Air and Fire (19 page)

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.

Namu called to him and pointed at the sail. They had picked up a light north-westerly, and maybe that was the best they could hope for with June around the corner. Wilson spoke to Suzanne, who was seated in the bow.

‘With any luck, we'll make it to San Bruno. Namu knows a place about a mile off shore. It's where the big fish go.'

She did not respond. She sat with her face angled away from him, her parasol turning absent-mindedly upon her shoulder.

He scoured his mind for something that he might have done to offend her, but he could find nothing.

‘Suzanne?'

‘I was wrong to come to Mexico,' she said, still facing away from him.

‘No.' The word had escaped before he had time to think what it might imply. ‘No,' he said, more gently, ‘you weren't wrong. Your place is by your husband's side, surely.'

‘He hardly even knows I'm there. And when he does, I only disappoint him.'

‘Disappoint him? How?'

She sighed. ‘He tried to warn me what it would be like. I didn't listen. I
didn't want to understand.' She turned to him with a sad smile. ‘I'm sorry, Wilson. I didn't mean to spoil the day with my bad humour. You're so kind to have arranged all this.'

All this. She made it sound as if he had arranged the sea and sky for her, those islands in the distance, that leaping fish. Of course he would have, if he could.

‘You're not spoiling it,' he said. Though he was happier now that she had owned her mood; he could begin to find ways of dispossessing her of it.

He shifted down the bench towards her, then leaned forwards, forearms draped across his knees, hands dangling.

‘Someone else who thinks of nothing but his work,' he said, ‘is Jesús Pompano.'

The boat gathered speed; water chopped against the hull. He began to tell her the latest instalment in the story of the elusive baguette.

Only the day before, as he returned from breakfast at Mama Vum Buá's place, he had found Jesús waiting on the first-floor landing in his hotel. Jesús was tucked so deep into the gloom that he was hardly visible. If it had not been for the pale patches on his clothes, Wilson would not have noticed him at all. He showed the baker into his room and sat him down.

‘What is it, Jesús?'

‘I've got to hide.'

‘Hide? Who from?'

‘Take a look outside.'

Wilson went to the window. Something shiny was moving up the street. Something that flashed and glittered. He saw a hat, two legs. A man then. But not just any man. A man who looked as if he had been wrapped in sunlight.

The doctor.

He faced back into the room. ‘I thought you had it all worked out, what with the new oven and your Austrian techniques and everything.'

The baker put his head in his hands. ‘My mother died.'

Thinking some tragedy had befallen the Pompano family, Wilson brought the second chair in from the balcony and sat down beside his friend.

‘I didn't know you had a mother,' he said. ‘I mean, you have never spoken of her.'

The baker's shoulders twitched once, twitched again. They began to
shake. Wilson could not tell whether the baker was laughing or crying. Then Jesús threw his head back, and there could be no doubt. His laughter swelled, and filled the room. He slapped his thighs; flour billowed into the air. Both men began to cough.

‘Wilson,' Jesús said, ‘you're a fool.'

Wilson stared at Jesús blankly. Hiding in doorways, laughing at the death of his mother, insulting his friends. Had the baker lost his mind?

‘Don't you know anything about bread?' Jesús said.

Wilson had to admit that his knowledge was limited.

Jesús proceeded to define a mother for him. A mother was a spontaneous lactic fermentation informed by wild yeasts, otherwise known as a leaven. It was achieved by mixing flour and water in a bowl and leaving the mixture to mature. A mother had to be added to each day – another handful of flour, a little more water. A mother had to be nurtured and developed. When you came to make a loaf of bread you used some fresh leaven in combination with some of the original. A mother lay at the heart of all good bread. A mother was fundamental, irreplaceable. Without a mother, you could do nothing.

‘It was some lecture,' Wilson said, turning to Suzanne.

Her melancholy had lifted, leaving her face clear and untroubled in the sunlight. All her keenness had returned.

‘How did the mother die?'

He smiled. ‘That was my next question.'

‘I don't know,' Jesús said.

‘Well, how does a mother usually die?'

‘One of two ways. It has to be kept at a constant temperature, say between seventy-five and eighty-five degrees. If it gets too cold, it dies. But can you imagine it getting too cold in a town like this?' Jesús let out a mirthless chuckle. ‘It also dies if you don't add to it each day. It gets too sour. But I could've sworn I added to it. I do it religiously.'

‘So what will you do?'

‘Start again, from the beginning. I've got no other choice.'

The long silence that followed this pronouncement made the knock on the door seem all the louder. Three knocks, each one separate, abrupt, demanding. A voice called from the landing.

‘Monsieur Pharaoh?'

The baker looked towards the door. The flesh seemed to have slipped an inch on his face. ‘The doctor?'

Wilson nodded. He scanned the room. There was no place to hide
save underneath the bed. The gap between the floorboards and the springs was negligible, and the baker was not a small man. But there was nowhere else.

‘Monsieur Pharaoh?' Another triple knock. ‘It is I. Dr Bardou.'

TakingJesús by the sleeve, Wilson pointed under the bed. Jesús nodded dismally. He dropped to his knees and began to insert himself into the gap. He was whispering the most terrible blasphemies against the doctor.

Wilson opened the door, and the doctor slid past him with the smoothness of a ball of lard in a heated skillet. He was wearing a waistcoat of raspberry, peppermint and gold, and his hair, slick with pomade, mirrored the brilliance of his patent-leather shoes. He looked almost supernatural against the decaying plaster of the walls.

‘I was looking for Monsieur Pompano, but he is not at home. So I came to see you, Monsieur Pharaoh. My patient. How is the foot? You are resting it?' Not a breath was taken between sentences, and his eyes darted about the room. He seemed thrilled to have penetrated this new territory.

‘Won't you sit down, Doctor?' Wilson said, hoping that he would not notice the light dusting of flour on the seat.

The doctor's hand polished at the air. ‘No, no, Monsieur Pharaoh. Thank you. I cannot stay.' Then his head dipped sharply to one side. ‘But I can smell bread. No, it's flour. Am I right, Monsieur Pharaoh?' He had danced forwards and was balanced on the ball of one foot, his dark eyes searching Wilson's face, one hand held out flat, palm uppermost, like a tray for drinks.

‘The baker was here this morning,' Wilson said, ‘to give me the sad news.'

‘Sad news? What sad news?'

‘His mother has died.'

‘Oh, but I am sorry. Yes, look.' And he folded in half, his eyes not six inches from the boards. ‘There is some flour on the floor.' He dabbed the white dust with one finger and examined it. If he had looked sideways at that moment he would have seen a man under the bed. ‘But his mother died, you say? That is terrible.'

Terrible indeed, thought Wilson, as he watched the doctor straighten up. Especially for you, Monsieur.

‘Poor Jesús,' Suzanne said, though she was laughing. ‘He was under the bed the whole time?'

Wilson nodded. ‘When the doctor had gone, it took him ten minutes
to extract himself. “I've been breathing cockroaches and dust for half an hour,” he said. “By Christ, if I'm not tempted to put a few new ingredients in the doctor's beloved bread.'”

‘He wouldn't,' Suzanne said.

Wilson laughed. ‘He might.'

Namu called from the stern and pointed towards the coast. The land had flattened out; they could see a few thatch huts, some palm trees, a strip of volcanic sand.

‘San Bruno,' Wilson told Suzanne. ‘People say that a tribe of Amazon women lived there once, but there's no real proof, only stories that were handed down.' He stared towards the shore, its charcoal sand, the curved prows of canoes. ‘It's just a fishing village now.'

Suzanne listened carefully as Wilson described the place that they were heading for. It lay just to the south of a sandbank that was almost a mile long. Each morning shoals of small fish swam through a channel at the southern tip, which made it a popular feeding-ground for bigger fish. If they anchored above the channel, Wilson explained, they would stand a good chance of catching bonita or cabrilla or yellowtail.

She interrupted him. ‘But it's all sea. How do we know when we've arrived?'

Wilson asked Namu, and then translated the fisherman's reply for her. There were three different marks on the land, Namu said. When all three lined up in a formation that he recognised, then he knew he was there. He lifted his shoulders, grinned.

She watched Namu as he watched the land, and thought she saw the moment when the landmarks fell into place because his wide eyes sharpened at the corners. Soon afterwards he stood up and began to furl the sail. Next he had to fix their position on the surface with his anchor, a solid lump of rusting metal. It looked more like part of an engine than an anchor, and she said as much to Wilson.

‘It is part of an engine,' he said.

There were rocks on the ocean bed below, he told her. If they used a traditional anchor, the kind with a straight piece and a smiling piece, it would more than likely just get stuck.

He had to help Namu heave the anchor on to the bow and roll it overboard. The two men could barely manage it between them. But over it went, and the rope uncoiled slickly, fizzled over the side as if it were being devoured by the sea. Uncoiled, uncoiled; it seemed the sea's appetite was boundless.

‘It must be deep,' she said.

Wilson nodded. ‘Fifteen fathoms.'

Namu took a wooden reel and unwound the twine. On the end of
the twine was a lead weight, the shape of a teardrop, and a hook. He reached into a bucket at his feet and took out a mackerel.

She watched as Namu threaded the hook in through the fish's mouth, out through its gills, in through its body, out through its tail. It reminded her of sewing. He straightened the fish on the hook, then threw it overboard and put the reel and the line in her hand.

‘Let the line pay out,' Wilson told her. ‘It'll run through your fingers. When it stops running, that means you've reached the bottom. Then you reel it back in a few feet, so it's hanging above the floor. That's where the big fish are.'

She followed his instructions. The line slid across her palm and vanished into the water, just kept vanishing. A magic trick: there did not seem to be any reason why it should be moving. She tried to imagine what the line was passing through, what it would be seeing if it had eyes, and could not. Such a vastness lay beneath them; it was like an image of infinity.

At last the line stopped paying out, as Wilson had said it would, and she reeled it back and held it, as he was holding his, between her thumb and forefinger, almost as if she were testing its weight. She sat for several minutes with the line between her fingers. Nothing happened.

When Wilson reeled his line in, the bait had gone.

She decided to check her own line. The hook came up empty. Yet she had felt nothing.

‘It's practice,' Wilson told her. ‘It takes years.'

He fixed her hook for her, and she began again. Time slowed down, and then it did not seem to pass at all. Light glanced off the water. The boat seemed cushioned, in suspension; nothing changed or moved. Soon even her sense of place dissolved. It was not here that children walked in her shadow and moonlight ran down swords. Not here; somewhere else. She tried to summon Paris into her mind, and found that she could hardly remember it. Or rather, she could remember it, but it just did not seem real. The grey streets that she saw did not convince her. What had she loved? The city after rain. Dancing until she was almost asleep on her feet. The nightingales on the Rue de la Sorbonne. But their singing now seemed artificial, shrill, to her, a tune played on a music box. Rain was something she no longer understood. And dancing? She preferred not to think of that at all. The sound of a knife on wood broke into her thoughts, and she glanced round.