It was then that we spoke of Dalban’s death, and I learned something about the causes of it.

“In one way, Señor Arrio has done a public service,” Cortes mused. “For too long Dalban had been making a fortune out of the base impulses of our people” — this I took to be an oblique reference to his monopoly of the contraceptive market — “and in so doing has encouraged them to continue.”

“In more ways than one — so some people might maintain,” said his wife. “Have you thought of the effect it will have on Señor Mendoza?”

I thought, of course, she was referring to Cristoforo Mendoza, editor of Tiempo. Since Tiempo had been closed down, I didn’t see that the loss of Dalban’s financial aid mattered much one way or the other — unless the order to close the paper down had been rescinded, and if it had been, I hadn’t been told.

But apparently that was not the point, for Cortes gave his wife a stern look.

“Isabela, you are well aware that in my view Mendoza’s books will be no loss to the world, even if he never writes another—”

“Excuse me,” I put in. “I don’t see the connection.” Cortes shrugged. “Dalban’s vanity required him to seem to be also a patron of the arts. In keeping with the pattern of his other activities — all of which seem to have been concerned with pandering to the lower tastes of the people — he had made Felipe Mendoza a protege of his. He had given him ahouse and had occasionally paid him a salary when the sales of his books were not high.”

“I see. But surely, if Mendoza still needs a patron, he will have no trouble finding another? After all, he has an international reputation—”

“So had the American Henry Miller,” said Cortes stiffly. “But neither he nor Mendoza wrote the sort of book I would permit to be read in my house.”

“Approval or disapproval apart,” said Señora Cortes, “one has to admit that he is creative — and original. No, Señor Hakluyt, Felipe Mendoza may not find it so easy, certainly not in his own country, for as you may perhaps have heard, all his works are on the Index, and consequently he labors under disadvantages.”

“And is that not his fault?” began the professor belligerently. They would have launched on a heated argument had not Señora Cortes abruptly noticed the time and realized they were late for the overture.

I was very thoughtful after they had gone. The girl with the guitar who sometimes turned up here in the evenings, especially when there was to be a big performance at the opera or one of the theaters, was singing — more to herself than an audience — at the other end of the bar. I took my drink and went and sat where I could listen to her.

The way things were now, it almost appeared that my arrival in Vados had been a trigger to set in motion a chain of violent and sometimes bloody events. But that was ridiculous. It must simply be chance or coincidence. Most likely, both my being brought here and the events that had followed were symptomatic of the same web of rivalries, hatreds, and jealousies. In other words, at the moment everyone in Vados, from el Presidente himself down to that girl with the guitar, were puppets dancing at the mercy of forces beyond the control of individuals.

Here in Ciudad de Vados, of course, they had made a determined attempt to control those forces — as Mayor had claimed, this was “the most governed country in the world.” Yes, but maybe the success they had seemed to achieve was no more than illusion. You could only disguise, not govern, the dark impulses at the bottom of the human mind, the inheritance of prejudice with which every man, woman, and child walking the streets in every city on earth was laden down. You couldn’t govern those. At most, you could dictate when they should be turned loose — and sometimes, when the pressure behind them had built up to a climax, you couldn’t even do that.

“Señorita,” I said to the girl with the guitar, and she turned grave dark eyes to me. She wasn’t pretty; she had a large nose and a large mouth, with one crooked tooth in her upper jaw. “Señorita, what is your opinion of the books of Felipe Mendoza?”

She looked taken aback. “I do not know, señor,” she said. “I am a good Catholic, and Catholics are not permitted to read his books. That is all I know.”

I sighed. “What do you think about the death of Señor Dalban?”

“They say he was a very evil man. Perhaps his conscience troubled him. Certainly he must have been a great sinner to have killed himself as he did.”

“Suppose, señorita, that a jealous rival of yours were to steal from you everything that means anything to you, everything whereby you make your living — your guitar, your songs — seduced your boy-friend if you have one, so there was no hope for you — what would you do then?”

She frowned, as if trying to decide my purpose in asking such questions. After a moment’s reflection she said virtuously, “I should pray, señor.”

I turned toward her. “Listen, señorita, I am not an inquisitor. I’m just a stranger in Vados who wants to know what people think about all these happenings of the past few days. Consider! Señor Dalban was killed, just as surely as if someone had held the knife with which his throat was cut. His business was ruined, he was plunged suddenly into debts that he couldn’t pay, everything he had worked for all his life was snatched away, not as a visitation from God but because a rival businessman was envious of him. Isn’t envy a sin?”

“Oh, yes, señor! A vile sin!”

“Exactly. Can it be right that somebody like Dalban should have his life’s work destroyed to satisfy a rival’s jealousy?”

She didn’t answer. Probably I was posing her questions which her confessor would regard as highly technical and best left to trained theologians.

“As for the man who was so jealous,” I went on. “You have heard of Señor Arrio?”

“Oh, of course! He is a very good man. My father work in one of his stores; he is assistant manager, and maybe one day he will be manager.” Realization dawned. “You mean — it was Señor Arrio who was so jealous?”

“Of course, Señor Arrio is very rich; Señor Dalban was also quite rich. Naturally they were rivals.”

“That I do not believe,” she said firmly. “Señor Arrio must be a good man. All the people who work for him say so, and he has set up many good stores in our country, not only in Ciudad de Vados.”

“Somebody ask Job’s opinion of that,” I muttered to myself.

“Besides,” she said, as though arriving at an important conclusion, “if Señor Dalban cared more about money than about saving his immortal soul — and he must have if he killed himself merely because he lost his money — he was certainly a wicked man. The love of money is the root of evil.”

“Then who loved money the more — Señor Dalban or Señor Arrio, who took all Dalban’s money away from him although he himself is already very rich?”

That floored her completely; she sat staring wide-eyed at me as if I were stirring her personal cosmos around and around with a spoon, and she had lost all her bearings. I tried another tack.

“You remember Señor Brown, who was killed the other day?”

“Yes, señor. I read about it in the newspaper.”

“What do you actually know about the matter? What do you think he had done?”

She looked down and spoke hesitantly. “Well, señor, everyone knew what Estrelita Jaliscos was like, so what he had done — wel…”

I was about to rescue her from her painful embarrassment when the significance of what she had actually said went through my stupidly thick skull. I almost spilled my drink as I shot forward in my chair.

“Did you say ‘everyone knew’ what she was like?”

“Why, yes!” She put her hand up to her throat as though my violent reaction had made her dizzy. “What is wrong?”

“You did say they knew?” I insisted. “Not ‘everyone knows’? You knew what sort of girl Estrelita Jaliscos was before all this happened? You haven’t come to that idea because of what the bishop has said on television, for example?”