The Squares of the City (5 page)

“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.

IV

Angers, so he told me, had arranged appointments for me with the police chief, whose name was O’Rourke, and with the treasury department official he had previously mentioned, Seixas, who was handling the estimates for the replanning. But these were not until late in the afternoon, and I saw no point in hanging around the traffic department while they got things ready for me; besides, I’d probably have been in Angers’ way.

Accordingly, having finished lunch, I left him and made my way back to the Plaza del Sur to have a look at the day’s parade of grievances.

The speakers were in full swing when I arrived, and some thousand-odd people were idly listening to them or dozing on the ground or the benches under the palms. I dawdled through the crowd to see what the speakers’ hobbyhorses might be.

The two most heavily patronized were on opposite sides of the square: one under a Citizens of Vados banner, one a swarthy mulatto with a demagogue’s manner who emphasized his remarks by pounding fist into palm and who stood beneath a banner saying NACIONAL.

Beside him on his small dais, legs dangling, sat a man with a long, morose Indian face, wrapped in a gorgeous
serape;
he seemed to be paying no attention.

After a while the mulatto stopped talking, there was a spatter of applause mixed with booing from the hundred or so people clustered in front of the dais, and a troupe of Indian musicians in traditional costume came forward and played the pipe and drums in an insistent, repetitive style. Obviously this was not to everyone’s taste; as I pushed forward to hear better and to get a sight of the players, I noticed a strange coincidence—even with my Florida tan, I was the palest among the people who had stayed to hear the music, whereas on the other side of the square, where I had been at first, it was a swarthy skin that was a rarity. A division of sophistication, perhaps.

A collection box jangled under my nose; I presumed this was for the musicians, so I thrust a folded one-dolaro bill into it. The man carrying the box had a face as wooden as a cigar-store Indian’s; his only reaction was to incline his head a few degrees forward before passing on.

A familiar, husky voice addressed me as the collector went away.

“Are you aware what you have just paid for, Señor Hakluyt?”

I turned to see Maria Posador standing beside me. She wore narrow biscuit-colored linen slacks today, a white tailored shirt, and sandals on her bare feet; she looked dressed more for an expensive holiday resort than for this crowd. Enormous dark glasses made her face inscrutable, and her tone of voice had been absolutely neutral.

“For the musicians, I suppose,” I said, belatedly answering her question.

“That, and other things. Indirectly, you have helped to get Juan Tezol out of an impossible situation. You have heard perhaps that they fined him one thousand dolaros this morning?” She gestured at the group of people around us. “If you went through the pockets of all these people—those who have pockets—you would find perhaps one hundred dolaros.”

I shrugged. “I have no great interest in the matter.”

“No?” The great dark lenses searched my face. “You would perhaps not even recognize Tezol?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

“There he is, sitting like one of his ancestors’ idols on the steps of the speaker’s platform. He is wondering how the world can be so unjust to him. If you showed him a thousand dolaros, he would be able to count them in a week—perhaps. The man of mixed blood who was addressing the crowd on his behalf is a certain Sam Francis. He had just assured the crowd—and I, for one, believe him—that he will not spend a cento on himself until the fine is paid. And yet there are holes in his shoes.”

She swung around and pointed at the speaker under the Citizens of Vados banner. “There you see Andres Lucas, secretary of the Citizens Party. The shoes
he
is wearing probably cost him fifty dolaros, and he probably has more than twenty pairs. I do not know where Guerrero is, their chairman.”

“I do,” I said after a pause. “Lunching in the Plaza del Norte.”

She nodded without surprise. “The check there will be as much as a pair of Lucas’s shoes. You may consider you are lucky, señor, not to have a great interest in the matter.” She uttered the last sentence bitingly.

“I begin to see what the customs officer meant,” I murmured, and she snapped a quick “Who?” at me.

I explained, and she laughed without humor. “You may expect to find that often in Vados, Señor Hakluyt. The reason, of course, is that much money has already been swallowed up in this city—and while we are all proud of it, there are those here, and many more in Cuatrovientos and Astoria Negra and Puerto Joaquin, who think that it is about time money was spent elsewhere. Perhaps they are right; perhaps they are.”

The crowd was breaking up; two men of middle age carefully carrying a chessboard with an unfinished game went past us, dispersing like the rest back to their work. The speakers had come down from their platforms, and energetic youths were dismantling these and carrying them and the banners away.

We watched in silence for a few minutes. Then Señora Posador came to herself briskly. “Well, señor, I will delay you no longer—indeed, I cannot, for I have an appointment. But we shall meet again, and we must have this match at chess sometime.
Hasta la vista
!”