'Did you come to El Salvador to see the football game?'
'Yes,'I said.
The San Salvador railway station was at the end of a torn-up section of road in a grim precinct of the city. My ticket was collected by a man in a pork-pie hat and sports shirt, who wore an old-fashioned revolver on his hip. The station was no more than a series of cargo sheds, where very poor people were camped, waiting for the morning train to Cutuco: the elderly and the very young - it seemed to be the pattern of victims in Central American poverty. Alfredo had given me the name of a hotel and said he would meet me there an hour before kick-off, which was nine o'clock. The games were played late, he said, because by then it wasn't so hot. But it was now after dark and the humid heat was choking me. I began to wish that I had not left Santa Ana. San Salvador, prone to earthquakes, was not a pretty place; it sprawled, it was noisy, its buildings were charmless, and in the glare of headlights were buoyant particles of dust. Why would anyone come here? 'Don't knock it,' an American in San Salvador told me. 'You haven't seen Nicaragua yet!'
Alfredo was late. He blamed the traffic: There will be a million people at the stadium.' He had brought along some friends, two boys who, he boasted, were studying English.
'How are you doing?' I asked them in English.
'Please?' said one. The other laughed. The first one said in Spanish, 'We are only on the second lesson.'
Because of the traffic, and the risk of car-thieves at the stadium, Alfredo parked half a mile away, at a friend's house. This house was worth some study; it was a number of cubicles nailed to trees, with the leafy branches descending into the rooms. Cloth was hung from sticks to provide walls, and a strong fence surrounded it. I asked the friend how long he had lived there. He said his family had lived in the house for many years. I did not ask what happened when it rained.
But poverty in a poor country had subtle gradations. We walked down a long hill towards the stadium, and crossing a bridge I looked into a gorge expecting to see a river and saw lean-tos and cooking fires and lanterns. Who lived there? I asked Alfredo.
'Poor people,' he said.
Others were walking to the stadium, too. We joined a large procession of quick-marching fans, and as we drew closer to the stadium they began yelling and shoving in anticipation. The procession swarmed over the foothills below the stadium, crashing through people's gardens and thumping the fenders of stalled cars. Here the dust was deep and the trampling feet of the fans made it rise until it became a brown fog, like a sepia print of a mob scene, with the cones of headlights bobbing, in it. The mob was running now, and Alfredo and his friends were obscured by the dust cloud. Every ten feet, boys rushed forward and shook tickets at me, screaming, 'Suns! Suns! Suns!'
These were the touts. They bought the cheapest tickets and sold them at a profit to people who had neither the time nor the courage to stand in a long rowdy line at a ticket window. The seat-designations were those usual at a bullfight: Suns were the cheapest, bleacher seats; Shades were more expensive ones under the canopy.
I fought my way through the touts and, having lost Alfredo, made my way uphill to the kettle-shaped stadium. It was an unearthly sight, the crowd of people emerging from darkness into luminous brown fog, the yells, the dust rising, the mountainside smouldering under a sky which, because of the dust, was starless. At that point, I considered turning back; but the mob was propelling me forward towards the stadium where the roar of the spectators inside made a sound like flames howling in a chimney.
The mob took up this cry and surged past me, stirring up the dust. I'here were women frying bananas and meat-cakes over fires on the walkway that ran around the outside perimeter of the stadium. The smoke from these fires and the dust made each searchlight seem to burn with a smoky flame. The touts reappeared nearer the stadium. They were hysterical now. The game was about to start; they had not sold their tickets. They grabbed my arms, they pushed tickets in my face, they shouted.
One look at the lines of people near the ticket windows told me that I would have no chance at all of buying a ticket legally. I was pondering this question when, through the smoke and dust, Alfredo appeared.
Take your watch off,' he said. 'And your ring. Put them in your pocket. Be very careful. Most of these people are thieves. They will rob you.'
I did as I was told. 'What about the tickets? Shall we buy some Suns from these boys?'
'No, I will buy Shades.'
'Are they expensive?'
'Of course, but this will be a great game. I could never see such a game in Santa Ana. Anyway, the Shades will be quieter.' Alfredo looked around. 'Hide over there by the wall. I will get the tickets.'
Alfredo vanished into the conga line at a ticket window. He appeared again at the middle of the line, jumped the queue, elbowed forward and in a very short time had fought his way to the window. Even his friends marvelled at his speed. He came towards us smiling, waving the tickets in triumph.
We were frisked at the entrance; we passed through a tunnel and emerged at the end of the stadium. From the outside it had looked like a kettle; inside, its shape was more of a salver, a tureen filled with brown screeching faces. In the centre was a pristine rectangle of green grass.
It was, those 45,000 people, a model of Salvadorean society. Not only the half of the stadium where the Suns sat (and it was jammed: not an empty seat was visible); or the better-dressed and almost as crowded half of the Shades (at night, in the dry season, there was no difference in the quality of the seats: we sat on concrete steps, but ours, being more expensive than the Suns, were less crowded); there was a section that Alfredo had not mentioned: the Balconies. Above us, in five tiers of a gallery that ran around our half of the stadium, were the Balcony people. Balcony people had season tickets. Balcony people had small rooms, cupboard-sized, about as large as the average Salvadorean's hut; I could see the wine bottles, the glasses, the plates of food. Balcony people had folding chairs and a good view of the field. There were not many Balcony people - two or three hundred - but at $2,000 for a season ticket in a country where the per capita income was $373 one could understand why. The Balcony people faced the screaming Suns and, beyond the stadium, a plateau. What I took to be lumpish multi-coloured vegetation covering the plateau was, I realized, a heap of Salvadoreans standing on top or clinging to the sides. There were thousands of them in this mass, and it was a sight more terrifying than the Suns. They were lighted by the stadium glare; there was a just-perceptible crawling movement among the bodies; it was an ant-hill.
National anthems were played, amplified songs from scratched records, and then the game began. It was apparent from the outset who would win. Mexico was bigger, faster, and seemed to follow a definite strategy; El Salvador had two ball-hoggers, and the team was tiny and erratic. The crowd hissed the Mexicans and cheered El Salvador. One of the Salvadorean ball-hoggers went jinking down the field, shot and missed. The ball went to the Mexicans, who tormented the Salvadoreans by passing it from man to man and then, fifteen minutes into the game, the Mexicans scored. The stadium was silent as the Mexican players kissed one another.
Some minutes later the ball was kicked into the Shades section. It was thrown back into the field and the game was resumed. Then it was kicked into the Suns section. The Suns fought for it; one man gained possession, but he was pounced upon and the ball shot up and ten Suns went tumbling after it. A Sun tried to run down the steps with it. He was caught and the ball wrestled from him. A fight began, and now there were scores of Suns punching their way to the ball. The Suns higher up in the section threw bottles and cans and wadded paper on the Suns who were fighting, and the shower of objects - meat pies, bananas, hankies - continued to fall. The Shades, the Balconies, the Anthill watched this struggle.