The Squares of the City Read online

  “No,” he said. “You’re wrong. Our laws are like the Code Napoléon. The onus is on the accused.”

  Faces full of hate came to the entrance of the slum; eyes stared down at us, and children threw more filth that spattered across the clean shining cars. One of the policemen fired three shots, and the faces vanished.

  Distantly we heard the howl of police sirens hurrying toward us.

  I went up the slope to the station and caught a monorail to the Plaza del Sur. Nobody tried to hinder my going.

  I wasn’t really thinking as I went. My mind seemed to have ceased its high-level functions, as though my skull had been poured full of cold water. Afterward quick snapshots of things I had seen on the way remained in memory—faces in the monorail car, the sight of traffic in the streets below, the reflection of sun on the windows of buildings, a headline in a paper from Puerto Joaquin that someone was reading as I left the car at Plaza del Sur station. But I wasn’t thinking. I had stuck, as though walking up a down escalator, in front of a billboardlike vision of Señora Posador, informing me that whether I liked it or not I had importance in the scheme of affairs.

  Enough importance to kill a man.

  If I had not conceived this irritable plan to enter the slum for myself, if I had not checked and turned as Señora Brown went by … Here you could point to decisions of mine; here you could say, “He did this, and therefore this followed.”

  The afternoon lay hot and bright on the Plaza del Sur. It was almost empty of people. I went straight across it and entered the hotel.

  Sitting alone in the lounge, the habitual unlit Russian cigarette between her fingers, was Maria Posador. Someone had been with her; two glasses rested on the chessboard-topped table beside her, two brands of cigarette were crushed in the ashtray. She was reading through a letter, with eyebrows drawn together.

  I went over to her; she raised her face and gave me a cool nod.

  “I thought you’d want to know,” I said harshly. My voice sounded unfamiliar in my ears, as though another man were speaking through my lips. “They found Fats Brown.”

  She jerked upright in the chair. “Diablo! Where, in the name of God?”

  “In Sigueiras’s slum—where else?”

  “I had thought him safely out of the country! Señor, what have they done with him?”

  “Angers put a bullet through his head,” I said, and the frozen golden face under the dark sleek hair with the violet eyes and the rich red lips was overlaid in my vision by the sight of the other face as it ceased to be a face at all.

  Maria Posador had halted at my words like a movie when the projector motor fails; after a long second she flowed into motion again, but a mist had come up in her eyes, and I do not think she saw me clearly.

  “Of course,” she muttered. “Of course, that was to be expected.”

  I waited in silence. In a while she stood up, very erect, and gave me a little stiff half-bow. Then she walked away, crumbling the cigarette in her hand so that flakes of tobacco scattered behind her elegant, expensive shoes.

  I turned toward the bar.

  Later, they put television on, and I was too apathetic to move away. The program opened with news: Brown’s death. I saw the same graveled ground where I had stood earlier; there were military trucks deployed around it now, and people going to the monorail station crowded curiously in the background. Troops went into the slum, came out with Brown’s body; the watchers saw it, recognized it under its covering of sacks. Hats were lifted. People crossed themselves. Behind, many of the slum-dwellers were chased into sunlight, beaten with fists and batons, hurried along with the butts of carbines. Like impounded stray dogs, they were driven into the army trucks, sat with bowed heads, and waited to be taken away.

  There was a hunt going on for Sigueiras. He was somewhere in the city. As soon as he was found, they would charge him with concealing a wanted man.

  They interviewed Angers, looking heroically injured with a bandage on his head, on the current affairs program at five past eight. I was still in the bar; I hadn’t any stomach for food. I’d just been sitting there. They also put Bishop Cruz on, and he thundered episcopally about the wages of sin as he had done before, the day after Estrelita Jaliscos died.

  And then they gave a sort of credit line to those who had helped in this brave hunting-down of a desperate killer—unquote. In among the rest they dragged my name.

  I felt a sort of dull resentment harden within me. Hell, maybe Brown had laid this Jaliscos girl, in spite of all his denials; if he hadn’t, maybe he had pushed her out of a window; if he hadn’t done that, either, it was sure—I myself had seen—that he had it in mind to kill Angers. All granted, all granted. He wasn’t a desperate killer; he was an honest man on the wrong side. And I wasn’t going to have any part of posthumous attempts to convict him without trial.

  Maybe it was a sort of habit, conditioned into me by my work; up to now, I’d been passive, reacting, absorbing, accepting, just as when I started a new job I had to spend a long time acquiring facts and feelings. Now I was past that stage. I was going to start saying what I thought and doing what I believed to be right. And I could start by raising a little hell at the TV studios.

  I went out to my car and drove there as soon as the program ended.

  Rioco, the producer of the program, was on the point of leaving the building. He seemed very tired; at first he failed to recognize me, and when he did, he hardly seemed to be taking in what I said.

  As I was starting to repeat myself, however, he brushed his hand impatiently across his eyes. “Yes, yes,” he muttered. “I did hear what you said. But what can I do? This is a policy question—you must take your complaints to Dr. Mayor.”

  “Why? What’s it got to do with him?”

  He snapped at me. “You don’t think I decide what goes out on our programs, do you? The most important ones we broadcast? If you want your name kept out of our reports, you’ll have to tell Mayor, because he handed down an order to play up your part in the affair at seven-thirty this evening. If we’d had time, we’d have come down and got you to give an interview, like Angers.”

  “You would not!” I said when I could draw breath again—the sheer presumption of the remark staggered me momentarily. “All right, if I have to see Mayor, I see Mayor. Where do I find him?”

  “Maybe in his office—on the first floor.” Rioco gave a savage grin. “I wouldn’t tackle him now if I were you. He’s not in the best of moods—”

  “What kind of a mood do you think I’m in after all the lying trash you’ve been putting out about me?” I could feel my nerves fraying as if Rioco’s voice were sawing them on the sharp corner of a block of sandstone; I stamped past him and went up the stairs two at a time to the next floor.

  Mayor’s office was well guarded; there was a receptionist, male, muscular, as well as a receptionist, female, pretty. I walked past both of them while they were still putting on their “good evening we recognize you of course” smiles and threw open the door to Mayor’s sanctum.

  For a moment everything was silent. I had expected Mayor to erupt, but he did nothing of the sort—he showed astonishment for a second and then mastered it. His visitor, who had been talking to him, broke off and swung around on his chair. I recognized, of all people, Dalban.

  I was at a loss for a moment, and Mayor recovered his composure altogether. He sat back, settling his glasses on his nose with a fingertouch, and spoke with ponderous humor.

  “Your business is obviously urgent, Señor Hakluyt. What is it?”

  I ignored him and addressed Dalban. I could hear bitterness and rage struggling in my voice. “You’ll be delighted to know, señor, that what your threats and bribes couldn’t achieve is being successfully accomplished by this—this Mayor here. Minister of Misinformation and Accusations, so I understand.”

  It was at this point that I first realized I was very drunk indeed.

  I stood back inside my head and allowed myself to go on talking—I c
ouldn’t do anything else. I said, “They say the bigger the lie the better the chance of people believing it. He’s been telling the whole of Aguazul this evening that I was right-hand man to hero-boy Angers in the rounding up of a dangerous killer called Fats Brown. That’s a hell of a big lie, and probably a hell of a lot of people believe it. Well, I don’t—and after all, I was only there. What I saw was murder. I’m telling you that straight. I’ve stood practically every kind of pushing around this pretty-in-theory, stinking-in-practice government of yours can dish out, Mayor, and I’m saying now that this last lie makes me want to vomit on your nice clean desk!”

  On the last three words I beat my fist on that desk, each time harder, until the last time the two phones jumped in their cradles.

  Mayor had heard me out without expression. Now he moved plumply in his chair. He said in his surprisingly mellow voice, “Señor Hakluyt, you are excited. I well understand the shock you have suffered; this is not the first violent death to which you have been a witness since arriving here. But it is our duty to present facts to the public.”

  I said, “Facts! Facts! Lies aren’t facts!”

  “It’s a fact that this slum under the monorail central is a place where a suspected murderer can hide, isn’t it? Or do you deny that self-evident truth?”

  “Suspected! He wasn’t condemned or even tried, except in the minds of the people who believe your falsehoods, and now he never can be tried. That’s a fact—and you haven’t given that to the public, have you? You and your ‘most governed country,’ Mayor—let’s face it, you’ve degraded yourself into a mouthpiece for government propaganda, and this television service you’ve created is no more than a megaphone for an arrogant dictator, with hypnotic attachments! ‘Know the truth and the truth shall make you free’—hide the truth and you get what you’re after: a country where everyone believes what they’re told and never gets an inkling of the dirty truth behind the pretty lies!”

  Mayor’s face was purpling; before he could speak and before I could formulate the climactic insult I needed to finish my tirade, Dalban’s rich voice cut across the room.

  “Señor Hakluyt, I here and now apologize to you. To bribe or threaten you was ill-judged. I believe you are an honest man. I have often desired to say exactly what you have said to this corrupt barrel-of-wind Mayor. But even with my not inconsiderable prestige I have dared do little more than remonstrate—as I came here to remonstrate tonight. Now I do not care any more. I think you are perfectly correct. I think Mayor is a dangerous megalomaniac, and Ciudad de Vados is an unhealthy town in which to live so long as he is forcing his perverted propaganda on our citizens. He and the professor of so-called social sciences Cortés who foists the same predigested pap on our intelligent young students to stop them from saving themselves would be better—off—dead.”

  I felt vaguely embarrassed; maybe it was the drink. Or it was the unmistakable sincerity in Dalban’s tone, which made me feel that I had been looking at him up to now through some officially issued dark glasses.

  “I do not any longer think we need speak of your leaving Aguazul,” Dalban continued thoughtfully. “Dr. Mayor, you have heard what I said; now you have heard what Señor Hakluyt said. Are you prepared to undo the effects of your vicious lies?”

  Mayor sat very still; we looked at him. I was vaguely aware that the receptionist, male, muscular, was standing in the doorway with a helpless expression, as if waiting for a command to remove us both. I thought at first Mayor might yield, for sweat pricked out on his forehead and two bright red spots burned high on his cheekbones.

  But when he at last spoke, his voice was hard and firm.

  “My broadcasting service is the organ of our government,” he said. “It is not to be controlled by the whim of private individuals. Señor Hakluyt, you are a distinguished visitor doing a valuable service for our city; you are likewise a stranger, and at the moment you are very drunk. We—and when I say we, I speak for the cabinet—we can overlook this breach of manners. You are fortunate in your privileged position. But I will not withdraw anything that has been said.”

  “I’ve sold your government nothing, except my services,” I said harshly. “Whatever you may be able to do with your own puppet-citizens, you can’t do it to me.”

  He ignored me. “As for you, Dalban!” His gaze shifted, and I suddenly felt that I was looking at a man who wielded conscious and astonishing power. “You have been a damnable nuisance for too long. The patience of the government is great, but not inexhaustible, and this time you have overreached yourself. You are finished.”

  He just sat there when he was done. I felt a hand on my shoulder; the tough male receptionist had come up to me and jerked a thumb to indicate the door. Dalban, with dignity, was rising to his feet.

  “On the contrary, Dr. Mayor,” he said quietly, “I am just about to begin.”

  And he strode from the room.

  I followed, wishing I had not drunk quite so much. A million things I wanted to say to Mayor boiled in my skull, but none of them would come to my tongue. What was left of my ability to think logically directed that I should obey the command to leave; if I stayed, it was inevitable that my frustration would drive me to attack Mayor physically—I should have liked to strangle him with the cord of his telephones. But that wouldn’t have solved anything. And I’d have been thrown out bodily.

  Outside, in the cool night air, with the illuminated façade of the building looming above us, Dalban stopped and turned back to me.

  “Again I will apologize, Señor Hakluyt,” he said, curiously humble.

  “I’ll accept that,” I said. “But I don’t undertake to forget that you threatened me. I thought that honor was at a premium here. And yet—”

  He gave a somehow ghastly chuckle. “And yet your encounter with Mayor has perhaps disillusioned you, no?”

  “I’d like to—oh, hell, I don’t know what I’d like to do to him. I thought he was a sound man; maybe he was when he was just a political theorist. But—corrupted by power, maybe. I don’t know.”

  “This country may owe its twenty years of peace to his methods,” said Dalban, and glanced up toward the lighted windows. “But Mother of God, it has cost us dearly!”

  “What will you do now?” I said.

  “Who knows? We will find a way, señor. The worst things in the world cannot endure.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything to say after that, so I went back to my car and drove, very slowly, with cool air on my face, back down the mountainside into the city.

  XX

  Something howled, screamed, and rattled past the hotel. I blinked wildly at the pattern of lights drifting across my ceiling—I always prefer to sleep with the curtains open—interpreting them into nonsense.

  I got out of bed and stared down toward the street.

  A fire engine, its siren crying like a soul in torment (I thought of Brown’s wife at her husband’s death), swung around a corner and tore off into darkness. A helicopter buzzed past, seeming so close that I could have jumped up beside the pilot. Two police patrol cars took the same route as the fire engine.

  By this time I was beginning to understand what was going on, and I lifted my eyes toward the hills. There was a glare up there—a red, shifting glare that was patently no sort of street lighting. A plane crashed into the mountainside was my first guess; then I realized that it wasn’t necessary to implicate a plane. The broadcasting center was on fire.

  I glanced at my watch as I went to fetch my binoculars. Three-ten a.m. A dead time of night. From the way it showed up, the blaze had had plenty of time to take hold before it was discovered. Perhaps there was no one in the entire building.

  But surely there would be sprinkler systems in a place like that, and probably also an alarm system connected directly with fire headquarters—

  I stopped myself making empty guesses, because whether or not there were sprinklers and alarms, they hadn’t saved the place. Through the glasses it was an impressive si
ght. The antennae, stilted and stiff atop the hard square outline of the building, seemed to be walking with vast deliberation into the mouth of hell. A section of wall and roof would slip; accordingly, one leg of one of the masts would dip, like a man taking a short step forward. After that, the mast would wait, as children do when playing Red Light, for an opportunity to move again.

  I couldn’t see the fire engines—they were hidden from view by intervening buildings and the slope of the ground—but their presence could be detected wherever the red glow dulled with the impact of their thousand-gallons-a-minute pumps. I considered going out to see the fire from close at hand; then I decided that anybody who did would certainly interfere with the serious job of fighting the flames. Though Vados’s traffic flow was excellent, even a single extra vehicle on the road up to the broadcasting center might delay an essential ambulance or another fire engine.

  So after ten minutes or so I went back to bed.

  My mind was slightly muzzy. It wasn’t until I’d lain down again that the full impact of what I’d just seen came home to me. Vados’s Minister of Information and Communications wouldn’t be broadcasting any retractions, or anything else, today, tomorrow, or for months to come.

  And if Vados’s government was really dependent on the operations of Mayor’s public misinformation service to mold the pliable opinion of Vadeanos, then for that period el Presidente was going to be like a man with one hand tied behind his back.

  I thought of what Dalban had said, standing outside that imposing building which the age-old force of fire was now reducing to a shell. And I wondered. …

  Wondering, I dozed off. But I wasn’t allowed to get much rest. It was still before daylight, only a little after five o’clock, when I heard voices at my door.

  “Este cuarto es el No. 1317,” said a hard, low voice. “Abria la puerta.”

  It was uttered in too quiet a tone to be addressed to me, but the number of the room was certainly mine. I sat up in bed.