Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

She lifted the palm-leaf packet out from among her many jars and bottles, and carefully untied the string. The powder lay inside, all flattened out, and smooth as icing-sugar. She touched it with one finger, tasted it. Stale — like chalk, or plaster. She sniffed at it. It did not smell of anything at all.

That morning in the witch’s tent, a week ago, seemed as remote as history. If she could only talk to someone. Wilson Pharaoh, with his slow face and his crooked teeth and his hands too big on the end of his wrists. He was good and kind. She had never imagined that ordinary Americans might be like that. She had only read of gunfights and liquor. But this American, he lifted his hat to her and wiped his hand on his trousers before he shook her hand. Also, sometimes, he said ‘Gee’. He would have listened to her; he would at least have tried to understand. But he had gone. A strange numb dread invaded her, and her limbs felt heavy, bolted on to her body. She looked at the powder lying in its leaf. Two pinches in a cup of water.

On her way downstairs she passed Théo’s study. He was bent over his desk. She could hear the scratching of a pen on paper. He would be writing another letter to his mentor, Monsieur Eiffel. In the parlour she saw Imelda, searching the sewing basket for a cotton thread to match the silk of her new dress. Imelda did not notice her either. It was so quiet in the house. She rested one hand on the fine wire-mesh of the screen door and looked out into the dark. She listened to the creaking of a gecko on the veranda. She could imagine it, pale-yellow, almost transparent, with eyes like black rubber, moving in silent spasms towards a fly.

Upstairs in her room once more, with the door closed, she reached for the powder and stirred two spoonfuls into her glass of water. She drank it down. Then she lay back and waited for the promised sleep to come.

17 Calle Francesa, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico

22nd June, 189 –

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

It was with great delight that I received your letter of the 2nd of April and I thank you for your prompt reply, especially considering the weight of your responsibilities at the present time. The projects that you mention certainly seem of sufficient importance to be worthy of your attention; a Paris Métro is, in my opinion, long overdue and will bring a new freedom of movement to a city that has become congested, both with pedestrians and vehicles. Moreover, the technical problems involved should prove most challenging — a challenge to which the Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel will doubtless rise with its traditional competence and ingenuity.

One problem that has been occupying me in idle moments is the problem of insulation. Some members of the community have expressed a degree of concern regarding the high temperatures which they fear may occur inside the church during the summer months. Monsieur Castagnet and I have put our heads together and we have, I believe, come up with a most satisfactory solution. We have decided to use the local pumice stone which is abundant here owing to the volcanic nature of the land, and should prove extremely effective when ground into a fine powder and inserted between the panels (Monsieur de Romblay has already placed at my disposal certain machinery at the smelting plant for this specific purpose). The lightness and porosity of the stone make it an ideal material for insulating both the walls and the roof, and I feel confident that it will dispel, once and for all, the anxieties of everyone concerned.

You may remember that I referred, in a previous letter, to the new spirit of eagerness that prevails among my workers. This mood was temporarily soured last week when I returned from lunch to find a Mexican soldier administering a beating to one of the Indians. It was a beating of such untrammelled savagery that I felt compelled to intervene, at some risk to my personal safety, since the soldier in question had lost all semblance of control and succeeded in striking me a blow on the forehead before he could be overpowered. When he had regained his senses, I asked him what the Indian had done to merit such punishment. He became stubborn, almost mulelike, referring over and over again to the laziness of the Indians, their primitive ways, their stupidity; in short, he could give me no satisfactory answer. I determined that he had been acting solely out of prejudice and dismissed him immediately, an action which caused quite a stir on the site, there being no love lost between the Indians of the peninsula and the mainland Mexicans. I realise that this dismissal may upset the Mexican contingent and weaken the security of the site, but I would rather lose another box of bolts than see a man beaten for no good reason. In any case, one might say that we profited from this unpleasant incident: the Indians were most grateful to me for coming to their defence and redoubled their efforts, working with an industry and vigour that was quite unparalleled.

Even as I write, however, a pall of uncertainty hangs over the town. Last night one of the mine’s principal tunnels collapsed, costing the lives of several Indians. Many others are still in a critical condition. The situation is volatile, to say the least, since charges of negligence have been levelled at the company. Many of my own men are related to the mining families, either by tribe or by blood, with the result that all work on the site has had to be temporarily suspended. I trust this tragedy will not greatly affect their morale or interfere with the completion of the church, which is now only a few days away. I find myself wondering how much of the unrest and irrationality that I have witnessed can be attributed to the climate, which has become almost intolerable of late. The great heat that we are currently experiencing is usually associated with the months of August and September and I feel that I can speak for both myself and Madame Valence when I say that we envy you the mildness of Paris in June. I can only hope for some respite in the days to come.

On glancing through your letter once again, I notice that it took far less time to reach Mexico than we did, from which I surmise that the trans-Panamanian Railway has resumed operations. Welcome news indeed, if true; I do not think that I could face Cape Horn a second time — though my wife will no doubt be disappointed! My first hope is that the present situation eases and that our work is brought to a successful conclusion. This is a long letter, Monsieur, yet it will not be sufficiently long if it leaves you in any doubt as to the continuing zeal of my endeavours and the profound respect with which I have the honour to be your humble and obedient servant,

Théophile Valence.

Wilson spent the early part of the evening in the Hotel La Playa. He occupied himself with small, painstaking tasks. He mended a shirt. He cleaned his round-nosed shovel, sanding the place where the blade had worn to silver. He sharpened his pick and oiled his rifle. He wanted to rid himself of the dream about Suzanne: her explicit beauty, her poignant, unexpected brittleness. It was his mind more than anything that he was working on.

Outside his window the streets were quiet. Every part of the mining operation had shut down. The natural sound of the land descended. That wide, desert silence. Air standing tall and glassy on the soil. Air shocked by heat. The silence had rarely been heard in the town before, and there were some who had to bury their heads beneath their pillows. Others picked fights because fights made noise. From his balcony Wilson watched a man running along the Calle Majore with his hands clamped over his ears. One of the man’s moccasins fell off, but he did not stop. It lay in the street, the wrong way up — an emblem of his fear. Most people were frightened of silence. Maybe it was because they could hear the fragile loop of blood in their veins. Maybe they thought it was death coming in his soft shoes. Creeping closer, closer still. Sitting in his room up on the first floor, Wilson had the feeling that the Indians were turning the silence to their own advantage. They were used to it, after all; it was their element. It was their masters — the Mexicans, the French — who had brought sound to the peninsula.