“Beauty is secondary,” Alain said again. Secondary to engineering — the trams were well constructed. Secondary to trade — they were part of an important deal with far-off Japan. Secondary to the governance of the country that he loved immoderately.
The mayor sighed with relief. “Your perspicacity — I gambled on it,” risking a sort of wordplay, for Alain was minister of gaming. Through the years he had become confidante and advisor to almost everybody in government — his colleagues could rely on his discretion and good sense, and his lack of personal ambition let them take all the bows. Today he had come from the capital to inspect the trams on behalf of the minister of transportation.
Now he shook hands with the mayor, and, with grace surprising in a man his size, swung aboard a tram setting off down the broad central avenue. “Smooth,” he called to the mayor from a window, and turned away perhaps a moment too soon. He hoped he’d never have to deal with this lout again, but of course he would: Dealing with louts was part of his caretaker’s job …
Halfway to the train station, he got off and entered a café for a glass of wine and a slice of the local pâté, compounded of anchovies and hog liver. And another slice. During a conference he often thrust something into his mouth to avoid taking the last word. At home he raided the refrigerator. The family housekeeper knew which nights he woke up hungry, though Isabella slept through his absence from their bed. So perhaps he could be considered overweight … not if you asked his staff, who associated appetite with kindliness; and not if you asked the public, who didn’t recognize his rarely photographed face so couldn’t comment on his physique; and not if you asked his tailor, scrupulously silent as he enlarged another garment; but decidedly if you asked his daughter, who called him “Fatty.” Isabella, though, appreciated the extra flesh around Alain’s middle — she liked to finger it, even knead it, during lovemaking — just as she appreciated his bright blue eyes and thick hair. She might flirt with others, but always in the energetic, meaningless way of a woman true to her man. Alain was faithful, too.
The waiter stood ready to stuff another slice of pâté into his customer’s arteries. “No, thanks,” said Alain, smiling. He paid the bill and climbed a narrow staircase to a casino of the exact size — six tables — permitted everywhere except on the coast. There, big resorts flourished, drawing tourists from all over the world.
The draperies in the dim room were closed against the afternoon sun, giving the honest place the atmosphere of a thieves’ den. The croupiers wore ill-fitting tuxedos and the manager’s eyes glided every which way as if on the lookout for police. In fact he had strabismus. Alain bought an amount of chips equivalent to a week’s salary. His companions at the roulette table had the peaceable look of habitués. He played black until he won a few times; then 13 through 24 until he was sitting behind two silos of chips. He ran his finger up them, down them … He bet again: on his wife’s age at their marriage, 22; what a lighthearted loving girl Isabella had been then, still was, despite the decades, despite the death of their son at birth, not often mentioned between them, but sometimes. He did not bet on the boy’s age, which was always zero; and anyway zeros belonged to the house. He bet on the age of their bold daughter, 16; on the factors of his own age, 9 and 5. The darling ball ran, stopped, spun, popped out of its trough, grew still. When he had tripled his stake he quit.
And now he was eager to get home. He walked to the train station. He bought a ticket and boarded the late-afternoon express. The train was sleek and silvered. But Alain and the minister of transportation had persuaded the railroad to give passenger cars an old-fashioned design: a corridor down one side and compartments seating six on the other. Brass fixtures, mahogany panels, conductors wearing high-visored hats and double-breasted jackets — the whole first-class works, though there was just one class of ticket. He took a seat by the window — the train was only half full on this late-afternoon run. When it moved out of the station and turned slightly, revealing its gleaming curve, he leaned forward like a schoolboy and banged his forehead on the window.
The one other passenger in the compartment, seated opposite, made a sympathetic grimace. She was about thirty, and very tall. He calculated that if you added the length of her legs to the length of her torso to the extraordinary length of her neck to the length of her head she would reach six feet, his own height. Her forehead was narrow and her hair was pulled up into a sort of topknot, as if all that was needed to complete her beauty was a little extra height … He could hear his wife making that sort of wisecrack, though of course out of this woman’s hearing; Isabella was rarely unkind. The woman’s upper lip was constructed of two short peaks. She wore glasses: Their extreme convexity told him she was farsighted. She also wore an ur-dress, sleeveless, waistless, ankle-length, the same coconut color as her skin — perhaps she had dyed one to match the other …
She looked up from her book and awarded him a grave smile. “Minister.”
“Ah … we know each other? Forgive me …”
“I am vice president of the Artisans’ Union. You spoke to us a few years ago … about trust. Priests and doctors must be trustworthy. Gambling masters, too. ‘When a country can trust its croupiers the polity is safe.’ That’s what you said.”
The usual speech, no less sincere for being canned. “Forgive me, I remember you now,” he lied. Perhaps she had been shorter then; perhaps she hadn’t attained her full height until this afternoon. Though it was almost evening, wasn’t it. The sun was already on the other side of the mountain. The fields there would be a melting gold, the hills beyond the fields rosy, and beyond them the capital’s mellow buildings would still be drenched in light. But here the silver of the train reflected a darkening green.
“My name is Dea …, ” she said helpfully. He didn’t catch the surname. He was leaning forward again to watch the glistening locomotive penetrate the mountain — the locomotive, and the first passenger car, and the second. Then others, hidden from him as the train whipped itself straight, slid farther in. Their own car entered the tunnel now — there was a black moment. Then the lamps in the compartment began to glow.
He leaned back. She was reading again. Well, he too could read. He placed palm on briefcase; lists and tables lay within, a book of essays on agricultural reform. He read the book’s lengthy introduction. He read the first essay …
There was a dull noise, heavy and prolonged.
There was a powerful shudder which shook both the strong vehicle and the passengers within.
The train stopped.
In an instant uniformed men were running along the corridors — a dozen Charles de Gaulles. Men in overalls and caps ran after them. Bringing up the rear flapped a frightened old woman dressed in black, one of those ancient widows the country harbored.
Dea took off her glasses. Her eyes were the dark indefinable metal of old coins. “What do you suppose?” she said.
A second black witch flew down the corridor — fleeing disaster, she probably thought, but running toward it in fact.
“I think there has been a cave-in,” Alain said. He wondered how much stone and shale had fallen, and how much damage it had done, and whether anyone had been hurt.
Dea craned her long neck toward the window. The lamps within the train went out. The chalky sides of the tunnel turned a fitful lilac — the tunnel’s own electrical system apparently only weakened, not destroyed.
“Someone will give us a report,” Alain said.
“Yes, Minister. We need only make conversation. I was in Muñez buying materials for my work. I am a weaver.”
“I was in Muñez vetting some trams as a favor to the minister of transportation. I am a dogsbody, by choice.”