Thing to Love Read Free Page B

their mouths shut. So the police have got the lot of them down as Communists. That makes seven hundred and fifty. The remaining four hundred and fifty are former peons who now live in the Barracas, which is enough to turn anybody into a Communist.”
    The general thoughtfully considered his A.D.C.’s felicitous exaggerations. Humor delighted him, but it was his habit to subject it to close analysis. He usually laughed with his eyes.
    â€œOne does not become a trumpeter of the guard,” he said at last, “unless one has respect for the Army.”
    â€œAlternatively,” suggested Irala, “one might become a Communist as a natural reaction from so much empty ceremonial.”
    â€œWe’re not considering you,” said Miro, “but a very simple soldier. Probably more Indian than mestizo.”
    â€œShall we have him in, my General? Or make them all wait till after lunch?”
    â€œYes. Now. Better get it over.”

    Between his own troop sergeant and the R.S.M. of the Divisional Provost Company, Trumpeter Corporal Pepe Menendez marched up to the desk and made a sharp left turn to meet the formidable commander of the garrison. He was in such a blind state of panic that he might as well have been alone upon a mountaintop or in his grave; he was living entirely within the dark recesses of his own mind. General Kucera’s large face, with its pale, even tan, was to him an object as unconnected with a human being as the moon or a drumhead.
    In his ordinary daily life anything was possible to Pepe Menendez: the wildest human motives, the most astonishing behavior of saints and devils, the activities of an Intervener-General whom he understood to be God. There were no limits to what Pepe Menendez could believe, on the rare occasions when he considered what was possible and what was not. Even his nightmares therefore — and this in its unreality was equivalent to one — were less reasonable than those of a man with some education or at least a tradition of education. It would not have surprised him had Kucera executed him, paraded his ghost and ordered it to trumpet eternally before the Father.
    He heard the R.S.M. read the charge. It had nothing to do with the motives of his crime. Why should it? It was part of the curious and terrifying rite which was taking place over his body. He remained dumb in answer to the questions that were put to him. He was answering them in his mind, but it did not seem necessary or possible to speak aloud.
    Miro knew the type. Whether one was dealing with a Slovak peasant or a Guayanas mestizo, one had to break through the inarticulateness of fear. Once that had been done, the only problem was to make the primitive European say enough to explain himself and the Guayaneño say so little that something definite could be gathered from the flood of words.
    â€œAre you married?” he asked.
    There was no reply.
    â€œIs your mother still alive?”
    His tone and smile implied that he had been a friend of the family when the trumpeter was in his cradle.
    â€œThe general knew her?” inquired Pepe Menendez faintly.
    â€œEverybody in your pueblo knew her,” the general prevaricated. “A most honorable woman!”
    â€œShe died five years ago.”
    â€œI am sorry indeed,” said Miro with solemn courtesy.
    â€œBut my father is still alive,” added the trumpeter as if to soften the grief of his hearers.
    â€œWhere does he live now?”
    It was a safe bet. The trumpeter would not have joined theregular Army at the end of his compulsory military service if he could have followed his father on the land or in the family means of livelihood.
    â€œWhen my mother died, we went to live in the Barracas.”
    North of the port, the Barracas stretched along the coast where a hundred years of San Vicente rubbish had been tipped. On this melancholy level ground, which fell so sharply to a beach of garbage that in a westerly gale