Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

The mule shifted sideways, almost tripped. He calmed her with his hand. Then he threw some brushwood on the fire, enough to keep the jackals away while he was sleeping.

Wilson peered into the distance, eyes screwed against the glare. The Volcan las Tres Vírgenes rose out of a monotonous plain. There was no sign of life, human or animal. The Vizcaino Desert. A wilderness of thorns and stones. A place to try your faith.

‘She is married, you know.’

Only yesterday afternoon he had been sitting in the Hotel La Playa with Pablo and Jesús. Pablo was making entries in the ledger. His hair, slick with pomade, shone white where the light ran over it. Jesús was testing the reflexes in his left knee with a failed baguette. The bread was stale, hard as wood; the knee was not responding. From time to time a vulture dropping landed with a soft slap on the lobby floor. The two Mexicans were teasing him about Suzanne.

‘I know she’s married,’ Wilson said. ‘In fact, I was the one who told you.’

‘You Americans,’ Jesús said.

‘I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of,’ Wilson said.

Pablo glanced up. ‘I don’t know. You Americans. No scruples.’

‘You can’t talk,’ Wilson said, ‘calling this place the Hotel La Playa.’

‘What’s wrong with Hotel La Playa? It’s a nice name.’

‘Yeah, it’s a nice name,’ Wilson said, ‘but where’s the beach?’

Pablo returned to his ledger. A couple of figures demanded his immediate and close attention.

‘You’re in the middle of the town,’ Wilson said, ‘and you call it Hotel La Playa. You’re not even on the waterfront.’

‘It’s salesmanship,’ Pablo said. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Hotel La Playa?’ Wilson said. ‘There isn’t a beach within five miles of here.’

Another vulture dropping slapped on to the floor.

‘I must do something about a roof,’ Pablo said.

Jesús shifted on his chair, anxious suddenly. ‘What if the French find out?’ he said. ‘About you and the Señora?’

Wilson sighed. ‘I told you. There’s nothing in it.’

‘They’ll crucify him,’ Pablo said, with relish. ‘Absolutely crucify him.’

The mule dipped her head and began to snap at the shoots on a mesquite tree. Wilson let her eat. He had been travelling since dawn without a break. Two hours’ sleep, and only his memory for entertainment. He had decided not to think about how to find Suzanne. He would just ride to San Ignacio, zigzag-fashion, so as to cover the widest possible area. He chose not to dwell on the fact that she did not know the way. There was a point at which he had to throw his lot in with everything that could not be counted on. It was nothing new for him. This journey put him in mind of other journeys. Leaving San Francisco on foot to look for his father had seemed no less foolhardy, no less desperate. His mother standing on the corner of Piano Street, wrapped in a shawl against the April wind. ‘Find the good-for-nothing. Bring him back.’ With a country three thousand miles wide to choose from! But Constance Pharaoh knew her husband. He told lies that were remembered. He left a trail in people’s heads. Out on the open road Wilson soon found women who wanted his father dead. Men who had laughed so hard, their faces were still marked with it months after.

Now he thought about it, he seemed to have spent his entire life on missions where the chances of success were so remote that he could not actually imagine it at all. And yet he had developed qualities along the way that had stood him in good stead: intuition, tenacity, patience too. In patience wisdom can be found. A Navajo scout had told him that, one winter in Zuñi. That man had taught him plenty. How to move from one part of yourself to another. How to listen to the part you chose and hush the rest. A bent nose and a turquoise amulet. A bottle of Taos lightning. A voice no louder than the desert wind. That was the most that he could summon of the man, and yet the lesson had never faded. Maybe because he had a picture of it. Maybe because he saw patience as a kind of ore and wisdom as the gold that it could yield. It was a good thing for him to know and to remember, seeing as how he was descended from a line of tense and brittle men.

It was late afternoon and he had ridden through the heat, twelve hours of it, when he thought he could see a white dress lying on the ground ahead of him.

He did not believe it.

It was what he wanted to see, and it was just like the land to conspire with his mind and fake it for him. It must be water, then. A puddle on the ground.

But out here?

His eyes swept tall cactus, orange rocks, the sheet glare of the sky. Returned. It was still there. A glimmer. A reflection.

It could not be her — surely. For one thing, it was too soon. For another, there was no sign of the horse.

As he drew closer, though, he saw the vultures. Then he knew for certain. They looked like smudges of black ink on the cactus spires. They looked like mistakes; they should not have been there. He dug his heels deep into the mule’s flanks and urged her forwards. The ground was almost level here. She did not complain.

In one motion he jumped down and looped the reins around the branch of an elephant tree. He swiftly gathered rocks and hurled them at the vultures. They took off as if they were made of sticks and cloth. They ambled away through the air on clumsy wings, indifferent to his anger, untouched by it.

He dropped to his knees beside her. Opening the lid of his tobacco tin, he held the shiny metal to her lips. The faintest smear of condensation formed. Now he was inches away from her he could see a weak pulse beating in her neck. He brought the water up to her mouth.

As he moistened her lips, her eyes opened. Rolled backwards, then seemed to focus. He felt that she could see him.

‘Suzanne?’

Her lips were scorched and split, dried blood in the ridges. But they had moved a fraction. He bent down close to her.

‘Who — ’ Her voice cracked.

‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Wilson.’

One of her hands curled in the dirt. Blood had blackened on her thumb. He had never imagined that she could be so injured.

‘You — ’

‘Slowly,’ he said. ‘Take it slow.’

His ear grazed her lips.

‘You came — ’

His eyes drifted, blurred.

Her face turned sideways; she was looking along the top of the ground. ‘I had so much love in me,’ she whispered, ‘and no one wanted it.’

He lowered his head. His tears fell among hot cinders.

Suzanne could see a woman standing at the water’s edge. The woman wore nothing but a skirt of black pearls. The water washed across her feet and then withdrew. The woman smiled. A slow smile, a smile with pure pleasure in it. She knew where the power of life ended and the power of death began. She had drawn the line.

Suzanne lifted an arm to wave but her hand stayed motionless in the air beside her ear. She did not call out, not yet. She just waited, knowing it would not be long.

Slowly. Take it slow.

Life, she comes from nowhere. Behind, above, below. Some place our eyes are not looking at. Death, she walks right up to us. We see her coming. Every step, every sway of the hips. Every inch of the way. Death, she wears a black pearl skirt.

Suzanne opened her eyes. Until she opened them she had not known that they were closed. It was like having a choice. Two worlds. One on this side, one on the other. Her eyelids were the border, were the door. The sky was darkest blue in front of her. Then something landed on her face and made her blink. Not pearls, though almost as miraculous.

Rain.

Beads of it dropping all over her skin, her dress, the ground. Some necklace had broken up above. And the sky still darkest blue, and not a cloud in it.