Somewhere in Latin America...in a classic apartment on the better side of town...
This represents the fourth installment of my AU "modernized" Scarlet Pimpernel tale.
Once again, I am obliged to advance a disclaimer: I do not own Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel or any of its sequels. Although most of the characters I describe here originate only in my own imagination, with no deliberate reference to any real individuals, living or dead, I wish to acknowledge that I do not own the memoir of Jacobo Timmerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, translated by Toby Talbot (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), pp. 20-21, which mentions an incident upon which I have very loosely based the circumstances described by the character of Martin Tarebbe, below.
The author would like to express her enormous gratitude to Elizabeth Marshall, who read an earlier version of this chapter, and whose generous enthusiasm for this series has been critical to its composition. The author is also extremely grateful to Slytherinsal, and several other readers and writers who have been good enough to review episodes of this series. Their kind attention is deeply appreciated.
The following piece is rated T for some references to political violence at home and abroad. As always, I mean no offense, and hope none is taken; and welcome all comments negative & positive.
Two men were seated in the spacious room of an old apartment located in the most fashionable part of the city.
The furnishings that surrounded them bespoke a life in which ideas were prized above luxury, but in which luxury had always lain comfortably within reach.
High ceilings, decorated by the sort of ornate moldings that had been popular in the construction of apartments at the end of the nineteenth century, held cracks revealed by the owner's failure to order a fresh coat of paint for decades.
A carpet of deep Turkish weave, a feast of contrasting red and brown tones, was no less luxurious for evidence in a few threadbare patches, where its fibers had been worn thin by the heels of numerous guests and family members who'd crossed it, paced upon it, and as, children, turned an occasional cartwheel.
Books, many of them no less marred and distended by thumb-eared pages, thickened by pieces of paper, heavy with the owner's scribbled commentary sandwiched underneath their covers, lined walls of shelving littered with decorative antiques, often chipped by falls to the floor, as eager hands had pulled books carelessly off shelves without pausing to attend them.
On one end of the room, an entering visitor's gaze would have been drawn to an untidy desk piled high with papers, and an adjoining typing table, a typewriter set at its center.
The desk and typewriter were, perhaps, the most beloved possession of a man who had dedicated his life to articulating his own complex thoughts, and recording and explaining those of others.
On the other end of the room, several plush leather chairs were set about a marble coffee table, on which was arranged a variety of tapas: tasty cheeses, tart olives, and sausage imported from Europe, crusty bread from a nearby French bakery; and a bottle of sweet red wine.
Two men sat occupying two of the chairs, sharing the contents of the wine bottle and what seemed to be an amicable conversation.
Although both men were fluent speakers of Spanish, their conversation was being conducted in English, the younger man's native language, and one that the elder had learned to speak easily decades before.
The older man, shorter, slightly portly, and balding, who spoke English distinctly but with a Spanish accent, was the man to whom the desk, the typewriter, and the apartment belonged: the esteemed Martin Tarebbe, editor and owner of the widely read local newspaper, La Voz Popular.
In private life, Tarebbe had lost his beloved wife to cancer two years earlier, but remained in close contact with the one member of his immediate family who remained to him, his only daughter, the dedicated and widely respected doctor, Susana Tarebbe Feinburg.
Martin's English had improved over the past two years as he had come to enjoy regular Friday evening meals with his daughter and the American Susana had married, who was, like Martin, a journalist: Andrew Feinburg, arts editor of The World Courant.
It was in the setting of Andrew and Susana's smaller and more contemporary apartment nearby that Martin had first encountered the tall, blond, younger man: Percy Blake, Andy's old childhood friend, fraternity brother, and captain of Blake Enterprises, the American engineering company hired by the nation's governing generals to build the dam whose operation, it was promised, would bring the irrigation of the nation's river to hundreds of farms, and fresh water for household use to thousands of peasant families outside the city.
A casual observer might have imagined that the two men sat as subject and conductor of an interview, perhaps on the subject of what benefits Blake Enterprises hoped to bring to the editor's country in completing the dam under construction.
They would not have realized that Blake sat in Tarebbe's elegant study as the Scarlet Pimpernel, the master of a tiny band of rescuers who had cheated the generals of over 100 victims already, and who hoped to shortly add Martin Tarebbe's list to the number of those saved.
And yet, for the last hour, Martin Tarebbe had turned a deaf ear to the younger man's entreaties that Martin avail himself of their private transportation to escape.
"Is it so easy, then, to leave the country of your birth?" Tarebbe inquired of the younger man, his brow furrowed with a mixture of sadness and sympathy.
"But you weren't born here," Percy protested. "Andy told me so."
"But my heart is here," Martin retorted, gently. "I learned to think in this country. I became a man here. My child, the precious apple of my eye, was born here."
"And my beloved wife, who no longer comforts me, is buried here."
Martin's deep brown eyes studied the earnest blue of his companion's.
"I know why my son-in-law left his home," Martin Tarebbe continued. "He followed my daughter, whom he is sensible enough to worship as the finest of all women-with the exception, of course, of her late mother," Martin paused to smile fondly at the thought of his daughter, the gentle and skilled Dr. Susana Feinburg; and his wife, whose grave he still visited each week.
"But what of you?" Martin inquired, bending forward. "Why did you leave home?
Percy offered a sly smile, evading the question. "Why Martin, you know the answer to that," he drawled. "I came here to build a dam."
Martin shook his head impatiently. "Poppycock! Andy told me that you and he drove across the United States to finish your education, over the objection of your parents."
"Why?" Martin fixed Percy with a penetrating look, the look that few interview subjects had ever been able to evade.
"And why," Martin continued, "would you risk your life for an old man like myself?"
It was Percy who dropped his gaze, as Martin's sharp query continued to hang in the air between them.
"There are a dozen reasons why I left home, I suppose." Percy sighed, as he debated whether to confide a story about himself that only Andy knew—that oddly, he realized, he had never told anyone else, not even Ed, who might have understood.
Percy continued to hesitate.
And yet he was prodded, finally, to share his confidence by an intuition that somehow, the veteran journalist would weigh his history carefully.
And perhaps, he thought, his tale might finally shake Martin Tarebbe's perilous determination to stay put.
"The main thing that made me leave home was a man," Percy admitted, beginning his story.
"A man?" Martin frowned, uncertain of what would come next.
"His name," Percy went on, "was Henry Jackson. He was a Negro, or what we now call black, in my country—and what my parents would call colored. Henry was our family chauffeur."
Percy paused to take a breath, and looked at Martin directly, before he continued.
"People like my parents and their country-club friends would never see a man like Henry as he truly was. As far as they were concerned, Henry—all Negros, for that matter—were simply put on earth to cater to them and their needs. He was just…." Percy searched for the right word, "an appliance, a human machine, to them."
Some lingering trace of filial duty made Percy feel vaguely guilty about criticizing his parents this way, when they were not there to defend themselves.
Except that Percy knew he spoke no more than the truth.
"My parents aren't really evil people, Martin," Percy went on, his eyes shadowed by a thoughtful sadness that always seemed to settle over his aspect when he spoke of home.
"Just limited," Percy spoke the word assertively, "by the world they lived in—the world they still live in, in fact."
It was only time, Percy thought to himself, that had given him the clarity to understand the things he tried to explain as he continued.
"It would never have occurred to them that a man like Henry might have had a mind, or ideas. But Henry did. He had actually finished two years of college—one of our Negro colleges, which is the only way a Negro got to go to college at all where I grew up, while segregation was still legal."
"Before his father died, and Henry had to leave school to support his mother," Percy went on, "Henry had attended college on a scholarship. And Henry was a reader—Shakespeare, philosophy, literature—Henry kept reading, even after he left college.
Percy's voice dropped to a lower tone.
"Henry knew it all."
Martin nodded, and settled back in his chair, as he spoke for the first time since Percy had begun.
"So." Martin asked, "this…Henry Jackson spoke to you of what he'd read?"
Percy nodded. "He talked to me about everything. I could tell him anything. I could ask him anything. Henry drove me to school every morning, and picked me up every afternoon…" his voice trailed off…"until the spring I was twelve years old."
Percy let out a little snort of laughter. "Hell, I even asked him about girls."
"I'd read things in school—I'd see things happening around me—and Henry would explain them. Henry read newspapers! My father never read anything but the stock reports for the family business!"
Percy's voice ripened with a mixture of excitement and affection as he recalled those days of discussion in the car, the forty-five minute drives to and from school that had represented the core of his real education for over seven years.
"It was Henry who made me understand why the other boys could be so vicious to Andy; about the fights we were forever getting into at school. It was Henry who explained to me about the debates over whether Negros should be able to vote, and shop at the same stores we shopped at. Henry talked to me about the Reverend King's work, and non-violent resistance, and even about debates over whether non-violence was the best course…"
"Did he approve of non-violence?" Martin wanted to know.
Percy thought back. "Mostly, he did," he replied, slowly, remembering. "Henry was following the work that Andy's parents were doing, with other lawyers, down south. He thought change wasn't coming fast enough. But he was also convinced that ending the segregation laws would be crucial…"
Percy was looking up, now, at Martin, as he continued. "Henry's 'lectures'…" Percy looked at Martin and grinned, "…you might call them 'editorials,' Martin…"
Martin could not help but return the smile. Blake's charm was irresistible.
"…Were always annotated with references to the classics."
Percy smiled again, remembering.
"He'd quote from Thoreau, and Shakespeare, and Rousseau, and Nietzsche and…I swear, Martin, every single author Andy and I were assigned in freshman philosophy was familiar to me because Henry had talked about them first! And Henry would talk to me about what was going on in the world—about the Cold War, and Europe, and Africa—he even knew something about what was going on in this country!"
Percy's voice trailed off, as his eyes returned to the floor.
"But that was what brought him down, in the end," Percy sighed.
"What do you mean?" Martin probed.
"One morning, I came downstairs for school, and there was someone new. Charlie, I think his name was. He was nice enough, of course. But he wasn't Henry."
"I spent two weeks trying to pester cook, the maids, my parents, to tell me where Henry had gone. No one would tell me anything. Finally, I went to Isaac and Myra."
Martin nodded. "Andy's parents. They flew here for the wedding. Lovely people," he commented.
Percy smiled again, this time with genuine affection.
"Yeah," he agreed, softly. "Isaac's a sweetheart. And Myra is everybody's mom."
There were District Attorneys from the southern state in which Percy and Andy had been raised who might have been surprised to hear their fierce courtroom opponents described in these terms.
"It was Myra who finally told me how the Klan had broken in on a meeting about registering Negros to vote. A bunch of people had been roughed up—they'd even knocked Isaac around a little- but four of the Negros who'd attended were killed. Henry had been one of them."
Percy stared, unseeingly, at the rug beneath him, lost in his memories.
It was funny how telling the story had brought back some of the grief and confusion he'd felt as a boy of twelve.
"I went to my mother and father after that, asked them about it."
"I wanted to know if I could go with Andy and his parents to visit Henry's family—he was supporting a wife and three children, Martin, in addition to his mother-and tell her how sorry I was."
Percy's voice grew a little hard.
"They gave me a flat-out no. 'We weren't to become involved' were the words I believe my father used."
Percy sighed. "And that was that."
Martin settled back in his chair, and assessed the younger man before him.
It was edifying, certainly, to finally learn the depth of the connection that existed between Percy Blake and his son-in-law.
Martin had never thought to compare his lovely daughter to the physically unprepossessing Myra Feinburg, to whom Andy bore less physical resemblance than he did his lanky father.
Evidently, however, there were some similarities of character.
Martin chided himself for not having perceived this before.
"So now you want to save all the Henry Jacksons of my country, eh?" Martin inquired with an indulgent smile.
Percy looked up at him. "You have a problem with that, Martin?"
"No," Martin pursed his lips, and gave Percy a look of almost paternal affection. "It's reckless, of course; dangerous, but well-intentioned."
Martin gave a little sniff. "I had forgotten how romantic you Americans can be at times."
Percy bridled at the condescension implicit in the elder man's tone.
He was here to try save Martin's life, he thought indignantly.
He wondered, fleetingly, if he could slug him first.
"But you know, young man," and here Martin fixed Percy with his unflinching gaze—the gaze of a man who feared nothing, and spoke truths from which others might prefer to hide—"I have lived in this country a long time, and I am not as certain as you seem to be that everyone who is being threatened by the generals is one of your Henry Jacksons."
"Do you remember the legend of the Sirens, Mr. Blake?" Martin queried, his voice taking on the cadence of a dreamy pendant.
"Yes, of course," Percy answered, a little impatiently, summoning memories of boyhood tales of Greek mythology, and college required reading. "In Homer's Odyssey. They lured sailors to their death."
Martin nodded at Percy's affirmative answer, but elaborated as if he hadn't provided one. "They were beautiful women, with voices as glorious as their aspect," Martin rejoined.
"And even if a man knew that he could die, leaping into the sea to reach them," Martin continued, "he still could not resist the seduction of their melodies."
"Violence is our siren's song, Mr. Blake," Martin explained, leaning forward to fix his eyes, once more, on Percy's as his voice grew lower, and more emphatic. "For years, it has lured men who desired power into the deadly oceans of our politics."
"Once trapped by the ocean's waves," Martin continued, his voice now dangerously soft, and yet, somehow, poetic, "these men-inevitably-are doomed to perish."
"But it is the music of violence itself that corrupts them," Martin went on, as he continued to hold Percy with his gaze.
"And it is violence, and that lust for power," Martin asserted, "that fuels the madness that threatens my country now."
"Sometimes," Martin finished, in a voice that had become barely more than an urgent whisper, "revolution is a flame that needs to burn itself out."
For a few moments the room was still, as Martin's whispered words seemed to echo in the silence.
Percy tried to make light of the older man's speech.
"I think you just switched your analogies from water to fire, there, Martin," he drawled. "Which is it?"
The drawl cloaked how genuinely disturbed he was by Martin's analysis-or was it a warning?
Hadn't Marguerita, that night in the restaurant, said almost exactly the same thing?
Martin was smiling now, enjoying the way he seemed to have obtained the young man's full attention.
"Ah, but whether it is fire, or water, a surfeit of either can kill a man, can they not?" Martin beamed, reveling in Percy's cleverness as thoroughly as he did in his own.
Resettling himself in his chair, Martin prepared to drive home his point by relating the events of a recent incident that might have struck fear into the heart of a lesser man.
To Martin, it would serve merely as the evidence he'd draw upon to support an evening's friendly argument.
"Just last week, for example," Martin began in a conversational tone, "I received two death threats."
Percy's eyebrows winged upward, startled as much by the number as by the elder man's casual manner of reference.
"Two?" Percy inquired, trying to contain his surprise.
"Yes!" Martin replied with a triumphant snort of amusement. "Two!"
Martin took up his wine, again, and sipped it before he continued. "One arrived, at 10 AM precisely, from a radical left-wing group—the one, incidentally," he interposed, "to which Armando Santa Justa has occasionally been linked." Martin sniffed with contempt. "Sixteen people died two years ago due to a bomb they exploded in one of our town squares."
Percy frowned at the name, and filed away the information Martin had just given him for future reference.
Armando Santa Justa was linked to left-wing political radicals?
Did Marguerita know?
Was Marguerita involved?
Martin was sufficiently engrossed in telling his tale not to sense any quickening of anxiety behind Percy's expression as he continued.
"Their threat, which was proffered in the form of a written letter, pasted together from magazine clippings, denounced me," Martin went on, "for allowing 'right-wing propaganda'—this is how they put it—to appear in my newspaper."
Martin paused, a little theatrically, and sniffed again. "I believe they were referring to an opinion piece I had printed written by one of the economic professors at our university, which argued for the value of a free-market economy."
"They indicated that if I continued to entertain such arguments on the pages of La Voz Popular, they would silence it, and me, permanently, by blowing our offices to the skies."
Martin put down his wine, and frowned at the memory, his expression betraying no hint of fear, merely amused irritation, and a trace, perhaps, of indignation.
"After luncheon—I guess it would have been shortly before fifteen hours," Martin went on, in the same unflappably sardonic tone, "I received a second death threat. This one arrived in the form of a telephone call, from a sender whose voice was carefully disguised and whose number could not be traced, although my industrious secretary valiantly endeavored to do so for over two hours afterwards."
"Here, the caller indicated that if I did not wish to 'disappear' myself, I should cease to call upon the generals to account for the sons of those poor mothers who march in the Plaza—and that remarkable woman whose body was found on the beach two months ago."
Martin paused to give Percy a searching look. "I believe I can assume the caller spoke for the generals, and worked, most probably, for our distinguished chief of police, whose acquaintance I understand you made the other evening."
Percy looked down at the floor for a moment, thinking of the night he'd met Contreras, of the Colonel's eyes on Marguerita, and the way she'd seemed to shrink from his scrutiny.
The night was etched, permanently, in his memory, but Martin's story was transforming it with a new significance he would have to consider further.
For the moment, however, Percy returned his attention to Martin.
Martin was laughing again. "I must say, Mr. Blake, as a journalist, I can't but take it as a compliment to my professionalism that I have provoked both sides of the question to such excessive communications! It reassures me, where I might have doubted my own merits, that my coverage is, indeed, unbiased!"
It was impossible not to be a little in awe of the man's bravery, Percy thought.
And not to be goaded, beyond measure, by the man's stubbornness.
"I'm glad you were flattered by all that attention, Martin," Percy drawled again, in the manner he might have used to make small talk in public. "But doesn't it kinda confirm my argument that it might just be time to skip town?"
"No, my boy, it does not," Martin replied, sobering after his moments of merriment. "It indicates to me that the people of my country are in thrall to the seduction of violence, and that it is the voice of truth—rather than rescue—which is mere flight from the unpleasant—that they will require if they are to face the unpleasant and return to their senses."
"What's more," Martin continued, looking severely down his nose at Percy, "I confess I have strong reservations about how deeply you've involved my son-in-law in these schemes of yours."
"His safety cannot be jeopardized," Martin scolded. "He is necessary to my daughter's happiness," Martin added, pronouncing the word necessary with special emphasis.
"Aren't you necessary, too, Martin?" Percy retorted, bringing the conversation back to where it had started.
There were no sirens singing of violence, Percy thought impatiently; and the merits of his own reasons for acting as he did were irrelevant if they merely fueled Martin's sophistry.
The bottom line was Martin should come with them, and save himself.
"I can get you out, Martin," Percy whispered, his voice holding a promise of safety, and escape.
"You're a newspaper man, a talented writer. You could write anywhere," Percy urged.
"Think of your daughter, worrying about you. Think of the people in my country, who need to be told what's going on!"
But Martin could not be moved.
Settling firmly into his chair, the elder man reaffirmed his decision, in the same low, emphatic tone he had employed earlier to evoke myths and verities.
"You don't leave your country," Martin pronounced with an air of finality, "when it's in trouble."