The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 59

commandant was furious with the ineptitude of his men. His temper seemed to amuse the crowd. And once the corpses were cleared, the gathering relaxed noticeably. Women and children appeared from the stone huts. Altogether, the villagers appeared as condemned as the prisoners—beaten down, starving, hanging on. The idea of politics in such a place was ridiculous, what Grandfather would have said was a Satanic jest. The highest form of civilization in 2 de Diciembre was the firing squad. The second trio of prisoners was dragged to the posts.

The women behind us let out a wail. I realized then they were not nuns, just hags in black. One stout hag churned across the yard, heaved herself down before the post of one of the condemned, a thin, boyish white man with a mangled arm. The subaltern tried to pull her away. The boy sagged to her, held up only by his bonds. The display seemed to embarrass the commandant. From the graveyard gate, a stocky black-bearded man appeared. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a clerical collar as would a minister calling on his parishioners; oddly, he also wore excellent brown seaboots. Black-beard made for the hag. He carried a shovel, and it occurred to me that he was both pastor and gravedigger. He moved with a weight and dexterity that attracted me—more animated than the whole assembly. He got the hag up, took her back to the scaffold steps, consoled her like a worried son. It was bizarre yet sad-making. I suppose that explains why the commandant was not alarmed. The subaltern ordered his men to get on with it. Black-beard shouted at the subaltern in Spanish, then walked toward the commandant, turned to the crowd, began a speech in broad English, “What ye’ve done, there’s no forgiving! She raised that boy after his folk was killed by yerr butchers! Ye tortured out his mind! I want ye to know, it’s important to myself ye know, I don’t see an end to this! Don’t want an end! Yerr Republic be a thief! What’s ours be ours by right!”

The soliloquy was a ruse, as Black-beard was a masquerade, neither pastor nor gravedigger. He was the enemy. His talk distracted the mob, astounded the soldiers, signaled the attack. Black-beard arched back and swung his shovel, felling the commandant. The square was suddenly awash in ricocheting bullets. Explosions tore apart the church tower and the second stories of the only two real buildings in town. The scaffolding took a direct mortar hit and toppled in pieces. We three broke for the inlet, were cut off by firepower and the hysterical crowd. Otter Ransom dragged me and Lazarus behind the trough of a well.

The assault was intended as a rescue, became a fiasco. The condemned died with their captors. The subaltern waved at the warehouse down the cliffside, the origin of the heaviest fire, and gathered what men he could for a charge that did not lack courage. Two small groups of men firing pistols and rifles then rushed the square from the north side to outflank the militia. The combat was hand-to-hand, fanatical. We had to scramble again, Iceberg right with us, through the shattered church, through falling timbers, over the iron gate, and into the graveyard. We worked from stone to tomb back to a stone-built shed. We were moving away from Black Crane. Behind the shed was a sloping heath, beyond that, hillocks and treeless moors. As we rested, Lazarus said he hoped Orlando the Black had pushed off. I said that would make us dead men. He returned that I was a coward, this was “the revolution.” I can see now that he was as frightened as I was, that his dogma was disguised panic. At the time, I cursed him, we cursed each other, over the gunfire and explosions.

We did not do more than yell at each other, however, too terrified to swing. It was childish hysterics. I understand now that I despised Lazarus not, as I then thought, because he was a braggart and poseur, or because I did not understand why he had murdered that pathetic priest; I hated him because he was my rival for Cleopatra. I knew he thought me a dumb beast; I thought him a sly cheat. More, I had reason—incidents on board Angel of Death I have passed by—to believe that he and Cleopatra were lovers. This seems as inappropriate a revelation here as it was an inappropriate interlude then. We were trapped by massacre. Yet I had deceived myself for months about the two of them. She had shown her condescension toward me the night before. I blamed Lazarus. I was a young man. I had naive fancies. I do even now, without the youth. I suppose that I have delayed until here to mention my longing and jealousy because I have yet to accept completely our baleful, never resolved triangle.

Lazarus and I were interrupted in our squabbling by the appearance in my life for the second time of the very same bold, graceful, sad-eyed seaman who had earlier heralded the battle with a shovel. There should be some more telling way I can introduce Germanicus. It does not come to me. Germanicus Frazer himself, stockily built, black-bearded, proud-hearted, girded with iron determinism as Grandfather was with his ineffable Lord God, then pushed through the graveyard’s postern gate. He had the boy with the mangled arm across his shoulders, and the stout hag in tow. He saw us before we did him, crouched, gritted, waved a black horse pistol to keep us at bay while he weighed his chances.

He began heavily, “I’m Frazer, of the South Georgia Volunteers. I need yerr help. Give it, or I take it. She’s bad hurt, he’s near dead. I need ye”—he pointed at me—“to carry her. We got to get up there.”

“It’s not our fight,” said Otter Ransom to me in Swedish.

“We have people back there,” I said to Germanicus.

“Dead or gone now. With