Mask of the Andes. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ now the butler brought cups for Taber and McKenna. Romola Ruiz poured from the big silver pot that looked as old as the rest of the room’s furniture.

      ‘My parents are dead, so their house is gone. And I’m unmarried.’ Or twice divorced, if you like; but he did not say that. He did not think the Ruiz would have a high opinion of divorce, especially with a bishop in the family. He tried for some graciousness, lying like a diplomat, which he was in effect but which he often forgot: ‘You have a beautiful home.’

      Romola Ruiz surprised him: ‘It could be modernized. Museums are not for living in.’

      ‘This house is the continuum in our family,’ said her husband. He sat in an upright, leather-backed monk’s chair, one that had for three centuries supported Ruiz men in the same uncomfortable way. Taber guessed that few Ruiz women would have sat in it and certainly not Romola Ruiz. ‘It was built in 1580. The history of our country has passed through this room.’

      ‘My family came to San Sebastian only in 1825,’ Romola Ruiz told Taber. ‘Our house fell down in 1925. They don’t build them like they used to.’

      Her husband smiled, but it was an effort. ‘It is my wife’s joke that her family are Johnny-come-latelies. But her ancestor who settled here was one of Bolivar’s principal lieutenants. He is honoured in our history.’ He looked with pride about the room. ‘This house is necessary. One needs something unchanging in this changing world.’

      ‘Perhaps Senor Taber would not agree with you,’ said the Bishop, who had chosen a comfortable couch on which to sit. He looked across at Taber, the non-religious non-ascetic who had found himself perched awkwardly in another monk’s chair. ‘You are here to change things, are you not, Senor Taber? Otherwise the FAO would not have sent you.’

      ‘Let’s say I’m here to try and help improve things.’

      ‘Improvement is change.’ Francisco Ruiz still stood in front of the big stone fireplace with the McKennas. He was a darkly handsome young man with his mother’s slim build and his father’s intensity that he had not yet learned how to control as the older man had. ‘Don’t you agree, Padre McKenna? The Church is trying to improve things by changing them.’

      McKenna looked warily at the Bishop, who waved a permissive hand. ‘Go ahead, my son. We are always interested in what the younger generation has to say.’

      ‘Change must come,’ said McKenna, still wary. ‘It’s inevitable.’

      ‘You can’t hold progress back. Look at the emancipation of women,’ said Carmel, as emancipated as a woman was likely to be, short of taking over the dominant role in the sex act. And I shouldn’t put that past her, thought Taber.

      ‘What does Hernando think?’ said Romola Ruiz.

      The nephew had been sitting on a third uncomfortable chair, his short legs dangling a few inches above the thick rugs that lay strewn about the tiled floor. He was a muscular young man, already destined to be bald like his uncle the Bishop, with a quietness about him that could have been shyness or that sort of arrogance mat did not need to be displayed because it was so sure of itself.

      ‘Everything must be seen in its context,’ he said in a deep voice that only just escaped being pompous. ‘We were supposed to have had progress here after the revolution. Have we had it?’

      He sounds like a politician, thought Taber. He’s just said something and said nothing.

      ‘What exactly are you going to do here, Mr Taber?’ said Alejandro Ruiz, ignoring his nephew’s rhetorical question: he was one man who was not interested in what the younger generation had to say.

      ‘Well, I’m basically a soil scientist, so that’s my first job – to see what deficiencies there are in the soil around here and if something can be done to improve crops. But I’m also supposed to report on things in general – livestock, for instance. To answer the Bishop’s question, and if Senor Francisco is right about improvement being change – yes, I suppose I am here to change things.’

      ‘The Indians resent change,’ said Alejandro Ruiz, sitting upright in his chair like a judge delivering sentence. ‘We are called reactionaries by outsiders, but it is not that we are against change just for our own sakes. We are realists, we see things, as my nephew puts it, in their context. The Indians are far more reactionary than we are, Senor Taber. I think Padre McKenna will have discovered that in the short time he has been here. We Ruiz have learned it over four hundred years.’

      Taber had heard this argument all over South America; it was an argument that had its echoes from history all over the world. It had a degree of truth in it, but then men in general hated change: necessity, and not the desire for a better neighbourhood, had driven Early Man out of his cave and into villages. But it was too early yet to set up antagonisms; they would come soon enough. He did not want to have to depart before he had unpacked his bags.

      ‘What were you studying at the Sorbonne?’ asked McKenna, changing the subject and looking at Francisco. Everyone was still throwing smiles into his conversation, like sugar into bitter coffee, but a certain tension hung in the room.

      ‘History,’ said Francisco, and looked at his cousin. ‘You should go there, Hernando. If only to meet girls like Carmel.’

      ‘I wasn’t studying history, darling,’ said Carmel.

      ‘What were you studying?’ asked Romola Ruiz.

      ‘Life,’ said Carmel. ‘And men.’

      Don’t try so bloody hard, said Taber silently. There’s no one with-it in this room, not even me; you’ll get no converts among this lot.

      ‘There is no better place to study men than South America,’ said Romola Ruiz; Taber was not surprised, coming now to expect the unexpected from her. ‘It is one of the last male strongholds, except of course in the animal world.’

      Alejandro Ruiz smiled a snarl at his wife; it reminded Taber of lions he had seen in East Africa when they were hungry. ‘My wife likes her little joke. But ask Jorge, my dear – he will tell you that men everywhere are the same in the confessional.’

      But the Bishop was too shrewd to be drawn into a domestic argument. ‘I have only sat in the confessional in South America.’

      ‘And am I not right, Jorge?’ Romola Ruiz would never surrender without a fight.

      Jorge Ruiz rubbed the ruby of his ring. ‘Ah, that is one of the secrets of the confessional, Romola.’

      Taber looked up at McKenna and the two men winked at each other; Carmel caught the wink and once again looked with interest at Taber. He stared back at her, then abruptly winked at her, too. She looked puzzled for a moment, tilting her head to one side, then she smiled and winked back. Neither of them had communicated anything to each other, the winks were meaningless, but a door had been unlocked, if not opened between them. Then Taber looked away and saw that both Francisco and Hernando had been watching them. Hernando’s face was expressionless, but Francisco’s was fierce with jealousy. I’ve just trodden on his balls, Taber thought, bruised his machismo.

      Taber stood up. ‘I must be going, Senor Ruiz. I have intruded long enough. I only came because Padre McKenna insisted—’

      ‘He helped me save an Indian from the lake,’ said McKenna.

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