The Casa Rosada

They spoke in Spanish.

They always had. The Viceroy wrote to him in English, because the Viceroy said a King’s representative should write to the King in the King’s language, and Frederick wrote back in Spanish, because Frederick said a King should write to the Plate in the Plate’s, and they had agreed in January, by letter, that this was absurd and that neither of them would change. But on the telephone, the one time they had spoken on the telephone, in January, they had spoken Spanish, and in the Blue Drawing Room on the second of May, and they did now, without either of them choosing.

“Majesty.”

“Señor Virrey.”

“You’ve finished your examination.”

“Yes. At twelve.”

“Good,” said the Viceroy. “Then I can tell you.”

There was a pause on the line, nine thousand kilometres of hiss, and in it the clock on the wall of the study ticking, slow, and the sea of people in the square under the window, not shouting, only there.

“I have refused,” said the Viceroy, “in Your Majesty’s name. Without Your Majesty’s word.”

---

Frederick did not say anything for a moment.

He was looking at the laptop on the desk, at the corner window on the first floor of the pink building, dark with the reflection of the sky, and he knew that the old man was behind it, at the desk, with his jacket on, with a receiver at his ear, looking out of the window that did not open, or the one that did. He did not know which. He tried to see him. He could see only the glass.

“I know,” said Frederick. “The Private Secretary told me. In the corridor.”

“I couldn’t ask you.”

“No.”

“I want you to understand something, Majesty, and then I won’t say it again.” The Viceroy’s voice was very dry, and very even, and it did not go up or down at all; it was the voice, Frederick thought, of a man who had given judgments for thirty-one years and had learned to give them so that nobody in the court could tell, until the last sentence, which way he would go. “I couldn’t ask you, because you were in a room with the door bolted, and I was told so at a quarter to eleven by Don Ignacio, who was very angry about it. But I want you to know that if I could have asked you, I would not have.”

“Why?”

“Because then they would say tomorrow that the Viceroy refused because the King told him to.” A pause. “And they would be right. And it would be worse.”

---

Frederick looked at the square.

At the twelve sand-coloured vehicles nose to tail across the stones with their guns pointed at the sky. At the sixty in dark blue in front of the arch. At the people at the edges, more of them now, a dark band along the north side where the Avenida came in, standing.

“They are not pointing at me,” said the Viceroy, as if he could see what Frederick was looking at. “You’ll have seen the pictures. They are pointing at the sky. Colonel Iriarte is a monarchist, Majesty. He is a great admirer of Your Majesty’s father. He wrote to the newspaper on the fourth because he believes that a Viceroy chosen by election would be the end of the Crown in the Plate, and he may be right, and that is not his business. He doesn’t want to shoot the King’s representative. He wants the King’s representative to agree with him.” A pause. “He has brought twelve armoured cars to help me agree.”

“What did you tell him?”

“He came to the gate at twenty to eleven with his proclamation, before he read it on the radio. Courteously. He sent it up by the officer of the guard. I read it.” The chair creaked. “I read it twice, Majesty. All of it. I read everything twice at this desk. You’ll know why.”

“Yes.”

“Then I wrote a note on the back of my own card and sent it down. It said that I had read his proclamation and would not act on it, and that he had asked for a thing which no Viceroy could grant and no King could lawfully be asked. At noon he sent a second note up. He asked whether the Viceroy would receive him if he came in alone and unarmed.” The Viceroy’s voice did not change at all. “I sent down that the Viceroy receives ministers, and judges, and any of the King’s subjects who come to the gate to petition him on Thursdays between three and five, and that the colonel would be welcome on Thursday.”

Frederick laughed.

He did not mean to. It came out of him in the green chair in Dr Brooks’s office, short, one breath, the first time he had laughed since the Private Secretary had shown him Don Ignacio’s note at half past seven, and by the window his mother turned her head and looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. I meant it to be funny. I’ve had nobody to say it to.” The Viceroy paused. “The officer of the guard didn’t laugh. He’s twenty-four. He thought I was serious.”

“Were you?”

“Entirely,” said the Viceroy. “That’s why it was funny.”

---

“Majesty,” said the Viceroy. “Are you looking at the square?”

“Yes.”

“Look at the north side. By the Cathedral. Where the Avenida comes in.”

Frederick looked.

The camera was on a rooftop on the far side; the north side of the square was at the left of the picture, and the people were there, behind the barriers at the end of the Avenida, a dark thick band of them now, more than there had been when he sat down. And in front of them, at the very front, against the barrier itself, there was a line of white.

He leaned forward in the green chair. It was small. It was at the edge of the picture. A line of white spots along the front of the crowd, close together, not moving, like a row of stones along a path.

Headscarves.

“I see them.”

“They came at half past twelve,” said the Viceroy. “I watched them come. From the window. Down the Avenida from the Congress end, past the roadblock there, which let them through, because what soldier is going to stop an old woman in a white headscarf in the Avenida de Mayo, and along the north side to the Cathedral, slowly, some of them with sticks, and they stood at the barrier. They have been standing there for fifty minutes. They haven’t said anything. They have photographs. I can’t see the photographs from here, but I know what they are.”

He did not say anything else for a moment.

“They walk on Thursdays, Majesty,” said the Viceroy. “They have walked on Thursdays since 1977. Around the obelisk, in front of this house, where the man who sat at this desk could see them from the window, and was not allowed to go down.” The clock ticked on his wall. “It’s Tuesday.”

Frederick looked at the white line at the edge of the picture.

“Since they came,” said the Viceroy, “more people have come behind them. I don’t know who. Ordinary people. Office workers from the Avenida with their jackets off. Boys from the Colegio Nacional, which is two streets away, in their uniforms, who ought to be in class. A man with a dog. They are not shouting. They are not doing anything. They are standing at the barriers behind the old women, where the colonel’s soldiers can see them, and the colonel’s soldiers are sitting on their vehicles, and looking at them.” A pause. “And at this house. And at me, I suppose. I’m at the window.”

“Which window?”

“The one that doesn’t open.”

---

“The ships,” said Frederick.

“They signalled at noon. From the Caribbean, about a day short of the Canal.” He heard paper move on the desk. “Sin novedad. Seguimos.”

Nothing to report. We continue.

“The captains are going to Los Angeles,” said the Viceroy, “because Your Majesty thanked them in Spanish on the thirty-first of May. The Minister of Defence told me so. He said that the captain of the senior ship had the King’s message pinned up in his wardroom, and that if the colonel wanted the Navy he would have to go and get it, and it was in the Caribbean.” A pause. “The Minister of Defence is a young man. He says things like that. I think he enjoyed saying it.”

“Is he with the President?”

“In Córdoba. He was the one who warned her. He had a call at ten from a captain at Campo de Mayo who would not take his squadron out, and he went straight down the corridor to her office and told her to get into her car, and she did, and he got in with her.” The Viceroy considered. “I’m told she argued for about a minute first. That is very quick for her.”

---

There was a silence on the line. It was not an empty one. Frederick could hear the clock, and the square, and the Viceroy breathing, very slightly, the breath of a man of seventy-six who had been sitting at a desk since eight o’clock.

“How was the examination?” said the Viceroy.

Frederick looked at the receiver in his hand.

“There was a question on 1976,” he said.

The line was quiet.

“Which refusal mattered more,” said Frederick. “The Viceroy’s or the King’s.”

He heard the chair creak, nine thousand kilometres away, and then not creak, as though the man in it had sat back and then sat very still.

“And what did you write?”

“That the Viceroy’s did.”

The silence went on for a long time. Long enough that Frederick thought the line had gone, and looked at the laptop, at the corner window, dark, as though he could see through it whether the old man was still there.

Then the Viceroy spoke, and his voice had changed. Not much. The dryness had gone out of it, a little, the way the stiffness goes out of a sheet of paper that has been held in the hand.

“Majesty. I have a letter in this desk. In the top drawer, on the left, where the man before me kept his crossword. It came from your father in March 2023, the week I was appointed, in his own hand. It’s a page long. Most of it is what a King writes to a new Viceroy. But there is a paragraph about 1976.” A pause. “I’ll tell you what it says, because I think you have earned it, and I think he would want you to have it from me and not from a book. It says: The Viceroy refused. I agreed with him. Everyone in the Plate has remembered it the other way round for forty-seven years, and I have let them, because it was useful to the Crown, and I have never once been comfortable with it. If you should ever have to do what he did, I hope that whoever is King will have the grace to say so.”

Frederick could not speak.

“I’ve read it twice,” said the Viceroy. “This morning. At about a quarter past ten.”

---

By the window his mother had turned round and was looking out at the yard, at the bike racks, with her back to him, very straight.

“Majesty,” said the Viceroy. “Three things. Then you must ring Córdoba. She has been waiting with great patience, which is not a thing she has.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t come. Don’t send anybody. Not Don Ignacio, not your Private Secretary, nobody. The Plate must see this done by the Plate.” A pause. “Don’t let your Prime Minister say anything.”

“He’s said he won’t. He rang at a quarter to ten to say so.”

“Good. He’s a sensible young man. I liked him in May.” The chair creaked. “And the third thing. When your President of the Council advises you, and she will, say something. Short. In Spanish. Not to the colonel. Not to me. To the square.” He paused. “They have been standing there for an hour, Majesty, at the barriers, behind the old women, waiting to find out whether the King is with them. They have only heard from me. They need to hear it from you. Once.”

“What should I say?”

“That’s for your President of the Council to advise,” said the Viceroy. “And for you to say.”

Then, more quietly, in a voice Frederick had not heard from him, not on the second of May, not in any letter:

“Thank you for ringing me first, Majesty. You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted you to hear me before you heard anybody else telling you what I’d done.”

“I know,” said the Viceroy. “That’s why I’m thanking you.”

The line clicked, and hissed, and was empty, and on the laptop the corner window on the first floor of the Casa Rosada was dark with the reflection of a winter sky, and at the north side of the square the white line along the barrier had not moved.