The Squares of the City

XXI

I thought of Maria Posador saying in that calm voice from which she seemed to try to eliminate all possible suspicion of emotionalism, “I believe it right and necessary for there to be some sort of counter-propaganda in Vados.”

And I suddenly felt that the remark contained a truth as stunning as a blow.

When a dictator silences the opposition’s means of influencing public opinion, then is the time to get the hell out of his domains. Up till now, presumably, Tiempo had not menaced Vados seriously, nor had any other source of information opposed to his regime. After all, one TV broadcast, reinforced with the “evidence of my own eyes” of the subliminal perception technique, was worth a dozen issues of any newspaper.

Was this new step due to his losing the weapon of broadcasting? Did he feel that his grip was in danger of slipping, that Tiempo now represented a major threat to his security? I speculated frantically for the hour it took me to establish the real facts behind it.

Today Judge Romero had a hangover.

So far as I was able to make out, that was the root of the decision. Physical discomfort has often in the past brought nations, let alone single cities like Ciudad de Vados, to the brink of disaster. It was not so long since one sick administration, composed of bodily unwell men, had nearly blown the whole world to pieces through their continued ill-temper.

In attacking me and Seixas in their issue of today, the editor and staff of Tiempo had, of course, infringed the injunctions against them which Romero had issued. And Romero, not taking time to consult me or Lucas, acting for me, as to whether I wished this to be regarded as an infringement of malice, had decided to haul the Mendozas in for contempt of court and to confiscate the unsold stocks of the day’s issue.

And he wasn’t playing. Police had closed the offices and were standing guard at the doors. There wasn’t going to be another issue of Tiempo for a long tune to come.

It took the news an hour or so to spread through the city. When it had spread, the reaction was immediate and thorough. The National Party, deprived of its only organ of propaganda, raised a howl that could probably be heard in Puerto Joaquín. Demonstrators were pouring into the Plaza del Sur long before the customary starting time for the daily speakers’ session, bearing improvised banners and placards attacking Romero specifically and the administration in general. The Citizens’ Party was not slow to follow suit; the pegs on which they hung their protests were, of course, the burning of the broadcasting center and the death of Mayor.

The police descended in force to try to clear the square, but it was hopeless. I stayed to watch until it wasn’t safe any longer, even from inside the entrance of the Hotel del Principe. The staff closed the doors and stood by under the direction of the anxious-looking manager, ready to barricade the ground floor if they had to. And it looked for a while as though they might have to — the rival mobs first swore at each other, then began to clash: a fist-fight here, knives drawn there, until there was a full-scale riot brewing.

The police did what they could — perhaps more than I had cynically expected — but they were limited to placing under arrest an individual here and there who didn’t have too many of his own side within easy reach. They were just nibbling the edges of the crowd.

“They will have to send for troops,” I heard someone say nervously in the hotel lobby. “Why do they not send for the troops?”

“What could even troops do to quell this?” answered someone else.

And then nature took a hand.

All morning a damp wind off the ocean had been piling up gray thunderhead clouds against the inland mountains; now, just as the riot was starting to flare, the storm crashed down on the city. Their grievances dying in the downpour, soaked, cold, and uncomfortable, supporters of both sides dispersed to shelter while the police, sighing with relief, escorted ambulance men into the plaza to pick up the injured.

But this was merely a respite. The tensions that had so nearly exploded would be fulminating beneath the surface for at least the rest of the day, and if it turned hot again so that tempers frayed…

And this because an old man had dined too well last night! I cast around in my mind for someone whom I could approach for information as to whether anything was being done to put right this thoughtless and potentially disastrous act. It occurred to me that Luis Arrio ought to know; if the chairman of the Citizens of Vados didn’t, who would?

I told a waiter to get Arrio on the phone for me, hardly expecting success at the moment, but he was reached for me in minutes — on the strength of my name, it appeared. Getting notorious in Vados had compensations.

“Señor Arrio,” I said, “I’ve just been watching what might have been a full-scale riot in the Plaza del Sur. Can you tell me what’s being done about this suppression of Tiempo ?”

“Oh, that has gone ahead very satisfactorily,” came back the dismaying answer. “The editor has been jailed until he purges his contempt, and the staff have been forbidden to engage in further journalism until he does so. He’ll be out of the way for some time, probably, and by then the situation should be calmer—”

“You mean they’re going to let Romero get away with it?”

A pause, as though wondering if he had heard me correctly. Then: “Why not, señor? It is the law!”

“The people in the square outside this hotel are paying damned little attention to the law!” I said harshly. “They think — and I agree — that this is a piece of criminal idiocy!”

“It is the law, señor,” he said frigidly, and put down his phone.

I felt as nervous, frustrated, and eager to do something as though the disaster that impended hung over myself personally; whom else could I get in touch with who might understand the danger of the situation?

The only idea that came to me was Miguel Dominguez. He’d been a friend of Fats Brown’s, of course, and because of that he wouldn’t particularly care for me personally. Not if he believed what he saw on television. On the other hand, he had this hold over Judge Romero — he was trying to get Romero disqualified for his disgraceful handling of that case against Guerrero and his chauffeur. Maybe if he had succeeded or was near success, Romero’s orders of today could be set aside.

The rain was still pelting down. I drove over to the Courts of Justice, wondering if I would find him. As it happened, he was in court today dealing with some minor case; an usher told me it would be adjourned in a few minutes, and I waited in the passage till then.

I had expected a colder reception from Dominguez than the one I actually got — not that that was any too warm. But I was spared the need to deny what had been publicized about my part in Fats Brown’s death.

“I was told by Jose Dalban what you said to Mayor in his office,” Dominguez informed me. “I am glad to hear that. We were much afraid you cared more for your contract than you did for the rights of the situation.”

“I don’t,” I said shortly.

“I accept that. What can I do for you?”

“Well, as I understand it, Señor Dominguez,” I said, “you were going to try to get an impeachment of Romero, or something of the sort. Is there any hope of hurrying it up? Because closing down Tiempo seems bound to cause disaffection — there was practically a riot in the Plaza del Sur today — and surely, if Romero was removed for incompetence, there’d be a chance of salvaging the situation.”

He gave me a shrewd, searching stare. “Continue, Señor Hakluyt,” he said in a voice that had suddenly acquired a purr. “I think you are about to speak good sense.”

“This is the way I see it,” I said. “If the Nationals are deprived of their paper, they’re going to riot. Only the storm saved Vados from a minor civil war today. The government has lost its television station — who did that, we don’t know, but what the hell, anyway? They’ve got twenty years’ advantage! I should have thought that even if Vados himself wasn’t prepared to crack down on Romero, Diaz would have done so by now, or Gonzales. Luis Arrio was trying to tell me a little while ago that ‘it’s the law’ — but law or not, damn it, it’s bad politics and bad psychology!”

He was actually smiling now — not broadly, but smiling. “Good, Señor Hakluyt. Very good. Yes, it is true that we have taken action to secure a new trial of Guerrero’s chauffeur. And we have put in motion the procedure for impeaching Judge Romero for his behavior on that occasion — at which, now I come to think of it, I believe you were present, no? Unfortunately,” and here he frowned, “owing to the tension created by Guerrero’s death, it was judged advisable not to progress too rapidly in the matter, and it will still be a few days before anything definite is done. In the meantime, God knows what may happen. You may, though, accept that Judge Romero, who has been too long in his place already, is, as you say in English, ‘washing up.’ ” I was too relieved to correct him. “Then what?”

“Then all his subsequent judgments will be null and void and all cases at which he has since presided will have to be retried. Of course, this implies that his injunctions against Tiempo will fall, and no one else on the judicial bench will be so stupid as to ban the paper completely.” He spread his hands. “But between now and then other things may happen.… I agree with you, señor. We must not delay longer. We must take steps now, at once, and I will see to it.”

Only a little less worried than when I arrived, I left him on that note.

The main story in the next morning’s edition of Liberdad — this was Saturday — was about Dominguez demanding an impeachment of Romero. Diaz had formally given orders for an investigation into the matter. The paper’s hackles had risen in righteous anger: a polemical and furious article by Andres Lucas on an inside page, bearing the signs of hurried writing, profiled Romero and his career. Lucas declared that this was the crowning insult to a man who despite being reviled by his enemies had served his country faithfully during a long and distinguished career — the sort of defense I could imagine him putting forward in court when he was convinced his client was guilty.

In any case, Romero was out of the reckoning after this; as Dominguez had put it, he was “washing up.” And, reading between the lines of Lucas’s article, I got the strong impression that he was suddenly afraid of Dominguez — perhaps seeing in him that rival who might usurp Lucas’s position of supremacy in the legal world in Aguazul. How real, I wondered, was that threat? Not very, if Lucas had the might of the Citizens’ Party on his side.

Coincidentally, I saw Lucas that evening. He was eating in the restaurant in the Plaza del Norte, for although the weather was still cool, it had not rained today, and the tables had been set out again under the palms.

The look on Lucas’s face made me suddenly think back to the expression Juan Tezol had worn the day I saw him trudging toward his home under the monorail station, wondering where he could find a thousand dolaros to meet the fine Judge Romero had imposed on him. In the end the powerful backers who had used him as the figurehead of the party had discarded him — made him a martyr. I imagined, realizing it was imagination, Lucas picturing himself in the same situation and perhaps for the first time feeling in his bones what a dirty game politics can be.

I couldn’t feel sorry for him now.

Angers turned up at my hotel on Sunday; he had called me before he came, and I had been a bit brusque with him. But he came nonetheless, a little nervously, a little less self-possessed than usual — almost, I would have said, a little ashamed.

I let him find an opening when we had sat down in the hotel lounge. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t even try to look anything in particular.

He had brought a portfolio with him. He covered a minute’s awkward silence by searching in it for some documents, and at last, having found them, cleared his throat.

“I — uh — have bad news, I’m afraid,” he said. “Diaz has studied that plan for the market area you gave me. He says he can’t approve it. He wants a lot of changes. I tried to object, of course, but—”

I said wearily, “I warned you. It’s too expensive as it stands, for one thing. And Diaz is at perfect liberty to criticize individual points. So long as he hasn’t questioned the actual traffic flow, that’s fine. I thought I’d made that clear when I gave you the draft in the first place.”

Angers looked at me. He didn’t reply for a moment, and before he did he had to drop his eyes.

“You feel pretty ba’d about what happened to Brown, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes.”

He opened his hands, palms up, and looked at them, seeming not to know how to go on. Eventually: “So do I, damn it! I — I was scared, Hakluyt. You must understand that. When I felt him hit me on the back and I turned around to look into his face — it was like a maniac’s or a wild animal’s! What else was I to do, in Heaven’s name? If I’d hesitated, I’m certain he’d have tried to kill me with his bare hands.”

“You weren’t exactly treating his wife in the way an English gentleman is supposed to,” I said.

He flushed scarlet, all the way to the roots of his hair. “She — she — oh, hell, Hakluyt! Brown was a suspected murderer, whatever else anyone says, and he’d run away to hide instead of staying to face a trial the way an innocent man would have done—”

“Stop trying to convince yourself,” I said. “I saw the way you loved that gun the police gave you. Why the hell can’t you stick to your own job? You’re a highway manager, a traffic organizer, not a one-man crusade for the moral improvement of Ciudad de Vados! And I don’t think the conceited pleasure you got out of playing Sir Galahad was worth the life of a good lawyer and an honest man.”

His face was interesting over the next few moments; it began to go dignified, hesitated, flushed again, and ended up tattered, like a papier-mache mask that has been out in the rain.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to convince you you’re wrong,” he said. “Probably not.”

He took out a cigarette, but didn’t light it. With it waiting between his fingers, he gave a bitter smile. “You just don’t like us or our country, do you, Hakluyt?”

“I haven’t been given much reason to like it.”

“No… But I think you might try to understand people like me, the foreign-born citizens. We — we hitched our wagons to the star of Ciudad de Vados, as the saying goes. We put our hearts and souls into this city. We gave up all the other things our lives might have held for us — chances of possibly greater wealth, greater success, elsewhere — because we saw in Ciudad de Vados something we could shape to our own desires. There was a line of poetry” — he looked suddenly self-conscious — “that used to keep running through my head when I first made up my mind to come to Vados and settle here. It said something like ‘reshape it nearer to the heart’s desire.’ Well, that’s why. That’s why, when we see people like Brown and Sigueiras making an unholy mess of our — our dreams, if you like — we find it pretty hard to take lying down. Oh, maybe they have their reasons, maybe they’re doing right according to their lights, but we gave up everything for the sake of this city, and when people forget that, who never had to give up anything because they never had anything till we came along and gave it to them, it makes us furious.”

I didn’t comment. Angers waited a few seconds, half-hoping for a favorable answer, and at last got to his feet. “Will you be down at the department in the morning?” he asked.

“I’ll be there,” I said. “I’ll be there.”