‘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?’
Chapter 7
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.’