When I paid attention to what the crowd around me was saying, I discovered that they had all come in the hope of seeing the grand master because there was no television any more.
On an impulse, I thrust my way through the crowd to the box office. There were many people in the lobby, hurrying to their seats. The girl clerk in the box office shook her head with a smile.
“The señor is plainly a stranger in Vados,” she said smugly. “Otherwise he would know that all tickets were sold — as usual — the day before yesterday.”
She turned to exchange someone else’s reservation form for his tickets; I went back to the entrance, wondering why I had taken the trouble to go and ask anyway, since there were few things I fancied less this evening than sitting and watching a chess match.
Obviously, though, a lot of people didn’t share my tastes. I could hardly get down the steps now for a huge swarm of schoolchildren eagerly waving their tickets and chattering with excitement.
Suddenly a siren sounded outside. As though by magic half a dozen policemen appeared, thrusting the bystanders off the sidewalk and clearing the approach to the hall. One of the officers recognized me just as he was about to shove me back with the rest of the crowd, and courteously asked me to stand back from the entrance. I did so, just as el Presidente’s car pulled up.
A dapper little man in full evening dress — probably the manager of the hall — and a stout woman whose gown was ornamented with an official-looking rosette incorporating a checkered motif greeted Vados and his wife as they emerged from the car. Smiling and bowing in response to the claps of the onlookers, they came toward the entrance.
And as he passed, Vados caught sight of me.
“Señor Hakluyt!” he exclaimed, halting in his tracks. “You have been unlucky in obtaining a ticket?”
I admitted that I had. “But it’s of no importance,” I said. “I was just walking past, and I came in on the spur of the moment—”
“But it is of the greatest importance!” said Vados with enthusiasm. “I am told your work is finished and you will be leaving us soon. It is unthinkable that you should go without seeing a great national institution like a chess match!” He turned peremptorily to the dapper man following him. “Place another chair in the presidential box!” he commanded. “Señor Hakluyt is my guest.”
I cursed the man’s generosity, but I could hardly get out of it now, so I murmured dutiful thanks and fell in behind.
The box was large, with an excellent view of the four tables which were in play together. Even so I was a bit of a nuisance, for in addition to Vados and his wife and the stout woman with the rosette — who turned out to be the organizing secretary of the city chess federation — there was also Diaz, who was already in his place when we entered.
He rose to shake hands with Vados, and a flash from the body of the hall immortalized the moment on film. A gust of applause swept the packed audience, and the national anthem was played — recorded, presumably, for there certainly wasn’t room in the hall for a seventy-piece symphony orchestra. A one-man band would have had trouble finding space.
The various grand masters who had come through to the finals took their places; Garcia, bobbing his head and smiling, received a tremendous ovation. Then the chief referee called for silence, and play began.
Everyone in the hall could follow the play easily enough; there were opera glasses to study the tables in direct view, and additionally the various moves were repeated on large hanging illuminated signs, grouped in fours, all around the hall. I remembered having seen similar signs, not yet illuminated, outside the entrance, without realizing their purpose.
For a while I made a great show of appreciating the opportunity of seeing the match. Then the heavy thinking set in, and I began to get bored.
I stole a covert glance at Señora Vados; she sat with her face in an expression of absolute blank tranquillity, and I judged she had mastered the art, so useful to a public figure, of turning off her mind.
I also looked at Diaz, wondering what was going on inside that dark skull. Having directly countermanded Vados’s instructions to Angers, he must be feeling pretty tense in his president’s company; indeed, I saw the muscles on the backs of his large hands knot and unknot, and sometimes he swiveled his eyes to scan Vados’s face.
As for Vados, he seemed utterly absorbed in the play.
A scatter of applause which the stewards failed to kill ran through the audience, closely pursued by indignant hushing sounds. I saw that Garcia was sitting back with a smug expression, while his opponent literally scratched his head in cogitation.
A clever move, presumably. But I was getting more interested in the audience than in the play. Who were these chess fans? They seemed to be a complete cross-section of Vadeanos; there a shabby man like a factory hand was playing through Garcia’s game on a much-worn pocket set balanced across his knee — he was on the wrong side of the hall to see Garcia’s board clearly and had to take the moves off a sign. Two places from him a woman was knitting and chewing gum while staring at the players; then there was a block packed solid with children under eighteen and over twelve.
Across the hall, in the more expensive places that commanded a perfect view of the most popular table — Garcia’s, of course — were men in tails and women in low-cut dresses who looked as though they had set out for boxes at the opera rather than seats at a chess match. Yes, both the blankes and the nie-blankes were -
Whatwas that? I caught the idea by its disappearing tail and hauled it back into the front of my mind. Surely I must have been dreaming about the pieces on the boards: black opposed to white. For this was the wrong country.
I looked again, straining my eyes past the brilliant hanging lights, and felt a shiver down my spine. Coincidence, perhaps — but it was true. Diaz, for instance, sat on Vados’s right, and for the most part the audience on that side of the hall were long-faced Amerinds or recognizably mulatto. Oh, there were plenty of Caucasian faces, too, but on this side dark skins lined up in groups of half a dozen together. The situation across the hall was reversed: the dark skins were spaced singly among the rows of lighter faces.
I’d seen this phenomenon the day after my arrival in Vados, and I hadn’t understood its significance. I remembered very vividly how I’d felt isolated among the dark-skinned crowd listening to the native musicians raise funds for Tezol’s fine, under the trees in the Plaza del Sur. Maybe I’d seen it since without noticing it because it was accepted automatically. Nonetheless, it was certain that the two sides, playing out a game more deadly than chess on the squares of the city, were divided like chessmen into black and white.
XXX
“Ah!” said Vados suddenly. “That is good. That is perfect!”
A pawn move by the grand master Garcia had just gone up on the signs; for a few moments no one except the players and the referees were paying any attention at all to the other games. I joined my gaze to everyone else’s. But I hadn’t been following the development of Garcia’s game very closely, and I didn’t see that it was a spectacular move.
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.