Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

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.