all one word the way Dr Partridge said it. ‘Absolutely splendid party, what? Lots of dashed pretty gels. Always make for a jolly show.’

I’m hearing things, thought Carmel.

‘My husband is always looking at the gels,’ said Senora Partridge. ‘Still thinks he is a medical student, you know. Silly old dear, aren’t you, Bunty?’

They can’t be real, Carmel thought. These were people right out of those old British movies of the nineteen thirties that one saw on the Late Late Late Show; the Partridges belonged with Clive Brook and Constance Collier and the country cottage in the Home Counties. ‘Have you been out here long?’ she said.

The Partridges looked offended. ‘We belong here. Well, not here, actually. We came up here – when was it, old gel?’

‘Never remember years,’ said Senora Partridge, and laughed a horse’s laugh straight out of the pages of The Tatler: Dr and Senora Partridge enjoy a gay joke at the Hunt Ball. ‘Never pays at my age, you know.’

They moved on, vice-regally, and Carmel, slightly stupefied, looked at her brother. ‘Are they for real?’

‘They’re Anglo-Brazilians. They’ve never seen England, except for a three weeks’ honeymoon God knows how long ago. They still talk about the Royal garden party that they went to and how King George the Fifth shook hands with the doc.’

‘They’re more British than the British!’

‘You find them all over South America,’ said Taber. ‘Still whistling Land of Hope and Glory in the bathroom, celebrating the Queen’s Birthday, cursing Harold Wilson and the Socialists – you can’t laugh at them, you have to feel sorry for them. They are born here, they live here all their lives, yet they can never bring themselves to call it home. Home is where their father or their grandfather came from.’

‘Oh, my God, how sad!’

McKenna said to Taber, ‘I want to thank you for getting Carmel out of that trouble this morning. You’re making a habit of helping out the McKennas.’

‘What trouble was that?’ said Dolores Schiller. ‘When the guerrillas blew up the bank?’

‘We were just across the plaza,’ said Carmel; then glanced at Taber, looking at him with a new eye tonight. ‘Did your friend the police chief come back?’

‘He’s coming back now,’ said Taber. ‘Who’s the bloke with him, Terry?’

McKenna had only time to say, ‘Karl Obermaier. He’s an ex-Nazi. Or maybe not so ex.’

Condoris, the police chief, and the short muscular man with him paused in front of Dolores Schiller, both bowing and clicking their heels. This is an unreal, three-o’clock-in-the-morning night, Carmel thought: where is Conrad Veidt?

‘Senorita Schiller, how was the ski-ing?’ Condoris asked in Spanish, ignoring the three foreigners.

‘I go ski-ing in Chile every winter,’ Dolores explained to Carmel; then still speaking English she introduced Carmel and Taber to the German. Her snub of the police chief was as blunt as a blow to his long sharp nose. But he did not flush or blink an eye; he was obviously accustomed to being snubbed in company like this. But he must know how necessary he is, to put up with it, thought Taber; and looked with sharper interest at Condoris. The man knew where the bodies were buried; or, worse still, knew where they were going to be buried.

Obermaier, having bowed and clicked his heels, now stood with his hands behind his back. He had a strong emperor’s face, the sort one saw on Roman coins; Taber wondered what empire he ran here. Obermaier was not the first ex-Nazi he had met in South America, but he was certainly the cockiest. He looked Taber up and down like a Storm Trooper colonel inspecting a new recruit.

‘Captain Condoris tells me you were almost shot by the terrorists, Senor Taber.’

Well, I’m glad he didn’t call me Herr Taber. ‘I think it was a threat more than a real intention.’

‘Their intentions are real enough, Senor Taber. We have to stamp them out – ruthlessly.’

Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil. Hold on, mate, this isn’t Europe in the thirties. ‘We, Herr Obermaier?’

‘It is the task of everyone who lives here in Bolivia. Or anywhere in South America.’

‘Does Herr Bormann believe that, too?’

There was just a faint stiffening of Obermaier’s face. ‘Herr Bormann?’

‘Martin Bormann. I understand he lives in Paraguay, on the Bolivian border.’

‘You should not believe the propaganda, Senor Taber. Martin Bormann died in Berlin at the end of the war.’

Dolores Schiller broke up the tension. Her voice faintly mocking, she said, ‘Senor Obermaier escaped from Berlin just at that time. He came here and helped train our army up till the revolution occurred. You were a panzer commander, weren’t you, Karl? He follows in an old tradition – Germans have always been popular here in Bolivia. Except Socialist ones, of course,’ she said with a tiny smile. ‘Captain Ernst Roehm trained our army before he went back to Germany and led the SS for Hitler.’

‘A panzer commander?’ said Carmel, thinking the baiting of Obermaier had gone too far. After what she had seen this morning she had become afraid of violence, knowing she would no longer be surprised where it broke out.

Obermaier waved a deprecating hand, but even that gesture looked cocky. He’s cocky, not arrogant, thought Taber. There’s a difference; and saw the difference when he looked around the room at Alejandro Ruiz and some of the older criollos. ‘What do you do now, Herr Obermaier?’

‘I run the brewery,’ said Obermaier. ‘I come from Munich. Naturally, I understand beer.’

‘Naturally,’ said Taber; but Obermaier was another man who did not understand irony.

‘Will the terrorists blow up the brewery?’ Carmel asked.

‘That could be one of their prime targets,’ said Taber.

‘Why should it be that, Senor Taber?’ demanded Obermaier.

Taber shrugged, looking innocent. ‘I don’t know. But one can never be sure what terrorists will blow up. I have had more experience of them than you, Herr Obermaier.’

He knew he had said the wrong thing as soon as he saw Captain Condoris look hard at him; he had thought the police chief did not understand English. ‘What experience have you had, Senor Taber?’

‘Only indirectly, Captain. I have worked in countries where some of my projects have been blown up.’

‘What countries were they?’

‘I never speak ill of old clients,’ said Taber.

McKenna got him off the hook. ‘The raid on the bank this morning was pretty stupid. I understand they didn’t even try to heist any of the money. Is that right, Captain?’

‘Heist?’ Condoris did not understand American slang.

‘Did they attempt to steal any money?’

‘No.’

‘So they killed a policeman and blinded the bank clerk. What good will that do their cause?’

‘No good at all. We should have more such raids.’ Alejandro Ruiz, tired of circulating, had seated himself in one of the monk’s chairs beside the group. ‘We should throw open the banks, let them overdraw on their account of what goodwill they have with the campesinos. The dead policeman’s father is a campesino. The clerk was a mestizo, with a dozen cousins who are campesinos.’ He read the expression on Taber’s face. ‘You are surprised at my knowledge, Senor Taber? I own the bank. Today’s raid was a demonstration against me personally.’

Carmel, still unsettled by this casual talk of terrorism, said, ‘Aren’t you afraid they might try to raid your house tonight? I mean—’ She gestured at the guests, every one a possible target for the revolutionaries.

‘Why do you think the chief of police is here? How many men do you have out in the plaza, Captain?’

‘Fifty,’ said Condoris. ‘Another thirty in the field behind your house. You are safe, Senor Ruiz.’

Ruiz nodded, taking his impregnability for granted. ‘We shall soon be rid of them. They will never succeed, because they are mostly outsiders and the campesinos will have nothing to do with them when it comes to full revolution.’

‘What if they raise a local leader, one of us?’ Dolores Schiller’s voice had risen a little: no one had to lean forward to hear her now.

‘Where will they get him?’

Dolores shook her head. ‘You are the only one who is so confident. The rest of us—’ The other guests drifted past, their small talk showing the smallness of their circle: they had no one to talk about but themselves. They had already exhausted the main topic of the evening, the bombing of the bank: it dignified one’s enemies to discuss them too long and too openly. But they were uneasy, moving restlessly throughout the house, as if to stand too long in the one place would only invite attack. ‘Have you asked the young men what they think, Francisco and Hernando?’

On cue Francisco came up, nodded coolly to Taber, then put his hand possessively under Carmel’s arm. ‘My friends want to meet you. Everyone on this side of the room looks so serious—’

Carmel went with Francisco, and Alejandro Ruiz laughed. ‘There is your answer, Dolores. The younger men want only to enjoy themselves.’

‘Tonight, perhaps,’ said Dolores. ‘But tomorrow—?’

No one was prepared to discuss tomorrow. Obermaier and Condoris moved off, bowing stiffly like twin automatons as they passed people; Taber wondered if Condoris had ever been a cadet under Obermaier. McKenna took Dolores’s arm. ‘I think I’d better go and pay my respects to the Bishop. He’s over there with his Jesuit buddy from the university. Maybe they can tell us about tomorrow.’

‘Not my brother,’ said Alejandro Ruiz. ‘He leaves tomorrow to God.’

‘And the Jesuit?’

‘He will prefer to discuss the past. He’s been fed on logic and logic is safer when discussing history. You’ll never find a crystal ball in a Jesuit’s cell.’

Taber and Ruiz were left alone. They looked at each other, Taber warily, Ruiz with the confident stare of a man master in his own house. ‘Have you improved anything since we last met, Senor Taber?’

‘Nothing,’ Taber admitted. ‘But I’ve only just learned you are chairman of the local Agrarian Reform Council. Perhaps you can help me improve things.’

‘How?’

‘I have a shipment held up by the local Customs chief. I think he is waiting for some graft.’

‘Did he ask you for money?’

‘You know he wouldn’t do that. But I know the system as well as you, Senor Ruiz.’

‘I pay graft to no one.’

I’m suffering from foot-in-mouth disease, Taber thought. ‘I did not mean to suggest that you did. But neither do I – pay graft, I mean. That’s why I have several thousand dollars’ worth of stuff stuck down at the railway yards and can’t get at it.’

Ruiz had seen his wife, across the room, nod peremptorily at him to begin recirculating. He got wearily to his feet, sourly aware that there were times when he was not master in his own house. ‘I shall see what can be done, Senor Taber. But I can promise nothing. There is room for improvement in our Customs.’

Taber had a sudden intuition: Ruiz was putting him on trial. Everything he was going to do for FAO here in San Sebastian province would eventually have to go through the Agrarian Reform Council. Nothing would come out of Customs till he had proved himself. And proving himself meant proving that he was not a radical, that he would not advocate too much change.

‘Excuse me,’ said Ruiz. ‘I have my other guests to attend to.’

Taber was left alone. He looked across the room and saw Carmel surrounded by half a dozen young men and girls; she smiled at him, then she was blotted out by Francisco, who moved deliberately in front of her. Taber looked around, saw the Partridges bearing down on him, and escaped into a side room. Obermaier and Condoris were there, heads close together; they looked up as he came into the room, then turned away. He moved on, looking for a place to sit, to put up his feet and be alone. He might even try getting slightly drunk on Obermaier’s beer, if he could find any.

He stopped one of the servants. ‘Could you get me two – no, four bottles of beer? Brewery beer, not chicha.’ He wanted none of the Indians’ maize beer. ‘I’ll be in this room here.’

It was not so much a room as an alcove off the long hall. He sat down in another monk’s chair, thinking, Christ, isn’t there a comfortable chair anywhere in this house? Did the bloody Spaniards believe in making themselves uncomfortable when they sat, as a penance for all their other excesses? He felt he was being watched and he looked up into a pair of gimlet eyes on the wall: a Ruiz glared at him from the seventeenth century. Get stuffed, Alejandro or Francisco or Hernando or whatever-the-hell-your-name-was. None of you, neither past Ruiz nor present Ruiz, is going to stop me doing my job here. I may never feel at home in your house, I will never be part of history; but none of that is going to stop me from doing my job. I’m here to improve things, to change things, and I’m going to bloody well do my best to see that it happens. So put that in your arquebus and see if you can fire it.

He heard voices coming down the hall and he sat farther back in the chair, hoping he would not be seen. McKenna and Dolores Schiller went by, heads close together, talking in low voices. They had passed on out of sight before Taber realized how close together they had been. He could not remember ever having seen a priest and a young attractive woman walking hand in hand like lovers.

3

Carmel heard the door of her bedroom open quietly, then close again. She sat up in bed, at once feeling the cold air that came in through the open window. Francisco, in pyjamas and thick dressing-gown, crossed to the window and closed it. Then he came and stood by the side of the bed.

‘I haven’t come to your room before. I know how the altitude bothers one at first.’

‘It is still bothering me, Pancho. Too much for any of that.’

‘Lie down or you will catch cold.’ He looked around the room, dimly lit by the moonlight filtering through the curtained window. He found the large convector heater and plugged it in. ‘Father really should have the house centrally heated.’