“You are a Catholic?” he inquired.
I shook my head.
He closed his hand around the crucifix. “In some ways I envy you. It is often hard to be both a good Christian and a good statesman.”
“I’d have said it was impossible,” I countered. “A state is concerned with people’s condition here and now; almost all religions are concerned with their state hereafter. And the two pretty often contradict each other.”
“Still, there is the ideal toward which we work.” He sighed heavily. “A Christian government for a Christian community — and almost all my people are believers… Señor, you must come and dine with me at Presidential House sometime soon. It has become rare for me to meet foreigners who have no personal interest in the way I run my country. I meet bankers negotiating loans, oilmen seeking favorable tariffs, importers and exporters desirous of exploiting our markets — and who else? Sometimes I even envy the man who might, had things been different, have ruled in my place… But I waste your time in empty talk, señor. Hasta la vista!”
He pocketed the crucifix, shook my hand, and returned to his study of the relief map of the city as I left the room.
XXV
I had a dim recollection that when I came to Vados five weeks ago I’d felt excited and proud of having been selected to do this job.
Well, the excitement and the pride were finished. Now I was reduced to doing a scrappy job, collecting my pay, and getting the hell out. The only part of that I wouldn’t regret would be getting the hell out.
It took me about four and a half hours to work out a scheme for the monorail central that was exactly what Vados wanted: two new passenger access ways, extra storage room, and a parking lot that might be half full on saints’ days and holidays. It looked all right superficially, of course; I’ve worked the basic rhythms so far into my system that I don’t think I could any longer design a bad-looking layout. But there wasn’t any need for any of this. There was no organic unity about it. It was like — well, creating a demand artificially by clever advertising and then complimenting oneself on having filled a long-felt want. Compared with the scheme I’d worked out for the market district — which was real development, worthy, I liked to think, of the painstaking original planning of the whole city — this was patchwork.
I turned it in for computing at the end of the afternoon. It would cost more than it was worth — but then, anything of this kind was essentially worth nothing. The hell with it. I went back to the hotel and had dinner.
Vados’s directive had amounted to an ultimatum. What else was I to do except get this thing over quickly?
Not long after I entered the dining room at the hotel, Maria Posador also came in. I hadn’t seen her for some days, and at the back of my mind I’d been wondering where she might have got to. Now she showed up with someone I failed to recognize at first, because I’d never before seen him in plain clothes. It was el Jefe O’Rourke, looking incredibly wrong as a foil to Señora Posador’s effortless elegance.
For someone who supposedly enjoyed a merely tolerated status in Ciudad de Vados, a bitter enemy of the president, who was alleged to be permitted to remain in the country only so that an eye could be kept on her subversive activities, Maria Posador had a respectably long list of influential friends. This particular mismatch just about capped all the others. I watched covertly while I was eating and saw that O’Rourke ate with gusto and was talking little, while Maria Posador ate rather little and seemed to be saying a lot. Occasionally O’Rourke rumbled into laughter, while his companion looked on with a tolerant smile. Their whole manner was that of old and close friends.
I was really getting curious when I finished my meal.
They came into the lounge for coffee and a game of chess after dinner, and, much to my relief, Maria Posador invited me to join them. O’Rourke commented on the fact by glancing at her, at me, and then at her again, but said nothing. In fact, his contribution to the conversation at first consisted of grunts before making his own moves and after Maria Posador had made hers.
I would never have pictured O’Rourke as a chess-player in any other country in the world, except perhaps the Soviet Union. In the States or back home I’d have said he probably played poker for relaxation. Nonetheless he played competently, with a style that fitted his personality: direct, aggressive, concentrating on the officers and not worrying much about pawn development except to ensure that his pawns got in his opponent’s way rather than his own. This two-fisted technique had faults; he would probably have made mincemeat out of me, but Maria Posador was on playing terms with grand master Pablo Garcia, and pretty soon the game was going all her way.
Trying to stir up conversation, I said, “This game is so popular here I’m surprised I haven’t seen any fights over it.”
O’Rourke raised his head and gave me a blunt look. “In our country, señor, we know this is the game which is always honest. We save our bad temper for other things which are not so.”
Señora Posador cut in quickly, “But that is not always true. You will hear sometimes of fights, if not about the game itself, then about the bets that have been made on the result of a match.”
O’Rourke moved a pawn and sat back with a satisfied noise. “Betting is for fools. We have more fools than we need, anyway.”
Maria Posador took the pawn, and O’Rourke scratched his chin thoughtfully. Before making his own countermove, he glanced at me. “The señor himself plays chess?”
“If you can call it playing. Ask Señora Posador — she beat me easily.”
“Señor Hakluyt has some understanding of the game,” said Señora Posador, her eyes on the board, “but lacks practice in the principles of combination.”
“He should then use his eyes and look about him,” O’Rourke retorted, and decided to castle queen side, about four moves later than he should have done. “Except that in actuality few people obey rules, there is much to be learned from what can be seen in the world.”
I had a fleeting impression that Maria Posador would have preferred the conversation to turn into other channels. I snapped quickly, “In what way, Señor O’Rourke?”
“Check,” said Señora Posador, taking another of O’Rourke’s pawns. “I think what Tomas means, Señor Hakluyt, is the same as I was saying to you the other day. One must not think from move to move, in real life as in chess; one must remember the overall picture.”
She gave me a sweet and dazzling smile, and — I thought, but couldn’t be sure — trod hard on O’Rourke’s toe under the table. O’Rourke caught on; I didn’t get anything further out of him, and eventually I gave up trying and went to the bar.
It was almost empty this evening. The now useless television set was gone from its regular place, and where it had stood was a shabby old radio, obviously dug out of storage. It was giving out with a pep talk when I arrived; I recognized the voice of Professor Cortes, who had assumed temporary direction of the emergency broadcasting service. I listened for a little while, but there was no real meat in the words. Aside from another broadside at Miguel Dominguez — Cortes was still not convinced, apparently, of the charges he had made about Caldwell and the health department — it was a woolly reiteration of trust in God and the President to see the citizens through their time of tribulation.
Mayor had certainly been a loss to the regime — perhaps far more of a loss than the television center itself. As a publicity man, Cortes was a good dishwasher.
Shutting my ears, I said to Manuel, who was polishing glasses behind the bar, “Señora Posador spends a lot of time in this place, doesn’t she?”