Air and Fire (24 page)

She ate her breakfast at the table, her robe draped over her shoulders, the pale silk hanging loose against her chemise. It was too hot to bother with the sash, too hot to dress. Beyond the surface of the table, through the window, she could see a section of the coastland. It looked like biscuit; if she reached out and touched it, it would crumble. Above it lay the sea, smooth and dull, the colour of slate. She lifted a slice of pitahaya towards her mouth, one black seed embedded in a strip of redness. She had held her second child on her hand, with Théo calling through the bathroom door. She had stared down at her second child, thinking nothing, only curious, perhaps. That black seed eye, that formless redness. The echo was too faithful. She put the fruit back on the plate and waved a fly away. To bear a child in this town. Her lips twisted in a wry smile. The conception would have to be immaculate. She sat back in the chair, her smile gone. She would not be drawing today, or reading, or embroidering. She would not be doing any of the things that women were supposed to do. She would not be doing anything at all.

The minutes passed with no division. Time had flattened into a single, smooth dimension, like the sea. Nothing separated one minute from another, or one hour from the next. As she stirred a spoonful of molasses into her coffee, her eyes moved to the divan. She reached out, took a
cushion between her hands and, unfastening the pearl buttons one by one, felt deep inside and drew the hidden letter out.

She sat on the window-seat, her legs folded beneath her, the envelope caught between her thumb and her remaining fingers. The ocean filled the window, still and hot and flat.

At last she sat up straighter, reached into the envelope. Unfolded the single sheet of paper it contained. Her eyes travelled through the unfamiliar words, tangling in the loops of some letters, slipping down the tails of others. Not understanding it only fuelled her excitement. Not understanding it, yet knowing what it was.

‘Amor,'
she read.

She saw a man borne down a flight of stairs on an uneven tray of hands. Her belly tightened; a tingling began inside her. The letter slipped from her fingers, swooped to the floor. She lay back. She thought of the point at which the ocean touched the land. The sun beat down outside, reducing everything to silence.

She moved one hand through the opening in her chemise.

Amor,
she thought.

She could feel a welling now, like water in a cup when it is filled too full. That moment just before it overflows. When it seems to tremble, higher than the cup's own lip.

One afternoon she had watched the Indians lifting sections of the church, sweat shining on their bodies, as if they had been coated with silver. The iron panels had been lying in the sun all day. She saw one of the Indians draw his hand back sharply, shake it in the air. They were burning their hands on pieces of Christ. Their bodies partly silver, partly wood. She could almost hear the sizzle of their flesh.

She moved her hand against her skin. Her head pushed back, she felt her breath case past her lips. She was filling a glass of water as slowly as she could. The glass was almost full, but she was still adding water, drop by drop. The water seemed to bulge above the rim. Then she had to hold it there, hold it until she could hold it no longer, until the moment when it spilled, ran slickly down the outside of the glass.

She could tell from the position of the sun that it was afternoon. The shadow of the house lay distorted on the ground. The century plant spread its long three-fingered hand across the hot brown rocks. What she could see through the window at this hour had an artificial quality: a papier mâché landscape, propped up from behind.

She thought of the place that Wilson Pharaoh had described for her. A forest in the desert, an oasis; a place that had three dimensions, even though it only existed in her imagination. She had broached the subject with him a few evenings before, sitting on the veranda of the hotel.

‘You never told me about the water,' she said.

‘Water? What water?'

‘The special water,' she said. ‘At San Ignacio.'

Wilson smiled, his amusement almost fatherly. ‘You haven't forgotten then?'

‘Forgotten? Of course not.'

‘It's fresh water,' he said, ‘kind of green in colour. It's known for its purity. They say it comes from springs high in the mountains.'

She had shivered at the words. It was as if part of her memory had been distilled and stored in his. She thought of the man in Paris and his small glass vial, almost holy in the way in which he wore it like a cross around his neck.

‘You have to remember that the town is surrounded by desert on every side,' Wilson went on, ‘and the desert, the Vizcaino, is merciless. It has killed many people. The water at San Ignacio is the only water for fifty miles around.'

‘Does it have a name?'

‘There's one pool among the palm trees where the water is said to be the sweetest. The Spaniards called it La Candelaria, but that's not the original name. The Indians were there long before. They called it Kadakaamana, which means “valley of the sedges”. It refers to the sedge grass that grows at the edge of the water, long grass, very green, a good deal like rushes. Without that water, the grass wouldn't be there at all.'

‘Kadakaamana.' She was already dreaming of the place.

‘For the Indians it was sacred,' he said. ‘The source of life itself.'

From her seat by the window she could hear the distant notes of a piano coming from the hotel across the street. Only today there was a difference. She began to smile. It was not Bizet's
Carmen
that Wilson was playing. It was ‘La Marseillaise'.

She roused herself and, leaving the haven of the divan, ran up the stairs to dress. She had an idea now and it had swept away her lethargy of the day; energy had come from nowhere in a rush. She was halfway across the street, her parasol spinning on her shoulder, before she remembered the letter that had fallen from her hand and would still be lying on the carpet. She had to hurry back into the house. There the letter was, where she had
abandoned it, unfolded, shameless, an open mouth confessing everything. She snatched it up, pushed it back into the envelope, returned it to its hiding-place inside the cushion. She could not believe that she had been so rash. Chastened, she left the house again, and it was with much greater composure that she set out across the street for the second time.

She had spurned all the muted colours in her wardrobe. Instead she had dressed in a gown of shell-pink foulard, and pale-green gloves with jade buttons. She had soaked a lace handkerchief in her favourite Guerlain. On her shoulder twirled a sunshade crowned with ostrich feathers, its handle finished in Japanese
cloisonné.
She crossed the threshold, stopping just inside the door. The lobby seemed deserted, apart from the man at the piano. Then she caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure, almost liquid, stooping in a sheet of light, the white glare where the corridor ended, where it opened out into the courtyard. But it was just Rodrigo, sweeping. She looked back into the room, which now seemed dark. Wilson noticed her, half-rose from his piano-stool.

‘No, no,' she said. ‘Don't stop.'

She stood at his shoulder and watched him play. Then she took a seat some distance away, by the window. She knew that he had been waiting for her. That the music was incomplete without her. She sat by the window, listening.

It was a while before she spoke.

‘How did you learn it, Wilson?'

‘I found the music in an outhouse back of the hotel. I thought I'd surprise you.'

‘You had better be careful,' she said, ‘or the French will be hiring you to play on special occasions.'

‘Do you think so?' he said, almost hopefully. Then he looked down at his soiled red bandana, his collarless shirt. ‘Not unless I smarten up a bit.'

‘I apologise for last night,' she said.

‘There's no need.'

She looked away from him. ‘I doubt the others will be quite so understanding.'

In the silence that followed she could hear the panting of a train as it struggled up the hillside to the mine. The red velvet drapes on the window smelled of damp.

‘Something else,' he said. ‘Look.' And he spun on the stool and shot out his right leg.

At first she did not see it. Two feet, two boots. There was nothing strange in that. Then she realised, and had to laugh.

‘But that's wonderful,' she said. ‘How does it feel?'

‘Like it belongs to someone else. I still need a stick to get around, but the doctor says it's just a matter of time before that goes too.' He grinned at her from beneath the brim of his hat. ‘The expedition you had in mind,' he said, ‘it won't be long now.' He swivelled on his stool and launched into the first bars of ‘La Marseillaise' once more.

She waited until he reached the part he did not know, until he stumbled, then she stood up and walked towards him. ‘Wilson?'

‘Yes?'

‘You speak Spanish, don't you?'

He took his hands off the keys. ‘You could say that.'

‘Can you read it?'

‘Pretty much.'

‘Do you think you could translate something for me? From Spanish into English?'

‘Depends what it is.'

‘It's a letter.'

‘That shouldn't be a problem. What kind of letter is it?'

She stood behind him, studying the music that lay open on the stand. She could hear Rodrigo's broom on the tiles at the far end of the corridor. A kind of pendulum, measuring a time that passed more slowly.

‘What do you like to eat?' she asked.

‘To eat?' Wilson glanced up at her.

‘Yes. What's your favourite food?'

He looked down, thought for a moment. ‘Steak, I guess. Though it's months since I had it.' He glanced up at her again. ‘Why?'

She turned away. She supposed that she could always ask Rodrigo. He ought to be able to get her some. His brother worked in the hotel kitchens.

She did not look back until she reached the door. Wilson was still sitting at the piano, and she could see from the angle of his head that he was confused.

She smiled across the room at him. ‘Come to lunch the day after tomorrow,' she said. ‘I'll cook some steak for you.'

Early the next morning Wilson was leaving the Hotel La Playa when he heard somebody call his name. He turned to see Monsieur Valence striding towards him, dressed in his usual black frock-coat, with his usual white umbrella hoisted in the air above his head. Less usual was the pair of cracked and dusty riding boots that he was wearing.

‘Good morning, Monsieur,' the Frenchman said.

Wilson returned the greeting, and then stood back and allowed himself a smile. ‘I see you've developed some more practical footwear.'

Valence surveyed his feet with faint embarrassment. It was as if he had been caught in fancy-dress.

‘Soon you'll be wearing spurs,' Wilson said.

‘Spurs?' The reference was lost on Valence. Then he understood, and shook his head. ‘Ah yes. The Mexican.' A smile crossed his face, but only remotely, like a man on a horse seen from a distance, traversing a stretch of open prairie. He looked up, some as yet unrevealed weight behind his steady gaze. ‘I thought, perhaps, that you might join me for a drink,' he said, ‘if there is a bar in the vicinity.'

The only bar in the vicinity, Wilson told him, was the Bar El Fandango where, if you did not drink with the greatest caution, you were liable to lose consciousness and wake up in the bed of a woman you had never seen before.

‘Perhaps a coffee then,' said Monsieur Valence.

Wilson led him down the street towards the waterfront, which was where he had been intending to go in the first place. They walked side by side with the ease of men who knew each other's measure and did not feel the need to stamp their own authority upon the silence. It was only when they drew close to the pale-brown wall of Mama Vum Buá's establishment that Valence stopped short, his face twisted out of shape by something that resembled dismay – or stronger than dismay, maybe, more like alarm.

‘I cannot go here,' he announced.

When Wilson asked him the reason, he explained that he had been poisoned during his last visit to Señora Vum Buá's place and that he no longer trusted anything that she produced.

‘A coffee.' Wilson spread one hand in the air. ‘Surely a coffee cannot hurt.'

Some private war was being waged inside the Frenchman; his face had stiffened with the conflict. At last he took a deep breath and sighed. ‘I suppose not,' he said.

Wilson sat down at the table beneath the tree. Valence settled gingerly beside him, as if he feared the chair itself might infect him with some terrible disease. The Señora was standing in the doorway with her arms folded. Her face had darkened, and she had bound her hair in three tight braids which jutted from her head like weapons. Wilson wished her good morning and ordered two cups of coffee.

Arms still folded, the Señora seemed to grow in size and stature before his eyes. Then she spoke:

‘No.'

He stared at her. The Yaqui Indians were often named after their physical characteristics. Vum Buá meant ‘high rock', but it could also be used to refer to a mountain. It was certainly appropriate this morning.

‘I'm not serving that man.' She would not even look at Monsieur Valence. Instead, she rolled her head to one side and spat on the ground.

‘Why not?' Wilson asked.

‘He insulted my food.'

So that was it. Wilson thought it best to improvise.

‘It was a mistake. He's come here today to make amends,' Wilson said, ‘by drinking a cup of your good coffee.'

He sensed a lessening of tension in her stance.

‘Señora,' he pleaded. ‘Two cups of coffee.'

At last she withdrew into the dark interior. He could see her twelve rings moving supernaturally about.