Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

‘The painted man is an ancestor, and they must listen to him.’ Pablo was still translating. ‘He is angry with his people. They are betraying their heritage. They must return whence they came. This town should never have come into being. It is a place of blood and ashes. It is an abomination.’ Pablo reached for a piece of rag and began nonchalantly to wipe the bar.

The miner uttered a single high-pitched shriek and dropped to the floor. His body thrashed like a hooked fish in the bottom of a boat. His eyes rolled back into his skull; his throat began to rattle.

Pablo looked up. ‘He’s an epileptic.’

‘He’s swallowed his tongue,’ Wilson said. ‘He’s choking.’

He pushed through the crowd and, bending down, reached into the man’s throat and pulled his tongue loose. Then he turned the man on to his stomach. The fit was over. Yellow vomit trickled from between the man’s lips.

‘Don’t move him,’ Wilson told the miners. ‘Leave him be.’

He found some water in a bucket behind the bar and washed the bile off his hands.

‘You saved him,’ Pablo said.

Wilson shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

The Indians had ordered more drinks. They were talking among themselves in rapid broken Spanish. Their prophet lay forgotten on the floor.

‘This town isn’t so bad,’ one said.

‘At least we’re getting paid,’ said another.

‘If you can call five pesos a day getting paid.’ This man had a short, twisted body and he wore a deerskin beret.

‘It’s five pesos more than you get scratching around in the dirt,’ the first man said.

‘Right,’ said the second. ‘And they build us houses.’

The man in the beret spat on the floor. The spit lay next to the epileptic’s hand, like a coin tossed to a beggar.

‘We’re cheap labour is what we are,’ he said. ‘They’re using us for work they wouldn’t do themselves.’

Some of the miners were beginning to see with his eyes. And maybe they had a point, Wilson thought. He could still remember how many patients there had been in the hospital, and that sudden shift in the doctor’s tone of voice.

‘They don’t care about us,’ said the man in the beret, one arm thrown up in front of his face and curved like a bow. A space had cleared in front of him so he could express himself. ‘They’re only interested in feathering their own nests,’ he said. ‘They build themselves fine houses up there on the Mesa del Norte. They’re even building themselves a church now — ’

‘Maybe Señor Wilson should pay the church a visit,’ Pablo said. ‘That would be the end of the church for sure.’

The miners laughed long and hard, repeating the joke among themselves, and then, when they had almost finished laughing, they translated the joke for those of the Indians who had not understood, and the laughter was handed on.

‘That was very funny, Pablo,’ Wilson said.

‘I thought so,’ said Pablo.

Tuesday came. You could tell that spring was almost over. The sky had stepped back, forfeiting all colour. The smelting works had shut down for repairs; only a faint chainsaw bit into the clean grain of the air. The silence of the desert could be heard, and the march of the heat across the land.

Though her enthusiasm for tea with the Captain had faded, Suzanne thought that she ought to honour the invitation. At four o’clock a victoria arrived for her. The driver wore an immaculate dove-grey uniform, complete with a red neck-tie and a belt of bullets slung diagonally across his chest. He helped her up into the carriage, then closed the door behind her. She heard him click his tongue. The carriage moved away. She had never been driven to tea by an armed man before. It was novel, if nothing else.

They passed French houses, silent in the afternoon. The rich scent of leather heated by the sun surrounded her. Soon they were descending the hill.

Montoya’s ranch stood high above the town, in the mesquite scrubland to the south. As they came up the last of the road’s tight curves, she saw the town cemetery. The ground was so hard on this barren ridge that gravediggers could make no impression on it. All they could do was scratch a shallow ditch and pile stones on to the corpse. It struck her as ironic that men who had died because they worked under the ground should be buried on the surface.

The carriage had come round in a long, dusty loop, doubling back towards the coast, and now she could see the house. It had whitewashed walls and a roof of dark-red tiles, and outbuildings at the rear for servants and horses. It stood alone on the ridge, unsheltered by trees, solid yet exposed; she would not have cared to live there. As they drew up outside, Montoya stepped out into the sunlight, hands clasped behind his back.

‘I trust you had a pleasant journey, Madame.’

A smile flickered across his face and was gone. She saw how her presence unsettled him, and it softened her. She resolved at once to be kind to him.

‘Yes, thank you, Captain,’ she said, as she placed a gloved hand on his arm. ‘It was very pleasant.’

Montoya led her across a sparse lawn to a terrace on the far side of the house. A banqueting table had been set up in the shade. Two Mexicans stood by with palm branches, in case a vulture tried to land. They both wore straw hats. One of the men had a bright-yellow face and yellow hands, and a cough that shook his entire body.

‘He used to work on San Marcos,’ Montoya said. ‘The sulphur mines.’

He had prepared a feast for her. Quails’ eggs, rock oysters, pomegranates. Iced cakes from the bakery. Fruit cordials. Even a bottle of sherry, produced by his great-uncle in Oaxaca.

‘I did not know what you would like,’ he said. ‘I thought that if I bought many different things then perhaps you would find something to your taste.’

‘That is most considerate of you, Captain.’ Though it was more than considerate; she felt almost crushed by the weight of the food.

He sat beside her and leaned forwards, his chin mounted in the palm of one hand, and stared out over the sea. His eyes shifted one way then the other, as if the empty expanse of blue were filled with countless fascinating objects.

‘You’re not eating, Captain,’ she said.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘But all this food — ’

He smiled miserably. ‘It’s for you,’ he said. ‘In your honour.’

There was a sense in which her own comfort depended on retaining a certain strict formality, a kind of tension between them, and yet the balance had to be precise or conversation would die out altogether. If only she could make him laugh, she thought; laughter would ease the passage of time. But she had yet to discover his sense of humour — if indeed he had one.

The silence stretched until the thick air seemed to hum. Once she thought she heard voices behind her. When she turned in her chair, the yellow man was grinning at her. His palm branch swayed and whispered above the untouched banquet.

After tea Montoya insisted on showing her the house. She passed through an ornate front door ahead of him and into a hallway with a high ceiling and a stone floor. And there, catching the light in a way she recognised, was the coiled snail-shell of wood. And there, as she lifted her eyes, was the staircase, curving round and up. Until that moment she had forgotten about her dream, and the realisation that it was true brought her to a sudden standstill.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked her.

‘I had a dream about this house.’

He bowed. ‘I’m flattered.’

He must have thought she was trying to compliment him. He had not understood. But then, how could he? And she was not about to embark upon an explanation. Her dreams contained an element of danger, and she could hardly instil a sense of caution in somebody whom she did not know.