‘I trod in some shit before I started work.’ Jesús took one hand off the bar and spread his fingers in the air. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s only the French, isn’t it.’
Wilson was glad to see that the baker’s sense of humour had returned. This certainly was a new Jesús.
The only shadow on the day was cast by Señor José Ramón, the customs officer. Ramón toured El Pueblo a couple of times a week, in search of bribes. His trouser pockets were the deepest in town, but still his mother had to fit them with extensions every year. He appeared on the threshold of the bakery, his hands clasped behind his back. Blue-tinted glasses hid his eyes.
‘You got anything for me?’
His hands surfaced and caressed each other. He moistened his lips. Like many corrupt and powerful men, José Ramón had an almost inexhaustible appetite for cake.
Jesús climbed out of his trough and reached behind the counter. He handed Ramón a brown paper bag. Ramón opened it, and peered inside. He just kept peering down until Jesús reached behind him once again and gathered a handful of sugar buns. Ramón held the bag out. Jesús dropped them in.
Ramón nodded and turned towards the door.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘American. You want to change some dollar? The rate is good.’ He bared his teeth in a predatory smile.
‘I haven’t got any dollar.’
Ramón laughed. ‘A poor American. Now that’s something.’
He was still chuckling when he left the bakery and set off down the street. His pockets were so fat with bribes and sweeteners, he had to swing his weight from one leg to the other; it was the only way he could achieve momentum.
Pablo nodded at the description.
‘Ramón more or less runs the town,’ he said. ‘This part of it, at least. He’s set an import duty of two hundred per cent. That’s on all imported goods. Flour, fruit — you name it. Just plucked the figure out of the air. If you don’t pay it, the goods are held in the warehouse. Guarded by a couple of Montoya’s men. They’re in on it too. If Ramón likes you, though, and you slip him a little something every once in a while, then he only charges you fifty per cent.’
‘A little something?’ Wilson could still see that brown paper bag, bulging with cakes and pastries.
‘Well,’ Pablo said, ‘that’s what he calls it.’
Wilson looked at his watch. It was time to hitch a ride up to Frenchtown. He hoisted himself to his feet and wedged his crutches under his arms.
‘Vows of silence,’ Pablo said.
Wilson turned in the doorway. ‘What?’
‘That word you were trying to think of,’ Pablo said. ‘It’s vows of silence.’
On his way down Avenida Cobre, Wilson heard voices — a low muttering, a hum of anticipation. Half the population of El Pueblo had gathered in the square outside the Hotel La Playa. Wilson caught sight of Luis Fernández, Pablo’s younger brother, and asked him what was happening. The first piece of the church was about to be lifted into place, Luis said. Some kind of arch. Wilson could see more than a dozen Indians crowding round a winch, under the anxious supervision of the man he now knew to be Suzanne’s husband. He pressed closer, leaned one shoulder against the wall of the hotel.
The arch lay flat on the ground, its feet loosely bolted into concrete foundations. Cables had been fastened to the other end, some linked to the winch, some lying unattached. A long line of Indians waited at the apex. Wilson watched as they bent down, inserting their hands beneath the structure. Then, on a signal from Monsieur Valence, they straightened up. The arch rose a foot into the air. The Frenchman shouted another command. The winch let out a creak; the cables tightened. The arch began to lift. The Indians supported it, their chins tucked into their chests, their arms stretching above their heads. Then it was out of reach, and all they could do was stand beneath it staring upwards as the cables took the strain.
As the arch lifted, framing the houses beyond it and the clear blue sky above, Wilson began to get an idea of its size and shape. It was at least forty feet high, and built entirely from interlocking pieces of grey metal. He remembered Suzanne telling him about the number of component parts involved. Two thousand and something, she had said. Now he could understand it. The arch had been constructed in six sections, and each section was made up of — he counted — twenty-four pieces. The two sections that met to form the apex and the two at the base were straight. Only the two sections that created the actual shape of the arch were curved. He saw how cleverly the structure had been designed, so as to use the least number of curved pieces; they would be more difficult to make, and more expensive.
Halfway up into the sky, the arch suddenly slipped back. Several of the Indians scattered, fearing they might be crushed. But Valence shouted a command and the arch slipped no further. It put Wilson in mind of trying to land a big fish: it seemed to require the same skills, that balance of strength and gentleness, that sureness of touch. He watched closely as the men bent to the handle of the winch and the arch rose up again. This time there were no false moves.
Once the arch stood upright, the cables that trailed from its apex were gathered up and fastened to rings in the ground. Men darted to the base and bolted the metal feet into position. Someone let off a firecracker. People began to shout and clap. Valence stood back with his arms folded, and his face tilted upwards in what appeared to be a private moment of celebration — pride mingled with relief.
Through the crowd, Wilson caught a glimpse of Mama Vum Buá. She stood out from those around her; she shared none of their amusement, their jubilation. Her chin was lowered, and she peered at the archway through her eyebrows. She seemed dissatisfied, suspicious, and Wilson thought he knew why. This structure from across the sea, half metal and half air, was not her idea of a church. She did not recognise it yet. She was still waiting for her enemy to show its face.
Smiling, Wilson moved off down Avenida Manganeso. It was about time the town had a church of its own. When he first arrived in San Francisco with his parents, there had been no church. His mother had never forgiven his father for that. Though he could only have been three years old, he could remember the night she turned on his father, rain beating against the canvas roof, the candle shivering. He could not remember what she had said, only the sound of her voice. He heard the sound again years later, felling redwoods in Oregon. The moment when a tree admits that it can no longer stand. The agony and indignation as something strong begins to break.
She had married Wilson’s father, Arthur Pharaoh, believing him to be a dealer in horses when, in fact, he was nothing more than a drifter, an opportunist, even, at times, a thief. The breadth of his shoulders and the energy that crackled in his heels had drawn her to him, but they only told part of the truth. He was an edgy, brittle man; he turned this way and that, like a branch caught in rapids. She had wanted to settle on the eastern seaboard, but he yearned for the West, those undiscovered places where life had yet to take shape, and she had, in the end, and against her better judgement, consented. During their journey across the country she became pregnant, an event which Arthur seized on with gratitude, claiming that it was the Lord’s blessing from above and proof that the adventure that they had embarked upon together would bear fruit. It would do nothing of the kind, of course. No sooner had they reached San Francisco than he was leaving again, for the mountains this time, in search of gold. His wife and child were left to fend for themselves in a town where the winter rains had begun, where people lived in tents made out of flour-sacks, where the streets became so thick with mud that horses had been known to drown. With her hair scraped close to her scalp and her teeth already loose in her head, Constance Pharaoh submitted to yet another cruel awakening. She felt herself surrounded by heathens, murderers and Chinamen, and she took to carrying a bottle of carbolic acid with her whenever she ventured out; she said it protected her against disease and sin. In the absence of any church she built a kind of chapel inside the walls of her own skin, a place that would be hers alone to govern, a place where she would be free from all deceit. She could not keep her husband, but she could keep God. He, at least, would not abandon her.