Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

‘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.

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.