The Honorary Consul Read Online Free

Plarr."
           "Me?"
           "You lie to me about Saavedra's novel and Charley Fortnum's baby. Let's hope, for his sake, it's a girl."
           "Why?"
           "It's so much more difficult to detect the father from the features." Doctor Humphries began to wipe his plate clean with a piece of bread. "Can you tell me why I'm always hungry, doctor? I don't eat well, and yet I eat an awful lot of what they call nourishing food."
           "If you really wanted the truth I would have to examine you, take an x-ray..."
           "Oh no, no. I only want the truth about other people. It's always other people who are funny."
           "Then why ask me?"
           "A conversational gambit," the old man said, "to hide my embarrassment while I help myself to the last piece of bread."
           "Do they grudge us bread here?" Doctor Plarr called across a waste of empty tables, "Waiter, some more bread."
           The only Italian came shuffling toward them. He carried a bread basket with three pieces of bread and he watched with black anxiety when the number was reduced to one. He might have been a junior member of the Mafia who had disobeyed the order of his chief.
           "Did you see the sign he made?" Doctor Humphries asked.
           "No."
           "He put out two of his fingers. Against the evil eye. He thinks I have the evil eye."
           "Why?"
           "I once made a disrespectful remark about the Madonna of Pompeii."
           "What about a game of chess when you have finished?" Doctor Plarr asked. He had to pass the timesomehow, away from his apartment and the telephone by the bed.
           "I've finished now."
           They went back to the little over-lived-in room in the Hotel Bolivar. The manager was reading 'El Litoral' in the patio with his fly open for coolness. He said, "Someone was asking for you on the telephone, doctor."
           "For me?" Humphries exclaimed with excitement. "Who was it? What did you tell them?"
           "No, it was for Doctor Plarr, professor. A woman. She thought the doctor might be with you."
           "If she rings again," Plarr said, "don't say that I am here."
           "Have you no curiosity?" Doctor Humphries asked.
           "Oh, I can guess who it is."
           "Not a patient, eh?"
           "Yes, a patient. There's no urgency. Nothing to worry about."
           Doctor Plarr found himself checkmated in under twenty moves, and he began impatiently to set the pieces out again.
           "Whatever you may say you are worried about something," the old man said.
           "It's that damn shower. Drip drip drip. Why don't you have it mended?"
           "What harm does it do? It's soothing. It sings me to sleep."
           Doctor Humphries began with a king's pawn opening. "KP4," he said. "Even the great Capablanca would sometimes begin as simply as that. Charley Fortnum," he added, "has got his new Cadillac."
           "Yes."
           "How old's your home-grown Fiat?"
           "Four—five years old."
           "It pays to be a Consul, doesn't it? Permission to import a car every two years. I suppose he's got a general lined up in the capital to buy it as soon as he's run it in."
           "Probably. It's your move."
           "If he got his wife made a Consul, too, they could import a car a year between them. A fortune. Is there any sexual discrimination in the consular service?"
           "I don't know the rules."
           "How much did he pay to get appointed, do you suppose?"
           "That's a canard, Humphries. He paid nothing. It's not the way our Foreign Office works. Some very important visitors wanted to see the ruins. They had no Spanish. Charley Fortnum gave them a good time. It was as simple as that. And lucky for him. He wasn't doing very well with his mate crop, but a Cadillac every two years makes a lot of