Dr. Brinkley's Tower (10 page)

Once on Mexican soil, Francisco took off his still-damp knapsack and hunted for the picture of Violeta's brother, which was creased and moist and had torn diagonally from the lower left corner to the centre. Again he grinned, albeit bleakly. He had yet to ask a single person whether the muchacho in the picture looked familiar, and already he had survived the death of Antonio Garcia's horse, a murder attempt, a night spent shivering in cold desert scrub, a swim across el Río Grande, and an arrest by the authorities. He was bone-tired and filthy and longed only for the comforts of home.

With some emergency pesos he had sewn into the bottom of his knapsack, he bought himself an order of tacos de menudo and a one-way ticket on a rickety, belching bus that had the words
Jesús Es El Numero Uno
written in blue paint across the sides and front. It took him three and a half hours to return from Piedras Negras, as opposed to the traumatizing thirty-six hours he'd needed to get there. Throughout, he sat between a nun and a Kickapoo Indian who snored like a small breed of dog, his head resting on Francisco's aching shoulder.

Around noon he was dropped on the roadway outside of Corazón de la Fuente, at which point Francisco lowered his gaze, cursed his own failure, and trudged home in the unrelenting sun.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LITTLE PLAZA FACING THE
home of Roberto Pántelas was an old stone well that had provided the original mission-dwellers with water. Spanning the sides of the well was an arch made from hand-cut stone. When building it, the Franciscans had used no mortar or dowelling of any kind: only an exact proportion of weight to height had kept it up through centuries of wind, rain, war, and locust assault. Along the side of the arch was an inscription that, it seemed, had been chiselled by a mason with a paucity of forethought:
God is a fountain, and that fountain is the heart of joy, and that joy is our reminder of the grace of God, and the grace of God is our guiding light in our battle against heathenry and …

The lettering, which had grown so puny that squinting was required to read it, ended there. Still, it was speculated that this inscription had inspired the town's name — Heart of the Fountain — it being patently obvious that there was no other fountain within the municipal limits. There was also no geyser, stream, creek, or reliable puddle — only the distant
gurgle of the Río Grande. For centuries the people of Corazón had relied on the well for water, only to watch their supply turn silty, and then sludgy, and then muddy, until the day came when the famed well of Corazón de la Fuente offered only worms, beetle husks, and the occasional lifeless vole. The rope that serviced it frayed, then broke. Fifty years on, everyone in Corazón (save for Madam Félix, whose brothel benefited from rudimentary plumbing) got their water from a rusty, clanking pump installed north of the village.

The well was now used for a different and, some would say, curious purpose. Residents would stare into its inky depths and reveal their secrets. No one knew quite how this tradition had started, though everyone was in agreement that the Pozo de Confesiones, as it had come to be known, had tranquilizing powers, and that talking to its echoing bottom somehow left one feeling calmed. Francisco Ramirez, as one example, visited the well immediately after returning from his failed search for Violeta Cruz's lost brother. He hung his head into its mushroom-scented depths and confessed that, had he been armed, those two contrabandistas would now be lying dead on the desert floor, their foreheads graced by a bloody third eye, their organs grazed on by buzzards, their eyes plucked out by scavenging beetles, their skin broiled by the relentless heat, their testicles gnawed on by ravenous sidewinders …

Inside his little home, the molinero listened, and grinned. Given the proximity of his living room window to the Pozo, coupled with the way in which the elderly disappear in front of those not beset with old age themselves, he was always the first to hear fresh gossip in town. He was the first to know
that the cantina owner suffered nightmares stemming from the day in which a unit of Villa's army had shot up his cantina and then set it alight after dousing the furniture with prize tequila. He was the first to discover that the hacendero was in love with Madam Félix, and yet could never marry a woman with such a disreputable profession. He was also the first to know whenever one of the Marias got pregnant and had to pay a midnight visit to the curandera, where the unwanted child would be delivered to heaven upon a carpet of magical utterances.

Fortunately, he was a gentleman above all else. It was one of the reasons he had always been so popular with women. He never betrayed secrets or used overheard admissions to gain advantage. It was a pledge that he had made to himself: he would never, ever act upon knowledge gained because of his proximity to the well. It was also a pledge that, after decades of adherence, he would finally disobey.

That evening, one of the town's señoritas, a girl named Laura Velasquez, came to the well. It was a clear night, and the packed white dust of the plazita looked auburn under the desert moon. The molinero watched as she stopped before the well's aperture and, after a moment, began to tremble. A second after that, he could hear her weeping softly. This surprised him. Yes, it was true that physical beauty had not graced Laurita the way it had graced some (well, most) of the town's other señoritas, and that, at the age of twenty-one, she had been a spinster for so long her marrying years were generally considered behind her. It was also true that her teeth were, by any definition, unconventional, and that the mild discomfort they caused her while chewing had
affected her eating habits, rendering her somewhat less than curvaceous.

By the same token, she had always struck the molinero as happy, as the sort of person for whom simple pleasures were sufficient. She was remarkably kind, and the molinero figured that this was the source of her contentment — she was always running errands for the sickly and delivering food to shut-ins and knitting bonnets for newly arrived babies. In the eyes of the old molinero, she was the sort of woman who might have joined a convent and led a life whose rewards included quiet contemplation and a profound connection with God.

And yet here she was, hair lit by moonlight, shoulders shaking with grief, tears dripping down her long, thin nose. It was a sight the molinero could barely stand to witness: in the workings of a small town, the satisfaction of a person like Laura Velasquez functioned as a sort of inspiration for those who were far luckier but who nevertheless considered themselves to be having a bad day. Her inner peacefulness, the molinero understood, functioned as a source of illumination, particularly in difficult times, and the last thing Corazón de la Fuente needed was for this light to be extinguished. Oh no — the pueblo could survive poverty, bloody upheaval, and whatever other ludicrous, blood-soaked indignity Mexican history would dream up next. But he wasn't sure it could survive a dampening of Laura Velasquez's spirits.

In a thin, croaking voice, she asked: — O Jesús, please tell me. Why couldn't I have been pretty?

This was too much for the old Casanova to bear. He stood up from his old, dusty chair — a movement that resulted in cramping, grunts, and shin pain. After feeling for his cane, he
shuffled as quickly as he could towards his bedroom. Sitting on his old, creaking bed, he tucked his nightshirt into a pair of worn, soil-encrusted dungarees. Realizing that Laura could leave at any minute, and that the ability to do anything with rapidity had deserted him sometime during the reign of Benito Juárez, the molinero hurried to pull on his boots. This resulted in the spasming of a muscle in his lower left flank, right where it intersected with his spindly, liver-spotted hip. He swore, rubbed himself, cursed the invention of old age, stabbed the floor with his cane tip, swore again, and then struggled more successfully to his feet. He limped through his small house, checked his snow-white moustache in a dust-coated mirror, and stepped into the street.

Laura Velasquez turned. Her face looked hot.

— Señor Pántelas, she gasped. — I'm sorry I woke …

— Shhh, mija, he responded. — There's no need.

He lowered his head and made towards her. His knees, which hurt him at the best of times, now had a companion in his hip, which was issuing an electric pain through his entire left side. When he reached her he stopped. She sniffled, and once again spoke a few words of apology. He waved them away.

— Señorita Velasquez, he said. — As you can see, I am an old, old man. My eyes are filmy and my knuckles are the size of plums and I have been known to fall asleep in the middle of conversations. Yet I was not always this way. When I was young and muscled and a town could not survive without the contribution of a strong-armed molinero, women would blush when I passed by. On Saturdays I wore a rodeo suit and sang songs about men who saved women from pistoleros and dragons. I was good with words and horses and games requiring
might. I was a man who understood what secrets lurked in the feminine heart, and I understood what words soothed the secret fears of women. Most importantly, I recognized the characteristics of
real
beauty, not the sort of beauty that can do nothing but stare back insipidly from the surface of a mirror.

The molinero stopped to catch his breath. When he next spoke, his voice was a gurgle.

— Do you understand what I am saying? I have watched you since you were a little girl still playing with dolls and tea sets. I have watched the way you treat people, and I have observed you during tranquil moments when you thought no one was looking.

He gestured towards her, his finger pointing to a spot that might have been considered inappropriate on a woman with more bosomy architecture. —
You
, he opined — are by far the most beautiful woman in Corazón de la Fuente.

The next day, around eleven o'clock, the old molinero was in his kitchen, eating stale oatcakes and a jam made from pomegranate seeds. He heard a knock. He rose, crossed his living room, and used his shoulder to push open the door, which had a habit of sticking in all but the driest weather. There stood Laura Velasquez. She was sporting a mild, restrained smile that both conveyed the gentle nature of her soul and concealed the rickety misshapenness of her teeth. In her right hand was a bucket filled with brushes and cloths and bottles. In her left hand was a broom.

The molinero stared at her, blinking. Her smile deepened, and he reflexively backed away from the door. She entered
and looked around, her gaze travelling from wall to wall, from floor to sagging ceiling, from corner to cobwebby corner. Most would have sighed or made some sort of deprecating joke: his was an abode that had clearly not benefited from a feminine touch for many years. Every square centimetre was covered with dust, old newspapers, unwashed glasses, plates crusted with food, and unlaundered clothing. In one corner, near the doorway to his grease-stained outdoor kitchen, was a pile of rusting metal parts that had fallen from the mill itself, which occupied a shed behind the house.

— I'm going to tidy a little, she said. — Está bien?

Already she was lining up her brushes and bottles on his table, in much the same way that a general might arrange a collection of pistols. The molinero was tired that morning, and for some reason his gums hurt. Though his understanding of decorum told him that he shouldn't allow her to do this, he didn't quite have the energy to stop her.

She went to work, humming. Within five minutes she had risen so much dust that the molinero's eyes stung, his oatcakes tasted gritty, and his coffee was swimming with the very flecks of dirt that Laura was, at that moment, banging free from the ceiling with the end of her broom. Between tampings, she said: — Perhaps you would like to take a walk, señor? That way I won't bother you.

It was a typical day in north Coahuila, the sky thickened by sun and the air smelling faintly of creosote. The molinero suddenly felt good to be alive, and those who noticed him ambling towards the plaza remarked that the old man was whistling, and that his gait wasn't quite as halting or as stiff as usual. He sat on a wrought-iron bench opposite the
church and looked up at the marvel that was Brinkley's tower. With its fuselage complete — only the antenna needed to be attached — the tower had already reached a magnificent eighty-five metres, a height so extreme that the molinero could barely make out where the tower ended and the rest of the sky began. As a man who had worked around machinery all of his life, the molinero couldn't help but marvel at the polish of its girders, at the precision of its construction, at its stateliness. Moreover, the tower broadcasted an almost lordly reassurance: Brinkley wouldn't have built it were another war even a remote possibility. People in town felt safer with the tower now hovering above them. He could see it in their faces, in the way they walked, in the ease with which they now smiled.

Lost to feelings of immense contentment, the molinero heard a shuffling
clip-clop.
He looked over, and there was Miguel Orozco limping towards him. Again the molinero grinned. It was just after one in the afternoon, and it was clear that the mayor was already knocking off for the day.

— Qué onda, Roberto?

— No mucho, Miguel.

— Can I join you?

— Claro, said the molinero. — Claro que sí.

— Smoke?

— Sí. Gracias.

The two men lit cigarillos and gazed up at the tower, which considerately blocked the sun from their eyes. They sat puffing, the atmosphere so heavy and still that the smoke hung in the air like dense blue webs. As the heat of the day climbed, both men cultivated a thin film of perspiration on
their brows, on their upper lips, and in the creases of their necks.

— Do you know Laura Velasquez? asked the molinero.

— Of course.

— She's cleaning my house.

— She's an angel. She really is.