At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

‘Oh that,’ said Pedro nonchalantly. ‘I’m always threatening to shoot people. Pay no attention to that.’

‘You mean you never carry out your threats?’ asked von Igelfeld.

Pedro looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘It depends on whether it’s historically necessary to shoot somebody. In your case, it is no longer historically necessary to shoot you.’

‘I am pleased to hear that,’ said von Igelfeld.

‘Good,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Well, that’s settled then. Let’s go through for dinner. After you, Pedrissimo!’

Pedro laughed. ‘That is a good name. My men would respect me more if I were called Pedrissimo. That is an excellent suggestion on your part.’

‘I am always pleased to help Moviemento Veintidos,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla.

‘Moviemento Veintitres,’ corrected Pedro, almost pedantically, thought von Igelfeld; or certainly with a greater degree of pedantry than one would expect of a guerrilla leader.

‘Precisely,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla, taking her place at the head of the table. ‘Now, Professor von Igelfeld, you sit there, and Gabriel, you sit over there. And this seat here, on my right, is reserved for you, dear Pedrissimo.’

Dolores Quinta Barranquilla had instructed the kitchen to make a special effort, and they had risen to the challenge. The depths of the cellar had been plumbed for the few remaining great wines (laid down some twenty years earlier by Don Quinta Barranquilla, who might not have imagined the company which would eventually consume them). These were served directly from the bottle, as decanting would have caused such vintages to fade. They were particularly appreciated by Pedro, who became more and more agreeable as the evening wore on. It might be impossible for him to travel to Bogota in the near future to receive his Academy Membership, owing to the fact that the Government had put a price on his head (‘Such provincial dolts,’ Dolores Quinta Barranquilla had observed); however, he would be able to do so he hoped in the future, under a more equitable constitution.

They ended the evening with toasts. Pedro toasted von Igelfeld, and expressed the hope that the rest of his stay in Colombia would be a pleasant one; Dolores Quinta Barranquilla proposed a toast to Pedro, and hoped that he would shortly be received into the Academy; and Cinco Fermentaciones proposed a toast to the imminent success of Moviemento Veintidos, rapidly correcting this to Veintitres on a glance from Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. Finally, von Igelfeld gave a brief recital of Auf ein altes Bild by Morike, which Pedro asked him to write down and translate into Spanish when he had the time to do so.

Replete after the excellent meal, they all retired to bed and slept soundly until the next morning, when, to von Igelfeld’s alarm, they were awakened by the sound of gunfire. Von Igelfeld tumbled out of bed, donned his dressing-gown, and peered out of the window. A group of thirty or forty of Pedro’s men were marshalled in the courtyard, breaking open a crate of weapons and handing them round. Dolores Quinta Barranquilla was there too, helping to pass guns to the guerrillas. Von Igelfeld gasped. They had got on extremely well with Pedro the previous evening, and both sides had obviously reassessed their view of one another, but he had not imagined that it would lead to their all effectively joining Pedro in his struggle. And yet there was Dolores Quinta Barranquilla, rolling up her sleeves and organising the guerrillas, and was that not Cinco Fermentaciones himself perched on the roof, rifle at the ready?

Von Igelfeld dressed and waited in his room. A few minutes later, there was a knock on his door and he opened it to find Dolores Quinta Barranquilla standing there, a rifle in her right hand and another in her left.

‘Here’s yours,’ she said, handing him the rifle. ‘The ammunition is over there.’

Von Igelfeld could not conceal his astonishment. ‘I don’t want this,’ he said, thrusting the rifle back at her.

Dolores Quinta Barranquilla looked over her shoulder. ‘You have to take it,’ she whispered. ‘If you don’t, he’ll shoot you. And if he doesn’t shoot you, then the Army will shoot you if they take this place from the guerrillas. The local Army commander has a terrible reputation for not taking prisoners. So you effectively have no choice.’ She pushed the rifle back into von Igelfeld’s hands and gestured for him to follow her.

‘I’ll find a position where you won’t be in danger,’ she said. ‘You can go to my study window. It’s very small and it gives a good view of the driveway. If the Army comes up the driveway, you’ll have plenty of time to pick them off without being too exposed yourself. It’s the best place to defend the villa without too much personal risk.’

Mutely, von Igelfeld followed her to his allotted position and crouched down beside her window.

‘You see,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘That gives you a clear field of fire. Have you ever fired a rifle before?’

‘Certainly not,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘The very idea.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Dolores Quinta Barranquilla. ‘Well, you just look down those sights there and try to line them up against an Army target. Then you pull that thing there – that’s a trigger. That’s the way it works.’

Von Igelfeld nodded miserably. The pleasure at last night’s reprieve was now completely destroyed. He couldn’t possibly fire at the Army if they came down the driveway, but then what should he do? There was always the possibility of surrender, once the Army approached the house. Perhaps he could tie a piece of white cloth to the end of his rifle and stick that out of the window, but then that would hardly be effective if Pedro’s men continued to fire from their positions. It was all very vexing.

Dolores Quinta Barranquilla left him in her study and went off to busy herself with passing ammunition to the guerrillas in their various positions about the house. Von Igelfeld drew a chair up to the window and sat down. He looked out down the driveway, along the line of trees that formed an avenue approaching the villa, to the countryside beyond. It all looked so peaceful, and yet even as he contemplated the scene there would be soldiers scuttling about in the undergrowth, edging their way into firing positions, ready to storm the villa. The sound of firing which he had heard earlier on had now died away, and there was a strange, almost preternatural quiet, as if Nature herself were holding her breath.

Von Igelfeld thought about his life and what he had done with it. He had done his best, he reflected, even if there was much that he still wished to accomplish. If the day turned out in the way in which he thought it might, then at least he had left something behind him. He had left Portuguese Irregular Verbs, all twelve hundred pages of it, and that was an achievement. It was certainly more than Unterholzer had done . . . but, no, he checked himself. That was not an appropriate line of thought to pursue. He should not leave this world with uncharitable thoughts in his mind; rather, he should spend his last few hours – or even minutes – thinking thoughts which were worthy of the author of Portuguese Irregular Verbs. These were . . . Now that he tried to identify them, no worthy thoughts