Why did you want me to come, Aunt Augusta?
You are the only family I have, Henry and you can be of great use to Mr. Visconti.
It was not an idea which appealed to me greatly.
I cant speak a word of Spanish, I said.
Mr. Visconti wants somebody he can trust to keep the books. Accounts have always been his weak point.
I looked around the empty room. The bare globe flickered with an approaching storm. The packing-case scratched hard against my thigh. I thought of the two mattresses and the dressing-table upstairs. The books didnt seem to need very much accounting. I said, I planned to leave after I had seen you.
Leave? Why?
I was thinking that perhaps its almost time I settled down[280].
What else have you been doing? For far too long.
And married, I was going to say.
At your age?
Im not nearly as old as Mr. Visconti.
A gust of rain splashed against the windows. I began to tell my aunt about Miss Keene and of the evening when I had nearly proposed to her.
You are suffering from loneliness, my aunt said. Thats all. You wont be lonely here.
I really think Miss Keene loves me a little. I get a bit of pleasure from the thought that perhaps I could make her happy. I was arguing without conviction, waiting for my aunts denial, and even hoping for it.
In a year, my aunt said, what would you two have to talk about? She would sit over her tatting I didnt realize that anyone still tatted[281] and you would read gardening catalogues, and then when the silence was almost unbearable she would begin to tell you a story of Kofiefontein which you had heard a dozen times before. Do you know what youll think about when you cant sleep in your double bed? Not of women. You dont care enough about them, or you wouldnt even consider marrying Miss Keene. You will think how every day you are getting a little closer to death. It will stand there as close as the bedroom wall. And youll become more and more afraid of the wall because nothing can prevent you coming nearer and nearer to it every night while you try to sleep and Miss Keene reads. What does Miss Keene read?
You may be right, Aunt Augusta, but isnt it the same everywhere at our age?
Not here it isnt. Tomorrow you may be shot in the street by a policeman because you havent understood Guaraní, or a man may knife you in a cantina because you cant speak Spanish and he thinks you are acting in a superior way. Next week, when we have our Dakota, perhaps it will crash with you over Argentina. (Mr. Visconti is too old to fly with the pilot.) My dear Henry, if you live with us, you wont be edging day by day across to any last wall[282]. The wall will find you of its own accord without your help, and every day you live will seem to you a kind of victory. I was too sharp for it that time, you will say, when night comes, and afterwards youll sleep well. She said, I only hope the wall hasnt found Mr. Visconti. If it has I will have to go out and look for it myself.
Chapter 5
The far-off murmur of great crowds woke me next morning; I thought at first that I was back in Brighton and that the sea was turning the shingle. My aunt was already up and had prepared breakfast with grapefruit picked in the garden. From the town came snatches of music.
Whats happening?
Its the National Day. Wordsworth warned me, but I had forgotten. If you go into town carry something red.
Why?
Its the colour of the governing party. The Liberal Party is blue, but its unhealthy to carry blue. No one does.
I havent got anything red.
Ive got a red scarf.
I can hardly wear a womans scarf.
Stuff it in your breast pocket. It will look like a handkerchief.
Wont you come into town with me, Aunt Augusta?
No. I must wait for Mr. Visconti. He will come today for sure. Or at least hell send a message.
I neednt have been shy of wearing the scarf. Most men in the street wore red scarves round their necks, and many scarves were printed with a picture of the General. Only the bourgeois confined themselves to a handkerchief, and some to a handkerchief barely on display at all but pressed in the hand and showing only through the knuckles perhaps they would rather have carried blue. There were red flags everywhere: you would have thought the town had been taken over by the Communists, but red here was the colour of conservatism. I was held up continually at street crossings by processions of women in red scarves carrying portraits of the General and slogans about the great Colorado Party. Groups of gauchos[283] came riding into town with scarlet reins. A drunk man fell out of a tavern door and lay face down in the road with the generals genial face spread over his back as the horses picked their way across him. Decorated cars carrying pretty girls with scarlet camellia blossoms in their hair went by. Even the sun looked red through the morning mist.
The movement of the crowd edged me towards the Avenue of Mariscal Lopez, where the processions were passing. Across the road were stands reserved for the government and the diplomats. I could recognize the General taking the salute, and the stand next door must have been that of the American Embassy, for in the back row I could see my friend OToole pressed into a corner by a stout military attaché[284]. I waved to him and I think he must have seen me because he gave a shy smile and spoke to the fat man at his side. Then a procession passed and I lost sight of him.