The Squares of the City

XXX

“Ah!” said Vados suddenly. “That is good. That is perfect!”

A pawn move by the grand master Garcia had just gone up on the signs; for a few moments no one except the players and the referees were paying any attention at all to the other games. I joined my gaze to everyone else’s. But I hadn’t been following the development of Garcia’s game very closely, and I didn’t see that it was a spectacular move.

Everyone else did, including Garcia’s opponent, who spent five minutes in close study of it and then thrust back his chair, shaking his head. The audience dissolved into applause.

Garcia smiled a little vacantly in acknowledgment and shook hands with his opponent before patting down the noise for the benefit of the other players. A general move for departure washed through the audience, as those who had obviously come only to see the champion triumph slipped away.

In answer to a signal from Vados, Garcia came up to the presidential box to receive congratulations, a waiter appeared with coffee, brandy, and biscuits, and Vados spoke in low tones with Garcia and Diaz. I paid little attention; I was too interested in my own new discovery.

Why should these politicians love chess so much if they were not hankering after just such orderliness and obedience to rule in the real-life government of their people? Chess, so the legend goes, was invented to amuse a prince. To console him for the unpredictability of his subjects? I wondered.

I came back from my reverie to find that Vados was gazing irritably at me. I apologized for not hearing what was said, and he repeated it.

“I was saying, Señor Hakluyt, that I had invited you to dine at Presidential House before your departure, and there is now little time. Would you care to join us and grand master Garcia tomorrow evening?”

“I’d be delighted,” I said. “I’m sorry to appear rude — I was thinking about chess and the art of government, as a matter of fact.”

I spoke in Spanish because I had been addressed in Spanish; the result was that Diaz and Vados together snapped their stares on my face. Taken aback, I glanced from one to the other.

“Really?” said Vados after a pause. “In what connection, may I ask?”

“Well,” I said lamely, “I’m not much of a chess-player, and I’m certainly no politician. I was — uh — thinking that the resemblance is pretty slight, because pieces on a chessboard have to go where they’re put. People are — uh — more difficult to control.”

Diaz relaxed and addressed me directly for the first time. “It comes perhaps as a relief to us to watch a chess match and dream that things might be so well ordered in the sphere of government.”

“Just what I was thinking,” I agreed heartily, and Diaz and Vados exchanged looks. The tension between them sparked almost visibly, like lightning crackling between a cloud and a tree. I guessed that each of them was thinking, “If only we could settle our problems as simply as a match like this…”

“Let us be going, then,” Vados said briskly to his wife, who gave a smile and a nod of ready consent. “Señor Diaz will accompany us, yes?” The dark, ungainly man nodded.

They took effusive leave of the stout woman who was secretary of the chess federation, of Garcia, and lastly of me, with a handshake, an automatic smile, and a quick, “Hasta manana, Señor Hakluyt!”

I stayed, smoking a last cigarette, until another of the four boards broke up, and then left the hall. It was about elevenp.m. The chess federation secretary informed me that the tournament would continue all day and evenings if necessary for the rest of the week, and that the regional finals winners would meet for the national championship the week after next.

“And I suppose the winner is bound to be Pablo Garcia, as usual?” I suggested, when she mentioned the timetable to me.

“I am afraid so,” she sighed. “People begin to lose interest now, because he is so far ahead of all our other players.”

But it didn’t seem to me that people were losing interest. I went back to the hotel and found that everyone except the tourists in residence was in the bar, where the radio was giving a — well, it was hardly a running commentary, but at any rate a report on the match in progress, interrupting a program of recorded music every time a move was made. Manuel had set up four peg-boards behind the bar, and transferred each move to the appropriate board when it was announced.

I’d had enough chess for one evening; I went into the lounge and found that here at least the chess fever was less prevalent. There was one game in progress — Maria Posador was playing against a man I didn’t know — but at least no one was talking about the championships that I could hear.

I kibitzed on Señora Posador’s game until it wound up, and her opponent disappeared for a few minutes. As soon as he had gone, she turned to me with a smile.

“You have had a pleasant evening, Señor Hakluyt?” she inquired.

“I’ve been at the chess match as Vados’s guest,” I said. She nodded noncommittally. “And you enjoyed the play?”

“Not much. I was much more taken with the audience.” And for no other reason than that I felt my discovery was important enough to share with someone, I mentioned the curious division between swarthy and pale which I had noticed in the hall.

“Oh, in some ways you are quite right,” she answered reflectively. “In part the conflict in Ciudad de Vados is a conflict of color. But that is incidental, not central. By the way, I should congratulate you. I have only just realized that you speak very good Spanish — when we first met, I invariably addressed you in English, but now I speak my own language with you and you answer well.”

“I’ve moved around a lot,” I said, shrugging. “I’ve got into the habit of acquiring languages. Arabic, Hindi, a bit of Swahili… But please go on. What do you mean, incidental?”

She spread her graceful hands. “There is no real color problem in Latin America in general, you see. That we have a dark native population and a high proportion of foreign-born citizens with lighter skins is a product of the special circumstances under which Vados founded the city. It aggravates the situation, perhaps. But it did not cause it.”

“I see. Well, maybe I have a hangover from my own background. You probably know there’s not much of a color problem in my country, either — Australia — but it’s nonetheless color-prejudiced as hell, with its keep-Australia-white immigration policy and the rest of it. I don’t care any longer; I’ve worked around the world, and I don’t find brown people harder to get on with than white people. But maybe some of that prejudice has stuck with me. Maybe I see problems where they don’t exist.”

I offered her a cigarette. As usual, she shook her head.

“I am afraid I do not care for that pale tobacco, señor. Please, though, make trial of one of mine. I think these of mine are of more character than ordinary cigarettes — they have a certain superior aroma.”

She flicked open the little gold case and slid a cigarette out for me with her thumb. I took it.

“I think,” she said, waiting for me to offer her a light, “it is better to see problems than to overlook them. Had we been more aware of such prejudice in some — not all, but certainly some — of our foreign-born citizens, we might be less troubled today. Naturally the newcomers brought their opinions with them. Possibly some of those opinions were infectious.”

She bent to take a light from me, and then glanced at her watch.

“Another day ended,” she said with a sigh. “Indeed, it is very late now. I must be leaving, señor. Should the gentleman with whom I was playing chess return, please make my apologies.”

“With pleasure, señora. Buenos noches.”

“Buenos noches,señor.”

I sent for a nightcap and lit the black cigarette — finding it aromatic, but too bland for my taste. There was no sign of the man she had been playing chess with.

I waited only a few minutes, in the end. I grew very sleeply all of a sudden, tossed off my drink and went up in the elevator to my room. I must have sunk into a deep stupor as soon as I had undressed and got into bed.

I awoke with cramp and discomfort in every limb. The surface on which I was lying was hard and cold, and I knew that if I breathed deeply, I would cough. I had to breathe deeply. I did cough — rackingly, with a violence that made my throat sore.

Then sudden shock brought me to my feet. I was in total darkness. I had been lying on a cold concrete floor — merely putting out my hands to stand up had told me that. But — what in hell was I doing on a concrete floor? I had nothing on but pajamas, and my feet and hands were frigidly cold from the still, slightly dank air in this place. Where in God’s name… ?

I hadn’t a lighter or a match; I had nothing at all except my sense of touch. Alert, tensing myself against anyone who might be in the room — if it was a room — and straining not to cough again, I felt in front of me like a blind man, taking a half-pace at a time. In a moment I struck something hard: a bench, about waist-high, littered with small objects I could not identify.

Fumbling over the bench, I touched a wall, and started to grope along it. My head felt as though it were stuffed with horsehair; my throat was rasped from my violent coughing. I wondered wildly whether I was engulfed in a nightmare or whether this was real.

My shaking fingers touched a switch. I threw it, not caring what the consequences might be. Nothing happened, and I started to creep farther forward.

Suddenly a startling pattern of lights leaped into being just in front of my face, and I staggered back, almost losing my balance. Things dropped into perspective with astonishing precision.

It was a cathode ray tube I had turned on. And by its fitful, irregular glare I could see that this was the concrete shed — the blockhouse — where Maria Posador had brought me to show me her recording of my appearance on television.

I looked around wonderingly. What the hell was I doing here?

Before I had had time to digest my situation, there was a clinking sound. I spun to face its direction; it came from the heavy padlocked door. Someone was putting a key in. I could hear tense breathing.

I snatched a length of metal bar from the nearest bench and snapped off the switch controlling the cathode ray tube. In the renewed darkness I saw irregular glimmers from a hand-held flashlight, seeping through the crack at the edge of the door. Cautiously, I moved toward the glimmers. Whoever had put me in here was going to get as good as he gave.

The door swung back — thrown back violently. I leaped forward, seeing in the dim light of dawn that the newcomer held not only a flashlight, but a gun.

Then my bare foot landed, with my entire weight behind it, on a thick electric cable crossing the floor.

The pain was shocking. I lost my footing, lost my grip on the metal bar — and the gun cracked.

Something hit the fleshy upper part of my left arm; it felt as though a pair of gigantic red-hot pincers had closed on the skin. The impact spun me around and sent me sprawling across the floor. Rough concrete burned skin from my cheek and the palm of the hand with which I tried to break my fall. My head rang with dizzying pain.

Light bloomed from the ceiling; I tried to turn my head, but all I could see was a pair of soft moccasin slippers and the lower part of a pair of biscuit-colored linen slacks. A voice said softly, “Madre de Dios! Why should he be here?”

Maria Posador herself.

I heard a clinking sound as she hurriedly pushed the gun and the flashlight onto a bench; then she was kneeling beside me, probing my blood-smeared arm with precise, gentle fingers. I dug my voice harshly out of my raw throat.

“I’m not unconscious, you know,” I said stupidly. “I—”

Another fit of coughing seized me. Maria Posador rocked back on her heels, staring down at me in astonishment. “But you!” she said, shaking her head. “But — you! I — I — oh, we must get you to the house. And quickly!”

I wasn’t thinking clearly for the next few minutes. I got to my feet somehow and stumbled out into the dawn with my left arm hanging limp, my right around her shoulders. The grass was cool and soft under my bare feet; the fresh, clean air steadied me and blew the clouds from my brain.

When we came in sight of the house itself, Maria Posador cried out for aid; a man who might have been Filipino threw open a window and stared out, his face blank with sleep. In a moment, though, he had comprehended the situation and was hurrying down to us.

I simply took the line of least resistance; I allowed myself to be guided into a room and laid on a divan. I set my teeth while she cut away the arm of my pajama jacket and wiped the wound with a cloth wrung out in hot water brought by the Filipino houseman. A fat, motherly woman who reminded me by her cast of face of Fats Brown’s wife came with brandy, and when my arm was bandaged I was made to sip a glass of it.

In a little while I was able to sit up. The bullet had gone clear through, making a shallow groove in the flesh rather than a hole, and the substance of the muscle was hardly touched. I could even move the arm — stiffly, but without great pain — when it was dressed.

Maria Posador watched me with her face quite expressionless.

“I will not ask your forgiveness,” she said at length. “Once before — soon after I came back to Aguazul five years ago — there was an ambush laid for me. I was beaten about the head and left to die.”

She reached up and drew back her sleek black hair from her left temple. With a quick twitch she removed one of the tresses — a postiche. Where it had been, a patch of red, granular scar tissue showed on her scalp.

She left it visible just long enough for me to take in its meaning. Then, deftly, she restored her hair to its original immaculate state.

“So,” she said levelly. “It was because of that, you understand. I have not been out very often to that place since the television center was burned down. But last night I heard a strange noise, and it occurred to me to — well, to see if there had been trouble. It was perhaps foolhardy to go out alone, but what could I do?

“And then I came to the shed, and I saw fresh scratches on the lock, as though someone had tried to open it with a wrong key. So I returned to get my gun, and — there you were.”

I nodded. There was a little more brandy in the glass at my side. I sipped it carefully. “I must have frightened you, coming for you with that iron bar,” I said. “But — who did it? Who kidnapped me and brought me here?”

“We will find out,” she said in a voice like ice breaking. “We will find out.”

There was a silence. The motherly woman came back into the room carrying a tray loaded with breakfast — hot coffee, glasses of fruit juice, half a dozen native cold dishes in little glass bowls.

“Drink coffee,” said Maria Posador stonily. “It will aid the refreshing stimulus of the brandy you have taken.”

I shivered a little, although the room was very warm. I said, “You know, if it hadn’t been for that cable I trod on — which knocked me off my balance — I’d be dead now. I’m sure of it.”

She gave a grave nod. “I have no doubt that was what was intended.”

Something clicked in my mind, and I gave a grunt of astonishment. “That cigarette you gave me last night — was it — was that cigarette doped?”

I half-rose to my feet, my mind flooding with suspicion. She looked at me calmly.

“Not so far as I am aware. Who could have obtained my own case? Who could have ensured that I gave you that cigarette and no other?”

“You could,” I said. There was silence for a while. “I could,” she said at last. “But in that case — would I have missed my aim?”

“Possibly. You might be — oh, hell, you wouldn’t have had to go to all that trouble.” I subsided, feeling that I had said several stupid things.

“Of course not,” was the calm comment. “You are a weapon in a struggle which trembles on the verge of open civil war. Enough people hate you for it to be possible to find an assassin to destroy you. No, señor! Your destruction was to have been linked to mine, plainly! Well, that has failed. But it may be tried again. I would suggest to you that you leave the country at once, today, but some formality would certainly be found to hinder your going…I am sorry that you should be involved as you are. But, as you yourself have said to me, we are at the mercy of impersonal forces.”

“I don’t think these forces are so impersonal,” I said grimly. “I think I’m being pushed around by individuals’ whims — as though I were one of those men who march around that life-size chessboard at Presidential House! What kind of impersonal force carried me up here from my hotel room and put me where it was an even chance you would think I was lying in ambush for you? It looks to me as if someone — whoever, Vados or Diaz or someone — were pushing me and you about exactly like bits of carved wood being shoved from square to square on a board!”

“Señor,” said Maria Posador heavily, “you must understand that for twenty years el Presidente — with the guidance of the late but not lamented Alejandro Mayor — has ruled his country by means direct and indirect. He has moved not individuals but whole masses of people at his whim. Once, a long time ago, I was capable of feeling as you do about the fact — but I was very young when my husband…”

Her voice broke suddenly. “Sixteen? Seventeen?” I suggested gently.

She nodded, not looking at me. “Seventeen. I was married very young. Oh, things have changed for me — once I swore I would follow where he had gone, once I swore I would wear black until I died, again I thought I would enter a convent… Then here I am, as you see me.” She gestured up and down, indicating her tailored shirt, her biscuit-colored slacks, with all their air of some expensive resort.

I cupped my hands around the thick pottery mug of coffee I had been given; there was still much heat in it, and it stung my palm where the skin had been grazed.

I said, “Up till last night I was proposing to get out of Ciudad de Vados as fast as I could, and be glad to see the last of the place. Now I’m not any longer just waiting to collect my pay. I’m not interested in that sort of thing anymore. It’s a different kind of pay I want, and who’s going to settle the account I don’t know. But someone is. Someone most definitely is going to pay.”