The Honorary Consul Read Online Free PDF

After Doctor Plarr had left the car he heard it being backed a few yards. He stood still, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dark, until he was able to see by starlight the kind of place they had brought him to. It was part of the 'bidonville' which lay between the city and the bend of the river. The track was almost as wide as a city street, and he could just see a shack made out of dried mud and old petrol cans hidden among the avocados. As his sight cleared he began to make out other huts standing concealed among the trees, like men in ambush. Aquino led him on. The doctor's feet sank more than ankle deep in mud. Even a jeep would have to pass slowly here. There would be plenty of warning if the police made a raid. Perhaps after all they were amateurs of some intelligence.
           "Is 'he' here?" he asked Aquino.
           "Who?"
           "Oh, for God's sake, there are no microphones in the trees. The Ambassador, of course."
           "Yes, he is here all right. But he has not come round after the injection."
           They moved as quickly as they could along the mud track, passing several dark huts. The silence seemed unnatural—not even a child crying. Doctor Plarr paused to recover breath. "These people," he whispered, "they must have heard your car."
           "They will not talk. They think we are smugglers. Anyway you can imagine—they are no friends to the police."
           Diego led the way down a side turning where the mud was even deeper. It had not rained for two days, but in this 'barrio' of the poor the mud lay permanently until the dry season was well advanced. There was nowhere for the water to drain, and yet, as Doctor Plarr knew well, the inhabitants had to walk as much as a mile in order to find a tap which gave water fit for drinking. The children—he had treated many of them—were big-bellied from protein deficiency. Perhaps he had been many times down this very track—it was indistinguishable from all the others; he had always needed a guide when he visited a patient here. For some reason 'The Taciturn Heart' came back to his mind. To fight for one's honor with knives over a woman, that belonged to another, an absurdly outdated world, which had ceased to exist except in the romantic imagination of writers like Saavedra. Honor meant nothing to the starving. To them belonged the more serious fight for survival.
           "Is that you, Eduardo?" a voice asked.
           "Yes, is that you, Léon?"
           Somebody held a candle up long enough for him to reach the threshold. Then the door was closed quickly behind him.
           In the light of the candle he saw the man whom they still called Father Rivas; Léon looked as thin and immature in his T-shirt and jeans as the boy he had known in the country across the border. His brown eyes were too big for his face, the large ears set almost at right angles to his skull made bun resemble one of the small mongrel dogs which haunted the 'barrio' of the poor. There was the same soft fidelity in the eyes and a vulnerability in the protruding ears. He could have been taken in spite of his age for a shy seminarist.
           "You have been a long time, Eduardo," he complained softly.
           "Ask your driver Diego about that."
           "The Ambassador is still in a coma. We had to give him a second injection. He was thrashing around too much."
           "I told you a second shot would be dangerous."
           "Everything is dangerous," Father Rivas said gently, as though he were in the confessional warning someone against the temptation of proximity.
           While Doctor Plarr unpacked his briefcase Father Rivas went on, "He is breathing very heavily."
           "What will you do if he stops breathing altogether?"
           "We shall have to change our tactics."
           "How?"
           "We shall have to announce he was executed. Revolutionary justice," he added