Pepe noticed Hall"s interest. "The doctor has many peasant projects," he explained. "He brought some Spanish refugees from Madrid to the country to teach the peasants how to make good furniture. They have a big co-operative shop in the southern province near the Little River. Sit down in one of these new chairs. I"ll get him."
Hall relaxed in one of the low-slung chairs while Pepe went to the rear part of the house. "He"s not on the couch in his office," Pepe said. He went to the foot of the stairs leading into the foyer. "_Hola!_ It"s Delgado! _Hola!_ Don Manuel, it"s Delgado!" His shouts would have roused the dead. He turned around and winked to Hall. "_Abajo_ Anibal Tabio!"
he shouted. "_Viva_ Gamburdo! _Viva_ Segura! _Abajo_ Tabio!"
Upstairs there was the sound of a book or a heavy shoe dropping to the floor. "Bandit!" someone shouted, and then a tall graying man in his stockinged feet shuffled to the head of the stairs, rubbing his eyes and cursing Pepe with a mock cantankerousness. "_Bulto_," he shouted. "Give a man a chance to put on his shoes. Show some respect for my degrees!"
Pepe made a low, courtly stage bow. "Forgive me, Your Eminence," he pleaded. "I am only a simple pet.i.tioner."
"_Momentico, companero._" The doctor went to his room for a pair of huaraches.
"Doctor, I want you to meet _Companero_ Mateo Hall."
"_Companero_ Hall!" The doctor started to speak English. "It is so good to finally meet you. Don Anibal gave me your book on Spain for Christmas when it was printed. He spoke to me about you very highly. Please, sit down. You will find these chairs very comfortable."
"Pepe has been telling me about your co-operative."
"It is not very large. Here, try this chair. It is my favorite."
Pepe reminded the doctor that Hall was in need of his professional services. "Excuse my bad manners, doctor," he said, "but when you start to talk about your projects ..."
"He is right," the doctor smiled. "Sometimes I do talk too much. I like to talk, even when people don"t really listen to me. Even in my sleep I talk. About many things. Art. Weaving. World politics. The war."
"I like to listen," Hall said. "Where did you learn your English, doctor?"
"My English?" The doctor leaned back in his chair, the smile of a man enjoying a highly private joke on his face. "I am afraid, _companero_, that I learned my English in the same sort of a place where you learned your excellent Spanish. That is, in a dungeon built by the Kings of Spain."
"In Spain?"
"No. I am not a Spaniard. My grandfathers were Spaniards, but my father and I were born here." He pointed to a framed flag of the Republic which hung on the wall over Hall"s chair. "That flag hung in my cell in El Moro for three years, and that flag was in my hands the day Segura"s death opened the prison gates to all of us." The doctor was not aware that he was now speaking in Spanish.
"The doctor was in El Moro with Don Anibal," Pepe said.
"That is true," the doctor admitted. "Nearly every patriot on the faculty and so many of the students were there, too. I had just taken my degree in medicine but I was still at the University as an instructor in biology when the arrests began. But don"t think it was all tears and terror. Don Anibal and his late cousin Federico formed the so-called University Behind Bars. We had Chairs in Latin, English, biology, history, art, literature--everything. The soldiers, who were with us, smuggled in our books and papers. Later, when the Seguristas were out of power, the students who were in prison were able to take their examinations in the University of San Hermano, and the new Regents gave them full academic credit for their studies at El Moro."
"He is a sick man, doctor," Pepe said. "Examine him first and talk to him later."
"Pepe is right, _Companero_ Hall. I do talk too much."
"Nonsense. Any man who did three years in jail has a lot of talking to catch up on when he gets out."
"Will the examination take very long?" Pepe asked. "I have to go back to town. I can pick you up later."
"Have you an hour?" the doctor asked Hall.
"I have all day."
Pepe got up. "I"ll be back in two hours," he laughed. He walked out to the porch. They heard him meow at the cat. Then the cat screeched and Pepe howled.
"A cat is never completely civilized," Dr. Gonzales said. "Poor Pepe refuses to believe it. And now Grisita has scratched him again."
"Your wild beast!" Pepe roared. "She clawed me!"
"Come inside, and I"ll fix it, Pepe."
"No, thanks. I"ve got iodine in my car."
Hall expected the doctor to be amused. Instead, a wave of profound sadness gripped the man. He took out a pocket handkerchief and ran it over his forehead. "What"s wrong, doctor?"
"Not much," Gonzales said. "I just can"t stand the way they spare me.
Since my illness it"s been h.e.l.l. For twelve years I was the National Minister of public health education. Don Anibal appointed me when he was Minister of Education. He created the job for me. Now I live on a pension, and outside of the few hours I put in every week as a consultant at the University and my handicraft projects, I do nothing.
Biologically I am now a vegetable. And my good friends, the people of San Hermano ..."
"_Claro._ You mean they are too kind ..."
The doctor nodded. "But they are my friends," he said. "They do not do this to hurt me. And now, what bothers you?"
"My back. I think that I may have strained it."
"I can examine you better in my office. It"s in the next room."
"Thank you. But first, I"d like to talk to you about some other things.
I don"t know what"s going on, but I do know that something is wrong. I knew Don Anibal in Geneva, and I know that if he were well, your country would break with the Axis...."
The doctor sighed. "You are not alone," he said. "Don Anibal is a very sick man. No one seems to know what is wrong, exactly. He is paralyzed from the hips down, and he grows weaker every day. The mind is still strong, but it must rest so much that none of us dare to tax Don Anibal with worries other than his health. In the meanwhile, Gamburdo has taken over."
"And Gamburdo? Is he honest?"
"Gamburdo is not a man of good will. He is a clever lawyer and a very intelligent man. His family prospered under Segura, but the General seduced a Gamburdo daughter, and that turned them against the Seguristas. Gamburdo volunteered his services as a lawyer when Tabio and the Republican junta was in jail. But this offer was a calculating gamble. He knew that Segura"s days were numbered; he knew that the leaders of the junta would be the new government of the nation. He joined the Party of Radical Socialism, but when he became its head, he saw to it that, like himself, the party became neither radical nor socialist."
"He was for Franco, you know," Hall said.
"I know. He was for Franco and the Falange and against Tabio. But he is very intelligent. He managed to keep these things nicely hidden. When Tabio was elected President and created the new government of national unity, Gamburdo joined forces with Don Anibal--but only to destroy this unity from within.
"This is the least of his sins. It seems that he has kept all the Republican doctors from the Presidencia. The only doctors Gamburdo has permitted are the reactionaries, the old servants of the Seguristas. We tried to talk to Don Anibal, but you know him and his saintly faith in the goodness of Man. I think that, deliberately, he has placed his life in Gamburdo"s hands as a lesson to all of his old friends in the need for real unity. It is as if he means to prove to us, by getting well, that unity is the most important issue in the nation today."
"And Dr. Ansaldo? Is he really good?"
"He has a great reputation. But it is a gamble for Gamburdo alone. If Don Anibal recovers, Gamburdo and his friends will say that it was a Spaniard who saved the President. If he dies--even a great Spanish doctor could not save him. Either way, Gamburdo stands to gain."
In the office Hall took a chair facing the microscope on the doctor"s white enameled metal desk. He watched the doctor hunt through the instrument cases along the wall. On a lower shelf, the doctor found his stethoscope.
"Would you please remove your shirt?"
Hall shook his head. "No," he said. He gently took the stethoscope from the doctor"s hands, carefully folded it and put it away in a small wooden box he found on the desk. "This is what I really came for, doctor."
"My stethoscope?"
"Exactly." He explained to the doctor that with such instruments one could easily hear through an average indoor wall. "I have a queer feeling," he said, "that with your stethoscope I can perhaps get a hint as to what is actually wrong with Don Anibal,--or, at least, in San Hermano."