John Brunner - The Squares of the City

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, Senor 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. “Senor 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 manana, Senor 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 Senora 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, Senor 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, senor. 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, senor. Should the gentleman with whom I was playing chess return, please make my apologies.”

“With pleasure, senora. Buenos noches.”

“Buenos noches, senor.”

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.