Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

One man stepped forwards, a spade resting on his shoulder.

‘You shouldn’t ought to be in this part of town,’ he said softly. ‘You should be up on the Mesa del Norte.’

‘Yeah,’ came a second voice. ‘What are you doing down here?’

‘I live down here,’ Wilson said.

The man with the spade shook his head slowly. ‘French don’t live down here.’

‘I’m not French.’ Wilson was balancing himself. Trying to pick the right moment to run for it. Their words were like a fuse that had just been lit. The explosion would come. No amount of talking could change that.

‘Not French?’ said the man with the spade. ‘What are you then?’

‘American.’

‘Like fuck.’

‘There’s no Americans here,’ came a second voice.

‘They’re all in America,’ came a third, ‘where they belong.’

The man with the spade tilted his chin towards his shoulder. ‘Shut up.’ The chin swung back. ‘You’re French, you are. I can tell.’ Again the chin tilted. ‘What is he?’

‘French,’ came the shout.

But Wilson was already running.

He had to lose them, and that would not be easy. On Calle 5 he burst through a gathering of miners. They split apart like fruit. They watched him go. He turned down Avenida Manganeso. He knew that he could not expect any help. Nobody helps a running man. A running man is always guilty. His foot hurt. He came round a corner, saw the church. In there, maybe. He ducked through the side door. But they had thought of it. Before he could hide, they were in front of him. Behind him, too. He tipped his head back on his neck, trying to regain his breath. The spit had thickened in his throat. His clothes stuck to his skin. He could taste blood.

He was surrounded by armed men. Some had picked up iron bars and bits of scrap metal from outside. One had a cross. The man with the spade still had the spade.

He could see the night sky through the open windows.

‘This is a church.’ He felt he had to point it out. But it brought him back from the stars’ cool sanctuary. His heart was trying to elbow its way through the clutter of his ribs.

‘So what,’ somebody said.

‘It’s a holy place. Nothing bad can happen here.’ Thinking he might vomit he had to squat down, hang his head. He heard somebody spit.

‘We don’t believe in that.’

They would not listen to a word he said. He was French. He was done for. A dog groaned and sidled out.

‘Besides,’ said the man with the spade, ‘it’s not even finished yet.’

Laughter rebounded off the walls. The man with the spade was right. It wasn’t finished. Wasn’t holy yet. It could prevent nothing. The spade lifted high into the unconsecrated air.

‘Wait.’

The voice had come from somewhere further out. The voice of the night sky. The stars had intervened.

An Indian broke the circle of men. Wilson could not see his face.

‘This man isn’t French.’

‘What is he, then?’ the man with the spade said.

‘American.’

A murmuring began. The new voice had authority. Doubt had been planted.

‘He’s the one who went with that whore and then her house fell down. Remember?’

The man with the spade was thinking.

‘I remember,’ somebody behind him said. ‘He was walking around with a broken foot. It had a rose on it.’

‘That’s the one. He’s got nothing to do with this. He’s not part of it.’

The murmuring grew. Some men shuffled in the dust, shamed by the weapons in their hands. Some had already thrown them down.

Wilson felt the ground beneath his hands, how smooth it was, how even. It had been levelled off, ready to receive the tiles. Then the altar would arrive. Then a lectern, rows of pews. There would be order, worship — peace. He could feel the sweat cooling on his forehead, on his clothes.

He sat on the floor of the unfinished church and gave thanks to that old inability of his to hold his drink. He paid tribute to Pablo, who had supplied the liquor, and to the pair of Seri Indians who had drunk him into oblivion. He sang quiet praises to the Bony One, the rottenness of the wood throughout her house, the weakness, in particular, of her balcony. He applauded the vices of gambling, intemperance and fornication. He owed his life to them.

When he looked up, he saw the Indians moving away across an almost empty square. He heard somebody crack a joke about the church not lasting long if that American stayed inside. He heard the laughter that came after. He began to smile. He had just identified the Indian who had spoken up for him. It was the epileptic from the bar. The man whose tongue he had freed.

He sat on the ground and smiled, and the dog that had slunk out earlier returned and, settling down beside him, rested its nose between its paws, sighed once and went to sleep.

At long last there was the illusion of a breeze.

Suzanne was riding up into the silence of the mountains. The town lay behind her, sprawling in a bowl of dust. A ship’s horn called from the harbour, but she shut her ears to the sound. She would only listen to herself from now on; she was done with any other kind of listening. The horse’s hoofs clinked on the stones; a cactus sent a thin green scent into the air. She was receiving everything around her with such clarity. That house had clouded her. Thoughts had snapped off like the tails of lizards in those airless, silk-lined rooms. Thoughts had dehydrated on the hot wooden floors.

It hurt to hold the reins. She looked down at her hands. She had bruised the knuckle at the base of her thumb, and her palms were flecked with splinters, all angled the same way, like rain on window-glass. One of her fingernails had torn; it was still attached, but only by a hinge. Théo had locked her in the bedroom. It was hard to believe that it had happened; it seemed so crude. But the pain in her hands kept reminding her that it was true. He had stood on the other side of a locked door and pleaded with her through the wood.

‘It’s for your own good.’

But it was not her own good that she was thinking of. That was the whole point.

‘Open the door, Théo.’

‘I had to do something. You were hysterical. You wouldn’t listen to me.’

‘Just open the door.’

‘Not until you’ve calmed down. I told you, it’s dangerous outside. You could get killed.’

He did not even have the courage to talk to her face to face. He had to keep a door between them. He was weak.

As she stood in the room that morning, no longer speaking, she had remembered the day that she had spent on the water with Wilson Pharaoh and the fisherman. With the village of San Bruno on the port bow, Wilson had told her about a tribe of female warriors who were said to have inhabited the peninsula long ago. They had lived according to one simple, brutal philosophy: the power of life belonged to women alone. Men had not been given the power, and were envious. They coveted it, assaulted it, corrupted it. They were a force for destruction, and should be treated as such. The women would capture men, but for one purpose only: to breed from them. Afterwards the men would be put to death. In legend the women were believed to be giants, a tribe of Amazons, though there was no evidence to support this. In fact, Wilson had said, laughing, there was no proof that they had ever existed at all. They might simply have been a nightmare in the minds of men.

‘Suzanne?’

Her silence must have disconcerted Théo, but she would not speak to him. A door between them, closed by him, the key in the keyhole turned by him. He was a jailer and a coward. Something else that Wilson had said came back to her. It was about the Indians who now inhabited the peninsula, whose existence could not be disputed. Apparently they had no understanding of the concept of marriage. They did not have a word for ‘to marry’ — or even a word for ‘jealousy’, for that matter. They had the word ‘husband’, he told her, but it referred to any man who was known to have abused a woman. She heard Théo sigh, then turn and walk away. She heard the stairs creak. She saw the key, one shining object at the bottom of his pocket, as if she had a jackdaw’s eye. A jailer and a coward. He would never touch her again. The decision was like a bright weight dropping through her brain.