Air and Fire (7 page)

A clock struck two somewhere. He drained his glass.

It had been his custom, during the afternoons, to walk up the hill to the Hôtel de Paris, which was the fancy place where all the French people stayed. He had noticed an old upright in the lobby. The wood had warped in the heat, and the keys had stiffened, but it was still a decent piano – a Chickering, from Little, Brown & Co. of Boston. He would sit on the maroon plush stool and run through pieces that he used to play in San Francisco – ballads, marches, negro melodies, fragments of opera from Europe, even hymns. It took him back to the years when he worked in the saloons around Portsmouth Square, the Empire and the Alhambra, La Souciedad, the Rendez-vous, ten bucks a night and another ten in tips if he was lucky, say if Bill Briggs dropped by, or Jack Gamble with his diamond stick-pin flashing like a whore's eye on
his shirt, ten bucks at least, those were the days. And then it took him further back; his mind would empty out and he would reach way down, deep into the past, and play dance tunes that his father used to whistle when they lived by trapping beaver in New Mexico, and Rodrigo Feliz, the houseboy at the hotel, would watch him from behind the bar, with his eyes the colour of wet leaves and his girl's mouth. But the music Wilson kept returning to was
Carmen,
by a Frenchman called Bizet. He had first heard
Carmen
on a trip back to San Francisco in the eighties. It had some fine tunes in it. His fingers got restless just thinking about it.

Before his foot broke, he could make his way up to Frenchtown any time he pleased. Even now he played most afternoons, but it required a measure of tenacity and planning. One thought, one image, sustained him: the woman in the yellow dress. His eyes lifted to the plateau where the carriage containing her had gone. He knew nothing about her; all he knew was that he had seen her face. And she was married – he knew that too. Mama Vum Buá had told him about the ring she wore. ‘Solid gold it was, and thick as rope,' the Señora had said, her blue eyes growing still more blue. ‘She must get awful tired carrying that thing around all day.' He knew nothing about her, and yet there was a new shape to his days, a sense of expectation. Not that he expected anything. Another glimpse of her, maybe. That was all the closeness he could hope for. That was all he asked.

He corked the bottle and, reaching for his crutches, hoisted himself to his feet. If he was going up to the hotel he had to move now. Two reasons. One: he would be less likely to run into La Huesuda and have to endure another lecture on his clumsiness and his sexual inadequacy (she always slept in the afternoon). Two: the Waterboys made deliveries to Frenchtown after lunch and if he timed it right he would be able to hitch a ride on the back of their cart.

He was half-way down the stairs when his good foot caught in the banisters. In an attempt to save the damaged one, he almost toppled headlong and broke everything else. He was beginning to lose his faith in manmade structures. Maybe he should forget about playing the piano for the time being. Maybe he should forget the whole damn thing. Half-way down the stairs, he stood quite motionless, the sweat cooling on his face.

There had been a terrible winter once, in the Sierras with his father, when they had dug hole after hole, when they had moved earth, washed it, moved earth, washed it, week after week of bloodied hands and all for
a couple of dollars a day, just barely enough to keep them from dying. Yet there was always someone near by, someone in the next placer or someone they just plain heard about, who had lifted sagebrush at the edge of a creek and found so many pieces of gold among the roots that he had taken the next ship to New York to live like an American King Solomon. It did not matter how bad things got. There was always something to keep you from trailing home to a life with no shine in it. Though maybe he should track Pablo down before the week was out, and speak to him about a room on the ground floor, just until his foot was mended.

From bats' wings at dusk, whispering through the deadened air, to the stubborn clanking of water churns at dawn, Santa Sofía was a place of incongruous sounds, but no sound was more incongruous, perhaps, than the sound of Bizet's
Carmen
being played on an out-of-tune piano in the middle of the afternoon. Suzanne found the piano downstairs, pushed against the wall in a distant corner of the lobby. She lifted the lid. The white keys were as discoloured as a horse's teeth. Two black keys had gone missing altogether. The piano did not look as if it had been used for years. And who would play
Carmen,
anyway? People thought it vulgar, hysterical. She stood beside the maroon piano stool, one elbow cupped in her hand, her fingers curled against her chin. Perhaps her dreams had served the music up to her. Perhaps she had imagined it.

The Hôtel de Paris was as luxurious as she and Théo could have hoped for, given the desolate surroundings, and the suite of rooms in which they had taken up temporary residence was the best in the hotel. There were armchairs upholstered in striped damask and floors of polished oak, and all the walls had been lined with silk – the drawing-room in peacock-blue, the bedroom in scarlet. The brass bed was said to have belonged to one of Maximilian's generals. Théo thought the décor more appropriate to a bordello than a hotel, and certainly, waking in that scarlet chamber on the first morning, Suzanne could not imagine where she was. Then she noticed the sky, a flawless blue, immaculate and hard, and she remembered. ‘Mexico,' she whispered to herself. ‘I'm in Mexico.'

She saw very little of Théo during the week of their arrival, but that was only to be expected. She did not mind – in fact, if anything it suited her. She was able to take the days at her own pace.

In the mornings she sat on the hotel veranda. From her table she could look down a barren hillside of rocks and cactus to the narrow coastal strip where most of the town's industry was to be found. Beyond that jumble of brown buildings lay the Sea of Cortez, palest blue, too lazy to achieve
a tide, yet capable, so Théo had told her, of the most sudden and violent storm that was known locally as El Cordonazo or ‘the Lash'. While she gazed at the view which, even at an early hour, would seem to undulate in the heat, Rodrigo, the houseboy, would bring her coffee in a glass cup, a basket of fresh rolls and a French newspaper that was never less than six months out of date. Rodrigo moved with a kind of slovenly grace which was only appealing because he was young, and which would in time, she felt, become grotesque. He always had a smile for her, though, and he would leave small gifts on her table – sometimes the flower from a prickly pear, sometimes a piece of fruit. It was Rodrigo who showed her the library behind the office, shelves of novels, journals and almanacs that had been discarded by previous guests, some in English, the rest in French, and it was Rodrigo who then offered to carry her selections up the stairs for her. She spent whole afternoons in her drawing-room, reclining on the ottoman by the window. She sketched, she read her books; she slept. There were no more expeditions of the kind that she had undertaken on her first evening. She did not seek the land out; she was content to let it come to her.

Her first visitor was the Director's wife. A sharp, two-syllable knock on the door heralded a flurry of emerald silk skirts as Madame de Romblay launched herself into the room. Her tin eyes glittered; her tea-gown foamed with Irish lace.

‘Forgive me for disturbing you like this. I was just passing.' Her mouth opened in a mirthless smile. ‘In a town the size of Santa Sofía, one cannot help but be just passing.' She placed one hand against her collar-bone and stooped to examine the gilt frame on a miniature. ‘How are you, my dear?'

‘I'm very well, thank you.' Suzanne always had the feeling that Madame de Romblay's questions, though innocent and conventional on the surface, were probing after some much deeper and more unhappy truth. ‘Can I offer you something?'

But the woman was already half-way to the fireplace, her eyes scanning the silk-lined walls, her pale-green sunshade twitching on her shoulder. ‘It's not a bad hotel, though it's not what you're used to, I'm sure.'

‘I'm not used to staying in hotels at all,' Suzanne replied. ‘Actually, I'm quite enjoying it.'

Madame de Romblay surveyed her from the far end of the room. ‘We are so few here. I'm afraid that you'll be bored.'

‘I came here to be with my husband, Madame. I did not expect a constant round of entertainment.'

‘Well, we do our best.' With a fatalistic sigh, Madame de Romblay opened a fan that was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and began to beat the air beneath her chin. ‘There will be a dinner, of course,' she said, ‘to welcome you both.'

‘I shall look forward to it.'

‘Oh yes, and my husband asked me to assure you that you'll not be inconvenienced for much longer. Your house will be ready by the end of the week,' and Madame de Romblay's eyes lingered on the books and journals that littered surfaces throughout the room, ‘then you'll have something to occupy you at last.'

Later, Suzanne stood at the window and watched as Madame de Romblay emerged from the ground floor of the hotel. The drawing-room still seemed disrupted by her presence. The air churned.

It was the doctor who appeared next, using his professional status as an excuse for a visit which was, Suzanne suspected, entirely social.

‘And how are you feeling, Madame?' He spun gracefully into the room on slippered feet, the tips of his moustache as sharp as the points of pencils, his hair slick with pomade.

She admitted to being somewhat tired.

‘A long voyage,' the doctor said. ‘A new climate.' He opened his hands and brought his shoulders up towards his ears. ‘It's only to be expected.'

‘And what do you prescribe, Doctor?'

‘Rest, Madame.'

‘I've been resting a good deal,' she told him.

‘Excellent.' The doctor nodded to himself. His sleek hair caught the light and flashed. ‘One must conserve one's energy. I insist that my wife rests for at least an hour every afternoon. She finds it most beneficial.'

Suzanne had met Florestine Bardou the day before, on the Calle Francesa. The two women stood on the street, their faces shaded by the fringed rims of their parasols. Florestine had been wearing a plain grey dress which constrasted most strangely with the luxuriant convolutions of her name, and she had the habit of lowering her eyes when she was speaking as if she were in the presence of someone far more important than herself. Suzane was beginning to understand how this might have come about.

‘Well,' the doctor was saying, ‘I just hope that life won't be too dull for
you. I hope that you will not become too,' and his eyes lifted to the ceiling as he searched for the word, ‘too jaded.'

She smiled. ‘The town doesn't seem to have had that effect on you, Doctor.'

‘No?' The doctor glowed. He was not a man to be dismayed by compliments.

That afternoon, as she followed his advice and rested for an hour, she heard the piano again, only this time it was not
Carmen,
but something that she did not know. It sounded like a ballad or a show-tune, she decided, as she closed her eyes. She dreamed of people dancing in a barn, with bales of hay stacked high against the walls, rush-torches casting shadows on a sawdust floor.

In the evening she looked for Rodrigo. She found him on the veranda, idly flicking dead flies off the tables with an ancient copy of
Le Temps.
When he saw her, his eyes brightened.

‘You have been reading?' he asked.

She smiled at his mangled, lisping French. ‘A little.' She let her eyes drift out over the Sea of Cortez. The water had absorbed the fading light, its surface the colour of woodsmoke, or hyacinth. It was after five o'clock. People would soon be arriving for their aperitifs.

She turned back to Rodrigo. ‘I thought I heard someone playing the piano this afternoon.'

‘Yes, Madame.'

‘Do you know who it is who plays?'

‘He is American.'

‘There's an American here?'

‘Yes. He plays the piano. Always in the afternoon.' Rodrigo smiled, and his sharp teeth showed. ‘He is a good man,' Rodrigo said, ‘but he is,' and he revolved one finger in the air beside his ear.

‘Mad?' she said.

‘Yes.' He grinned. ‘Mad.'

The following afternoon, towards three o'clock, Suzanne was woken from a light sleep by the opening bars of Schubert's ‘Marche Militaire'. She rose from the couch and crossed the room to her dressing-table. She had determined to seek out the American and make his acquaintance. It would be a welcome diversion; it would also be a chance to practise her English. She had only met one American before. In the summer of 1889 Buffalo Bill Cody had brought his Wild West Company to Paris as part of the
World Fair. During his stay Mr Cody had visited the Eiffel Tower and, after signing his name in the guest book, she and Théo, among others, had taken him to lunch. He had been a man of some considerable charm, despite his long hair and his peculiar clothes.

She made one final adjustment to her dress, then left the room. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, however, she hesitated; she did not advance into the lobby. The American was seated at the piano, less than twenty feet away. He was playing with such vigour that he remained entirely unaware of her. She drew back into the shadows.

Light flooded through the windows behind him. His face was hard to see. He sat with a straight back, his hat wedged down to his eyebrows, his fingers jumping on the keys. She thought she recognised him, and did not know from where. Then she remembered. He was the man who had lifted his hat to her on that first day. It was, in fact, the same hat. It was the hat that she had recognised, not the man.

She took another step backwards, the heel of her right shoe touching the bottom stair, her thumb set sideways against her mouth. The American reminded her of somebody from her childhood in Paris – the gardener, perhaps, the lamp-lighter or the postman. It was not the lowliness; quite the reverse. It was the unacknowledged stature. Not the proscribed role, but its secret counterpart. These had always been people she could trust, people who would not give her away. She remembered one with particular fondness, a man with a voice like logs hauled over rocks. She knew him as Monsieur Épaules. He was the water-carrier. Every morning he would tramp up the back stairs with two pails suspended across his shoulders on a wooden bar. The pails would be brimming with water, yet he would never spill a drop. The palms of his hands were so rough, it seemed as if he had been made from bits of trees. He wore a velveteen suit of darkest green, and he carried an earthy smell about with him; being close to him was not unlike being in a forest. She did not think that she had ever seen him out of breath, even though, in those days, they had lived in an apartment on the seventh floor. Perhaps he rested on every landing. Somehow she doubted it. She never found out whether Monsieur Épaules was his real name, or whether he had invented it for her – his own wry summary of his place in life, a statement of his limitations.