Air and Fire (23 page)

‘Why do you say that?'

‘Your country is famous for gold. California, Montana, even Idaho.' Pineau paused. ‘But Santa Sofía – '

Wilson waited for the laughter to fade. Some people cannot resist trying to soil and ridicule your dreams. Maybe it is because they have none of their own.

‘It is my contention,' he said finally, ‘that, sometime in the future, it will be discovered that this entire peninsula is nothing less than an extension of the famous gold-fields of Northern California.'

You could have heard a dime land in the rug.

He sat back in his chair. It was the first dinner party that he had ever attended. The men wore shirts that gleamed like ivory. The women had jewelled necks and ears; flowers blossomed in their hair. He did not belong in such exalted company. He had washed with carbolic soap. He had trimmed his moustache. He had dressed in his best blue-flannel shirt, a black four-in-hand tie of his father's and pair of dark trousers which he had borrowed from Jesús Pompano. But still he looked like the men they put in fields to scare the birds.

‘Do you have any proof of this,' and Pineau paused again, ‘contention of yours?'

Wilson smiled to himself. ‘Certainly, at the present time, I should be hard pressed to furnish you with proof to the contrary.'

The doctor chuckled. ‘Bravo, Monsieur. Well said.'

Wilson glanced at Suzanne and saw his secret safe behind her eyes, invisible to everyone but him.

But Pineau would not let him alone. ‘You would not be here,' he said, ‘if you did not know something.'

Suzanne let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Monsieur Pharaoh is a romantic,' she said, ‘and romantics don't need proof. All they need is faith.'

‘Faith.' Pineau curled his lip.

‘My dear Suzanne,' said Madame de Romblay, whose head and shoulders rose out of a froth of purple satin, ‘you make our American friend sound like a candidate for sainthood.'

Smiles travelled the length of the table. Wilson felt that he should smile too, if modestly.

But Suzanne did not smile. Her cheeks flushed and her green eyes seemed to bleach.

‘Who was it, may I ask,' she said, ‘who landed in California with gardening implements believing, in their naivety, that gold was so abundant that it could be raked out of the rivers?' Nobody spoke. ‘I'll
tell you who it was,' she said. ‘It was the French.' She looked round the table, settling at last on the Director's wife, whose eyes were glittering at this betrayal of her nation, whose lips had snapped tight shut. ‘We may think that we're superior, that we know more than others,' she said, ‘but we don't. We don't know the half of it.'

Monsieur Valence leaned forwards, placing his hands flat on the tablecloth. He had folded his napkin into one tight square.

‘Well,' he said, ‘if we have all finished, perhaps we should adjourn to the veranda.'

‘But we haven't finished,' Suzanne said, ‘have we, Théo?'

Valence looked steadily at Wilson. ‘Monsieur Pharaoh?'

Wilson had no choice but to struggle to his feet. As he turned away from the table he saw Suzanne lift her napkin into the air and suspend it quite deliberately above the candelabra. In seconds the napkin had caught fire. She dropped the burning cloth in the centre of the table and rose calmly from her chair.

‘By all means,' she said. ‘Let's adjourn.'

She did not appear for the coffee and brandy that were served on the veranda. Monsieur de Romblay took hold of the conversation and, working in unison with the doctor, steered it into a debate about the recent unrest among the miners, not exactly an entertaining subject, but less troubled than some. It was a discussion in which Wilson played little part since most of those present had by now reverted to their native language. Still, he could feel some of the tension in the air disperse. Now and then the doctor leaned over and translated for him. At one point he thought of mentioning the epileptic's vision, which could well have helped to undermine morale, but he held his tongue, fearing that he might make a fool of himself again. Indeed, his only contribution drew a snort of indignation from the accountant. He had simply observed that conditions in the mine were far from perfect. Monsieur de Romblay also bridled at the remark.

‘We are not running a charity, Monsieur.'

Wilson kept silent after that.

It was not long before the doctor turned the conversation to his favourite subject: bread. Given the conspicuous lack of progress during the last few weeks, he suggested that they should consider recruiting a baker from France. Madame de Romblay said that, in her opinion, no baker worth his salt would agree to come. The Sister, Marie Saint-Lô, thought they should give the Mexican another chance.

‘Apparently there has been a death in the family.' Marie Saint-Lô turned to the doctor.

‘That's correct. I forgot.' The doctor sighed. ‘Well, I suppose you cannot expect too much of somebody who is going through a period of mourning.'

‘Who died?' Monsieur de Romblay asked.

‘His mother, wasn't it?' The doctor did not seem sure.

Madame de Romblay shook her head. ‘No,' she said. ‘It was his aunt. I'm certain of it.'

‘Monsieur Pharaoh?' the doctor said. ‘Perhaps you could enlighten us?'

But Wilson only shrugged. He felt bloated and queasy. He could have opened his mouth and emptied the contents of his stomach on the ground, a temptation that was very nearly rendered a necessity a few minutes later when Pineau settled in the chair beside him.

‘Monsieur Pharaoh,' and he put a hand on Wilson's shoulder, and Wilson could smell compost on the accountant's breath, ‘they tell me that you can recommend a local whore.'

It was after midnight when Wilson put his glass of brandy down. Reaching for his crutches, he announced that he would have to be going. ‘I could use some rest,' he said.

The doctor beamed up at him. ‘I'm delighted to hear it. The message is getting through at last.'

Monsieur de Rombay joked, rather drunkenly, that Wilson should not consider looking for any gold until morning and, under the cover of good-natured laughter, Wilson wished the company a pleasant night, thanked Monsieur Valence for the most excellent dinner and then began to make his way round to the front of the house.

Halfway along the veranda, Monsieur Valence overtook him.

‘There is a carriage,' he said. ‘I will fetch it for you.'

Before Wilson could protest, the man had vanished.

Sheet lightning lit the heavens to the west, beyond the mountains. In other towns it might have heralded rain; in Santa Sofía, this did not seem likely. He stood at the top of the steps. His head ached from listening to hours of talk.

Then, as he looked up, the lightning came closer, laying bare the sky above the house, and there, in the shadows of the veranda, stood Suzanne.

‘Wilson? Is that you?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're leaving?'

Stumbling over his words, he began to thank her for the dinner, but he encountered a look of such utter distraction on her face that he could no longer speak.

‘Imagine,' she said, ‘if the house had burned down.'

She was laughing. A sequence of notes, innocent and clear.

He stood still, uncertain what to say.

Lightning again: her face jumped out at him, a section of her dress, a jasmine flower behind her. It seemed to have the power to reveal her one moment and remove her the next, as if her existence were pure illusion.

‘You're ashamed of me.'

He shook his head.

‘I'm sorry, Wilson,' she said, Tm truly sorry. It was not the dinner I intended it to be.'

‘It was a fine dinner,' he maintained stubbornly. ‘I enjoyed it very much.'

She took a step towards him. The shadow of a hanging plant moved down her forehead and across her cheek, reminding him of fingers on the keys of a piano.

‘He never touches me,' she said. ‘He doesn't love me.'

She held his arm. He felt something land on the back of his hand and knew a moment later that it must have been a tear.

‘Suzanne,' he said.

She wiped her cheek. ‘Will you come again?'

‘Of course.'

He heard the wheels on the street below.

‘Look,' she said. ‘Your carriage.'

When Wilson turned in his seat, looked back towards the house, she was still standing on the veranda, a branch of lightning stranded on the ground, a white flag in the darkness.

Somebody surrendering.

The carriage ambled down the hill. He could not fit his thoughts together. He could only see that napkin burning on the table, and her face above the flames, quite calm, absorbed.

During the night Suzanne woke up and heard voices. She was lying with her head close to the window, only a mosquito-net between her and the stars. The voices drifted up from the veranda; the words had lost their shape, turned into murmurings. Théo and another man. She sipped at the tea Imelda had prepared for her – to calm her, Imelda said. It tasted of grass and dust. She wondered how late it was, wondered if she should go downstairs. Sleep took her again before she could come to a decision.

In the morning she woke with the same dream in her head, the dream about Montoya's house. She could not be sure whether she had dreamed it again, or whether it was just a memory, fostered by sleep. She lifted the jug off the floor and poured some water into her china bowl. She washed slowly, the dream becoming clearer in her head, though she could only remember that one fragment: two women dancing in the hallway – that was all. There had been no reference to their appearance on the night of the doctor's birthday. She did not know if she should feel reassured.

She thought back to the time when she realised that she had the power of dreams, dreams that were like prophecies, dreams that came true. It had sent fear screaming through every layer of her skin. After the death of her friend she no longer trusted sleep. She saw beds as enemies. She even gave up eating cheese, afraid of what she might dream. But sleep lay in wait for her, knowing she would come, and she could not keep the dreams away.

Time passed; she became accustomed to the gift. She found that she often dreamed of people whom she did not know. It was like receiving a letter that had been intended for someone else; the dream postman had delivered to the wrong address. But what a relief that was. She could not be blamed for what happened. There would be no policemen calling at the house. Other times the dreams were commonplace or trivial. Always accurate, though. Once, for instance, she saw her father meeting a man on the road from Paris to Dieppe. The man was an old friend of her father's.
He wore a blue swallowtail jacket with gold buttons, and his horse was lame; she even knew which hoof. When her father came home, his face was lit with astonishment. ‘Do you know who I met today?' Yes, I know, she thought.
And
I know what he was wearing. And his horse was lame too, wasn't it? But she did not actually say anything; she did not dare. It was only the servant classes who believed in signs and portents. She turned to their African maid, Olique, with her wide eyes and her credulous heart. Every Thursday Olique would pay a clandestine visit to the bookstall on the Rue Chartreuse, returning with pamphlets and treatises, almanacs and horoscopes, which they would then spread out on the dark oak table in the servants' kitchen. They would explain the present, explore the future. Excavate the past. Telling Olique about her power made it more bearable. She even felt a sense of privilege because Olique told her that, in the country she came from, only very few were chosen, and they were almost always women. She came to treat the premonitions as a thrilling edge to her existence rather than a core of fear and unease.

And then they stopped.

She had been married for less than a week. She could still remember entering the library on the first floor of their house on the Rue de Rivoli, the tall window standing open, a sheet of white sunlight on the carpet. Nobody had used the room in days; the air had settled, motionless and dense. She held her arms away from her sides as if she were naked and about to be dressed. That moment had, in fact, been like a kind of nakedness. She had been stripped of her power. Her gift had gone.

Standing in the library that morning with the doves calling from the garden and the books in their hushed rows on the walls, she did not know what she thought. From being open, her hands closed up; she felt her fists begin to shake. She ought to have been warned. Too much was being taken from her. She seemed to have to pay so heavily for anything she gained.

And now that Théo would not touch her any more, she thought, as she dried her face and draped the towel over a chair, now that the ghost of her purity had been summoned and was walking through the house, could her gift be returning? It made a kind of sense. It was so logical that even Théo would have been compelled to agree with her. She left the room and moved down the corridor, her hands shifting among the folds of her dress. The thought of her gift returning was like a shiver in the heat. She did not want to use that part of her – not any more.
The future was too volatile, too uncertain. There were things just out of sight that she would rather have no knowledge of, like other people.

It was late by the time she walked downstairs, and Théo was long gone. She thought that it must have been a relief for him to leave while she was still asleep, to be able to avoid what would certainly have been an awkward encounter. To think that she had almost set fire to the house. This morning the whole episode seemed ludicrous, beyond belief. She smiled faintly, had to shake her head.

In the parlour she found her breakfast, which Imelda had left out for her some time before. There was coffee, still warm in its blackened pot; a few sweet rolls; a bowl of peeled oranges and pitahaya, covered by a sieve; some fresh dates. She stood above the table, looking down. The world crackled at the limits of her vision, as if it had been fed with bolts of electricity. That fruit, for instance. Glistening in its prison of fine wire-mesh. That china vase, the hooped back of a chair, her paintings on the wall. Just ordinary objects, but each one invested with a shimmer, fizzing at the eges, rimmed in white. She could not explain it. She was just aware of it as she poured herself some coffee.