The Squares of the City

III

The city administration was housed in buildings near the government quarter, north and east of the Plaza del Norte and about a mile from my hotel on the Plaza del Sur. Since it was fine and warm and I had time to spare before my appointment, I decided to walk there and get a preliminary feel of the city.

I came quickly to the central traffic intersection that lay at the focal point of the flow generated and governed by the four great squares. I stopped there for some time on the sidewalk, watching the vehicles move — and they did move, with no breaks. Ingenious use of precedence lanes and total avoidance of same-level crossing had eliminated the need for stoppages altogether, and there wasn’t a traffic signal in sight — nothing but one bored-looking policeman filing his nails in a small booth high above the middle of the maze. A bright red telephone handset was his only visible equipment, connected presumably to the public address system whose speakers formed bulbs like coconuts on nearby lamp posts.

With the feeder roads for the three superhighways debouching here, and seven access roads for local traffic, pedestrians had to be kept well out of the way. Accordingly, there was a complex network of subways forming an underpass. After the bright morning sun outside, I found the mercury vapor lighting hard to adjust to at first when I’d finally dragged myself away from admiring the smooth flow of traffic. Somehow I overlooked one of the direction signs and found myself going the wrong way; while trying to retrace my steps, I had the first and less pleasant of two major surprises.

Dodging a fat woman with a large basket on one arm and a little girl on the other, I almost tripped over a boy sitting on the floor.

Between his legs rested a beautiful hand-painted Indian clay pot; around his shoulders was a handsome but threadbare serape, with the fringe of which his right hand played endlessly. He had no left hand, and his battered sombrero was tilted back to show that he had no left eye, either — the whole of that quarter of his face was one great weeping sore.

Startled, I halted in mid-stride: He fixed me with his one eye and whined something in a harsh voice. I felt embarrassed and appalled at the sight of him, as though I had found obscene words scribbled on the Parthenon. I kept my eyes averted as I fumbled in my pocket and found about a dolaro and a half in odd coins which I dropped in his clay pot.

Badly shaken, I went on my way. I had seen sights like that in India fifteen years ago, when I was first working away from home, although even then beggars were rapidly disappearing; I’d seen them in the UAR before it quit bickering and settled down to clean house. But I had thought they belonged to past history.

I had gone only a short distance farther when I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find a fresh-faced young policeman trying to regard me sternly. He banged some quick-fire Spanish at me, the thread of which I lost after two words.

“No habla español,” I told him.

“Ah, Norteamericano,” he said with an air of having had everything explained to him. “The señor please not again geev — geev dinero to so kind of people.”

“You mean people like that beggar-boy?” I said, and waved in the boy’s direction to clarify the meaning.

He nodded vigorously. “Si, si! Not to geev to heem. We try ver’, ver’ mooch feenish so kind of people — we not want any more. Not good have in Ciudad de Vados,” he added triumphantly.

“You mean he’s allowed to sit there and ask for money, but it’s illegal to give him any?” I felt slightly confused.

“Ah, no, no, no, no, no! He seet zere, a’right. He ask for dinero, not good. Señor geev dinero, mooch bad.”

“I see,” I said. I wasn’t sure that I did, completely. But they were trying to discourage beggars; that was plain. The boy seemed like a deserving case — still, I wasn’t prepared to take up the question of social welfare services in pidgin Spanish.

The policeman gave me a beaming smile and went back along the subway.

When I came to the next intersection, I found I’d taken a wrong turning again and would have to go back. That was how I happened to find the policeman, baton thrust against the beggar-boy’s chest, fumbling in the clay pot for the money I had put there. The boy was weeping and protesting.

The policeman made certain he had all the coins and stood up. He made his baton swish through the air an inch from the boy’s face, yelling at him to be quiet, as though he were a disobedient animal, and turned away.

In the same instant he saw me standing looking at him.

He seemed to turn green — or perhaps that was an illusion caused by the mercury vapor lights. His mouth worked as if he were trying to find words to explain his action. He failed. When I silently put out my hand, he sheepishly dropped his plunder into it.

I just stood there. After a while he gave a foolish, apologetic smile and marched rapidly off down the passage, trying to look as though nothing had happened.

I put the money back in the boy’s pot and got across to him the idea that he would be better off somewhere else. Smiling and nodding his grotesque head, he gathered his serape around him, hid the pot under it, and shambled away.

I had no further difficulty in finding my way to the correct exit from the subway, which brought me out on the edge of the Plaza del Norte. I stood there for a moment, getting my bearings by reference to the two statues in the square. One was of el Liberador, Fernando Armendariz, first president of the Republic of Aguazul; the other — inevitably — was of Vados. Armendariz faced right, toward the palatial old-gold frontage of the Congress building, Vados left, toward the vast, plain City Hall.

It was only to be expected that there was a tremendous bustle of people coming and going before the City Hall — and nearly complete stillness in front of Congress.

I had just identified the third great building that fronted on the plaza as the Courts of Justice when there was a tug at my sleeve. I turned to find a small man with glasses, a notebook, and a fistful of ball-point pens. Behind him, two identically tall men in dark suits watched me closely. I disliked the look of them at once — “bodyguard” was the word they brought to my mind.

The small man addressed me rapidly in Spanish; it was too much for me to follow, and I said so. He laughed forcedly at his mistake.

“It is an error of mine, señor,” he said importantly. “I am asking the questions for the government, and I regret that I took you for a citizen.”

“What questions for the government?”

“Ah, the señor is perhaps not acquainted with some of our enlightened and progressive ideas!” He beamed at me. “Why, it is simple. When there is a matter of public importance to be decided, we take what is called a random sampling of the people’s opinion.”

“I see,” I nodded. This seemed much of a piece with what Señora Posador had told me yesterday about the Speakers’ Corner in the Plaza del Sur; it might even be another of Diaz’s ideas. Governmental public-opinion polls seemed like pretty good insurance for an absolute ruler, to find out which of his proposed decrees he would be unable to shove down his people’s throats.

“And what’s the current survey about?”

“It is on the citizenship rights in Ciudad de Vados,” said the small man. “But since the señor is not a citizen, he will excuse me for returning to my business.”

He bustled back importantly to the subway exit, and I saw him stop and question a pretty girl as she emerged. I wondered, watching her, whether, had I been a citizen, I could have spoken my mind honestly with those two tall and menacing characters staring at me.

I checked my watch and found I had spent five minutes too long on my way to the traffic department. I hurried across the plaza, toward City Hall.

The head of the traffic department had signed the contract that brought me to Vados; I knew therefore that his name was Donald Angers, and I had naturally assumed him to be North American.

He wasn’t. He was type-English almost to the point of affectation, and my first reaction to the discovery was to feel that he was almost as much out of place in Vados as the one-eyed beggar-boy.

He studied me hard as he shook my hand and then waved me to a chair. “I see you’ve caught a dose of the local manana temperament already, Mr. Hakluyt,” he said, with a glance at the clock on his office wall that was just discreet enough not to be offensive.

“I ran into one of your organs of government,” I said, and told him about the public-opinion pollster.

Angers gave a thin, wintry smile. “Ye-es… I suppose President Vados is one of the very few people ever to have put into practice the old saw about a government standing or falling by its public relations.”

He offered me a cigarette, and I accepted. “Is this another of Diaz’s ideas?” I suggested as I held out my lighter.

Angers hesitated momentarily before setting his cigarette to the flame. “What makes you think that?” he countered.

“It seems on a par with this sort of Speakers’ Corner they run in the Plaza del Sur, and a woman I met at my hotel last night told me that was one of Diaz’s notions.”

Again the wintry smile, this time a little broader. “Yes, that’s one of the best pieces of gallery play we have.” He made a note on a memorandum pad before him; he used a fine-nib fountain pen with light blue ink.

“Purely out of curiosity,” I said, “what the hell was going on in the Plaza del Sur when I arrived yesterday afternoon? I see the papers are full of it today, but I don’t speak very good Spanish.”

Angers drew in smoke thoughtfully, looking past me. “That isn’t strictly true,” he said. “Tiempo played it up, as was to be expected, but they naturally magnified it out of all proportion. As it happens, though, it was one minor aspect of a problem with which your work here is directly involved.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I’ll brief you as well as I can. The situation’s very complex, but I can at least give you an outline at once.” He stretched out a thin arm and tugged down the cord of a roller-mounted wall map on his right.

“You’ve probably made yourself acquainted with the history of Ciudad de Vados?” he added with a passing glance at me.

I nodded.

“Good. Then you’ll know it was planned about as thoroughly as a city could well be. But the human element is always the most difficult to legislate for, particularly when the human element concerned is not the population of the city itself, but the extremely balky and obstinate native group.”

There was a pause. I became aware that a comment was expected from me. I said, “This doesn’t sound much like an orthodox traffic problem.”

“Not much in Vados is orthodox,” said Angers pointedly. “As you have no doubt gathered. However, the essence of the problem is simple enough.

“Vados, of course, is an exceptionally farsighted and astute man. I believe that he had for a long time envisaged the possibility of building his new capital city before there was a chance of really doing it, but he was forced to admit that if he simply used up the funds and resources he had available in employing — uh — native talent, be would get not the handsome new town he hoped for, but something petty and rather squalid, like Cuatrovientos or Puerto Joaquín. You should visit those towns while you’re here, if you want to see a traffic man’s nightmare.

“Well, there was one possible solution, and he rather courageously went ahead and adopted it, in face — so I’m told — of extremely strong opposition from Diaz and a good few of his other supporters. That was to invite anyone and everyone who could make a positive contribution to his new city to invest their efforts in its building. Naturally enough, he wanted the very best of everything, and the very best simply wasn’t to be found in Aguazul.

“I myself was supervisory engineer on the road-building project between here and Puerto Joaquín, and like everyone who had played a major part in the creation of the city I was granted citizens’ rights and the offer of a permanent post when the job was over. The great majority of us took the posts we were offered, naturally; in fact, about thirty per cent of the city’s present population, the most influential and important section, acquired their citizens’ rights the same way. After all, a city isn’t something you can put down in the middle of nowhere, fill with people, and expect to run itself, is it?”

I murmured that I supposed not.

“Exactly. Some such scheme was essential to the success of the project. The natives could never have produced the Ciudad de Vados you see today without this help from outside — you take that from me.

“A few years ago, however, unforeseen trouble arose. Here’s what I mean about the human element. The people of the villages and half-pint towns up-country from here saw this prosperous new city on their doorstep, so to speak, and decided they wanted to move in. Why, they argued, shouldn’t they cut a slice of this cake? Of course, to people like you and me it’s obvious why not, but imagine trying to explain the facts to an illiterate Indian peasant. Why, until we managed to put a stop to it recently, we were getting whole families moving in not only from the West Indies but even, so help me, from Hawaii — people with no more right to the streets of Vados than — than Laplanders!

“One of the less savory effects of this you may have noticed already — the fringe of shantytowns just outside the city boundary, populated by a shiftless crowd of spongers and beggars: illiterate, forming a positive cesspool of disease, contributing nothing to the life of Vados and expecting everything in return.”

He was growing quite heated with the force of his expostulations. I took advantage of the fact that he seemed to have worked himself up to a climax, and interrupted.

“How exactly does this become my problem, Mr. Angers?” He relaxed a little, remembered his cigarette, and knocked off its accumulated ash. “Well, as you can understand, we citizens don’t like the situation. We played an indispensable part in creating Vados, and we expect the terms of our citizens’ rights to be honored. We don’t want our town smeared with patches of slum development. Matters came to a head some months ago, and it was obvious that something was going to have to be done — something really drastic. Diaz, who is, strictly speaking, the minister to whom the various administrative departments of the city are responsible, wanted to try to integrate this new floating population into the town. I told him it was ridiculous, because the natives just aren’t city-dwellers — they’re backward peasants. But Diaz is a hard-to-persuade sort of man, son of the soil and all that — I sometimes wonder, actually, whether he’s really superior to these people in the shantytowns or whether he’s just more cunning. It would be hard to imagine two people less alike than Diaz and the president, who’s a very intelligent and cultured man. Still, I suppose it’s for precisely that reason that Diaz managed to make himself indispensable — the common touch, you know, and all that sort of thing.

“Anyway, as it turned out, the president fortunately saw the citizens’ point of view. But it wasn’t just a matter of passing a few bylaws, because it’s Vados’s policy to give with one hand if he’s forced to take away with the other, and there’s no denying that a vocal minority exists on Diaz’s side. So the solution that was finally adopted was to remodel the ‘black spots’ of Vados in such a way that the sponging existence of these people became insupportable — and at the same time to confer positive benefits on the whole population. There are four million dolaros at your disposal, Mr. Hakluyt. I’m certain that someone of your qualifications can be relied on to produce a satisfactory solution.”

He gave me his wintry smile again. In thoughtful silence, I digested the statement he had just made.

I had often quoted to people who asked me about my work the standard platitude to the effect that traffic is the lifeblood of the city society. I had never expected to find myself in the position of a leukocyte charged with eliminating an undesirable social germ from that bloodstream. Nevertheless, the idea was logical.

And could probably be made to work. I told Angers as much, and he put out his cigarette with a nod. “I was fairly certain you would say so right away, Mr. Hakluyt. Well, the next step, of course, is to make you acquainted with the various officials with whom you’ll be cooperating, in addition to myself — the chief of police, for example, and Señor Seixas in the treasury department, and our various planning and administrative personnel. But before we really get stuck in, there’s one point I’ve been asked to bring to your attention, which I’m sure you’ll see the necessity for. I’d like to impress on you the need for you to remain absolutely detached in this matter.

“You’ll probably find that I sometimes get a bit — a bit worked up, as they say. But that’s because the whole thing is pretty personal to me, or to any other citizen. The reason we selected you for the task — in addition to your outstanding record, of course — was that you’d never been to Aguazul in your life. It will be much more satisfactory for everyone concerned, and will cut the ground from under the feet of the people who’ve tried to oppose the plan, if we can go on pointing to your verdict as that of a wholly independent and disinterested expert.”

“I presume,” I said, “that that was why you called in an outside traffic analyst anyway, instead of having the job done by your own traffic department.”

He looked slightly embarrassed, as though I had put my finger on a sensitive point, and I had a vision — so sharp it almost brought a smile to my lips — of the opposition he had probably put up to my being engaged.

“Yes, of course,” he answered with a hint of severity. “Well, now that I’ve made that point clear, perhaps you’ll give me an idea whether there’s any special equipment or assistance you’ll be needing.”

I took a sheaf of paper from an inside pocket; I had typed it out before leaving Florida. “That, broadly speaking,” I said, and lit another cigarette while he was running down the list. I’d put down only the obvious items — scraped off the top of my head — but nonetheless they added up to a respectable length. A car to be permanently at my disposal; an official laissez-passer in case the police got inquisitive — I’d more than once been picked up for loitering while standing at an intersection counting the traffic flow; the use of an office in the traffic department with a computer at least up to MAXIAC standard, and a secretary speaking English and Spanish with equal fluency; addresses of every important organization and company in the city, a supply of maps, a team of qualified statisticians, borrowed if need be from a business research firm; comprehensive cost figures for the last half-dozen major construction jobs in Aguazul, down to hard core per cubic meter and standard-rate fees for demolition squads — I was always careful about this now and had been ever since the time when, as a green novice, I produced a beautiful scheme for a budget of sixteen thousand pounds Australian, which costed out at four hundred per cent over; and, not least important, English translations of all relevant bylaws and regulations governing construction work in Aguazul.

Angers seemed to be favorably impressed with the comprehensive list — at any rate, his manner thawed perceptibly as the morning leaked away, and when we had finished going into the details of my requirements, he gave me the warmest smile I had yet seen from him.

“I can tell it’s going to be a pleasure working with you, Mr. Hakluyt,” he said confidentially. “You’re obviously a methodical man, and we appreciate that sort of thing. I don’t imagine I need refer again to the question of being detached about all this, do I? After all, I suppose you people down under look at things pretty much the same way as we do, really.”

I couldn’t have thought of an adequate reply to that if I had tried for a week; fortunately he turned to his clock and stood up.

“It’s about time for lunch,” he said briskly. “Suppose you join me, eh? We can eat in the plaza — it’s a beautiful day.”

I had a wild vision of sitting on the grass and having a picnic when Angers suggested lunching in the plaza; I should have guessed that his dignity implied something different.

In actual fact, a restaurant was what we found — twenty tables for four and a complete portable kitchen that appeared with near miraculous suddenness under the trees every noon and evening except when the weather forecast was bad. I learned afterwards that it was the most expensive place to eat in the whole of Vados, but it was extremely pleasant if you had no objection to being watched by groups of workers who had come to eat their tortilla-and-frijole lunch and take their siesta on the benches all around the square.

We were halfway through the main course — Angers holding forth on the history of the city again — when a stir caught my eye on the steps outside the Courts of Justice, which, as I had previously noted, also fronted on the Plaza del Norte. A tall, good-looking man in his forties was coming out, surrounded by a group of admirers and hangers-on. A big black car pulled up to the sidewalk as he descended the long half-spiral of steps that crossed the frontage of the courts; he called something to the driver of the car and continued across the plaza to take a table not far from where Angers and I were sitting. Here he sat down with three of his friends, and the waiters rushed to serve him. I noticed that whereas they were merely polite to Angers and myself, they were positively deferential to the new arrival,

“Who’s that over there?” I asked Angers, and he turned his head.

“Oh, one of our most distinguished citizens! Excuse me — I must ask the result of the case. Though I’m pretty sure it was a foregone conclusion.” He beckoned to a waiter and gave him instructions in Spanish; the waiter crossed to the newcomer’s table, spoke briefly with him, and returned to us.

“Excellent,” exclaimed Angers when the waiter had conveyed his news. “We must have another bottle of wine on that, Hakluyt — it’s worth celebrating.”

I reminded him delicately that I still didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry! That’s Mario Guerrero, chairman of the Citizens of Vados. You’ll recall that our professional troublemaker Tezol made himself a nuisance in the Plaza del Sur yesterday — you said you arrived in the middle of the row. Guerrero has just been giving evidence, because he happened to be present when it all happened, and he says Tezol was heavily fined. I wish they could get rid of him altogether, though.”

“Who is he? Tezol, I mean.”

“Oh, some Indian rabble-rouser from the villages, I believe. Not a citizen.”

Angers raised his glass toward Guerrero, who caught the movement and inclined his head in acknowledgment, smiling. After that, Angers went on recounting the history of the city and mainly his part in building its highways; I let the flow of words wash over my head and reflected on the function of a white corpuscle.

Somehow, the sense of elation I’d had at being invited to work in Vados was beginning to evaporate.