Air and Fire (43 page)

Standing in front of the mirror, Théo adjusted the lapels on his frock-coat. ‘Make sure you post it in the morning,' he said. ‘There won't be another chance for a while.'

She watched him settle in the armchair with a newspaper. The walls behind him were papered in green-and-gilt, mould blossoming above the picture-rail. Dictionaries filled the shelves. Works by Cervantes too. The size of the books wearied her; she had to look away.

‘How was your walk?' she asked.

‘It was hardly a walk,' Théo said, peering over his paper. ‘I sat on the quay most of the time. There were two Chinamen playing a game of dice. One of them was blind and the other one kept cheating.' Théo forced a laugh.

He was attempting to amuse her, she thought, but he could not summon the enthusiasm necessary to make what he was describing come alive. Or perhaps the incident had depressed him.

He turned back to his paper with a frown. After scanning the front page, he folded it in two and laid it aside.

‘It's seven o'clock,' he said. ‘Perhaps we should go down.'

They ate in the hotel dining-room – a vast, deserted room with white walls and a tilting wooden floor. Huge gilt mirrors increased the sense of desolation. The orchid on their table sent a thin but sickly fragrance into the air. Outside, the usual evening rain began to crash against the trees.

‘You were lucky,' she said.

‘Lucky?'

‘With your walk.'

He reached into his pocket and took out his watch. ‘It always seems to rain at the same time.'

Somewhere in the hotel a shutter banged.

Then two young men ran up the steps. They stood in the hotel lobby, laughing and shaking the water off their clothes.

Suzanne watched Théo tuck his watch back into his pocket. He seemed so delicate, though it was she who was supposed to be the convalescent.

Since leaving the shores of Mexico, Théo had been sleeping poorly. Night after night he woke up bathed in sweat, his bedclothes drenched; also he had developed eczema on the back of his hands. She did what she could, sitting beside him in the darkness, laying cool cloths against his
brow, but she did not have the strength to nurse him properly. During the daylight hours a calmness stretched between them, a silence that felt bottomless, a kind of exhaustion. It was not uncomfortable; rather, it was as if they had been admitted to a place where words did not apply. She was not sure what had happened to her love for him. It had been withdrawn, concealed from her. Only charity remained. She moved about with hollow spaces inside her. Her limbs weighed almost nothing. It was like the feeling she used to have after communion when she was a child, a feeling of sublime emptiness that had somehow been received, been granted, that was greater, infinitely greater, than what had been there before.

The shutter banged again. She looked up. Théo was staring at the piece of beefsteak on his plate.

‘This meat,' and he grimaced.

‘It's terrible, isn't it?'

He nodded.

‘I can't even get my knife through it,' she said.

‘Why did we order steak,' he said, ‘when there is all this fish – ' He gestured towards the windows and the dark arena of the ocean that lay beyond.

As his hand returned, it knocked against the table's edge. A glass tottered, almost spilled. He did not notice.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘About everything.'

He was staring at his plate again.

She saw that he had not meant to speak. Those last few words of his had startled him.

‘Théo,' she said, ‘you have nothing to be ashamed of.'

Still he would not look at her.

She leaned forwards. ‘Nobody could have done more.'

The rain was louder now, a constant roar against the roof. Their waiter was closing shutters on the north side of the room.

‘But Monsieur Eiffel,' Théo said. ‘It was my responsibility – '

She reached across the table for his hand. ‘You wrote him letters, didn't you?'

He nodded.

‘Regularly?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then they will be your witness,' she said. ‘Those letters. They will vouch for you.'

She sat back and looked at him. Just looked at him.

‘And me,' she said at last. ‘I, too, will be your witness.'

His eyes lifted to her face. They seemed filled suddenly with a curious benevolence – as if he were old and she were very young, as if the fifteen years between them had grown to fifty. And yet, paradoxically, some gap appeared to have narrowed, some barrier had been removed. She had a sudden image of the tree that she had seen from the train, those birds which she had taken to be flowers, and the moment when their petals turned into wings, and they rose up out of the foliage, and flew.

After dinner, they retired to the veranda, where the anthropologist awaited them. The two men lit cigars. Suzanne excused herself, using words that Théo had given to her earlier. ‘I have a letter to write. It must be finished by the morning.'

She left the two men blowing smoke against a curtain of rain.

Climbing the stairs to her room, she heard laughter. Three women were grouped around an open doorway on the landing. They were Cuña Indians. Each woman had a black stripe running from her hairline to the tip of her nose – a sign of beauty. One wore a dress of orange silk. As Suzanne passed by, the woman in the orange dress reached for her hand.

‘Ah,' she said, ‘you are married.'

Suzanne smiled; she could not think what else to do.

Still holding Suzanne's hand, the woman turned and spoke to her companions. They were listening, murmuring what sounded like agreement, but they were staring at Suzanne, their wide eyes rimmed in purple paint.

Then the woman in the dress turned back again. ‘We say, if we are married, we are very happy.'

She let go of Suzanne's hand – but reluctantly, as if it were something of her own that she was parting with.

Suzanne moved on towards her room. Fitting the key into the lock, she looked back down the corridor. The women were still watching her, their eyes filled with drowsy fascination, a kind of awe.

‘Good-night,' she said.

Their faces did not alter.

It was not until she was sitting at her writing desk that she remembered the open doorway and how she must, at some point, have glanced inside because she could now picture the man who had been lying on the bed.
He was dressed only in his underclothes. He was stretched out beneath a fan. His black hair moved on his forehead.

She took up her pen and dipped it into the ink, but it was several minutes before she began to write.

Do you remember how we used to sit on the veranda of the Hôtel de Paris and try to imagine rain? I think we always failed. How we longed for it, though! Well, it is raining tonight in Panama; it is raining so hard, in fact, that it is splashing through the closed shutters, soaking the floor under the windows. Outside, the streets are rivers –

She paused with her pen in mid-air.

Suddenly she believed that the letter would reach him. She could see the doctor darting into Wilson's hotel, his waistcoat glittering, his moustache-tips needle-sharp. ‘Monsieur Pharaoh,' he would be breathing a little hard, ‘a letter for you. From Panama.' Then Wilson turning the envelope in his slow hands. Would he know who it was from? Would he guess? She thought he would read it upstairs, in the room that she had never visited, or at Mama Vum Buás place, perhaps, with a cup of grey coffee in front of him and the Mama's dark-eyed girls plucking at his sleeve. Later, perhaps, he would sew it into his jacket lining like that map. Carry it with him, to America.

It hurts me that I could not see you before I left, Wilson. I am not sure that I would have known what to say to you if I had. I know now, though. I want to tell you that you have given me a second life, a new place to begin, a new tranquillity. I cannot thank you enough for that.

I have a favour to ask. Would you write to me occasionally, just a few words, so that I may have some news of you? I enclose my Paris address in the hope that you will not deny me this. I am so grateful for your companionship, Wilson; in truth, I do not know how I would have managed without you.

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.