Air and Fire

Chapter 1

Suzanne had only met Captain Montoya once, at the welcoming banquet in the last week of April, and they had exchanged no more than the few required sentences, yet she had suspected, even then, that he would fall for her. It had not been hard to predict this infatuation; she had seen the signs in the mournful slackening of his face as he gazed at her across the table, and in the reverence with which he bent over her gloved hand and brushed it with his lips when she departed. Since that evening she had not thought of him at all except to smile when she remembered how Madame Bardou, the epitome of modesty and decorum, had caught a glimpse of his plumed hat on the chair and let out a shriek because she thought a cockerel had found its way into the room.

Then, one afternoon, she was woken from her siesta by a knocking on the door. Her maid, Imelda, always returned to her parents’ shop in El Pueblo after lunch, so she was alone in the house. She drew a silk peignoir over her chemise and fastened her hair in a casual knot at the back of her head. It was the most silent hour of the day, and not a time when anyone would think of visiting. She assumed that it was Théo; he must have forgotten his keys. She stepped out into the corridor that ran through the centre of the house.

‘Who is it?’

‘It is I, Félix Montoya.’

Her surprise registered as an instinctive glance at the mirror, one hand moving up to adjust a stray twist of hair. She would have recognised his voice, even if he had not given her his name. He spoke French with an unmistakable accent, though he had assured her, on the night of the banquet, that he had learned the language at the most expensive school in Mexico City.

She unlocked the front door and then unfastened the screen door that lay beyond it. Captain Montoya was standing on the veranda in full dress uniform: a scarlet tunic with a stiff collar and silver epaulettes, tight-fitting dove-grey trousers, and high black boots garnished with a pair of spurs. Rows of silver buttons ran down the outside of his trouser-legs. He wore a cutlass, too, housed in an ornate, hand-hammered silver scabbard.

‘Good afternoon, Captain,’ she said.

He brought his heels together and bowed low.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you at such an hour, Madame,’ he said, ‘but I have an invitation.’

Bowing again, he handed her an envelope. He would not look at her. She took the envelope. It had not been addressed, nor was there any name on it.

‘It’s for me?’ she asked.

‘It is.’

‘Am I to open it now?’

He shrugged. ‘As you wish.’

There was a tension and a carelessness about him. It was as if he were constantly in possession of some powerful emotion that he had to suppress, but whose existence was impossible to deny. She stared at him for a few moments then, when he still had not moved from the veranda, she asked him if he would like some refreshment before he continued on his way.

In retrospect she decided that perhaps she ought not to have encouraged him, though by then she was to realise that he would have seen encouragement even if it had not in fact been there. At the time she saw no harm in offering a little hospitality.

She led him into the parlour and showed him to a chair by the window. He sat down. The shutters had been drawn against the sun, and the room was cool.

‘I will just fetch you something,’ she said.

When she returned from the kitchen with a glass of lemonade, he was sitting with a straight back, his eyes angled away from her. The room had relieved him of some portion of his glamour; he seemed inert, weighed down, encumbered by all the metal he was wearing. She handed him the glass and watched him while he drank. There were smudges beneath his eyes — signs of sleeplessness. His moustache was made up of two entirely separate triangles. There was a line beside his mouth which would deepen if he smiled. When he had finished almost half the contents of the glass, he put it down on the table by the window and stared at it, as if it were capable of moving by itself.

‘Is it good?’ she asked him.

‘Yes, Madame.’

She took a seat across the room from him and picked up the envelope. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘The invitation.’

Reaching for her paper-knife, she slit the seal. Inside she found a card that requested the presence of Monsieur and Madame Valence at the private residence of Captain Félix Tortoledo de Avilés Montoya on the 11th of May at five o’clock in the afternoon, for tea. It had been written in crimson ink, with a number of loops and flourishes, the graphological equivalent, she supposed, of spurs and epaulettes. She experienced a sudden and almost uncontrollable urge to burst out laughing, a desire which was only heightened by the Captain’s mournful and unwavering gaze. She did not have to look at him to know. In fact, she dared not look. She concentrated on the invitation — its scalloped edges, its crimson loops and flourishes.

‘The eleventh,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a Tuesday.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘My husband will be at work. He won’t be able to come.’

‘Then come alone.’

Though this was ostensibly his answer to the objection that she had raised, it also had the distinct ring of an order. There was no doubt in his mind but that she would come, and come alone, if she had to. It might even, she thought, have been his original intention, and it now occurred to her that, despite the conspicuous formality of the invitation, Montoya was a man who took no account of the accepted social proprieties.

That evening, after supper, when Théo had retired to his study on the first floor, Suzanne read for an hour on the divan, the invitation tucked between the pages of her book. Towards ten o’clock she climbed the stairs to bed. The study door stood open, but she thought that she should knock. When there was no reply, she entered. Théo was hunched over some plans, his back to her.

‘Will you be much longer?’ she asked.

He spoke without looking round. ‘I didn’t hear you knock.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I did knock.’

‘I’m sure you did. I just didn’t hear it.’

She crossed the room and leaned against the window. She could hear the monotonous rumble of the smelting plant through the wire-mesh screen. The night smelled of jasmine and rust.

‘Don’t you find it hard to concentrate,’ she said, ‘with all this noise?’

‘One can become used to anything.’

Smiling faintly, she moved away from the window and stood behind him, one hand on the back of his chair.

‘We’ve been invited to tea,’ she said.

‘Really? Who by?’

‘Montoya.’

‘The man’s a clown.’ Théo unfolded a detailed drawing of the church and spread it on the table in front of him. The crash and rustle of the paper dismissed her.

‘Clowns can be entertaining,’ she said.

Still Théo would not look up.

‘And besides,’ she added, ‘I think he has a certain charm.’

‘You know that I’m busy.’

She was staring at her hand. White against the dark wood of the chair. And, beyond her hand, his back. The curve of it. Solid, black — immovable.

‘Do whatever you think best, my dear.’

She doubted he had heard much of what she had said. Like the rumble of the smelting works and the heat, her presence lacked the power to disturb him. He was too preoccupied with the documents that lay before him.

It was only when she pulled her hand away from the chair and turned to leave the room that his eyes lifted. She thought she could feel him studying her as she walked out.

Chapter 2

It was twenty past eleven by his father’s gold watch when Wilson pushed through the corrugated-iron door of the Bar El Fandango. Pablo Fernández was sitting in the cool gloom, a heap of peanuts at his elbow. Staring straight ahead, Pablo would snap a shell open, toss the nut into his mouth, then let the empty husk spill out of the side of his hand. His eyes did not blink or flicker as Wilson passed in front of him; they did not move at all. Though Wilson had grown used to Pablo, he still found this manner of his unnerving; it was like dropping a stone into a pond and it just vanishing without a ripple. He sat down at the only other table and waited for the two hands on his watch to meet.

The Bar El Fandango was a wooden lean-to, with sky showing through the walls. The floor was clay, baked solid by the heat, its surface polished by spilt drinks and miners’ phlegm. Pickled eggs crowded in a tin bowl on the counter. Close by stood a jar that bristled with viznaga spines — the poor man’s toothpick. A turtle-shell and a pair of castanets hung from a nail above the bar. Bottles with no labels filled the shelves beneath. Cactus liquor. Pablo had told Wilson how the stuff was made. It was simple enough. You found the right kind of cactus, then you just cut the top off and added sugar. Seven days later a pure, clear alcohol dripped from a pinhole in the base. Seven days. That was how long it took. ‘Just like the world,’ Wilson had observed at the time. Pablo had not reacted — not for a moment, anyway. Then his head began to turn. It turned until it locked on Wilson’s face. Then he stuck his hand out and Wilson had to shake it. ‘Just like the world,’ Pablo repeated, and his thin dark lips achieved a smile. After that, Wilson always knew when he had said something Pablo liked because Pablo would stick his hand out and Wilson would have to shake it. The smile would happen later. Sometimes not until the next day.

At twenty-five to twelve Wilson broke the silence.

‘Don’t it give you wind,’ he said, ‘eating all them nuts?’

Pablo could not answer, of course. Not at twenty-five to twelve. Wilson watched Pablo’s thin, arched eyebrows lift and curl as his blunt fingers hunted among the peanut shells. The seconds ticked away inside Wilson’s jacket pocket.

‘You know, I just had a thought, Pablo.’

Pablo looked up.

‘You know you don’t talk in the morning? Well, maybe it would be a good idea if you didn’t talk in the afternoon as well.’

Another empty shell slid from the side of Pablo’s hand and hit the floor.

‘And the evening,’ Wilson added, after a moment’s reflection.

Pablo just looked at him.

Wilson stood up. He reached across the bar and took a bottle off the shelf. He brought the bottle over to his table. He sat down again and folded his arms.

‘What I’m trying to say is, maybe we’d all be better off if you didn’t talk at all.’

Pablo said nothing.

‘There’s a couple of missions I heard about,’ Wilson said. ‘They’re on the mainland. You can go there and nobody ever speaks to you. There’s a word for it, I can’t remember what. Calls for a bit of discipline, but I reckon you’d be up to it.’

Wilson leaned forwards. ‘Then nobody would get hurt any more, see? Then nobody would bust their foot.’

Still Pablo said nothing. He studied a husk. His eyebrows had lifted high on to his forehead, as if he were appraising it.

‘No need to rush into anything,’ Wilson said. ‘Just think it over.’ He poured himself a drink and swallowed it.

Then he looked at Pablo again. ‘It’d give me wind,’ he said, ‘that’s for sure.’

It was two minutes to twelve.

When midday came, Wilson decided not to speak. Instead, he closed his eyes and dozed. The next time he looked at his watch, it was eighteen minutes past.

‘About the room,’ he said.

Pablo cleared his throat. First words of the day. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing’s wrong with the room. It’s the stairs.’

‘What’s wrong with the stairs? They’re good stairs.’

‘My foot. That’s what’s wrong with the stairs.’

‘You shouldn’t have bust it, should you. Shouldn’t go sleeping in strange places. With strange women.’ Pablo shook his head.

‘I was thinking,’ Wilson said. ‘Maybe I should take a room on the ground floor.’

‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid.’

‘But there’s an empty room below me,’ Wilson said. ‘I can see it through the floor. There’s no one in it.’

‘It’s taken. They’re all taken.’

Wilson gaped at Pablo. If this was true, it would be the only time in the hotel’s history.

‘It was Montoya’s idea,’ Pablo said. ‘There’s some new workers coming in. For the church. There’s no houses for them, so they’re putting them in my hotel. Fifteen of them,’ he said, ‘in three rooms.’ His dark lips twisted.

‘How long for?’

Pablo shrugged. ‘As long as it takes.’ He swept the rest of the shells on to the floor. ‘I’m not happy about it either. They’re paying me some cut rate that they decided on. The Government,’ he said, and sighed. He brushed a few last fragments off the table, then ran the same hand through his hair. ‘Have you seen anything of Jesús?’

‘I saw him this morning,’ Wilson said. ‘Ramon’s been giving him trouble.’

‘Ramon’s a parasite.’

Wilson had spent most of the morning with the baker, sitting on a sack of flour just inside the door. Jesús had suspended a wooden bar from the ceiling on ropes, and he was standing in his kneading-trough with both hands on the bar, trampling a mass of dough with his feet.

‘This is new,’ Wilson remarked.

‘It’s what they do in Austria,’ Jesús said. ‘An Austrian came through on a ship. He told me about it.’

‘What about your oven? Is it finished yet?’

‘Take a look.’

Wilson crossed the room, unlatched the iron door and peered inside. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s got a slope, that’s for sure.’

‘A slope?’ Jesús chuckled. ‘That’s called a sole, that is. I’m going to do it this time. I’m really going to show them.’

His refurbished oven and his adoption of European techniques had given him the kind of lift he needed. He could see his way forwards again. A baguette began to seem possible. He pumped up and down with his wide feet. The sweat dripped off his chin, moistening the dough beneath.

‘Salt,’ he said, and his pale, heavy mouth broke into a grin. ‘Good bread needs salt.’

‘I hope you washed your feet,’ Wilson said.

‘I trod in some shit before I started work.’ Jesús took one hand off the bar and spread his fingers in the air. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s only the French, isn’t it.’

Wilson was glad to see that the baker’s sense of humour had returned. This certainly was a new Jesús.

The only shadow on the day was cast by Señor José Ramón, the customs officer. Ramón toured El Pueblo a couple of times a week, in search of bribes. His trouser pockets were the deepest in town, but still his mother had to fit them with extensions every year. He appeared on the threshold of the bakery, his hands clasped behind his back. Blue-tinted glasses hid his eyes.

‘You got anything for me?’

His hands surfaced and caressed each other. He moistened his lips. Like many corrupt and powerful men, José Ramón had an almost inexhaustible appetite for cake.

Jesús climbed out of his trough and reached behind the counter. He handed Ramón a brown paper bag. Ramón opened it, and peered inside. He just kept peering down until Jesús reached behind him once again and gathered a handful of sugar buns. Ramón held the bag out. Jesús dropped them in.

Ramón nodded and turned towards the door.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘American. You want to change some dollar? The rate is good.’ He bared his teeth in a predatory smile.

‘I haven’t got any dollar.’

Ramón laughed. ‘A poor American. Now that’s something.’

He was still chuckling when he left the bakery and set off down the street. His pockets were so fat with bribes and sweeteners, he had to swing his weight from one leg to the other; it was the only way he could achieve momentum.

Pablo nodded at the description.

‘Ramón more or less runs the town,’ he said. ‘This part of it, at least. He’s set an import duty of two hundred per cent. That’s on all imported goods. Flour, fruit — you name it. Just plucked the figure out of the air. If you don’t pay it, the goods are held in the warehouse. Guarded by a couple of Montoya’s men. They’re in on it too. If Ramón likes you, though, and you slip him a little something every once in a while, then he only charges you fifty per cent.’

‘A little something?’ Wilson could still see that brown paper bag, bulging with cakes and pastries.

‘Well,’ Pablo said, ‘that’s what he calls it.’

Wilson looked at his watch. It was time to hitch a ride up to Frenchtown. He hoisted himself to his feet and wedged his crutches under his arms.

‘Vows of silence,’ Pablo said.

Wilson turned in the doorway. ‘What?’

‘That word you were trying to think of,’ Pablo said. ‘It’s vows of silence.’

On his way down Avenida Cobre, Wilson heard voices — a low muttering, a hum of anticipation. Half the population of El Pueblo had gathered in the square outside the Hotel La Playa. Wilson caught sight of Luis Fernández, Pablo’s younger brother, and asked him what was happening. The first piece of the church was about to be lifted into place, Luis said. Some kind of arch. Wilson could see more than a dozen Indians crowding round a winch, under the anxious supervision of the man he now knew to be Suzanne’s husband. He pressed closer, leaned one shoulder against the wall of the hotel.

The arch lay flat on the ground, its feet loosely bolted into concrete foundations. Cables had been fastened to the other end, some linked to the winch, some lying unattached. A long line of Indians waited at the apex. Wilson watched as they bent down, inserting their hands beneath the structure. Then, on a signal from Monsieur Valence, they straightened up. The arch rose a foot into the air. The Frenchman shouted another command. The winch let out a creak; the cables tightened. The arch began to lift. The Indians supported it, their chins tucked into their chests, their arms stretching above their heads. Then it was out of reach, and all they could do was stand beneath it staring upwards as the cables took the strain.

As the arch lifted, framing the houses beyond it and the clear blue sky above, Wilson began to get an idea of its size and shape. It was at least forty feet high, and built entirely from interlocking pieces of grey metal. He remembered Suzanne telling him about the number of component parts involved. Two thousand and something, she had said. Now he could understand it. The arch had been constructed in six sections, and each section was made up of — he counted — twenty-four pieces. The two sections that met to form the apex and the two at the base were straight. Only the two sections that created the actual shape of the arch were curved. He saw how cleverly the structure had been designed, so as to use the least number of curved pieces; they would be more difficult to make, and more expensive.

Halfway up into the sky, the arch suddenly slipped back. Several of the Indians scattered, fearing they might be crushed. But Valence shouted a command and the arch slipped no further. It put Wilson in mind of trying to land a big fish: it seemed to require the same skills, that balance of strength and gentleness, that sureness of touch. He watched closely as the men bent to the handle of the winch and the arch rose up again. This time there were no false moves.

Once the arch stood upright, the cables that trailed from its apex were gathered up and fastened to rings in the ground. Men darted to the base and bolted the metal feet into position. Someone let off a firecracker. People began to shout and clap. Valence stood back with his arms folded, and his face tilted upwards in what appeared to be a private moment of celebration — pride mingled with relief.

Through the crowd, Wilson caught a glimpse of Mama Vum Buá. She stood out from those around her; she shared none of their amusement, their jubilation. Her chin was lowered, and she peered at the archway through her eyebrows. She seemed dissatisfied, suspicious, and Wilson thought he knew why. This structure from across the sea, half metal and half air, was not her idea of a church. She did not recognise it yet. She was still waiting for her enemy to show its face.

Smiling, Wilson moved off down Avenida Manganeso. It was about time the town had a church of its own. When he first arrived in San Francisco with his parents, there had been no church. His mother had never forgiven his father for that. Though he could only have been three years old, he could remember the night she turned on his father, rain beating against the canvas roof, the candle shivering. He could not remember what she had said, only the sound of her voice. He heard the sound again years later, felling redwoods in Oregon. The moment when a tree admits that it can no longer stand. The agony and indignation as something strong begins to break.

She had married Wilson’s father, Arthur Pharaoh, believing him to be a dealer in horses when, in fact, he was nothing more than a drifter, an opportunist, even, at times, a thief. The breadth of his shoulders and the energy that crackled in his heels had drawn her to him, but they only told part of the truth. He was an edgy, brittle man; he turned this way and that, like a branch caught in rapids. She had wanted to settle on the eastern seaboard, but he yearned for the West, those undiscovered places where life had yet to take shape, and she had, in the end, and against her better judgement, consented. During their journey across the country she became pregnant, an event which Arthur seized on with gratitude, claiming that it was the Lord’s blessing from above and proof that the adventure that they had embarked upon together would bear fruit. It would do nothing of the kind, of course. No sooner had they reached San Francisco than he was leaving again, for the mountains this time, in search of gold. His wife and child were left to fend for themselves in a town where the winter rains had begun, where people lived in tents made out of flour-sacks, where the streets became so thick with mud that horses had been known to drown. With her hair scraped close to her scalp and her teeth already loose in her head, Constance Pharaoh submitted to yet another cruel awakening. She felt herself surrounded by heathens, murderers and Chinamen, and she took to carrying a bottle of carbolic acid with her whenever she ventured out; she said it protected her against disease and sin. In the absence of any church she built a kind of chapel inside the walls of her own skin, a place that would be hers alone to govern, a place where she would be free from all deceit. She could not keep her husband, but she could keep God. He, at least, would not abandon her.

Wilson shook his head as Avenida Manganeso delivered him on to the waterfront. He sat down on an iron bollard in the milky sunlight. If she could see him now she would despair. The drunkenness, the debts, the wanderlust. Image of your father, she would say. A bleak smile on his face, he stared out across the harbour. One small boat lifting and falling, one grey sail. It was Namu. He raised a hand, but the fisherman did not notice him. A pelican dipped over the water, ragged edges to its wings. Three beats and a rest, three beats and a rest.

‘You seem melancholy today.’

He did not need to look round; he knew the voice. As he began to climb to his feet, a gloved hand touched his shoulder. ‘Don’t get up.’

‘Melancholy?’ he said. ‘Your English is certainly coming on.’

She laughed. ‘It’s the same word in French.’

He turned his face towards hers. A plain cream dress, a straw hat. A basket on her arm. There were people who could reach down and lift you effortlessly out of where you were. It was almost a godlike quality. Suzanne was one of those people and, in the spirit of those people, did not know it.

‘I bought some fish,’ she said. ‘Would you like to have lunch with me?’

He hesitated, not wanting to impose on her.

‘I thought we could eat in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘My husband would not approve, but he will not be there.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s having lunch with Monsieur Castagnet.’

Wilson nodded. ‘I saw him earlier. Your husband, I mean. The first piece of the church has just gone up.’

‘Thank goodness. He was beginning to think that nothing would ever happen.’ A despondency settled on her for a moment. Then she shook the look out of her face and smiled down at him. ‘Please come.’

‘I would like it very much, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Though by the time I get up that hill, it will be closer to dinner.’

‘Dinner then.’

She had pinned her hair up under her hat and, as she bent down to lift one of his crutches, he could see the valley between the delicate muscles at the back of her neck. It seemed that he was always discovering new natural places of beauty on her. But her beauty did not ache this morning. It was part of the lightness that she had brought with her, part of the elation that had risen through him the moment that he heard her voice. He wedged the crutches beneath his arms and turned to face the road that led to the hill.

‘Race you,’ he said.

The kitchen was a simple timber shack, linked to the back of the house by a short flight of stairs. It had a wood-burning stove for cooking on, and a row of copper pans hung along the wall, arranged according to size. There were two windows. One framed the lower slopes of the Cabo Vírgenes Mountains to the north-west. The other offered a view across El Pueblo; Wilson could see the ridge known as Mexico and the white wall that encircled Montoya’s ranch. A century plant grew close to this second window. On his way down the steps, he had noticed how its lethal spikes had collected in the grooves of the tin roof. The Indians used these spikes as needles and even, on occasion, as weapons. He had not eaten since early that morning, and then only the inside of two blackened loaves that Jesús had given him. As he watched Suzanne slip the fresh fish into her shallow pan of oil, his hunger rose from the pit of his stomach, powerful and sour. She did not disappoint him. For lunch she served fillets of bonita fried in sweet garlic, a salad of capsicum and cucumber, and a dozen ripe figs, the colour of evening shadows. She opened some white wine too. Condensation poured down the outside of the bottle, pooling at the base. When he asked her how it came to be so chilled, she showed him the earthen pit below the house, lined with lava blocks and filled with ice. Her two canaries sang in their gilt cage. Wilson thought they sounded a little like wagon-wheels in need of grease, though he did not tell her that, of course. Instead they talked about journeys — his through Mexico by mule, hers on a steamer round Cape Horn. As he sat at the tilting wooden table, watching her prepare each new delight for him, he felt that he was receiving a gift that hardly seemed deserved. He would not have dared to imagine an intimacy such as this, and there were times during the meal when it humbled him. But then, risking a glance at her, he would witness the pleasure that she was taking in this small rebellion of hers, and he realised that he was in some way necessary to her. When he finally laid down his knife and fork he told her that it had been the best cooking he had tasted in a long time.

‘Better than Mama Vum Buá?’ She was smiling at him across the rim of her glass. He could feel the beauty rising off her face like heat.

‘There’s no comparison,’ he said, lowering his eyes, ‘though I do enjoy the company of her children.’

‘How many children does she have?’

‘Eight, I think. You can never be sure with her. She had four more that died.’

Suzanne’s face dipped, and she was silent.

‘Have you got any children, Wilson?’ she asked eventually.

‘Not that I know of.’

She smiled again, her face still dipped, one finger pushing grains of salt across the table. ‘Have you ever been married?’

‘Still waiting for the right girl, I guess.’ He heard his voice across a distance, steady and light. His words were not his; they belonged to someone else.

She looked up, her cheeks flushed with the wine that she had drunk. Her eyes flashed and glinted, like earth when it is strewn with mica.

‘But you have been in love,’ she said, ‘surely?’

He did not want to answer her. He did not see how he could talk of other women in her presence. He had the feeling that it might debase him in her eyes. That it might cheapen him, and spoil everything.

He shifted on his chair.

If he was to mean anything to her, he should now be telling her that he had never loved anyone — shouldn’t he? It would prepare the way for his love for her. No past. No history. No seeds sown in him by any face but hers.

His love for her, which stretched in both directions, past and future. A love which overflowed the banks of the present to flood his entire life. What people called eternal.

So, yes. Deny the past, what little there was of it. Then maybe she would understand his love for what it was — unique, unparalleled, beyond compare.

He glanced at her — a quick, guilty look. She was still watching him, still smiling.

And suddenly he knew that he had got it wrong. The stories he did not want to tell her, she would eke them out of him. He saw that now. She would eke them out of him because he wanted more than anything to please her — even if it meant that he was sacrificing some pleasure, some ambition, of his own.

And something else. There had been his promise, hadn’t there. Lightly given, lightly accepted — yet firm, remembered, serious.

‘Surely,’ she repeated, waiting.

He leaned forwards, let out a sigh.

Once, he told her, a long time ago in Monterey, he had loved a girl who had red hair.

Chapter 3

As Suzanne passed through the screen door and into the house, the darkness suddenly closed in, wrapped around her head, and she had to rest one hand upon the banister. She had drunk too much wine. She was not accustomed to drinking, and certainly not during the day, but the spontaneity and ease with which she had improvised the lunch had induced in her a kind of recklessness. She did not move again until there was light in the hallway, until she felt that she could see.

Upstairs in the bedroom she reached into the bottom of her trunk and found her paint-box bound in a scarf of crêpe-de-Chine. She had been intending simply to show Wilson the paints, but now she had another idea. She took a vase from the table and filled it from the water jar.

When she returned to the veranda, the sun seemed to have fallen in the sky. The shadow of the house sprawled below, warped by the uneven slope of the terrain; the edge of the shadow rippled, reminding her of flags in wind. At the foot of the hill lay the sea. It stretched away to the horizon in alternating shades of lavender and jade. The American was sitting where she had left him, in an upholstered cane chair, his hands folded across his waistcoat, his hat pulled level with his eyebrows.

‘Wilson?’

He tipped his hat back and sat up straighter. ‘I was dreaming there for a moment,’ he said. ‘Must be the wine.’ He leaned forwards. ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

She handed him the paint-box. ‘It was given to me when I was a child,’ she told him. ‘Before that, it belonged to my mother.’

He admired it slowly, turning it in his rough hands, making it seem, for the first time, a thing of delicacy.

‘Are you going to paint something?’ he asked her.

‘Yes, I am.’ She smiled. ‘I’m going to paint your foot.’

His look of alarm pushed her smile over into laughter. ‘Look at it,’ she said. ‘It’s so dull. It needs some decoration.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Now what shall it be? A flower? An animal? Some gold at the end of a rainbow?’

‘I don’t want everyone to know my secret.’

‘I guess not.’

He looked at her, one corner of his mouth curling humorously upwards.

‘It’s American,’ she said. ‘I learned it from you.’

At length they decided on a flower. But which kind? He let her choose. Then it would be a rose, she said. A red rose. And, propping his foot on a stool, she dipped her brush in the vase of water and set to work.

‘Saffron,’ she mused. ‘It’s a strange name for a girl with red hair.’

Wilson thought for a while. ‘I believe her father was in the business of spices.’

She laughed; the stem of the rose jumped sideways. Sometimes his answers were so crooked and unlikely that she thought she must have misunderstood, but one look at his face would tell her she had not. It was only that he himself had no sense that what he was saying was anything other than commonplace and everyday. They were things that had happened to him, and that was how he passed them on — as fragments of a life, as facts. As she began to outline the petals of the rose she let her mind wander back through the story of the red-haired girl. Her father must have had some premonition of her effect on men, for she seemed to have lasted in Wilson’s memory in the same way that a certain fragrance lingers in the place where spices have been stored — though she could not now remember what saffron smelled like, or even if it smelled at all.

‘Did you ever see her again?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I never did.’

‘Did you look for her?’

‘I passed through Monterey a few years later. Somebody told me she’d got married. Maybe it was that man who came out of the fog.’ He laughed quickly.

‘Has there been anyone else?’ She felt she could ask him almost anything, so long as she used the voice he used, and did not look up from her work. The truth could only be drawn from the thorns and petals of the rose.

His eyes explored the air above her head. ‘No.’

She had embarrassed him, but she talked on through his embarrassment as if she had not noticed. They were doing favours for each other without acknowledgement, which was ground on which friendship could be built.

‘But it must be lonely,’ she said, ‘when you are always travelling from one place to another.’

‘You don’t travel by yourself. Mostly you team up. Especially if you’re heading into dangerous territory.’ Wilson sat back in his chair, easier now.

He told her about a trapper, name of Mickey Noone. They were riding across the prairies of West Texas together. Noone was after hunting beaver on the Colorado River, the Gila too, but the beaver were strictly incidental. He just seemed to have a natural bent for killing things. His rifle always lay in his arms, one restless finger in the region of the trigger. One day Wilson had asked him what he liked killing best. Noone shrugged. ‘It don’t matter what,’ he said, ‘though, on general principles, I’d prefer an Indian.’

‘I think I’d rather travel alone,’ Suzanne exclaimed, ‘than travel with such a man.’

‘I don’t believe he ever killed an Indian in his life.’ Wilson smiled down at her. ‘He was a terrible shot. Once I saw him miss a jack rabbit from six feet away.’

The rose, complete with petals, stem and leaves, had almost dried when they heard the grating of carriage-wheels in the street. From the shadows of the veranda they watched Montoya leave his carriage and climb the steps to the de Romblays’ house. At this distance they could not see his face, only the scarlet of his tunic and the epaulettes that clung, like huge glinting spiders, to his shoulders.

‘My God.’ Suzanne had only breathed the words.

‘What is it?’ Wilson asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve just remembered something.’

Last night she had dreamed that she was standing in a house. It was late. No lamps or torches had been lit. There was not even a candle to see by. Only the moonlight falling through a high window, pooling on anything that had a shine to it.

She was standing at the foot of a stone staircase. She could look up and watch the stairs come sweeping down into the hall, almost like a river or a tide, each stair gifted with a silver edge. She could see details; the smooth wooden rail of the banister and how it curved towards her, curled into a snail-shell. She reached one hand out, let her fingers trace the curve and final circle of the wood.

She heard a shuffling close by. She had been expecting something to happen on the staircase — someone to descend, perhaps; but the sound had come from behind her. She looked round.

Two women were dancing with each other on the flagstone floor. They were Indian women, with oval faces and splayed toes. One wore a scarlet tunic. The other wore pale breeches with silver buttons. Otherwise they were naked. It was a slow dance; they scarcely lifted their feet from the ground. Round and round they shuffled, on their big square feet. Round and round. There was no music.

She had woken that morning believing the house to be Montoya’s.

‘Sounds like the uniform was his,’ Wilson said.

‘You know something, Wilson? He has invited me to tea.’

‘Montoya?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Then you’ll be able to find out, won’t you?’

‘Find out what?’

‘Whether it was his house that you dreamed about.’

They watched as Montoya emerged from the house up the street and climbed back into his waiting carriage.

‘There are men like him in Paris,’ she said, ‘but I did not expect to find them here, in Santa Sofía.’

Wilson squinted after the carriage. ‘He’s not a typical inhabitant, certainly.’

She began to laugh, and found she could not stop. It was the thought he had given to his judgement, and the gravity with which he had delivered it. He, too, began to laugh.

‘Though I don’t know how I can talk,’ he added, a few moments later, ‘with a red rose painted on my foot.’

After Wilson had left, her smile faded and she sat on the veranda for a long time without moving. She was more shaken than she had realised. It was not the dream that had disturbed her, as she had let him believe. It was not the dream itself, but the nature of the dream.

There had been this, when she was young.

She had dreamed about her china doll. She had watched the doll come tumbling down a slope. Head over heels over head over heels. That tall blue summer sky above. And a faint breeze across the grass. And quiet. Just the china doll all folded up at the foot of the smooth green hill.

It did not happen quite like that, of course.

When she left her house the next morning she was not frightened in the slightest. There was no reason to be: no tall blue sky, no smooth green hill. It was the first time, and she had not yet learned to recognise the pathways, how they bend round without you noticing, how they bring you out in some new, remembered place.

She met her friend Claire at the edge of the woods, as agreed.

‘What’s the time?’ Claire whispered.

Suzanne shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Early.’

It was a secret, this crime that they were about to commit, and yet they must have looked so obvious, two girls threading their way through the trees in clean white dresses. They might almost have been daring the world to catch them in the act, but the world had been asleep that morning; the world saw nothing.

The tip of Claire’s nose was red and every time they hid behind a tree, thinking they had heard something, Claire sniffed.

‘Be quiet,’ Suzanne whispered.

‘I am quiet.’

‘You’re not. You keep sniffing.’

‘I can’t help it,’ Claire whispered back. ‘I’ve got a cold.’

‘Just don’t sniff, that’s all. Do something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Wipe it on leaves.’

The canal lay to the east of the town, beyond the woods. It would be a warm day later but, at that hour, the grass was sticky with mist; it licked at their brown boots, stained the toes and heels black. Suzanne listened to the birds sending their long calls looping through the trees. She could smell the bitter sap in the stalks of plants.

It was still early when they reached the canal. The apple lighters were tied up, two abreast, along the towpath. Here was the threat: the huge dark hulls coarse with rust and sloping steeply into water that was coated with a thick green scum. They were not yet full of fruit. That would take a few more days. Then they would be setting off for Paris. Paris was where the canal ended. Paris was where the apples went.

The two girls crouched in the bracken at the edge of the towpath. They had to be careful. Sometimes there were men.

Insects hovered on the slime below. No one came.

When Suzanne decided it was safe, they ran across the gravel and clambered on to the nearest lighter. Breathing fast, they crouched again. The silence held. They climbed down a vertical metal ladder, and then they were standing in the hold. It was darker down there, though still open to the sky. The sweet smell of peel rose into Suzanne’s nose. She began to fill her bag.

‘Look at me.’

Suzanne looked up.

Claire was balanced on the hill of apples, her toes pointed, her arms held out sideways. She must have climbed back up the ladder and out along the walkway. It was strange. Claire was usually the more cautious of the two, but now she seemed to have fallen into a kind of trance. Perhaps she thought she was the girl who walked the tightrope when the circus came to town.

‘We’re supposed to be stealing,’ Suzanne whispered, ‘not doing tricks.’

Claire did not take any notice.

Before Suzanne could speak again, a noise began. A murmuring and then a drumming. Then a rumbling. She saw Claire’s face tilt. As if the power of the trance were being tipped out of her. The apples jumped from under her feet, and one of her legs swung up into the air. She came tumbling backwards down the slope, and when she reached the floor she did not move.

‘Claire?’ Suzanne was still whispering. If she shouted, men might hear.

Claire was folded up against the side wall of the lighter. The apples had almost buried her completely. There was even an apple resting in the socket of her left eye. Her head looked funny on her neck, like a flower when the stalk has snapped. The tip of her nose was still red, and a clear liquid slid towards her upper lip.

It was then, in the silence that followed the avalanche, in that sudden silence, that Suzanne remembered the dream — the tumbling doll, the smooth green hill — and she dropped her bag and ran for the ladder. She cut her finger as she snatched at the first rung, but she did not look back, not once, not even when she was safe behind her bedroom door.

She filled her wet boots with newspaper and hid them in the cupboard; she would clean them with polish as soon as they were dry so nobody would know. She sucked her finger until the blood slowed down, then she undressed and put her nightgown on. She climbed between the sheets. They were cool against her feet, as if whole days had passed.

She lay in bed with her eyes wide open and waited for somebody to come and wake her up.

That afternoon a policeman visited the house. He sat in a chair, and she had to stand in front of him. She could still remember the dark cloth of his uniform, the bright metal buttons. He asked her whether she had seen Claire that day.

She thought carefully and then said, ‘No.’

‘Claire has disappeared,’ the policeman said. ‘Do you know where she might have gone?’

Again she answered, ‘No.’

‘Claire’s your best friend, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you have no idea where she might have gone?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

The policeman put his hands on his knees and prepared to stand up. She felt sorry for him suddenly. She would tell him something.

‘She had one favourite place.’

Everything fell quiet then. She could hear a wasp trapped between the curtains and the window. Outside it was the end of summer.

‘You know the boats on the canal, the ones they put the apples in? Sometimes she liked to go there.’

Suzanne rose shivering from her chair and moved to the rail of the veranda. The mountains were in shadow now. It would soon be dark. She could hear their maid, Imelda, moving inside the house. She had not even noticed the girl arrive.

The dream about the women dancing was the same kind of dream. Some coded version of the truth, a message in disguise. But she was out of practice. It had been years since this had happened. Six, at least.

It seemed to her, as she watched the dusk come down and the French begin to leave their houses, that the town was offering her some link back into her childhood. It could have been as simple as the presence of the sea: steamships and lighters moored along the quay, the smell of kelp and gutted fish and brine, that salt-water grittiness in the air. It could have been. But the feeling rose in her — and it was a feeling she could not dispel — that there was another side to this that she had still to understand, that it was not just some surface familiarity, some coincidence, but a deeper link, inside her mind, below the skin.

Chapter 4

Towards midnight Wilson left the Hotel La Playa. He took the long route to Pablo’s bar, passing through the church on his way. It was strange how the bare arches had the appearance of remains — some creature that had perished in the desert’s grip and then been stripped by vultures; it was strange how the beginning could imitate the end. What he could not imagine, as he limped among the pillars and the stacks of metal, was what came between: the final shape of the building, its place in the life of the town.

It was dark on Avenida Manganeso. The only light came from the pool-hall, which was used for cock-fights and illegal lotteries. He stopped in the entrance. Three smoking oil-lamps lit the room. A man was sleeping on a table, with an empty bottle for a pillow. There was a smell of warm urine. Wilson moved on, his arms aching from the crutches. Stars massed in such numbers above his head that it looked as if somebody had spilled chalk-dust across the sky. As he passed along the north side of the municipal square he heard a baby crying, and then silence. At last he pushed through the door of the Bar El Fandango.

The first person he saw, leaning against the zinc counter, was La Huesuda. He could tell from the angle of her head on her neck that she already had a few drinks under her skin. He began to ease backwards through the crowd, but she noticed him. Downing a shot of clear liquor, she swilled it round her mouth, spat it on the floor, then elbowed her way across the room towards him.

‘So,’ she said, ‘American.’

He touched the brim of his hat.

‘Where have you been hiding?’

‘Nowhere special,’ he said.

‘You’ve been lying low, haven’t you. Avoiding me.’

He glanced down at his foot. ‘I’ve been resting. The doctor told me to rest.’

Her eyes followed his.

‘That’s a pretty flower,’ she said. Her voice had sharpened at the edges.

‘It’s not bad.’

‘Who painted that on there?’

‘A friend.’

‘More than a friend, I’d say. That’s a woman, did that.’ Her thin face scraped the air. ‘Am I right, American?’

He nodded.

‘Mother of Christ.’ Her eyes were knocking around in their sockets like two drunks in a cell. She was muttering some language that he did not understand. All teeth and saliva.

‘Pearl,’ he said, taking hold of her wrist, ‘what’s wrong with you?’

She twisted away from him. ‘Get lost.’

‘Pearl,’ he said.

‘Go fuck a goat,’ she said, and slammed out of the bar.

One of the miners turned to him, ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What did you do to her?’

Wilson did not answer. He was remembering the afternoon he had spent with Suzanne and how, after saying no to all the flowers he could think of, and all the animals, after saying no to lumps of gold — they would look, she said, like potatoes — she had decided on a rose. He had not been able to dissuade her. In truth, he had not tried too hard. Deep down he had thought that it might represent the love he felt for her and could not name, though he suspected that she was thinking of his heart and how he had lost it to a girl with bright-red hair. And now the Bony One, with the prickly insight that whores seemed to possess, had seen right through the veils and disguises to that secret truth.

‘Nobody wants to fuck her anyway,’ Pablo was saying. ‘She’s too skinny for fucking.’

‘I had her once,’ the miner said. ‘It was like what you leave on your plate after you ate a chicken.’

Wilson sighed. ‘I don’t feel good about it. When my foot’s mended, I’m going to build her a whole new set of stairs.’

Pablo’s lip curled.

‘I’m going to paint them some colour that’s real nice for a whore,’ Wilson said. ‘Like pink, maybe. Maybe put in a few electric lights as well.’

‘Sure you are,’ Pablo said.

‘I am,’ said Wilson.

But somehow it was Suzanne that he could see, standing at the top of the steps in a white silk dress. And, as he watched, he saw the French gold wedding-ring slide off her finger. It slid right off her finger and dropped, spinning, through the air. It landed on a stair and bounced, missed the next two stairs, then bounced again, jumped over his boot and lay down in the dust like it was dead.

He drank quietly for a while, and the blood ran with smooth purpose in his veins, and he dreamed of setting his foot, his mended foot, on that first step, and of her smile as he looked up for reassurance. Clutched in his fist would be a lump of gold. Enough for ten thousand wedding-rings.

Raised voices brought him out of his reverie, and one voice louder than the rest. It was an Indian, his neck and forearms streaked with clay. A miner. He stood shouting in a circle of men. His hands shook as if he were carrying a fever, and his eyes were fastened on the ceiling, though there was nothing there but sheets of tin and smoke from cheap cigars. His words forced themselves out of his mouth; it almost seemed as if he was retching — a flood of words, a pause, another flood. His hair was spiked with sweat.

Wilson asked Pablo what was being said.

‘He has seen a painted man.’ Both Pablo’s eyebrows lifted.

‘A painted man?’

‘The man was seven feet tall and he was naked,’ Pablo said. ‘He was standing at the entrance to one of the mines. He was painted half in red and half in black.’

‘Who was he?’

‘He is a warning.’

Wilson watched the Indians close in around the shouting man. They were pulling at his shirt and talking into his face, but he paid them no attention. He seemed to be receiving a voice from beyond the roof, and repeating what he heard.

‘The painted man is an ancestor, and they must listen to him.’ Pablo was still translating. ‘He is angry with his people. They are betraying their heritage. They must return whence they came. This town should never have come into being. It is a place of blood and ashes. It is an abomination.’ Pablo reached for a piece of rag and began nonchalantly to wipe the bar.

The miner uttered a single high-pitched shriek and dropped to the floor. His body thrashed like a hooked fish in the bottom of a boat. His eyes rolled back into his skull; his throat began to rattle.

Pablo looked up. ‘He’s an epileptic.’

‘He’s swallowed his tongue,’ Wilson said. ‘He’s choking.’

He pushed through the crowd and, bending down, reached into the man’s throat and pulled his tongue loose. Then he turned the man on to his stomach. The fit was over. Yellow vomit trickled from between the man’s lips.

‘Don’t move him,’ Wilson told the miners. ‘Leave him be.’

He found some water in a bucket behind the bar and washed the bile off his hands.

‘You saved him,’ Pablo said.

Wilson shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

The Indians had ordered more drinks. They were talking among themselves in rapid broken Spanish. Their prophet lay forgotten on the floor.

‘This town isn’t so bad,’ one said.

‘At least we’re getting paid,’ said another.

‘If you can call five pesos a day getting paid.’ This man had a short, twisted body and he wore a deerskin beret.

‘It’s five pesos more than you get scratching around in the dirt,’ the first man said.

‘Right,’ said the second. ‘And they build us houses.’

The man in the beret spat on the floor. The spit lay next to the epileptic’s hand, like a coin tossed to a beggar.

‘We’re cheap labour is what we are,’ he said. ‘They’re using us for work they wouldn’t do themselves.’

Some of the miners were beginning to see with his eyes. And maybe they had a point, Wilson thought. He could still remember how many patients there had been in the hospital, and that sudden shift in the doctor’s tone of voice.

‘They don’t care about us,’ said the man in the beret, one arm thrown up in front of his face and curved like a bow. A space had cleared in front of him so he could express himself. ‘They’re only interested in feathering their own nests,’ he said. ‘They build themselves fine houses up there on the Mesa del Norte. They’re even building themselves a church now — ’

‘Maybe Señor Wilson should pay the church a visit,’ Pablo said. ‘That would be the end of the church for sure.’

The miners laughed long and hard, repeating the joke among themselves, and then, when they had almost finished laughing, they translated the joke for those of the Indians who had not understood, and the laughter was handed on.

‘That was very funny, Pablo,’ Wilson said.

‘I thought so,’ said Pablo.

Chapter 5

Tuesday came. You could tell that spring was almost over. The sky had stepped back, forfeiting all colour. The smelting works had shut down for repairs; only a faint chainsaw bit into the clean grain of the air. The silence of the desert could be heard, and the march of the heat across the land.

Though her enthusiasm for tea with the Captain had faded, Suzanne thought that she ought to honour the invitation. At four o’clock a victoria arrived for her. The driver wore an immaculate dove-grey uniform, complete with a red neck-tie and a belt of bullets slung diagonally across his chest. He helped her up into the carriage, then closed the door behind her. She heard him click his tongue. The carriage moved away. She had never been driven to tea by an armed man before. It was novel, if nothing else.

They passed French houses, silent in the afternoon. The rich scent of leather heated by the sun surrounded her. Soon they were descending the hill.

Montoya’s ranch stood high above the town, in the mesquite scrubland to the south. As they came up the last of the road’s tight curves, she saw the town cemetery. The ground was so hard on this barren ridge that gravediggers could make no impression on it. All they could do was scratch a shallow ditch and pile stones on to the corpse. It struck her as ironic that men who had died because they worked under the ground should be buried on the surface.

The carriage had come round in a long, dusty loop, doubling back towards the coast, and now she could see the house. It had whitewashed walls and a roof of dark-red tiles, and outbuildings at the rear for servants and horses. It stood alone on the ridge, unsheltered by trees, solid yet exposed; she would not have cared to live there. As they drew up outside, Montoya stepped out into the sunlight, hands clasped behind his back.

‘I trust you had a pleasant journey, Madame.’

A smile flickered across his face and was gone. She saw how her presence unsettled him, and it softened her. She resolved at once to be kind to him.

‘Yes, thank you, Captain,’ she said, as she placed a gloved hand on his arm. ‘It was very pleasant.’

Montoya led her across a sparse lawn to a terrace on the far side of the house. A banqueting table had been set up in the shade. Two Mexicans stood by with palm branches, in case a vulture tried to land. They both wore straw hats. One of the men had a bright-yellow face and yellow hands, and a cough that shook his entire body.

‘He used to work on San Marcos,’ Montoya said. ‘The sulphur mines.’

He had prepared a feast for her. Quails’ eggs, rock oysters, pomegranates. Iced cakes from the bakery. Fruit cordials. Even a bottle of sherry, produced by his great-uncle in Oaxaca.

‘I did not know what you would like,’ he said. ‘I thought that if I bought many different things then perhaps you would find something to your taste.’

‘That is most considerate of you, Captain.’ Though it was more than considerate; she felt almost crushed by the weight of the food.

He sat beside her and leaned forwards, his chin mounted in the palm of one hand, and stared out over the sea. His eyes shifted one way then the other, as if the empty expanse of blue were filled with countless fascinating objects.

‘You’re not eating, Captain,’ she said.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘But all this food — ’

He smiled miserably. ‘It’s for you,’ he said. ‘In your honour.’

There was a sense in which her own comfort depended on retaining a certain strict formality, a kind of tension between them, and yet the balance had to be precise or conversation would die out altogether. If only she could make him laugh, she thought; laughter would ease the passage of time. But she had yet to discover his sense of humour — if indeed he had one.

The silence stretched until the thick air seemed to hum. Once she thought she heard voices behind her. When she turned in her chair, the yellow man was grinning at her. His palm branch swayed and whispered above the untouched banquet.

After tea Montoya insisted on showing her the house. She passed through an ornate front door ahead of him and into a hallway with a high ceiling and a stone floor. And there, catching the light in a way she recognised, was the coiled snail-shell of wood. And there, as she lifted her eyes, was the staircase, curving round and up. Until that moment she had forgotten about her dream, and the realisation that it was true brought her to a sudden standstill.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked her.

‘I had a dream about this house.’

He bowed. ‘I’m flattered.’

He must have thought she was trying to compliment him. He had not understood. But then, how could he? And she was not about to embark upon an explanation. Her dreams contained an element of danger, and she could hardly instil a sense of caution in somebody whom she did not know.

They moved on through the house. Montoya talked about stone floors and narrow windows — cool in the summer, warm in winter. He laid the flat of his hand against the wall, as if it were a horse’s flank. She murmured her approval, but could not concentrate. She kept expecting to recognise something else — the next room, perhaps, or some object that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. She braced herself, as if for a shock.

But the shock did not come. No room had a secret to reveal, no new fragment of the dream, nothing.

Slowly, she relaxed.

‘These are my ancestors,’ Montoya declared. ‘My family.’

They had reached the gallery, a dim room at the back of the house. One by one Montoya introduced the portraits, some distant, close to being forgotten, some still living, all with names as long as incantations or diseases. There was a reversal of the feeling that she usually experienced in a gallery. She felt that this was being done, less for her benefit, somehow, than for theirs, as if she were being offered up for their approval, as if, in fact, they were alive and standing in the room with her. She discovered that she was shivering.

‘Are you cold?’

‘A little.’ She laughed. ‘As if one could complain, in a place like this, of being cold.’

She stood closer to the paintings, close enough to see the brushstrokes, close enough to reduce Montoya’s ancestors to mere techniques, details: a man with hair that glistened with pomade; a woman holding in her hands a gold mirror and an intricate lace handkerchief. Sometimes there were clocks and roses in the background, sometimes a cannon and a battlefield. She felt the weight of evidence accumulate. Montoya had clearly been born into a noble and distinguished family. Then why had he been sent to Santa Sofía, the very limit of the kingdom, memory’s edge? Had he been exiled from the glittering circle that the pictures appeared to represent? She suspected this might be the case, but put it as subtly as she knew how.

‘You are so far from your family, Captain.’

She watched his face go cold and still. It was enough to convince her of the soundness of her intuition. There was no need to pursue the subject, and yet she could not simply let it drop. She softened her voice.

‘It doesn’t seem to suit you. You belong elsewhere.’

There. She had withdrawn, leaving him a comfortable place in which he might explain himself. She had been kind.

But he was staring out of a narrow window, out across the landscape, brown and faded in the heat.

‘It is in the nature of a test,’ he ventured finally.

‘A test?’

‘Of character. That’s what my father told me.’

He was waiting for her to speak, but she chose not to.

‘A glamorous posting on the mainland,’ and he drew down the corners of his mouth and shook his head, ‘there would have been no challenge. This town may be remote but it is still, after all, a command. But you,’ and he brought his dark eyes up to hers, ‘why did you come?’

‘I wanted to be with my husband.’

‘And now?’

She gave him a steady look. ‘You’re insolent, Captain. I expect that’s why they sent you here. It was your insolence.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said.

Though her rebuke had been seriously intended, he had chosen to treat it as a joke. His voice remained light and mischievous, admitting no remorse, no guilt. She felt cheated. He had taken the confidence that she had given him, and used it against her.

She moved past him, towards the door. Somehow she felt that she had been robbed of the initiative, and that her departure from the room could be seen as a retreat. She heard him follow her, his spurs chinking every time a heel struck the floor. The sound was like a few coins in a pocket, a handful of loose change. It seemed to mock her. Was that all she was worth?

‘It is almost seven o’clock. You should go, or people might begin to worry.’ He was still behind her, speaking into her back. His words were ambiguous. They contained equal measures of menace and concern.

The carriage was waiting outside. Night had already fallen. To the north the furnaces had thrown an amber light into the sky, as if that part of town had been left out in the rain and then rusted. It was the only light there was.

‘It’s so dark,’ she said. ‘How will he find the way?’

‘He knows the road.’

As she stepped up into the carriage, Montoya took her by the arm, asking her to wait, and before she could ascertain the reason he had turned and hastened back into the house. He emerged a moment later with a lit candle inside a dome of glass. She took the lantern, asking him what it was for. His smile was crooked in the tilting flame, unstable. It was so he could watch her, he said, as she travelled back across the town.

Chapter 6

Wilson was woken by Indians shouting in the room below. They had arrived three days before, from the mainland. They were a tribe that he did not recognise, short querulous men with barrel chests and hair that hung in greased strands to their shoulders. Wilson had seen them through the gap in the floor. Sitting cross-legged, they scrawled sets of circles on the bare boards with a piece of charred wood. Then they tipped pebbles out of leather pouches. They would be up for hours, drinking and gambling, cackling, spitting. Their little stones would rattle through his dreams.

He lay down and tried to sleep, but his foot was troubling him and he was up again as the sun poured its light across the waters of the gulf. He watched the miners shuffling out on to the street. They could not have slept for more than an hour or two; it was no wonder they could scarcely lift their feet. And now they would be working underground, in temperatures of forty degrees, pitting their strength against the stubborn local clay. But that was how the Indians lived. They thought no further than the day or night that surrounded them. They always looked forward to the ripening of the pitahaya, but when the time came they never harvested or stored the fruit. They ate as much as they could on the first day. Towards sunset they could be seen sprawling on the ground, speechless, bloated, green in the face. He had once heard of an Indian who had received six pounds of sugar as payment of a debt. The Indian sat down in the dirt and ate his way through the sugar, every ounce of it, and died. Wilson did not doubt but that story was true. They did not think ahead. There were those who said they did not think at all.

He rolled a cigarette and took it out on to the balcony. He sat on his weak chair, smoking peacefully. The ridge to the north-west had caught the sun. The rock glowed orange. The land that lay below still stood in shadow, the colour your fingers go when you gather wild berries. He could see a long line of men moving on the path that climbed up from the town. They would be heading for the Arroyo del Purgatorio, where a new bed of copper had been discovered. He still could not get used to the sight of so many Indians collected in one place. On his expeditions inland, his many fruitless searchings for the riches he believed were buried there, he had become acquainted with their customs. They were a nomadic folk, with no attachments to the land and few belongings. They travelled in small groups to where the food and water was, seldom sleeping on the same ground twice. They were simple, hopeful — credulous. In their daily lives they would walk for twenty hours without fatigue, but give them a vision of doom, a man painted half in red and half in black, and the light emptied from their eyes and their muscles cramped. It took something supernatural to happen before they believed their grievances were real. Their progress up the wall of rock seemed laboured now. He could not help wondering how it would end.

His gaze dropped down into the town. In the square outside his window men were already at work on the church. He had grown used to the ringing of hammers; if he closed his eyes he saw a score of blacksmiths making shoes for horses. Almost a month had elapsed since the tramp steamer had docked; four metal arches now stood on the ground, four hoops lined up in a row and linked by horizontal rods, like a wagon with the canvas off. He could see Monsieur Valence, seated on a packing-case in his black frock-coat, mopping the sweat from his forehead. The pale face seemed turned for a moment in Wilson’s direction, and Wilson raised a hand in greeting. The Frenchman did the same. But that was the limit of their acquaintance. No word had yet passed between them.

He took up his guitar and ran his thumb across the strings. One jangled chord lifted into the air. In his enforced idleness, he had decided to write a song. It was about gold, of course, but it was also, in a curious way, about Suzanne as well. The words would have a kind of double meaning, if he could just get them right. He only had one line so far, which had come from the dream he had woken with on the morning she arrived: ‘Gold fever, running in my veins …’ That was it. He had already decided to dedicate the song to her and, when it was finished, he would play it for her, one quiet afternoon, in the shade of a veranda.

His eyes blurred, took on distance.

A morning in the hills west of Salinas. A morning that had stayed with him. The sun slanting on yellow grass. Pale-green moss hung from the trees like the matted strands of fleece that sheep leave on fences. A cool morning, early fall.

They had stolen two horses the day before, in Greenfield. A good horse was better than money, his father always said. It might last fifteen years, which was more than money ever did. Money had this way of spilling through your fingers, even if you closed a fist round it. Money always found the one hole in your pocket. Money ran out on you every chance it got; it was even worse than women. These were lessons he had learned from his father, though as a teacher his father often contradicted himself. He taught out of bitterness instead of knowledge, that was the trouble. Take women, for example. It was not women who had run out on his father — if anything, it was the other way round — but it was not the son’s place to point out inconsistencies; it was the son’s place to listen. He owed obedience, still being only twelve years old, not yet a man. And that obedience, that listening, could pass for love. Were parts of love. When his father told him they would have to steal a horse or two to get through the winter, he went along with it. But the horses that they stole that day, a chestnut and a roan, from the back of the Staging Post Hotel, belonged to a marshal who happened to be visiting the town. They were fortunate to escape arrest, hitching a ride on a melon cart, switching two hours later to a doctor’s wagon that was travelling in the opposite direction, then walking half the night. That was the nature of his father’s luck: two-sided, like a coin.

But he woke the next morning with a feeling of lightness that he could not explain. He threw off the blanket and, leaping to his feet, tried to stamp the life into his stiff limbs. He saw that his father was still sleeping, so he set about gathering some kindling for a fire, just enough to boil water for coffee. It was a risk, but only a slender one; during the night they had climbed high into the hills and they were now shielded by oak trees. He drove two sticks into the earth, balancing a third above the flames. He slung the kettle on this third stick and sat back on his heels.

When the steam began to swirl across the face of the water, he went to wake his father. His father was lying there with his eyes open. He was staring up into the trees. His eyes wide open, like tins to catch the rain for drinking.

‘The coffee’s ready, Pa.’

His father did not answer. He just lay on the ground, still as fallen wood, and did not say a word. Did not even blink.

‘What’s wrong, Pa?’

He had never seen anybody who was dead before, and maybe this was what it looked like. Your eyes were polished till they were clean and so much silence was poured into you, it reached all the way to your fingers.

‘Pa?’

His heart was threatening to jump between his ribs.

And then his father’s lips moved. ‘All I ever dreamed of was to find us some gold.’

His relief converted into faith, the faith his father had instilled in him. ‘There’s plenty more gold in the ground, Pa. It ain’t all used up yet. There’s plenty there.’

‘That’s all I ever dreamed of and all that happens is we end up running from the law.’

He leaned closer, his faith working his tongue for him, lending him the words. Maybe they were running towards the gold, he told his father. Maybe all their running, it was in the right direction. It was just that they didn’t know it.

His father was still lying there, the shape of people when they put them into coffins. A faint smile altered his mouth, but it did not reach his eyes. His eyes were wide and frightened; they had that shine to them, the shine of something final. It was as if he were waiting for six feet of sky to come down and cover him like earth. As if he were so old that there was nothing left for him but that. And yet he seemed young too, no more than a child, and needed to be wrapped in something big like love.

Wilson reached into his pouch of tobacco and rolled another cigarette. He could not recall much else about that morning. He struck a flame on the wall behind him and touched it to the paper. He took the first bloom of smoke into his mouth and back over his throat. It was harsh Indian tobacco, grown in the hard ground. Harsh as memory.

There was one thing, now he thought about it. Something he had said to his father. Something that had been on his mind for weeks.

‘Maybe we should go home, Pa.’

His father’s head turned slowly on his bedroll. ‘What good would that do?’

He could think of some good, actually, but he could not voice it, not with his father bending such a look on him. And just then the water, boiling suddenly, jumped out of the kettle, and he had to snatch it off the fire before it spilled some more.

They walked south, then east, with the trail losing heat behind them. Once they saw a group of horsemen cut out against the light above a ridge, but otherwise the world was theirs. No longer fearing capture and the branding that would surely follow it, they dropped down to the valley floor. On the third evening they felt secure enough to risk another fire. He roasted squirrel over a blaze of wild oak and, for want of any potatoes, baked some pale roots in the ashes. The squirrel tasted like rabbit, a pungent meat, but succulent. They cleaned their palates with some strawberries that he had gathered earlier on the wooded slopes. The next day they walked on, always east. His father did not talk at all, but he would often stop and lift his face, as if the air had spoken to him, as if it had said something that gave him cause to hope. To the north a range of yellow hills unfolded. The weather held, dry and crisp. He asked his father where they were headed, but his father would not say. The mystery walked beside them, always there, unsolved.

They walked for a month. Rising before dawn, sleeping at dusk. Moving all the time, and always in silence. He sang to himself so he did not forget he had a voice — ’Old Zip Coon’ and ‘The Banks of the Mohawk’. They soon left the yellow hills behind. The earth altered beneath their feet. Though September must have been over, the air grew dry and hot. They crossed parched valleys, dried-up riverbeds; they climbed through fields of sharp red rock. They were finding no fresh water now. His father taught him how to create water where none existed. You cut the top off a barrel cactus and then dug a hole inside, about the size of a quart bottle. Then you gathered brush and built a fire around the base. In a few moments sap would collect in the hollow place that you had made. Only two cupfuls, and bitter, but drinkable — and it could save your life. Again he asked his father where they were headed; again his father acted deaf. He could almost see the mystery, walking just ahead of them. It seemed to be leading the way. It was as real as his father, and no less inscrutable.

And then, one afternoon, they came over a stretch of barren ground, a few red rocks, some wiry grass, and there, opening in front of him, was a chasm that was wider and deeper than his eyes could understand, a great gap in the world. He stepped back, dizzy.

‘The Grand Canyon.’

His father stood with his hands in his pockets and his toes close to the precipice.

‘People say the devil got mad and tried to cut the world in two.’ His father turned to him. ‘Would you rather be home now?’

He could only gasp. ‘No.’ All the doubts were chased out of his head by the red-and-violet splendour of the place. All the words too. All the thoughts.

Later they climbed down to where the river, pale-green and lazy, coiled along the canyon floor. He stood on the bank, his shoulder touching his father’s rolled-up shirt-sleeve. His father stared at the water with such defiance, it might have been the source of all his misfortune. But his voice, when he spoke, was gentle.

‘Now this is something to remember,’ he said. ‘This place, us being here — that’s something to remember. But not the rest of it.’ His face opened; he hazarded a smile. ‘At least I showed you something.’

His father had kept the secret for weeks — a child’s desire to surprise him, a deep need to get something right at last.

Standing at his father’s shoulder that afternoon, he was filled with equal measures of happiness and sorrow. When he saw the Grand Canyon again, years later, he could not find the place where they had stood, and yet the same feeling rose in him, a pull in two directions, a spirit divided against itself.

‘Hey! American!’

He came back slowly from the past and peered down between the splintered staves that formed the railing to his balcony. Standing on the street below was the Bony One. He shifted on his chair, preparing to withdraw deep into his room.

‘I’m sorry if I laid into you the other night,’ she called up. ‘I was feeling lousy. I had to take it out on someone.’

‘That’s OK,’ he said.

‘I just want to apologise. I was pretty hard on you.’

‘Forget it.’ Smiling, Wilson leaned against the wall.

‘Really? You forgive me?’

‘I do.’

‘Hey, American!’

He leaned forwards again, looked down.

‘Don’t you think you’re tempting fate,’ she said, ‘sitting on that balcony like that?’

Chapter 7

It was the 21st of May, the doctor’s fiftieth birthday, and Captain Legrand, master of the SS Providencia, had organised a dance in his honour. The SS Providencia had docked the day before with a cargo of timber, live piglets and, most important of all, champagne. Twenty-five cases of Clicquot had arrived from Paris, ordered for the occasion by Madame de Romblay (the doctor’s wife being incapable, presumably, of such an extravagant gesture). The birthday dance was to be held on the rear deck. There was one problem, though. Since the freighter had been unloaded, it had risen in the water, and it could only now be reached by means of a vertical ladder on the starboard bow. This would be too hazardous for the ladies — for certain of the gentlemen as well. In the event, Captain Legrand had proposed an ingenious, if unorthodox, alternative. They would attach an armchair to a system of ropes and pulleys, and hoist the guests aboard. He had used the technique before, he said, in Chile, almost entirely without incident.

‘I could donate a chair,’ Jean-Baptiste Castagnet said.

But Monsieur de Romblay was frowning, one forefinger set diagonally across his mouth. ‘Almost, Captain?’ he said. ‘What do you mean, almost?’

Captain Legrand was a vast, droll man. To see the Captain and the Director together, in conversation, was to be reminded of two majestic planets orbiting slowly, one around the other.

‘It was the Mayor of Valparaiso’s wife,’ he said. ‘She drank too much gin. One the way back down, the chair began to spin. She vomited on the heads of her citizens from a height of thirty feet.’ He paused. ‘They lost the election the following year.’

That evening, on the stroke of seven, the French gathered on the north quay. They were dressed in all their finery, as such an event demanded, though nobody could outshine the doctor. He had received a birthday surprise from his wife: a new waistcoat. Cream silk brocade, it was, overlaid with a tracery of ferns in palest green and gold. Three months in the making.

The doctor clapped his hands for silence. ‘My colleagues,’ he cried, ‘my friends. Let us begin!’

They had agreed beforehand that they should choose straws to determine the order of their ascent. One by one they stepped forwards, dipped their hands into the doctor’s opera hat. It was Florestine, his wife, who drew the shortest. Her eyes scaled the steep sides of the freighter, mollusc-encrusted, pocked with rust. Then dropped down, round and watering, to the yellow damask armchair that had been donated, as promised, by Monsieur Castagnet. Florestine, it now transpired, had vertigo.

There was some delay, but after a few drops of valerian and a soothing lecture from her husband on the psychological advantages of going first, the yellow armchair lifted into the night sky with Florestine securely strapped in place. She had a rosary plaited through the fingers of her right hand. Her husband’s velvet cummerbund shielded her eyes. The French watched from below. Nobody spoke. The chair spun slowly on its rope, but Florestine did not so much as murmur. Soon only the soles of her shoes were visible.

When at last she appeared at the guard-rail, supported on her husband’s arm, eyes glittering in a face that had drained of blood, the French rewarded her with an outburst of spontaneous applause. The yellow chair descended, empty now. High on the deck above, the doctor borrowed the Captain’s megaphone and aimed it at the quay.

‘Next!’

There was a moment’s silence, some nervous laughter, then Suzanne stepped forwards. Théo helped to strap her in.

‘I would have thought you’d prefer the ladder,’ he murmured in her ear.

She smiled up at him, but did not answer.

He was paying her small attentions tonight, which could have been the result of the dress she was wearing, since it was a favourite of his, an evening gown of peach silk-satin, with bare arms, a looped neck held by ribbons at the shoulders and skirts that were patterned with chrysanthemum petals.

As she rose off the ground and the faces below her shrank, the chair began to turn clockwise. First she was facing the sea, then she was looking inland, towards the mountains. Then she faced the sea again. She tried not to think about the Mayor of Valparaiso’s wife. Instead, she summoned the image of her friend, Lucille, who at that moment was probably attending some dreary opera in Paris. How Lucille would have relished this.

She was swinging sideways now, over the guard-rail, and she could look down. The entire rear deck of the SS Providencia had been transformed into a ballroom. Chinese lanterns hung round the edges of the dance-floor, shedding exotic coloured light — cider, damson, lime. French flags had been draped across the forecastle and the bridge. On a rostrum at the stern, an orchestra was playing a polonaise by Ambroise Thomas. The armchair gently touched the deck and she was helped out of the harness by Florestine Bardou, who was almost ragged with exhilaration.

‘It’s a miracle, isn’t it?’ Florestine said.

Champagne had reached the town at exactly the right time; a ballroom had been created out of nothing; Florestine had survived her ordeal in the armchair — they were all miracles. It was hard to know which of the miracles she was referring to.

And suddenly the doctor was dancing towards them on the balls of his feet, his elbows tucked against his ribs, his hands spread sideways in the air as if he were walking a tightrope. His waistcoat seemed to arrive first. He gestured at the streamers and pennants that looped above the dance-floor. ‘I should be fifty more often.’

‘I should like to be fifty again.’ The voice had come from above, and they all looked up. Monsieur de Romblay saluted them from an armchair in the sky.

‘As for me,’ Suzanne said, ‘I should not like to be fifty at all,’ which won her a burst of raucous laughter from the airborne Director.

Soon everyone was on board — and entirely without incident, as the Captain was swift to point out in his brief welcoming speech. The glasses were charged with iced champagne and Monsieur de Romblay stepped forwards to toast the doctor. The fact that they had something special with which to celebrate became in itself a cause for celebration. The drinking was reckless, even among the ladies, and by the time the first dances were over and the early supper was served, most of the party was drunk.

At the table on the top deck, with the night so still that the candle flames stood motionless and tall, Théo began to talk about bolts. The week before, a box of bolts had vanished from the construction site. They were particularly robust bolts, a full ten centimetres in diameter; they were used to attach the purlins, which formed the basis of the secondary structure, to the central structure of the arches.

‘I do like a man who can tell a story,’ Madame de Romblay said. It was not a venomous remark; she seemed genuinely amused by Théo’s long-winded and technical introduction. She leaned towards him. ‘Don’t forget, Monsieur Valence. You promised me the mazurka.’

With a brief nod in her direction, Théo continued. The missing box of bolts had held him up for three days. He approached one of the more communicative Indians and tried to establish who had been left in charge of it. The Indian said, ‘Vara.’

‘Literally, “Vara” means “nothing”,’ Théo explained. ‘But they also use the word idiomatically, to mean “I don’t know”.’

He asked the Indian when he had last seen the box. Again the Indian said, ‘Vara.’ He wondered whether the Indian had any idea what might have happened to the box. The reply was the same: ‘Vara.’ He demanded the Indian’s name. ‘Vara.’

Laughter rippled round the table.

Pineau interrupted. ‘How long is this going to take, for heaven’s sake?’ ‘Vara’ shouted Monsieur de Romblay.

By now everyone was laughing, even Théo, though, as Suzanne knew, he had by no means reached the point of the story.

He proceeded to describe how he had set up a search party, consisting of himself, a Mexican soldier, an Indian interpreter and ‘Vara’ too, since he suspected that four denials in a row amounted to some kind of confession, or at least suggested that the Indian had something to hide and might be party to the theft.

Monsieur de Romblay lifted his glass. ‘I salute you, Monsieur Valence. You have penetrated one of the first mysteries of Indian logic. “Nothing” means everything.’

Théo tried not to look too pleased with himself. Just for a moment he resembled a head on a coin: frozen, stern, imperial.

‘And did you find the bolts?’ asked Marie Saint-Lô.

‘Yes, I did,’ Théo said. ‘I found them on a piece of wasteground behind the town. They were in the possession of four of my Indian labourers. Do you know what they were doing with them?’

Nobody could guess. In fact, they did not want to guess. They wanted to be told.

Théo smiled. ‘They were playing boule.’

The thought of four Indians playing boule with Théo’s bolts was too much for the French. Laughter exploded against the still night air.

‘Now for the best part,’ Théo said. ‘I asked them what they were doing. “There is no work,” they said, “so we play.” ‘He leaned forwards, gripping the edge of the table. ‘The theft of the bolts by the Indians had caused a stoppage at work. The effect of this stoppage was a sudden acquisition of free time. Having acquired this free time, the Indians reacted in a predictable way: they looked round for something to do. And what did they find?’ Théo opened his hands. ‘The bolts. They used the original cause of their predicament as its solution. Cause, effect, cause, effect, cause. A perfect circle.’ He had become dishevelled in his excitement, his white tie loosening, one shirt-cuff dappled with Hollandaise sauce.

‘It sounds like a Belgian joke,’ Pineau said.

Monsieur de Romblay disagreed. ‘It’s a classic tale of the region. Absolutely archetypal.’ He lifted a glass to Théo. ‘You should be a logician, Monsieur Valence, not an engineer.’

‘Perhaps the two are not so far apart,’ said Théo, with becoming modesty.

Madame de Romblay appeared to be finding it difficult to grasp the twists and turns of the logic that her husband so admired. She was staring into the night with the vacant expression of someone who has been waiting for a carriage for a long time, only to see it drive past without stopping. Nothing could have been further from her mind at that moment than a mazurka, though that was what the orchestra was playing on the deck below.

‘To the lost bolts,’ cried Florestine Bardou, ‘now happily found again!’

At least someone was benefiting from the seemingly infinite supply of champagne.

The night began to whirl. A huge moth flew over the supper table, blundered three times around a candelabra and crackled into nothing in the flames. Montoya, who had arrived late, presented the doctor with a brocade sombrero. Marie Saint-Lô flung her shoes into the harbour and danced barefoot with Captain Legrand. It was still only eleven o’clock.

Suzanne sat by the rail in the stern, a glass of champagne cooling the palm of her hand.

‘Would you care to dance?’

She looked up. It was Montoya, Félix Tortoledo de Avilés, with his mournful eyes. His plumed hat nestled beneath his arm, like a chicken just bought from the market. Théo was right: the man was a clown. But the champagne had softened her. She would grant him this one dance and be done with it.

Folding her fan, she rose to her feet and placed one gloved hand on his arm. The music swooped down and spun her through the air. Dancing seemed as natural as breathing.

‘I watched you all the way across the town,’ he said.

She remembered the lantern he had given her and smiled.

‘I watched your light ascend the hill.’ He was staring past her shoulder, his eyes distant.

Still smiling, she turned her face sideways. There were two women dancing at her elbow. One wore a scarlet tunic with silver epaulettes. The other was naked from the waist up, her breasts gleaming from the exertions of the waltz. She only saw the women for a moment. Then Montoya whirled her away across the floor. When she could look again, they were gone.

She broke away from the Captain, moved quickly to the rail. The lights of the boat were reflected on the water. She could see black dots and dashes, punctuations in the shifting gold — the heads and arms of children swimming in the harbour. Further along the deck, François Pineau, the accountant, was tossing coins over the side.

‘There’s no point throwing money to them,’ Pierre Morlaix was saying. ‘They can’t see it.’

Pineau’s top lip curled. ‘Exactly.’

‘You’re incorrigible.’ Morlaix began to laugh.

Suzanne found her glass and held it against her cheek. The coolness burned her skin.

Montoya came and stood beside her. ‘Is something the matter? Are you faint?’

‘Leave me alone,’ she said.

The two women had been so close to her; she could have reached out and touched either one — a glistening bronze shoulder, a ghostly epaulette. Her mind opened in front of her like an abyss. She could hear the safety engineer laughing.

A hot wind, rising off the water, gusted across the deck. All the candles guttered and then blew out.

‘Time to leave,’ somebody cried. Which must have been a joke, since it was not even midnight and the Captain had promised dancing until dawn.

But when she turned round, she saw Montoya step over to the doctor and shake his hand. His eyes met hers for a moment across the deck, then he was climbing backwards down the ladder. She watched his plumed hat vanish below the rail.

At the late supper Suzanne sat quietly while Pineau and Morlaix traded stories that served to illustrate the foolishness of the Mexicans, the foolishness, particularly, of the local representative of the Mexican Government.

‘He’s very young, is he not,’ Marie Saint-Lô remarked, ‘to be representing the Government?’

‘Ah well,’ the doctor said. ‘His father went to school with Porfirio Díaz.’ And, when she did not seem enlightened by the information, he added, in lower tones: ‘The President.’ He faced the gathering again. ‘Apparently he was named after Félix Díaz. The President’s brother.’

Morlaix swirled the cognac in his glass. ‘Wasn’t he the one who got shot?’

The doctor nodded. ‘I believe so.’

‘I still can’t get used to that preposterous uniform.’ A lock of Pineau’s hair hung in his eyes. His twisted upper lip was sprinkled with drops of perspiration. ‘What does he think he is? A general?’

‘He’s dashing, though.’ Florestine Bardou sounded wistful, almost unconvinced.

‘And am I not dashing?’ cried the doctor. ‘Even at fifty?’

Nobody could deny that, of course, not on his birthday, and certainly not in that new waistcoat.

Madame Bardou blushed.

But the subject could not be changed quite so easily. It was a favourite among the French, especially after dinner when the blood was high.

‘He may be dashing,’ Madame de Romblay said, ‘but he’s also mad, completely mad.’

‘Did you know?’ Castagnet said. ‘He has a submarine.’

Madame de Romblay’s eyelids drooped with pleasure. She had not expected support from such a reputable quarter.

‘I’ve never seen it,’ Morlaix said.

‘He keeps it in Señor Ramon’s boathouse,’ Castagnet said.

Pineau chuckled sardonically. ‘For a small fee, I imagine, knowing Ramón.’

Monsieur de Romblay wanted to know how Montoya had come by it.

‘He bought it from the Pacific Pearl Company,’ Castagnet said. ‘I’m not sure if he ever uses it. It must be twenty years old by now. It would probably dive straight to the bottom.’

‘One way of getting rid of the fellow,’ Morlaix said.

Laughter swept the table.

‘You know that boy who works in the hotel,’ Madame de Romblay said, ‘the one who plucks his eyebrows like a girl? Well, apparently,’ and she lowered her voice and leaned over the table, ‘he spends whole afternoons up at Montoya’s place.’

‘No!’ Florestine Bardou put a hand to her throat. Though she would not initiate a story, she would, it seemed, become a willing accomplice in the telling.

‘Oh yes, Madame.’ Pineau leered. ‘I’ve been watching him.’

‘Two Mexicans live there too.’ Madame de Romblay’s tin eyes glittered, and her powdered shoulders were streaked with excitement’s generous secretions. ‘People say that the four of them,’ and she dropped her voice still lower, ‘indulge in vicious practices.’

‘Whole afternoons?’ Florestine Bardou had fixed on this single, lurid detail. Her hand still clutched her throat.

Suzanne was smiling. ‘Actually, I doubt that.’

All eyes turned on her, but it was the eyes of Madame de Romblay that felt the closest.

‘It’s true, there are two Mexicans living with Montoya,’ she went on, ‘but they’re both well over sixty. And one of them is poisoned from years of working in a sulphur mine. So I think vicious practices are probably out of the question.’

‘And how, precisely, do you know all this, my dear?’ Madame de Romblay knew how to use a simple question as an accusation. It was all in the twist she gave to the word ‘precisely’.

‘I’ve been to his house. He invited me there,’ Suzanne said, ‘for tea.’

The air softened with astonishment. Several of the company ostentatiously refrained from looking at each other. Across the deck, between two coloured streamers, Suzanne could see the moon, dented in two places, as if it had drunk too much and fallen several times.

One swift glance at Madame de Romblay and she knew that she had made a mistake. She had walked into the woman’s limelight, pricked the rumour like some ludicrous balloon. You did not do that to Madame de Romblay. She saw that she was about to be punished for it.

‘It was the strangest tea,’ she said brightly, attempting to escape through humour. ‘We ate oysters that had been harvested in the Bahía San Lucas. We drank sherry from his great-uncle’s vineyard. There was no actual tea at all.’

She had hoped for laughter, but the silence lasted. The only response issued, as it had to, from the thin, painted lips of the Director’s wife.

‘You drank with him?’

‘I didn’t know you had been to tea with Montoya,’ Théo said.

It was after two in the morning and they were taking the Director’s carriage home.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I did tell you that I was going.’

Looking at him, she could sense him trying to remember. She did not have to try. She could recall that night’s conversation word for word. His monotonous remoteness, his sudden scorn.

‘You probably didn’t hear me. You were probably too busy,’ she said, ‘with your work.’

He dropped away from her, into a long silence.

She listened to the carriage-wheels, the chink and jingle of the reins. The night was loud with all the champagne that she had drunk. She could feel his disapproval surfacing and knew that it would take the form of a rebuke. But waiting for it, that was hard. Knowing that it would come. When all she wanted to do was rest her head against his shoulder.

‘You should not have said what you did.’

It was a relief to hear him speak, even though he was condemning her. She did not reply.

Such nonsense had been talked at the supper table, but there was one moment, towards the end of the evening, that she would always cherish. The candles had burned low. The white tablecloth was littered with melting sorbets, lobster claws, the skins of fruit. Pierre Morlaix was holding forth. She could see his lips, moistened, flecked with spit. She could see his scalp beneath a flickering of silver curls. It was the usual monologue. The locals could not be trusted. They were lazy, unhygienic, sly. Animals, really. No wonder the church was taking so long. And so on. Théo had not witnessed what happened next; he must have been downstairs, dancing the promised mazurka with Madame de Romblay. For, suddenly, there was a young boy standing in their midst. Only his shoulders and his shaved head showed above the table’s edge; his eyes too — dark and sombre, bewitched by the place in which he found himself. He had been swimming; his wet skin shone. In his hands, held just below his chin, a pair of women’s shoes. Water dripped from the silver straps. The sequinned heels blinked. But it was to Morlaix that Suzanne looked. It was Morlaix she remembered. His sudden silence, as if the blood had knotted in his brain. His mouth gaping, fishlike, the next boorish words already shaped. There was nobody at the table who was so drunk that they did not recognise the irony.

As the carriage drew up outside their house, a grim smile appeared on her face. Perhaps she had behaved badly, but she had not been alone. In fact, all things considered, she believed that she had behaved quite well. There was no reason why she should apologise. She did not feel the slightest remorse.

Towards morning she woke up. A long way off she heard the mournful cry of a coyote, but she knew that it was not the coyote that had reached down into her sleep. Her nightgown had gathered underneath her arms, binding her tight. She sat up in bed and threw the damp sheet back.

Théo lay sleeping under a single mound of white. It looked as if snow had fallen in the bedroom, and then drifted. A soothing image in a climate such as this, she thought, though certainly perverse. Then she heard a clink. She could not place the sound, and yet she knew it well. Another clink. It was measured, regular; it could almost have been the beating of her own frustrated heart.

As silent as that imagined snow, her feet landed on the floor. She slipped from the bed, moved to the window. The narrow gap between the shutter-blades afforded several different views. Through one, she saw part of the hard mud path that led past the kitchen hut. Through another, a portion of the kitchen roof. Through a third, the sea.

That clink again, somewhere below.

She pressed her face to the shutters, saw moonlight running down a sword. A gasp escaped her. She stepped back.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Her heart had gathered speed; it now outstripped the chinking of the spurs. She felt nothing for the Captain, nothing at all, and yet his secret vigil excited her. These were the sleepless nights that she had predicted for him. This was the hunger. But it was dangerous knowledge. There would be nobody to tell.

She eased back, laid her head against the pillow. Instead of spurs, she willed herself to see a man’s hand bouncing coins. Then just the coins. Then she spent them.

Her heart slowed down.

Her husband, whom she had always loved, still loved, would always love, slept blindly on.

Chapter 8

17 Calle Francesa, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico

23rdMay, 189–

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

Though it is fully three weeks since last I wrote, I am delighted to report that everything is proceeding according to plan. All the principal arches have been erected and assembled, their sections being placed end to end in the usual manner, immediately drifted, and then bolted. The purlins will soon follow. I have divided my labour force into two equal groups, one working an early shift, one working late. In this way the Indians are afforded some respite from the considerable heat, though it troubles them less than it does me. The arrangement is also far more suited to their temperament; the idea of pay may appeal, but the idea of work, especially eight hours of it, does not. I often think fondly of those intrepid men, each one vying with the other in his zeal, who worked up to sixteen hours a day in high winds, rain and snow, to build the tower that now bears your name, and fall to wondering how long the job would have taken had you attempted it in Mexico. During the idle hours between shifts I eat lunch with Monsieur Castagnet, a most genial man, and a capable one too (he it was who solved the dilemma of the lifting-mast by commandeering half a dozen railway sleepers to anchor the base). We have discussed the church in detail, and I have found myself referring him to your renowned monograph, Mémoire sur les épreuves des arcs métalliques de la galerie des machines du Palais de l’exposition universelle de 1867, and those early experiments that led you so ingeniously to determine the value of the modulus of elasticity applicable to composite members. Monsieur Castagnet has always demonstrated great loyalty to timber, but even he has no choice but to agree that the galvanised wrought-iron that we are using here is a truly remarkable material. When we return to the site in the afternoon, there are invariably half a dozen children climbing among the girders, as if the structure had been provided solely for their own amusement. I always feel that this forms the perfect counterpoint to our weighty lunchtime meditations.

Such problems as we have encountered here have rarely been of a technical nature; in Santa Sofía it is the human problems that abound. We had the greatest trouble, for instance, trying to explain the notion of a working-week to the local Indians. On the Monday of the second week of construction, six of them failed to report for work. We found them two days later, almost five kilometres from the town, grilling a rattlesnake over a fire! They seem to have only two measurements of time: a day, which lasts from dawn to dusk, and an ‘ambia’ which is the period of time that elapses between one harvest of their beloved pitahaya fruit and the next (three ‘ambia’s amount to approximately one year). If they work hard, I now tell them, the church will be finished by the next ambia. This, of course, they understand.

Property is another source of confusion. With the exception of a bladder or a cow’s horn for holding water, a bow fashioned from the wild willow and a sharpened stick or bone for digging up roots, the Indians have no possessions. They simply do not understand the concept. This was illustrated last week, when a box of bolts went missing from the site. Construction was held up for three days while I endeavoured to ascertain their whereabouts; it seems that the role of an engineer in Mexico can stretch to encompass that of a police detective. Suffice to say that the bolts were recovered and are now in place on the central arches, where they belong. I have taken precautions against further thefts by enlisting the services of three Mexican soldiers from the garrison above the town. (I should just mention, in passing, that I have met the garrison commander, a gentleman by the name of Félix Montoya. In my opinion he lacks the experience to be able properly to discharge his responsibilities; he should be replaced as soon as possible — though this might be a somewhat delicate matter, since it lies beyond our jurisdiction.)

The living conditions — climate, diet, etc. — have also taken their toll. I was struck down only last week by a most unpleasant gastric infection, the result, I suspect, of eating a meal that had been prepared in a local restaurant, though the woman responsible was vociferous, to put it mildly, in her rebuttal of these charges. Whatever the true origin of my complaint, I was laid up in bed for almost two days with frequent attacks of vomiting and diarrhoea. My poor wife had to minister to me, and I am sure that I was not the easiest of patients. I have recovered now, however, and, though still weak, am back at work on the site.

Madame Valence is well (unlike myself, she has succumbed to no illness of any kind since our arrival) and is proving a most popular member of this small community, as you might imagine; Monsieur de Romblay seems to have taken quite a fancy to her. She sends her fondest regards, as do I, and I trust this letter finds you in good health — better, at least, than mine. I have the honour to be your most humble and obedient servant,

Théophile Valence.

Chapter 9

As soon as his boat had passed the harbour wall, Namu hoisted a sail and tried to coax some life out of the air. The patched canvas faltered, swelled, faltered again. Wilson could not help but think of the Pacific, less than a hundred miles to the west. The wind blew constantly on that side of the peninsula, hurling breakers shorewards, tormenting shrubs and bushes until they bent down, cowered, turned their backs. That same wind spent itself in the foothills of the Sierra de la Giganta Mountains, and not even the faintest of breezes made it through. August and September could be fresh months on the Pacific coast, but in the valley where Santa Sofía had been built the air hung like a curtain of steaming velvet and the streets turned to powder.

Namu called to him and pointed at the sail. They had picked up a light north-westerly, and maybe that was the best they could hope for with June around the corner. Wilson spoke to Suzanne, who was seated in the bow.

‘With any luck, we’ll make it to San Bruno. Namu knows a place about a mile off shore. It’s where the big fish go.’

She did not respond. She sat with her face angled away from him, her parasol turning absent-mindedly upon her shoulder.

He scoured his mind for something that he might have done to offend her, but he could find nothing.

‘Suzanne?’

‘I was wrong to come to Mexico,’ she said, still facing away from him.

‘No.’ The word had escaped before he had time to think what it might imply. ‘No,’ he said, more gently, ‘you weren’t wrong. Your place is by your husband’s side, surely.’

‘He hardly even knows I’m there. And when he does, I only disappoint him.’

‘Disappoint him? How?’

She sighed. ‘He tried to warn me what it would be like. I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to understand.’ She turned to him with a sad smile. ‘I’m sorry, Wilson. I didn’t mean to spoil the day with my bad humour. You’re so kind to have arranged all this.’

All this. She made it sound as if he had arranged the sea and sky for her, those islands in the distance, that leaping fish. Of course he would have, if he could.

‘You’re not spoiling it,’ he said. Though he was happier now that she had owned her mood; he could begin to find ways of dispossessing her of it.

He shifted down the bench towards her, then leaned forwards, forearms draped across his knees, hands dangling.

‘Someone else who thinks of nothing but his work,’ he said, ‘is Jesús Pompano.’

The boat gathered speed; water chopped against the hull. He began to tell her the latest instalment in the story of the elusive baguette.

Only the day before, as he returned from breakfast at Mama Vum Buá’s place, he had found Jesús waiting on the first-floor landing in his hotel. Jesús was tucked so deep into the gloom that he was hardly visible. If it had not been for the pale patches on his clothes, Wilson would not have noticed him at all. He showed the baker into his room and sat him down.

‘What is it, Jesús?’

‘I’ve got to hide.’

‘Hide? Who from?’

‘Take a look outside.’

Wilson went to the window. Something shiny was moving up the street. Something that flashed and glittered. He saw a hat, two legs. A man then. But not just any man. A man who looked as if he had been wrapped in sunlight.

The doctor.

He faced back into the room. ‘I thought you had it all worked out, what with the new oven and your Austrian techniques and everything.’

The baker put his head in his hands. ‘My mother died.’

Thinking some tragedy had befallen the Pompano family, Wilson brought the second chair in from the balcony and sat down beside his friend.

‘I didn’t know you had a mother,’ he said. ‘I mean, you have never spoken of her.’

The baker’s shoulders twitched once, twitched again. They began to shake. Wilson could not tell whether the baker was laughing or crying. Then Jesús threw his head back, and there could be no doubt. His laughter swelled, and filled the room. He slapped his thighs; flour billowed into the air. Both men began to cough.

‘Wilson,’ Jesús said, ‘you’re a fool.’

Wilson stared at Jesús blankly. Hiding in doorways, laughing at the death of his mother, insulting his friends. Had the baker lost his mind?

‘Don’t you know anything about bread?’ Jesús said.

Wilson had to admit that his knowledge was limited.

Jesús proceeded to define a mother for him. A mother was a spontaneous lactic fermentation informed by wild yeasts, otherwise known as a leaven. It was achieved by mixing flour and water in a bowl and leaving the mixture to mature. A mother had to be added to each day — another handful of flour, a little more water. A mother had to be nurtured and developed. When you came to make a loaf of bread you used some fresh leaven in combination with some of the original. A mother lay at the heart of all good bread. A mother was fundamental, irreplaceable. Without a mother, you could do nothing.

‘It was some lecture,’ Wilson said, turning to Suzanne.

Her melancholy had lifted, leaving her face clear and untroubled in the sunlight. All her keenness had returned.

‘How did the mother die?’

He smiled. ‘That was my next question.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jesús said.

‘Well, how does a mother usually die?’

‘One of two ways. It has to be kept at a constant temperature, say between seventy-five and eighty-five degrees. If it gets too cold, it dies. But can you imagine it getting too cold in a town like this?’ Jesús let out a mirthless chuckle. ‘It also dies if you don’t add to it each day. It gets too sour. But I could’ve sworn I added to it. I do it religiously.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘Start again, from the beginning. I’ve got no other choice.’

The long silence that followed this pronouncement made the knock on the door seem all the louder. Three knocks, each one separate, abrupt, demanding. A voice called from the landing.

‘Monsieur Pharaoh?’

The baker looked towards the door. The flesh seemed to have slipped an inch on his face. ‘The doctor?’

Wilson nodded. He scanned the room. There was no place to hide save underneath the bed. The gap between the floorboards and the springs was negligible, and the baker was not a small man. But there was nowhere else.

‘Monsieur Pharaoh?’ Another triple knock. ‘It is I. Dr Bardou.’

TakingJesús by the sleeve, Wilson pointed under the bed. Jesús nodded dismally. He dropped to his knees and began to insert himself into the gap. He was whispering the most terrible blasphemies against the doctor.

Wilson opened the door, and the doctor slid past him with the smoothness of a ball of lard in a heated skillet. He was wearing a waistcoat of raspberry, peppermint and gold, and his hair, slick with pomade, mirrored the brilliance of his patent-leather shoes. He looked almost supernatural against the decaying plaster of the walls.

‘I was looking for Monsieur Pompano, but he is not at home. So I came to see you, Monsieur Pharaoh. My patient. How is the foot? You are resting it?’ Not a breath was taken between sentences, and his eyes darted about the room. He seemed thrilled to have penetrated this new territory.

‘Won’t you sit down, Doctor?’ Wilson said, hoping that he would not notice the light dusting of flour on the seat.

The doctor’s hand polished at the air. ‘No, no, Monsieur Pharaoh. Thank you. I cannot stay.’ Then his head dipped sharply to one side. ‘But I can smell bread. No, it’s flour. Am I right, Monsieur Pharaoh?’ He had danced forwards and was balanced on the ball of one foot, his dark eyes searching Wilson’s face, one hand held out flat, palm uppermost, like a tray for drinks.

‘The baker was here this morning,’ Wilson said, ‘to give me the sad news.’

‘Sad news? What sad news?’

‘His mother has died.’

‘Oh, but I am sorry. Yes, look.’ And he folded in half, his eyes not six inches from the boards. ‘There is some flour on the floor.’ He dabbed the white dust with one finger and examined it. If he had looked sideways at that moment he would have seen a man under the bed. ‘But his mother died, you say? That is terrible.’

Terrible indeed, thought Wilson, as he watched the doctor straighten up. Especially for you, Monsieur.

‘Poor Jesús,’ Suzanne said, though she was laughing. ‘He was under the bed the whole time?’

Wilson nodded. ‘When the doctor had gone, it took him ten minutes to extract himself. “I’ve been breathing cockroaches and dust for half an hour,” he said. “By Christ, if I’m not tempted to put a few new ingredients in the doctor’s beloved bread.’”

‘He wouldn’t,’ Suzanne said.

Wilson laughed. ‘He might.’

Namu called from the stern and pointed towards the coast. The land had flattened out; they could see a few thatch huts, some palm trees, a strip of volcanic sand.

‘San Bruno,’ Wilson told Suzanne. ‘People say that a tribe of Amazon women lived there once, but there’s no real proof, only stories that were handed down.’ He stared towards the shore, its charcoal sand, the curved prows of canoes. ‘It’s just a fishing village now.’

Chapter 10

Suzanne listened carefully as Wilson described the place that they were heading for. It lay just to the south of a sandbank that was almost a mile long. Each morning shoals of small fish swam through a channel at the southern tip, which made it a popular feeding-ground for bigger fish. If they anchored above the channel, Wilson explained, they would stand a good chance of catching bonita or cabrilla or yellowtail.

She interrupted him. ‘But it’s all sea. How do we know when we’ve arrived?’

Wilson asked Namu, and then translated the fisherman’s reply for her. There were three different marks on the land, Namu said. When all three lined up in a formation that he recognised, then he knew he was there. He lifted his shoulders, grinned.

She watched Namu as he watched the land, and thought she saw the moment when the landmarks fell into place because his wide eyes sharpened at the corners. Soon afterwards he stood up and began to furl the sail. Next he had to fix their position on the surface with his anchor, a solid lump of rusting metal. It looked more like part of an engine than an anchor, and she said as much to Wilson.

‘It is part of an engine,’ he said.

There were rocks on the ocean bed below, he told her. If they used a traditional anchor, the kind with a straight piece and a smiling piece, it would more than likely just get stuck.

He had to help Namu heave the anchor on to the bow and roll it overboard. The two men could barely manage it between them. But over it went, and the rope uncoiled slickly, fizzled over the side as if it were being devoured by the sea. Uncoiled, uncoiled; it seemed the sea’s appetite was boundless.

‘It must be deep,’ she said.

Wilson nodded. ‘Fifteen fathoms.’

Namu took a wooden reel and unwound the twine. On the end of the twine was a lead weight, the shape of a teardrop, and a hook. He reached into a bucket at his feet and took out a mackerel.

She watched as Namu threaded the hook in through the fish’s mouth, out through its gills, in through its body, out through its tail. It reminded her of sewing. He straightened the fish on the hook, then threw it overboard and put the reel and the line in her hand.

‘Let the line pay out,’ Wilson told her. ‘It’ll run through your fingers. When it stops running, that means you’ve reached the bottom. Then you reel it back in a few feet, so it’s hanging above the floor. That’s where the big fish are.’

She followed his instructions. The line slid across her palm and vanished into the water, just kept vanishing. A magic trick: there did not seem to be any reason why it should be moving. She tried to imagine what the line was passing through, what it would be seeing if it had eyes, and could not. Such a vastness lay beneath them; it was like an image of infinity.

At last the line stopped paying out, as Wilson had said it would, and she reeled it back and held it, as he was holding his, between her thumb and forefinger, almost as if she were testing its weight. She sat for several minutes with the line between her fingers. Nothing happened.

When Wilson reeled his line in, the bait had gone.

She decided to check her own line. The hook came up empty. Yet she had felt nothing.

‘It’s practice,’ Wilson told her. ‘It takes years.’

He fixed her hook for her, and she began again. Time slowed down, and then it did not seem to pass at all. Light glanced off the water. The boat seemed cushioned, in suspension; nothing changed or moved. Soon even her sense of place dissolved. It was not here that children walked in her shadow and moonlight ran down swords. Not here; somewhere else. She tried to summon Paris into her mind, and found that she could hardly remember it. Or rather, she could remember it, but it just did not seem real. The grey streets that she saw did not convince her. What had she loved? The city after rain. Dancing until she was almost asleep on her feet. The nightingales on the Rue de la Sorbonne. But their singing now seemed artificial, shrill, to her, a tune played on a music box. Rain was something she no longer understood. And dancing? She preferred not to think of that at all. The sound of a knife on wood broke into her thoughts, and she glanced round.

Namu was hacking two mackerel into pieces on the bench beside him, chopping the fish as fine as if they were parsley. When he had reduced them to a bloody pulp he moved down the boat, examining the pale stones that were wedged between its ribs. She had thought these stones might be decorations, or represent some kind of superstition, but she now saw that they had a specific, practical purpose. Namu selected a stone with a good flat surface and laid the crushed fish across it, then he took his hook, already threaded with a whole mackerel, and wound it round and round the stone. He threw the whole grisly parcel into the water and paid his line out fast. He looked up, saw that she had been watching. He grinned, and uttered a few quick words.

‘What did he say?’ she asked Wilson.

‘Wounded fish. They smell the wounded fish.’

And sure enough, before too long, Namu was up on his feet, the line taut in his fist, the muscles standing out on his stringy arms.

‘He’s got something,’ Wilson told her.

Namu would haul on the line and then pause, his head tipped sideways, as if he were listening to the fish below. Then he would haul on the line again. One final tug, a shudder of silver in the air, and the fish landed on the boards at Namu’s feet. The length of an arm, and heavy too, if the blows it gave the bottom of the boat were anything to go by. She could feel the power of its convulsions in the soles of her feet. As Namu chopped another pair of mackerel, he began to talk to the dying fish. Wilson translated for her. ‘He’s telling it to quieten down. He’s saying that everything’s going to be all right.’

Namu spoke to the fish as you might speak to a child with a fever, his voice calm and comforting, soothing as a cool hand on your brow. It struck her that he cared for the creature he had killed. There was respect in the look he gave it, a kind of compassion too, perhaps even a little affectionate teasing at the continuing strength of its protestations, even though the battle was lost. She touched it after it had ceased to move; it felt as hard as muscle. There were many colours in its skin, pink and blue and yellow, the colours of dawn, but only when the light caught the scales at a certain angle. She thought of the doctor’s waistcoats and mentioned the similarity to Wilson, who looked up from yet another empty hook and smiled.

At the end of an hour Namu had two more fish, almost identical to the first. It was close to midday by then, and time to set sail for the land.

‘I don’t think I’m very good at fishing,’ she said, as she handed her reel back to Wilson.

‘I didn’t catch anything either,’ he reminded her.

Namu spoke to Wilson. He pointed at the sky, then at the fish, and shrugged.

‘He says we arrived too late,’ Wilson told her. ‘He says the small fish mostly pass this way just after sunrise. If we’d been here earlier, we would have caught forty or fifty.’

‘Three, though,’ she said. ‘It’s enough for lunch, surely?’

Wilson laughed. ‘More than enough.’

Chapter 11

Wilson chose a beach that was just south of San Bruno. It had a platform of flat rocks to moor against, and sea-grape clustered thickly at the water’s edge, providing anchorage for the boat and some degree of shade.

‘But this is beautiful,’ Suzanne exclaimed.

He let his eyes travel beyond her, along the curve of blinding sand. The burnt-orange hinterland bristled with cardon and ocotillo. Out to sea, there were small islands, as rough and pink as grazed skin, and the sky above was that uncanny blue, so bright and hard that if you stared into its depths, it threatened to turn black.

While Namu gathered brushwood for the fire, Wilson put up the parasol that he had borrowed from the company store. Suzanne had brought a straw hamper and a Mexican rug with her. She spread the rug out on the rocks and began to unpack: plates, glasses, bottles of water and fruit cordial, knives and forks, two loaves of fresh bread, some green tomatoes and a few ripe figs.

She glanced up, caught him. watching her. ‘It’s only a few simple things,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing special.’ Her eyes had captured so much light that it was hard to look at her.

He piled stones around the base of the parasol, then sat down close to her. They were silent, taking in the view. Dark-purple shells the size of dishes lay scattered along the shoreline, rolling and scuttling as the waves pushed up the beach, pulled back, pushed up again. Three pelicans flew north, their bellies no more than a finger’s width above the surface of the water. Soon a crackling began. Namu was turning the fish on a wooden spit, and all its fats and juices were spilling down into the fire.

In twenty minutes it was cooked. The meat, pinkish-grey and succulent, fell into easy slices on their plates. It tasted so good, they could not pause to speak. They ate with their fingers, to be closer to the food; the knives and forks lay near by, still glittering and clean, parts of their lives that had been abandoned, disdained. Afterwards they crouched by the sea and washed their hands, returning to the shade of the parasol to lean against rocks or rest their heads on cushions.

With the brim of his hat pulled low over his eyes and his vision narrowed to a strip of blue water, Wilson began to talk about his feelings for gold. He wanted to try and explain how it was. He had been born in a wagon at the edge of a road in Iowa. Come to think of it, he was not so sure about the road. It could have been a track or a riverbed or just plain grassland, featureless and wide. Still, it was probably fair to say that he had been born in transit, on the way to somewhere. Born with movement in his blood. Later, his father would tell him of the many strange sights that they had witnessed on their journey west. A wardrobe standing by a river, its mirrored door ajar; snakes coiled among the rows of ballgowns that still hung inside. A four-poster bed beneath a tree (they spent the night in it). And, once, abandoned on the prairie, quite alone, a grand piano. Its stout legs bound with weeds. Wind whipping through the strings. A sound so mournful, they heard it for weeks after. Like everyone else they were forced to offload most of what they owned, fetching up in San Francisco with a few pans and a blanket. He had never had much, never wanted much. He could not imagine being rich. No, it was the idea of gold. The feel, the colour — the idea of it. It was out there someplace and you never quite knew where; it was the looking for it. It ran beneath your days like time itself. It measured just about everything you did. It was the joy you felt for no reason. The thought of gold pushed everything else to the sides of your head, like a room cleared for dancing.

He looked across at Suzanne, saw that she had understood.

‘But tell me, Wilson. How did it begin?’

‘Let me show you something.’

He sat up, took off his jacket and, borrowing Namu’s knife, began to unpick the stitching on the lining. After opening the seam along one edge, he reached his hand inside. And slowly drew a piece of parchment out into the air.

‘It’s a map?’

He nodded. ‘It’s my father’s map.’ He spread the parchment on the ground and put stones on the corners to keep it flat. ‘We travelled together many times looking for gold. We never did have much success. Then, one fall, the fall of ‘82 I think it was, we headed down to Reno. Reno, Nevada.’

His father sensed that his luck had changed. He said a man just knew sometimes. He claimed there was gold waiting for them at a gaming-table, a whole heap of it. He claimed it had the name Pharaoh written all over it. His father was not given to mystical episodes or premonitions of any kind — in fact, he had always poured mockery on fortune-tellers, calling them a pack of charlatans. His announcement was so unlikely, such a departure from the rule, that Wilson thought there must be something in it.

In those days the town of Reno had a reputation for lawlessness. Assaults were commonplace, even in broad daylight. Greed had men reaching for their guns; greed pulled the trigger. The time to arrive was just after dawn. Cold-streak gamblers would already be asleep. The rest would be locked deep into their games, with eyes for nothing else. There was less chance of trouble at dawn; they might even live long enough to sit down at a table and win themselves some money.

They walked in with the first fingers of light, one morning late in September. The desert floor creaked as the chill lifted. Wilson could see the low brown buildings of the town, and the mountains behind, violet and grey and mauve. The way it had been set with such deliberation in the middle of nowhere, it had the look of a place that could settle your destiny, if you were prepared to hand that power over. He took the keen air into his lungs and whistled under his breath. His thoughts were falling into line with his father’s thoughts. The ground stood firm beneath his feet. Out here there would only be fine days.

On the edge of town, they passed a shack. A man was saddling up outside. His father hailed the man. Said they’d been walking through the night and could the man spare a drop of water for their thirst.

The man studied them across the horse’s neck. ‘Ain’t got no water, but I could sell you a couple beers.’

His father said that beers would do just fine. The man named a high price, and his father paid. They sat in the shade behind a wall and drank from the cool brown bottles. When Wilson remarked on the man’s avarice, his father shook his head.

‘This here’s a town of transactions. People came out here with money and threw it around, and the town sprang up like money was the seeds for it. The price of beer’s steep because people can afford it. If the beer was cheap, then we’d be in the wrong place for what I got in mind. It’s no more than I was hoping for. It’s a good sign.’

During the next five days his father let it be known that he was a road agent, a gambler and a horse-thief. All the bad things he had ever done, he owned — and he invented some more, just to be on the safe side. The only shame in a town like Reno, or so he claimed, was a life lived according to the law. He boasted of robberies he had never committed, men he had never killed. His crimes swirled around him like some voluminous, embroidered cloak. They had arrived in town on Monday. By Saturday they were being shown into a private room at the back of the Lame Mule Saloon.

He had never seen his father play cards before. Imagining disaster, he could not watch. Instead he let the room absorb him. It was some place. Tall gold pillars, scarlet drapes. Walls that were said to be bullet-proofed with sheets of corrugated iron. Paintings of women, naked beneath transparent scarves. One had hair like Saffron’s, and he stared until the face came too; even after fifteen years, he had not forgotten it. Then, towards midnight, the doors burst open and a burning girl walked in. Her face serene, but all her clothes on fire. Three men put her out with French champagne. Afterwards, she stood beneath the chandelier, her arms raised, the fingers on each hand spread out to form a crown. She seemed unharmed. A man in a white derby turned to him. The man had to shout to make himself heard above the whistling and the applause. ‘Most nights she shows up,’ he said. ‘We call her Flaming Lil.’ When Wilson looked round again, the girl had gone. The air filled with string music, and the watery slap and lick of cards. From time to time someone would kill someone else with a revolver and smoke would drift upwards from the barrel, mingling with the fumes of a gambler’s cigar. One man, wounded or dead, would be removed, and the music would start up again and the game would continue. It got so he could tell the difference between the smoke from a gun and the smoke from a cigar: the gunsmoke had more blue in it. His father was smoking too, he noticed, when he could bear to look, the smudged black letters of the horse-thief’s brand showing casually on his thumb as he brought his cigar up to his mouth.

Then came the decisive moment, at five o’clock that morning, when he snapped awake to see his father raise the stakes so high that all the players had dropped out but one, and that one player paused and then reached down, not for a gun, as might have been expected, but for a roll of parchment that had been sealed with wax and tied with black ribbon.

‘I’m using this to match your stake,’ the man said.

His father frowned. ‘What in hell is it?’

‘It’s a map.’ The man smiled. ‘It could be worth more than all the money on the table. All the money in this room, for that matter. It’s up to you.’ The man leaned back, put two fingers to his jaw and waited, the same curious smile on his face, a bystander’s smile, as if he were outside the game, as if it amused him to know what the outcome might be.

Smoke rose from seven motionless cigars.

The man did not look like a gambler. He wore no long-tailed coat, no white shirt with ruffles. There was no pearl-handled Colt revolver lying on the floor beside his chair. All the same he had an air about him.

It was as if the man knew his father, Wilson thought, shifting on his gilt chair in the corner. As if he were some kind of doctor and had diagnosed the fever that had brought them to the town. He was offering a piece of parchment instead of money, and he knew that Arthur Pharaoh would accept it. Maybe it was the inevitability of it all that amused him.

But his father was smiling too, a smile of recognition. He fanned his cards out on the table. Three queens. The stranger had nothing but a pair of tens. His father had won the hand.

Though there was more than eight hundred dollars in the pot, it was the map that his father reached for first. He turned to Wilson with the scroll clutched in his fist.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is why we came.’

His father had astonished himself that night. He had become something that he had never dared to dream he might become, something that he had been known, in his fear, to scorn: a man who could cut the cloth of his existence and turn it into a suit of clothes that he might wear.

It was morning by the time they climbed the stairs to their room. Outside, the street stank of hogs and vomit but the map, it seemed, could sweeten any air. They spread it out on the table, weighed down with mining tools. It followed the outline of Lower California, from the Mexican border to the tip of the peninsula. Three women stood in the sea, below the Colorado river. They had brown skin and pointed breasts, and they wore skirts that were made of black stones hung on bits of string. Halfway down the east coast, just to the right of a grove of palm trees, the land was covered with a flurry of markings that looked like the transcript of someone’s excitement. His father read anything that was legible out loud. The names of islands, towns and bays dropped into the still air of the room and sent out ripples.

‘The Sea of Cortez,’ his father breathed.

His eyes gleamed. There might already have been gold stacked in the room. His eyes were just reflecting it.

‘And this is the same map?’ Suzanne bent over the parchment, her face lit with the secrecy of it. Her hair had come unpinned. One curl hung against her cheek like the spring inside a watch.

‘The very same,’ he said.

‘So you know where the gold is?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘But the map — ’

‘There are sea serpents and women in black skirts. There are volcanoes. But I don’t see any gold, do you?’

She leaned down, frowning.

‘It’s like wearing a cross,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean that God exists. It just means that you believe He does.’

Chapter 12

It was as they sailed past San Bruno, close enough to notice the bell suspended in the tower of the church, that the feeling came flooding into her. A sense that she had been left to fall into ruin, to decay. A sense that everything was over. She could see that girl, standing in a pool of ashes and champagne, the smoke still rising from her clothes. There were rooms in her and all the doors were open. Dead leaves blew across the floor. She could feel their gentle scraping against the inside of her skin.

She watched the village slip by, with a kind of desperation, as if by noticing it in all its detail she could save herself and break free. Those children poking among the fallen palm branches and the shells of crabs, those children turning to stare and then waving their thin arms. The boats drawn up on a strip of olive silt, their hulls as fine and curved as melon rinds. The church, pain-white against a cloudless sky. But she could not gather it; it would not wait for her. The view was a dismissive river. It just moved on past.

She did not know why. Perhaps it was the beauty and contentment of the day. The battle between Namu and the fish, a meal eaten by the sea. So much new knowledge. And she had found her beauty and contentment in the company of an Indian fisherman and a gold prospector from San Francisco. Imagine Madame de Romblay’s face if she ever learned of that. Imagine Théo’s.

A moment opened in her memory, its petals lifting to reveal a poisoned heart. How she looked up and out across the banqueting table on the SS Providencia and saw Théo distancing himself from her, disowning her. And how, later, as they rode home in the carriage, he held a silence that was heavy with rebuke and then, at last, and without looking at her, said, ‘You should not have talked that way.’ Should not. Later still, close to the house, he had added something kinder, a few words that sounded like advice. It astonished her how easily he could achieve distance from almost anything. They could have been two virtual strangers who would shortly separate and make their way to different houses for the night. They had no longer seemed to be linked by any bond or understanding. If they seemed close, it was only because they were sharing the same carriage. It was no more than geographical coincidence. Like statues in a park. Like planets.

The empty house; deserted rooms.

They shared a bed, and yet they hardly seemed to touch. His work. Responsibilities. The heat. It was love that was leaving, or had left. Not hers for him, she thought, but his for her. She was trying to gather it in, and it was slipping through her hands, like ice. The tighter she held on, the faster it melted. And when it was gone there would be nothing. No, less than nothing. Emptiness that once contained something always felt much emptier than emptiness that had never been otherwise.

She glanced up. The children, the boats, invisible. The spire almost gone. Tears were coming to her now. The sky, the land, the water, blurred. She wiped her eyes, and then looked round. She had not been observed.

‘Wilson?’

He looked up, his hat pushed to the back of his head.

‘I wish we didn’t have to go back,’ she said. ‘I don’t want the day to end.’

He was smiling, but he did not speak. Sometimes she would see him keep something to himself, not through want of a desire to offer it, but because it might be spoiled by words.

‘Promise me something,’ she said.

She saw that this would not be difficult for him.

‘Promise me that we can do something like this again. Not this exactly. Just something like this.’

He gave his promise easily. Not lightly, but easily. And she knew that she could rely on him.

But what should it be? She recalled a tedious conversation with Florestine Bardou. The doctor’s wife had mentioned the Misión San Ignacio which was, she claimed, one of the finest churches in Lower California. It had been established by the Jesuits in 1728 and completed, by the Dominicans, she thought, in about 1786.

‘I hope ours doesn’t take that long.’ Then Suzanne saw that she had been flippant and also, perhaps, tactless. ‘Have you seen it?’ she asked quickly. ‘The Misión San Ignacio?’

‘Oh no,’ Florestine said. ‘I haven’t seen it. But you must.’ Her chin dropped; her forehead, wide and concave, seemed to expand. ‘You’re so much more adventurous than I am.’

Suzanne chose to deny this — politeness demanded it of her — and yet, in truth, she could not disagree. It struck her that Florestine Bardou lived through others, encouragement being the most active part that she could play, and even in her encouragement she showed humility.

She turned to Wilson once again. ‘Have you ever heard of San Ignacio?’

‘I went there once.’

‘You have been there?’ She could have cried out with delight at the coincidence, but then she saw Santa Sofía on the port bow, crouching in the shadow of the mountains. The chatter of machinery carried across the water. The harbour wall reached out, bent halfway along, like an elbow. It would soon be gathering them in.

‘What’s it like?’ She spoke with urgency now.

‘The town?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the town.’ Men could be slow sometimes. They had to weigh everything, like shopkeepers.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s famous for its trees.’

‘There are trees?’ She had not expected that.

‘There are thousands of trees. Date palms, mostly. All in the same valley.’

She sat still, trying to imagine it.

‘And its water,’ he said.

‘What’s so special about the water?’ she asked.

He thought for a moment, and then he lifted his eyes to hers. ‘That it is there at all.’

Before she could ask him to explain, he pointed towards the land. ‘Look. Your husband’s waiting for you.’

‘Yes.’ But she did not look.

They had passed through the harbour entrance, and both Wilson and Namu were occupied with practicalities. Wilson stood close to the mast and began to haul the sail down. Namu’s eyes were fastened on the quay, the tiller shifting in his grasp as he brought the boat alongside. It was accomplished with great tenderness — a mother laying down her child. Half dozen boys squatted on the parapet above, their toes hooked over the edge. With their shaved heads and their pinched eyes, they looked capable of malice, but they caught the ropes that Wilson threw to them and looped them around the iron bollards. It struck her that one of them could have been the boy who appeared with Marie Saint-Lô’s silver shoes, though she was not sure she would have recognised him now.

She climbed the flight of stone steps that led up to the quay. It was not until she was standing on solid ground that she looked up. Théo was waiting at a respectable distance, his hands clasped behind his back. She could not see his face, only the winking of his gold watch-chain against the dark ground of his coat. The routine demands of mooring the boat, that sequence of small, sure actions, had given her time to recover her poise, had moored her too. When she waved, he lifted one hand and lowered it again, the gesture reassuringly mechanical, familiar. Her husband, waiting for her. She moved towards him, took his arm.

‘Théo, this is the American I’ve been telling you about.’

Wilson swung his way along the quay on his crutches. She turned quickly and included him.

‘Mr Pharaoh,’ she said, ‘this is my husband, Monsieur Valence.’

The men shook hands.

‘It’s a great pleasure,’ Wilson said.

‘And for me.’ Théo raised a clenched fist to his mouth, as if it were a cup and he might drink from it. He coughed once. ‘And I must thank you, Monsieur Pharaoh, for going to such trouble to entertain my wife, especially in your condition. Perhaps I could offer you a small aperitif?’

Suzanne smiled, not just at Théo’s heavily accented English, but because she realised that he must have been assembling this little speech while standing on the quay, attaching one word to another, piecing the sentences together — and the construction was sound, of course, and the pieces fitted perfectly.

Wilson dipped his head. ‘Thank you kindly,’ he said, ‘but I have to settle up with Namu.’ He indicated the fisherman, who was standing some way off.

‘Settle up? Ah yes. Of course.’ The gap between Théo’s eyebrows narrowed and he nodded, as if some weighty legal matter had been mentioned. Possibly he had not understood; out of politeness he would let his lack of understanding pass. ‘Another time, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps you would dine with us one night,’ Suzanne said.

‘Thank you,’ Wilson said. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Good. Then I’ll arrange it.’

She was distracted by a scraping sound that seemed to be coming from behind Wilson’s back. She peered past his shoulder. The Mexican boys had gathered a few yards away. One of them had wedged his foot into a metal bucket and was limping round the quay. Two others were bowing, shaking hands, bowing again.

Wilson swung round and flung an arm out sideways, as if he would have liked to sweep them all into the water. They scattered — though the boy with the bucket on his foot clung to his fiction, scattering more slowly, more awkwardly, than the rest.

‘Little devils,’ Wilson said.

Lifting his hat to Suzanne, he pivoted on his crutches and moved away. The boys followed at a safe distance, some limping, some hopping, one with his bucket still attached. She smiled as she watched him go. It was partly the sight of the procession and partly this: she would have been willing to lay money on the fact that Wilson had never heard of an ‘aperitif.

‘You’ve caught the sun,’ Théo said.

‘Have I?’

He touched his forehead, then his cheek. ‘Here and here.’

‘It must have reflected off the water,’ she said.

‘But you enjoyed yourself?’

‘Oh yes. Very much.’

Though she was tiring now after her long day she hoisted her spirits for a moment. They were light, yet artificial; she was imitating her pleasure in the day for him. Underneath, she could hardly wait for sleep.

‘You mentioned that we might invite the American to dinner,’ Théo said, as they began to climb the hill.

She looked at him. ‘What of it?’

‘Wouldn’t it be awkward?’ he said. ‘I mean, after all, he doesn’t know anybody.’

‘He knows the doctor.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’ Théo walked in silence for a while. ‘It’s just that some of our colleagues don’t seem to have a very high opinion of Americans.’

‘Or of any other nationality, for that matter.’ Suzanne smiled. ‘But I’m sure Madame de Romblay would not be averse to a little extra male company,’ she said, ‘wherever it happens to come from.’

‘Well,’ Théo said, ‘if you think it might be agreeable.’

When they reached the house, he mentioned that he would be dining with Jean-Baptiste Castagnet in the company offices that night. For once she was glad to be excluded. She did not have the energy for dinner. It was as much as she could do to wish Théo a pleasant evening.

She noticed his eyebrows lower. Her apparent equanimity had wrong-footed him; probably he had been expecting to have to defend himself. He would now be convinced more than ever of her capriciousness — or perhaps he would interpret it as his reward for having given way to her. It seemed that once men saw some kind of pattern in a woman then they clung to it. This acquiescence of hers did not conform to the pattern that had been assigned to her. Her fatigue became suspicious, even perverse.

She ate a cold supper on the divan by the window. Afterwards she read a novel. Every now and then she let the book close on her thumb and, resting her head against a cushion, dreamed of San Ignacio.

Towards eight o’clock a letter arrived. She studied the envelope that Imelda handed to her. It had been secured with a dab of scarlet wax that bore the seal of the Mexican Government. Thinking that this must be another of Montoya’s invitations which she would be obliged on this occasion, to turn down, she asked Imelda if anyone was waiting for a reply.

‘There was a coachman,’ Imelda said, ‘but he drove off.’

‘Thank you, Imelda.’

As soon as she slit the envelope open and removed the single sheet of vellum, folded neatly in half, she knew what it would be. She did not need to see the fevered tangle of loops and flourishes or read the significance in his choice of ink (the hot vermilion of lips and hearts); she already knew. Montoya had brought his secret vigil to an end. He had declared himself.

At once she was curious to know what exaggerated form his language took, how the waves of his emotions crashed upon the page, but she could understand hardly a word of Spanish. In order to know what the letter said, she would need someone to make a translation for her, and that would be a delicate matter, most delicate. On a sudden, almost girlish, impulse she slid the sheet of paper back into its envelope and hid the letter inside one of the many cushions that littered the divan and then lay back, unable to keep herself from smiling at the thought that she had received a love letter that had been fastened with the official seal of a government.

Chapter 13

Though almost a week had passed since the outing on the water, Wilson was only now addressing himself to the task of sewing his map back into its hiding-place. Dusk had fallen on the town, and he could hear men returning from the afternoon shift. He sat in his window with a needle and thread, an oil-lamp close by. He was not much of a seamstress. He had already pricked his left thumb and two of his fingers. Each time it happened he held the wound away from him and saw how the tiny bulb of blood swelled and glistened in the soiled yellow light. Yet he pressed on. His spade, his rifle and his pickaxe stood on the far side of the room. They had the look of old acquaintances, propped against the wall like that, all in a row; they seemed to be watching with a kind of quiet amusement.

Such was his concentration as he bent over the jacket that he lost the feeling in his good leg. He stood up and, leaning his weight on his walking-stick, circled the room. The plaster would be coming off next week. He could hardly, wait. So much would suddenly become possible. He paused by the window. Stars glittered above the ridge, whole constellations; the tail of the scorpion curled down like a hook for a hat. He missed the sky above him as he slept. He missed that vast, overhanging silence. He even missed the irritations: sandflies, cactus thorns, the absence of shade. He sat down again. On with the jacket. Half the hem was done, a zigzag of stitches, a drunk’s walk down the lining. As he took up the needle he thought of the journey he would undertake with Suzanne. The day before, he had spent part of the evening in her company, and she had talked of little else.

They had been sitting on the veranda of the Hôtel de Paris, the only people there. A night of almost inconceivable stillness. They could have been imprisoned in a vault; gold would probably feel like this, he remembered thinking, as it lay in windowless rooms beneath a bank. He had smoked half a cigar to keep the mosquitoes away and when he let the smoke drift out between his teeth it hung in the air, almost without moving, like a flower that blooms at night. He let her excitement wash over him, never taking his eyes off her face except to attend to his cigar or glance along the veranda to where Rodrigo was standing, or not standing so much as leaning, slouching against the doorpost in his pale silk shirt, as if he had no bones to hold him up. Only when she paused for breath did he betray some uncertainty about the venture. It was two days’ ride across treacherous terrain, and he was not sure that a woman, any woman, would be up to it.

She absorbed the subtle compliment that he had paid her, but mocked what she called his ‘lack of faith’. He had disappointed her, she said.

‘After all,’ she went on, ‘we could always take longer. We could spend two nights under the stars. Or three.’

‘With the rattlers,’ he said, ‘and the polecats.’

‘Rattlers?’ She studied him sternly. He could see that she suspected him of inventing dangers now, and she would rather challenge his authority than own up to any fear.

‘Rattlesnakes, vipers, scorpions, tarantulas.’ He smiled into the night. ‘There’s even a poisonous tree. If you sleep under it, you can go blind. And there’s no water anywhere. None.’

‘So I will have to make the journey alone,’ she said. ‘Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’ Her lips had hardened in defiance, a sharp edge to their usual soft lines. And yet a smile lay below the surface, waiting to emerge.

She was determined to go at any cost, and he soon tired of trying to discourage her. It had, in any case, been a show of undeniable perversity on his part, since there was nothing he would rather do than ride with her to San Ignacio. He could imagine arriving above the town with an hour of light remaining in the sky. It was always a shock to look down on the oasis after crossing the lava fields and plains of basalt that lay to the east. It was so lush suddenly, so tropical. All those green trees clustered in the valley, all that green water. It did not belong. It could not be real. It could seem almost cruel.

He could still remember the last time that he visited the mission. There had been a party for the padre, Father Lutz, who was going up country the following morning. His Indian converts had danced the fandango until daybreak, their sweat spattering the floor of the barn like rain. Even the Father had danced, his cassock swirling around his bare ankles, a flagon of wine balanced just above his eyes. Father Lutz was the kind of missionary the Indians could understand. They were still dancing at nine o’clock in the morning when the Father rode out of town with a cool cloth wrapped around his head. He had drunk too much of the local wine. He could not even lift an arm to wave.

Wilson looked up from the jacket lining and out through the window. One star fell in a breathless curve. Perhaps he would dance the fandango with her. If she did not know it, he would teach it to her. First the wheeze of an accordion. Then a guitar picking up speed, the click and chatter of the castanets. Her skirts spinning across the dirt floor, one curl coming loose and dangling like a spring beside her ear. Air the colour of crushed pomegranate. Rush torches blazing. Laughter. In many of the songs there would be obscene references to cacti and volcanoes, but they would be in Spanish and she would not understand. If she asked him for the words, he would sweeten them in his translation.

And later in the night they would stroll among the palm groves, beside the still green waters of La Candelaria. He would sing the song that he had written, the song about gold. She would listen, and she would understand only half of it. That was the beauty of the song. Later still, they would bathe, perhaps. Cool their feet, which had been scorched by hours of dancing. Wash the sweat and smoke from their bodies. And he would turn his eyes away as she took off her clothes because his love was of a size that could embrace all denial. I don’t want the day to end. The words that she had uttered on the boat. It was his wish that she had voiced that afternoon. His one impossible wish. Impossible because unthinkable. Doubly impossible because it countered everything that he admired in her. Her faith, her purity, her love. If she were to betray those qualities and turn to him, then she would forfeit his respect. His love could only be denied or else consume itself. In her own sadness, though, she had not noticed his. He had been grateful for that. His sadness was something she must not be allowed to see. He would show her only joy.

A sharp pain arrowed through his thumb. He watched another ball of blood form on his skin. But he had almost closed the lining of his jacket. Only one more inch to go.

‘Don’t show it to anyone. Not to anyone.’

He saw his father leaning over him, a twist of black smoke rising through the glass shaft of the oil-lamp. The cords strung taut in his father’s neck, the skin draped over them like canvas. The map spread beneath his gaze. It had been laid out so many times, in so many different rooms, that it had become obedient; weights were no longer needed to hold the corners down.

‘Keep it sewed up in the jacket, sewed up good and tight. And keep your mouth sewed up likewise.’

His own mouth twisted away from his face when he spoke, like a steer fighting to escape the branding-iron. His eyes were always looking beyond the walls to some far horizon, some future time: the place where the map began, the moment when they entered it. But the place came no closer, and the time never arrived. All his father’s luck had drained away and only fear remained. He was convinced that they were in danger. If they made one move towards the gold they would be ambushed and robbed — probably murdered too.

For almost eighteen months they traced a wary arc across the southern states — Texas, New Mexico, Arizona — keeping a safe distance from the line that marked the beginning of the map. They never stopped in any town for long. They switched hotels after dark, riding in rivers to become invisible, or splitting up and taking different trails so those in pursuit would not know which one of them to follow. They travelled under false identities. Sometimes they dropped down to the Mexican border, and spent a night in Tombstone or El Paso, but they always left the next morning, a feeling of ricochet as they headed north or east, into a land where nothing could happen. They stayed in red-light districts, near railroad tracks, on waterfronts. Places with names like Hell’s Half Acre. Places with no name at all. Anywhere so long as it was cheap, anonymous. One night they watched an orchestra of ladies who were clothed only in their undergarments. For their own protection, the ladies played inside a cage that had been electrified. Three men had died trying to climb between the bars. In Fort Griffin they met a man who had no ears and no fingers, his punishment for stealing a fellow-miner’s gold. Life descended into nightmare. Countless evenings where they were barricaded in some room, listening for footsteps on the stairs. His father kept his right hand thrust into the bosom of his coat, as if he had a gun in there. People took to calling him Napoleon. ‘Big mistake, heading into Russia like that,’ they would say. Or, ‘How’s the syphilis?’ ‘I’m not Napoleon,’ his father would mutter. ‘I’m nobody.’ All he wanted was to feel safe. All he was seeking was refuge, invisibility.

‘Not a word to anybody. Not one word.’

1882–1884. The lunatic years.

Wilson thought it must have happened during the poker game in Reno. When his father let that man reach below the table, knowing it could be a gun that he was reaching for. When, smiling, he let that man reach down. You have to be part crazy to orchestrate that kind of moment.

It was what dreams did to you if they did not come true. They made you mad with the constant glimpsing of them. The dreams were there, but only just. The heels of the dreams were always vanishing round corners, and when you reached the corner they were gone. Only you saw them; that was what made them so valuable, so terrible. Only you saw them. And when there were things that only you could see, then you were crazy for sure. A footprint on the sand, one snapped twig in a forest. The trail that you were following did not exist for anybody else. On you went.

‘Keep that mouth of yours sewed up. Good and tight now. Good and tight.’

Some nights he woke with a cry, thinking that his father was bending over him with a needle and thread. He could feel a tugging at the corner of his mouth as the first stitch tightened. He could smell his father’s bitter breath. Hold still now. Just hold still. Other nights he dreamed that the horror had already been accomplished. He would lie awake as morning came and would not be able to open his lips. He feared mutilation at the hands of his own father. Towards the end he had even feared death. They would be sitting in a hotel room in Bastrop or Santa Fe and he would see his father’s head lurch round and fasten a mad but calculating look on him. He was the only person in the world who knew about the map. Could he be trusted with the knowledge? He slept in snatches during the daylight hours and lay awake all through the night. A son fearing his father, his father fearing everyone. It could not go on.

Seventeen months after that game of cards, his father was dead. In a boarding-house in Silver City. The name of the town cast an ironic shadow over the event. His father had never in his life sought any metal but gold. In that one sense you could say that he had been faithful. His chest had been crushed by a stagecoach as he crossed the main thoroughfare at midnight. Listening for the dreaded footsteps, he had not heard the wheels.

It was a decent boarding-house, with curtains in the windows and no gambling allowed. His father’s hand lay on the clean sheet, fingers curled. Cracks ran lengthways in the nails. His father’s wool shirt hung on the back of a chair, the breast decorated with medals of blood.

Exploiting his father’s weakness, he did something he would never otherwise have dared to do. He took his father’s hand. And held it.

‘You got the map?’ His father could only gurgle. He was drowning in his own fluids.

Wilson nodded.

‘It’s safe?’

He pressed his father’s hand. ‘It’s sewed into my jacket,’ he said, ‘just like you showed me.’

‘Never found it, did we?’

He could only smile down.

‘On the grave,’ his father said, ‘I want some words.’ His eyes cleared for a moment, a gap between clouds. Then he coughed, and his chin tipped backwards, and his voice filled with blood. Wilson thought that he might never hear the words.

At last his father found an ounce of breath.

‘Still looking,’ he said.

Two hours later he was dead.

The last stitch, double-strength, was now in place; the map was back where it belonged. And he was standing on the land that it described, ground that had taken his father’s luck, two-sided though it may have been, and spent it all. He could have inked himself in, with a hat, a moustache and a broken foot, three inches to the south-west of the women with the pointed breasts. He was here, he was on the map, and yet he seemed no closer to anything. His father would never have imagined such disillusion to be possible. Bending over the needle, he severed the thread with his teeth, then tied the two tails in a solid knot.

He stood up, poured some water into a bowl. Then he began to wash. He was expected on the Mesa del Norte for dinner.

‘I hear that you’re looking for gold.’ Monsieur de Romblay’s face lowered over the table like a huge ripe fruit that might drop at any moment from its branch. ‘Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Wilson said. ‘It is.’

Monsieur de Romblay nodded. ‘I didn’t think that you could have been drawn here simply by the beauty of the place,’ he said with a smile, his face resembling a fruit more than ever as it glowed and dimpled in the candlelight.

There were a few sardonic chuckles. Then a man with a thin face and prominent knuckles leaned forwards.

‘It would be better to go back to where you came from, would it not?’ The man’s name was Pineau. He was not a man for whom Wilson had developed any great fondness.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Your country is famous for gold. California, Montana, even Idaho.’ Pineau paused. ‘But Santa Sofía — ’

Wilson waited for the laughter to fade. Some people cannot resist trying to soil and ridicule your dreams. Maybe it is because they have none of their own.

‘It is my contention,’ he said finally, ‘that, sometime in the future, it will be discovered that this entire peninsula is nothing less than an extension of the famous gold-fields of Northern California.’

You could have heard a dime land in the rug.

He sat back in his chair. It was the first dinner party that he had ever attended. The men wore shirts that gleamed like ivory. The women had jewelled necks and ears; flowers blossomed in their hair. He did not belong in such exalted company. He had washed with carbolic soap. He had trimmed his moustache. He had dressed in his best blue-flannel shirt, a black four-in-hand tie of his father’s and pair of dark trousers which he had borrowed from Jesús Pompano. But still he looked like the men they put in fields to scare the birds.

‘Do you have any proof of this,’ and Pineau paused again, ‘contention of yours?’

Wilson smiled to himself. ‘Certainly, at the present time, I should be hard pressed to furnish you with proof to the contrary.’

The doctor chuckled. ‘Bravo, Monsieur. Well said.’

Wilson glanced at Suzanne and saw his secret safe behind her eyes, invisible to everyone but him.

But Pineau would not let him alone. ‘You would not be here,’ he said, ‘if you did not know something.’

Suzanne let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Monsieur Pharaoh is a romantic,’ she said, ‘and romantics don’t need proof. All they need is faith.’

‘Faith.’ Pineau curled his lip.

‘My dear Suzanne,’ said Madame de Romblay, whose head and shoulders rose out of a froth of purple satin, ‘you make our American friend sound like a candidate for sainthood.’

Smiles travelled the length of the table. Wilson felt that he should smile too, if modestly.

But Suzanne did not smile. Her cheeks flushed and her green eyes seemed to bleach.

‘Who was it, may I ask,’ she said, ‘who landed in California with gardening implements believing, in their naivety, that gold was so abundant that it could be raked out of the rivers?’ Nobody spoke. ‘I’ll tell you who it was,’ she said. ‘It was the French.’ She looked round the table, settling at last on the Director’s wife, whose eyes were glittering at this betrayal of her nation, whose lips had snapped tight shut. ‘We may think that we’re superior, that we know more than others,’ she said, ‘but we don’t. We don’t know the half of it.’

Monsieur Valence leaned forwards, placing his hands flat on the tablecloth. He had folded his napkin into one tight square.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if we have all finished, perhaps we should adjourn to the veranda.’

‘But we haven’t finished,’ Suzanne said, ‘have we, Théo?’

Valence looked steadily at Wilson. ‘Monsieur Pharaoh?’

Wilson had no choice but to struggle to his feet. As he turned away from the table he saw Suzanne lift her napkin into the air and suspend it quite deliberately above the candelabra. In seconds the napkin had caught fire. She dropped the burning cloth in the centre of the table and rose calmly from her chair.

‘By all means,’ she said. ‘Let’s adjourn.’

She did not appear for the coffee and brandy that were served on the veranda. Monsieur de Romblay took hold of the conversation and, working in unison with the doctor, steered it into a debate about the recent unrest among the miners, not exactly an entertaining subject, but less troubled than some. It was a discussion in which Wilson played little part since most of those present had by now reverted to their native language. Still, he could feel some of the tension in the air disperse. Now and then the doctor leaned over and translated for him. At one point he thought of mentioning the epileptic’s vision, which could well have helped to undermine morale, but he held his tongue, fearing that he might make a fool of himself again. Indeed, his only contribution drew a snort of indignation from the accountant. He had simply observed that conditions in the mine were far from perfect. Monsieur de Romblay also bridled at the remark.

‘We are not running a charity, Monsieur.’

Wilson kept silent after that.

It was not long before the doctor turned the conversation to his favourite subject: bread. Given the conspicuous lack of progress during the last few weeks, he suggested that they should consider recruiting a baker from France. Madame de Romblay said that, in her opinion, no baker worth his salt would agree to come. The Sister, Marie Saint-Lô, thought they should give the Mexican another chance.

‘Apparently there has been a death in the family.’ Marie Saint-Lô turned to the doctor.

‘That’s correct. I forgot.’ The doctor sighed. ‘Well, I suppose you cannot expect too much of somebody who is going through a period of mourning.’

‘Who died?’ Monsieur de Romblay asked.

‘His mother, wasn’t it?’ The doctor did not seem sure.

Madame de Romblay shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It was his aunt. I’m certain of it.’

‘Monsieur Pharaoh?’ the doctor said. ‘Perhaps you could enlighten us?’

But Wilson only shrugged. He felt bloated and queasy. He could have opened his mouth and emptied the contents of his stomach on the ground, a temptation that was very nearly rendered a necessity a few minutes later when Pineau settled in the chair beside him.

‘Monsieur Pharaoh,’ and he put a hand on Wilson’s shoulder, and Wilson could smell compost on the accountant’s breath, ‘they tell me that you can recommend a local whore.’

It was after midnight when Wilson put his glass of brandy down. Reaching for his crutches, he announced that he would have to be going. ‘I could use some rest,’ he said.

The doctor beamed up at him. ‘I’m delighted to hear it. The message is getting through at last.’

Monsieur de Rombay joked, rather drunkenly, that Wilson should not consider looking for any gold until morning and, under the cover of good-natured laughter, Wilson wished the company a pleasant night, thanked Monsieur Valence for the most excellent dinner and then began to make his way round to the front of the house.

Halfway along the veranda, Monsieur Valence overtook him.

‘There is a carriage,’ he said. ‘I will fetch it for you.’

Before Wilson could protest, the man had vanished.

Sheet lightning lit the heavens to the west, beyond the mountains. In other towns it might have heralded rain; in Santa Sofía, this did not seem likely. He stood at the top of the steps. His head ached from listening to hours of talk.

Then, as he looked up, the lightning came closer, laying bare the sky above the house, and there, in the shadows of the veranda, stood Suzanne.

‘Wilson? Is that you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re leaving?’

Stumbling over his words, he began to thank her for the dinner, but he encountered a look of such utter distraction on her face that he could no longer speak.

‘Imagine,’ she said, ‘if the house had burned down.’

She was laughing. A sequence of notes, innocent and clear.

He stood still, uncertain what to say.

Lightning again: her face jumped out at him, a section of her dress, a jasmine flower behind her. It seemed to have the power to reveal her one moment and remove her the next, as if her existence were pure illusion.

‘You’re ashamed of me.’

He shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, Wilson,’ she said, Tm truly sorry. It was not the dinner I intended it to be.’

‘It was a fine dinner,’ he maintained stubbornly. ‘I enjoyed it very much.’

She took a step towards him. The shadow of a hanging plant moved down her forehead and across her cheek, reminding him of fingers on the keys of a piano.

‘He never touches me,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t love me.’

She held his arm. He felt something land on the back of his hand and knew a moment later that it must have been a tear.

‘Suzanne,’ he said.

She wiped her cheek. ‘Will you come again?’

‘Of course.’

He heard the wheels on the street below.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘Your carriage.’

When Wilson turned in his seat, looked back towards the house, she was still standing on the veranda, a branch of lightning stranded on the ground, a white flag in the darkness.

Somebody surrendering.

The carriage ambled down the hill. He could not fit his thoughts together. He could only see that napkin burning on the table, and her face above the flames, quite calm, absorbed.

Chapter 14

During the night Suzanne woke up and heard voices. She was lying with her head close to the window, only a mosquito-net between her and the stars. The voices drifted up from the veranda; the words had lost their shape, turned into murmurings. Théo and another man. She sipped at the tea Imelda had prepared for her — to calm her, Imelda said. It tasted of grass and dust. She wondered how late it was, wondered if she should go downstairs. Sleep took her again before she could come to a decision.

In the morning she woke with the same dream in her head, the dream about Montoya’s house. She could not be sure whether she had dreamed it again, or whether it was just a memory, fostered by sleep. She lifted the jug off the floor and poured some water into her china bowl. She washed slowly, the dream becoming clearer in her head, though she could only remember that one fragment: two women dancing in the hallway — that was all. There had been no reference to their appearance on the night of the doctor’s birthday. She did not know if she should feel reassured.

She thought back to the time when she realised that she had the power of dreams, dreams that were like prophecies, dreams that came true. It had sent fear screaming through every layer of her skin. After the death of her friend she no longer trusted sleep. She saw beds as enemies. She even gave up eating cheese, afraid of what she might dream. But sleep lay in wait for her, knowing she would come, and she could not keep the dreams away.

Time passed; she became accustomed to the gift. She found that she often dreamed of people whom she did not know. It was like receiving a letter that had been intended for someone else; the dream postman had delivered to the wrong address. But what a relief that was. She could not be blamed for what happened. There would be no policemen calling at the house. Other times the dreams were commonplace or trivial. Always accurate, though. Once, for instance, she saw her father meeting a man on the road from Paris to Dieppe. The man was an old friend of her father’s. He wore a blue swallowtail jacket with gold buttons, and his horse was lame; she even knew which hoof. When her father came home, his face was lit with astonishment. ‘Do you know who I met today?’ Yes, I know, she thought. And I know what he was wearing. And his horse was lame too, wasn’t it? But she did not actually say anything; she did not dare. It was only the servant classes who believed in signs and portents. She turned to their African maid, Olique, with her wide eyes and her credulous heart. Every Thursday Olique would pay a clandestine visit to the bookstall on the Rue Chartreuse, returning with pamphlets and treatises, almanacs and horoscopes, which they would then spread out on the dark oak table in the servants’ kitchen. They would explain the present, explore the future. Excavate the past. Telling Olique about her power made it more bearable. She even felt a sense of privilege because Olique told her that, in the country she came from, only very few were chosen, and they were almost always women. She came to treat the premonitions as a thrilling edge to her existence rather than a core of fear and unease.

And then they stopped.

She had been married for less than a week. She could still remember entering the library on the first floor of their house on the Rue de Rivoli, the tall window standing open, a sheet of white sunlight on the carpet. Nobody had used the room in days; the air had settled, motionless and dense. She held her arms away from her sides as if she were naked and about to be dressed. That moment had, in fact, been like a kind of nakedness. She had been stripped of her power. Her gift had gone.

Standing in the library that morning with the doves calling from the garden and the books in their hushed rows on the walls, she did not know what she thought. From being open, her hands closed up; she felt her fists begin to shake. She ought to have been warned. Too much was being taken from her. She seemed to have to pay so heavily for anything she gained.

And now that Théo would not touch her any more, she thought, as she dried her face and draped the towel over a chair, now that the ghost of her purity had been summoned and was walking through the house, could her gift be returning? It made a kind of sense. It was so logical that even Théo would have been compelled to agree with her. She left the room and moved down the corridor, her hands shifting among the folds of her dress. The thought of her gift returning was like a shiver in the heat. She did not want to use that part of her — not any more. The future was too volatile, too uncertain. There were things just out of sight that she would rather have no knowledge of, like other people.

It was late by the time she walked downstairs, and Théo was long gone. She thought that it must have been a relief for him to leave while she was still asleep, to be able to avoid what would certainly have been an awkward encounter. To think that she had almost set fire to the house. This morning the whole episode seemed ludicrous, beyond belief. She smiled faintly, had to shake her head.

In the parlour she found her breakfast, which Imelda had left out for her some time before. There was coffee, still warm in its blackened pot; a few sweet rolls; a bowl of peeled oranges and pitahaya, covered by a sieve; some fresh dates. She stood above the table, looking down. The world crackled at the limits of her vision, as if it had been fed with bolts of electricity. That fruit, for instance. Glistening in its prison of fine wire-mesh. That china vase, the hooped back of a chair, her paintings on the wall. Just ordinary objects, but each one invested with a shimmer, fizzing at the eges, rimmed in white. She could not explain it. She was just aware of it as she poured herself some coffee.

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

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

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

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

‘Amor,’ she read.

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

She moved one hand through the opening in her chemise.

Amor, she thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Water? What water?’

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

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

‘Forgotten? Of course not.’

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

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

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

‘Does it have a name?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Don’t stop.’

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

It was a while before she spoke.

‘How did you learn it, Wilson?’

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

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

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

‘I apologise for last night,’ she said.

‘There’s no need.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes?’

‘You speak Spanish, don’t you?’

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

‘Can you read it?’

‘Pretty much.’

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

‘Depends what it is.’

‘It’s a letter.’

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

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

‘What do you like to eat?’ she asked.

‘To eat?’ Wilson glanced up at her.

‘Yes. What’s your favourite food?’

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

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

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

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

Chapter 15

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

‘Good morning, Monsieur,’ the Frenchman said.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Perhaps a coffee then,’ said Monsieur Valence.

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

‘I cannot go here,’ he announced.

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

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

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

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

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

‘No.’

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

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

‘Why not?’ Wilson asked.

‘He insulted my food.’

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

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

He sensed a lessening of tension in her stance.

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

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

‘She is very proud,’ Monsieur Valence observed.

Wilson was not sure how much of the exchange Valence had understood, if indeed he had understood anything at all. He decided not to enlighten him. Ignorance might be a happier state.

‘They’re a proud people,’ he said. ‘They work, but they don’t like to serve. Service is not in their nature.’

Monsieur Valence did not appear to be listening. He held his left hand in his right, and was pressing his thumb into the palm. A fly landed on his shoulder and became invisible.

At last he spoke. ‘You have not known my wife for very long, but I believe you are a friend to her.’

‘Yes,’ Wilson said, ‘that’s correct.’

‘Has she said something to you? Has she expressed,’ and the Frenchman looked up quickly, then looked down again, ‘any dissatisfaction?’

It was Wilson’s turn to hesitate. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not that I can think of.’ And it was, in some sense, true. He was too surprised at the bluntness of the questioning to apply his mind properly to the answer.

Valence continued to massage the palm of his left hand with his thumb.

Mama Vum Buá brought their coffee in two buckled tin mugs. It was the grey colour of certain rivers in the winter; grounds swirled in a sluggish spiral on the surface. It provoked in Wilson a curious and unexpected nostalgia for the north — or perhaps it was just the sudden desire to be far away, to be somewhere else.

‘Two coffees,’ the Señora said. ‘You want eggs?’

Wilson felt the Frenchman shudder. ‘No eggs,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’

‘Something wrong with my eggs?’ Her blue eyes glinted in her heavy copper face.

‘First we’ve got to talk some business,’ Wilson said, ‘then I’ll have some eggs.’

‘Business?’ She ambled away, cackling. ‘Business.’

Monsieur Valence put one finger through the handle of his mug, but did not lift it to his lips. ‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that she is losing her mind.’

For a moment Wilson thought he was referring to the Señora and was about to smile, then he understood. He felt his heart drop in his chest like a dead weight; it was like watching a sack of flour being heaved off the back of a cart. He could not speak.

Monseiur Valence had been watching him, and now seemed reassured to see that he was taking the matter seriously. Valence pushed his tin mug to the centre of the table.

‘How is your ankle?’

‘It’s still weak.’

‘Good.’

Wilson stared at the Frenchman, but the Frenchman did not even notice. He was one of those people who are incapable of seeing the world from outside of themselves, and are therefore denied a share in much of its humour.

‘Since you must stay here in town,’ Valence continued, ‘I would be grateful if you could watch my wife.’

‘Watch her?’

‘Yes.’

‘You make it sound like work for a policeman,’ Wilson said, ‘or a jailer.’

‘Forgive me. It’s my English. Sometimes it escapes me.’ Monsieur Valence let out a sigh. And looked, just for a moment, like an ordinary person, with ordinary measures of weakness and fatigue.

He leaned forwards, hands on the table, shirt-cuffs resting against the edge. ‘All that I am talking about is friendship,’ he said. ‘Do you understand me?’

‘I understand.’

‘I would be very grateful.’ Without lifting his wrists off the table, the Frenchman spread his hands.

Wilson watched the Frenchman as he rose to his feet. ‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘I’m having lunch with her tomorrow.’

‘Excellent.’ Monsieur Valence placed a banknote beside the mug of coffee, which he had not touched, and, retrieving his umbrella, stepped out into the sunlight.

As soon as the Frenchman had turned the corner, Wilson took the Frenchman’s mug and drank the coffee down in three swift gulps. Then he sat back, stretched his legs. The street beyond the pool of shade looked white as chalk. He contemplated the banknote on the table. It was enough for twenty cups of coffee.

‘Something wrong with it?’

He jumped. Mama Vum Buá was standing at his elbow with her arms folded and a toothpick wedged between her two front teeth.

‘Your coffee,’ she said. ‘Is there something wrong with it?’

‘The coffee’s fine,’ he said.

She reached down, picked up the banknote. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s payment. The Frenchman left it.’

‘It’s too much.’

‘I know.’

She fingered the money with a mixture of amusement and disgust. ‘The fool,’ she said. ‘He don’t know the value of what he’s got.’

Chapter 16

17 Calle Francesa, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico

30th May, 189 –

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

At last I can be the bearer of unadulterated good news. During the past two weeks we have made excellent progress. In place now are the purlins which have had the desired effect of correcting the relative positions of the arches and, simultaneously, of bracing them by creating an indeformable whole. We are now proceeding with the panels. I estimate that the job will be completed by the end of next month.

There have been no more thefts of any kind, thanks to the assiduous attentions of the soldiers whom I employed to guard the construction site, nor have there been any further instances of absenteeism. Indeed, one could almost say that the Indians are becoming Frenchmen. They work hard, and are beginning to demonstrate a certain pride in their achievement. I think they could not, for a long time, imagine what it was that they were building, but now that the structure is taking shape before their eyes they have suddenly become enthusiastic. Only yesterday my foreman expressed a sense of wonder at my ability to turn such an ‘unpromising heap of metal’, as he called it, into something as worthy and elaborate as a church! He seemed to be suggesting that, in less ingenious hands than mine, the pieces of metal might not have amounted to anything at all. It was a most amusing moment; I only wish that you had been there, Monsieur, to witness it.

I apologise for the relative brevity of this letter, but it is late and I must rise again before dawn; continuing good progress is dependent on my presence on site at every hour of the day. Madame Valence is well, and conveys her warmest regards. I am with respectful esteem, Monsieur, your most humble and obedient servant,

Théophile Valence.