Read Online Thing to Love by Geoffrey Household - Free Book Online Page B

said.
    â€œI don’t know why you always have to laugh at lovely old customs, Juan,” Pilar replied with soft indignation.
    Morote, delighted to show that he could surpass his company in at least one social accomplishment, took the guitar fromValdés. His broad thumbs and low, harsh voice carried back the history of Guayanas in song after song to Lima and Madrid.
    Naturally he did not know when to stop; but the general, content to bask in that proud and melancholy culture which was half his and would be the birthright of his children, could have listened all evening. He was warm with love for those millions of mestizos who made up Guayanas and his Division. Spanish and Indian — what mixture in the world had produced so promising a people? They had a right not to be put off century after century with slight improvements on the same old thing. Gil and his land reforms, whether economically sound or not, at least offered justice.
    Felicia, watching her husband, murmured obviously sincere encouragement. As for Valdés and the Avellanas, if they felt impatience they were far too courteous to show it. All of them knew that it was his guitar-playing which had carried Morote out of the rut of his fellow dock laborers and first proved to him that he could command an audience.
    Beltrán Carrillo, however, took advantage of too short an interval, when the thick hand was again raised over the strings, to say: “Shall we go?”
    Miro was surprised that one born and bred in San Vicente could be so abrupt. Carrillo always looked so thoroughly of the capital — a flabby, middle-class Latin-American businessman with nothing much to show that he didn’t run a prosperous men’s wear shop except his long, clean-shaven upper lip. But intellectuals . . . Well, he had noticed before that in the urgency of their thoughts they did not consider themselves bound by the ordinary rules of politeness.
    Morote laid down the guitar, exchanging a curious glance with the general. It was quite impossible to translate. Doubt? Regret? A turning for appreciation to the one person he had fascinated?
    â€œIt’s to talk in the air,” he murmured.
    The four men drifted away to Gil Avellana’s study, where, as Miro knew very well, they had been discussing the future of Guayanas for most of the weekend. When Felicia and Pilar had also gone into the house to change, he lay back in his chair trying totranslate that last remark. To talk in the air — did it mean that for Morote, nothing counted but direct action, or was he affected by the mood of the moment and suggesting that reality was not in politics but in the emptiness of the sierra and an act of creation? Primitive poet though he was, that seemed unlikely. For Morote power was reality. Then did he mean that continual talk was futile against such a practical politician as Vidal? It was indeed, without — did Morote mean without Fifth Division?
    That was not a question to ask Juan, silently occupied with a cigar and the ice tinkling in his long glass. Miro understood the leader from the Barracas better than his father-in-law — who considered him as a sort of ghost out of the future — or the Ateneo, who were terrified of him.
    â€œThis basket chair,” said Juan, “with its broad arm and a hole for the glass, died out fifty years ago. Yet I expect you could buy such a chair in any New York department store.”
    â€œWhat about it?” the general asked cautiously.
    He realized that Juan, on the move to somewhere with his usual Indian approach, was feeling for a flank. He never attacked from the front. If he had ever had a serious objective, in politics or war, he would have been a formidable opponent.
    â€œI was only thinking, Miro, that our friends in the smoke-filled room — except that Valdeski doesn’t smoke — carry their anti-Americanism too far. North America revives things. Look at their Latin-American