The Squares of the City Page 13

  “You’re quite right, of course,” said Angers, not apparently liking to agree with Seixas but wishing more to condemn Mendoza. “If it weren’t for the fact that his brother runs that rag Tiempo, I’m certain he’d never get his stuff into print.”

  “Was that his brother with him—the man who looks like him?”

  “That’s right. His name’s Cristoforo. He, his brother, and a man called Pedro Murieta who finances the publication of Felipe Mendoza’s books are sort of literary dictators in the country, which is a damnable shame, because most of the stuff that’s to their taste is on the verge, if not over the verge, of pornography—”

  There was a shout from the head of the steps. I only caught the tail of it, but I presumed it was approximately, “Pray silence for his excellency the president,” because everyone on the lawn stopped talking, the band played pianissimo, and there was movement under the pillared portico of the house.

  Then el Presidente himself emerged, accompanied by his dark and beautiful young wife and by a nervous-looking man with spectacles, whose tie was out of place and whose hair was rumpled as though he habitually ran his fingers through it.

  A burst of clapping went up, Angers and Seixas and their wives joining in without great enthusiasm. It lasted till the group was at the top of the steps, and then Vados, smiling, indicated to the nervous man that he should step forward. He did so, blinking in the strong sun and smiling apologetically.

  “That’s Pablo Garcia,” said Angers softly, leaning toward me. “The local chess champion, of course.”

  I nodded. Then Vados descended the steps to the lawn and he, his wife, and Garcia took three chairs which had sprung from nowhere against the wall at that end of the lawn.

  “Well, here’s where we have to start circulating,” said Angers with a sigh. I gave him a puzzled glance, but then realized that everyone on the lawn was beginning to move in a counterclockwise procession. As each visitor passed the President, he or she bowed, and Vados either smiled back an acknowledgment or, in the case of the highly privileged, beckoned them to come and have a word with him. A man who was probably a secretary, wearing a dark suit, stood behind him and occasionally whispered in his ear.

  He whispered as I, dutifully circulating with the Angerses—the Seixases had got left behind—came up. The presidential hand beckoned me. I excused myself to my companions and went forward.

  “Delighted to have this chance of meeting you, Señor Hakluyt,” said Vados in excellent unaccented English. “I have seen you before, of course—on the television—but not in the flesh, as they say.”

  “There I have the advantage,” I said. “I have seen you, and Your Excellency’s lady, in the Plaza del Norte the other day.” I gave a slight bow toward Señora Vados; she really was very beautiful. But apparently she didn’t speak English, and was paying no attention.

  “Ah, but such a fleeting glimpse is not a meeting,” Vados said.

  “But I’ve met Ciudad de Vados,” I countered. “And I’ve been extremely impressed by it.”

  “So you said on the television,” Vados answered, and smiled. “It is always a pleasure to me when someone says that, even after ten years. I regard it almost as my child, you know. To have founded a city, though, is better than having a son, for a son is only an individual as oneself is, while a city—a city is the finest offspring a man can have.” He gave a sudden sigh. “But, as with human children, sometimes it does not grow up quite as one would have wished. Well, that is of no matter at the moment—I will not spoil your afternoon by discussing professional matters. I hope you enjoy your stay in Aguazul, señor.”

  He inclined his head, and I said, “Señor presidente—Señora—Señor Garcia,” and backed away. I was glad I’d added the last two words, for the nervous-looking man was having nothing to do but stare at the passing people. At my addressing him, even to say good-bye, he lit up like a lamp being switched on and echoed, “Señor!” with as much enthusiasm as a small boy accepting an offer of candy.

  “You were honored, señor,” said a voice I recognized as I rejoined the circular procession. Isabela Cortés was parading past the President on the arm of a distinguished man of about sixty who wore pince-nez in the old-fashioned manner. I acknowledged the remark.

  This was a fortunate meeting, of course, because I had a question burning in the back of my mind—a question about the use of subliminal perception.

  “León,” Señora Cortés said to her companion, “this is Señor Hakluyt whom you saw on my program the other evening. My husband, señor—the professor of the department of social sciences in the university.”

  The professor gave me an uncomprehending but beaming smile and shook my hand warmly; then he gave his wife a reproving stare, and she laughed. “Please excuse him, señor,” she explained. “He speaks English less well than I.”

  “Please speak Spanish,” I said, since it appeared to be expected of me, and she explained to her husband who I was. Before she had finished, he seized my hand again and told me he was overjoyed to meet me. Señora Cortés looked on indulgently.

  “I suppose you know rather few of the people here?” she suggested.

  I nodded.

  “Suppose we go over to the refreshment table and take advantage of this carousel to point out some of the notables for you. Thank you again, by the way, for the performance you put on on my program the other night.”

  “It was very interesting,” I said guardedly. We were both talking Spanish now, for the professor’s benefit, and I was afraid I might not get the chance to ask my burning question—I probably couldn’t be sufficiently tactful in Spanish.

  A waiter offered us another tray of drinks as we stepped aside from the circular flow, and the professor raised his glass to me, beaming again.

  “To a successful conclusion of your difficult task, señor,” he toasted.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said feelingly, “I’ll drink to that myself.”

  We drank; then Señora Cortés moved close to me and began to name prominent personalities in a low tone.

  “Over there, do you see?—it is General Molinas”—she was back to English, rather to my relief—“who is the … oh, I don’t know the word: the man in charge of all the forces.”

  “Minister of War?” I suggested, and she laughed.

  “War, señor? We don’t fight wars any longer! No, he is—ah, I have it! Commander in chief. And there, of course, is our Minister of Information, Dr. Mayor, whom you know—and that is another minister to whom he is talking at the moment: Señor Diaz, Minister of the Interior.”

  This time I took considerable note. Diaz was a large, ungainly man—what they call in Spanish an hombrazo—with huge hands and a coarse-boned face revealing more than a trace of Indian ancestry. He wore a well-cut tropical suit which he contrived to make look like a flour sack, and he made sweeping gestures as he spoke; people stood well back even when they were being directly addressed by him. One of the group around him was Miguel Dominguez.

  “And there—next to Señor Dominguez—is another minister: Secretary of Justice Gonzales, the stout one with the dark glasses. Then there is Señor Castaldo, who is deputy chief of the Ministry of the Interior, a close colleague of Diaz, naturally. … I think all the ministers of the cabinet will be here—yes, there is our director of health and hygiene, Dr. Ruiz.”

  Ruiz, a small and excitable-seeming man, was talking to Caldwell, the stammering man from the city health department whom I had met in Angers’ office.

  “There are many people here, and I do not recognize them all,” Señora Cortés said with an air of vague apology, as though I had expressed perfect faith in her universal knowledge. “But there are many well-known business persons here, too—ah, you see, talking to Andres Lucas, that is Señor Arrio, whose name you will have seen on big stores here in the city.”

  Lucas was in full mourning and was trying to look as if he had only come to this garden party out of a sense of duty to his President. I didn’t lo
ok very hard at Señor Arrio; the flow of names was beginning to make me dizzy.

  Señora Cortés was looking around, at a momentary loss for another notable to point out. I seized the opportunity to break in. “And who is Señor Garcia?” I asked. “I mean, aside from being a chess champion.”

  “Oh, he is a chess champion, and that is all. Formerly, I believe, he was a teacher of mathematics at a small school in Puerto Joaquin, but now he is the director of the national chess school here in Vados.”

  “You really take the game seriously in this country, don’t you?” I said.

  Professor Cortés said something to his wife, which I failed to catch; he heard the answer and turned to me almost belligerently.

  “And why not take it seriously, señor? It is a finer game than your football or your baseball, no? It trains the mind to think with clarity and never to move in haste without thought; it is always new and always stimulating.”

  “You play yourself?” I asked, and Señora Cortés explained, while her husband looked modest, that he had himself been in the finals of the national championship some years ago.

  I made appropriately impressed sounds and took another drink off a passing tray.

  Since the professor had now joined the conversation again, I had to stick to Spanish for politeness. I lined up my first couple of sentences.

  “I was very interested to visit your television center,” I began, hoping I wouldn’t put my foot in my mouth straight away. “Particularly to find that a minister of the government was—uh—directly in charge of the service.”

  “Very rightly!” said Cortés energetically. “I fully support Dr. Mayor in his view that television is one of the most useful organs of modern government. For example”—he waved down a budding protest from his wife—“for example, let us take this business in which you are involved. There are many things we could not possibly publish in print, for example, and which the public nonetheless ought to know about. With apologies to yourself, ’Belita, you know as well as I do that we’d have the bishop thundering at us if we ever attempted to put into Liberdad half the things you manage to get across on television.”

  He turned directly to me. “You know we are very concerned about these squatters who have invaded Ciudad de Vados—well, of course you do, you of all people. But some of the things that go on in their hovels you would barely credit—bestial cruelty, abominable immorality, everything that is worst in children of the soil suddenly uprooted and left without the stabilizing effect of the cultural milieu to which they are accustomed. I have the honor to be an adviser to the city council, and in pursuit of the duties of my office I have had to go to this slum under the monorail station and to those tin shacks on the outskirts, and the health inspectors and I—by entering without warning—have made the most terrible discoveries on occasion. Naturally, the danger of having such a well of corruption in the city is inestimable. And yet, back in their own villages, where they have certain social pressures operating on them—respect for the local priest, for instance, and force of traditional custom—these people are really sober, moral, even, one may say, honorable.”

  He spoke authoritatively. I framed my next remark cautiously; it seemed that I was going to get my burning question answered without even trying. I said, “But surely you can’t show—well, I presume you mean obscene material—on television, any more than you could put it in a newspaper.”

  “Not in the ordinary way,” agreed the professor. “Our revered bishop—why, there he is; I wondered what had become of him—oh, of course, today is a holy day, isn’t it? He must have had other commitments. Where was I? Oh, yes. The bishop would have a good deal to say if we tried it. Yet the facts ought to be known to the public at large, and television is the only possible medium for reaching a wide audience consistently with the truth. So we use a technique known as subliminal perception to intersperse this kind of information in other matter—it involves a—”

  “I’ve heard of it,” I interrupted, not knowing whether to be pleased or appalled that he frankly admitted their employment of the technique.

  He beamed at me. “Most useful!” he exclaimed. “Really, most useful!”

  I suddenly felt convinced that here was a thoroughly nice man. I pictured him stepping through the doorway—probably pushing aside a curtain of sacking—of one of the shanties on the outskirts of Vados and confronting such a scene as the one involving the Negro and the children which Señora Posador had shown me. I thought Cortés would probably charge at the man, telling him that it were better that a millstone be tied around his neck and he be cast into the depths of the sea.

  Señora Cortés looked at me rather uneasily, as though unsure of the effect her husband’s declaration might have had on me. When she saw I was not going to reply at once, she spoke.

  “Yes, señor, we do use our television service for such propaganda, but only when the subject is a truly serious one. As León has said, here is a subject we feel is enough to justify extreme measures—and since not everyone can go and see for himself, we have no alternative. There are many people in Vados who deny the facts of the case and will stop at nothing to prevent the President remedying the situation as he feels is best—some of those here this afternoon, indeed, oppose his plans. But our President is a very tolerant man.”

  “There certainly are people here I wouldn’t have expected to be invited,” I admitted. “The editor of Tiempo, for instance. And his brother.”

  “You are acquainted with the Mendozas?” Señora Cortés asked in some surprise. I shook my head. “Ah, you merely know of them. They are a case in point. But Señor Cristoforo is, after all, a notable man in Vados, and Señor Felipe’s reputation is today international—and in any case, all other differences fade before our admiration for the skill of Señor Garcia, our champion. But it is a matter for regret that Felipe Mendoza cannot find a more worthy use for his talent than slandering our good President.”

  “Well, why does Vados invite such people, anyway?” I said.

  She shrugged. “To him, it seems, it means more that Felipe Mendoza has brought fame to his country by his books, and that Cristoforo, his brother, should love Ciudad de Vados enough to care about its future. Why, I have heard it said that because he has, to his sorrow, no children, he has taken to calling this city his only child. I believe that anyone who loves the city is assured of his friendship—so long as he does nothing to harm it.”

  “True,” nodded the professor emphatically. “Quite, quite true. Believe it or not, he even invites Maria Posador to nonpolitical functions such as this—she was invited today, I know for a fact, because I have seen the list of guests. She did not come, of course.” He looked at me inquiringly. “You have heard of this woman Maria Posador?”

  “I’ve met her,” I said. “The widow of the man Vados defeated for the presidency.”

  The professor’s fine-arched gray eyebrows went up. But before he could comment, his wife had touched him on the arm. “León!” she said quietly.

  I noticed that a general movement was taking place up the lawn and toward the house. Rows of chairs had been set out on the asphalt drive, overlooking the place where we were now standing. The band was putting its instruments away. A group of servants had brought a long rolled-up cylinder of stiff heavy cloth down to the side of the lawn and were laying it in front of the bandstand.

  “Ah, yes, of course,” said the professor, glancing at his watch, and without further explanation my companions started to join the move toward the steps. We were among the last to ascend, but the chairs were set in staggered tiers, and all the places commanded a view of the lawn. I saw that Vados was laughing and joking with Garcia in the center of the front row as we filed into our places to await whatever was going to happen.

  Below us, the servants briskly unrolled the cylinder, and it proved to be a gigantic chessboard, fully sixty feet square. As soon as it was laid flat, the servants unrolling it retired, and from opposite ends of the avenues of trees at the bac
k of the lawn, two files of men began to march out.

  Those on the left wore white shirts and trousers; those on the right wore black. The first eight on each side had plain skullcaps on their heads; those who came next had tall round cylinders topped with crenellated indentations. After them followed men with horses’ heads, and then others with bishops’ miters; then the only women among the whole group, each with a gilded coronet. Lastly, to the accompaniment of clapping, came two very tall men wearing crowns.

  These people marched up the sides of the chessboard to the beating of a single drum in the bandstand. Two at a time, they made a deep bow before the President; then they turned away to take up their positions on the board.

  I was so astonished at this unexpected display that all the “pieces” had fallen in before I managed to turn to Señora Cortés and look inquiringly blank.

  “Did you not know about this?” she said in surprise. “Why, this is the highest tribute we pay to our chess masters. Each year the national champion, or anyone who wins a championship abroad, has his winning game played through like this before a distinguished audience. This is the ninth time such an honor has befallen Señor Garcia—a wonderful achievement, no? But look, they are starting to play.”

  A tap from the drum; a white pawn marched solemnly two squares forward. Another tap; a black pawn marched out to face him. Pawn to Queen Four on both sides.

  People settled themselves more comfortably in their seats, as if preparing for a long session. But I was too fascinated to relax at once. This was the most extraordinary game of chess I had ever seen. I had, of course, heard of the games that used to be played by despotic Middle Eastern rulers—by Shahs of Persia, or somewhere, where every time a piece, represented by a slave, was taken, the executioner decapitated the unfortunate victim on the spot. I had heard of attempts to stage similar games—shorn of their barbaric refinements—on boards the size of tennis courts, directing the pieces by megaphone. But from what I had heard, most of these stunts were failures, owing to the length of time involved and the risk of the actors fainting like soldiers kept too long on parade.