Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

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

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

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

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

She held the glass out for him to take.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Any time, four-legs.’

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

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

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

Gracefully she leaned down, retrieved the hat.

‘Here,’ she said.

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

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

‘You speak it very well.’

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

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

‘You are the piano player,’ she said.

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

‘Rusty? What is rusty?’

‘It means I’m out of practice.’

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

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

‘Will you play today?’ she asked him.

‘If you would like me to.’

Her smile widened. ‘Shall we go in?’

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

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

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

‘Maybe.’

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