The Five Arrows Part 38

"_Con mucho gusto!_"

Riding to the Hall of Congress, Duarte drew Hall's attention to the loud speakers fastened to the poles in every plaza. "The government has bought over a hundred speakers in the past two weeks," he said. "I know, because most of them were bought in California and I had to O.K. their transit duty-free through Mexico. I think our friend Gamburdo is up to something today."

Hall looked at a knot of grim-faced _Hermanitos_ standing under one of the speakers. "I think the people suspect it too."

"We couldn't get an advance copy of the speech at the Emba.s.sy, Mateo.

Usually, Tabio releases advance copies to the press and the diplomatic corps on the morning of the speech."

"I wonder why?"

"I can only suspect the worst. After the speech, can you come back to the house with me? I want to hear what happened to you. Commander New called me this morning and told me that he had asked the police to investigate Fielding's death."

"What? On the phone?"

"Yes."

"Oh, the d.a.m.ned idiot! Now even if the police are not fixed every d.a.m.ned fascist in South America knows that the Fielding thing went wrong!"

"It's too late for cursing now. Let's talk about the whole picture after the speech."

The plaza facing the Hall of Congress was filling up with citizens who had come to hear the speech over the public-address system. Scattered through the crowds were men carrying signs reading "_Viva_ Eduardo Gamburdo." Duarte pointed them out.

"Every one a Cross-and-Sword ruffian," he said. "I used to see the same faces while the Falange was legal. They then wore the blue s.h.i.+rt."

"I can't see their faces," Hall said.

"I've seen their faces. Three months ago Lombardo came to San Hermano to address the C.T.A.L. convention. The same gang showed up with their filthy signs, only this time the signs read: '_Viva_ Christ the King'

and 'Go back to Bolshevik Mexico, you Dirty Jew' and 'Down with the Commune of the anti-Christ' and other lovely things. I know them."

"Something is happening," Duarte said when they were in the building.

"Everyone is too quiet." They followed a military escort to the Mexican box.

The Mexican Amba.s.sador was tense. "I don't like it," he said to Hall and Duarte. "Why is everyone so quiet on the rostrum?"

"They look as if they've seen a ghost," Hall said.

Duarte studied the faces of the officials on the flag-decked rostrum.

"Where's Gamburdo?" he said. "Has anyone seen him?"

"I saw his car parked outside when I came in," the Amba.s.sador said.

"What's that? Do you hear it, Mateo?"

"Sounds like distant thunder, Felipe."

"It's not thunder. It's the crowd. What have they got to cheer about?"

"Gamburdo's cheer leaders must have gone to work."

"I don't like it," the Mexican Amba.s.sador said. "I don't like it."

A gavel fell on a block. At a signal from the President of the Senate, a military band hidden in one of the caucus rooms began to play the national anthem. The music was piped in to the great hall over the public-address system.

The gavel called the Congress to order. A clerk called the roll, the Senate head started the parliamentary ritual. Then the band started to play the national anthem again, this time without a signal. A door behind the rostrum opened.

In the doorway, flanked by his two young sons, Anibal Tabio sat in a wheel chair. His closest friend, Esteban Lavandero, the Minister of Education, stood behind him. Slowly, the chair was wheeled to the rostrum.

"Members of the Congress," the Senate Chief shouted, "The President of the nation has come to deliver his annual address."

_Chapter ten_

There were two shouts. On the floor, one of the Senators screamed "_Viva La Republica!_" At the same moment a young voice in the press gallery yelled, "_Viva_ Don Anibal Tabio!" and in the great hall every man sprang to his feet. The low distant thunder of the crowds in the Plaza had now swelled to a roar whose joyous overtones poured into the Hall of Congress through the doors, the windows, the steel and marble walls themselves. Senators and Deputies of the Popular Front Parties were the first in the hall to find their voices. "_Viva_ Don Anibal!" they shouted, applauding wildly, laughing, yelling, embracing one another, wondering if the tears in their eyes could be seen by their colleagues.

The anti-Tabio Congressmen remained on their feet, their hands moving in the motions of applause, their hearts cold and sick. Somehow, Eduardo Gamburdo had found his former place on the rostrum, was now standing and applauding with the other people in the hall. The signals had been crossed. The dead President had come to life. Anibal Tabio was sitting before the chromium microphone, serene and unmoving, his paralyzed legs neatly covered with a light Indian blanket.

Outside, the crowd had begun to sing the national anthem. The legislators, the reporters, many of the Latin American diplomats in the visitors' gallery took up the words. Hall glanced at his neighbors.

Tears flowed down the cheeks of Duarte and his chief. A few rows away, Skidmore and Orville Smith, correctly dressed in formal afternoon wear, stood stiffly at attention, their eyes firmly riveted to the strange tableau of Tabio and his entourage.

Someone thrust a huge bouquet of orange and blue mountain flowers at the invalid in the wheel chair. His son Diego accepted the flowers, laid them tenderly on an empty chair. Diego at fifteen was heavier than his father had ever been, darker, more like an Indian peasant than the son of Anibal Tabio. His brother Simon, who now accepted the second bouquet, was an eighteen-year-old replica of Don Anibal himself. Tall, lithe, he had the same fair brown hair, the same thin spiritual face as the father. Lavandero, standing behind Tabio's chair, had the dark, brooding face of a Moor. His shock of black hair started at the peak of a high, broad forehead; his large black mustache failed to dominate his thick, strong lips. He was rubbing a hairy fist in his eyes and talking softly to Tabio.

The President, at fifty-three, seemed to have aged ten years since Hall had last seen him. His hair had turned gray, and everything about him was thinner than ever before in his life. In Geneva, Hall had always wondered what would have happened to the thin, delicate frame of Anibal Tabio in a tropical hurricane. Now, even from the gallery, Hall could see that Tabio had grown so thin that the high cheek bones which had always marked his slender face now stuck out like two sharp points, almost burying the deep-set gray eyes. Tabio sat quietly in his wheel chair, smiling at friends on the floor, looking first to Diego then to Simon, gently patting the hand of his older son when the boy put his hand on the father's fragile shoulder.

The ovation continued when the singing of the national anthem was completed. Tabio turned to Lavandero, whispered a few words. The Minister of Education held his hands, palms out, toward the a.s.semblage.

"Please," he said. "Please."

Guests and legislators took their seats. In another room, a drummer dropped his cymbal on the floor. It rent the sudden silence of the great hall, and then its echoes were stilled.

Anibal Tabio squeezed the hands of his sons, drew a deep breath, and faced the microphone before him.

"My countrymen," he said, "this is the third year in which I have had the honor of addressing you at this solemn hour. A week ago, I would have said that my chances of preaching my own funeral sermon were better than my chances of opening this, the fifteenth free Congress of our beloved Republic.

"But since then ..." he leaned forward, his long chin jutting pugnaciously forward as he gasped for breath, "since then many things have come to my ears. I have heard rumors. Strange and disturbing rumors about what was going to happen today. I need not repeat these rumors to you. You have all heard them."

Hall looked at Skidmore's face as Smith translated Tabio's words.

"Yes, you have heard them. When they came to my ears," Tabio said, "I thought: What is happening? Who dares to challenge the mandate of the people? Who dares to speak of perverting the will of the people? It was then that I knew, as never before, that a President's place is with the people. If I could sit up in my bed and talk this way to my sons, to my dear friend Esteban Lavandero, then I could sit up in this chair before you, the chosen representatives of the people.

"My good friends, this may be the last time I will ever speak to you ..."

Shouts of "No!" rang all over the hall.

"Hear me, friends. Hear me and mark well what I say. Once this nation honored me with the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. As your Minister, I crossed the ocean. I went to Geneva. I went to Spain, from where we have derived so much of our culture, our language, so much of our personality as a people.

"We are today a free people, not the colonial va.s.sals we were in the days of Imperial Spain. But Spain, too, had become a free nation in 1931. I saw the free Spain at the hour of her birth, when the hated Bourbon heard the voice of Spain's millions at the ballot and fled to the empty pleasures of a decaying society abroad. I also saw the free Spain in the hours of her agony. It was at that hour that I beheld for the first time the ugly bloodless face of fascism.