Mask of the Andes. Jon Cleary
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outside the railway station and Taber and Pereira got out. A blind Indian woman, led by a small girl, came shuffling towards them; the child guided the claw of a hand up to the coin that Pereira dropped into it. A policeman, dark eyes blank under the stiff vertical peak of his cap that seemed to be an extension of the planes of his face, stood by the kerb but made no attempt to move the beggar woman on. He was an Indian, too: criollos and gringos were fair game.
‘Begging is against the law,’ said Pereira as he and Taber went on into the big deserted hall of the station. ‘But no one ever takes any notice of it, least of all the minions of the law.’
Miguel Pereira was a chubby little man in his mid-thirties with a handlebar moustache, bad breath that he constantly sweetened with mints, and a vocabulary derived from a library of Victorian English novels. He had graduated as an agronomist from the University of San Marcos in Lima, then had had an extra year at Texas A & M on an American grant. He had come back to San Sebastian, married a local girl and now had four children and two jobs. He was the government agricultural adviser and, under a pseudonym that everyone knew of, he also managed the largest cinema in town.
‘It is the only way one can survive,’ he had told Taber when the latter had arrived a week ago. ‘The government does not reward its devoted minions. I grew up as a child expecting a life of comfort – my family were of wealthy means. But we lost all that in the revolution – we were not as fortunate as some people. I was suddenly thrown on the world—’ He had spread dramatic hands; Taber listened for violins, but heard none. ‘When one is born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth, one finds it difficult to adapt to a life of penury. Luxury is in the blood, don’t you think?’
‘I couldn’t say,’ said Taber mildly. ‘It’s quite a while since I’ve had a blood test.’
‘A sense of humour!’ Pereira clapped his hands together as if Taber had just announced a World Bank grant for penurious agronomists. ‘The sign of an educated man. We are going to be very amicable colleagues, Senor Taber. You will be my guest any night you wish at the cinema. Tonight, perhaps? We are showing Rosemary’s Baby, a jolly comedy about witchcraft in New York. The campesinos will love it, though they may find it a little unsophisticated.’
‘Some other time. I like Westerns.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ Pereira put his hands on his plump hips as if he were about to draw six-guns. ‘John Wayne. The campesinos flock to see his movies. They are waiting for the one where he is shot in the back by an Indian or a Mexican bandit. I await with dread the night it happens. They will burn down the cinema in celebration.’
Now, in the station, he said, ‘This way to the Customs chief. His name is Suarez – he is a very difficult man.’
‘They always are,’ said Taber, with memories of other Customs chiefs in a dozen other countries. ‘It’s in their blood.’
‘A sense of humour!’ Pereira burbled admiringly. ‘How it makes life bearable!’
Their footsteps echoing hollowly on the stone floor, they walked across the wide main hall. Only four trains a week now arrived at and departed from San Sebastian; the station was a monument from and to the past; it had been superseded by the still half-constructed airport terminal up on the altiplano. Birds flew in and out through the upper reaches of the high domed roof, the only arrivals and departures for today. From the hall Taber could see the empty platforms stretching away down towards the marshalling yards, currents of rust showing clearly in the river of rails. In the yards two ancient engines, British made at the turn of the century, shunted some equally ancient wagons back and forth as if the drivers were intent only on keeping the stock rolling, otherwise they would be out of a job. I’m in another museum, Taber thought.
Suarez’s office was like that of the director of a museum. Yellowed sheets of regulations hung on the wall like ancient scrolls; a Wanted smuggler stared out from a poster like a cave dweller. Suarez himself was a dapper mestizo with one eye that was walled and the other suspicious. He nodded without smiling and waited for Taber to make the opening remark. All right, you bastard, Taber thought, no pleasantries.
‘An FAO officer was here on a short visit three months ago. He recommended that sulphur, fertilizer and some other soil additives should be used around here. He ordered it and it was dispatched at once. Senor Pereira understands the shipment has now arrived.’
Suarez nodded, a barely perceptible movement. ‘Yes.’
‘Then we’d like to take delivery of it.’
‘That is impossible. The necessary papers have not arrived.’ He spoke Spanish with the correctness of someone who had had to learn it; Quechua had been his childhood language. These are the worst, Taber thought. The converts to a way of life were as dedicated as the converts to a religion.
‘I have the papers here with me. Duplicates.’
‘I must have the originals. They have not arrived.’
‘Where are they?’
Suarez shrugged, his good eye as blank as the other.
‘How long will they be arriving?’
Another shrug. Out in the yards the engines hooted: derisively, thought Taber, trying to hold on to his temper.
‘The chemicals are urgently necessary. The farmers need them.’
A third shrug. ‘The papers are also necessary.’
Taber looked around the office, wondering if it was worthwhile wrecking. But the steel cabinet, the plain table and chairs, the old rusty typewriter, were government issue: Suarez would probably be glad to have them replaced. Taber looked down at the dapper little man and wondered what the penalty would be for wrecking a corrupt Customs chief. Death, probably: the system had to be protected.
‘I shall write to La Paz at once and ask them to send the papers special delivery.’
Suarez shrugged yet again. ‘It will be no use hurrying them. They are notoriously slow and inefficient up in La Paz.’
‘Shall I quote you?’
For a moment the good eye flickered; then there was a fifth shrug. ‘As you wish.’
One more shrug, you little bastard, and I’ll risk the firing squad. ‘I shall write today. Adios.’
Outside in the main hall again Pereira, hurrying to keep up with Taber’s long strides, said, ‘It’s his way of surviving. Why didn’t you pay him the bribe he wanted?’
‘One more remark like that and I’ll wreck you.’ Taber stopped, looked about him, blind with rage. ‘I’ll bloody wreck someone!’
Pereira backed away, hands held up in front of him; all his gestures seemed borrowed from old silent movies. ‘A man of principle! So inspiring to see—’
Suddenly Taber’s rage went, he took off his cap, scratched his head and laughed. ‘Miguel, you’re a beaut. When did you last take out a principle and look at it?’
Pereira was offended. He said nothing till they were back at the Land-Rover. ‘It is not easy to be a man of principle all the time, not when one has to survive—’
Taber felt sorry for the chubby little man; after all, his own survival was guaranteed. ‘Miguel, I’m no paragon. I’ve bent my principles so often I could have strung them together and made a hippie necklace out of them. But I like to tell myself that when I’ve bent them, no one else has suffered – at least not as far as I know. But that bastard inside there—!’ He looked back into the station, his temper rising again. ‘I’m here to help you people and I’m buggered if I’m going to pay through the nose for the privilege!’
‘You would not have to pay, Harry, not personally. Suarez will not want much, a few dollars, that’s all, a token payment—’
‘It’s just the principle of the thing with him, that what you mean?’