Chapter 13
Though almost a week had passed since the outing on the water, Wilson was only now addressing himself to the task of sewing his map back into its hiding-place. Dusk had fallen on the town, and he could hear men returning from the afternoon shift. He sat in his window with a needle and thread, an oil-lamp close by. He was not much of a seamstress. He had already pricked his left thumb and two of his fingers. Each time it happened he held the wound away from him and saw how the tiny bulb of blood swelled and glistened in the soiled yellow light. Yet he pressed on. His spade, his rifle and his pickaxe stood on the far side of the room. They had the look of old acquaintances, propped against the wall like that, all in a row; they seemed to be watching with a kind of quiet amusement.
Such was his concentration as he bent over the jacket that he lost the feeling in his good leg. He stood up and, leaning his weight on his walking-stick, circled the room. The plaster would be coming off next week. He could hardly, wait. So much would suddenly become possible. He paused by the window. Stars glittered above the ridge, whole constellations; the tail of the scorpion curled down like a hook for a hat. He missed the sky above him as he slept. He missed that vast, overhanging silence. He even missed the irritations: sandflies, cactus thorns, the absence of shade. He sat down again. On with the jacket. Half the hem was done, a zigzag of stitches, a drunk’s walk down the lining. As he took up the needle he thought of the journey he would undertake with Suzanne. The day before, he had spent part of the evening in her company, and she had talked of little else.
They had been sitting on the veranda of the Hôtel de Paris, the only people there. A night of almost inconceivable stillness. They could have been imprisoned in a vault; gold would probably feel like this, he remembered thinking, as it lay in windowless rooms beneath a bank. He had smoked half a cigar to keep the mosquitoes away and when he let the smoke drift out between his teeth it hung in the air, almost without moving, like a flower that blooms at night. He let her excitement wash over him, never taking his eyes off her face except to attend to his cigar or glance along the veranda to where Rodrigo was standing, or not standing so much as leaning, slouching against the doorpost in his pale silk shirt, as if he had no bones to hold him up. Only when she paused for breath did he betray some uncertainty about the venture. It was two days’ ride across treacherous terrain, and he was not sure that a woman, any woman, would be up to it.
She absorbed the subtle compliment that he had paid her, but mocked what she called his ‘lack of faith’. He had disappointed her, she said.
‘After all,’ she went on, ‘we could always take longer. We could spend two nights under the stars. Or three.’
‘With the rattlers,’ he said, ‘and the polecats.’
‘Rattlers?’ She studied him sternly. He could see that she suspected him of inventing dangers now, and she would rather challenge his authority than own up to any fear.
‘Rattlesnakes, vipers, scorpions, tarantulas.’ He smiled into the night. ‘There’s even a poisonous tree. If you sleep under it, you can go blind. And there’s no water anywhere. None.’
‘So I will have to make the journey alone,’ she said. ‘Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’ Her lips had hardened in defiance, a sharp edge to their usual soft lines. And yet a smile lay below the surface, waiting to emerge.
She was determined to go at any cost, and he soon tired of trying to discourage her. It had, in any case, been a show of undeniable perversity on his part, since there was nothing he would rather do than ride with her to San Ignacio. He could imagine arriving above the town with an hour of light remaining in the sky. It was always a shock to look down on the oasis after crossing the lava fields and plains of basalt that lay to the east. It was so lush suddenly, so tropical. All those green trees clustered in the valley, all that green water. It did not belong. It could not be real. It could seem almost cruel.
He could still remember the last time that he visited the mission. There had been a party for the padre, Father Lutz, who was going up country the following morning. His Indian converts had danced the fandango until daybreak, their sweat spattering the floor of the barn like rain. Even the Father had danced, his cassock swirling around his bare ankles, a flagon of wine balanced just above his eyes. Father Lutz was the kind of missionary the Indians could understand. They were still dancing at nine o’clock in the morning when the Father rode out of town with a cool cloth wrapped around his head. He had drunk too much of the local wine. He could not even lift an arm to wave.
Wilson looked up from the jacket lining and out through the window. One star fell in a breathless curve. Perhaps he would dance the fandango with her. If she did not know it, he would teach it to her. First the wheeze of an accordion. Then a guitar picking up speed, the click and chatter of the castanets. Her skirts spinning across the dirt floor, one curl coming loose and dangling like a spring beside her ear. Air the colour of crushed pomegranate. Rush torches blazing. Laughter. In many of the songs there would be obscene references to cacti and volcanoes, but they would be in Spanish and she would not understand. If she asked him for the words, he would sweeten them in his translation.
And later in the night they would stroll among the palm groves, beside the still green waters of La Candelaria. He would sing the song that he had written, the song about gold. She would listen, and she would understand only half of it. That was the beauty of the song. Later still, they would bathe, perhaps. Cool their feet, which had been scorched by hours of dancing. Wash the sweat and smoke from their bodies. And he would turn his eyes away as she took off her clothes because his love was of a size that could embrace all denial. I don’t want the day to end. The words that she had uttered on the boat. It was his wish that she had voiced that afternoon. His one impossible wish. Impossible because unthinkable. Doubly impossible because it countered everything that he admired in her. Her faith, her purity, her love. If she were to betray those qualities and turn to him, then she would forfeit his respect. His love could only be denied or else consume itself. In her own sadness, though, she had not noticed his. He had been grateful for that. His sadness was something she must not be allowed to see. He would show her only joy.
A sharp pain arrowed through his thumb. He watched another ball of blood form on his skin. But he had almost closed the lining of his jacket. Only one more inch to go.
‘Don’t show it to anyone. Not to anyone.’
He saw his father leaning over him, a twist of black smoke rising through the glass shaft of the oil-lamp. The cords strung taut in his father’s neck, the skin draped over them like canvas. The map spread beneath his gaze. It had been laid out so many times, in so many different rooms, that it had become obedient; weights were no longer needed to hold the corners down.
‘Keep it sewed up in the jacket, sewed up good and tight. And keep your mouth sewed up likewise.’
His own mouth twisted away from his face when he spoke, like a steer fighting to escape the branding-iron. His eyes were always looking beyond the walls to some far horizon, some future time: the place where the map began, the moment when they entered it. But the place came no closer, and the time never arrived. All his father’s luck had drained away and only fear remained. He was convinced that they were in danger. If they made one move towards the gold they would be ambushed and robbed — probably murdered too.