Air and Fire (17 page)

His father had kept the secret for weeks – a child's desire to surprise him, a deep need to get something right at last.

Standing at his father's shoulder that afternoon, he was filled with equal measures of happiness and sorrow. When he saw the Grand Canyon again, years later, he could not find the place where they had stood, and yet the same feeling rose in him, a pull in two directions, a spirit divided against itself.

‘Hey! American!'

He came back slowly from the past and peered down between the splintered staves that formed the railing to his balcony. Standing on the street below was the Bony One. He shifted on his chair, preparing to withdraw deep into his room.

‘I'm sorry if I laid into you the other night,' she called up. ‘I was feeling lousy. I had to take it out on someone.'

‘That's OK,' he said.

‘I just want to apologise. I was pretty hard on you.'

‘Forget it.' Smiling, Wilson leaned against the wall.

‘Really? You forgive me?'

‘I do.'

‘Hey, American!'

He leaned forwards again, looked down.

‘Don't you think you're tempting fate,' she said, ‘sitting on that balcony like that?'

It was the 21st of May, the doctor's fiftieth birthday, and Captain Legrand, master of the
SS Providencia,
had organised a dance in his honour. The
SS Providencia
had docked the day before with a cargo of timber, live piglets and, most important of all, champagne. Twenty-five cases of Clicquot had arrived from Paris, ordered for the occasion by Madame de Romblay (the doctor's wife being incapable, presumably, of such an extravagant gesture). The birthday dance was to be held on the rear deck. There was one problem, though. Since the freighter had been unloaded, it had risen in the water, and it could only now be reached by means of a vertical ladder on the starboard bow. This would be too hazardous for the ladies – for certain of the gentlemen as well. In the event, Captain Legrand had proposed an ingenious, if unorthodox, alternative. They would attach an armchair to a system of ropes and pulleys, and hoist the guests aboard. He had used the technique before, he said, in Chile, almost entirely without incident.

‘I could donate a chair,' Jean-Baptiste Castagnet said.

But Monsieur de Romblay was frowning, one forefinger set diagonally across his mouth. ‘Almost, Captain?' he said. ‘What do you mean, almost?'

Captain Legrand was a vast, droll man. To see the Captain and the Director together, in conversation, was to be reminded of two majestic planets orbiting slowly, one around the other.

‘It was the Mayor of Valparaiso's wife,' he said. ‘She drank too much gin. One the way back down, the chair began to spin. She vomited on the heads of her citizens from a height of thirty feet.' He paused. ‘They lost the election the following year.'

That evening, on the stroke of seven, the French gathered on the north quay. They were dressed in all their finery, as such an event demanded, though nobody could outshine the doctor. He had received a birthday surprise from his wife: a new waistcoat. Cream silk brocade,
it was, overlaid with a tracery of ferns in palest green and gold. Three months in the making.

The doctor clapped his hands for silence. ‘My colleagues,' he cried, ‘my friends. Let us begin!'

They had agreed beforehand that they should choose straws to determine the order of their ascent. One by one they stepped forwards, dipped their hands into the doctor's opera hat. It was Florestine, his wife, who drew the shortest. Her eyes scaled the steep sides of the freighter, mollusc-encrusted, pocked with rust. Then dropped down, round and watering, to the yellow damask armchair that had been donated, as promised, by Monsieur Castagnet. Florestine, it now transpired, had vertigo.

There was some delay, but after a few drops of valerian and a soothing lecture from her husband on the psychological advantages of going first, the yellow armchair lifted into the night sky with Florestine securely strapped in place. She had a rosary plaited through the fingers of her right hand. Her husband's velvet cummerbund shielded her eyes. The French watched from below. Nobody spoke. The chair spun slowly on its rope, but Florestine did not so much as murmur. Soon only the soles of her shoes were visible.

When at last she appeared at the guard-rail, supported on her husband's arm, eyes glittering in a face that had drained of blood, the French rewarded her with an outburst of spontaneous applause. The yellow chair descended, empty now. High on the deck above, the doctor borrowed the Captain's megaphone and aimed it at the quay.

‘Next!'

There was a moment's silence, some nervous laughter, then Suzanne stepped forwards. Théo helped to strap her in.

‘I would have thought you'd prefer the ladder,' he murmured in her ear.

She smiled up at him, but did not answer.

He was paying her small attentions tonight, which could have been the result of the dress she was wearing, since it was a favourite of his, an evening gown of peach silk-satin, with bare arms, a looped neck held by ribbons at the shoulders and skirts that were patterned with chrysanthemum petals.

As she rose off the ground and the faces below her shrank, the chair began to turn clockwise. First she was facing the sea, then she was looking inland, towards the mountains. Then she faced the sea again.
She tried not to think about the Mayor of Valparaiso's wife. Instead, she summoned the image of her friend, Lucille, who at that moment was probably attending some dreary opera in Paris. How Lucille would have relished this.

She was swinging sideways now, over the guard-rail, and she could look down. The entire rear deck of the
SS Providencia
had been transformed into a ballroom. Chinese lanterns hung round the edges of the dance-floor, shedding exotic coloured light – cider, damson, lime. French flags had been draped across the forecastle and the bridge. On a rostrum at the stern, an orchestra was playing a polonaise by Ambroise Thomas. The armchair gently touched the deck and she was helped out of the harness by Florestine Bardou, who was almost ragged with exhilaration.

‘It's a miracle, isn't it?' Florestine said.

Champagne had reached the town at exactly the right time; a ballroom had been created out of nothing; Florestine had survived her ordeal in the armchair – they were all miracles. It was hard to know which of the miracles she was referring to.

And suddenly the doctor was dancing towards them on the balls of his feet, his elbows tucked against his ribs, his hands spread sideways in the air as if he were walking a tightrope. His waistcoat seemed to arrive first. He gestured at the streamers and pennants that looped above the dance-floor. ‘I should be fifty more often.'

‘I should like to be fifty again.' The voice had come from above, and they all looked up. Monsieur de Romblay saluted them from an armchair in the sky.

‘As for me,' Suzanne said, ‘I should not like to be fifty at all,' which won her a burst of raucous laughter from the airborne Director.

Soon everyone was on board – and entirely without incident, as the Captain was swift to point out in his brief welcoming speech. The glasses were charged with iced champagne and Monsieur de Romblay stepped forwards to toast the doctor. The fact that they had something special with which to celebrate became in itself a cause for celebration. The drinking was reckless, even among the ladies, and by the time the first dances were over and the early supper was served, most of the party was drunk.

At the table on the top deck, with the night so still that the candle flames stood motionless and tall, Théo began to talk about bolts. The week
before, a box of bolts had vanished from the construction site. They were particularly robust bolts, a full ten centimetres in diameter; they were used to attach the purlins, which formed the basis of the secondary structure, to the central structure of the arches.

‘I do like a man who can tell a story,' Madame de Romblay said. It was not a venomous remark; she seemed genuinely amused by Théo's long-winded and technical introduction. She leaned towards him. ‘Don't forget, Monsieur Valence. You promised me the mazurka.'

With a brief nod in her direction, Théo continued. The missing box of bolts had held him up for three days. He approached one of the more communicative Indians and tried to establish who had been left in charge of it. The Indian said,
‘Vara.'

‘Literally,
“Vara”
means “nothing”,' Théo explained. ‘But they also use the word idiomatically, to mean “I don't know”.'

He asked the Indian when he had last seen the box. Again the Indian said,
‘Vara.'
He wondered whether the Indian had any idea what might have happened to the box. The reply was the same:
‘Vara.'
He demanded the Indian's name.
‘Vara.'

Laughter rippled round the table.

Pineau interrupted. ‘How long is this going to take, for heaven's sake?'
‘Vara'
shouted Monsieur de Romblay.

By now everyone was laughing, even Théo, though, as Suzanne knew, he had by no means reached the point of the story.

He proceeded to describe how he had set up a search party, consisting of himself, a Mexican soldier, an Indian interpreter and ‘Vara' too, since he suspected that four denials in a row amounted to some kind of confession, or at least suggested that the Indian had something to hide and might be party to the theft.

Monsieur de Romblay lifted his glass. ‘I salute you, Monsieur Valence. You have penetrated one of the first mysteries of Indian logic. “Nothing” means everything.'

Théo tried not to look too pleased with himself. Just for a moment he resembled a head on a coin: frozen, stern, imperial.

‘And did you find the bolts?' asked Marie Saint-Lô.

‘Yes, I did,' Théo said. ‘I found them on a piece of wasteground behind the town. They were in the possession of four of my Indian labourers. Do you know what they were doing with them?'

Nobody could guess. In fact, they did not want to guess. They wanted to be told.

Théo smiled. ‘They were playing boule.'

The thought of four Indians playing boule with Théo's bolts was too much for the French. Laughter exploded against the still night air.

‘Now for the best part,' Théo said. ‘I asked them what they were doing. “There is no work,” they said, “so we play.” ‘He leaned forwards, gripping the edge of the table. ‘The theft of the bolts by the Indians had caused a stoppage at work. The effect of this stoppage was a sudden acquisition of free time. Having acquired this free time, the Indians reacted in a predictable way: they looked round for something to do. And what did they find?' Théo opened his hands. ‘The bolts. They used the original cause of their predicament as its solution. Cause, effect, cause, effect, cause. A perfect circle.' He had become dishevelled in his excitement, his white tie loosening, one shirt-cuff dappled with Hollandaise sauce.

‘It sounds like a Belgian joke,' Pineau said.

Monsieur de Romblay disagreed. ‘It's a classic tale of the region. Absolutely archetypal.' He lifted a glass to Théo. ‘You should be a logician, Monsieur Valence, not an engineer.'

‘Perhaps the two are not so far apart,' said Théo, with becoming modesty.

Madame de Romblay appeared to be finding it difficult to grasp the twists and turns of the logic that her husband so admired. She was staring into the night with the vacant expression of someone who has been waiting for a carriage for a long time, only to see it drive past without stopping. Nothing could have been further from her mind at that moment than a mazurka, though that was what the orchestra was playing on the deck below.

‘To the lost bolts,' cried Florestine Bardou, ‘now happily found again!'

At least someone was benefiting from the seemingly infinite supply of champagne.

The night began to whirl. A huge moth flew over the supper table, blundered three times around a candelabra and crackled into nothing in the flames. Montoya, who had arrived late, presented the doctor with a brocade sombrero. Marie Saint-Lô flung her shoes into the harbour and danced barefoot with Captain Legrand. It was still only eleven o'clock.

Suzanne sat by the rail in the stern, a glass of champagne cooling the palm of her hand.

‘Would you care to dance?'

She looked up. It was Montoya, Félix Tortoledo de Avilés, with his mournful eyes. His plumed hat nestled beneath his arm, like a chicken just bought from the market. Théo was right: the man was a clown. But the champagne had softened her. She would grant him this one dance and be done with it.

Folding her fan, she rose to her feet and placed one gloved hand on his arm. The music swooped down and spun her through the air. Dancing seemed as natural as breathing.

‘I watched you all the way across the town,' he said.

She remembered the lantern he had given her and smiled.

‘I watched your light ascend the hill.' He was staring past her shoulder, his eyes distant.

Still smiling, she turned her face sideways. There were two women dancing at her elbow. One wore a scarlet tunic with silver epaulettes. The other was naked from the waist up, her breasts gleaming from the exertions of the waltz. She only saw the women for a moment. Then Montoya whirled her away across the floor. When she could look again, they were gone.

She broke away from the Captain, moved quickly to the rail. The lights of the boat were reflected on the water. She could see black dots and dashes, punctuations in the shifting gold – the heads and arms of children swimming in the harbour. Further along the deck, François Pineau, the accountant, was tossing coins over the side.

‘There's no point throwing money to them,' Pierre Morlaix was saying. ‘They can't see it.'

Pineau's top lip curled. ‘Exactly.'

‘You're incorrigible.' Morlaix began to laugh.