Allan Chase

“ At the same moment a young voice in the press gallery yelled, "Viva Don Anibal Tabio!" and in the great hall every man sprang to his feet. The low distant thunder of the crowds in the Plaza had now swelled to a roar whose joyous overtones poured into the Hall of Congress through the doors, the windows, the steel and marble walls themselves. Senators and Deputies of the Popular Front Parties were the first in the hall to find their voices. ”

“ Are they not the very devout gentlemen who sent money and rum and cigars to the fascists in Spain during the Spanish phase of this war? Are they not the very men who sent cables of homage to Hitler and Mussolini after the shame of Munich? Are they not the very men who even now wear the medals of Nazi Germany, of Blackshirt Italy, of Falangist Spain—who wear these medals proudly while they chortle over the blood of dying Russians on the Eastern Front, of dying Americans on the Bataan peninsula? ”

“ At exactly thirty-five minutes and twelve seconds after the fascist Gamburdo conceded the elections to his Popular-Front opponent, the people of this Republic learned that the world has grown much smaller since Lincoln declared that no nation could exist half slave and half free. Today what Lincoln had to say about one nation goes for one world. This one world, our one world, is now torn by a global war. It is a total war. The people of this democracy struck at the Axis today by overwhelmingly defeating the Axis candidate at the polls. ”

“ Whole families in their best clothes, trolley drivers in their work uniforms, longshoremen in their dungarees, even peasants from the other side of Monte Azul in their brown-cotton trousers and their broad-brimmed straw hats milled along the sidewalks, the pavements, the Plaza, the trolley tracks. Cars, taxis, trucks, wagons, trolleys were parked crazily all over the place.
Pepe, like a hundred other drivers within a block of the Hall of Congress, was standing on top of his car, waving the flag of the Republic, shouting, "Long live the United Nations! Long live Don Anibal! ”

“ The picture which spread across four columns of the top of the page was remarkably like the picture Hall had carried in his mind since that day with Jerry in San Hermano. The fans in the negative dryer were whirring over twenty-odd other negatives. Lobo was right, Hall realized. They were worth the life of one Rivas, they might yet take the life of a Hall. The stakes were worth the risk. Kill the beast in San Hermano, drive a knife into its arteries, keep it from crawling north and its foul breath beginning to stink up the clean air. ”

“ The old man's attitude told Hall more about what Gamburdo had already done to the Press Bureau than he could have learned in a week of routine digging. He handed the old man a cigar and a box of matches and walked through the door to Valenti's office. He found himself in a small anteroom facing a dark-haired girl pecking genteely at the keys of a typewriter with creamy fingers whose long nails were painted a deep blood red. She was immaculately groomed and pretty. ”

“ If the United Nations win, if world fascism is crushed forever, a new world era of economic democracy must begin at once. It will not come easily. The defeat of the Axis will not immediately bring in its wake the millennium. It will, however, give the common people of the world the final realization of their great power. In this lies the inherent strength of political democracy. For democracy is not a static thing. It can grow and bring in the era of economic democracy, or it can falter and give way to fascism. ”

“ I know that I have spoken the thoughts that are uppermost in the minds of that great majority of our citizens who have given their mandate to you and to me. In a week, you will have to frame the mandate for the delegation which will speak for our Republic at the forthcoming conference of the nations of the Americas. Speak out! Speak out honestly, speak out openly. Speak as the spokesmen of a democracy. Speak as the citizens of the embattled united democracies of the entire world must speak at this hour. Speak for the free men of the free world. ”

“ On the plateau, the airport lights blended with the brown-orange shades of dusk; in the city the lights cut through the classic blackness of night.
A smartly dressed colonel and a top-hatted functionary of the Foreign Office were waiting with two black limousines for the Ansaldo party. The man from the Foreign Office had cleared all the passport and customs formalities. Jerry had just enough time to tell Hall that she and the doctors were to stay at the Bolivar before the cars started down the winding hill to San Hermano. ”

“ I think we should rejoice in our membership in the world's family of races. But we must not lose sight of the fact that our nation, no less than any other nation, be it free or fascist, is part of this strange family.
"We must never forget that the great war which started in unhappy Spain in July, 1936, was not a war between good and evil in Spain alone. It was a war not of two Spanish ideas but of two fundamental world ideas. It was the start of the universal death struggle between the slave-world ideas of fascism and the free-world ideas of political and economic democracy. ”

“ They drove to the University for Jerry.
Soldiers were everywhere, patrolling the city, guarding both the Axis diplomatic buildings and the commercial houses owned by known fascists. The streets were crowded with civilians. They hung around the cafés, listening to the latest election bulletins over the café radios, or they congregated under the government's loud speakers in the plazas and the broad avenues. Even though Gamburdo had already conceded his defeat, the people awaited the results of each new count, cheered each new electoral repudiation of the Falange candidate. ”

“ For a searing moment the emptiness and the agonies of the past four years rose to the surface like a two-edged razor in his brain, rose slashing wildly to torture and torment, and then, as suddenly, they were lost in the devils and the blood and the white, pine-scented thighs of the girl and Hall stopped thinking and gave himself completely to the one, to the only one, to the only thing that could answer the devils and the pain and the moment. ”

“ But even if we were the most perfect state in the world, today this would mean very little. Our chances of surviving, of progressing until the Republic of Man became even more attractive than the Kingdom of God, our chances of surviving at all would still be obscured. If our nation were some remote island in the skies, whirling on its own axis, remote from all other lands, perhaps then I would have no fears for our future. ”

“ Hall looked at Skidmore's face as Smith translated Tabio's words.
"Yes, you have heard them. When they came to my ears," Tabio said, "I thought: What is happening? Who dares to challenge the mandate of the people? Who dares to speak of perverting the will of the people? It was then that I knew, as never before, that a President's place is with the people. If I could sit up in my bed and talk this way to my sons, to my dear friend Esteban Lavandero, then I could sit up in this chair before you, the chosen representatives of the people. ”

“ Davila, the lawyer, explained. "What Don José means," he said, "is that a secret denunciation generally precedes an assassination. You see, Señor Hall, if the Reds denounce you in their press, you would be marked before the world as an enemy of the Tovarich. Then, if anything happened to you—they are not only blameless, but even after killing you they can make great propaganda about how the alleged fascists killed you because you are a noted American patriot who stands for free enterprise." ”

“ Hall laughed. "I've seen boys like you before," he said.
"We were too young to go then," Juan Antonio said. "But if they try it here, the streets of San Hermano will run with blood before we let the fascists win."
"Juan Antonio is a Communist," Big Pepe said.
The boy did not deny it. "Remember my words," he said, "the flag of the Falange will never fly over San Hermano."
"Not if we are still alive," Miguelito added.
"Will you listen to these children?" Pepe asked. "As soon as you turn your back they put on the pantalones and make the noises of a man!" ”

“ Here were the two great impulses of the Hispanic world, the fragile, gentle, trusting dreamer of great new horizons and at his side the broad-backed practical man of earth who threw his strength into the effort of implementing the dreams and making them the new realities. Here was the visionary Juarez and the young soldier Porfirio Diaz, when the warrior was still a man untainted by his own betrayal of a people's dream. ”

“ Tabio said to everyone in the room. "Mateo can tell you. He knows how tough our breed is. Tell me, Mateo, is it true that the American Ambassador considers me to be the most violent Bolshevik outside of Russia?"
Lavandero laughed, and Hall laughed, and when Tabio, laughing, turned to his wife and son, they laughed too.
"He is such a pompous fool, that Ambassador. Oh, I am being terribly undiplomatic, viejo, but to think of an old-fashioned bourgeois reformer like me being compared to Lenin and Stalin! It is the height of confusion. ”

“ Quinones said. "In his speech to the University, El Tovarich said that only the so-called fascists in San Hermano supported Franco."
"Sounds like our pinkos back home," Giselle Prescott said to Hall.
Fernandez exploded. "I am a good Catholic," he snapped. "I am pious. During the Civil War I supported Franco. I was proud to support him. I not only supported Franco, but I was delighted to hail Hitler and Mussolini as noble allies in the struggle against Jewish Bolshevism. But am I a fascist? I defy any man to call me a fascist or a Falangist to my face!" ”

“ Even if Gamburdo is licked, it's only the beginning."
"But you're sticking it out, aren't you?"
"I have to. I've been in it since Madrid. There's no escaping it for me. I'll never know any peace until the crime of Spain is liquidated. Fascism isn't just an ideological enemy for me, baby. It's a cancer burning in my own, my very personal guts. I'd go off my conk if mine weren't two of the billion fists that are smashing and will go on smashing back at fascism until it's deader than Willie Androtten. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Dutchman was delighted to see Hall. "This is indeed a damn surprise," he said. "Join you at the table? Happy as hell to join you, Mr. Hall. Ah, the nurse of the great doctor. Tell me, nurse, do you think the doctor could cure my rheumatism?" This, he made clear by his gesture of holding his side in mock agony and groaning, was meant to be a joke.
Hall translated the joke for Pepe.
The driver nodded. "I understood most of it," he admitted. "One doesn't drive American tourists for a century and learn nothing."
"Aha," Hall said. "Pepe knows a few words of English, it develops." ”