“Is the trouble very bad?”
“It is something that may divide the city into warring camps,” she answered absently. She slid pieces into position with expert fingers as she spoke, leaving them set up as though to start a new game. “Thus!”
“I don’t think I’ve come to Vados at a very healthy time.” I tried to speak lightly; that was a failure. She raised her violet eyes to my face.
“Had it not been you, señor, it might have been anyone else. It was what the situation dictated, that is all. No, the death of Mario Guerrero is all part of a pattern — it is, you might say, one symptom of a disease that is poisoning our lives. There is a corruption, a fundamental rottenness — and each part of it renews the corruptness of the rest. You are doubtless aware that Señor Seixas in the treasury department has a strong interest in seeing new highways built, at whatever cost in money or human happiness, for it will be into his pocket that goes the — the financial oil that lubricates such deals in our country. Oh, this is widely known! Yet what happens when our good friend Felipe Mendoza tries to expose this bribery — he, a man whom success has not spoiled, who knows his duty to his fellow citizens? Seixas takes the telephone in his hand and speaks to his friend the judge, Señor Romero. And today he is armed with an injunction against Señor Mendoza, and in its shelter he can proceed with his shady negotiations, while the truth is hidden from the people. I become revolted, señor.” She grimaced.
“But enough, Señor Hakluyt, enough of that. Have you reflected on the things I showed to you the other day?” I chose my words carefully. “I have,” I said. “In fact, I spoke to Señora Cortes of the television service, and her husband, the professor, admitted at once without my asking that they use this technique. I don’t like it myself, but according to what Cortes says, they seem to have some justification, at any rate—”
She seemed to wilt like a flower in an oven. “Yes, Señor Hakluyt. I have no doubt there was also some justification at any rate for Belsen. Good day to you.”
And she lapsed into a silent reflection so complete that I do not think her eyes registered me as I passed through her field of vision on leaving.
XIII
All that weekend I felt as though I were walking down a tunnel on the verge of collapse. The threat of violence, which had bared its teeth for twenty-four hours after Guerrero died, still snarled across the city; one saw it in the way certain people walked circumspectly on the street, in the way others — who they were, of course, I didn’t know, but there were many of them — stayed out of sight. This was a conflict that engaged the Vadeanos from the cabinet minister to the factory worker. I thought of what Señora Posador had said about splitting the city into warring camps.
And yet… well, perhaps it was Vados’s firm hand on the controls. At least the threat of violence remained snarling rather than biting.
On Saturday Tiempo’s headlines concerned Dominguez’s victory over Romero — they claimed it as a victory, at least. Not quite overshadowed by this was a spirited defense of Felipe Mendoza, over the signature of his brother Cristoforo, editor of the paper. Though there was no direct mention of the fact, I presumed this was a reaction to the event Señora Posador had told me about — Seixas’s injunction against Mendoza. The article found space to praise Señora Posador as well, referred to Dominguez in the next breath, and topped off by calling Juan Tezol “loyal defender of the people’s freedom.” The whole tone of the article was sickly-patriotic and bombastic.
The more I sought to get ahead with my work, the more circumstances seemed to conspire to make speed impossible. And — what was worse — the more complex became the situation in which I was involuntarily caught up.
Oh, there were probably decent people on both sides — and that was half my personal trouble. Aside from Francis, who was now out of the calculation anyway, the Nationals were probably well-meaning enough, from Mendoza to Dominguez. In spite of her notorious grudge against Vados, Maria Posador seemed to have rational fears to back up her opposition, and certainly Judge Romero had treated Dominguez in a way no one of his eminence should have done.
But the political atmosphere here was of the hothouse kind. The least incident capable of being made to bear political fruit was being nurtured, protected from frost and fed with manure until it blossomed out of all proportion. The only hard case of grievance on either side, so far as I could see, was the death of Guerrero — and that, since Francis was in custody, was emotionally based.
At the time, I now realized, I had been oddly little affected by seeing Guerrero die. The incident was so brief, so nearly unreal. I’d seen men die before — twice in brawls between construction-gang workers, several times from accidents on the job or in the street. As the days slipped by and as the resentment engendered by Guerrero’s death continued to fester in the city, I was coming to see that people who had perhaps never met Guerrero in their lives had been far more affected by his death than I who had seen it take place.
And that could have only one implication. No man could have meant so much to so many strangers unless he was a symbol. A symbol of very great importance.
They buried him on Sunday, after a service in the cathedral at which Bishop Cruz officiated in person. The city stopped, and crowds lined the sidewalks to watch the cortege, the women almost all in black, the men with black bands on their arms or black ribbons on their lapels, and black ties if they wore ties at all. Symbol.
O’Rourke had every available police officer on duty along the route of the funeral procession, which was as well, for half a dozen attempts were made to start disturbances. I assumed at first that they were organized by the National Party; I learned later, however, that it was actually students from the university who had been responsible, and they were demonstrating against the National Party, not against Guerrero and the Citizens of Vados.
The funeral left renewed tension in its wake, as a ship crossing calm water leaves a swell that may endure for hours. Symbol, I said again to myself, and saw that perhaps I should seek a reason for my own unasked-for and unmerited notoriety here.
Maria Posador had said, “Had it not been you, señor, it might have been anyone else. It was what the situation dictated.”
Exactly. As a neurosis caused by repression manifests itself in ways that may bear no resemblance at all to the root of the trouble, so the repressed tension in Ciudad de Vados was showing itself — here, there, disconnected as though poking from a wall of fog, seizing what focal event or personality came to hand and crystallizing briefly around it.
Ill chance decreed that I should be one of the focal personalities it fastened on. And once the process had begun, how to fight it? How to struggle against that amorphous combination of emotions, desires, fears, jealousies, now ruling Ciudad de Vados? I was beginning to feel hemmed in, chained, a prisoner, pushed at by impersonal forces, denied the most essential liberty, which I had all my life prized: liberty to do the work I did best in the best possible way.
Yet, somehow, two more days of illusory calm slipped by. I spent most of them in the traffic department, trying to force some sort of order on a chaotic lot of computer figures, struggling to reduce abstract flow patterns to terms of what Jose and Lola would see, hear, think as they passed on their way. I contrived nearly to forget a lot of things — among them, the suit that Sigueiras was bringing against the traffic department.
But on Wednesday morning Angers warned me that the legal resources of his side were drying up. Lucas had secured one adjournment and had taken advantage of the time to organize his case against Sam Francis — but then, there was no question of the outcome of that trial.