The Squares of the City

XII

It was a long game, though — eighty or ninety moves — even shorn of the thinking time it must have needed in the actual tournament. I’m not a good enough player to appreciate the fine points of end-game play, and long before the forces on either side were reduced to two pawns and a rook I was feeling as restive as I had when watching Cordoban take on Dr. Mayor after dinner at the TV center.

I noticed that I was not completely alone in growing restive. In the opening stages the play was interesting enough as simple spectacle: pieces not being moved dropped to one knee to facilitate the audience’s view, and there were pauses at intervals to emphasize a particularly skilled piece of development. Usually there was a spattering of applause when this happened, and once there was a burst of approving cries as well. The taking of a piece was pantomimed with short daggers, and the victim was then carried from the board by two pawns of the opposing side and dumped on the lawn. The whole thing took place almost in silence, aside from the tap of the drum which signaled each move, and the occasional clapping.

But once the slow routine of the end game set in, with the pawns solemnly moving their one square forward in monotonous alternation, almost everyone except Garcia and a few others (Garcia himself, I noticed, was reliving the game in an agony of nervousness) adopted polite but bored expressions and signaled more and more often to the hovering waiters for a tray of drinks.

The most noticeable exceptions to this rule, aside from Garcia, were President Vados and Diaz. Vados watched with as much attention as a fan at a Melbourne test (the likeness reminded me that sometime I ought to go home and see another Shield match — sometime); Diaz, on the other hand, seemed to be watching Vados almost as closely as the game itself.

Once, when the game had been halted for a particular move to sink in, Vados happened to glance at his Minister of the Interior. Their eyes met. A muscle in Vados’s cheek tensed suddenly. Diaz’s hands clenched, with deliberation, as if squeezing something that wasn’t there. The tableau lasted a few seconds; then both at once looked back toward the game, with a suspicion of guilt, like children pretending they hadn’t been disobedient.

There had been dislike in their expressions. Or perhaps not dislike, no. Something nearer to — nearer to hatred, and yet tempered with a mutual respect. I thought of all the stories I’d heard about their rivalry. Well, there it was, burning brightly. And unless habit had enabled them to control it, it was violent enough to break loose.

The pieces finished their complicated maneuverings; the white king dropped to his knees and bent his head. The black king stepped from the board, bowed before Garcia, and gave him the dagger from his side, before escorting him across the board to administer the coup de grace in pantomime. Vados led the applause, and Garcia stood between the two tall kings smiling and nervously fingering his spectacles.

Then Diaz looked at Vados again. This time he smiled: a great loose-lipped smile that exposed a broken tooth.

Beside me, Señora Cortes gathered herself together with a sigh.

“Well, that’s over,” she said with satisfaction. “Now we only have to join the line of people waiting to say good-bye to the president, and we can get away.”

“ ’Belita!” interrupted her husband, a distant look in his eyes. “You’re going back to the studios, aren’t you? I want to stay and have a word with Pablo about that king’s knight development in the opening — I haven’t seen him use it before.”

“Very well,” said Señora Cortes composedly. “I’ll see you at home tonight.”

Cortes pushed his way through the dissolving crowd; servants rerolled the chessboard and carted it away; I went to receive Vados’s nod of dismissal and returned to my car.

This was a cock-eyed country, I was thinking as I drove away down the road to the city. Chess champions for public heroes; public opinion molded by subliminal perception, without any great effort made to conceal the fact; primitive squalor next door to buildings as modern as tomorrow. What a weird city this “child” of Vados’s had turned out to be…

And what was I to make of this subliminal perception business, anyway? Maria Posador had been right to assume — as she had — that I would react against it; yet now I had been told by Cortes that he had himself made appalling discoveries in the shantytowns, and Cortes struck me as a man not only of high intelligence but of a certain old-fashioned rectitude, a man to whom telling a lie, no matter how worthy a cause it furthered, would be repulsive. Again, in all honesty, I must reserve judgment, I told myself. And, in the same moment, I wondered how much of that impulse was true honesty, how much simple unwillingness to commit myself beyond the bounds of the field in which I was skilled.

It became clear as I reentered the city that since the frightened reaction of last night and this morning life had swung back toward normality; at any rate, there was a liveliness of the kind that was customary on saint’s day evenings, with many people in the bars and restaurants, and occasional groups of musicians playing in the squares and on street corners. In a vague hope that I might likewise get back to normal, I collected my camera and notebooks and went out into the market quarter again.

But here the stamp of the panic that had followed the Guerrero killing was impressed heavily even now. The streets were quiet; a municipal street sprinkler had been through them, and the surface of the road was shiny with recent wet.

I passed a small shrine set in the wall of one of the houses — a crude clay statuette of the Virgin, with a niche around it and a shelf with some candle spikes in front. There were several candles guttering here, one of them with a notice stuck on it. I lifted the sheet of paper and read it.

“For the soul of Mario Guerrero,” it said in Spanish. “He was killed by those” — then a word I couldn’t understand but which I presumed to be an obscenity — “Indians who themselves are without souls.”

“Ay!” said a harsh voice from across the street. “No toce!” I swung my head. Two ruffian-type men stepped from a dark doorway opposite, each carrying a heavy cudgel. I teased myself as they approached.

“Que hace Vd.?” said one of them threateningly. The other, after scrutinizing my face closely, motioned to his companion to lower his club.

“Es el Señor Hakluyt,no?” he said. “I have seen your honor on the television. Apologies, señor — we set that candle there as a warning and a reminder to these peasants that the death of Mario Guerrero” — he crossed himself — “will not go unavenged. It will be well, if you desire peace, not to come this way again.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said shortly, and made at a smart pace for the end of the street. If I was going to have to contend with belligerent supporters of the Citizens’ Party, I might equally well get involved with Tezol’s faction, and no contract was going to make me risk my life in a street brawl. As a concession to duty, I went back to the main traffic nexus and spent a couple of hours counting the flow, before deciding to call it a day and going to bed.

I really needed at least another week’s work before progressing to a digest of my results; on the other hand, with the city in its present abnormal condition I would probably be fouling up my averages if I combined current data with what I already had. Rather than waste time, therefore, I settled down for the next two days at the traffic department, converting vehicle counts into computer data and running them, setting limits to my parameters, and developing the first approximations for the terms in my main equations. Owing to the relatively small quantity of data I had to hand, I went through the job rather more quickly than I really liked. But Angers was much impressed when, at noon on Friday, he found me actually sketching a diagram of a tentative revised layout for the market area.

I told him, of course,, that I had no real idea whether or not it would serve the purpose and that it usually took me at least six tries to find a scheme that even approximately suited the realities; he brushed aside the perfectly true statement as praiseworthy modesty and took me to lunch in the Plaza del Norte.

I didn’t really like the smooth-spoken Englishman; he was too — too dustproof. But he certainly knew highway engineering. He had, so he told me, left Britain in despair because although that country’s roads were notoriously the worst of any major nation in the world, there was no coherent traffic policy. He had worked for a time in Commonwealth countries and had had a hand in the West African Coastway; then he had helped to design two freeways in the States and the Manhattan Southern Overflow, and after that, as in his view the British still didn’t have a proper traffic policy, he had given up all intention of returning home and come to Vados instead. When he talked about the Manhattan Southern Overflow, my opinion of him went up a notch — he had been supervisory engineer on Section K, which I had often traveled while I lived in New York.

We were having a minor technical dispute when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder, and I found Fats Brown’s ample bulk eclipsing the sun.

“’Lo, Hakluyt,” he said in a cloud of cigar smoke. “Got news you might like to hear.”

He ignored Angers completely. Nettled, the Englishman addressed him.

“Hello, Brown! We don’t often see you here — have you actually secured a client who can pay his fee, for a change?”

“Your pal Andres Lucas is the one who worries about lining his pockets,” said Brown unconcernedly. “I’m the guy who worries about seeing justice done, remember? I’m easy to recognize, ’cause I’m damn near unique in Vados. Like I was saying, Hakluyt,” he continued, while Angers scowled, “it looks like I’ve managed to fix Judge Romero, thanks to Mig’s pull with Diaz. Gonzales has ordered a new trial. So I came out here to celebrate. If you want to congratulate Mig, he’s over there lunchin’ with me. See you around, Hakluyt. So long.”

He lumbered back to his own table. Angers glared after him. “Interfering blighter!” he said under his breath. “No business of his, our legal system, but he never stops trying to knock holes in it. Hah!” He ground his cigarette into an ashtray and stood up.

“Coming back to the office now?”

“In a little while,” I said. “I have to pick up some books at the hotel. I’ll see you later.”

The books were a pretext; I was more interested to see how the lunchtime meeting in the Plaza del Sur was going. I’d missed the morning papers, and I wanted to know if the National Party had plucked up sufficient courage to put in another appearance yet.

But when I reached the plaza, there was no meeting going on at all. Instead, perhaps a hundred policemen were lounging under the trees, most of them smoking and throwing dice. A few of them were clustered around a chessboard on which two of their number were playing.

Puzzled, I entered the hotel. The commissionaire saluted me, and I wondered whether to ask him what had happened. Then I reflected that he probably wouldn’t know, just as he had “not known” on the day of my arrival, and changed my mind altogether as I caught sight of Maria Posador in the lounge, idly moving pieces on one of the chessboard-topped tables, an unlit Russian cigarette between her fingers. She looked worried. She greeted me with a faint smile as I came up, and gestured at the chair opposite her. “Would you care for that game of chess now, señor?” she invited. “I feel in need of a small distraction.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “I have to get back to the traffic department. But perhaps you can tell me — why no meeting in the square today?”

She shrugged. “There was considerable disturbance there yesterday. Diaz has decreed that there shall be no more meetings until the furore over Guerrero’s death has died down.”

“Is the trouble very bad?”

“It is something that may divide the city into warring camps,” she answered absently. She slid pieces into position with expert fingers as she spoke, leaving them set up as though to start a new game. “Thus!”

“I don’t think I’ve come to Vados at a very healthy time.” I tried to speak lightly; that was a failure. She raised her violet eyes to my face.

“Had it not been you, señor, it might have been anyone else. It was what the situation dictated, that is all. No, the death of Mario Guerrero is all part of a pattern — it is, you might say, one symptom of a disease that is poisoning our lives. There is a corruption, a fundamental rottenness — and each part of it renews the corruptness of the rest. You are doubtless aware that Señor Seixas in the treasury department has a strong interest in seeing new highways built, at whatever cost in money or human happiness, for it will be into his pocket that goes the — the financial oil that lubricates such deals in our country. Oh, this is widely known! Yet what happens when our good friend Felipe Mendoza tries to expose this bribery — he, a man whom success has not spoiled, who knows his duty to his fellow citizens? Seixas takes the telephone in his hand and speaks to his friend the judge, Señor Romero. And today he is armed with an injunction against Señor Mendoza, and in its shelter he can proceed with his shady negotiations, while the truth is hidden from the people. I become revolted, señor.” She grimaced.

“But enough, Señor Hakluyt, enough of that. Have you reflected on the things I showed to you the other day?” I chose my words carefully. “I have,” I said. “In fact, I spoke to Señora Cortes of the television service, and her husband, the professor, admitted at once without my asking that they use this technique. I don’t like it myself, but according to what Cortes says, they seem to have some justification, at any rate—”

She seemed to wilt like a flower in an oven. “Yes, Señor Hakluyt. I have no doubt there was also some justification at any rate for Belsen. Good day to you.”

And she lapsed into a silent reflection so complete that I do not think her eyes registered me as I passed through her field of vision on leaving.