Fombombo/Chapter 1
FOMBOMBO
CHAPTER I
IN CARACAS, Thomas Strawbridge called at the American Consulate, from a sense of duty. The consul, a weary, tropic-shot politician from Kentucky, received him with gin, cigars, and a jaded enthusiasm. He glanced at Mr. Strawbridge's business card and inquired if his visitor were one of the Strawbridges of Virginia. The young man replied that he lived in Keokuk, Iowa, and that his father had moved there from somewhere East. Upon this statement the consul ventured the dictum that if any family did n't know they had come from Virginia, they hadn't.
Having exhausted their native states as a topic of conversation, they swung around, in their talk, to the relatively unimportant Venezuela which sweltered outside the consulate in a drowse of endless summer. The two Americans damned the place, with lassitude but thoroughness. They condemned the character of the Venezuelan, his lack of morals, honesty, industry, and initiative. The Venezuelan was too polite; he was cowardly. He had not the God-given Anglo-Saxon instinct for self-government. But the high treason named in this joint bill of complaint was that the Venezuelan was unbusinesslike.
“I'm no tin angel,” proceeded Mr. Strawbridge, emphatically, "but you know just as well as I do, Mr. Anderson, that the fellow who pulls slick stuff in a business deal has hit the chutes for the bowwows. Business methods and strict business honesty will win in the long run, Mr. Anderson.“
The consul nodded a trifle absent-mindedly at this recommendation of his nation's widely advertised virtue.
“In fact,” continued Mr. Strawbridge, with an effect of having begun to recite some sort of creed he could not stop until he reached the end, “in fact, continual aggressive business policies coupled with an incorruptible honesty are bound to land the American exporter flat-footed on the foreign trade. And, moreover, Mr. Anderson—”Strawbridge had the traveling salesman's habit of repeating a companion's name over and over in the course of a conversation, so he would not forget it—“moreover, Mr. Anderson, we American traveling business men have got to set an example to these people down here; show 'em what to do and how to do it. Snap, vim, go, and absolute honesty.”
“Yes, … yes,” agreed the consul, still more absently. He was holding Mr. Strawbridge's card in his fingers and apparently studying it. Presently he broke into the homily:
“Speaking of business, how do you find the gun-andammunition business in Venezuela, Mr. Strawbridge?”
“Rotten. I've hardly booked an order since I landed in the country.”
The consul lifted his brows.
“Have you booked any at all?”
“Well, no, I haven't,” admitted Strawbridge.
The consul smiled faintly and finished off his glass of gin and water.
“I thought perhaps you hadn't.”
“What made you think that?”
“No one does who just passes through the country offering them to any and every merchant.”
“Why not?”
“Isn't allowed.”
Strawbridge stared at his consul—a very honest blue-eyed stare.
“Not allowed? ”Who doesn't allow it, Mr. Anderson? Why, look here—“ he straightened his back as there dawned on him the enormity of this personal infringement of his right to sell firearms whenever and wherever be found a buyer—”why the hell can't I sell rifles and—“
“Forbidden by the Government,” interposed Mr. Anderson, patly.
Strawbridge was outraged.
“Now, is n't that a hell of a law! No reason at all, I suppose. Like their custom laws. They don't tax you for what you bring into this God-forsaken country; they tax you for the mistakes you make in saying what you've brought in. They look over your manifest and charge you for the errors you've made in Spanish grammar. Venezuela's correspondence course in the niceties of the Castilian tongue!”
The consul again smiled wearily.
“They have a better reason than that for forbidding rifles —revolutions. You know in this country they stage at least one revolution every forty-eight hours. The minute any Venezuelan gets hold of a gun he steps out and begins to shoot up the Government. If he wings the President, he gets the President's place. It's a very lucrative place, very. It's about the only job in this country worth a cuss. So you see there's a big reason for forbidding the importation of arms into Venezuela.”
Mr. Strawbridge drew down his lips in disgust.
“Good Lord! Ain't that rotten! When will this leather-colored crew ever get civilized? Here I am—paid my fare from New York down here just to find out nobody buys firearms in this sizzling hell-hole; can't be trusted with 'em!”
In the pause at this point Mr. Anderson still twirled his guest's card. He glanced toward the front of his consulate, then toward the rear. The two Americans were alone. With his enigmatic smile still wrinkling his tropic-sagged face, the consul said in a slightly lower tone:
“I didn't say no one bought firearms in Venezuela, Mr. Strawbridge. I said they were not allowed to be sold here.”
“O-o-oh, I se-e-e!” Mr. Strawbridge's ejaculation curved up and down as enlightenment broke upon him, and he stared fixedly at his consul.
“All I meant to say was that the trade is curtailed as much as possible, in order to prevent bloodshed, suffering, and the crimes of civil war.”
Mr. Strawbridge continued his nodding and his absorbed gaze.
“But, still, some of it goes on—of course.”
“Naturally,” nodded Strawbridge.
“I suppose,” continued the consul, reflectively,“ that every month sees a considerable number of arms introduced into Venezuela, as far as that goes.”
Strawbridge watched his consul as a cat watches a mousehole—for something edible to appear.
“Yes?” he murmured interrogatively.
“Well, there you are,” finished the consul.
Strawbridge looked his disappointment.
“There I am?” he said in a pained voice. “Well, I must say I am not very far from where you started with me; am I?” “It seems to me you are somewhat advanced,” began the diplomat, philosophically. “You know why you haven't sold anything up to date. You know why you can't approach a Venezuelan casually to sell him guns, as if you were offering him stoves or shoe-polish.” The consul was still smiling faintly, and now he drew a scratch-pad toward him and began making aimless marks on it after the fashion of office men. “In fact, to attempt to sell guns at all would be quite against the law, as I have explained, for the reasons I have stated. It 's a peculiar and I must say an unfortunate situation.”
As he continued his absent-minded marking his explanation turned into a soliloquy on the Venezuelan situation:
“You may not know it, Mr. Strawbridge, but there are one or two revolutions which are chronic in Venezuela. There is one in Tachira, a state on the western border of the country. There is another up in the Rio Negro district, headed by a man named Fombombo. They never cease. Every once in a while the federal troops go out to hunt these insurrectionists, a-a-and—” the consul dragged out his “and” after the fashion of a man relating something so well known that it isn't worth while to give his words their proper stress— “a-a-and if they kill them, more spring up.” His voice slumped without interest. He continued marking his pad. “Then there are the foreign juntas. About every four or five years a bunch of Venezuelans go abroad, organize a filibustering expedition, come back, and try to capture the presidency. Now and then one succeeds.” The consul yawned. “Then the diplomatic corps here in Caracas have to get used to a different sort of… of… President.” He paused, smiling at some recollection, then added, “So, you see, one can hardly blame the powers that be for wanting to keep rifles out of the country.”
The young man was openly disappointed.
“Well,… that's very interesting historically,” he said with a mirthless smile, “and I am sure when I send in my expense account for this trip my house will be deeply interested in the historical reasons why I blew in five hundred dollars and landed nothing.”
“Well, that's the state of affairs,” repeated the consul, with the sudden briskness of a man ending an interview. “Insurrectionists in Tachira, old Fombombo raising hell on the Rio Negro, and an occasional flyer among the filibusters.”
He rose and offered his hand to his caller. “Be glad to have you drop in on me any time, Mr. Strawbridge. Occasionally I give a little soirée here for Americans. Send you a bid.” He was shaking hands warmly now, after the fashion of politicians. His air implied that Mr. Strawbridge's visit had been sheer delight. And Mr. Strawbridge's own business-trained cordiality picked up somewhat even under his unexpressed disappointment. In fact, he was just loosing the diplomat's hand when he discovered there was a bit of paper in Mr. Anderson's palm pressing against his own. When the consul withdrew his hand he left the paper in his countryman's fingers.
“Well, good-by; good luck! Don't forget to look me up again. When you leave Caracas you'd better give me your forwarding address for any mail that might come in.”
The consul was walking down the tiled entrance of the consulate, floating his guest out in a stream of somewhat mechanical cordiality. Strawbridge moved into the dazzling sunshine, clenching the bit of paper and making confused adieus.
He walked briskly away, with the quick, machine-like strides of an American drummer. After a block or two he paused in the shade of a great purple flowering shrub that gushed over the high adobe wall of some hidden garden. Out of the direct sting of the sun he found opportunity to look into his hand. It held a sheet of the scratch-pad. This bore the address, “General Adriano Fombombo, No. 27 Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas.” Inside the fold was the sentence, “This will introduce to you a very worthy young American, Mr. Thomas Strawbridge, a young man of discretion, prompt decision, strict morals, and unimpeachable honesty.” It bore no signature.
Strawbridge turned it over and perused the address for upward of half a minute. Now and then he looked up and down the street, then at the numbers on the houses, after the fashion of a man trying to orient himself in a strange city.