‘What is it, Jesús?’
‘I’ve got to hide.’
‘Hide? Who from?’
‘Take a look outside.’
Wilson went to the window. Something shiny was moving up the street. Something that flashed and glittered. He saw a hat, two legs. A man then. But not just any man. A man who looked as if he had been wrapped in sunlight.
The doctor.
He faced back into the room. ‘I thought you had it all worked out, what with the new oven and your Austrian techniques and everything.’
The baker put his head in his hands. ‘My mother died.’
Thinking some tragedy had befallen the Pompano family, Wilson brought the second chair in from the balcony and sat down beside his friend.
‘I didn’t know you had a mother,’ he said. ‘I mean, you have never spoken of her.’
The baker’s shoulders twitched once, twitched again. They began to shake. Wilson could not tell whether the baker was laughing or crying. Then Jesús threw his head back, and there could be no doubt. His laughter swelled, and filled the room. He slapped his thighs; flour billowed into the air. Both men began to cough.
‘Wilson,’ Jesús said, ‘you’re a fool.’
Wilson stared at Jesús blankly. Hiding in doorways, laughing at the death of his mother, insulting his friends. Had the baker lost his mind?
‘Don’t you know anything about bread?’ Jesús said.
Wilson had to admit that his knowledge was limited.
Jesús proceeded to define a mother for him. A mother was a spontaneous lactic fermentation informed by wild yeasts, otherwise known as a leaven. It was achieved by mixing flour and water in a bowl and leaving the mixture to mature. A mother had to be added to each day — another handful of flour, a little more water. A mother had to be nurtured and developed. When you came to make a loaf of bread you used some fresh leaven in combination with some of the original. A mother lay at the heart of all good bread. A mother was fundamental, irreplaceable. Without a mother, you could do nothing.
‘It was some lecture,’ Wilson said, turning to Suzanne.
Her melancholy had lifted, leaving her face clear and untroubled in the sunlight. All her keenness had returned.
‘How did the mother die?’
He smiled. ‘That was my next question.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jesús said.
‘Well, how does a mother usually die?’
‘One of two ways. It has to be kept at a constant temperature, say between seventy-five and eighty-five degrees. If it gets too cold, it dies. But can you imagine it getting too cold in a town like this?’ Jesús let out a mirthless chuckle. ‘It also dies if you don’t add to it each day. It gets too sour. But I could’ve sworn I added to it. I do it religiously.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘Start again, from the beginning. I’ve got no other choice.’
The long silence that followed this pronouncement made the knock on the door seem all the louder. Three knocks, each one separate, abrupt, demanding. A voice called from the landing.
‘Monsieur Pharaoh?’
The baker looked towards the door. The flesh seemed to have slipped an inch on his face. ‘The doctor?’
Wilson nodded. He scanned the room. There was no place to hide save underneath the bed. The gap between the floorboards and the springs was negligible, and the baker was not a small man. But there was nowhere else.
‘Monsieur Pharaoh?’ Another triple knock. ‘It is I. Dr Bardou.’
TakingJesús by the sleeve, Wilson pointed under the bed. Jesús nodded dismally. He dropped to his knees and began to insert himself into the gap. He was whispering the most terrible blasphemies against the doctor.
Wilson opened the door, and the doctor slid past him with the smoothness of a ball of lard in a heated skillet. He was wearing a waistcoat of raspberry, peppermint and gold, and his hair, slick with pomade, mirrored the brilliance of his patent-leather shoes. He looked almost supernatural against the decaying plaster of the walls.
‘I was looking for Monsieur Pompano, but he is not at home. So I came to see you, Monsieur Pharaoh. My patient. How is the foot? You are resting it?’ Not a breath was taken between sentences, and his eyes darted about the room. He seemed thrilled to have penetrated this new territory.
‘Won’t you sit down, Doctor?’ Wilson said, hoping that he would not notice the light dusting of flour on the seat.
The doctor’s hand polished at the air. ‘No, no, Monsieur Pharaoh. Thank you. I cannot stay.’ Then his head dipped sharply to one side. ‘But I can smell bread. No, it’s flour. Am I right, Monsieur Pharaoh?’ He had danced forwards and was balanced on the ball of one foot, his dark eyes searching Wilson’s face, one hand held out flat, palm uppermost, like a tray for drinks.
‘The baker was here this morning,’ Wilson said, ‘to give me the sad news.’
‘Sad news? What sad news?’
‘His mother has died.’
‘Oh, but I am sorry. Yes, look.’ And he folded in half, his eyes not six inches from the boards. ‘There is some flour on the floor.’ He dabbed the white dust with one finger and examined it. If he had looked sideways at that moment he would have seen a man under the bed. ‘But his mother died, you say? That is terrible.’
Terrible indeed, thought Wilson, as he watched the doctor straighten up. Especially for you, Monsieur.
‘Poor Jesús,’ Suzanne said, though she was laughing. ‘He was under the bed the whole time?’
Wilson nodded. ‘When the doctor had gone, it took him ten minutes to extract himself. “I’ve been breathing cockroaches and dust for half an hour,” he said. “By Christ, if I’m not tempted to put a few new ingredients in the doctor’s beloved bread.’”
‘He wouldn’t,’ Suzanne said.
Wilson laughed. ‘He might.’
Namu called from the stern and pointed towards the coast. The land had flattened out; they could see a few thatch huts, some palm trees, a strip of volcanic sand.
‘San Bruno,’ Wilson told Suzanne. ‘People say that a tribe of Amazon women lived there once, but there’s no real proof, only stories that were handed down.’ He stared towards the shore, its charcoal sand, the curved prows of canoes. ‘It’s just a fishing village now.’
Chapter 10
Suzanne listened carefully as Wilson described the place that they were heading for. It lay just to the south of a sandbank that was almost a mile long. Each morning shoals of small fish swam through a channel at the southern tip, which made it a popular feeding-ground for bigger fish. If they anchored above the channel, Wilson explained, they would stand a good chance of catching bonita or cabrilla or yellowtail.
She interrupted him. ‘But it’s all sea. How do we know when we’ve arrived?’
Wilson asked Namu, and then translated the fisherman’s reply for her. There were three different marks on the land, Namu said. When all three lined up in a formation that he recognised, then he knew he was there. He lifted his shoulders, grinned.
She watched Namu as he watched the land, and thought she saw the moment when the landmarks fell into place because his wide eyes sharpened at the corners. Soon afterwards he stood up and began to furl the sail. Next he had to fix their position on the surface with his anchor, a solid lump of rusting metal. It looked more like part of an engine than an anchor, and she said as much to Wilson.
‘It is part of an engine,’ he said.
There were rocks on the ocean bed below, he told her. If they used a traditional anchor, the kind with a straight piece and a smiling piece, it would more than likely just get stuck.