Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

Goodbye, my dear friend. I shall never forget all you have done for me. I must stop now, for it is after eleven o’clock and this must be posted in the morning.

I am yours, with the greatest affection and gratitude,

Suzanne Valence.

She took the blotter and rolled it across the page. Then, folding the letter once, she tucked it into an envelope. She would address it care of the doctor. She could no longer remember the name of that hotel in El Pueblo; in any case, she did not trust the place.

The letter in her hand, she sat quite still and listened to the rain.

Outside, the streets were rivers.

‘You have finished?’ Théo was smiling down at her. She had not even heard him enter.

She nodded.

He stood behind her chair.

‘Out there, in the desert,’ she began, ‘when I was out there,’ and then she faltered.

One of Théo’s hands moved slowly upwards, touched her neck. Or not so much touched, perhaps, as came to rest.

‘I almost died,’ she said.

‘I know.’

She stared down at the letter she had written. The words blurred on the envelope.

‘I know,’ he repeated, still more softly.

She felt his lips descend, his breath against her hair.

‘Suzanne.’

The morning Wilson left the hospital, he walked to Mama Vum Buá’s place for breakfast. Sweat had soaked his flannel shirt before he was halfway down the hill. The dense heat of July. He had forgotten how immovable it was, how still; how it could hold a smell. Today it was beached weed, the rotting shells of crabs. Eight hours, even in the shade, could turn a piece of fresh meat green; eight hours, and the meat would be alive with maggots.

When he turned into the yard he found La Huesuda sitting at his table, three empty plates in front of her. For once he had no reason to flinch from the encounter. She was wearing a gingham dress of faded blue, earrings made from drilled coins and a red paper rose in her hair. She gave him a neutral look; he could have been a tree, or a dog, or a ship with no sailors in it. He put one hand on the back of a chair.

‘May I?’

She shrugged.

He pulled the chair out, eased down into it, stretching his legs under the table.

‘You’re looking well,’ he said.

‘Riots do have their advantages.’ She aimed her fork at the Mesa del Sur. ‘All these new soldiers in town.’

‘It’s strange,’ he said, ‘but I was just on my way to see you.’

He saw the light of business flare up in her eyes.

‘Not for that,’ he added quickly.

The time had come for him to keep his promise to her. He intended to build her a new balcony, he told her, and a flight of stairs to go with it.

‘The French are giving me the wood. As much as I want.’

She stared at him sidelong, across the bridge of her nose. Her teeth glistened on her lower lip.

He would start the following day, he said, if that was all right. He was still weak, he warned her; it might take a while to complete the job.

She had not stopped staring at him. At last she spoke.

‘I don’t like jokes like that. I don’t think they’re funny.’

‘I’m not joking.’

Her earrings jingled as she pushed backwards from the table. ‘Pompano’s right.’

‘About what?’

‘You’ve been in the desert too long. Your brains have cooked.’ She moved away across the yard, shaking her head and muttering to herself.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he called after her.

But she did not believe it; she just kept on walking.

He heard the creak of a door-hinge and shifted on his chair. Mama Vum Buá stood behind him, her fists dug into the fat on her hips.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘Some eggs’d be good.’

She fired a ball of red spit into the dirt. ‘You’re late.’

‘I’m lucky to be here at all.’

‘Not that lucky.’

He did not follow.

‘There’s no eggs,’ she told him.

‘How come?’

The Señora jerked her chin towards the quay. ‘That skinny bitch just ate the lot.’

Pablo was sitting in the lobby of the Hotel La Playa when Wilson walked in. One elbow on the table, his cheek propped on his hand, he was tapping the rim of a glass with a long grey key. Some mornings, silence was difficult for Pablo — more of an affliction than a choice. Wilson consulted his watch. Eleven minutes to go.

He took a seat at the table. After a while he noticed something moving at the top of the stairs. A black hunched back, a shuffling of feathers. He stood up, walked over. Through the banisters he saw a vulture hobble across the landing.

‘Did someone die in here?’ he asked.

Pablo did not answer.

Wilson pushed his face against his sleeve as the stench of droppings reached his nostrils. That smell, he had forgotten it; sometimes it was so bad, you had to tie a rag over your face. He had been spoiled in the hospital. Retreating to the table, he sat down again. There were still five minutes till midday.

His thoughts turned back to Mama Vum Buá. As she cleared his breakfast plates away that morning, he had spoken to her again.

‘I heard the church burned down.’

A smile slid out of the right side of her mouth. ‘I heard that too.’

‘You don’t seem too upset about it,’ he said.

The smile shrank. ‘What are you getting at?’

In that moment, he suddenly remembered what the Director had told him. It had not been a spontaneous act of violence. It had taken real determination. He thought of Mama Vum Buá’s grudge against priests. They had corrupted her family. They had polluted her with their blue eyes. If anyone had reasons for burning the church, she did. Especially since it was being built by Monsieur Valence, a man who had insulted her cooking.

He looked up at her. ‘Apparently somebody piled wood inside the building, then set fire to it — ’

The Señora’s head swung sideways and she spat.

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said.

The clock on the roof of the company store began to strike. Wilson had never expected to learn the truth from her, but that sly smile spilling from her mouth intrigued him. She smiled so rarely. Had Monsieur Valence been justified in his suspicions? For the first time, it occurred to Wilson that she might actually have poisoned the Frenchman. Deliberately.

As the twelfth note died away, Pablo stood up and walked to the cupboard where he kept his liquor. His eyes lifted to the landing; the vulture was still up there someplace, shuffling its feathers in the gloom.

‘It’s ever since the riots,’ he said. ‘Can’t seem to keep them off the streets.’ He brought a bottle over to the table. ‘Talking of streets, have you heard the latest? They’re thinking of naming a street after Montoya. The place where it happened. They say it’ll be a kind of memorial.’

Wilson had to slow him down. ‘Where what happened?’

Pablo took Wilson through the events in detail, as Wilson had known he would. Montoya was returning from Frenchtown after another round of discussions with de Romblay when he was ambushed by a crowd of Indians. Such was the Indians’ fury that they tore the carriage to pieces with their bare hands. They stripped Montoya of his uniform and nailed him to one of the wheels. For more than an hour they dragged him through the streets. They believed his suffering would act as a kind of poultice, drawing out the suffering of their people; his anguish would replace their own. Afterwards they took him to the park. There, on the dark corner where the Calle Majore met Avenida Aljez, not two blocks from the hotel, the Indians got out their knives. Montoya was still conscious when they cut him open and threw his intestines on the ground. It was their version of a crystal ball. Nothing like the guts of a Mexican aristocrat to give you an idea of the future.