William Boyd - The Blue Afternoon

'Don't worry,' Pantaleon said. 'I'll take it straight home. I'll hire a carromato.'

Constancio was despatched in search of one and then the three men picked their way on sagging gangplanks across the banked houseboats towards where Axel's steamer was moored. Families sat around cooking fires preparing dinner, only the children curious about these three Americanos in their white suits tramping through their homes.

'Why doesn't he put in at a jetty?' Carriscant asked.

'Nothing is meant to be easy or straightforward,' Udo explained cryptically. 'Your business with Axel has to be very important for you to make this effort.'

Moored alongside the outlying casco was Nicanor Axel's ugly little steamer the General Blanco. It was a wide, low-lying coaster with its tall single smokestack set aft and conspicuously raked. In front of the bridge superstructure were three holds with primitive-looking derricks above them. A foul smell, acid and corrupt, seemed to hang like a miasma about the craft. Carriscant felt his stomach turn and he put his handkerchief to his nose as the three of them climbed the angled ladder to the deck, Udo's genial bellows of 'Nicanor, Nicanor, where are you?' preceding them.

On deck Carriscant thought he had located the source of the smell. One of the holds was full of livestock, goats and kids, and the floor of the hold seemed to be lined with rotting vegetation, as far as he could tell from the light thrown by a hanging oil lantern.

'Goat shit,' Pantaleon said. 'Centuries old.'

Udo explained that the crew fed off the livestock as they travelled about the islands and on the longer ocean crossings to Hong Kong and Japan. 'You throw all your rubbish in there, the goats eat it, you eat the goats.' He smiled, pausing to light a cigar. 'Powerful smell, no? If I was a customs officer I wouldn't want to linger on this vessel, I tell you.'

A man descended from the bridge house and advanced along the deck towards them, wiping his hands on a rag. He had a curious sidelong, diffident gait, Carriscant thought, as if some invisible accomplice was pushing him from behind, urging him forward against his will. Udo made the introductions. Nicanor Axel was a small, slight man, with round shoulders, with a dark swarthy skin that sat most oddly with his pale blue eyes and his fair, almost ash-blond hair. On closer inspection Carriscant realised that it was grime that was responsible for the man's skin colour: oil and dirt, grease and dust seemed to have worked their way through his pores and formed a subcutaneous layer beneath his epidermis, in the way that the ink from a tattooer's needle seems to shine through the skin rather than rest upon it. No amount of diligent scrubbing would ever return Nicanor Axel's cheeks to their ruddy Nordic glow – he was steeped and stained with dirt, impregnated with muck.

He was a taciturn, shifty fellow too, Carriscant thought, with a limp, fleeting handshake. He accepted Pantaleon's money grudgingly and counted through the notes twice, pedantically, before ordering two deckhands to board the lorcha that was towed behind the steamer, a semi-masted schooner hulk which, while it reduced the General Blanco's speed through the water, allowed it to double its cargo capacity.

'I'm most grateful,' Pantaleon said. 'There were no problems?'

'No,' Axel replied. 'It was there in Hong Kong waiting.'

The crewmen came towards them bearing a small wooden chest and set it down on the deck. On the side Carriscant read the stencilled letters: 'Ets. Flanquin. Paris '. With a chisel, Axel prised off the lid and there, secure in its wooden braces, was a small petrol engine, factory fresh, with a dull sheen of oil.

Pantaleon knelt before it, lightly resting his fingers on the cylinder casings. 'The Flanquin, twelve horsepower,' he said quietly, reverentially, his face entranced and wondering. The dream was one step nearer.

Carriscant approached the Sieverance house on the Calle Lagarda in a state of some agitation and trepidation. Delphine Sieverance had returned to her home on 22 December: the new year was now three days old and he had yet to see her. Christmas chez Carriscant had been tense but endurable, largely because he had spent most of his time at the hospital, and Annaliese was preoccupied with her seasonal work with the bishop. Udo had come over for dinner on Christmas Eve, had grown drunk and maudlin as the evening progressed and ended up staying for three days. But at least his limping presence about the house dissipated the coolness that now existed between Carriscant and Annaliese. Nothing had been said openly, there had been no one moment, but somehow over that period a tacit understanding had been arrived at: there would be no more pretence, there was little affection between them any more, and that was that. It was an inescapable fact, Carriscant knew, but its acknowledgement depressed him all the same, and he had deliberately arranged that he saw in the new year by constructing a new rectum for a Jesuit priest, returning home exhausted after a long and arduous operation to a dark and silent house.

He put on a smile, now, as he climbed the stairs to the living room where Sieverance greeted him warmly, affably. He was out of uniform, wearing a seersucker suit with a thin blue stripe and a loose cerise bow tie which, for some reason, Carriscant found irritating and affected.

'How is Mrs Sieverance?' he asked, once he had reassured the man about his own well-being.

'Excellent, improving daily, my dear fellow, thanks to you.'

Carriscant accepted more compliments as he was led down the corridor to her bedroom. The American nurse, a plump young woman with a wide gap between her front teeth, opened the door to admit them. She had a busy over-efficient manner that verged on the insolent, Carriscant thought.

'You know Nurse Aslinger?' Sieverance asked.

'Indeed. Good morning, Miss Aslinger.'

'Morning, Doctor, everything is ready for you.'

He turned to the bed. She sat there patiently, smiling at him, a smile of such pleasure and such genuine warmth, he thought, that it made him want to weep.

'Ah, my favourite medical man. Dr Carriscant, a happy new year to you.'

He took her proffered hand and shook it briefly. 'And to you, Mrs Sieverance. A happy and healthy one.'

'Not forgetting "prosperous",' Sieverance added with a silly laugh.

'Health and happiness will do fine for oh-three,' Delphine said, and then continued, 'I'm feeling very well, Doctor. I walk a little further in the garden every day. I've even taken a short carriage ride.'

'You'll be on the Luneta next,' he said, 'listening to the band. The police band is playing all next week.' He approached the bed, avoiding her eye.

'Talking of the Luneta, you haven't seen anything of Miss Caspar recently, have you?' she asked. Her face was all smooth innocence.

He could not believe the temerity, the arrant mischief. 'What? Ah, no I don't think -'

'Who's that, my dear?' Sieverance asked.

'Miss Rudolfa Caspar,' she said, her face deadpan, her eyes never leaving Carriscant. 'A mutual acquaintance. She's an old friend of Dr Carriscant, isn't that so, Doctor? A special friend.'

'I think I should be – ' Carriscant gestured vaguely towards the bed.

'Excuse me, I'll make myself scarce.' Sieverance left.

Nurse Aslinger drew back the sheet over Delphine's lap. Carriscant saw that, although her nightgown had been folded up to her waist, towels had been laid across her thighs and belly so that only the area of the dressing was exposed. Nurse Aslinger stood close by his elbow as he gently removed it. The six-inch scar was pink and vivid but it had knitted well. His mouth drying rapidly, he could just make out, beneath the towel's hem, the shadowed new growth of her pubic hair. Gently, with his fingertips, he touched the wound: a shininess, a hard smoothness, but no puckering or ridging.