John Brunner - The Squares of the City

The way things were now, it almost appeared that my arrival in Vados had been a trigger to set in motion a chain of violent and sometimes bloody events. But that was ridiculous. It must simply be chance or coincidence. Most likely, both my being brought here and the events that had followed were symptomatic of the same web of rivalries, hatreds, and jealousies. In other words, at the moment everyone in Vados, from el Presidente himself down to that girl with the guitar, were puppets dancing at the mercy of forces beyond the control of individuals.

Here in Ciudad de Vados, of course, they had made a determined attempt to control those forces—as Mayor had claimed, this was “the most governed country in the world.” Yes, but maybe the success they had seemed to achieve was no more than illusion. You could only disguise, not govern, the dark impulses at the bottom of the human mind, the inheritance of prejudice with which every man, woman, and child walking the streets in every city on earth was laden down. You couldn’t govern those. At most, you could dictate when they should be turned loose—and sometimes, when the pressure behind them had built up to a climax, you couldn’t even do that.

“Senorita,” I said to the girl with the guitar, and she turned grave dark eyes to me. She wasn’t pretty; she had a large nose and a large mouth, with one crooked tooth in her upper jaw. “Senorita, what is your opinion of the books of Felipe Mendoza?”

She looked taken aback. “I do not know, senor,” she said. “I am a good Catholic, and Catholics are not permitted to read his books. That is all I know.”

I sighed. “What do you think about the death of Senor Dalban?”

“They say he was a very evil man. Perhaps his conscience troubled him. Certainly he must have been a great sinner to have killed himself as he did.”

“Suppose, senorita, that a jealous rival of yours were to steal from you everything that means anything to you, everything whereby you make your living—your guitar, your songs—seduced your boy-friend if you have one, so there was no hope for you—what would you do then?”

She frowned, as if trying to decide my purpose in asking such questions. After a moment’s reflection she said virtuously, “I should pray, senor.”

I turned toward her. “Listen, senorita, I am not an inquisitor. I’m just a stranger in Vados who wants to know what people think about all these happenings of the past few days. Consider! Senor Dalban was killed, just as surely as if someone had held the knife with which his throat was cut. His business was ruined, he was plunged suddenly into debts that he couldn’t pay, everything he had worked for all his life was snatched away, not as a visitation from God but because a rival businessman was envious of him. Isn’t envy a sin?”

“Oh, yes, senor! A vile sin!”

“Exactly. Can it be right that somebody like Dalban should have his life’s work destroyed to satisfy a rival’s jealousy?”

She didn’t answer. Probably I was posing her questions which her confessor would regard as highly technical and best left to trained theologians.

“As for the man who was so jealous,” I went on. “You have heard of Senor Arrio?”

“Oh, of course! He is a very good man. My father work in one of his stores; he is assistant manager, and maybe one day he will be manager.” Realization dawned. “You mean—it was Senor Arrio who was so jealous?”

“Of course, Senor Arrio is very rich; Senor Dalban was also quite rich. Naturally they were rivals.”

“That I do not believe,” she said firmly. “Senor Arrio must be a good man. All the people who work for him say so, and he has set up many good stores in our country, not only in Ciudad de Vados.”

“Somebody ask Job’s opinion of that,” I muttered to myself.

“Besides,” she said, as though arriving at an important conclusion, “if Senor Dalban cared more about money than about saving his immortal soul—and he must have if he killed himself merely because he lost his money—he was certainly a wicked man. The love of money is the root of evil.”

“Then who loved money the more—Senor Dalban or Senor Arrio, who took all Dalban’s money away from him although he himself is already very rich?”

That floored her completely; she sat staring wide-eyed at me as if I were stirring her personal cosmos around and around with a spoon, and she had lost all her bearings. I tried another tack.

“You remember Senor Brown, who was killed the other day?”

“Yes, senor. I read about it in the newspaper.”

“What do you actually know about the matter? What do you think he had done?”

She looked down and spoke hesitantly. “Well, senor, everyone knew what Estrelita Jaliscos was like, so what he had done—wel…”

I was about to rescue her from her painful embarrassment when the significance of what she had actually said went through my stupidly thick skull. I almost spilled my drink as I shot forward in my chair.

“Did you say ‘everyone knew’ what she was like?”

“Why, yes!” She put her hand up to her throat as though my violent reaction had made her dizzy. “What is wrong?”

“You did say they knew?” I insisted. “Not ‘everyone knows’? You knew what sort of girl Estrelita Jaliscos was before all this happened? You haven’t come to that idea because of what the bishop has said on television, for example?”

“No, senor! What would we need to be told, in the district where I live? We have seen for many years how she carried on. She was going out alone with young men when she was only fourteen; she drank liquor—aguardiente, even tequila and rum. And it was said she—she even sold her honor.” The girl uttered these last remarks with a faintly defiant air, as though challenging anyone to contradict them.

“In short,” I said, “Estrelita Jaliscos had a reputation as an accomplished tart.”

“Senor!” she said reproachfully, and blushed brightly. I turned and signaled the bartender.

“If you were really as sheltered as you try to make out,” I said, “you wouldn’t even have known what the word means. You’ve given me some very valuable information, and I’m going to buy you a drink on the strength of it. What’ll it be?”

She giggled nervously. “First I must sing you a song,” she said. “Manuel, there behind the bar, is a friend of my father, and all the time I am here he keeps his eyes on me. I will sing, and then when you give me the drink you will say it is because you like my singing, understand?”

I gave her a sarcastic look. “I suppose you go out with boys, too,” I said. “Senor!”

“All right, that wasn’t an invitation. Go ahead and sing. How about La Cucaracha?”

“That is a bad song, senor. It is all about marijuana. Let me sing you a song of my own.”

It was an ordinary sort of pop, such as one might have heard over the radio any day anywhere in Latin America. I watched her as she sang, and came to the decision that she was about one-tenth as much of a shy violet as she liked to make out. Probably Manuel let his eyes wander occasionally.

So nothing was what it seemed, I now discovered. Estrelita Jaliscos had been a real tart, going downhill since she was fourteen. And for her sake Fats Brown was being buried tomorrow. If he’d come to trial and evidence of character had been brought, surely the prosecution’s case would have collapsed like cardboard!

Then why hadn’t he risked trial? He’d said himself on the night I found him getting drunk to “celebrate” that he was sure Estrelita Jaliscos was a tart. He knew the legal setup in Vados; he could have built a case against her for blackmail stronger than any case against himself for murder.