Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

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

‘Do you think that you will stay?’

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

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

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

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

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

He had not.

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

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

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

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

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

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

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

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

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

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

‘It was my pleasure, ma’am,’ he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wilson showed Namu his foot.

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

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

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

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

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

‘You been past my place recently?’

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

‘You seen it?’

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

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

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

He did not even smile.

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

‘I’ve ruined mine too.’

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

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

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

He turned away from her and limped towards his table.

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

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

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

‘Somebody out there?’

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