There were valuable pointers to public opinion, too, to be followed up — sources of irritation and resentment against the market that could be gently magnified until it became possible to decree it out of existence without opposition.
It was fascinating. But then I’m one of those lucky people to whom it is given to enjoy his regular job. There are so many aspects of human existence reflected in the way people move through their streets. I’d had to allow for the snarls in traffic flow caused by the muezzins in Moslem cities calling the devout to prayer, and the consequent five-times-daily interruption of everything, much to the annoyance of the nonreligious citizens. I’d had to work out a design for an embankment along the Ganges where it was certain that at least a million people would suddenly turn up once a year, but which had to cope with them and with its ordinary traffic without wasting unduly much space on the million-strong crowd which would remain idle the rest of the year. I’d helped develop the signal system in Galveston, Texas, designed to get every fire appliance within twenty miles nonstop to any outbreak without interfering with traffic on any route not used by the engines. Those were large-scale tasks, and they had their own interest. But this — by comparison — half-pint puzzle was equally intriguing.
By Monday afternoon I was coming to a tentative conclusion.
I was wandering along the sidewalk, pausing to turn over things displayed for sale and rechecking my guess about how many people came this way just to do their shopping when the offices and businesses nearby closed for the night, when a hoarse voice called out to me. “Ay, señor!”
I glanced around. The only people in the direction from which the yell had come were two shabby old men deep in thought over a chessboard resting on an empty packing case — I saw that the white king was lost or broken and had been replaced by the neck of a bottle, broken off short and stood on its jagged end — and a fat man in a white suit that was soaked with sweat under the arms. He sat on a rickety chair tilted back against the wall. A hat shaded his plump face; one pudgy hand clutched a bottle of some sickly-colored soft drink with a straw in it; the other held a ropy cigar.
I looked inquiring; he beckoned; I went over to him. As I came up, he said something in rapid Spanish, and I had to ask for a repeat.
“Ah, that’s all right,” he said with a sudden surprising switch into strong New York. “Figured you weren’t one of these stuck-up spicks. Tourist?”
I nodded; that was my role at the moment. “Drink?” he suggested, and before I could accept or refuse, he had thrown back his head and yelled, “Pepe!”
I looked at the nearest doorway and found that I was in fact standing outside a shabby bar, converted in makeshift fashion from the entrance hall of a house. A misspelled name scrawled on the wall in black paint announced the fact. “What’ll it be?” said the fat man.
“Something long and cool,” I said in my best tourist manner, wiping my face.
The fat man snorted. “In a hole like this? Pal, if they had a frigidaire here, they’d have to use it for cooking tamales. The power company cut the supply a month ago. Makes it a choice between beer and this muck I’m drinking. Better have beer — at least it doesn’t get dirty inside the cans. “Cerveza!” he added sharply as a worried little man appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on an apron or maybe the flapping tail of his shirt.
“Siddown,” he went on, indicating a folding chair propped against the wall near him. “Reason I called you over was ’cause I figure I’ve seen you around here a few times before. Didn’t I?”
“You might have,” I acknowledged, finding that the chair, seemingly on the point of collapse, was still strong enough to take my weight. I hadn’t seen him; that I was sure of. But I didn’t comment on the fact.
“You seem to be spending a hell of a lot of time down here.” His eyes fixed on me. “Mind my askin’ why? Sort of — uh — unusual for a tourist.”
“A girl I know back home told me to get her one of those fancy Indian shawls — rebozos,” I answered, thinking in high gear. “You know how it is,” I added, trying to make the words imply I thought he was irresistible to every girl for miles. “I wanted to make it something — something classy, if you get me. Can’t find anything I like.”
The fat man spat with great deliberation into the gutter, three inches from the bare feet of a woman carrying a basket of clay pots. “Should think not. Stuff you get here’s not worth a damn. You’d do better to stop off for a couple hours in Mexico City on your way home an’ spend a few bucks in a big store there. These people can’t afford to spin their own thread any more, y’see. Have to make do with lousy commercial stuff — won’t dye properly, won’t weave the same way. No good.”
“Looks like I’ve been wasting my time, then,” I said. Beer arrived, brought by the worried man; I took it as it was — in the can — and sipped it.
“Maybe not altogether. Get better stuff here than anywhere else in Vados, that’s for sure. And cheaper. Trying to clear this market away — hear about that?”
“No!” I said, feigning astonishment. “Why? Don’t people like having a genuine Indian-style village market right in the heart of Vados? I’d have thought tourists would go for it in a big way.”
“Nuts. Vados is ‘the — most — modern — city — inaworld.’ ” He managed to make the slogan sound faintly obscene. “That’s what tourists come looking for. Old-world crap they can find back in New Mexico or somewhere. What they want here is the day afer tomorrow, not the day before yesterday. ’Sides, the place stinks. Don’t it?”
The smell was pretty thick, and likewise indescribable. Cooking oil and frijoles and rotting fruit and human bodies all had a place in it. So did sun on dust, which smells like nothing else in the world.
“What are these poor bastards gonna do for a living when they clear this market up? Hafta live in that dump of Sigueiras’s — they don’t show that to tourists. Heard about it?”
“Under the main monorail station?”
“Tha’s right.” He looked at me with a speculative expression. “For a tourist, you got eyes, pal — say that for you. Guess you didn’t go down inside, though.” I shook my head. “Guessed right. There’s a guy called Angers in a city traffic department been shooting off his mouth about cleaning out market, shacks, whole damn lot. Him an’ that money-grabbing bum Seixas.”
He gestured with his now empty bottle; he had been sucking enormous gulps between sentences. The movement took in the big-eyed children and the back-bowed women and the shabby men playing chess, the barrows and the baskets and the fruit and corn and clay pots and trinkets. “Riles me! I’m a citizen, same as Angers. I got my stake here, same as him. But it’s these poor bastards’ own damn country, and they don’t get much of a share.”
On the last word he hurled the empty bottle at a rotten melon lying in the gutter; it sank in without breaking and stuck up at an angle, the straw still in the neck. “Have another on me?” I suggested.
“Next time you’re by,” he said, and hauled himself ponderously to his feet. “Got to go make room for it before I have another. Think about Angers while I’m doing it. Maybe we’ll fix him one of these days. Still a law in this country — of sorts. Wouldn’t think I was a lawyer, would you?”