The Gate of the Casa Rosada

At nine the news came round again, and it was different.

He heard it in the voice before he heard the words. The ABC’s man in Buenos Aires, the tired one with the traffic behind him, had stopped being tired. The traffic had stopped too. Behind his voice there was something else now, a sound Frederick knew from the laptop on Theo’s desk at a quarter past one: the long low wave of a great many people in a square, not shouting, only there.

“We’re getting reports,” said the man from the ABC, “that Colonel Iriarte has left the Ministry of Defence building.”

Bridget, at the range, turned round.

His mother put her cup down in its saucer without a sound.

“He came out of the main doors of the building alone, about four minutes ago, ten o’clock here, without an escort and, so far as we can see from here, without a weapon. He has walked across the corner of the square. I’m at the south side; I can see him. The crowd is making room for him. Nobody is saying anything. It is very quiet.” A pause. The wave of sound behind him was lower. “He’s in uniform. He has his cap under his arm. He is walking towards the Casa Rosada.”

---

Frederick stood by the dresser with his hand on the edge of it.

He could see it. He could not see it; there was no laptop in the kitchen, only the radio, a brown one with a cloth front that Bridget had had since before he was born. But he could see it anyway, the way he had seen the Viceroy at his desk at a quarter to twelve without seeing him. The square at night. The obelisk lit from below. The stones, cold. Thousands of people sitting on them in coats, with flasks, standing up now, one after another, as a man in uniform with his cap under his arm walked between them, and they moved aside for him, and did not say anything at all.

And the long low pink house at the far end of the square, lit, with sixty men in dark blue in front of the arch, and a balcony over it with loudspeakers from the old days, and a window at the corner on the first floor, with the light on.

“He’s at the gate,” said the man from the ABC. “He’s stopped at the gate. He’s speaking to the officer of the guard.”

A long pause. The radio hissed. Bridget had not moved from the range.

“He has saluted the officer of the guard. The officer has returned the salute. I believe, I’m told by colleagues closer to the gate, that the colonel has asked to see the Viceroy. The officer has gone inside.”

---

They waited.

The three of them, in the kitchen at Columbia Palace, at a quarter past nine on a Tuesday evening in June, with the windows open on the service yard and the smell of the fish still in the air and the clock over the range four minutes slow, as it always had been. Nobody said anything. His mother sat at the long table with her hands folded on it. Bridget stood at the range with a wooden spoon in her hand, held up, as if she had forgotten it was there. Frederick stood by the dresser.

He thought about the man at the gate.

He did not know what Colonel Iriarte looked like. He had seen his signature on a facsimile, grey, and his crest, and his letter, two pages, careful, old-fashioned, written by a man who had read a great deal of history and believed every word of it. We have waited fifty-three years for a King who would refuse as his father refused.

He thought: he has been in that building since two o’clock, with his men, with the doors shut and the lights on. He heard the five words at two, from the balcony, like everybody else. He watched his armoured cars go up the Avenida one by one between the old women. He watched his signals company go. He watched his own companies march back to Palermo in their ranks. He received his papers back at five, unsigned, with a covering note that said the King had read them twice. He sent back gracias.

And at ten o’clock at night he had come out of the doors of the building alone, with his cap under his arm, and walked across the corner of the square to the gate of the house where the man was who had refused him at twenty to eleven that morning, and asked to see him.

To surrender to him. To the Viceroy. Not to the Army, or the police, or the President of the Council in Córdoba. To the man at the window.

Frederick found that he understood that, and did not know what to do with understanding it.

---

“The officer of the guard has come back out,” said the man from the ABC. “He’s speaking to the colonel.”

A pause.

“I’m told,” said the man, and his voice did something, “I’m told by colleagues at the gate, who heard it, that the officer said the following. That the Viceroy receives the King’s subjects who come to the gate to petition him on Thursdays, between three and five. That this is Tuesday. And that the Viceroy has sent for a judge.”

Bridget made a sound at the range. Frederick did not look at her.

“There is a car coming into the square from the Avenida,” said the man. “A black car. It’s stopping by the gate. A man is getting out. An older man, in a dark coat. I’m told, I’m being told, he is the duty judge of the federal court, who was sent for from his home at a quarter to ten. He’s speaking to the colonel.” A long pause. The wave of sound from the square had dropped to almost nothing. “The colonel has handed him something. I can’t see what. The judge has taken it. The colonel is… The colonel has turned round.”

Another pause.

“He’s looking up at the Casa Rosada. At the first floor. At the corner. The lights are on in the corner window, they’ve been on all day.” The man stopped. Started again. “He’s saluted it. The window. The colonel has saluted the window.”

And then, after a moment, very quietly, as though he had forgotten he was on the radio:

“There’s somebody at the window.”

---

The cream telephone on the wall by the dresser rang.

It rang right beside Frederick’s hand, loud, the old bell, so that he jumped, and his mother at the table jumped, and Bridget dropped the wooden spoon into the pan, and none of them, for a moment, moved.

Then Bridget came across the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and took the receiver off the wall, and said kitchen, and listened. Her face changed. She held it out to him, at the full length of the curly cord, though he was standing next to it.

“Switchboard, pet,” said Bridget. “Buenos Aires.”

He took it.

Nine thousand kilometres of hiss. And under it the square. Not the wave now: the square at night, enormous and quiet, a great many people in it not making any sound at all, and somewhere very far down, a car door shutting, and an engine starting, and going.

And then a chair. A breath.

“Majestad,” said the Viceroy.

“Señor Virrey.”

“Se acabó,” said the Viceroy.

It’s over.

---

Frederick leaned against the wall by the dresser, with the curly cord round his wrist, and shut his eyes.

“I watched him come across the square,” said the Viceroy, in Spanish, and his voice was dry and even, exactly as it had been at twenty-five past twelve, and exactly as tired as a man’s voice is at seventy-six at ten o’clock at night who has been at a desk since eight in the morning. “From the window. The one that doesn’t open. I watched the people stand up and make room for him. Nobody touched him. Nobody said anything. I think it was the worst thing that could have happened to him. I think he’d have preferred them to shout.”

“Did you go down?”

“No.”

“He asked for you.”

“He asked to see the Viceroy,” said the Viceroy. “He wished to surrender to the Viceroy. He wished, I think, to come up the stairs and stand in front of this desk and say that he had done it for the King, and have me say that I understood.” A pause. “I do understand. That is why I sent a judge. A colonel who has brought twelve armoured cars into the Plaza de Mayo does not surrender to the Crown’s representative in the Crown’s house. He surrenders to the law of the Plate, at the gate, on the pavement, in front of everybody, like anybody else. If I’d gone down, he’d have been a soldier giving up his sword to the King’s man. I didn’t want him to be that. I wanted him to be a man who’d broken the law, being met by a judge.”

Frederick did not say anything.

“He looked up at the window,” said the Viceroy. “Afterwards. When he’d given the judge his pistol. He’d had it in his pocket. He looked up and saluted. And I stood at the window so that he could see that someone was there.” A pause. “That was all I did. All day. I stood where I could be seen.”

---

The kitchen was very quiet. His mother had not moved from the table. Bridget had not gone back to the range; she stood in the middle of the kitchen floor with her hands in her apron, looking at him, with her face doing something he had never seen it do.

“The vote,” said Frederick. “Tomorrow.”

“Goes ahead,” said the Viceroy. “At three in the afternoon. The President of the Council rang me at half past nine from Córdoba to say so. She flies back at seven in the morning. She said that if the Deputies did not sit tomorrow and debate the second reading of a bill that a colonel had tried to stop with tanks, then the colonel would have won, and she’d rather lose the vote.” He sounded, very faintly, as though he might be smiling. “The government’s free vote stands. She’ll vote against it. The Governor of Córdoba’s people will vote for it. It may pass. If it passes, my successor may be elected.” A pause. “I hope they elect a judge.”

“Why?”

“Because a judge knows the difference between a thing you may do and a thing you must not. And because a judge knows how to sit at a desk all day and not sign.” The chair creaked. “And because if they elect a politician, Majesty, he will be able to refuse things for reasons. And a Viceroy should never have a reason. He should only have the Crown, and a window.”

---

“They’ll ask,” said the Viceroy, “tomorrow, in the newspapers, what the Crown is for. They’ve been asking for a year. Since your father went. What will the Crown be for, after the King who refused the junta? It’s a good question. I’ve asked it myself.” A pause. “Tonight, in the square, they answered it. Without anybody asking them. And by Friday they’ll have forgotten the answer, and go back to asking, and that’s as it should be. A country that knows what its Crown is for every day of the week has something wrong with it.”

“What was the answer?”

The Viceroy was quiet for a moment.

“That it was there,” he said. “When it was needed. In the house on the square, at a window. And in New Westminster, in a room with the door bolted, where nobody could reach it, and nobody needed to.” He paused. “And then, at two o’clock, it said where it was. Once. In five words. And then it stopped talking.”

Frederick could not say anything.

“Go to bed, Majesty,” said the Viceroy. “You have an examination in the morning.”

“Geometry.”

“I was very bad at geometry,” said the Viceroy. “At the Colegio Nacional, in 1971, under the virtues. I failed it. I had to sit it again in March.” The chair creaked. “I passed the second time. I didn’t look up.”

“Buenas noches, señor Virrey.”

“Buenas noches, Majestad.”

The line clicked, and hissed, and was empty.

He stood for a moment with the receiver at his ear, listening to nothing, nine thousand kilometres of it. Then he unwound the curly cord from his wrist and hung the receiver back on its hook on the kitchen wall, where the kitchen kept it for tradesmen and the Household kept it for nothing.

---

His mother was looking at him from the table.

“It’s over,” he said.

“I heard.” She did not get up. She looked at him across the long table in the kitchen with her hands folded on it, where she had sat every Tuesday from November to April doing the boxes, and where he had sat opposite her and watched. “In their time.”

“In their time.”

“Good.” Her face did something then, at last, after all day; it stopped being held. Not much. It let go a little at the corners, the way the Viceroy’s voice had let go at twenty-five past twelve when he said I’ve read it twice. “Go to bed, Frederick. You’ve got geometry.”

Bridget had gone back to the range. She fished the wooden spoon out of the pan with a fork, and looked at it, and put it in the sink, and did not turn round.

“Well,” said Bridget, to the window, quite fiercely. “Well, then.”

---

There was a card under the door of his room.

White, stiff, nothing printed on it. Three lines in Dame M’s small upright hand.

Car at 0800.

Geometry, 0900 to 1200. All informed.

It is only an examination. M.

He read it twice and put it on the desk.

He laid them out the way he had laid them out last night. Two black pens and a spare. The spare was his father’s fountain pen; he had not used it today, and would not use it tomorrow, and would take it anyway. A pencil. An eraser. A ruler, because the Board’s list said a ruler, and he had found today what it was for, which was drawing a line under a thing when you had finished it. A compass, for geometry. Mrs Pruitt’s revision sheet, with the cone on it, done.

The lemon from his blazer pocket. He put it on the windowsill, where the sun would be in the morning.

Then he took his telephone out of his pocket.

He had turned it on at last at five, in the car from the hospital. It had in it his mother and Theo and the Palace switchboard and the hospital and Castellanos and Dame M and the Private Secretary and fourteen numbers that were the fourteen offices of the fourteen heads of government, and one that was the Casa Rosada. It had a hundred and twelve messages on it that he had not read, and would read tomorrow at twelve, after pens down, or not.

He turned it off.

He put it face down on the desk, beside the ruler, with the crack across its corner from the step on the bluff at Santa Monica. Tomorrow at a quarter to nine he would carry it down the long aisle of the gym, between the desks in their rows, in the striped light, and put it in the grey steel box on the green cloth with ninety others, and say nothing else, sir, and Mr Lumsden would shut the lid and put the brass padlock through the hasp and button the key into his waistcoat pocket.

And for three hours nobody would be able to reach him.

He found that he did not mind at all.

He turned off the lamp. Through the window, over the gardens and the wall and the trees along the Axis, the river was dark, and the lights were on along the Maryland shore, and somewhere a long way south of all of it, past the Carolinas and the islands and the whole shoulder of Brazil, it was half past eleven at night in Buenos Aires, an hour ahead, and a square was emptying, slowly, people going home on the buses that ran on the Avenida de Mayo again, and in a long low pink house at the far end of it, at a corner on the first floor, a light went out.

He could not see it. He knew it anyway.