John Brunner - The Squares of the City

It would have suited my purpose much better if I’d been allowed to go with a single policeman as escort, but I was made to understand that, while they couldn’t stop a foolhardy foreigner from committing suicide this way, the lives of their men were too valuable to risk so lightly. Somehow this went with the Spanish-speaking personality—in Spain itself, the guardias civiles are a species that hunts invariably in pairs; here in the press and hurry of the New World it seemed that nothing short of four times that number would do.

Moreover, they insisted that we each take a police automatic; Angers, possibly picturing himself as Beau Geste or someone of the kind, accepted enthusiastically, but I did my best to refuse the one given to me—after the way my reputation in Vados had been distorted, I thought carrying a gun was a final straw. When I had to give in, I made sure the holster was well out of sight inside my jacket, and hung the sling of my camera across it.

The cars skidded to a halt on the same graveled patch of ground where the traffic department’s car had halted on the occasion of my first visit. A group of children playing a singing game on the lip of the depression below the station caught sight of us and scattered, crying a warning. The officers piled out of the cars and hurried toward the entry; perhaps they didn’t realize what they were letting themselves in for, because one after the other they lost their footing on the slippery slope and raced in undignified manner toward the bottom.

Angers and I followed more slowly. One could sense the wave of silence spreading through the congested heart of the slum as news of the police’s presence was whispered ahead. It was as though the massed human beings were melting into a single hostile organism, like a carnivorous plant on the approach of a fly.

At the entrance a courageous little dark-skinned woman was trying to bar our way. When the police repeated the ostensible reason for the visit, she shook her head determinedly. Fats Brown was not there, had never been there, and never would be there. Everyone was saying he had fled the country.

“Then you won’t mind us looking through the place if you aren’t hiding him,” said the lieutenant in charge of the squad with heavy irony, and thrust her aside.

We threaded our way one by one into darkness and stink.

Two of the police had brought powerful flashlights; they turned them on now, and I saw how this slum had been created. Rough wooden or tin partitions, slatted floors, and rudimentary ladderlike stairs had been attached as best they could be to the original bare steel strutting and concrete buttresses of the monorail station. There was no provision for sanitation, of course, and ventilation was taken care of only by the gaps accidentally left between the ill-fitting sections of board.

Whole families somehow existed here in each of the drawer-like compartments. For furniture they had old boxes, for beds heaps of rags, for cooking stoves sheets of tin with a few glowing sticks heaped in the middle. The smoke mixed with all the other smells and was easier to bear than most.

There were garishly colored prints of the Virgin on most of the walls, along with last year’s pinup calendars from soft drink companies. Occasionally a family ran to a complete home shrine with a crucifix and a couple of wax tapers.

“Don’t they have a lot of trouble with fires here?” I asked Angers, and he snorted.

“Sigueiras is careful about that sort of thing. He knows perfectly well that if this place caught fire, the firemen would just make sure it didn’t spread to the station overhead, and otherwise let it burn itself out. Burning would be a good way of cleaning it out, come to that.”

There were no burros actually in the heart of the slum— but only because if anyone had tried to bring an animal that heavy into the place, its hoofs would have gone straight through the rickety flooring. But there were pigs, and there were chickens, and there were certainly goats somewhere out of sight—their presence was unmistakable.

The police threw back curtains—there was hardly a real door in the place—without ceremony. The word had gone ahead of us; we surprised no one in the kind of situation that Professor Cortes had assured me was commonplace down here. People turned blank faces to us or scowled or half-rose with an ingratiating smile and made meaningless gestures of invitation. Children hesitated between watching the strangers and running to hide; they seemed undernourished and all were

dirty, but there were few that were visibly sickly or diseased. I saw cases of eczema, rickets, and something else I could not put a name to—six or eight in all out of perhaps a hundred-odd children.

The extent of the slum was tremendous once one was inside. After twenty minutes we were a long way from the outside air, and the surrounding, dimly sensed hatred was beginning to prey on my nerves. We were going down a particularly dark passage, the police flashlights cutting stark blades of white through the thick air, rough-cut slats creaking under our weight—when a woman in a peasant’s rebozo went past us, head down, carrying a basket. Something about the way she walked struck me as familiar; I paused and looked after her. I never forgave myself for that flash of sudden memory.

For Angers noticed it, and turned to follow my gaze. When he saw the woman, he stiffened.

“By God!” he said softly. “That’s Brown’s wife! What would she be doing here—unless he was here, too?”

Angers had spoken in English; the policemen nearest us at that moment did not take in the sense of his words. He rounded on them with a sudden burst of incredible, untypical rage—I had not thought his shell of self-possession could break down so completely.

“Don’t just stand there!” he exploded. “That’s Brown’s wife! Get her back here!”

It sank in. Two of the officers scrambled into the dimness. There was a cry. In a moment they were coming back, grasping Senora Brown’s arms in strong hands. She struggled, panting, but she was growing old and these police were young and vigorous. Her rebozo fell back around her shoulders.

“So it is you,” said Angers softly. He took one of the flashlights and shone it full into her face, dazzling her. She half-turned her head to escape the glare.

“Donde esta su exposo ?” Angers said fiercely.

She gave him a murderous scowl. “No se,” she said flatly. “No estd aqui.”

I think it was in that instant that she recognized me and remembered who I was; at any rate I suddenly caught a flash of hatred from her dark eyes. I turned away, not wanting to be a party to what happened next.

Angers took out his pistol and slowly slid the safety catch off; the tiny noise it made was very loud in the confined space. “All right,” he said, not taking his eyes from Senora Brown’s face. “Go down the way she came and see if you can find him.”

Obediently the policemen released their grip on Senora Brown’s arms. She rubbed the place where their hands had dug into her flesh, but otherwise did not move. Angers leveled the pistol at her chest; her only response was a sneer.

But when the policemen moved purposefully past Angers and off down the passage, she could not control a shudder of terrified anticipation.

“Angers,” I said softly, “you ought to be ashamed of doing this.”

He didn’t look at me as he replied, his voice cold and thin and drained of all human warmth. “Brown is wanted for murder. You know that. If he’s here, we mustn’t let him get away.”

The woman did not understand what he said, of course— she spoke only Spanish. But her gaze followed the armed police officers as they flung back rickety tin doors and swept the squalid cubbyhole rooms with their spears of light.