The Squares of the City (18 page)

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 back 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.

But this dramatization of chess, with the living pieces moving according to carefully rehearsed patterns, was something infinitely more impressive than any stunt.

XII

It was a long game, though—eighty or ninety moves—even shorn of the thinking time it must have needed in the actual tournament. I’m not a good enough player to appreciate the fine points of end-game play, and long before the forces on either side were reduced to two pawns and a rook I was feeling as restive as I had when watching Córdoban take on Dr. Mayor after dinner at the TV center.

I noticed that I was not completely alone in growing restive. In the opening stages the play was interesting enough as simple spectacle: pieces not being moved dropped to one knee to facilitate the audience’s view, and there were pauses at intervals to emphasize a particularly skilled piece of development. Usually there was a spattering of applause when this happened, and once there was a burst of approving cries as well. The taking of a piece was pantomimed with short daggers, and the victim was then carried from the board by two pawns of the opposing side and dumped on the lawn. The whole thing took place almost in silence, aside from the tap of the drum which signaled each move, and the occasional clapping.

But once the slow routine of the end game set in, with the pawns solemnly moving their one square forward in monotonous alternation, almost everyone except Garcia and a few others (Garcia himself, I noticed, was reliving the game in an agony of nervousness) adopted polite but bored expressions and signaled more and more often to the hovering waiters for a tray of drinks.

The most noticeable exceptions to this rule, aside from Garcia, were President Vados and Diaz. Vados watched with as much attention as a fan at a Melbourne test (the likeness reminded me that sometime I ought to go home and see another Shield match—sometime); Diaz, on the other hand, seemed to be watching Vados almost as closely as the game itself.

Once, when the game had been halted for a particular move to sink in, Vados happened to glance at his Minister of the Interior. Their eyes met. A muscle in Vados’s cheek tensed suddenly. Diaz’s hands clenched, with deliberation, as if squeezing something that wasn’t there. The tableau lasted a few seconds; then both at once looked back toward the game, with a suspicion of guilt, like children pretending they hadn’t been disobedient.

There had been dislike in their expressions. Or perhaps not dislike, no. Something nearer to—nearer to hatred, and yet tempered with a mutual respect. I thought of all the stories I’d heard about their rivalry. Well, there it was, burning brightly. And unless habit had enabled them to control it, it was violent enough to break loose.

The pieces finished their complicated maneuverings; the white king dropped to his knees and bent his head. The black king stepped from the board, bowed before Garcia, and gave him the dagger from his side, before escorting him across the board to administer the
coup de grace
in pantomime. Vados led the applause, and Garcia stood between the two tall kings smiling and nervously fingering his spectacles.

Then Diaz looked at Vados again. This time he smiled:
a
great loose-lipped smile that exposed a broken tooth.

Beside me, Señora Cortés gathered herself together with a sigh.

“Well, that’s over,” she said with satisfaction. “Now we only have to join the line of people waiting to say good-bye to the president, and we can get away.”

“ ’Belita!” interrupted her husband, a distant look in his eyes. “You’re going back to the studios, aren’t you? I want to stay and have a word with Pablo about that king’s knight development in the opening—I haven’t seen him use it before.”

“Very well,” said Señora Cortés composedly. “I’ll see you at home tonight.”

Cortés pushed his way through the dissolving crowd; servants rerolled the chessboard and carted it away; I went to receive Vados’s nod of dismissal and returned to my car.

This was a cock-eyed country, I was thinking as I drove away down the road to the city. Chess champions for public heroes; public opinion molded by subliminal perception, without any great effort made to conceal the fact; primitive squalor next door to buildings as modern as tomorrow. What a weird city this “child” of Vados’s had turned out to be. …

And what was I to make of this subliminal perception business, anyway? Maria Posador had been right to assume—as she had—that I would react against it; yet now I had been told by Cortés that he had himself made appalling discoveries in the shantytowns, and Cortés struck me as a man not only of high intelligence but of a certain old-fashioned rectitude, a man to whom telling a lie, no matter how worthy a cause it furthered, would be repulsive. Again, in all honesty, I must reserve judgment, I told myself. And, in the same moment, I wondered how much of that impulse was true honesty, how much simple unwillingness to commit myself beyond the bounds of the field in which I was skilled.

It became clear as I reentered the city that since the frightened reaction of last night and this morning life had swung back toward normality; at any rate, there was a liveliness of the kind that was customary on saint’s day evenings, with many people in the bars and restaurants, and occasional groups of musicians playing in the squares and on street corners. In a vague hope that I might likewise get back to normal, I collected my camera and notebooks and went out into the market quarter again.