Air and Fire

Chapter 1

The sea had turned red overnight.

Suzanne faced into the early morning breeze, her hands curling round the cool metal of the rail. She was standing on the narrow deck above the midship’s house, the funnel towering behind her, a crop of ashes drifting downwards through the air. It was shortly after dawn on the 17th of April. She had been on board ship for more than three months. Her hands tightened on the rail, and she looked down. An infinity of red water, shifting and tilting under a pale sky.

There would be an explanation, of course. Some refraction of the light peculiar to the tropics. Or perhaps they were passing through the grounds of some great carnage: whales slaughtered for their fat, or seals for their skins. Though, strangely, it was men that she could see, an army of men laid out in rows, the blood draining from their wounds, spiralling upwards through the water, until at last each individual vein was empty. Then their skin would shine like snow and the ocean would glow above their heads, red as a basket of geraniums. She faced into the breeze once more, smoke from the steamer’s funnel unwinding across the sky. There would be an explanation. Someone would know.

They were sailing due north now, into the Sea of Cortez, and the southern tip of California had appeared on the port bow, a long talon of volcanic rock pointing out across the water. It belonged to Mexico, though Mexico showed little interest in it; it was a land adrift, peopled by Indians and half-breeds — and now, she thought, by the French as well. She strained her eyes to take in every detail. The soil was the colour of an autumn leaf, somewhere between brown and gold. The ridges looked sharp to the touch. And scarcely a trace of vegetation to be seen. Brown land, red water. Paris had been left so far behind.

Altering her grip on the rail, she thought back to a summer morning the year before, late summer, one of the last days of August. The windows of the drawing-room stood open and she could hear doves murmuring in the garden. She even knew which dress she had been wearing — a white satin gown striped with bands of black velvet. The dress had been a gift from Théo, her husband. He had chosen it on account of its short sleeves which were fashionable that year and which also, so he said, showed off the beauty of her arms.

It must have been a Sunday since they were taking breakfast together at the octagonal table by the window. She could recall the exact moment, her hands closing round the handle of their silver coffee-pot. She could still feel the carved vines against the inside of her fingers as she leaned forwards to fill his cup, as she listened to herself pronounce the words that she had been planning:

‘I’d like to come with you, Théo.’

The curtains shifted as a draught moved into the room. The air smelled of leaves as they begin to decay, that first hint of change.

Théo contemplated her across the table. It was a look that she remembered from their first meeting in the parlour of her parents’ house in Dieppe. It seemed to pause on her face and then pass through; she might have been transparent, made of glass.

Though her announcement had caught him unawares, she could see that he was in no doubt as to what she was referring to. She met his eyes, and her gaze did not waver. She wanted him to know that her request was in earnest.

‘And what do you propose to do about the house?’ he asked, his voice poised, almost light, his alarm exquisitely disguised.

‘I have spoken to Madame Marcelline.’ Madame Marcelline, their housekeeper, had been in their employ ever since they were married. ‘She would be happy to take care of things while we’re away.’

This did nothing to quell Théo’s uneasiness; perhaps he even sensed a conspiracy. ‘It will occupy the best part of a year,’ he reminded her, ‘when you consider the voyages out and back.’

‘Which is a long time,’ she said, ‘to be separated from the man you love.’

Smiling faintly, he let his eyes wander across the cool satin elegance of her dress and then out into the comfort of the room in which they sat.

‘It will be primitive,’ he warned her.

‘Dieppe,’ she said, ‘was primitive.’

Less than a month later she was ordering six gowns, three of foulard, three of mousseline-de-soie, fabrics that would be ideal, her dressmaker said, for a lady living in what she called ‘the torrid zone’. Two months after that, she watched dust-sheets settle on the furniture, imitating the snow that had fallen in the night and now lay on the trees and rooftops that she could see through the window.

She heard a whistling behind her, soft and low, almost the same pitch as the ship’s engines. The cabin-boy’s face rose into view, his eyes scanning the narrow deck.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody else about.’

It had become a ritual, to meet him here at dawn, the ropes knocking and tapping against the mast, the cluster of white ventilators breathing their warm steam into the air. Sometimes they would talk; other times they would just lean against the rail and feel the soothing beat of the propellor and watch the water fold away from the side of the ship.

‘You couldn’t sleep, Madame?’

‘I didn’t want to sleep.’ She looked down into his face, his features gathered tightly, almost braced, his dark curls corkscrewing in the breeze. ‘Did you see the water?’

He nodded.

‘What is it?’ she asked him.

‘I don’t know. I saw something like it once before, but that was off Java.’ Only twelve years old, but he had sailed the circumference of the world three times. He seemed burdened by experience, wearied, aged by it. She often wished that she could give him back some portion of his childhood. ‘It could be weed, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘You see so many strange things.’

So many strange things.

Two nights ago she had been returning from a dinner in the Captain’s quarters with Théo when a member of the crew scuttled from the shadows, plucking at Théo’s sleeve with fingers that were callused, black with grease. ‘Monsieur,’ he whispered, ‘we’re entering a land where legends are born.’ And then, as Théo prised the sordid fingers loose, ‘You won’t believe your eyes.’

Later, in the safety of their cabin, Théo dismissed the encounter. He had travelled by sea many times before, and he was familiar with the superstitious nature of sailors. They would sit on deck late into the night, he said, and hypnotise each other with tales of planets that dropped sizzling into the ocean and fish with the eyes and breasts of women.

‘It’s all nonsense, of course,’ he said. ‘And besides, did you not notice, the fellow smelt most unmistakably of liquor. Why, he was almost drowning in the stuff!’

Suzanne did not dispute this and yet she had to admit, to herself, not to Théo, that the sailor’s words had thrilled her.

Théo stood by the porthole, frowning.

‘Isn’t it more likely,’ he said, turning to her once again, ‘that we’re simply entering a place about which much remains unknown, a place where the imagination, especially, it would seem, the imagination of sailors, can take hold and run riot?’ He stood over her, his face lit with exhilaration at the clarity and precision of his reasoning.

‘It’s more likely,’ she said, ‘yes.’

Though it occurred to her, as she smiled up at him, as he took her hand in his and touched it to his lips, that they were already in a place where the imagination, to use his phrase, had taken hold. That she was even there at all, sitting in the cabin of a ship that was bound for Mexico, was the purest act of the imagination. Hers, not his; he would never have been able to imagine it, had she not compelled him to.

The cabin-boy jumped. When she turned to look at him, he was standing with his head tipped at an angle, his toes gripping the deck.

‘I thought I heard something,’ he said.

Not for the first time during the voyage, Suzanne realised her debt to the boy. The SS Korrigan was a tramp steamer. It was in the business of carrying cargo, and its crew was unused to passengers — unused, especially, to women. Monsieur Groque, the Captain, would address her during meals or on the bridge, but he had to labour to produce even a few civilities, and it was no surprise to her that he reverted to the most foul language the moment her back was turned. As a woman she was, at best, a source of discomfort and inhibition. At worst, she was invisible — no, worse than invisible: a jinx, an evil omen, a pariah. Only the cabin-boy would speak to her with any measure of normality, though he had sworn her to secrecy, fearing what the crew might do to him if they found out. She had kept her promise, and nobody knew of their assignations, not even Théo; still, the boy’s head swivelled at every creak.

At last he satisfied himself that nobody was calling him. He seemed to uncoil, his muscles loosening against his bones. He was like a dead thing coming back to life.

‘When do we arrive?’ she asked. ‘Tomorrow, isn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘Midday.’

‘So we can see each other one more time,’ she said, ‘and by then one of us will know. About the water, I mean.’

He moved to the rail beside her, and his head dipped on his neck. ‘What will you do there,’ he asked, ‘in Santa Sofia?’

‘My husband’s building a church.’

‘Is he a priest?’

She laughed. ‘No, he’s an engineer.’

The cabin-boy ran his hand along the rail, following a sudden twist in the metal. It had buckled during their passage round Cape Horn. That same night a wave had snatched one of the lifeboats from its cradle. They had not seen the lifeboat again.

‘He builds things,’ she added. ‘Out of metal.’

‘Metal? Why metal?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps because it lasts.’

‘Suzanne?’

The voice had come from below.

‘It’s him,’ she whispered. ‘My husband.’

But the cabin-boy was already slipping through the narrow gap between the ventilators.

She crossed to the stair-head and peered down. Théo stood at the foot of the steps in a dressing-gown and leather slippers, his black hair still disarranged by sleep.

‘In heaven’s name, Suzanne. What are you doing up there?’

It was at moments like this that she could feel the fifteen years that lay between them. She did not see the difference in age as an obstacle, however; she saw it only as a place where irony could happen, a gap that tenderness could close. She knew that she had disconcerted him — ladies of her station ought not to climb ladders — but she decided to make light of it.

‘Have you noticed the water, Théo?’

He had not.

‘Take a look,’ she said.

But Théo did not move towards the rail. He remained at the foot of the stairs; he seemed suddenly to be plunged in thought. ‘I think I’ll write a letter,’ he said.

‘A letter? Who to?’

‘Monsieur Eiffel.’ He looked up at her again and she saw that he was smiling. ‘I shall inform him that my wife has turned into a monkey.’

Laughing, she began her precarious descent.

She slept late on the morning of their arrival. By the time she woke, Théo had already dressed. He was wearing his black frock-coat and a pair of elegant pale-grey trousers, and he carried a malacca cane with a carved silver head. They would be landing in three hours, he reminded her.

They took breakfast on the bridge, accompanied by the Captain, the Quartermaster and the Chief Engineer. The usual food was served: dry biscuits, fried eggs sliding on a bed of grease, coffee with no milk. Though it was the last meal of a long and perilous voyage, there was no sense of occasion. If they had been putting into Hong Kong or Shanghai, perhaps it would have been different — but Santa Sofía? Perhaps, after all, there was nothing to celebrate. They ate in silence; the ship steamed northwards, its metal plates vibrating gently.

The Captain hunched over the table, as if his breakfast were a mirror and he were studying his reflection. Suzanne watched him fork a dripping yolk into his mouth, the web of muscle pulsing in the thin flesh of his temple. She had to speak, if only to distract herself from her disgust.

‘I wondered if you’d be good enough, Captain,’ she said, ‘to explain what has happened to the sea.’

The Captain stopped chewing. His eyes lifted, pale, faintly mocking, empty of intelligence. ‘I beg your pardon, Madame.’

‘The sea’s red,’ she said. ‘I wondered why.’

‘Scared you, did it?’

Suzanne looked away. There was so much that she did not know, and the Captain seemed to take pleasure in seeing her ignorance confirmed — not only confirmed, in fact, but reinforced. During the past three months she had often asked him if she might be shown the stokehold or the engine-room. He would grunt, invent excuses, prevaricate. The ship was a mystery to her, and he had set himself up as guardian of that mystery. It was entirely typical of his behaviour that, though it was she who had enquired about the sea, it was to Théo that he directed his reply.

It transpired that the change in colour was caused by a myriad of tiny organisms floating just below the surface. As a natural phenomenon, it was customary for the time of year, though it led, he said, to ‘a great many tall tales’. There was once a tribe of Indians, for instance, who believed that it was a sign from the gods, instructing them to make a human sacrifice.

‘They thought the sea had turned to blood.’ The Captain grinned. ‘Savages,’ he said, and, picking up his fork, he pierced the skin on his second egg.

Théo pursued the subject with the Captain, for he too was eager to acquire some knowledge of the region, but Suzanne found, in any case, that she could no longer listen. The inside of her head was slowly turning, as if she had been fastened to a wheel. Heat rose off her in a blast. She had to concentrate on the table, the stains and burns, the ridges in the grain of the wood.

She had been married to Théo for more than five years and they still did not have any children. She had miscarried twice. Théo did not know. The first time it happened, she had not even realised that she was pregnant. She had been walking down the stairs when she felt something break inside her, run down her legs. She stood in the hallway and lifted her skirts. The blood had filled her shoes.

She wrapped all her clothes in old copies of the newspaper and left the house. It was evening. The sky had filled with stunned light; the streets lay dark and still beneath. She set off towards Les Halles and did not stop until she found a brazier that contained a few glowing embers. It was a place where five roads met, but she saw no one. She dropped her bundle into the flames. Watched the paper catch, the clothes begin to blacken. Every now and then she stirred the fire with a stick from the gutter. She stayed until she was certain that nothing remained. It took a long time. Her shoes were glazed kid; they would not seem to burn. At last she returned to the house and took to her bed, saying that she was ill.

Some days later, when Théo asked her about the dress — it was one that he had bought for her, from her favourite shop on Rue de la Paix — she told him that she had lost it. ‘Lost it?’ he said. ‘How could you lose a dress?’ But she had run out of words. All she could do was shrug and turn away.

‘Are you not feeling well, my dear?’

This question coincided with her thoughts so neatly that, for one moment, she could not be certain where she was. Then, looking up, she remembered and had to invent an excuse.

‘It’s just the heat, Théo.’

‘This is nothing,’ the Captain said. ‘Wait till July.’

‘Do you need some air?’ Théo asked her.

She summoned a smile for him. ‘I feel fine. How long until we arrive?’

Théo studied her for a moment longer then he reached up with his napkin and dabbed his mouth. ‘An hour.’ He turned to the Captain for corroboration.

‘Aye,’ the Captain murmured. ‘Close enough.’

‘Then we ought to be able to see the town by now,’ she said and, leaving her chair, she launched herself towards the window that overlooked the bow.

But she could only see the land stretching away in both directions, a land stripped of all adornment, musty and jagged.

Then she noticed a cloud to the north-west, a thin white cloud that lay perfectly horizontal in the air. It was so straight, it might have been drawn with a ruler; Théo might have been responsible for it. Looking more closely, she realised that it was not a cloud at all. It was smoke, rising in thin columns from the land below. She could just make out two chimneys, some huddled buildings, the dark arm of a harbour wall.

‘I can see it,’ she cried.

The two men joined her at the window.

‘Aye, that’s it,’ the Captain said, ‘godforsaken hole that it is.’

But Théo was smiling.

‘At last,’ he murmured. ‘The work can begin.’

Chapter 2

SS Korrigan

17th April, 189–

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

I wrote to you from Panama in January and again from Santiago some weeks later, but as I have little faith in either of the two postal services, I am writing to you once more on the assumption that this is the first that you have heard of me.

That I should mention Santiago at all will no doubt cause you some concern since our original plan, as I am sure you remember, was to put in at Panama, transport the church by rail to the west coast and then proceed northwards by steamer into Mexican waters. This plan was thwarted owing to the untimely dynamiting of a government train by a notorious group of revolutionaries. Any assessments as to when the line might once again be operational were vague, to say the least. After a conference with the Captain of the SS Korrigan I decided that it would be as well to continue south, reaching Mexico by way of Cape Horn. Though it would add two months to our journey it seemed the course of action that would offer least threat to our cargo which was, after all, our primary concern. Before too long I was to regret this decision, for we encountered the most ferocious storm, not only ferocious but persistent too, lasting, as it did, a full seventeen days. A section of the bulkhead split, and it seemed at one moment as if we all might perish. It was during that day that we sighted another vessel struggling, like we were, against the elements; it is difficult to express the degree of succour that it afforded us, to know that other men were sharing the same dangers, the same exhaustion.

Suffice to say that we survived the rigours of Cape Horn. On the 2nd of March we put into Santiago for extensive repairs, and it struck me then as an immense irony that, had the National Assembly supported the Panama Canal project, as you supported it, out of a sense of duty to the nation, we might have been spared many of the hardships of the preceding two months. Our sojourn in Santiago was, in many respects, delightful, but it was a relief to be under way once more. Our passage up the coast of South America was accomplished without incident, and the first day of April found us lying off Mexico. They say that one knows when one is entering the Gulf of California on account of the numerous sea serpents that appear in the waters alongside one’s vessel, but, I must say, I have noticed no such phenomenon. Is it not more likely that we are simply entering a part of the world about which much remains unknown, a part of the world where the imagination — especially, it would seem, the imagination of sailors — can take hold and run riot? They were eager to assure me that it was a fact, that the serpents had been seen. I pointed downwards through the floor. ‘In the hold of this ship,’ I said, ‘there are two thousand, three hundred and forty-eight component parts which, when assembled, will fit together with the greatest perfection. That, gentlemen,’ I said, ‘is a fact.’ Sea serpents or no, we will arrive at our final destination this morning, some four months after leaving Le Havre.

You may remember that I was anxious regarding my wife’s desire to join me on this undertaking. I need not have worried. She has acquitted herself admirably. After my many attempts to discourage her, mentioning, above all, the very real danger to her health, it will no doubt amuse you to hear that she has proved to be a far better sailor than her husband. While I lay below deck, prostrated by the most tenacious bouts of seasickness, she was usually to be found up on the bridge, sketching! She knows that I am writing to you and asks me to convey her most respectful regards. Please accept mine also, with your customary kindness, and know that I am, as always, your humble and obedient servant,

Théophile Valence.

Chapter 3

Wilson Pharaoh dreamed that all his veins were filled with gold; he only had to cut his wrists and he would be rich.

Awake, there was a moment when he still believed the dream. That he could take his hunting-knife and open up a vein. That gold would pour in liquid abundance from the wound. He had seen maps of his own body, drawn up by a mining company of international repute. He had seen the proof with his own eyes.

He lay still, limbs swimming heavily at some distance from his body. Mosquitoes hung in the air. They were greedier here than anywhere that he had ever been. Kill one in the morning and you could watch your blood spring clear across the room.

His eyes moved along one edge of a green tin ceiling, down a yellow wall. This was not his hotel. He turned his head slowly on the pillow, discovered a girl sleeping beside him. One glimpse of that narrow face, that cataract of coarse black hair, and his memory returned.

He saw Pablo Fernández wiping the counter with a rag, his eyebrows reaching high on to his forehead and curving slightly, like the arms on spectacles. Pablo ran the Bar El Fandango, a cantina at the back of town. He also owned the hotel where Wilson was staying.

‘There’s a couple of men here say Americans can’t drink.’ Pablo slid the words casually past his thin dark lips, his eyes angled sideways and downwards.

Wilson glanced along the bar. The couple of men in question were Indians. Men hired by the company to mine copper. Men who carried future grievance in their bellies like an embryo. They were Seri Indians, famous for their treachery: you could never read their faces, but you could be sure that one of them would have a knife.

Wilson could not back down or walk away. He knew it, and Pablo knew it too. He could think of few distances more dangerous than the distance between the bar of El Fandango and the door. At least twenty men had perished in the space of those few yards. So there was really only one response:

‘Line them up, Pablo.’

He had been drawn into a contest that lasted half the night. They drank cactus liquor from tin mugs, with strips of salted fish to take away the taste. Pablo distilled the liquor himself, in a shack behind the bar. The first shot lowered your voice an octave. The second almost blinded you.

There followed a bewildering sequence of events, one of the last of which would have been Wilson’s delivery to the mildewed sheets of none other than La Huesuda, the skinniest whore in the Gulf of California — she was so skinny, you could gather her in your arms like a bundle of sticks. She was short too; her shoulder knocked against your hip-bone if you walked together down a street. It had been agreed in the cantina that whoever lost the contest would be expected to spend the night with her, all expenses paid. Wilson could not remember losing, though he supposed he must have. Not remembering and losing were two horses that pulled the same cart.

He leaned on one elbow, looking down. From her hairline to her nostrils was one long curve, except for a slight dip that signified the bridge of her nose. Her mouth had fallen open, as neat as that first notch you cut in the trunk of a tree before you set about the work of felling it; the breath sizzled past her teeth like lard heating in a skillet. He was looking down at her with some curiosity. She claimed to be descended from a tribe of Amazons who, according to legend, had once ruled the waters of the gulf. They were believed to have captured men in order that they might breed from them. Afterwards the men were put to death. Dressed in black pearls that had been threaded on lengths of wild flax, the Amazons would dance until the moon changed shape, and it was said that the thunder of their feet could be heard for miles around, and on the mainland too. Nobody could ignore that sound. Women carved holes in cactus plants, hollowed out the middles and hid their man inside. Even to this day, if they heard a storm coming, the Indians would often hide their men.

La Huesuda did not dance on beaches, nor had she been known to put men to death — business was slow enough already, God knows — but she did christen herself Pearl, which was in keeping with her lineage, and she painted the name on the wall of her house in letters so tall that they could be read from a ship anchored in the harbour. The people of the town were not impressed. They saw less with their imaginations than their eyes. They called her La Huesuda which, literally translated, meant ‘the Bony One’. Though her nostrils shrank whenever the name was used, she could often be found in Mama Vum Buá’s establishment on the waterfront, eating plates of jerked beef and refried beans in an attempt to put on the inches that would bring with them not only trade, but credibility as well. For as José Ramón, the customs officer, said, if she was descended from a tribe of giant women, then how come she was only four feet eleven?

A ship’s horn sounded, long and mournful.

La Huesuda murmured something, licked her lips, but did not wake. Wilson Pharaoh quietly left the bed.

Unlatching the shuttered door, he pushed it wide and stepped on to a small balcony that overlooked the port.

It was early morning. The water, tight and pale, glittered in the harsh light. Boys were diving off the south quay. Dogs pushed blunt muzzles into piles of trash.

Another low moan from the ship’s horn. Wilson shielded his eyes against the glare. A steamer edged past the headland, trailing smoke across an otherwise clean sky. He wondered if they could read her name yet. He wondered if they could see him standing on her balcony like some advertisement.

‘Hey! American!’

He faced back into the room. La Huesuda was leaning on her elbow, her black hair sliding sideways past one shoulder and down on to the stained pillow.

‘Did you pay me yet?’

‘The others,’ he said. ‘They paid you.’

‘How much did they pay me?’

He was almost ashamed to answer, and his shame took the shape of courtesy. ‘I believe it was twenty pesos, ma’am.’

‘Ma’am?’ She let out a rasp of laughter. A pelican lifted, startled, from a nearby roof. ‘If you like,’ she said, ‘you can have me again.’

He stared at her. He was not sure that he had even had her once; in fact, he was rather hoping that he had not.

She mistook his alarm for hesitation. ‘Half-price,’ she said, ‘since it’s morning.’

He leaned against the balcony, his arms spread along the warm wood of the rail, and shook his head. ‘Thank you kindly,’ he said, ‘but no.’

‘I’m too skinny for you, is that it?’

There was a sudden crack, and then a splintering. The sky tilted, shrank; the doorway jumped into the air. Then Wilson was struck square in the back.

For a moment his vision blackened and he could not breathe. There was no feeling in his body. He hauled some air into his lungs, and let it out. Then hauled some more.

He looked round. He was lying in the street with pieces of timber splayed out around him, like rays around a sun.

‘Holy Mother of Jesus,’ came a voice from above. ‘My balcony.’

Slowly he sat up. Everything was very quiet. The town seemed clear to him for the first time, both in its nature and its promise. He felt he could see through it, as if through glass, to what it held; he felt that it would yield.

A ball of dried mule-dung rebounded off his shoulder. Two of the Vum Buá girls stood at the corner of Avenida Aljez and showed him their tongues. He managed a smile. It scared them, and they fled. Somewhere up above, La Huesuda was still running through a list of saints and martyrs, anyone, in fact, who was even remotely connected with Christ. There were also some names that he did not recognise. These would be gods of her own, he supposed. Amazons, no doubt.

In climbing to his feet, he almost fell. It appeared, after all, that he had hurt himself.

‘Hey, American,’ La Huesuda shouted. ‘What about my balcony?’

He squinted up at her, with her chicken’s legs and her eyes of mingled green and brown, like the skins of over-ripe avocados.

‘If you’d fucked me like a man,’ she shouted, ‘none of this would’ve happened.’

Shutters were beginning to open further down the street.

He tried to hold his patience together. ‘I’d be grateful,’ he said slowly, ‘if you would throw me my clothes.’

There was a long moment while she stared down at him through narrowed eyes, then she withdrew. His clothes flew from the dark hole of her room like dirt scratched by a cat. He began to dress. His right ankle was already swelling, so he did not bother with his boots.

‘Where are you going?’ La Huesuda shouted as he limped away.

‘Where do you think?’ he replied.

The only doctor in town was a Frenchman by the name of Bardou, and he lived on the Mesa del Norte. All the French people lived up there. It was cooler. There was one main street, known as the Calle Francesa, and a small square with wrought-iron benches and a lemon tree. The Calle Francesa had been paved with stone, its blue-grey cobbles shipped all the way from Paris. Plane trees, also imported, had been planted down both sides of the street, though they were still too young to afford much shade. The houses had been designed with the pale skin and the thick blood of the Northern European in mind: verandas on all four sides, high ceilings in the downstairs rooms and a central corridor running from front to back, a kind of breezeway. They had as many windows and transoms as it was possible to have while still leaving four walls standing — though, as Wilson knew, the air did not move during the summer months, no matter how much encouragement it was given.

Wilson had seen Bardou in the lobby of the Hôtel de Paris on several occasions, but he had yet to make the doctor’s acquaintance. The doctor was an educated man, by all accounts. He spoke English fluently and with an American accent, owing to the fact that he had studied for many years in Boston, Massachusetts, and it was said, in this connection, that he had assisted at the autopsy of none other than Abraham Lincoln himself. The doctor’s drawled vowels were accompanied by gestures that were so frequent and elaborate that his hands must, sooner or later, Wilson felt, even despite themselves, produce a silk scarf or an egg or a dove in flight. Accordingly, it was with a somewhat sheepish air that he presented himself, boots in one hand, at the doctor’s front door.

He was greeted by Madame Bardou, the doctor’s wife, who showed him into a quiet room at the end of a corridor. She spoke to him in French and then, seeing that he had not understood, apologised in English.

‘It’s me who should apologise,’ Wilson said, ‘for troubling you at such an hour.’

She smiled quickly — not at him, but past him, somehow; he felt it dip over his shoulder, dart beyond him, the way birds do when they are trapped in houses. She lowered her head, and, murmuring an excuse, withdrew.

He let his eyes wander round the room. Blue silk lined the walls to elbow-height, giving way to panels of dark, lacquered wood. Here, in steel frames, hung an array of certificates, diplomas and commendations, almost too numerous to count. On the far wall there were three silver medals mounted in a glass case. Every medal and every piece of paper bore the name ‘Bardou’. It began to look as if the tales of his many accomplishments had not been exaggerated.

Wilson limped over to the window. They were an unlikely people, the French. In San Francisco, when he was a boy, he had spent his days on the waterfront with the white fog surrounding him and the world invisible, mysterious, beyond. Then the fog would thin and lift, and boats would emerge, ropes dripping, often as many as twenty in a single morning. He remembered French sailors jumping ship, whole crews sometimes. Let loose in a city that was new to them, they were as simple and eager as children; they seemed to expect gold to fall out of the sky like rain. Very few of them had any luck. They ended up opening restaurants or getting themselves killed. Small sad articles in the evening paper. And here they were again, in Mexico, with their hands waving on their wrists like meadow flowers in the wind and their silk umbrellas hoisted against the sun. A different breed of Frenchman, but no less conspicuous.

He heard a voice in the corridor and turned in time to see Bardou step into the room and close the door behind him. Bardou had shaved that morning, and his cheeks were pale and sleek. He wore a starched white shirt and a waistcoat tailored from some exquisite cloth — violets laid out upon a field of gold. His every movement was confident and precise. You could tell right away that he had spent many hours in the company of great men.

He joined Wilson by the window. Resting his hands on the sill, he filled his lungs with air and then turned back into the room.

‘Do you smell that, Monsieur?’

Wilson lifted his nose towards the ceiling and sniffed. Surely the doctor could not be referring to the odour of mule-dung and dead fish that seemed suddenly to have invaded the room?

‘The bread, Monsieur,’ the doctor said. ‘The bread.’

‘Ah,’ Wilson said. ‘The bread.’

There was a baker in town by the name of Jesús Pompano. For some time now, various members of the French community had been trying to teach Jesús Pompano how to bake bread. They had specific requirements. They wanted a loaf that was eighteen inches long. It had to be crusty on the outside, and soft and fragrant within. They even had a name for it: it was called, they said, a ‘baguette’.

Jesús Pompano was a Mexican, from the province of Arispé. He knew how to bake Mexican bread. He could turn out doughnuts too, and almond biscuits in the shape of angels, and sweet rolls dusted with cinnamon or sugar. But he had failed, so far, to produce anything that even remotely resembled a baguette. Wilson knew this from personal experience; he had been living off Jesús Pompano’s mistakes for weeks. ‘I hate to say this, Doctor,’ Wilson said, ‘but it smells a little burned to me.’

The doctor sighed. ‘To me too.’

‘I guess you’ll just have to be patient. I’m sure that Señor Pompano is doing his best.’

‘Patient?’ The doctor’s hands lifted into the air beside his ears and opened wide. Wilson held his breath but no egg hatched, no dove took wing. ‘We’ve been waiting for weeks,’ the doctor said. ‘Months. All we’re asking for is bread.’

Wilson had been present when Monsieur Morlaix, a mining-company executive, called in at the bakery to explain once again the notion of a baguette to Jesús Pompano. Morlaix had the face of an ageing cherub, his curly hair grey and thinning, his mouth set in a pout. He took a sheet of paper and drew on it. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That is a baguette.’ Jesús leaned down and studied the drawing. Then he stood back. ‘It looks like a sausage to me,’ he said. ‘Maybe you should try the butcher.’

Looking up, the doctor saw that Wilson was smiling.

‘But you didn’t come here to listen to my obsessions.’ The doctor moved away from the window and, holding a scented handkerchief beneath his nose, inhaled. ‘It’s your ankle, I take it.’

Wilson nodded. ‘I fell.’

The doctor motioned him to a chair and then knelt down in front of him. Wilson was ashamed of his feet, which were black with dirt from the journey up the hill, but the doctor did not seem to notice.

‘You’re American, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right. I was raised in San Francisco.’

The doctor was probing Wilson’s ankle with pale fingers. ‘I find it strange that you should leave a beautiful city like San Francisco for such,’ and his eyes lifted momentarily to the window, ‘for such barren shores as these.’

‘It’s only barren on the surface, Doctor.’

The doctor continued to probe the ankle, as if it might reveal to him the mystery of that last remark. ‘There’s copper here, of course,’ he mused, ‘and manganese — ’

‘It’s not copper that I’m talking about,’ Wilson blurted, ‘but gold.’

The doctor stared up at him. ‘I didn’t know that there was any gold.’

‘Well, it’s not exactly common knowledge.’

‘I see. Then you’re in no particular hurry.’

Wilson did not follow.

‘The injury, it’s not very serious,’ the doctor said. ‘Some torn ligaments, a little bruising. However, you would be wise to rest it.’

‘For how long?’

‘One month at least. Maybe two.’ He saw the look on Wilson’s face. ‘Unless, of course, you want to risk permanent damage. And the gold will wait, will it not?’

Wilson nodded gloomily. ‘I guess.’

The main ward in the hospital contained about thirty beds, at least half of which were occupied. All the patients, so far as Wilson could judge, were Indians. Each bed had been swathed in a fine gauze netting; the sick men looked like flies caught in some sticky spider’s web.

‘Are they all company employees?’ Wilson asked.

The doctor nodded. ‘Most of them.’

‘I hadn’t realised there were so many injuries.’

‘We’re doing what we can,’ the doctor said, ‘to improve the safety of the mines.’

Wilson recognised the change in tone, similar to the way in which a man reaches for his rifle when he sees a stranger about to trespass on his property. He resolved to keep more of his thoughts to himself.

At the far end of the ward the doctor held the door open for him, and they passed into the surgery. A long table with a veined marble top stood in the centre of the room. There was a stone sink in the corner, and a row of shelves that glittered with the tools of a doctor’s trade — scalpels, knives and saws. There was only one window, high in the wall.

The doctor told Wilson to lie on the table.

‘There’s no cause for alarm,’ he said, white teeth showing in his smile. ‘I do not intend to operate.’

Wilson gave himself up to the Frenchman’s hands, the same hands to which the President of the United States had been entrusted, even though he was dead. His head jangled. He could not tell whether it was the cactus liquor beginning to take its toll or the result of that fall from the balcony. He supposed that it might well be both.

‘It’s a difficult business.’ The doctor was bending over Wilson’s foot, binding the ankle in tight bands of gauze. ‘The soil in this region is a soft, wet clay. Very unstable. Even with heavy timbering it can collapse.’ He began to apply plaster of Paris to the gauze. ‘But you, as a prospector, would have a better understanding than most of the perils involved.’

‘I do most of my work on the surface,’ Wilson said. ‘I have come to mistrust tunnels.’

‘Even so, I’m sure that you have witnessed many accidents.’

Though Wilson had not, in fact, witnessed even a single accident, it seemed ungrateful, in the circumstances, to deny it. Accordingly, he recalled an incident where a man had fallen thirteen hundred feet to his death after being overpowered by a noxious gas. It had happened in Nevada.

‘There,’ the doctor said. ‘You see?’

Wilson lay motionless, content with the silence and the soothing coolness of the marble against his forearms and the back of his head. It did not seem to him that he had lied. He could still remember reading the article in the Illustrated News. The accident had been described in such a vivid and realistic style that he did honestly feel as if he had been there.

While the plaster dried, the doctor left the room, returning some minutes later with a pair of wooden crutches.

‘These will help you to move about,’ he said, ‘though I suspect you’ll find small spaces difficult.’

‘Small spaces?’ Wilson peered at the doctor over his chest.

‘Balconies, for example,’ the doctor said. He handed the crutches to Wilson, his lips tightening into a furtive smile.

The hospital clock was striking midday when the two men left the building. They stood on the south veranda looking at the town below. The houses had roofs made from sheets of shining tin. The streets looked swept. But mesquite and ocotillo were beginning to disrupt the symmetry, and away to the east, where the mountains lifted steeply against the sky, Wilson could see a number of shanty dwellings pieced together out of driftwood, scrap metal, wild flag.

His eyes shifted east, towards the waterfront. The ship that he had noticed earlier was now docking in the harbour. It was a freighter, out of Le Havre. You saw ships like it in every port from Seattle to New Orleans, carrying timber, grain or fruit. Three masts, a funnel that could use some paint, engines of low power. An ocean tramp.

He watched the hawsers fly from the deck to the quay, where they were deftly looped through heavy iron rings. Coal barges were already nudging against the starboard bow. It did not look as if the ship would be in Santa Sofía for long.

‘Do you know, Monsieur,’ the doctor said, ‘what is the cargo of that vessel?’

Wilson did not.

‘It’s a church.’

‘A church?’

The doctor’s smile broadened, but he chose not to elaborate. He too, it seemed, would have his mysteries.

‘I’m afraid I must leave you,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘I have other patients to attend to.’

‘You’ve been very kind,’ Wilson said. ‘What do I owe you?’

The doctor raised his hand in front of him, palms outwards, and turned his head away.

‘When you find your gold,’ he said, ‘then perhaps one small, how do you say,’ and he rolled his forefinger against the inside of his thumb and held it up.

Wilson could just see the sky through the gap. ‘Nugget?’

‘Yes.’ The doctor beamed. ‘Nugget.’

‘You’ve got yourself a deal,’ Wilson said.

He had reached town a month before, stone-broke and weak as a deadwood fence, his face buried in his mule’s coarse mane, and all his tools hanging off her flanks and chinking like a kitchen in an earthquake. The sun stamped on the back of his neck, his shoulderblades, his hat. When he raised his head he saw two brown trains on the beach, waves rustling against their wheels, and thought he must be tumbling into madness. Then buildings appeared. Workshops, furnaces. A railway line. Smoke climbed from a tall brick chimney. Sawblades poured gold on to a soil floor. He pinched his eyes. A woman was standing on the road, her feet spread wide in the dust, as if she were about to draw a gun on him. That was all he needed.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

Her name was Mama Vum Buá.

She stared at him. ‘You want breakfast?’

What he wanted was water.

‘No water,’ she said. ‘We got coffee.’

He took the coffee. You did not argue with Mama Vum Buá.

She was a Yaqui Indian, from the province of Sonora on the mainland, but sometime during the previous century the pure blood of her family had been corrupted by a renegade Jesuit priest. Her eyes were not brown, as you might have expected. They were a startling cobalt-blue. She was ashamed of the colour — it set her apart from her people, whom she loved — and she found her contempt for anything foreign almost impossible to conceal, especially if it involved religion too. There was an old withered quince tree in the yard behind her restaurant. ‘It was planted by some missionary,’ she would hiss. ‘No wonder it didn’t bear no goddam fruit.’

Like many Indians in Santa Sofia, she wore copper rings on her fingers and her thumbs: twelve of them — one for every child she had conceived, living and dead. She had strung a handful of bronze Mulege pearls on a length of catgut and fastened it around her neck. She arranged her hair in the traditional Yaqui style, three braids coiled on her head, and she always appeared in the same dress, yellow with red flowers, though it had been washed in salt water so many times that the colours had faded to cream and pink. She chewed quids of some fiery local root that stained her gums and palate red, and when she smiled, which was not often, she always smiled out of the right side of her mouth. Wilson had taken to her instantly, her belligerent manner, the hiss and rumble of her speech. No morning was complete until he had breakfasted at Mama Vum Buá’s place.

It was almost one by the time he limped into her yard. He laid his crutches on the ground and sat himself down at his usual table in the shade. Three Indians in cloaks stared blankly at his foot. A few minutes passed. At last the Señora emerged from the darkness of her kitchen. She stood in the sunlight, blinking, fists on her hips. When she saw Wilson, she hawked and spat. A rope of red liquid looped through the air towards him, landing in the dust close by.

‘You’re late this morning.’

‘I had an accident — ’

‘You fell off a balcony. I know.’

‘It just collapsed. I didn’t — ’

‘In your underwear. You want eggs?’

Smiling, he lit the butt of a cigar and aimed the glowing tip at the harbour. ‘They say there’s a church on that ship.’

She tilted her head sideways, as if listening for hymns or prayers or something that might give the church away — but there was only the clank of the conveyor belt and the dull whining of flies in the midday heat. She let her breath out fast and spat into the dust so hard it bounced.

‘You want tortillas?’

He nodded.

‘Coffee?’

‘Yes.’

Wilson heard voices chattering behind him. He looked round. Six of the Vum Buá girls were waiting by the date palm, two of them naked but for twenty-pound flour-sacks with holes for arms. One was swamped by a grown woman’s dress; it wrapped around her twice and trailed in the dirt. Another held a dead fish by the tail.

Mama Vum Buá had eight daughters, none of whom had yet reached womanhood. They had dark eyes and funny, jagged teeth, and their black hair was tied back with dried kelp or fishing twine or bits of frayed rope. They had Indian names that were so long and unpronounceable that he had christened them First, Second, Third, etc., according to their height. Every time he sat down to his breakfast, they would sidle up and twist themselves around the nearest trees or chairs like ribbons, their eyes all wide and shiny. Sometimes he would entertain them with coin tricks he had picked up from a retired gunslinger in El Paso. Other times he would bring his guitar along. While he waited for his coffee to cool he would sing them songs in his tuneless voice, songs about broken hearts and America and fields of gold. Since they could not understand the words, it did not matter what he sang about, though he would never sing anything that contained obscenities. This morning he planned to tell them about a man who was so dumb that he tried to leave the second floor of a house without using the stairs. He could already hear their ancient, cracked laughter as he traced his descent in the air with his hand.

He was still wondering how to begin the story without mentioning vice of any kind when he noticed a small crowd gathering on the quay. He recognised Monsieur de Romblay, the Director of the mining company. He could also see a group of Indians, dressed in white shirts and clean breeches. They were clutching a variety of pipes and drums and whistles. It looked as if Monsieur de Romblay had come down to the waterfront, along with certain other select members of the French community, to meet the boat that had docked that morning. It was a welcoming party, and there would be music.

‘Tell us about your foot, mister.’

Wilson turned to the girls. ‘What?’

‘Tell us what happened to your foot.’

His eyes drifted back towards the quayside. Two figures had just appeared on deck. A man and a woman, her arm linked through his. The band struck up a tune that Wilson did not recognise, and the two figures began to move down the gangway. The man wore a Panama hat and a black frock-coat. The woman wore a yellow dress that belled out into the air below her waist, and her parasol balanced at a jaunty angle on her shoulder. He wondered who they could be. Were they someone’s relations? Could they be royalty? He leaned back in his chair. One thing, at least, was clear: they were French.

‘Come on, mister. Tell us what happened.’

His foot ached inside the plaster cast. His shoulder ached too. He did not feel well. But he could not take his eyes off the scene that was unfolding on the quay. The man and woman had climbed into an open carriage, with Monsieur de Romblay in attendance. A whip arched and snapped. The carriage sprang forwards. Wilson suddenly saw that it would have to pass within a few feet of the table where he was sitting.

As the carriage approached, he straightened in his chair and, taking hold of his hat by the crown, lifted it into the air. The woman’s head turned at that moment and she saw him. Her eyes were green, the shape of leaves. They seemed to be resting on her face; if the wind came, they might blow away and then she would be blind. She smiled, as if to reassure him, and vanished behind the wall of the Señora’s restaurant. He did not see the carriage again until, pale-pink dust blossoming around its wheels, it took the bend that led up the hill to the Mesa del Norte.

The world bent at the edges and a fringe of sweat broke out on his forehead. Slowly he returned the hat to his head, slowly he lowered himself down into his chair. He sat without moving for some time, his hands clasped in his lap, his thoughts becalmed. The sight of that woman had run into him like something molten, had run into every part of him, and would set.

When he looked up again, the Vum Buá girls had gone. He could hardly blame them; he had not provided much in the way of entertainment. Only one of them remained, squatting in the dirt, oblivious to everything. She was carefully crushing ants with the tip of one finger. He lifted his cup and blew across the rim.

Mama Vum Buá put a basket of tortillas on the table, then she stood beside him, shielding her eyes, and peered out towards the boat.

‘Any sign of that church yet?’

But Wilson had seen something far more unusual, far more sacred, than a church, and could not answer.

Chapter 4

Towards dusk on the first day Suzanne left the Hôtel de Paris and walked south, along the Calle Francesa. She was wearing a white dress, a simple dress, fastened at the throat with an ivory cameo that had belonged to her mother. The sun had already fallen behind the wall of mountains to the west, and a fan of mauve and crimson rays had opened in the upper sky. She felt as if she were giving off light as she walked; she could have been a piece of the moon. Her new town, her new street. This new earth beneath her shoes.

Of course every place had its share of spells. Even the city she had left behind held many secrets underneath its skin. Only last year, while digging foundations for the Opéra, they had uncovered some ancient oyster beds, thousands upon thousands of shells, and several labourers had died of mysterious and disfiguring diseases. But there was nothing to compare with a new land, about which little was known, in which all the secrets lay waiting. The sailor’s words came back to her. You are entering a land where legends are born. Her hopes rose; a smile reached her lips. Perhaps there was even a child in this town, a child who expected her.

She was passing houses where the other French people lived. The lit rooms seemed to crouch down, then leap up again as the kerosene lamps flickered. Screens had been fastened to the windows, and moths whirled against the fine wire-mesh. She walked within a few feet of a veranda that had been shielded by columns of jasmine and bougainvillaea. She could hear voices murmuring behind the leaves.

After the stealth of sailing up into the gulf, after all the tensions and conspiracies, she had not been prepared for the effect the town would have on her. By the time she stepped out on to the deck that morning, a crowd had gathered on the quay below, hundreds of faces gazing upwards — native women selling copper jewellery, soldiers in grey uniforms, boys with shaved heads and voices like ravens. Not since Santiago had she seen people in such numbers. There was even a band of musicians, Indians dressed in white shirts and moleskin breeches. Their faces were serious, though it was not, she thought, the seriousness of concentration. It was more as if their minds were somewhere else. And their version of ‘La Marseillaise’ reflected this: it was shrill, chaotic, disembodied.

At the foot of the gangway Suzanne and Théo were greeted by Monsieur de Romblay. With his globelike cheeks and his tight, swollen belly, Monsieur de Romblay looked as if he had been pumped full of air. He wore a blue frock-coat with a velvet collar, and smelled strongly of lemon cologne.

‘The national anthem,’ he declared, ‘played on some of the traditional instruments of the region.’

‘Really?’ Théo said in a voice that made it perfectly clear to Suzanne that he had not, until that moment, recognised the music. ‘Most remarkable.’

‘I thought that, on this occasion,’ Monsieur de Romblay said, ‘the short version would suffice since, as you may have gathered,’ and he aimed a wry smile at the ground, ‘the Indians are not exactly renowned for their musicality.’

Suzanne had been studying the Director’s face, the sly shifting of his eyes beneath their lids, the way his smile tucked into his plump cheeks. He seemed familiar, and she did not know why; certainly she had never met him before.

‘Unfortunately my wife could not be here to greet you,’ Monsieur de Romblay was telling her. ‘She is at present arranging your accommodation.’

He turned to Théo. There was a small problem, he said. The house that they had been assigned was not yet ready. Instead, they were to occupy a suite of rooms in the Hôtel de Paris — at the company’s expense, of course.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘we thought you weren’t coming.’

Théo could not conceal his surprise. ‘But I wrote from Paris, Monsieur. I wrote to you.’

‘You said February. It’s now April.’

‘We were delayed. The Panamanian railway was out of action. And then there were the storms — ’

Monsieur de Romblay smiled into the air. ‘That may be. But I fear that you have arrived at the wrong time.’

‘I don’t understand, Monsieur.’

‘It’s almost summer. Nobody builds in the summer.’

‘We could always carry out the work during the hours when it’s cooler,’ Théo suggested.

A chuckle began deep inside Monsieur de Romblay. ‘They don’t exist, Monsieur.’

‘Don’t exist?’

‘Cool hours. There’s no such thing. Not in the summer.’

‘I’m sure we can arrive at some solution, Monsieur de Romblay. That, after all, is what I’m here for.’

Théo cast a despairing look at Suzanne, but Monsieur de Romblay was already ushering them towards an open carriage.

‘It’s hardly surprising that we’re late,’ Suzanne ventured in a light tone as she took her seat opposite the Director, ‘when you consider how far we’ve come.’

‘Some people who sail round the Horn,’ and Monsieur de Romblay paused, and his chuckle surfaced, ‘ma foi, they never arrive at all.’ He enjoyed this joke of his so much that he had to produce a handkerchief and mop the tears from his cheeks.

Suzanne could not help liking him, despite the peremptory manner in which he had treated Théo. She thought that he was probably just establishing his own authority. He was the Director of Mining Operations which, in a town like Santa Sofía, was tantamount to being mayor. He was the Director and he wanted everyone to understand that, and once they did, it could be forgotten. It was a curiously provincial trait, and all of a sudden she knew what it was about him that struck her as familiar. It was not his face, but his voice. His accent.

‘Forgive me for asking, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘but are you from Normandy?’

‘I was born in Calais.’

‘I thought so,’ she exclaimed. ‘You see, Monsieur, I grew up in Dieppe.’

‘Then we’re neighbours.’

‘We are now,’ she said.

Théo was looking at her with some perplexity, and she could guess why. She seldom spoke of her years in Dieppe — and when she did, it was never with any great fondness or nostalgia. But she had just realised that this coincidence, the link between her and the Director, could be worked to their advantage. Out here they might need allies, and Monsieur de Romblay, judging by the kindly look that he was now bestowing on her, was already close to being one.

Turning away from the Director, she noticed a man sitting in the shade of a tree. The man had a moustache. As she passed by, he raised his hat and smiled. It was an open smile, entirely without guile; it had no other motive than to show respect. She just had time to smile back before the man was hidden by a building. But his gesture lasted in her memory. This would be a friendly town.

She had reached the small square that marked the end of the Calle Francesa. She leaned on the stone parapet; it was still warm from the sun. The sky had darkened, but she could just make out the shape of the houses in the valley below, built in neat rows, like beans planted in a garden. Voices floated upwards. A dog barked once, then barked again — a strangely reluctant sound.

She stepped back from the parapet, uncertain what to do next. The breeze that drifted off the land smelt like a knife found lying at the bottom of a drawer, an unexpected blend of aniseed and rust. There was no freshness in it, nothing green, and yet it was dry and pure, it seemed to come from some high, clean place.

Looking left from where she stood, she could see the dirt-road bending away from her, over the brow of the hill, circling round behind the hospital, then dropping down into the part of town they called El Pueblo. It was still early, not even seven o’clock. She was not tired. A short flight of steps on the east side of the square took her to the road. Once there, she only hesitated for a moment before setting off down the hill.

There were rocks and potholes, and deep grooves worn by the wheels of carriages; she had to tread carefully, or she might fall. Two men rose through the darkness towards her, bent almost double by the loads that they were carrying. They stopped as she passed, not to rest but to stare. They spoke a language she could not identify. She heard it rasp across their tongues, grazing the air behind her as she walked on.

It was darker still in El Pueblo, as dark as the cupboards of her childhood. Sometimes a blade of light showed, bright, then fading, bright again — a candle seen through a crack in the side of a house. She could sense people moving past her down the street, or backwards into alleys, passageways, openings in walls, though it was only the movement that she sensed; she saw nothing as definite as a hand or a face. It could have been animals — dogs, perhaps, or pigs. One doorway spilled a cloudy yellow glow which reminded her of the apple cider her father used to buy for her at country fairs when she was young. She stood on the line where the light ended and the shadows began, and peered in. A single kerosene lamp hung from a rope that had been slung across the room. A family was gathered on the dirt-floor below, all eating with their fingers from the same tin bowl. Flies tangled in the air above their food. On the far wall Christ turned his eyes to the ceiling, as if he could not bear to look. She drew back from the door, moved on.

She took the first left-turning she could find. For a while she thought she was alone in the alley, then she noticed the girls in pale dresses who were leaning against the wall. They had flat faces and whistled softly through their teeth as she passed by. It was like the sound that the wind makes in trees. A sound as thin as needles. She walked faster, turned left again. She could not allow herself to think that she might have made a mistake in coming down the hill. Instead, she longed for a time when she knew the town, where to go for company — where not to go at all. But how would she ever know unless she confronted her ignorance?

Ahead of her, on the corner, she saw an old woman hunched over a fire, poking at the embers with a stick. She wished that she had chosen a different street: this travesty of her visit to Les Halles slowed her heart. But she did not feel that she could retrace her steps.

As she approached, the old woman looked beyond her, cackling. She glanced round. A crowd of children had gathered in her shadow. They must have been following her, but now they were standing still, fanned out behind her like a bridal train. There was a moment of quiet when only the spit and crackle of the fire could be heard, then they were moving closer, holding out their hands. They were asking for something. They used the same word, over and over again. She did not know it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in her own language. ‘I have nothing.’

‘Sorry,’ they cried, imitating her. ‘Sorry.’

‘Really, I have nothing,’ she said. ‘Look.’ And she held her empty hands away from her sides.

But she might have been inviting them to admire her, for they clustered round her, touching her dress.

‘Next time,’ she said. ‘Next time I’ll bring you something.’

‘Time,’ they chanted. ‘Time, time.’

She walked in the direction that would return her to the Mesa del Norte. The children followed her until the road began to climb and then they faltered, let her draw away from them. She did not look back again until she reached the hospital. They were still standing at the bottom of the hill, their faces tilted, pale in the darkness.

Entering the hotel lobby almost blinded her; she had to pause inside the door and let her eyes adjust. The wood floors stretched away, gilded under the electric lights. Minerals glittered in their oblong glass cases. Crimson drapes softened voices to a murmur, though, as she moved forwards, there came a sudden shout of laughter from the lounge. Through the curtained doorway she could see Théo sitting in a circle of their new acquaintances. She recognised the Director’s blue frock-coat.

‘Ah, Madame Valence.’ His short arms convulsed and, with a flurry of elbows, he propelled himself out of his chair. ‘May I present my wife?’

Madame de Romblay rose from the chair beside him. She was a handsome woman, in her middle-fifties.

Suzanne took her hand. ‘I’m honoured, Madame.’

‘What a charming creature.’ Madame de Romblay offered her profile as she spoke, the words spilling over her shoulder. They must have been intended for her husband. ‘I do hope that you’re settling in, my dear.’

‘Yes indeed, Madame. Thank you.’

Madame de Romblay had eyes the colour of tin and a nose that seemed profoundly attracted to her upper lip. When she smiled, her teeth slanted back into her mouth. Suzanne’s first thought was that she had assumed the airs of her husband, though without the underlying humour.

‘And this is Monsieur Castagnet,’ Théo said, moving to her side. ‘He has very kindly offered to assist me in the event of any construction difficulties.’

‘We’re not anticipating a great many of those, Madame.’ Monsieur Castagnet bowed low.

Suzanne noted the large square face, the amused eyes, the forehead scored with lines. ‘If the two of you are to be working together,’ she said, ‘then I can be perfectly confident of the outcome.’

Smiling, Monsieur Castagnet bowed again.

‘And now, if you would excuse us,’ Théo said, ‘we really must retire. It has been a long day.’

He took Suzanne’s arm and ushered her towards the stairs. Once they were alone, he turned to her.

‘Where have you been?’ His voice was hushed, fretful.

‘I went for a walk.’

‘A walk? Where?’

‘Nowhere in particular,’ she said.

‘You didn’t go into the town, I hope.’

‘I walked along the street,’ she said, ‘then down the hill a little way.’ She opened the door that led to their suite and moved beyond him, into the room.

‘There were children,’ she said, removing her gloves. ‘They wanted something, but I didn’t know what. Sweets, I suppose. Or money.’

‘You shouldn’t have gone down there, Suzanne. It’s dangerous.’

‘Dangerous?’ She put surprise into her voice — though there had been a moment, she remembered, when she had felt uneasy. Those girls in pale dresses, air whistling between their teeth.

‘Yes.’ He turned away, frowning, and touched the bevelled edge of the mirror with one finger. ‘Of course.’

‘But we’re living here, Théo. Surely we cannot live in fear.’

‘We can live with propriety, however.’

Something gave way in her; she went and stood beside him, took his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it was foolish of me.’

As she spoke, the building shuddered. The shutters on the window rattled. She tightened her grip on his arm.

‘That’s the smelting works,’ he said. ‘When I told Monsieur de Romblay that I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep, he just laughed. “You’ll be lucky,” he said.’ Théo shook his head. ‘That fellow takes great delight, it seems, in making fun of me.’

She smiled up at him. ‘I love you, Théo.’

He sighed and patted her hand. ‘I’m going to turn in. And you, my dear, you must be tired too.’

She nodded. ‘I am.’

But she stood for a while longer by the window, looking out into the night. Many of the lights across the street had been extinguished. The Gulf of California lay far below, one shade darker than the sky. And it was then that she thought of the cabin-boy and felt a loneliness descend. She remembered how avidly they had listened to each other’s stories, for they each believed the other’s life to be more exotic than their own. But there had been no time to meet him again. No chance to compare their findings about the colour of the sea, no chance to lean against the rail and watch the water folding away from the side of the boat. No chance to say goodbye. That morning, as she climbed into the Director’s carriage, she thought she saw a figure high up on the bridge, a figure with eyes like splinters and a head of curls. But when she waved, the figure had not waved back. She felt the disappointment sink into her, the way rain sinks into sand and darkens it. Her breath misted the glass. She wished that events would not so readily assume the shape of punishments.

Then she heard Théo call her name and, turning away from the window, she moved across the room towards him.

Chapter 5

Hôtel de Paris, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico

20th April, 189–

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

A second letter, following swiftly on the heels of the first, seemed called for, if only to reassure you that we have arrived at our destination without further mishap.

Santa Sofía is a most unusual town, dividing as it does into three almost completely separate parts. The centre is laid out on a grid pattern, three avenues wide (each one bearing the name of an indigenous mineral) and ten streets deep, coming to an abrupt end one kilometre inland in a steep wall of sandstone and pumice. The mineworkers, predominantly of Indian extraction, are housed here in rows of identical dwellings that were built for them by the company and, though insufficient time has passed for the houses to have achieved much of a sense of individuality, the character of certain tenants can be deduced from the speed with which their properties are becoming dilapidated. To the south, high on an inhospitable ridge, a modest company of Mexican soldiers (or rurales, as they are known) has been garrisoned. Their commander, Captain Montoya, is the local representative of the Mexican Government. As such, he is held responsible for policing the entire area, and he can also be called upon to intercede between the French and the Indians, should any disagreement or unpleasantness arise; I can make no comment on the gentleman, since I have not yet had the pleasure of his acquaintance. The French, meanwhile, are to be found in the northern section of the town. We have made our home on a plateau that plays host to any passing breeze and is therefore considerably more comfortable than the valley below. The Mesa del Norte (known, colloquially, as Frenchtown) comprises one wide street that seems familiar and reassuring at the outset — with its paved surface and its rows of plane trees planted down both sides, it is faintly reminiscent of a Parisian boulevard — though this familiarity is, in itself, strange and not a little disconcerting. It is here that we are quartered, in the local hotel, having been assured that a house awaits us.

And so to the work in progress — though the word ‘progress’ is hardly appropriate in the circumstances. The assembly of this particular church ought to be a simple enough process (and would be, if we were in France), but a number of difficulties have already arisen. Owing to our late arrival, we shall be building during the hottest months of the year. It is for this reason, I surmise, that we have so far been unable to muster an adequate labour force, though Monsieur de Romblay assures me that men will be found, even if he has to sacrifice a few of his own workers from the mine. In any case, we cannot yet begin the assembly since the foundations, which were to be laid in advance of our arrival, have been installed without the proper care and attention, and will have to be scrapped and then rebuilt. Perhaps, after all, this is just the confusion that surrounds any project at the outset.

I trust this letter finds you in the best of health, Monsieur. You would do me a great service if you would convey to your daughter Claire my very best wishes on the occasion of her birthday; it seems strange to be asking this of you in April, and yet, by the time this letter reaches you, the sentiment will, I judge, be an appropriate one. I am, respectfully, your must humble and obedient servant,

Théophile Valence.

Chapter 6

The doctor had told Wilson to rest, which was no great hardship if you lived in a fine house with maids and ceiling fans and a veranda. All Wilson had was a single room on the first floor of the Hotel La Playa. A narrow bed stood in the corner, its springs so exhausted that his spine touched the floor when he lay down. A striped blanket hid the mattress. There were no sheets. There was no closet either. Someone had driven nails into the wall instead. Three copper nails, green with rust. Still, they served as a place to hang his jacket and his hat. Plaster had tumbled from the ceiling, exposing joists of blackened wood and, over by the door, he could see between two floorboards down into the room below. There was a stubborn smell of cooking-fat and sour sweat. At least he faced the street, though. That was something. At least he had a view.

There were two chairs backed up against the wall, both as weak on their legs as newborn calves. He pulled one towards the window. It wasn’t a bad room, really. He had known worse. It just wasn’t a fine house with maids and ceiling fans and a veranda, that was all. He poured an inch of whisky into a cracked glass. Then he lit the stub of a cigar and settled back.

That morning Jesús Pompano had burned the bread again. Wilson sensed it the moment he woke up — a taste of ashes in his throat, that charred edge to the air. As he reached for his crutches he glanced out of the window. A thin column of smoke lifted from the roof of the bakery.

Downstairs in the lobby he went looking for Pablo, thinking they could discuss this new development, but there was no sign of him, only a boy scraping vulture droppings off the floor with a piece of palm bark. Pablo would not have been much use anyway; it was still only eight in the morning. Pablo never spoke a word before midday, not to anyone. It was a matter of principle.

Wilson found Jesús slumped on a sack of grain in the bakery, his chin propped on his fist. Flour clung to his eyebrows and his pale, heavy mouth. He looked old before his time.

‘Those French,’ and Jesús blew some breath out, and it turned white as it passed through his lips, ‘they’ll be the death of me.’

‘Another failure, I take it.’

‘See for yourself.’

Wilson crossed the stone floor and rested his crutches against the counter. He peered into the mouth of the oven. Three blackened loaves lay smouldering on their baking tray. One of them had split open, as if somebody had taken an axe to it; a wisp of steam rose from the fissure like an apology. He turned away, leaned an elbow on the counter.

‘Now they’re telling me I have to build a sloping oven. ¡Chingada Madre! Jesús cleared his throat and spat through the doorway, then he stared at the floor again and slowly shook his head.

‘A sloping oven?’ Wilson was not sure if he had understood.

‘It helps with the moisture. You have to have moisture, they tell me. Without moisture it can’t be done. Well, let me tell you something. I can’t stand moisture. I loathe it. Moisture makes me puke.’

‘I saw the doctor yesterday,’ Wilson said. ‘He’s getting impatient.’

‘Is he the one with the fancy waistcoats?’

‘That’s him.’

‘He’s the worst. Always down here, poking around.’

‘He just likes his French bread, that’s all.’

‘He should have stayed in France, then, shouldn’t he.’

Wilson grinned.

‘They’ll be the death of me, those French.’ Jesús shook his head again. A cloud of flour rose into the air and hung in a shaft of sunlight, looking suddenly as if it were made of gold. As Wilson watched, the middle of the cloud disintegrated; the cloud became a halo. The baker still sat gloomily below. It seemed to Wilson that he had been witness to a prophecy, which was his to do with as he wished.

‘It will come right in the end, Jesús,’ he said, and felt quite confident in his prediction.

Jesús looked at Wilson for the first time since Wilson had walked in. ‘What did you do to your foot?’

He must have been the only person in town who had not heard. He had been too preoccupied to see beyond the four walls of his bakery. An earthquake could have happened. A flood. He would not have known.

Wilson drank from his cracked glass. Through the window he could see the tilting iron rooftops of the town, the steep escarpment of the Mesa de Francia and the clean blue sky beyond. In the foreground a space had been cleared, about the size of a small town-square or a ceremonial arena; Wilson could imagine that an Indian tribe might dance on that red dirt, and call it sacred. As he stared down, a man passed through his line of vision. The man was buttoned into a black frock-coat, and held a white umbrella above his head. In his other hand he clutched a handkerchief; every now and then he would reach up and dab his throat, his forehead, the back of his neck. On his feet he wore a pair of immaculate white spats. A Frenchman. No doubt about it.

The Frenchman advanced to the middle of the arena and stood still, facing east. Then he turned about and faced the mountains in the west. His shadow crouched behind him. He began to walk westwards, his legs stiff, his stride exaggerated. He was counting the number of paces, measuring the ground. When he could go no further, he stopped and nodded to himself.

Then, suddenly, he was running back the way he had come. It was a strange sight, a man running with an umbrella above his head, especially when that man was a Frenchman. You rarely saw a Frenchman running; there was no dignity in it. Without taking his eyes off the man, Wilson lifted his glass and drank. The man was holding up his hand as he ran and Wilson could now see why. Some Indians had filed into the square. They were carrying pieces of grey metal; some of the pieces were large, and required the combined efforts of six men. It seemed important to the Frenchman that the pieces be set down in certain precise locations, but the Indians were having trouble following his instructions — or maybe it was simply that they did not see the point. Arms were being waved, heads shaken. The pieces of grey metal moved from one place to another. Then, sometimes, they moved back again. Wilson was highly entertained by the charade; it might almost have been arranged on his behalf, something to keep him amused during the long hours of his convalescence. But his smile faded as the Frenchman, pale with exasperation, turned his face up to the sky. He was the man from the boat. The man who had walked down the gangway with that woman on his arm. The man who had sat beside her in the carriage. A jolting began somewhere under Wilson’s ribs. He poured himself another shot of whisky, swallowed it.

Almost a week had passed since he had raised his hat to her and still he had not been able to banish her image from his mind — her yellow dress, her eyes like leaves, her hair tumbling blonde and bronze on to her shoulders. He dredged his past for some comparison, but he could only think of the girl he had known in Monterey when he was sixteen.

Her name was Saffron and she had been older than he was, almost twenty. She wore a shapeless green satin dress and no shoes. He had seen her in the street when it was raining, her bare feet turning puddles into crowns of water round her ankles as she ran, her red hair trailing in the air behind her. Later, she sat on his lap in the back of a saloon and her mouth tasted of brine, but her body was as firm as his belief in heaven under that slippery green dress.

He was not the only lover she had — there were others; he knew of at least two — but he was grateful to be counted among them, to be sharing her favours. In his innocence he felt privileged. And she had never lied to him. From the beginning he was made to understand that jealousy was something he was not entitled to. There was an odd purity about the girl, for all her promiscuities; twenty-five years later, he still felt a kind of skewed respect for her.

They would sit on the quay, among the coiled ropes and fishing nets, and watch the fog roll in, and it would fold around their shoulders, reach between their faces, and all the harbour sounds closed in — the creak of hawsers, sailors’ curses, cats on heat — and he would push his hands beneath her clothes and taste the weather on her lips, and there was fear in it, her pa would strap her if he knew, which only made the trembling more. But the danger did not issue from her family. One night a tall man showed; old he seemed then, though he had probably been less than thirty. He strode out of the fog and pulled a gun from his overcoat and fired. It sounded as if he had hit a tin tray with his fist. They fled, but there were no more shots. They crouched in a warehouse stacked high with salted mackerel and listened for his tread. None came.

‘Passion done spoiled his aim.’ She was panting, and her eyes glittered through her hair. ‘He’s not like you. He wants to be the only one.’

Again he felt the privilege of being close to her and, later that night, with the moon dull on the water, he told her that he loved her.

‘Oh Will,’ she said, ‘not you as well.’

‘I don’t mean nothing by it.’ He stared at the moon on the water. He stared so hard, he thought he might shatter it.

‘Will,’ and her voice was as soft and biased as a mother’s hand, ‘you don’t have the first idea.’

Then, one morning, his father shook him awake with the news that he had hitched them a ride on a covered wagon heading east, and it was leaving directly. He folded his bedroll, his mind still flat with sleep. It felt like one of those Chinese paper lanterns he had seen on Montgomery Street. You bought them flat and then you had to shake them out. Sometimes it was hours before his mind opened and there was light in it.

He followed his father down the narrow stairs and out on to the street. The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was warming up on the horizon, a blush of light that made his father’s eyes look fierce and clean. A man in a crumpled hat drove past them in a cart. A second man was balanced on the tailgate. He had rolled his sleeves up and he was dipping his hand in a barrel and his pale arm swung this way and that, like he was sowing seeds. But it was water that he was throwing on the street, salt water to hold the dust down. It must have been summer.

He huddled in the back of the wagon, pressed half-way off the bench by a man whose broadcloth coat was sticky with liquor and the grease of hogs. A cock crowed on a nearby roof; he could see its shape cut out against a strip of sky. His father handed him a tin mug with an inch of cold coffee in the bottom. He drank it down.

The wagon rocked and rattled east. As the town became memory, he began to think of the girl with the red hair and the green satin dress. If only he had asked for a lock of that hair of hers, a snippet of that dress. He had nothing but a name, held inside him, like a smooth stone in the darkness of a pocket. If only that tall man’s bullet had nicked his cheek. He did not even carry a scar he could remember her by. And it was too late now. And though he passed through Monterey several years later, on his way north, to Oregon, he never did see her again.

A clock struck two somewhere. He drained his glass.

It had been his custom, during the afternoons, to walk up the hill to the Hôtel de Paris, which was the fancy place where all the French people stayed. He had noticed an old upright in the lobby. The wood had warped in the heat, and the keys had stiffened, but it was still a decent piano — a Chickering, from Little, Brown & Co. of Boston. He would sit on the maroon plush stool and run through pieces that he used to play in San Francisco — ballads, marches, negro melodies, fragments of opera from Europe, even hymns. It took him back to the years when he worked in the saloons around Portsmouth Square, the Empire and the Alhambra, La Souciedad, the Rendez-vous, ten bucks a night and another ten in tips if he was lucky, say if Bill Briggs dropped by, or Jack Gamble with his diamond stick-pin flashing like a whore’s eye on his shirt, ten bucks at least, those were the days. And then it took him further back; his mind would empty out and he would reach way down, deep into the past, and play dance tunes that his father used to whistle when they lived by trapping beaver in New Mexico, and Rodrigo Feliz, the houseboy at the hotel, would watch him from behind the bar, with his eyes the colour of wet leaves and his girl’s mouth. But the music Wilson kept returning to was Carmen, by a Frenchman called Bizet. He had first heard Carmen on a trip back to San Francisco in the eighties. It had some fine tunes in it. His fingers got restless just thinking about it.

Before his foot broke, he could make his way up to Frenchtown any time he pleased. Even now he played most afternoons, but it required a measure of tenacity and planning. One thought, one image, sustained him: the woman in the yellow dress. His eyes lifted to the plateau where the carriage containing her had gone. He knew nothing about her; all he knew was that he had seen her face. And she was married — he knew that too. Mama Vum Buá had told him about the ring she wore. ‘Solid gold it was, and thick as rope,’ the Señora had said, her blue eyes growing still more blue. ‘She must get awful tired carrying that thing around all day.’ He knew nothing about her, and yet there was a new shape to his days, a sense of expectation. Not that he expected anything. Another glimpse of her, maybe. That was all the closeness he could hope for. That was all he asked.

He corked the bottle and, reaching for his crutches, hoisted himself to his feet. If he was going up to the hotel he had to move now. Two reasons. One: he would be less likely to run into La Huesuda and have to endure another lecture on his clumsiness and his sexual inadequacy (she always slept in the afternoon). Two: the Waterboys made deliveries to Frenchtown after lunch and if he timed it right he would be able to hitch a ride on the back of their cart.

He was half-way down the stairs when his good foot caught in the banisters. In an attempt to save the damaged one, he almost toppled headlong and broke everything else. He was beginning to lose his faith in manmade structures. Maybe he should forget about playing the piano for the time being. Maybe he should forget the whole damn thing. Half-way down the stairs, he stood quite motionless, the sweat cooling on his face.

There had been a terrible winter once, in the Sierras with his father, when they had dug hole after hole, when they had moved earth, washed it, moved earth, washed it, week after week of bloodied hands and all for a couple of dollars a day, just barely enough to keep them from dying. Yet there was always someone near by, someone in the next placer or someone they just plain heard about, who had lifted sagebrush at the edge of a creek and found so many pieces of gold among the roots that he had taken the next ship to New York to live like an American King Solomon. It did not matter how bad things got. There was always something to keep you from trailing home to a life with no shine in it. Though maybe he should track Pablo down before the week was out, and speak to him about a room on the ground floor, just until his foot was mended.

Chapter 7

From bats’ wings at dusk, whispering through the deadened air, to the stubborn clanking of water churns at dawn, Santa Sofía was a place of incongruous sounds, but no sound was more incongruous, perhaps, than the sound of Bizet’s Carmen being played on an out-of-tune piano in the middle of the afternoon. Suzanne found the piano downstairs, pushed against the wall in a distant corner of the lobby. She lifted the lid. The white keys were as discoloured as a horse’s teeth. Two black keys had gone missing altogether. The piano did not look as if it had been used for years. And who would play Carmen, anyway? People thought it vulgar, hysterical. She stood beside the maroon piano stool, one elbow cupped in her hand, her fingers curled against her chin. Perhaps her dreams had served the music up to her. Perhaps she had imagined it.

The Hôtel de Paris was as luxurious as she and Théo could have hoped for, given the desolate surroundings, and the suite of rooms in which they had taken up temporary residence was the best in the hotel. There were armchairs upholstered in striped damask and floors of polished oak, and all the walls had been lined with silk — the drawing-room in peacock-blue, the bedroom in scarlet. The brass bed was said to have belonged to one of Maximilian’s generals. Théo thought the décor more appropriate to a bordello than a hotel, and certainly, waking in that scarlet chamber on the first morning, Suzanne could not imagine where she was. Then she noticed the sky, a flawless blue, immaculate and hard, and she remembered. ‘Mexico,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I’m in Mexico.’

She saw very little of Théo during the week of their arrival, but that was only to be expected. She did not mind — in fact, if anything it suited her. She was able to take the days at her own pace.

In the mornings she sat on the hotel veranda. From her table she could look down a barren hillside of rocks and cactus to the narrow coastal strip where most of the town’s industry was to be found. Beyond that jumble of brown buildings lay the Sea of Cortez, palest blue, too lazy to achieve a tide, yet capable, so Théo had told her, of the most sudden and violent storm that was known locally as El Cordonazo or ‘the Lash’. While she gazed at the view which, even at an early hour, would seem to undulate in the heat, Rodrigo, the houseboy, would bring her coffee in a glass cup, a basket of fresh rolls and a French newspaper that was never less than six months out of date. Rodrigo moved with a kind of slovenly grace which was only appealing because he was young, and which would in time, she felt, become grotesque. He always had a smile for her, though, and he would leave small gifts on her table — sometimes the flower from a prickly pear, sometimes a piece of fruit. It was Rodrigo who showed her the library behind the office, shelves of novels, journals and almanacs that had been discarded by previous guests, some in English, the rest in French, and it was Rodrigo who then offered to carry her selections up the stairs for her. She spent whole afternoons in her drawing-room, reclining on the ottoman by the window. She sketched, she read her books; she slept. There were no more expeditions of the kind that she had undertaken on her first evening. She did not seek the land out; she was content to let it come to her.

Her first visitor was the Director’s wife. A sharp, two-syllable knock on the door heralded a flurry of emerald silk skirts as Madame de Romblay launched herself into the room. Her tin eyes glittered; her tea-gown foamed with Irish lace.

‘Forgive me for disturbing you like this. I was just passing.’ Her mouth opened in a mirthless smile. ‘In a town the size of Santa Sofía, one cannot help but be just passing.’ She placed one hand against her collar-bone and stooped to examine the gilt frame on a miniature. ‘How are you, my dear?’

‘I’m very well, thank you.’ Suzanne always had the feeling that Madame de Romblay’s questions, though innocent and conventional on the surface, were probing after some much deeper and more unhappy truth. ‘Can I offer you something?’

But the woman was already half-way to the fireplace, her eyes scanning the silk-lined walls, her pale-green sunshade twitching on her shoulder. ‘It’s not a bad hotel, though it’s not what you’re used to, I’m sure.’

‘I’m not used to staying in hotels at all,’ Suzanne replied. ‘Actually, I’m quite enjoying it.’

Madame de Romblay surveyed her from the far end of the room. ‘We are so few here. I’m afraid that you’ll be bored.’

‘I came here to be with my husband, Madame. I did not expect a constant round of entertainment.’

‘Well, we do our best.’ With a fatalistic sigh, Madame de Romblay opened a fan that was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and began to beat the air beneath her chin. ‘There will be a dinner, of course,’ she said, ‘to welcome you both.’

‘I shall look forward to it.’

‘Oh yes, and my husband asked me to assure you that you’ll not be inconvenienced for much longer. Your house will be ready by the end of the week,’ and Madame de Romblay’s eyes lingered on the books and journals that littered surfaces throughout the room, ‘then you’ll have something to occupy you at last.’

Later, Suzanne stood at the window and watched as Madame de Romblay emerged from the ground floor of the hotel. The drawing-room still seemed disrupted by her presence. The air churned.

It was the doctor who appeared next, using his professional status as an excuse for a visit which was, Suzanne suspected, entirely social.

‘And how are you feeling, Madame?’ He spun gracefully into the room on slippered feet, the tips of his moustache as sharp as the points of pencils, his hair slick with pomade.

She admitted to being somewhat tired.

‘A long voyage,’ the doctor said. ‘A new climate.’ He opened his hands and brought his shoulders up towards his ears. ‘It’s only to be expected.’

‘And what do you prescribe, Doctor?’

‘Rest, Madame.’

‘I’ve been resting a good deal,’ she told him.

‘Excellent.’ The doctor nodded to himself. His sleek hair caught the light and flashed. ‘One must conserve one’s energy. I insist that my wife rests for at least an hour every afternoon. She finds it most beneficial.’

Suzanne had met Florestine Bardou the day before, on the Calle Francesa. The two women stood on the street, their faces shaded by the fringed rims of their parasols. Florestine had been wearing a plain grey dress which constrasted most strangely with the luxuriant convolutions of her name, and she had the habit of lowering her eyes when she was speaking as if she were in the presence of someone far more important than herself. Suzane was beginning to understand how this might have come about.

‘Well,’ the doctor was saying, ‘I just hope that life won’t be too dull for you. I hope that you will not become too,’ and his eyes lifted to the ceiling as he searched for the word, ‘too jaded.’

She smiled. ‘The town doesn’t seem to have had that effect on you, Doctor.’

‘No?’ The doctor glowed. He was not a man to be dismayed by compliments.

That afternoon, as she followed his advice and rested for an hour, she heard the piano again, only this time it was not Carmen, but something that she did not know. It sounded like a ballad or a show-tune, she decided, as she closed her eyes. She dreamed of people dancing in a barn, with bales of hay stacked high against the walls, rush-torches casting shadows on a sawdust floor.

In the evening she looked for Rodrigo. She found him on the veranda, idly flicking dead flies off the tables with an ancient copy of Le Temps. When he saw her, his eyes brightened.

‘You have been reading?’ he asked.

She smiled at his mangled, lisping French. ‘A little.’ She let her eyes drift out over the Sea of Cortez. The water had absorbed the fading light, its surface the colour of woodsmoke, or hyacinth. It was after five o’clock. People would soon be arriving for their aperitifs.

She turned back to Rodrigo. ‘I thought I heard someone playing the piano this afternoon.’

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Do you know who it is who plays?’

‘He is American.’

‘There’s an American here?’

‘Yes. He plays the piano. Always in the afternoon.’ Rodrigo smiled, and his sharp teeth showed. ‘He is a good man,’ Rodrigo said, ‘but he is,’ and he revolved one finger in the air beside his ear.

‘Mad?’ she said.

‘Yes.’ He grinned. ‘Mad.’

The following afternoon, towards three o’clock, Suzanne was woken from a light sleep by the opening bars of Schubert’s ‘Marche Militaire’. She rose from the couch and crossed the room to her dressing-table. She had determined to seek out the American and make his acquaintance. It would be a welcome diversion; it would also be a chance to practise her English. She had only met one American before. In the summer of 1889 Buffalo Bill Cody had brought his Wild West Company to Paris as part of the World Fair. During his stay Mr Cody had visited the Eiffel Tower and, after signing his name in the guest book, she and Théo, among others, had taken him to lunch. He had been a man of some considerable charm, despite his long hair and his peculiar clothes.

She made one final adjustment to her dress, then left the room. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, however, she hesitated; she did not advance into the lobby. The American was seated at the piano, less than twenty feet away. He was playing with such vigour that he remained entirely unaware of her. She drew back into the shadows.

Light flooded through the windows behind him. His face was hard to see. He sat with a straight back, his hat wedged down to his eyebrows, his fingers jumping on the keys. She thought she recognised him, and did not know from where. Then she remembered. He was the man who had lifted his hat to her on that first day. It was, in fact, the same hat. It was the hat that she had recognised, not the man.

She took another step backwards, the heel of her right shoe touching the bottom stair, her thumb set sideways against her mouth. The American reminded her of somebody from her childhood in Paris — the gardener, perhaps, the lamp-lighter or the postman. It was not the lowliness; quite the reverse. It was the unacknowledged stature. Not the proscribed role, but its secret counterpart. These had always been people she could trust, people who would not give her away. She remembered one with particular fondness, a man with a voice like logs hauled over rocks. She knew him as Monsieur Épaules. He was the water-carrier. Every morning he would tramp up the back stairs with two pails suspended across his shoulders on a wooden bar. The pails would be brimming with water, yet he would never spill a drop. The palms of his hands were so rough, it seemed as if he had been made from bits of trees. He wore a velveteen suit of darkest green, and he carried an earthy smell about with him; being close to him was not unlike being in a forest. She did not think that she had ever seen him out of breath, even though, in those days, they had lived in an apartment on the seventh floor. Perhaps he rested on every landing. Somehow she doubted it. She never found out whether Monsieur Épaules was his real name, or whether he had invented it for her — his own wry summary of his place in life, a statement of his limitations.

He would always stop and tell her tales about where their water had come from that morning — which spring, which reservoir, which well — and he wore a flask of thick glass on a cord around his neck that contained, he said, a water that could not be surpassed, a water so rare that it was almost holy. And he would cross himself in the dark air of the stairwell, and she would too. The very last time that he delivered water to their house, just prior to their departure for Dieppe, he poured her a small glass of this most precious liquid. He held the glass out to her. She took it in both hands. He smelled more than ever like a forest on that last day. His dented silver pails stood on the floor like held breath.

She brought the glass up to her lips. The edge where you drank from was thick and smooth. She took a sip. The water tasted bitter, almost like metal. That was because it was filled with minerals, he told her. It had come from under the ground, from a place a kilometre down. It was virgin water, he said, clear and bright and pure.

She held the glass out for him to take.

He shook his head. ‘Drink it all up. It will keep you strong until the day when you return.’

It was to be almost twelve years before her family moved back to Paris. She must have been eighteen by then. She was already in love with Théo, and he lived in Paris, yet her first impulse on returning was to seek out Monsieur Épaules. But the city had changed during her absence. The twenty thousand water-carriers of Paris had been trampled by the march of progress. They no longer existed. They had been replaced by pipes.

Her father thought it was a good thing, of course, as did Théo. They were always talking about the advantages of ‘constant supply’ in those self-important voices that men so often use. She did not care a fig for ‘constant supply’; she liked whatever the opposite of it was. This new, modern city was most certainly a disappointment. She felt as if she had been cheated, betrayed; she felt, too, that she had broken her word. For the first few weeks she never went anywhere without peering at everyone she passed, without scanning the streets and pavements for a glimpse of a man in velveteen that was the colour of a forest. Even later she would think of him, and wonder where he was. She hoped that he was still alive somewhere, and that his virgin water had kept him strong.

Back in her room, sitting at her writing desk, she stared through the window at the landscape that she had insisted on seeing. When she first set eyes on the American, spied on him from the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, she had the feeling of returning to a piece of the past that had happened without her. He had allowed her access to a pleasure that she had always been denied. In that moment, sitting at her writing desk, she felt as if her presence in the town was proper, natural — even earned. She felt as if she were about to be compensated for her many disappointments. This place would afford her some redress.

Chapter 8

The cart shuffled to a halt outside the Hôtel de Paris. Wilson slid down off the tailgate, pulling his crutches after him. He thanked the boys for the ride.

‘Any time, four-legs.’

They fought briefly over the reins, then the cart moved on, its high silver churns tottering and clanking. ‘Water,’ the boys cried, in their hoarse voices. ‘Fresh water.’

Wilson shook his head as he watched them go. There was no respect for Americans in this town, no respect at all.

Still shaking his head, he swung round on his crutches, and there she was, standing at the foot of the hotel steps, with her green eyes the shape of leaves and that tumbling, dark-blonde hair. In a town the size of Santa Sofía coincidences were no cause for astonishment; in fact, they were practically a way of life. Yet he had been relying on coincidence for so many days now with no result that this coincidence, long overdue, took him completely by surprise. The sight of her at such close quarters when he had only imagined her at a distance closed the spaces between the beatings of his heart. He went to lift his hat, but it fell from his hand. One of his crutches toppled.

Gracefully she leaned down, retrieved the hat.

‘Here,’ she said.

‘You speak English?’ He had not expected this.

‘I teach it.’ She corrected herself. ‘I used to teach it. When I was young.’ She laughed.

‘You speak it very well.’

She looked away into the sky. ‘You know, it’s strange. I did not think that I would need English,’ and she brought her eyes back down to his, and they were filled with the sky’s light, ‘not here, in Mexico.’

There was not the slightest trace either of shyness or flirtation in her manner. Her parasol revolved slowly on her shoulder, like the wheel of a cart that has turned over in a road. He was the shy one. No words would come to him.

‘You are the piano player,’ she said.

He admitted it. ‘Though I’m a little rusty, I’m afraid.’

‘Rusty? What is rusty?’

‘It means I’m out of practice.’

‘But I heard you from my room. You’re good. You are, how does one say it,’ and the shadow at the corner of her mouth lengthened as a smile reached her face, ‘you have enthusiasm.’

It was for you, he almost said, but could not. He thanked her instead.

‘Will you play today?’ she asked him.

‘If you would like me to.’

Her smile widened. ‘Shall we go in?’

‘Give me an orange juice and a beer, would you, Rodrigo?’

Rodrigo eyed Wilson across the cool zinc counter. Rodrigo was polishing a glass. Wilson would have laid odds on the fact that Rodrigo had been polishing that same glass for half an hour.

‘You’re going to play the piano, Señor Wilson?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You must like the piano very much.’ Rodrigo’s eyes reached beyond Wilson’s shoulder to the Frenchwoman who was now taking a seat at the table by the window.

‘I do.’

‘You must like it very much,’ Rodrigo said, ‘to come all the way up here with that bad foot.’

‘It’s good for it. The doctor told me. It’s exercise.’

‘Exercise. I see.’ Rodrigo was still polishing the glass, only much more slowly now.

‘An orange juice and a beer,’ Wilson said, ‘when you’re ready, that is.’

‘No beer today, Señor.’

‘I’ll have two orange juices then.’

‘What about yesterday?’

‘What about yesterday, Rodrigo?’

‘You didn’t pay me for yesterday. Or the day before.’ Rodrigo made a few languid calculations on his fingers. ‘You owe me forty-five pesos.’

Wilson sighed.

‘I know, I know,’ Rodrigo said. ‘One day you’ll find your gold and then you’ll pay me everything.’

When Rodrigo brought the drinks, some ten minutes later, Wilson turned to the Frenchwoman and apologised. ‘You know, the oranges come from Mulege,’ he said. ‘It’s about forty miles south of town. The time it takes Rodrigo to make a glass of juice, I reckon he probably goes down there and picks them himself.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not in a hurry.’ She smiled. ‘We saw Mulege from the boat. There were many palm trees. And a rock shaped like a hat.’ She sipped at her drink. ‘And you, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘where are you from?’

As if he, too, were a species of fruit.

‘San Francisco,’ he said.

‘San Francisco?’ The name had the effect of widening her eyes and softening her voice.

‘That’s where I learned to play the piano.’

He found himself talking about his childhood, San Francisco in the early days. You could only mine for gold from April until October, and the city was almost empty then. In the winter everyone returned. There were not enough jobs to go around. Pay was low. His father had worked down at the docks unloading cargo. Only five dollars a ton, but he was lucky to have a job at all. It seemed to rain all the time. There was great poverty, great frustration. People got killed over nothing, and the punishment for murder was death.

The city was so new, unformed. Many of the streets did not even have names. He would make them up himself. In those days the cost of storing merchandise was more than the merchandise itself was worth. Goods were often dumped outdoors, simply abandoned. There was a sidewalk close to where Wilson lived that was built out of sacks of flour from Shanghai. He called it Chinese Flour Street. There were others too: Saucepan Alley, Tobacco Way –

‘The street where I grew up,’ he said, ‘it was always called Piano Street.’

‘There were pianos?’

‘A dozen of them, maybe more. And some still worked. That was how I learned to play, right there, in the middle of the street. With people passing by. Sometimes they would throw me money.’

‘Did you play concerts for them?’

Wilson nodded. ‘I even did a funeral once.’

A friend of his, John Goode by name, had died of pneumonia. Wilson had played the ‘Funeral March’ by Chopin for John Goode’s family as they carried the boy’s coffin up the street. It had rained that day and he could still remember the feeling of his fingers slipping on the black keys.

He stopped and looked at her. She was gazing down into her glass. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Maybe I talked too fast.’

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I understand almost everything.’

At last she looked up and wonder filled her face so full, it almost seemed as if it could have been poured. He saw that he had brought her some kind of happiness, though he did not know how, nor could he begin to guess.

‘Pardon me for asking, ma’am, but what’s your name?’

Her hand moved to hide her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Monsieur. How impolite of me.’ But she was smiling — or at least her eyes were, leaves narrowing and sharpening at the edges.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘We just forgot.’

‘I am Suzanne Valence.’

He rose to his feet and, after first wiping his hand so as not to soil her glove, offered it to her.

‘Wilson Pharaoh,’ he said.

‘I’m delighted to meet you, Mr Pharaoh,’ she said. ‘Now please, I beg you, tell me more about Piano Street.’

Wilson placed his glass on top of the piano and lifted the lid. The keyboard seemed to grin at him. For the last week he had been making his way up to the Calle Francesa every afternoon — it had taken real determination; once he had even walked — and he had played the piano for an hour each time, but he had been denied even a glimpse of the woman in the yellow dress. Only the day before he had decided to give up on it: the piano, the woman — everything. Now it turned out that she had been staying in the hotel, one floor above, that she had been listening to him all along. And here he was, about to play for her in person! The tips of his fingers rested on the keys. He would begin with something spritely, a dance tune that his father used to whistle.

It was a while later and he was just embarking on a piece of Schubert when the doctor ran lightly up the hotel steps. As he entered the lobby he saw Suzanne, and bowed from the waist. ‘Madame.’ Then his eye fell on Wilson, over at the piano. ‘Ah, Monsieur Pharaoh.’ He launched himself across the room. ‘But I am sure that I told you to rest. Or is my English so bad?’

The doctor was wearing a different waistcoat today, but it was no disappointment: a brocade design in colours that could only be described as burgundy and lightning.

‘Your English is not bad at all, Doctor. Your English is very good.’

‘Then what am I to understand? That you cannot live without music? That, without this,’ the doctor clutched at the air, ‘this opportunity for self-expression, your life would be a misery?’

‘A little piano practice,’ and Wilson spread his hands. ‘Surely that cannot hurt.’

The doctor leaned down, a glint of mischief in his eye, and lowered his voice. ‘And the company of a beautiful woman,’ and he tapped Wilson on the shoulder with the backs of his fingers. ‘Am I wrong, Monsieur Pharaoh?’

He waited until he saw that Wilson could not find an answer, then he stood back, rolling one wing of his moustache between finger and thumb. A smile darted nimbly from one part of his face to another.

‘Try to rest, Monsieur Pharaoh. Just a little. For me.’ And, dusting one palm against the other, the doctor spun on his heel and glided from the room. His waistcoat flickered in the gloom of the long corridor that led to the back of the hotel.

‘What did he say?’ Rodrigo asked, in Spanish.

Wilson spoke over the staccato notes of Carmen. ‘Well, Rodrigo, it was just like I said the other day. He told me to keep playing. For the exercise.’

‘Mr Pharaoh,’ came Suzanne’s voice from the far end of the room, ‘you are the most terrible liar.’

‘Yes, ma’am. That’s true.’ And the distance between them gave him the courage to voice the first thought that came to mind. ‘But I would never lie to you.’

A few minutes later, he walked back across the room towards her, walked into her soft applause.

‘I remember when that was first performed in France.’ She smiled. ‘Everybody hated it.’

‘It’s one of my favourite pieces,’ he said.

‘Mine too.’ Her smile widened. ‘And now you have brought it here,’ she said, ‘to Santa Sofía.’ She turned her glass on its base and then lifted her eyes to his. ‘Tell me, Monsieur. Do you like it here?’

It was not something he had thought much about. He shifted in his chair. ‘It’s a town full of strangers. There’s nobody that belongs, not really.’

‘You’re talking about us,’ she said, ‘the French.’

‘Not just the French. The Mexicans, the Portuguese.’ He leaned backwards in his chair. ‘See, twenty years ago there was nothing here. No town, no harbour. Maybe there was a mission, maybe that. But nothing else. Everyone who came here, came from somewhere else. Even the Indians.’

‘Do you think that you will stay?’

He looked down at his foot and grinned ruefully. ‘It looks like it.’ And before she could ask any questions that might embarrass him, he said, ‘And you, how long will you stay?’

She shrugged. ‘It depends. Two months. Perhaps three. I do not know how long it takes to build a church.’

He pictured the deserted square, just a piece of red ground, quite empty, then he saw a Frenchman running, a white umbrella in the air above his head.

‘So you’re here to build the church?’ he said.

‘My husband is.’ She paused. ‘Have you heard of the Eiffel Tower, Monsieur?’

He had not.

‘It’s the tallest structure in the world. It was built by a very famous man in France. His name is Gustave Eiffel. My husband works with him. My husband is an engineer.’

He watched the pride rise into her face and colour it. He saw how much she loved her husband and how, for reasons of convention, she was doing her utmost to conceal it.

‘He worked on the designs with Monsieur Eiffel and now he will assemble it. Here, in Mexico.’ She laughed. ‘There are two thousand, three hundred and forty-eight pieces.’

She turned to the window, and he looked at her without her knowing, the coil of hair beside her ear, that lilac groove beneath her eye, the same colour that you find on the lip of certain shells, the same smoothness too. While they had been talking, the day had darkened, and she was watching her own people as they stepped out of their houses to sample the evening air. The men wore top hats and pale linen suits. The women, balanced upright in their great hooped dresses, reminded him of spoons in cream. A new moon tilted above the sea. Couples strolled beneath the plane trees, the sky’s last light violet, uncanny. The women seemed to have no feet; they floated along the street, and their fans slid open and shut, like cards in a gambler’s hand. He heard her sigh.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

‘It can be.’ He leaned forwards. ‘On nights when the moon’s full, it shines so bright you can sit outside and read a book.’

She nodded, smiling. She was in the kind of mood where all previous belief suspends. Then it was over.

‘I should go.’ She rose with some reluctance from the table. ‘I hope that we shall meet again.’

Wilson had risen from the table too, but he could not think of the words that people used when they took their leave of each other.

At the door she paused and looked back at him across the room. ‘I did not thank you for the music.’

‘It was my pleasure, ma’am,’ he said.

That night, as he slept, he saw a woman shed her dress, her shoes, and then, as he embraced her on sheets that smelled of lavender and summer grass, she fell into more than two thousand pieces, and only her husband, waiting in the corridor outside, knew how to put her back together.

The following morning Wilson was once again the victim of coincidence, though this time it was in no respect a fulfilment of his wishes.

He had woken before dawn, and found he could not sleep. For a few moments his bed still smelled of summer grass; he could dream, at least. Then, as the darkness faded, hammers began to ring outside his window, each blow widening the gap between his dream and the world, between sheets that smelled of summer grass and no sheets at all. It was the church — the early shift. There would be no sleep now. He sat up, reached for his clothes.

On his way down to the waterfront he met Namu, one of the local fishermen, returning from a night out on the water. Namu was walking up the street with hunched shoulders and wet hair. He looked cold. Redness veiled the whites of his eyes.

‘The French are having a dinner,’ he said. ‘They wanted yellowtail or barracuda. I got both.’ He smiled, the gap showing between his teeth. ‘I haven’t slept for two days.’

The arrival of the French had been a stroke of luck for Namu. There was an almost constant demand for big fish, the kind that Indians would never think of eating. Namu sold most of his catch up on the Calle Francesa. He made a good living.

‘So when are we going out on the boat again, Señor?’

Wilson showed Namu his foot.

The fisherman’s eyes travelled from Wilson’s foot up to his face and then back down again. ‘We could always use you as an anchor.’

Wilson’s smile lasted until he came round the corner of Mama Vum Buá’s cantina and saw La Huesuda, whom he had been successfully avoiding for days, standing under the quince tree eating refried beans out of a pan. His smile soured. He should have realised that she might be here at dawn — a night’s work, then one last snack before turning in. He should have known.

But it was too late now. She had heard something alter, a sudden increment of tension in the silence, the scrape of his crutches on the ground as he stopped dead. She twisted round; her black hair swung against the backs of her knees.

‘How are the beans?’ Wilson said. ‘Good?’

She was wearing a lemon-yellow dress that could have been made from spun-sugar, but there was nothing sweet about the look on her face. The saucepan jumped out of her hand. He watched it land in the dust, roll over once.

‘You been past my place recently?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I have.’ Several times in fact, while she was sleeping.

‘You seen it?’

He guessed that she must be referring to the ladder. It stood propped against her bedroom window, the rungs made out of pickaxe handles, old rope from the harbour, bits of fruit crates. ‘I’ve seen it. It looks pretty solid.’

She moved to within a few feet of him. Up close the whites of her eyes were orange. One finger swerved upwards and stabbed the air below his chin.

‘I’m standing on the street the other night,’ she said, ‘and I meet a guy. He’s had a few drinks, now he wants a good time. So he comes back to my place. Then it turns out he’s got to fucking climb a ladder before he can screw me.’ The heat of her anger pushed Wilson back a step. ‘If you laugh,’ she said, ‘I’ll fucking kill you.’

He did not even smile.

‘The guy takes one look at the ladder and says no way. He won’t even do it up against the wall. One look at that ladder and he’s gone off the whole idea. You,’ and she poked him in the chest with two fingers, ‘have ruined my business.’

‘I’ve ruined mine too.’

He looked past her shoulder. The sun balanced on the horizon, seemingly uncertain of its course. Its gold light coated everything — innocent, deceptive. It told lies about the sea, the trees in the back yard, the saucepan on the ground; it told tall tales about their value. He reached up with one hand and rubbed his eyes. There was a smell coming from somewhere, a smell that was like eggs cooking in a pool of rancid fat.

‘I’ll make it up to you,’ he said. ‘As soon as my foot’s better, I’ll make it up to you. That’s a promise.’

She did not speak. She just aimed this look of bitterness at him from out of her narrow eyes, from out of the sweet spun-sugar of her dress.

He turned away from her and limped towards his table.

‘It’s no good thinking you can run away,’ she shouted after him.

‘I’m not running,’ he said. ‘Look at me.’

She had only been gone a few minutes when a voice called from behind the pale-blue shutters of the cantina.

‘Somebody out there?’

‘It’s Señor Wilson. I’ve come for my breakfast.’

The shutters burst open, bounced back off the wall. Some pieces of plaster landed on the ground below the window. Mama Vum Buá peered out, her eyelids bloated with sleep.

‘You’re late this morning,’ Wilson said.

‘If you’re going to be funny you can go up the road.’

He grinned. Up the road was an eating-shack called La Concha. You only had to step through the beaded curtain to feel the first twinges of dysentery.

The Señora appeared in the doorway, wearing her usual dress, the one that used to be yellow and red. She summoned a sound from deep in her throat, a sound commonly associated with geese, and sent her spit soaring clear across the yard. He heard it land in the peaceful water of the harbour. Turning her face towards the sun, she began to scratch her arms. Her blunt toes kneaded the dust.

‘That church,’ he said, ‘remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘You know why we couldn’t see it?’

Mama Vum Buá drew her shoulders up towards her ears. Her mouth curved downwards. She kept her eyes imperiously shut.

‘It’s in pieces,’ he said, ‘that’s why.’

‘What happened? Somebody break it?’

He laughed. ‘Nobody broke it. It’s supposed to be in pieces. It has to be assembled.’

‘Ah.’

‘A very famous man designed it, apparently.’

Her eyes were open now, and slanting at him, across her cheeks. ‘Who?’

‘His name’s Eiffel.’

The same downward curve of the mouth. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘He built the Eiffel Tower.’

‘The Eiffel Tower? What’s that?’

‘It’s the tallest building in the world.’

Her eyes moved lazily out towards the horizon. ‘I can’t see it,’ she said. ‘Can’t be that tall.’

Wilson could not keep from smiling.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘I’d like some of those eggs of yours, Señora, if you please.’

But she was staring at him, suspicion drawing her eyebrows down towards the bridge of her nose. ‘Something’s funny. You wouldn’t be laughing if something wasn’t funny.’

‘And coffee,’ Wilson said, still smiling. ‘Plenty of that good coffee.’

Chapter 9

‘It is an honour and a privilege, not to mention a relief,’ Monsieur de Romblay began, ‘a relief,’ he continued, lifting his voice above the laughter, ‘to be able finally to welcome into our midst Monsieur and Madame Valence who are here as representatives of one of the most prestigious construction companies in France, if not the world, the Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel — ’

Suzanne felt her attention begin to wander. Her eyes drifted away from the Director and out across the table — the glinting clutter of silver and glass, the red flowers arching out of their wide bowl, the tallow candles releasing the occasional twist of black smoke into the atmosphere. Gathered round her in the dining-room was the cream of Santa Sofía society: Eugène and Léonie de Romblay, the hosts; Émile Bardou and his wife, Florestine; Marie Saint-Lô, his assistant at the hospital; François Pineau, the accountant; Pierre Morlaix, the safety engineer; Jean-Baptiste Castagnet, who was in charge of timbering and lumber; and, lastly, Captain Félix Montoya, commander of the military garrison. The men were dressed in black coats and white cravats, the sole exception being the Mexican, who had appeared in a scarlet tunic with silver epaulettes and a broad felt hat which was now recumbent on a chair, its plumes shifting in the down-draught from the electric ceiling fan. The women wore evening gowns of silk and taffeta. Marie Saint-Lô had decided on emerald-green, which complemented her pale skin and her brown hair — though, by leaving her neck and shoulders bare, the dress accentuated her stocky, somewhat earthbound figure. Madame de Romblay had chosen a particularly unambiguous cerise. The doctor’s wife had settled for dove-grey. All three had adorned their hair and their décolletages with sprigs of jasmine and cactus blossom, and scent-vials glittered in their gloved hands. Suzanne was wearing mousseline de soie in lettuce-green, trimmed with pompon roses, and pale-shrimp suede gloves to the elbow, and, looking round the table, she did not feel that she was overdressed.

They were nearing the end of a dinner that had been a revelation. An hors-d’oeuvre of spiced bouillabaisse was followed by fillets of yellowtail and barracuda, caught in the waters off the island of San Marcos. For the entrée Madame de Romblay offered a choice of quail or pigeon, both trapped locally by Yaqui Indians. With the fish she served a chilled Chablis, with the fowl, a Bordeaux. (It transpired that, unknown to Théo, both wines had travelled in the hold of the SS Korrigan, along with the town’s new church.) Dessert consisted of segments of Mulege orange preserved in pomegranate brandy and, for the more enterprising, a bowl of pitahaya, the fruit of the organ-pipe cactus, whose spiny, ash-green skin could be peeled away to expose a deep red meat which tasted, Suzanne thought, like strawberries that were almost, but not quite, ripe. With dessert Madame de Romblay suggested a garnet wine from San Ignacio. It had been produced by Jesuits, she claimed, and was one of the few aspects of Jesuit teaching in which the Indians had shown any interest. It closely resembled port, both in its colour and its flavour, and was, in fact, most palatable. Théo had already drunk three glasses.

Suddenly the table rocked with laughter and Suzanne looked up. Théo was turning to her with a smile of resignation on his face. It appeared that Monsieur de Romblay was approaching his finale.

‘— late as a Valence. And if someone’s very late, say about two months,’ gusts of laughter were now sweeping the room and powder rose in clouds from the shoulders of the women, ‘then you might say, “That was a real Valence.” For many of the local people, as we all know, the Valence is a way of life. Perhaps,’ and now the Director himself could not keep from joining in the hilarity, ‘perhaps it’s a blessing, no, more than that, a stroke of genius, that they will now be working with the original exponent of the Valence, none other than Monsieur Valence himself.’

Théo leaned forwards in his chair and executed a number of modest bows in all directions. He was still smiling, though his smile had grown somewhat bemused.

Monsieur de Romblay reached down and seized a glass of Jesuit wine. ‘But seriously,’ he said, ‘we do welcome you both to Santa Sofía, and we hope that your stay will be a happy and rewarding one.’ He raised his glass high. ‘To Monsieur and Madame Valence.’

At last the time came for the company to divide, the men retiring to the library for cognac and cigars, the women to the drawing-room, where coffee and Turkish Delight would be served. As Monsieur de Romblay passed behind Suzanne on his way out of the room, she turned in her chair.

‘A most amusing speech, Monsieur.’

Monsieur de Romblay bent close to her ear. ‘I did not go too far, my dear?’

‘My husband may be correct,’ Suzanne replied, ‘but he can take a joke. You should hear me sometimes.’

Perhaps, after all, she had drunk one too many glasses of the garnet wine herself. But the Director had thrown his head back and seemed to be threatening, in his merriment, to swallow the chandelier.

‘You are certainly a welcome addition to our little throng,’ he said, when he had regained his composure. ‘Most welcome.’

In the drawing-room the women conversed among themselves, complaining first of the laziness of Mexican and Indian maids, then of the din made by the boys who delivered the water; there was also a brief and hushed discussion of some local root that was reputed to have aphrodisiacal powers. All this talk either concerned events that preceded Suzanne’s arrival or presumed a degree of intimacy that she did not as yet possess, but she was content simply to listen, turning every now and then to gaze out of the window. The Director’s house occupied the high ground at the south end of the Calle Francesa. She could look beyond the rooftops of the houses opposite to where the sea pushed against the gravel shore. She could see white smoke rising from the smelting works like the trunk of some ghostly tree. Away to the right and far below she could just make out the dim yellow lights of the harbour.

She had suspected that, sometime during the course of the evening, she would be examined by Madame de Romblay, so when she heard the chair beside her fill with rustling taffeta she knew, without looking, who it was. She could feel those cold tin eyes travelling across her clothes, her skin. She prepared a smile for the moment when she turned from the window, back into the room.

‘Madame de Romblay, that was a truly exceptional meal.’

‘You must call me Léonie, my dear.’ Madame de Romblay lit a dark-brown cigarette and let the smoke spill from the corner of her mouth. ‘We’re such a small community here. We cannot stand on too much ceremony.’

Suzanne inclined her head, a gesture that was not unlike submitting to a guillotine. And then Madame de Romblay’s voice, soft as the blindfold that would be used: ‘How long have you been married?’

‘Almost six years.’

Madame de Romblay’s upper body moved sharply backwards. ‘I would not have thought that you were old enough.’

The two remaining women had exhausted their conversation on the other side of the room and were listening with undisguised curiosity. But Suzanne could not think of a reply. Instead, she focused her attentions on Madame de Romblay’s dress. A woman with Madame de Romblay’s colouring should not be wearing cerise. It gave her neck and shoulders an unhealthy, mottled look. A darker colour would have been more flattering. Indigo, perhaps. Or heliotrope.

In the face of Suzanne’s silence, Madame de Romblay felt the need to elaborate.

‘You must have been very young,’ she said.

‘I was twenty.’

‘So you are now, what, twenty-six?’

Suzanne admitted it.

‘You don’t look twenty-six, my dear.’ Madame de Romblay appealed to the other women, and they duly shook their heads.

‘Thank you,’ Suzanne said.

Madame de Romblay tipped an inch of ash into the metal ashtray at her elbow, one eyebrow arching. ‘He’s a distinguished man, your husband.’

‘He has done well,’ Suzanne ventured, ‘yes.’

‘And how did you meet him?’ Madame de Romblay leaned over and shut her cigarette inside the ashtray. While her back was still turned, she added, ‘After all, the age difference, you must admit, is quite considerable.’

Suzanne smiled. ‘My father taught at the École Centrale in Paris, and Théo was one of his best students. They became friends. Théo was often a visitor at our house.’ Her smile spread as a lie occurred to her. ‘In fact, I’m sure that I remember Théo babysitting me,’ she said, ‘when I was about seven.’

‘How charming,’ Madame de Romblay said.

But she knew that Suzanne had pre-empted her, and she knew that Suzanne knew, and the pot of coffee that had just arrived in the room provided her with an opportunity to excuse herself.

After leaving the de Romblays’ house, Suzanne and Théo crossed the small square that she had discovered on her first evening. They stood at the parapet, looking down into the valley. A warm breeze rose off the sea and pushed against her dress.

‘What do you think of our new friends?’ he asked.

She understood his intent, however veiled. ‘I do not regret coming here,’ she said, ‘not for one moment.’

He laughed. ‘If our conversation were bridges, I fear they would soon collapse.’

‘Oh?’ She took his arm. ‘And why is that?’

‘We advance too quickly, before we have built the necessary struts and trusses to support us.’

‘Sometimes,’ she said, feeling daring now, feeling a sudden sense of release, ‘I think you overdo the struts and trusses.’

He laughed again, though less readily. It was a reference to the tower that he had laboured on with such zeal and devotion, and it was a reference that was less than respectful. But she had wanted to dispatch his gravity with her light wand; she had meant him to understand that she loved him, not for what he had accomplished, but for what he was — not the engineer, but the man.

He turned away from the parapet, hands clasped behind his back. She followed him. They walked beneath the trees in silence. She watched the light and shade alternating on his face.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘they seemed satisfied with the plans, though there was one rather awkward moment.’

She saw that he had not held her piece of gentle mockery against her. Perhaps he had understood her after all.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

He set the scene for her. When he entered the library that evening he saw that his architectural drawings had been laid out on the table, their corners held down by an assortment of natural paperweights — copper, mostly, as one might have expected, though there were also some specimens of various local minerals: gypsum, chalcedony, malachite and jasper; there was even, he remembered, a fossilised shark’s tooth from the Pliocene era. This digression, so typical of him, might, at other times, have frustrated her, but on this warm night, with her arm linked through his, she found it impossible not to indulge him.

For many of the men gathered round the table, Théo said, this was a first glimpse of the church that would be built for them, since it had been purchased on their behalf by the head office of the company in Paris. They were murmuring and pointing, conferring among themselves, the air rich with the mingled fumes of brandy and cigars. Then François Pineau cleared his throat.

‘He is the thin one,’ Suzanne said, ‘with the twisted upper lip.’

Théo nodded. ‘He’s the accountant.’

She smiled. It was as if, in describing the nature of the man’s work, Théo had supplied the reason for his ugliness.

Monsieur Pineau cleared his throat and stepped back from the table. ‘It’s a curious notion, don’t you think,’ he declared, ‘building a metal church in a town like this?’

The question was directed at no one particular person, but rather tossed into the air in order that somebody might reach out and catch it. That somebody was Théo, as, no doubt, it had to be.

‘Curious?’ he said. ‘Why do you find it curious, Monsieur?’

‘I don’t know whether you are familiar with our climate, Monsieur Valence, but during the summer months the temperature often rises to thirty-five degrees, sometimes higher. In a church that is constructed wholly out of metal —’ He lifted one hand into the air. He had made his point; he did not need to go on.

There was a sudden hush in the library, as if this factor had not been properly taken into consideration, as if some dreadful blunder had been committed. All eyes turned slowly, inevitably, to Théo. This was the awkward moment to which he had alluded. He was not shaken, however, or cowed. He had been present when Monsieur Eiffel defended his tower in front of a hostile committee of the city council, and defended it on both structural and aesthetic grounds. This was not even a matter of aesthetics; this was simply a practical objection.

‘I’m sure that your superiors in Paris would not have bought the church in the first place,’ he replied, ‘if they thought it inadequate for their needs.’ Then, in case it seemed that he had merely put the accountant in his place, he turned to specifics. ‘There will be insulation between the walls,’ he explained, ‘in the roof, too, if we can find a suitable material. Pumice has, I believe, been suggested.’ He turned to Monsieur Castagnet, who nodded. ‘There will also be a great many windows, as you can see. Draughts will be conducted throughout the building.’

‘My dear Monsieur Valence,’ and Pineau’s lip curled in a sardonic smile, ‘during the summer months, there are no draughts.’

‘And in time, of course,’ Théo continued, ‘there will be fans. I hasten to remind you that we are living in a modern age. We need no longer be at the mercy of an unfavourable climate.’

‘In time,’ Pineau muttered. He would not be placated.

‘Perhaps, gentlemen,’ Monsieur de Romblay ventured, ‘we are meant to suffer for our religion.’

Even Théo had laughed at that.

‘The Director is not without a certain wit,’ Suzanne observed.

Théo murmured his agreement. ‘In any case,’ he added, ‘they will not have to suffer just yet. In fact, it will be a good two months before they have to start suffering.’

‘Two months it may be,’ Suzanne said, ‘but I’ll wager that Madame de Romblay has already reserved her pew.’

‘I must say, I do not care for that woman.’ Théo was frowning. ‘There is something vulgar about her. Though the dinner was exceptional, of course.’

Suzanne smiled to herself as she recalled how Madame de Romblay had flirted with Théo, and how Théo had signally failed to respond. Théo did not understand flattery; he never took it personally or believed it, not for a moment. To him it was one facet of the art of conversation; it was purely an exercise in the social graces, pleasant enough, but essentially meaningless. When Madame de Romblay suggested that some of Eiffel’s genius might have rubbed off on him, he immediately, and without self-consciousness or hesitation, launched into a discussion of the word and then departed for the wider pastures of semantics, leaving the poor woman far behind with a glazed expression on her face.

Suzanne’s smile widened. There was something vulgar about her, he had said, as if it was something that he could not quite pin down — a hidden quality, some elusive trait. She remembered how Madame de Romblay had turned from Théo to Montoya, leaning into him, her tin eyes glittering through narrowed lids. She had been wearing a dress that made no secret of her breasts, and all the men, at some time in the evening, had let their eyes rest for a moment on those brazen slopes. Where for some they might have been emblems of seduction, for Théo they were merely vulgar. For the young Captain they appeared to present a positive threat. He seemed flustered, if not smothered, by her interest. As for the rest of the company it was rather as if she were lavishing attention upon a favourite hound. They displayed no signs of unease or embarrassment; the atmosphere was one of complicity. In fact, the manner in which her behaviour was tolerated suggested that this was an established routine, that the French thought of Montoya, and perhaps all Mexicans, as a lesser breed, a butt for ridicule, a source of entertainment. But if Madame de Romblay was vulgar, she was also dangerous — for what was that vulgarity but a craving for centre-stage; it was her right, her privilege, and the other women, Marie and Florestine, had left the field open for her. Suzanne saw that she would have to tread with the utmost care. She could make enemies here.

This meditation had brought them both to the front of the hotel, and Théo stood aside so she could climb the steps to the veranda. She paused under the sloping roof to draw the beauty of the night into her lungs. The air was dense and soft; she felt she could almost cup it in her hand. She looked away to the south. The moon had risen into the clear sky above the mountains. Her thoughts turned to the American. When she first addressed him, just below where she was standing now, it had been with a confidence, a kind of familiarity, which, had it been viewed from the outside, say by Madame de Romblay, would probably have seemed quite inappropriate — even, perhaps, shameless. But she had once again sensed a kinship between this new acquaintance and the water-carrier from her childhood; they shared the same kindliness, the same quiet strength. It had seemed entirely natural to seek him out and talk to him.

She took Théo’s arm. ‘When the moon is full, Théo, you can sit outside at night and read a book.’

The idea entertained him. ‘Who told you that?’

‘The American.’

‘Is he that fellow with the broken foot?’

‘His name is Wilson Pharaoh. He comes from San Francisco.’

‘Typical American,’ Théo said, ‘to go filling your head with fanciful notions.’ His tone of voice was understanding, though, and fond; he was only amused at the naivety of a foundling nation.

She pressed closer to him. ‘I wish you were younger,’ she said, ‘so that I might have more time with you.’

He smiled down at her. ‘I’m not dead yet.’

She lay on her back under the mosquito-netting that arched from the bed up to a metal halo near the ceiling. Its long sides billowed in the down-draught from the fan. She could hear Théo washing in the room next door — water splashing on to stone. It was their last night in the hotel. Tomorrow they would be moving into a house with a view of the sea. The garnet wine surged through her body; her blood weighed more than usual in her veins. One of her hands drifted upwards from her hip. Her skin rose to the touch of her nightgown.

‘Make love to me.’ She had to whisper, or he would hear.

‘Please,’ she whispered.

She wished that he desired her more often, with more urgency, with violence, if need be. She could imagine that he might hold her down by her hair, that he might take her by surprise, against her will.

But his love for her, every aspect of his love, seemed so measured. Methodical, precise. It had been the same during the voyage from Le Havre. In their cabin there had been two single bunks, and he considered it undignified, he said, to make love in a narrow bunk — though he had, on more than one occasion, the voyage being so long, felt driven to submit to this indignity.

The bed lunged and creaked as he climbed in. She listened to his breathing deepen. Then, without thinking, almost despite herself, she reached out and touched his shoulder. He shifted suddenly away from her.

‘What is it?’

There was anger in his voice. She could not answer.

‘I was almost asleep,’ he said. ‘You startled me.’ He became gentler, more persuasive. ‘You know that I have to be up early in the morning.’

‘Of course, Théo. I’m sorry.’ She turned away from him, lay on her side.

She felt him lift his head off the pillow and peer at her. She sensed his puzzlement, but knew it would not last. She closed her eyes and listened to her heart roll against her ribs. It was not long before the bed tilted and he sank back down into the sheets. Soon afterwards he was asleep.

She thought back to the summer when she met him. Though she was still only seventeen she had already been admired by many men, none of whom she cared for, not even remotely. Then, one afternoon, her father announced that Monsieur Théophile Valence, a former student of his, would be coming to their house for dinner.

When she saw him she could not look into his face. It was as if she knew that she would find what she had always wanted there, and was afraid suddenly. Her heart had vanished for a moment, completely vanished, like an animal falling into a trap, then it returned again, beating harder than before.

She remembered that she had stopped on the threshold to the drawing-room and watched the two men talking. It had been a hot day; evening sunlight gilded the arms of chairs, the raised piano lid, the crystal teardrops of the chandelier. Standing in the doorway, unobserved, it was his hands that she noticed first. They were not distinguished or refined at all. They did not taper, as men’s hands were supposed to. They were not as smooth as ivory. She could see the veins knotting just above his knuckles as he gestured; she noted the big, square palm. They were, well, they were labourer’s hands. And almost instantly the feeling took hold of her, as deep as if she was asleep and dreaming: the feeling that she wanted more than anything to surrender to his hands, to feel his hands descend and settle on her skin. Standing there she could, in fact, imagine this possession, and because she could imagine it, she knew that it would happen. It was the sweetest and most scandalous delight, to know this with such certainty before he even saw her.

At that moment her father noticed her, and he smiled and rose from his chair, saying, ‘Ah, and here, at last, is my daughter —’ And she had to pretend to be moving forwards, forwards into the room.

But what she had imagined did not happen. Nothing happened. She could not understand it.

At the Chantilly Derby that year, wearing a new dress (moon satin, daring for the afternoon), she had accepted compliments from no fewer than eleven members of the nobility, including a distant cousin of Napoleon III and a count from the Piedmont in Northern Italy, eleven pairs of lips had brushed the back of her mauve kid glove, but she could remember sitting in front of her triptych of mirrors after yet another desolate encounter with Théo and fingering her dark-blonde ringlets and thinking: What is it? What is wrong with me? For the truth was, he did not seem to see her. He just did not seem to see her at all. Autumn came, and she lay in bed like a stone, not even blinking.

In desperation she consulted her closest friend, Lucille, who was two years her senior and had more experience of the world.

‘Lucille?’ she said. ‘Am I ugly?’

Lucille stared at her, and then she began to laugh. She had a pretty laugh — like a bell, men often said — but that day it had grated.

‘It’s not a joke, Lucille.’

‘It has got to be.’

‘Just tell me the truth. I want to hear the truth.’

‘You’re beautiful, Suzanne. Everybody thinks so. I always wanted to look like you.’

Suzanne told Lucille about Théo.

‘Perhaps there is something wrong with him,’ Lucille suggested. ‘Perhaps,’ and she lowered her voice, ‘he doesn’t like women.’

Suzanne shook her head. ‘He was engaged once. My father told me.’

Lucille sighed.

When she left that afternoon she took Suzanne’s hand in both of hers. ‘Men can be slow sometimes,’ she said. ‘Men can be blind.’ She kissed Suzanne on the cheek. ‘He will come round, don’t you worry. He will come round in the end.’

And he did, of course. In the end.

She felt cold suddenly. She moved closer to Théo in the bed — gently, imperceptibly, so he would not wake — until she could feel his warmth against her belly and her thighs. It was no reflection on her that he did not make love to her more often. He was under pressure, that was all. He had so much to do.

She wedged a pillow between her knees and brought the sheet up to the soft hollow between her chin and her lower lip. I am married to the man I love, she thought, and let the thought repeat itself, over and over, until the sweet wine cut her moorings, and she slept.

Chapter 10

17 Calle Francesa, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico

30th April, 189–

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

It is two weeks since we arrived in Santa Sofía, and I am pleased to report that things are at last beginning to run smoothly. During the past two days I have been supervising the final stages of unloading. All the longitudinal elements are now laid out on site in the usual manner, along with the majority of the end posts and tie bars, and I find myself marvelling once again at the intrinsic simplicity of the system 1 B₂ 4, 5 B₄ 8, etc. upon which all our endeavours are based. We have employed dry foundations, sinking to a depth of just half a metre; given the quality of the subsoil in El Pueblo and the nature of the shearing forces in this particular structure, there seemed no necessity to ensure against unequal settling. With the aid of Monsieur Castagnet, the timbering expert, we have fashioned a crude but satisfactory mast and a number of simple hoisting gins. Tomorrow we should be able to lift the first of the central arches into position.

I am aware that much of the above may sound pedantic, but it is a measure of our predicament. In a country as primitive as the one in which we find ourselves, nothing can be taken for granted; we must be grateful for small mercies. Though I have assembled a workforce of twenty-two men, they are, for the most part, Indians and have difficulty interpreting even the simplest of my directives. It is the clear and systematic methods on which our company prides itself, curiously enough, that seem to present an obstacle, since the ways of the native people are pervaded throughout by every conceivable illogicality and confusion. The most common word in their vocabulary is ’vara’ which, literally translated, means ‘nothing’. They come and stand before me, and when I ask them why they have come, they say ‘Vara.’ If I then ask them what they want, they reply again, ‘Vara.’ It is quite maddening. Yesterday I received three successive ‘Vara’s from one man before I was able to elicit from him that he wanted to know when to report for work on the following day! At this point we were plunged abruptly into a new quandary, one that stemmed from differing approaches to the concept of time. Most of the Indians can only count to six, some only to three. (No Indian can say how many fingers he has; his reply will always be, ‘Many.’) Since we could not communicate the idea of five o’clock in the morning we had, in the end, to settle for ‘early’ or, in the revised version, ‘much early’. You are probably far more acquainted than I am with these frustrations, Monsieur, and I realise that I will have to learn that most irksome of virtues, namely patience. If current progress is anything to go by, the project is unlikely to be completed before June.

As you can see from the letter heading, we have moved into our new home. Though sparsely furnished, it is perfectly adequate, and Madame Valence is finding a hundred small ways of rendering the interior more pleasing, as only a woman can. She has bought two rugs from a Mexican trader to brighten the bare wood floors, and fills the rooms with various species of cactus which are, she claims, a substitute for flowers. In the absence of any paintings, she will no doubt hang her own! She is so occupied at present that I scarcely see her from dawn to dusk. Our neighbours have shown us every kindness, especially the Director of the company himself, Monsieur de Romblay, who is a most personable gentleman and a raconteur of some note. I will endeavour to keep you informed of our progress, such as it is, and hope this letter finds you, as always, in the very best of health.

I remain, with the deepest respect, Monsieur, your most humble servant,

Théophile Valence.