Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

As the carriage drew up outside their house, a grim smile appeared on her face. Perhaps she had behaved badly, but she had not been alone. In fact, all things considered, she believed that she had behaved quite well. There was no reason why she should apologise. She did not feel the slightest remorse.

Towards morning she woke up. A long way off she heard the mournful cry of a coyote, but she knew that it was not the coyote that had reached down into her sleep. Her nightgown had gathered underneath her arms, binding her tight. She sat up in bed and threw the damp sheet back.

Théo lay sleeping under a single mound of white. It looked as if snow had fallen in the bedroom, and then drifted. A soothing image in a climate such as this, she thought, though certainly perverse. Then she heard a clink. She could not place the sound, and yet she knew it well. Another clink. It was measured, regular; it could almost have been the beating of her own frustrated heart.

As silent as that imagined snow, her feet landed on the floor. She slipped from the bed, moved to the window. The narrow gap between the shutter-blades afforded several different views. Through one, she saw part of the hard mud path that led past the kitchen hut. Through another, a portion of the kitchen roof. Through a third, the sea.

That clink again, somewhere below.

She pressed her face to the shutters, saw moonlight running down a sword. A gasp escaped her. She stepped back.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Her heart had gathered speed; it now outstripped the chinking of the spurs. She felt nothing for the Captain, nothing at all, and yet his secret vigil excited her. These were the sleepless nights that she had predicted for him. This was the hunger. But it was dangerous knowledge. There would be nobody to tell.

She eased back, laid her head against the pillow. Instead of spurs, she willed herself to see a man’s hand bouncing coins. Then just the coins. Then she spent them.

Her heart slowed down.

Her husband, whom she had always loved, still loved, would always love, slept blindly on.

17 Calle Francesa, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico

23rdMay, 189–

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

Though it is fully three weeks since last I wrote, I am delighted to report that everything is proceeding according to plan. All the principal arches have been erected and assembled, their sections being placed end to end in the usual manner, immediately drifted, and then bolted. The purlins will soon follow. I have divided my labour force into two equal groups, one working an early shift, one working late. In this way the Indians are afforded some respite from the considerable heat, though it troubles them less than it does me. The arrangement is also far more suited to their temperament; the idea of pay may appeal, but the idea of work, especially eight hours of it, does not. I often think fondly of those intrepid men, each one vying with the other in his zeal, who worked up to sixteen hours a day in high winds, rain and snow, to build the tower that now bears your name, and fall to wondering how long the job would have taken had you attempted it in Mexico. During the idle hours between shifts I eat lunch with Monsieur Castagnet, a most genial man, and a capable one too (he it was who solved the dilemma of the lifting-mast by commandeering half a dozen railway sleepers to anchor the base). We have discussed the church in detail, and I have found myself referring him to your renowned monograph, Mémoire sur les épreuves des arcs métalliques de la galerie des machines du Palais de l’exposition universelle de 1867, and those early experiments that led you so ingeniously to determine the value of the modulus of elasticity applicable to composite members. Monsieur Castagnet has always demonstrated great loyalty to timber, but even he has no choice but to agree that the galvanised wrought-iron that we are using here is a truly remarkable material. When we return to the site in the afternoon, there are invariably half a dozen children climbing among the girders, as if the structure had been provided solely for their own amusement. I always feel that this forms the perfect counterpoint to our weighty lunchtime meditations.

Such problems as we have encountered here have rarely been of a technical nature; in Santa Sofía it is the human problems that abound. We had the greatest trouble, for instance, trying to explain the notion of a working-week to the local Indians. On the Monday of the second week of construction, six of them failed to report for work. We found them two days later, almost five kilometres from the town, grilling a rattlesnake over a fire! They seem to have only two measurements of time: a day, which lasts from dawn to dusk, and an ‘ambia’ which is the period of time that elapses between one harvest of their beloved pitahaya fruit and the next (three ‘ambia’s amount to approximately one year). If they work hard, I now tell them, the church will be finished by the next ambia. This, of course, they understand.

Property is another source of confusion. With the exception of a bladder or a cow’s horn for holding water, a bow fashioned from the wild willow and a sharpened stick or bone for digging up roots, the Indians have no possessions. They simply do not understand the concept. This was illustrated last week, when a box of bolts went missing from the site. Construction was held up for three days while I endeavoured to ascertain their whereabouts; it seems that the role of an engineer in Mexico can stretch to encompass that of a police detective. Suffice to say that the bolts were recovered and are now in place on the central arches, where they belong. I have taken precautions against further thefts by enlisting the services of three Mexican soldiers from the garrison above the town. (I should just mention, in passing, that I have met the garrison commander, a gentleman by the name of Félix Montoya. In my opinion he lacks the experience to be able properly to discharge his responsibilities; he should be replaced as soon as possible — though this might be a somewhat delicate matter, since it lies beyond our jurisdiction.)

The living conditions — climate, diet, etc. — have also taken their toll. I was struck down only last week by a most unpleasant gastric infection, the result, I suspect, of eating a meal that had been prepared in a local restaurant, though the woman responsible was vociferous, to put it mildly, in her rebuttal of these charges. Whatever the true origin of my complaint, I was laid up in bed for almost two days with frequent attacks of vomiting and diarrhoea. My poor wife had to minister to me, and I am sure that I was not the easiest of patients. I have recovered now, however, and, though still weak, am back at work on the site.

Madame Valence is well (unlike myself, she has succumbed to no illness of any kind since our arrival) and is proving a most popular member of this small community, as you might imagine; Monsieur de Romblay seems to have taken quite a fancy to her. She sends her fondest regards, as do I, and I trust this letter finds you in good health — better, at least, than mine. I have the honour to be your most humble and obedient servant,

Théophile Valence.

As soon as his boat had passed the harbour wall, Namu hoisted a sail and tried to coax some life out of the air. The patched canvas faltered, swelled, faltered again. Wilson could not help but think of the Pacific, less than a hundred miles to the west. The wind blew constantly on that side of the peninsula, hurling breakers shorewards, tormenting shrubs and bushes until they bent down, cowered, turned their backs. That same wind spent itself in the foothills of the Sierra de la Giganta Mountains, and not even the faintest of breezes made it through. August and September could be fresh months on the Pacific coast, but in the valley where Santa Sofía had been built the air hung like a curtain of steaming velvet and the streets turned to powder.