Almost, they could have done this when they were planning Ciudad de Vados. They didn’t have access to enough information, of course. They couldn’t have foreseen that Fernando Sigueiras would be a stubborn man with a streak of mulelike tenacity, or that Felipe Mendoza would become famous outside his own country and language group, or that Judge Romero would become incompetent and crotchety in his old age.
But they could have deduced that peasants deprived of water would move to the city. They could have guessed that the native-born citizens would be jealous of the foreign-born. They could have guessed a good many more things—no, not guessed. Reasoned out. Only they didn’t know what they knew.
And I did have the knowledge, and I had been used. Made to go through motions like a—a pawn on a chessboard.
I found myself on the fringe of a large crowd and looked to see where I had got to. I had somehow found my way to the Plaza del Oeste, and I was now facing the public tournament hall. Posters announced that tonight the finals of the Ciudad de Vados regional competition in the series for the national chess championship were being played off. Pablo Garcia was advertised to play.
When I paid attention to what the crowd around me was saying, I discovered that they had all come in the hope of seeing the grand master because there was no television any more.
On an impulse, I thrust my way through the crowd to the box office. There were many people in the lobby, hurrying to their seats. The girl clerk in the box office shook her head with a smile.
“The señor is plainly a stranger in Vados,” she said smugly. “Otherwise he would know that all tickets were sold—as usual—the day before yesterday.”
She turned to exchange someone else’s reservation form for his tickets; I went back to the entrance, wondering why I had taken the trouble to go and ask anyway, since there were few things I fancied less this evening than sitting and watching a chess match.
Obviously, though, a lot of people didn’t share my tastes. I could hardly get down the steps now for a huge swarm of schoolchildren eagerly waving their tickets and chattering with excitement.
Suddenly a siren sounded outside. As though by magic half a dozen policemen appeared, thrusting the bystanders off the sidewalk and clearing the approach to the hall. One of the officers recognized me just as he was about to shove me back with the rest of the crowd, and courteously asked me to stand back from the entrance. I did so, just as el Presidente’s car pulled up.
A dapper little man in full evening dress—probably the manager of the hall—and a stout woman whose gown was ornamented with an official-looking rosette incorporating a checkered motif greeted Vados and his wife as they emerged from the car. Smiling and bowing in response to the claps of the onlookers, they came toward the entrance.
And as he passed, Vados caught sight of me.
“Señor Hakluyt!” he exclaimed, halting in his tracks. “You have been unlucky in obtaining a ticket?”
I admitted that I had. “But it’s of no importance,” I said. “I was just walking past, and I came in on the spur of the moment—”
“But it is of the greatest importance!” said Vados with enthusiasm. “I am told your work is finished and you will be leaving us soon. It is unthinkable that you should go without seeing a great national institution like a chess match!” He turned peremptorily to the dapper man following him. “Place another chair in the presidential box!” he commanded. “Señor Hakluyt is my guest.”
I cursed the man’s generosity, but I could hardly get out of it now, so I murmured dutiful thanks and fell in behind.
The box was large, with an excellent view of the four tables which were in play together. Even so I was a bit of a nuisance, for in addition to Vados and his wife and the stout woman with the rosette—who turned out to be the organizing secretary of the city chess federation—there was also Diaz, who was already in his place when we entered.
He rose to shake hands with Vados, and a flash from the body of the hall immortalized the moment on film. A gust of applause swept the packed audience, and the national anthem was played—recorded, presumably, for there certainly wasn’t room in the hall for a seventy-piece symphony orchestra. A one-man band would have had trouble finding space.
The various grand masters who had come through to the finals took their places; Garcia, bobbing his head and smiling, received a tremendous ovation. Then the chief referee called for silence, and play began.
Everyone in the hall could follow the play easily enough; there were opera glasses to study the tables in direct view, and additionally the various moves were repeated on large hanging illuminated signs, grouped in fours, all around the hall. I remembered having seen similar signs, not yet illuminated, outside the entrance, without realizing their purpose.
For a while I made a great show of appreciating the opportunity of seeing the match. Then the heavy thinking set in, and I began to get bored.
I stole a covert glance at Señora Vados; she sat with her face in an expression of absolute blank tranquillity, and I judged she had mastered the art, so useful to a public figure, of turning off her mind.
I also looked at Diaz, wondering what was going on inside that dark skull. Having directly countermanded Vados’s instructions to Angers, he must be feeling pretty tense in his president’s company; indeed, I saw the muscles on the backs of his large hands knot and unknot, and sometimes he swiveled his eyes to scan Vados’s face.
As for Vados, he seemed utterly absorbed in the play.
A scatter of applause which the stewards failed to kill ran through the audience, closely pursued by indignant hushing sounds. I saw that Garcia was sitting back with a smug expression, while his opponent literally scratched his head in cogitation.
A clever move, presumably. But I was getting more interested in the audience than in the play. Who were these chess fans? They seemed to be a complete cross-section of Vadeanos; there a shabby man like a factory hand was playing through Garcia’s game on a much-worn pocket set balanced across his knee—he was on the wrong side of the hall to see Garcia’s board clearly and had to take the moves off a sign. Two places from him a woman was knitting and chewing gum while staring at the players; then there was a block packed solid with children under eighteen and over twelve.
Across the hall, in the more expensive places that commanded a perfect view of the most popular table—Garcia’s, of course—were men in tails and women in low-cut dresses who looked as though they had set out for boxes at the opera rather than seats at a chess match. Yes, both the blankes and the nie-blankes were—
What was that? I caught the idea by its disappearing tail and hauled it back into the front of my mind. Surely I must have been dreaming about the pieces on the boards: black opposed to white. For this was the wrong country.
I looked again, straining my eyes past the brilliant hanging lights, and felt a shiver down my spine. Coincidence, perhaps—but it was true. Diaz, for instance, sat on Vados’s right, and for the most part the audience on that side of the hall were long-faced Amerinds or recognizably mulatto. Oh, there were plenty of Caucasian faces, too, but on this side dark skins lined up in groups of half a dozen together. The situation across the hall was reversed: the dark skins were spaced singly among the rows of lighter faces.
I’d seen this phenomenon the day after my arrival in Vados, and I hadn’t understood its significance. I remembered very vividly how I’d felt isolated among the dark-skinned crowd listening to the native musicians raise funds for Tezol’s fine, under the trees in the Plaza del Sur. Maybe I’d seen it since without noticing it because it was accepted automatically.
Nonetheless, it was certain that the two sides, playing out a game more deadly than chess on the squares of the city, were divided like chessmen into black and white.
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 mañana, Señor Hakluyt!”
I stayed, smoking a last cigarette, until another of the four boards broke up, and then left the hall. It was about eleven p.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. Buenas noches.”
“Buenas 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 dee
ply. 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.