The Squares of the City Read online

And, in direct contradiction to Angers’ request, I proposed to concentrate first on what I considered the major problem: the street market and the attendant slum area. Sigueiras’s set of pigsties were not in fact essentially a traffic problem; if there were as many people who wanted to get rid of them as Caldwell had claimed, they could be cleared away on the basis of something little stronger than a pretext. But to get rid of the market was going to call for some rather subtle and organic planning.

  I’d arrived on Tuesday; today was Friday. The market area deserved at least three days’ close study, and the fact that I would have the end and beginning of the working week in the period meant that I would see it in both its busiest and slackest moments, which was ideal.

  The slackest period of all, of course, was Sunday—there was no market at all, and I concentrated on the outward and return flow of cars bearing people out of town for the day. But with that interruption, I stayed in and around the market area until Monday evening; three or four times a day I worked my way through the market and its surrounding streets, noting the volume of traffic on foot and on wheels at different times of day, estimating how many people had to pass this way, anyway, how many came here only because the market was here, and how many might come this way if it weren’t for the market and the resulting low character of the neighborhood.

  There were valuable pointers to public opinion, too, to be followed up—sources of irritation and resentment against the market that could be gently magnified until it became possible to decree it out of existence without opposition.

  It was fascinating. But then I’m one of those lucky people to whom it is given to enjoy his regular job. There are so many aspects of human existence reflected in the way people move through their streets. I’d had to allow for the snarls in traffic flow caused by the muezzins in Moslem cities calling the devout to prayer, and the consequent five-times-daily interruption of everything, much to the annoyance of the nonreligious citizens. I’d had to work out a design for an embankment along the Ganges where it was certain that at least a million people would suddenly turn up once a year, but which had to cope with them and with its ordinary traffic without wasting unduly much space on the million-strong crowd which would remain idle the rest of the year. I’d helped develop the signal system in Galveston, Texas, designed to get every fire appliance within twenty miles nonstop to any outbreak without interfering with traffic on any route not used by the engines. Those were large-scale tasks, and they had their own interest. But this—by comparison—half-pint puzzle was equally intriguing.

  By Monday afternoon I was coming to a tentative conclusion.

  I was wandering along the sidewalk, pausing to turn over things displayed for sale and rechecking my guess about how many people came this way just to do their shopping when the offices and businesses nearby closed for the night, when a hoarse voice called out to me.

  “Ay, señor!”

  I glanced around. The only people in the direction from which the yell had come were two shabby old men deep in thought over a chessboard resting on an empty packing case—I saw that the white king was lost or broken and had been replaced by the neck of a bottle, broken off short and stood on its jagged end—and a fat man in a white suit that was soaked with sweat under the arms. He sat on a rickety chair tilted back against the wall. A hat shaded his plump face; one pudgy hand clutched a bottle of some sickly-colored soft drink with a straw in it; the other held a ropy cigar.

  I looked inquiring; he beckoned; I went over to him. As I came up, he said something in rapid Spanish, and I had to ask for a repeat.

  “Ah, that’s all right,” he said with a sudden surprising switch into strong New York. “Figured you weren’t one of these stuck-up spicks. Tourist?”

  I nodded; that was my role at the moment.

  “Drink?” he suggested, and before I could accept or refuse, he had thrown back his head and yelled, “Pepe!”

  I looked at the nearest doorway and found that I was in fact standing outside a shabby bar, converted in makeshift fashion from the entrance hall of a house. A misspelled name scrawled on the wall in black paint announced the fact.

  “What’ll it be?” said the fat man.

  “Something long and cool,” I said in my best tourist manner, wiping my face.

  The fat man snorted. “In a hole like this? Pal, if they had a frigidaire here, they’d have to use it for cooking tamales. The power company cut the supply a month ago. Makes it a choice between beer and this muck I’m drinking. Better have beer—at least it doesn’t get dirty inside the cans. Cerveza!” he added sharply as a worried little man appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on an apron or maybe the flapping tail of his shirt.

  “Siddown,” he went on, indicating a folding chair propped against the wall near him. “Reason I called you over was ’cause I figure I’ve seen you around here a few times before. Didn’t I?”

  “You might have,” I acknowledged, finding that the chair, seemingly on the point of collapse, was still strong enough to take my weight. I hadn’t seen him; that I was sure of. But I didn’t comment on the fact.

  “You seem to be spending a hell of a lot of time down here.” His eyes fixed on me. “Mind my askin’ why? Sort of—uh—unusual for a tourist.”

  “A girl I know back home told me to get her one of those fancy Indian shawls—rebozos,” I answered, thinking in high gear. “You know how it is,” I added, trying to make the words imply I thought he was irresistible to every girl for miles. “I wanted to make it something—something classy, if you get me. Can’t find anything I like.”

  The fat man spat with great deliberation into the gutter, three inches from the bare feet of a woman carrying a basket of clay pots. “Should think not. Stuff you get here’s not worth a damn. You’d do better to stop off for a couple hours in Mexico City on your way home an’ spend a few bucks in a big store there. These people can’t afford to spin their own thread any more, y’see. Have to make do with lousy commercial stuff—won’t dye properly, won’t weave the same way. No good.”

  “Looks like I’ve been wasting my time, then,” I said. Beer arrived, brought by the worried man; I took it as it was—in the can—and sipped it.

  “Maybe not altogether. Get better stuff here than anywhere else in Vados, that’s for sure. And cheaper. Trying to clear this market away—hear about that?”

  “No!” I said, feigning astonishment. “Why? Don’t people like having a genuine Indian-style village market right in the heart of Vados? I’d have thought tourists would go for it in a big way.”

  “Nuts. Vados is ‘the—most—modern—city—inaworld.’ ” He managed to make the slogan sound faintly obscene. “That’s what tourists come looking for. Old-world crap they can find back in New Mexico or somewhere. What they want here is the day afer tomorrow, not the day before yesterday. ’Sides, the place stinks. Don’t it?”

  The smell was pretty thick, and likewise indescribable. Cooking oil and frijoles and rotting fruit and human bodies all had a place in it. So did sun on dust, which smells like nothing else in the world.

  “What are these poor bastards gonna do for a living when they clear this market up? Hafta live in that dump of Sigueiras’s—they don’t show that to tourists. Heard about it?”

  “Under the main monorail station?”

  “Tha’s right.” He looked at me with a speculative expression. “For a tourist, you got eyes, pal—say that for you. Guess you didn’t go down inside, though.” I shook my head. “Guessed right. There’s a guy called Angers in a city traffic department been shooting off his mouth about cleaning out market, shacks, whole damn lot. Him an’ that money-grabbing bum Seixas.”

  He gestured with his now empty bottle; he had been sucking enormous gulps between sentences. The movement took in the big-eyed children and the back-bowed women and the shabby men playing chess, the barrows and the baskets and the fruit and corn and clay pots and trinkets. “Riles me! I’m a citizen, same as Angers. I got my stake here, same
as him. But it’s these poor bastards’ own damn country, and they don’t get much of a share.”

  On the last word he hurled the empty bottle at a rotten melon lying in the gutter; it sank in without breaking and stuck up at an angle, the straw still in the neck. “Have another on me?” I suggested.

  “Next time you’re by,” he said, and hauled himself ponderously to his feet. “Got to go make room for it before I have another. Think about Angers while I’m doing it. Maybe we’ll fix him one of these days. Still a law in this country—of sorts. Wouldn’t think I was a lawyer, would you?”

  “No,” I said, genuinely astonished.

  “Pretty good one, too. Not the sort that gets the classy clients, like that bastard Andres Lucas, but I am a lawyer, and I’m out here drinking in the atmosphere so I can plead a case good tomorrow. Sigueiras filed suit on the traffic people—

  Angers’ lot—an’ I’m handling it. Name’s Brown. Everyone calls me Fats, even the spicks. Don’t give a damn—I am fat.”

  He glared at me as though challenging me to deny it.

  “Well, thanks for the beer,” I said, getting up and wondering whether I could safely admit that I was going to be by here again.

  “Oh, hell, that’s okay, Hakluyt. Nothin’ against you. Mucky stinkin’ business, but not your fault. Wouldn’t buy Angers a beer, so help me. But don’t blame me if you’re out of a job before you’re started.”

  For a moment I was completely stunned. “How did you know who I was?” I asked at length.

  “One of Sigueiras’s boys saw you around here Friday and Saturday. I didn’t. Wasn’t here. Won’t be tomorrow. If you want to buy me that drink, you’ll have to come to the courts. So long.”

  He disappeared into the dark entry of the bar; he must have turned back immediately, because I hadn’t taken more than one step away before he was calling me back.

  “Oughta warn you,” he said. “These lousy double-crossing sonsabitches at the top won’t pay a cent ’less your plan is just what they wanted anyway. Watch yourself.”

  He vanished again—so quickly this time that I suspected his succession of soft drinks must finally have made the matter urgent—and left me to walk very thoughtfully off down the street.

  VI

  I had been up late the three previous nights, watching the weekend flow of late-night traffic in the main traffic nexus. It appeared that at no time was it dense enough for me to worry about; it consisted mainly of heavy trucks on through journeys and a few cruising taxis. Except for a comparatively small area on the far side of the Plaza del Oeste where nightclubs were concentrated, Vados seemed to close down fairly completely by about one in the morning. There were, of course, parties and theaters and movies and so on which contributed irregular bulges in the flow, but nothing very significant, even on a weekend, on the generous scale of the streets here.

  That, combined with the shock Fats Brown had given me, decided me in favor of knocking off work early.

  It was about half past six when I got back to the hotel. The evening was warm, and the glass panels separating the loggia bar that ran along most of the ground-floor frontage from the sidewalk had been slid back. Several tables had been set outside under a wide green awning. Inside, the bar was crowded with men and women in evening clothes: the women’s jewels glittered brilliantly. I realized that since the opera house was only two blocks south, the Hotel del Principe was conveniently situated for a drink before the show, and there must be some kind of gala performance tonight.

  Few people were sitting outside, except for a small group at the far end table; a bored, dark-haired, dark-complexioned girl with a guitar was idly plucking chords on a seat just outside the loggia, stopping every few moments to pick up a cigarette. I was intending to go inside, into the lounge, but a quiet voice called to me.

  “Señor Hakluyt!”

  I glanced around. Maria Posador was looking at me over her shoulder; she was sitting in one of the chairs at the far end of the awning, with her back to me. I had not noticed her as I came up. Beside her was a dark, scowling man whom I thought I ought to recognize but could not identify.

  I walked over and said hello, and she signaled a waiter. “You will drink with us?” she suggested, eyes twinkling. “You have had a thirsty day, no doubt. Please be seated.”

  I couldn’t think of a reason for objecting, except for Angers’ ill-phrased advice to stay clear of this woman, and I had reacted against that. I took the place next to the dark man, who continued to scowl. He looked extraordinarily out of place next to Señora Posador’s elegance, for his hands were like a workman’s, blunt-fingered and with broken nails, and he wore a floral shirt and grimy off-white trousers. His feet were thrust without socks into rope-soled espadrilles.

  “Señor Hakluyt, I should like you to meet Sam Francis,” said Señora Posador equably, but with a hint of mischief in her tone. “You remember you were listening to him speak in the Plaza del Sur last week. Sam, this is our visiting traffic expert.”

  The swarthy man’s scowl didn’t lighten. I managed to smile, though his brooding presence made me uneasy. I wondered what Juan Tezol’s right-hand man was doing here, among the kind of people he seemed to have made his deadly opponents.

  The waiter took my order and was back almost immediately. I raised the cool glass to my companions, and was taking the first sip when Francis stubbed out the cigarette he had been smoking and spoke angrily to Señora Posador.

  “Maria, what the hell you do around here, anyway? Ain’t things bad enough without you waste time ’mong these sonsabitches?” He jerked a large thumb at my glass. “Why not you put that cash to help Juan pay his fine, hey? What’s the reason?”

  He had a sweet, thick Caribbean accent that was hard for me to follow at once; Señora Posador was used to it. “The idea is that Señor Hakluyt had a thirst,” she answered. “Didn’t you?” she added, glancing at me.

  I realized I’d come in halfway through an argument. “I—was thirsty,” I agreed. “And this was very welcome.”

  Señora Posador half-smiled. She took from her handbag a thin gold case containing half a dozen of her black Russian cigarettes, offered me one, which I took, offered another to Francis, which was refused with a gesture of disgust, and took one herself.

  “I should explain to you,” she said urbanely. “Sam and I have had a difference of opinion regarding yourself. I’ve been maintaining that as an independent expert called in to solve a problem here in Vados you can be relied on to give a satisfactory answer to it, regardless of personal interests. I remember you saying to me in so many words that you had no interest in affairs here. Whereas Sam—”

  Sam Francis made his opinion plain enough without uttering a word.

  “So you see it was very gratifying that you arrived when you did,” Señora Posador finished with gravity. “We now have a chance to decide our argument.”

  Then they both looked at me, very hard and very closely, in a way that made me feel like a specimen under a microscope.

  “I have to admit,” I said slowly, “that when I took the job I didn’t realize there was so much local feeling involved. I was told I just had to straighten out some kinks in a traffic pattern. That’s my job; that’s what I came here to do. If I find myself instructed to solve a social problem, and it’s been made pretty clear to me that’s what I’m really supposed to do, then I tell them: any halfway proposition designed to fit what they want and not what’s really needed will land them in a whole mess more of trouble.”

  Francis turned to me, laying one enormous fist on the table before him. “You better mean that, man,” he rumbled. “ ’Cause trouble is something we got too much of right now.”

  He sat back glowering; Señora Posador put a calming hand on his arm. “That seems a fair answer to me, Sam,” she said. “Have another drink, Señor Hakluyt—we’ll toast a solution satisfactory to all parties.”

  I was about to insist on buying this one when a big car halted at the curb and a man and
a woman got out. The woman was plumply attractive, wearing an evening gown and a diamond tiara, with a stole around her bare shoulders; the man was thin and good-looking, and I recognized him at once. It was Mario Guerrero, chairman of the Citizens of Vados.

  Sam’s eyes followed them closely as they crossed the sidewalk toward the bar. Guerrero, looking around rather lanquidly, caught sight of him and halted in his tracks. When he spoke, he did so, of course, in Spanish, but my ear had been improving rapidly over the weekend, and I followed the gist of what was said.

  “Well, good evening, Señor Francis!” Guerrero exclaimed. “Who would have thought to see you here? Surely it’s not good for your relations with your peasant supporters to be seen indulging your taste for gracious living like this!”

  Sam snapped back his answer crisply. “Possibly they will think I deserve it more than you, for I spend my time working on their behalf, and you—you work only for yourself.” His Spanish was better than his English and had as polished a ring to it as Guerrero’s own.

  As though by magic, a small group had gathered around us; they included a man with a news camera and flashgun. Guerrero’s eye fell on this man, and he smiled to himself. The woman he was with plucked at his sleeve; he ignored her and continued: “Is there perhaps a photographer here from that rag of your party’s—Tiempo?”

  “Of course not! Tiempo has better things to fill its pages than pictures of a bunch of idlers.”

  “Really?” said Guerrero smoothly. “Yet I seem to remember seeing pictures of you in it almost every time I ever glanced at it.”

  I noticed that the man with the news camera was grinning, and realized suddenly what was being worked out.

  “Well, I don’t doubt that those of your supporters who are literate enough to read Liberdad occasionally will be very interested to see a picture of you lounging here,” Guerrero said, and as the photographer whipped his camera into position adopted a friendly smile.

  A picture of that could have been a very damaging weapon indeed, obviously. For the followers of the National Party to see their leader’s right-hand man apparently chatting in a friendly way with the head of their opponents—and in such surroundings—might be damaging to Sam’s prestige. Guerrero was plainly a very clever man.