<
id="heading_id_65">The Terrace at the Club</
>
I
Dr. Carlos Esparza, the minister for Uruguay, assumed a worldly air as, tongue-in-cheek, he listened to the confidences of his close colleague, Dr. Aníbal Roncali, the minister for Ecuador. They were dining at the Rifle Club. “The Baron of Benicarlés has created a very trying situation. You know the brilliant track record I have established as a seducer of women, and that I’ve got no reason to be afraid of gossip. However, the minister for Spain continues to behave in a most inappropriate fashion. The way he titters! The glances he gives me!”
“Sure, buddy. That’s called passion.”
Bald, shortsighted, and refined, Dr. Esparza jammed his tortoise-shell monocle into an eye socket. Dr. Aníbal Roncali stared, unsure whether to grin or look mortified. “You’re kidding.”
The minister for Uruguay apologized with a sarcastic sweep of the hand.
“Aníbal, it looks like you’re hand in glove with the Baron of Benicarlés. That could spark a diplomatic row, not to mention complaints from the mother country!”
The minister for Ecuador gestured impatiently, fluttering his curls. “You continue to jest.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“I haven’t the slightest.”
“I assume you’re not about to accept the post of secretary to the grand project you were so eloquently describing the other night?”
“No doubt.”
“All because of your jackassing it around...!”
“Spare me wordplay, please.”
“No pun intended. Yes, I’m sure it would be a great opportunity for you, and you just can’t think of any reasons to refuse. The eagle and its eaglets opening their wings to take heroic flight. What a blithe spirit you! What a lover of the lyre!”
“Dear Doctor, will you please stop kidding around.”
“Lyrical, sentimental, sensitive, sensible!” proclaimed Rubén Darío, the swan from Nicaragua. “And that’s why you’ll never drive a wedge between the minister for Spain’s diplomatic initiatives and his flirting.”
“Let’s be serious, Doctor. What is your opinion of Sir Jonnes’s suggestion?”
“It’s a first step.”
“And what do you perceive will be the effect of the Note?”
“Qui lo sá! The Note may open the way for other Notes...It depends on the president’s response. Sir Jonnes is so very affable and evangelical that all he requests is that the West Company Limited be compensated at the cost of twenty million. As so often, a viper lurks among the sweet-smelling violets of humanitarian sentiment.”
“No doubt the Note is a way of testing the waters. But how will the general react? Will the government agree to the compensation?”
“Unfortunately, this America of ours continues to be a colony of Europe...On this occasion, however, the government of Santa Fe is not going to allow its arm to be twisted. The government is quite aware that the ideals of the revolution are in direct conflict with the monopolies these companies enjoy. Tyrant Banderas is not going to die from a diplomatic goring. Selfish Creoles, landowners, and foreign investors are coming together to prop him up. In the end, the government could refuse compensation, confident that the great powers are not going to support radical revolutionaries. The emancipation of the Indian is of course inevitable. It would be unwise to shut one’s eyes to that. But something may be inevitable and still not be imminent. Death is inevitable, but our lives are devoted to keeping it at bay. The diplomatic corps acts reasonably when it defends the existence of these old and, yes, now declining political entities. We’re the crutches of geezers who mean to hang on for eternity like those philosophers of old.”
The breeze rippled the draperies and the blue curtain of the marina, illuminated by the opalescent lanterns on masts, glistened in the deep distant darkness.
II
The minister for Ecuador and the minister for Uruguay walked onto the terrace in a billowing cloud of cigar smoke. When he saw them, Tu-Lag-Thi, the Japanese minister, sat up in his bamboo rocking chair and greeted them with the feigned affability of Oriental diplomats. He was savoring his frothy coffee and his gold-rimmed glasses lay open on an English newspaper. The Latin American ministers went over to him. Bows, smiles, the whole solemn charade of nods and handshakes and French chitchat. The servant, a vacuous mulatto forever attentive to every diplomatic demand, dragged over two rocking chairs. Dr. Roncali set his curls a-dancing and launched into gushing oratory, singing the praises of the beauty of the night, the moon, and the sea. Tu-Lag-Thi, the Japanese minister, listened, scowling darkly, his face drawn. His lips framed his gleaming dentures like purple welts. His slant eyes shone with malign suspicion. An admirer of everything exotic and novel, Dr. Esparza commented, “Nighttime in Japan must be wonderful!”
“Oh! Undoubtedly! And tonight is not without a certain Japanese cachet!”
Tu-Lag-Thi’s voice sounded as flat as an out-of-tune piano and his movements were as stiff as a windup doll with rusty springs, an unholy inner life of coiled wire. He grimaced a dark, affected smile: “My dear colleagues, earlier on I was unable to solicit your opinions. How important do you believe the Note to be?”
“It’s a first step!”
Dr. Esparza qualified his words with an ambiguous smile. The Japanese minister continued: “One understood it as such, naturally. Will the diplomatic corps remain in accord? Where is this all going? The English minister is driven by humanitarian imperatives, but his generosity may be checked. None of the foreign colonies has any sympathy with revolutionary ideas. The Spanish colony, so numerous, so influential, and in every way so tightly linked to the Creole class, is frankly hostile to the agrarian reforms of the Zamalpoa Plan. At this very moment—according to my inside information—the Spanish colony is preparing to affirm its allegiance to the government of the republic. Perhaps in the end Honorable Sir Scott will find himself the lone supporter of his humanitarian campaign.”
Dr. Carlos Esparza’s myopic eyes twinkled maliciously. “My dear colleague, it’s all too obvious diplomacy is not born of the Gospels.”
Tu-Lag-Thi mewled mournfully in response: “Japan believes that the Rights of Man take priority over the interests of any of its citizens resident here. But in our mutual exchange of confidences, or rather indiscretions, I cannot hide that I view the moral support some of our colleagues have offered to the laudable sentiments of the English minister with great pessimism. Nor as a man of honor can I credit the insinuations and slanders published by the dailies that are in tight with the government of the republic. The West Company! How abominable!”
Tu-Lag-Thi’s final truculent blast wound down to a lisping hiss as he flashed an obsequious Asiatic grin. Dr. Aníbal Roncali stroked his mustache while his quavering lips came up with an emotion-laden paragraph. He spoke with tremendous nervous energy, working his black curls into a frenzy, until they stood up straight like lizards’ tails: “Dr. Banderas cannot order the liquor shops to shut their doors. If he does, there will be riots. These fiestas are bacchanalia for half-breeds and bums!”
III
Echoes from the fair floated in on the breeze. Strings of toy lanterns danced along the street. At the far end a merry-go-round went round and round, lights blinking, creating a strident, hysterical clatter that hypnotized the cats crouched on the eaves. The wind hummed and performed acrobatic feats with the toy lanterns that swung back and forth in time, and the street winked. In the distance, the shadowy fortress of Saint-Martin of the Mostenses loomed up through the luminous haze.