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.

In answer to a signal from Vados, Garcia came up to the presidential box to receive congratulations, a waiter appeared with coffee, brandy, and biscuits, and Vados spoke in low tones with Garcia and Diaz. I paid little attention; I was too interested in my own new discovery.

Why should these politicians love chess so much if they were not hankering after just such orderliness and obedience to rule in the real-life government of their people? Chess, so the legend goes, was invented to amuse a prince. To console him for the unpredictability of his subjects? I wondered.

I came back from my reverie to find that Vados was gazing irritably at me. I apologized for not hearing what was said, and he repeated it.

“I was saying, Señor Hakluyt, that I had invited you to dine at Presidential House before your departure, and there is now little time. Would you care to join us and grand master Garcia tomorrow evening?”

“I’d be delighted,” I said. “I’m sorry to appear rude — I was thinking about chess and the art of government, as a matter of fact.”

I spoke in Spanish because I had been addressed in Spanish; the result was that Diaz and Vados together snapped their stares on my face. Taken aback, I glanced from one to the other.

“Really?” said Vados after a pause. “In what connection, may I ask?”

“Well,” I said lamely, “I’m not much of a chess-player, and I’m certainly no politician. I was — uh — thinking that the resemblance is pretty slight, because pieces on a chessboard have to go where they’re put. People are — uh — more difficult to control.”

Diaz relaxed and addressed me directly for the first time. “It comes perhaps as a relief to us to watch a chess match and dream that things might be so well ordered in the sphere of government.”

“Just what I was thinking,” I agreed heartily, and Diaz and Vados exchanged looks. The tension between them sparked almost visibly, like lightning crackling between a cloud and a tree. I guessed that each of them was thinking, “If only we could settle our problems as simply as a match like this…”

“Let us be going, then,” Vados said briskly to his wife, who gave a smile and a nod of ready consent. “Señor Diaz will accompany us, yes?” The dark, ungainly man nodded.

They took effusive leave of the stout woman who was secretary of the chess federation, of Garcia, and lastly of me, with a handshake, an automatic smile, and a quick, “Hasta manana, Señor Hakluyt!”

I stayed, smoking a last cigarette, until another of the four boards broke up, and then left the hall. It was about elevenp.m. The chess federation secretary informed me that the tournament would continue all day and evenings if necessary for the rest of the week, and that the regional finals winners would meet for the national championship the week after next.

“And I suppose the winner is bound to be Pablo Garcia, as usual?” I suggested, when she mentioned the timetable to me.

“I am afraid so,” she sighed. “People begin to lose interest now, because he is so far ahead of all our other players.”

But it didn’t seem to me that people were losing interest. I went back to the hotel and found that everyone except the tourists in residence was in the bar, where the radio was giving a — well, it was hardly a running commentary, but at any rate a report on the match in progress, interrupting a program of recorded music every time a move was made. Manuel had set up four peg-boards behind the bar, and transferred each move to the appropriate board when it was announced.

I’d had enough chess for one evening; I went into the lounge and found that here at least the chess fever was less prevalent. There was one game in progress — Maria Posador was playing against a man I didn’t know — but at least no one was talking about the championships that I could hear.

I kibitzed on Señora Posador’s game until it wound up, and her opponent disappeared for a few minutes. As soon as he had gone, she turned to me with a smile.

“You have had a pleasant evening, Señor Hakluyt?” she inquired.

“I’ve been at the chess match as Vados’s guest,” I said. She nodded noncommittally. “And you enjoyed the play?”

“Not much. I was much more taken with the audience.” And for no other reason than that I felt my discovery was important enough to share with someone, I mentioned the curious division between swarthy and pale which I had noticed in the hall.

“Oh, in some ways you are quite right,” she answered reflectively. “In part the conflict in Ciudad de Vados is a conflict of color. But that is incidental, not central. By the way, I should congratulate you. I have only just realized that you speak very good Spanish — when we first met, I invariably addressed you in English, but now I speak my own language with you and you answer well.”

“I’ve moved around a lot,” I said, shrugging. “I’ve got into the habit of acquiring languages. Arabic, Hindi, a bit of Swahili… But please go on. What do you mean, incidental?”

She spread her graceful hands. “There is no real color problem in Latin America in general, you see. That we have a dark native population and a high proportion of foreign-born citizens with lighter skins is a product of the special circumstances under which Vados founded the city. It aggravates the situation, perhaps. But it did not cause it.”