"Hurry back," Duarte said. "He bores me stiff when I have him on my hands too long."
"You bastard," Hall said. "You're a diplomat now. Don't you ever stop clowning?"
"Sure. When I kill fascists I am very serious. You know that, Mateo. But here, if I did not clown, I would die of boredom. For example, when Skidmore gives a party, the politicos in my Embassy, they all find reasons for being out of town. I am not a politico. I am a professor of literature and a killer of fascists, by profession; a diplomat because someone wanted to do Lombardo a favor and at the same time remove my face from the domestic scene. Claro? So it is clown or die. And if I must die, I prefer to die having a second crack at Franco."
"Claro, amigo. But must you wear a suit like this one?"
Duarte's evening clothes were his cloak of independence. He wore a cheap tuxedo he had bought in New York for twenty dollars and a pair of worn patent-leather shoes that creaked as he walked. On state occasions, he wore the medals he had earned on the battlefields in Spain. For private parties, he simply wore an enameled gold Mexican flag on his lapel. Tonight, he wore only the flag.
All this he explained to Hall in his gay, rasping Spanish. "When the Falangist Embassy was still on good terms, I wore my Republican medals all the time. But just before Don Anibal took sick, he insulted the Caudillo in a speech before the University faculty, and when the Franco Ambassador called to ask for an apology Tabio told him that the truth called for no apologies. So the Caudillo got sore and he called his Ambassador home. The Embassy is still open, but a clerk is in charge, and there isn't a Spanish diplomat in San Hermano of high enough standing to be invited to any Embassy."
Jerry joined them, and when Hall presented her to Duarte, the Mexican kissed her hand and murmured, "Enchanté."
"Miss Olmstead is Dr. Ansaldo's nurse," Hall said.
"How very interesting," Duarte said. "May I have this dance with the nurse of Dr. Ansaldo?" and before she had a chance to say that her feet were killing her, the dexterous Duarte was guiding her through the steps of an intricate rumba he improvised at that moment.
Hall took another glass of punch. Duarte was his friend, but at the moment he wanted to break his neck. He wanted Jerry for himself, and he hated the idea of admitting or showing it. He watched them so intently that he failed to see Margaret return to the punch bowl.