The Five Arrows Part 43

Good. Banter. Nice cheap cafe-society banter. Have to play the game as she is played; silly brittle talk about nothing. Break her down, keep her off guard, keep your own guard up. Talk about the lobster. Talk about the steak. Make vacuous wise-cracks over the coffee. Now she's pleased with the guava pastry. Be the man of the world. Talk about guava.

"You're talking down at me, Matt. I told you once before. I'm not really stupid."

"G.o.d, I'm sorry," he said. "I must have been groggy all through dinner."

"You sounded it."

"Can you walk?"

"I'm too full."

"Let's sit on the sea wall. It's the pleasantest spot in town."

Hall bought a paper from a pa.s.sing newsboy. They walked along the sea wall for a block, and then he spread the paper out on top of the wall and lifted Jerry to the broad ledge. They sat facing the sea, not saying much of anything.

"The beach looks so clean," she said. "Do you think ..."

He leaped to the sand. "Take my hand," he said, "and bring the paper with you." He spread the papers on the sand, laid his jacket over the papers, and sprawled on the makeshift pallet. Jerry sat near him, took his head in her lap.

"Poor Matt! You're so tired. Want to tell me about it?"

"About what?"

She stroked his face with soft, gentle hands. "About what's bothering you, darling. Something terrible is happening to you."

"There's nothing wrong."

"You're such a bad liar, darling. I can see it in your face."

"Only that?"

"It's enough. That is, when you care for a guy."

"You're sticking your chin out, baby."

"No, I'm not. You're really a very gentle person. But you want to be hard as nails, don't you, Matt?"

"I don't know what I want to be, baby. I'd like to see the world a good place for little guys who like republics. I'd like to kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who are fouling up such a world. It sounds very big, I know. But I'm not big. I'm a little guy and I like the world of little people. Or don't I make sense?"

"I think I understand you, Matt."

"Later I'll read you Tabio's speech. Or at least the high lights, in English. You'll get a pretty good idea of the things I believe in."

"What was it like on the other side, Matt? In the war, I mean. Or don't you want to talk about the war?"

It's now or never, he thought. Tell her about the war, tell it to her straight. If she's ever going to see it, she's got to see it now. "I don't like to talk about it," he said, "but I will. I guess I owe it to you to talk about it. I was there when it started, and I kept hollering that it had started, but no one would believe me."

"In Poland?"

"h.e.l.l, no! In Madrid. The summer of '36. I reached Madrid in the fourth week of July, and by September I'd seen enough of the n.a.z.is and the Italians to know it was World War Two." The words came easily, the whole fabric. Tabio had told the story as a historian. This was the other way it could be told, the way of the eyewitness, of the partisan. He told her everything, about the fighting in Spain and about the slaughter of the innocents; about the grotesque ballets of death and disintegration on the green tables of Geneva; about the arrows of Falange, reaching out from the festers of Spain to the New World. Everything but the role of Ansaldo.

"Now," he said, "I think you can guess why I'm so bothered about this war, why I sometimes act as if I have a very personal stake in it.

Please try to understand what I mean, Jerry."

She was silent for a long moment. "I think I do," she said. "For the past few days I've been thinking about the war. Ever since--oh, you know since when. I've been thinking that if I don't do anything else, maybe I'll join the Army as a nurse when we leave here."

"You've got it bad, haven't you?"

"I don't know what I've got, darling. All I know is that I don't have the right to be a Me Firster any more. Do you think I'm right about that?"

"Baby, listen to me. You don't have to go to Bataan to get into the war.

It's spread everywhere. The front stretches from Murmansk to Manila to San Hermano. And it's the same front."

"But what can I do here?"

Hall drew a deep breath. "Let's both have a cigarette," he said. "This is going to take some telling." He sat up, faced the girl, took her hands and held them firmly. "Now, what I'm going to say might sound harsh, Jerry. But you'll simply have to believe me."

"What is it, Matt?"

"How much do you know about Dr. Ansaldo?"

"Only that he's a nice guy. He's never made a pa.s.s at me, he behaves like a gentleman, and he's one crack surgeon. Don't tell me he's no good, Matt. I just won't believe it."

"You'll have to believe me," Hall insisted. "What do you know about Ansaldo's past? Do you know where he was during the Spanish War?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Do you know?"

"Sure, I do. I saw him." Hall described his first meeting with Ansaldo.

As he spoke, Jerry abruptly withdrew her hands. Trembling, she backed away from him, started to get up.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I wish you hadn't made love to me," she said, simply. "Now I feel cheap--and used."

"Don't say that. I ..."

"You know it's true. You're not just another newspaperman. And you don't give a d.a.m.n about me. It was Ansaldo you were interested in from the beginning. That's why you were on the same plane with us on the way here. And that's why you ..."

"You mean I'm a G-man? Don't be absurd."

"Don't make it worse by calling me a fool. I liked you. I liked you a lot. Don't make it worse now, Matt."

"But you're dead wrong." He tried to put his arms around her. She shook him off. "Believe me," he said, "I'm not government. You were right--but only partially--about my original interest in your party. But tonight I wish to h.e.l.l it were only Ansaldo who interests me. It would make things a lot easier all around. The other morning I was watching Marina when a Spanish ship came in. Someone didn't want me to watch. I was drugged.

That's why I disappeared for a few days. It d.a.m.n near finished me. I've got something on Ansaldo--before I'm through I hope to have enough to hang him. I mean it literally. I'm trying to have him fitted for the same grave he thought I'd have. And it's going to be simple. What won't be simple is convincing the authorities here that you were an innocent bystander in the whole affair. Do you think I would talk to you this way if things were as you suspect they are with me?"

"I don't know what to think, Matt."

"Don't stop liking me," he said.