Air and Fire (2 page)

‘In heaven's name, Suzanne. What are you doing up there?'

It was at moments like this that she could feel the fifteen years that lay between them. She did not see the difference in age as an obstacle, however; she saw it only as a place where irony could happen, a gap that tenderness could close. She knew that she had disconcerted him – ladies of her station ought not to climb ladders – but she decided to make light of it.

‘Have you noticed the water, Théo?'

He had not.

‘Take a look,' she said.

But Théo did not move towards the rail. He remained at the foot of the stairs; he seemed suddenly to be plunged in thought. ‘I think I'll write a letter,' he said.

‘A letter? Who to?'

‘Monsieur Eiffel.' He looked up at her again and she saw that he was smiling. ‘I shall inform him that my wife has turned into a monkey.'

Laughing, she began her precarious descent.

She slept late on the morning of their arrival. By the time she woke, Théo had already dressed. He was wearing his black frock-coat and
a pair of elegant pale-grey trousers, and he carried a malacca cane with a carved silver head. They would be landing in three hours, he reminded her.

They took breakfast on the bridge, accompanied by the Captain, the Quartermaster and the Chief Engineer. The usual food was served: dry biscuits, fried eggs sliding on a bed of grease, coffee with no milk. Though it was the last meal of a long and perilous voyage, there was no sense of occasion. If they had been putting into Hong Kong or Shanghai, perhaps it would have been different – but Santa Sofía? Perhaps, after all, there was nothing to celebrate. They ate in silence; the ship steamed northwards, its metal plates vibrating gently.

The Captain hunched over the table, as if his breakfast were a mirror and he were studying his reflection. Suzanne watched him fork a dripping yolk into his mouth, the web of muscle pulsing in the thin flesh of his temple. She had to speak, if only to distract herself from her disgust.

‘I wondered if you'd be good enough, Captain,' she said, ‘to explain what has happened to the sea.'

The Captain stopped chewing. His eyes lifted, pale, faintly mocking, empty of intelligence. ‘I beg your pardon, Madame.'

‘The sea's red,' she said. ‘I wondered why.'

‘Scared you, did it?'

Suzanne looked away. There was so much that she did not know, and the Captain seemed to take pleasure in seeing her ignorance confirmed – not only confirmed, in fact, but reinforced. During the past three months she had often asked him if she might be shown the stokehold or the engine-room. He would grunt, invent excuses, prevaricate. The ship was a mystery to her, and he had set himself up as guardian of that mystery. It was entirely typical of his behaviour that, though it was she who had enquired about the sea, it was to Théo that he directed his reply.

It transpired that the change in colour was caused by a myriad of tiny organisms floating just below the surface. As a natural phenomenon, it was customary for the time of year, though it led, he said, to ‘a great many tall tales'. There was once a tribe of Indians, for instance, who believed that it was a sign from the gods, instructing them to make a human sacrifice.

‘They thought the sea had turned to blood.' The Captain grinned. ‘Savages,' he said, and, picking up his fork, he pierced the skin on his second egg.

Théo pursued the subject with the Captain, for he too was eager to acquire some knowledge of the region, but Suzanne found, in any case, that she could no longer listen. The inside of her head was slowly turning, as if she had been fastened to a wheel. Heat rose off her in a blast. She had to concentrate on the table, the stains and burns, the ridges in the grain of the wood.

She had been married to Théo for more than five years and they still did not have any children. She had miscarried twice. Théo did not know. The first time it happened, she had not even realised that she was pregnant. She had been walking down the stairs when she felt something break inside her, run down her legs. She stood in the hallway and lifted her skirts. The blood had filled her shoes.

She wrapped all her clothes in old copies of the newspaper and left the house. It was evening. The sky had filled with stunned light; the streets lay dark and still beneath. She set off towards Les Halles and did not stop until she found a brazier that contained a few glowing embers. It was a place where five roads met, but she saw no one. She dropped her bundle into the flames. Watched the paper catch, the clothes begin to blacken. Every now and then she stirred the fire with a stick from the gutter. She stayed until she was certain that nothing remained. It took a long time. Her shoes were glazed kid; they would not seem to burn. At last she returned to the house and took to her bed, saying that she was ill.

Some days later, when Théo asked her about the dress – it was one that he had bought for her, from her favourite shop on Rue de la Paix – she told him that she had lost it. ‘Lost it?' he said. ‘How could you lose a dress?' But she had run out of words. All she could do was shrug and turn away.

‘Are you not feeling well, my dear?'

This question coincided with her thoughts so neatly that, for one moment, she could not be certain where she was. Then, looking up, she remembered and had to invent an excuse.

‘It's just the heat, Théo.'

‘This is nothing,' the Captain said. ‘Wait till July.'

‘Do you need some air?' Théo asked her.

She summoned a smile for him. ‘I feel fine. How long until we arrive?'

Théo studied her for a moment longer then he reached up with his napkin and dabbed his mouth. ‘An hour.' He turned to the Captain for corroboration.

‘Aye,' the Captain murmured. ‘Close enough.'

‘Then we ought to be able to see the town by now,' she said and, leaving her chair, she launched herself towards the window that overlooked the bow.

But she could only see the land stretching away in both directions, a land stripped of all adornment, musty and jagged.

Then she noticed a cloud to the north-west, a thin white cloud that lay perfectly horizontal in the air. It was so straight, it might have been drawn with a ruler; Théo might have been responsible for it. Looking more closely, she realised that it was not a cloud at all. It was smoke, rising in thin columns from the land below. She could just make out two chimneys, some huddled buildings, the dark arm of a harbour wall.

‘I can see it,' she cried.

The two men joined her at the window.

‘Aye, that's it,' the Captain said, ‘godforsaken hole that it is.'

But Théo was smiling.

‘At last,' he murmured. ‘The work can begin.'

SS Korrigan

17th April, 189–

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

I wrote to you from Panama in January and again from Santiago some weeks later, but as I have little faith in either of the two postal services, I am writing to you once more on the assumption that this is the first that you have heard of me.

That I should mention Santiago at all will no doubt cause you some concern since our original plan, as I am sure you remember, was to put in at Panama, transport the church by rail to the west coast and then proceed northwards by steamer into Mexican waters. This plan was thwarted owing to the untimely dynamiting of a government train by a notorious group of revolutionaries. Any assessments as to when the line might once again be operational were vague, to say the least. After a conference with the Captain of the
SS Korrigan
I decided that it would be as well to continue south, reaching Mexico by way of Cape Horn. Though it would add two months to our journey it seemed the course of action that would offer least threat to our cargo which was, after all, our primary concern. Before too long I was to regret this decision, for we encountered the most ferocious storm, not only ferocious but persistent too, lasting, as it did, a full seventeen days. A section of the bulkhead split, and it seemed at one moment as if we all might perish. It was during that day that we sighted another vessel struggling, like we were, against the elements; it is difficult to express the degree of succour that it afforded us, to know that other men were sharing the same dangers, the same exhaustion.

Suffice to say that we survived the rigours of Cape Horn. On the 2nd of March we put into Santiago for extensive repairs, and it struck me then as an immense irony that, had the National Assembly supported the Panama Canal project, as you supported it, out of a sense of duty to the nation, we might have been spared many of the hardships of the
preceding two months. Our sojourn in Santiago was, in many respects, delightful, but it was a relief to be under way once more. Our passage up the coast of South America was accomplished without incident, and the first day of April found us lying off Mexico. They say that one knows when one is entering the Gulf of California on account of the numerous sea serpents that appear in the waters alongside one's vessel, but, I must say, I have noticed no such phenomenon. Is it not more likely that we are simply entering a part of the world about which much remains unknown, a part of the world where the imagination – especially, it would seem, the imagination of sailors – can take hold and run riot? They were eager to assure me that it was a fact, that the serpents had been seen. I pointed downwards through the floor. ‘In the hold of this ship,' I said, ‘there are two thousand, three hundred and forty-eight component parts which, when assembled, will fit together with the greatest perfection. That, gentlemen,' I said, ‘is a fact.' Sea serpents or no, we will arrive at our final destination this morning, some four months after leaving Le Havre.

You may remember that I was anxious regarding my wife's desire to join me on this undertaking. I need not have worried. She has acquitted herself admirably. After my many attempts to discourage her, mentioning, above all, the very real danger to her health, it will no doubt amuse you to hear that she has proved to be a far better sailor than her husband. While I lay below deck, prostrated by the most tenacious bouts of seasickness, she was usually to be found up on the bridge, sketching! She knows that I am writing to you and asks me to convey her most respectful regards. Please accept mine also, with your customary kindness, and know that I am, as always, your humble and obedient servant,

Théophile Valence.

Wilson Pharaoh dreamed that all his veins were filled with gold; he only had to cut his wrists and he would be rich.

Awake, there was a moment when he still believed the dream. That he could take his hunting-knife and open up a vein. That gold would pour in liquid abundance from the wound. He had seen maps of his own body, drawn up by a mining company of international repute. He had seen the proof with his own eyes.

He lay still, limbs swimming heavily at some distance from his body. Mosquitoes hung in the air. They were greedier here than anywhere that he had ever been. Kill one in the morning and you could watch your blood spring clear across the room.

His eyes moved along one edge of a green tin ceiling, down a yellow wall. This was not his hotel. He turned his head slowly on the pillow, discovered a girl sleeping beside him. One glimpse of that narrow face, that cataract of coarse black hair, and his memory returned.

He saw Pablo Fernández wiping the counter with a rag, his eyebrows reaching high on to his forehead and curving slightly, like the arms on spectacles. Pablo ran the Bar El Fandango, a cantina at the back of town. He also owned the hotel where Wilson was staying.

‘There's a couple of men here say Americans can't drink.' Pablo slid the words casually past his thin dark lips, his eyes angled sideways and downwards.

Wilson glanced along the bar. The couple of men in question were Indians. Men hired by the company to mine copper. Men who carried future grievance in their bellies like an embryo. They were Seri Indians, famous for their treachery: you could never read their faces, but you could be sure that one of them would have a knife.

Wilson could not back down or walk away. He knew it, and Pablo knew it too. He could think of few distances more dangerous than the distance between the bar of El Fandango and the door. At least twenty men had
perished in the space of those few yards. So there was really only one response:

‘Line them up, Pablo.'

He had been drawn into a contest that lasted half the night. They drank cactus liquor from tin mugs, with strips of salted fish to take away the taste. Pablo distilled the liquor himself, in a shack behind the bar. The first shot lowered your voice an octave. The second almost blinded you.

There followed a bewildering sequence of events, one of the last of which would have been Wilson's delivery to the mildewed sheets of none other than La Huesuda, the skinniest whore in the Gulf of California – she was so skinny, you could gather her in your arms like a bundle of sticks. She was short too; her shoulder knocked against your hip-bone if you walked together down a street. It had been agreed in the cantina that whoever lost the contest would be expected to spend the night with her, all expenses paid. Wilson could not remember losing, though he supposed he must have. Not remembering and losing were two horses that pulled the same cart.

He leaned on one elbow, looking down. From her hairline to her nostrils was one long curve, except for a slight dip that signified the bridge of her nose. Her mouth had fallen open, as neat as that first notch you cut in the trunk of a tree before you set about the work of felling it; the breath sizzled past her teeth like lard heating in a skillet. He was looking down at her with some curiosity. She claimed to be descended from a tribe of Amazons who, according to legend, had once ruled the waters of the gulf. They were believed to have captured men in order that they might breed from them. Afterwards the men were put to death. Dressed in black pearls that had been threaded on lengths of wild flax, the Amazons would dance until the moon changed shape, and it was said that the thunder of their feet could be heard for miles around, and on the mainland too. Nobody could ignore that sound. Women carved holes in cactus plants, hollowed out the middles and hid their man inside. Even to this day, if they heard a storm coming, the Indians would often hide their men.