He was greeted by Madame Bardou, the doctor’s wife, who showed him into a quiet room at the end of a corridor. She spoke to him in French and then, seeing that he had not understood, apologised in English.
‘It’s me who should apologise,’ Wilson said, ‘for troubling you at such an hour.’
She smiled quickly — not at him, but past him, somehow; he felt it dip over his shoulder, dart beyond him, the way birds do when they are trapped in houses. She lowered her head, and, murmuring an excuse, withdrew.
He let his eyes wander round the room. Blue silk lined the walls to elbow-height, giving way to panels of dark, lacquered wood. Here, in steel frames, hung an array of certificates, diplomas and commendations, almost too numerous to count. On the far wall there were three silver medals mounted in a glass case. Every medal and every piece of paper bore the name ‘Bardou’. It began to look as if the tales of his many accomplishments had not been exaggerated.
Wilson limped over to the window. They were an unlikely people, the French. In San Francisco, when he was a boy, he had spent his days on the waterfront with the white fog surrounding him and the world invisible, mysterious, beyond. Then the fog would thin and lift, and boats would emerge, ropes dripping, often as many as twenty in a single morning. He remembered French sailors jumping ship, whole crews sometimes. Let loose in a city that was new to them, they were as simple and eager as children; they seemed to expect gold to fall out of the sky like rain. Very few of them had any luck. They ended up opening restaurants or getting themselves killed. Small sad articles in the evening paper. And here they were again, in Mexico, with their hands waving on their wrists like meadow flowers in the wind and their silk umbrellas hoisted against the sun. A different breed of Frenchman, but no less conspicuous.
He heard a voice in the corridor and turned in time to see Bardou step into the room and close the door behind him. Bardou had shaved that morning, and his cheeks were pale and sleek. He wore a starched white shirt and a waistcoat tailored from some exquisite cloth — violets laid out upon a field of gold. His every movement was confident and precise. You could tell right away that he had spent many hours in the company of great men.
He joined Wilson by the window. Resting his hands on the sill, he filled his lungs with air and then turned back into the room.
‘Do you smell that, Monsieur?’
Wilson lifted his nose towards the ceiling and sniffed. Surely the doctor could not be referring to the odour of mule-dung and dead fish that seemed suddenly to have invaded the room?
‘The bread, Monsieur,’ the doctor said. ‘The bread.’
‘Ah,’ Wilson said. ‘The bread.’
There was a baker in town by the name of Jesús Pompano. For some time now, various members of the French community had been trying to teach Jesús Pompano how to bake bread. They had specific requirements. They wanted a loaf that was eighteen inches long. It had to be crusty on the outside, and soft and fragrant within. They even had a name for it: it was called, they said, a ‘baguette’.
Jesús Pompano was a Mexican, from the province of Arispé. He knew how to bake Mexican bread. He could turn out doughnuts too, and almond biscuits in the shape of angels, and sweet rolls dusted with cinnamon or sugar. But he had failed, so far, to produce anything that even remotely resembled a baguette. Wilson knew this from personal experience; he had been living off Jesús Pompano’s mistakes for weeks. ‘I hate to say this, Doctor,’ Wilson said, ‘but it smells a little burned to me.’
The doctor sighed. ‘To me too.’
‘I guess you’ll just have to be patient. I’m sure that Señor Pompano is doing his best.’
‘Patient?’ The doctor’s hands lifted into the air beside his ears and opened wide. Wilson held his breath but no egg hatched, no dove took wing. ‘We’ve been waiting for weeks,’ the doctor said. ‘Months. All we’re asking for is bread.’
Wilson had been present when Monsieur Morlaix, a mining-company executive, called in at the bakery to explain once again the notion of a baguette to Jesús Pompano. Morlaix had the face of an ageing cherub, his curly hair grey and thinning, his mouth set in a pout. He took a sheet of paper and drew on it. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That is a baguette.’ Jesús leaned down and studied the drawing. Then he stood back. ‘It looks like a sausage to me,’ he said. ‘Maybe you should try the butcher.’
Looking up, the doctor saw that Wilson was smiling.
‘But you didn’t come here to listen to my obsessions.’ The doctor moved away from the window and, holding a scented handkerchief beneath his nose, inhaled. ‘It’s your ankle, I take it.’
Wilson nodded. ‘I fell.’
The doctor motioned him to a chair and then knelt down in front of him. Wilson was ashamed of his feet, which were black with dirt from the journey up the hill, but the doctor did not seem to notice.
‘You’re American, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right. I was raised in San Francisco.’
The doctor was probing Wilson’s ankle with pale fingers. ‘I find it strange that you should leave a beautiful city like San Francisco for such,’ and his eyes lifted momentarily to the window, ‘for such barren shores as these.’
‘It’s only barren on the surface, Doctor.’
The doctor continued to probe the ankle, as if it might reveal to him the mystery of that last remark. ‘There’s copper here, of course,’ he mused, ‘and manganese — ’
‘It’s not copper that I’m talking about,’ Wilson blurted, ‘but gold.’
The doctor stared up at him. ‘I didn’t know that there was any gold.’
‘Well, it’s not exactly common knowledge.’
‘I see. Then you’re in no particular hurry.’
Wilson did not follow.
‘The injury, it’s not very serious,’ the doctor said. ‘Some torn ligaments, a little bruising. However, you would be wise to rest it.’
‘For how long?’
‘One month at least. Maybe two.’ He saw the look on Wilson’s face. ‘Unless, of course, you want to risk permanent damage. And the gold will wait, will it not?’
Wilson nodded gloomily. ‘I guess.’
The main ward in the hospital contained about thirty beds, at least half of which were occupied. All the patients, so far as Wilson could judge, were Indians. Each bed had been swathed in a fine gauze netting; the sick men looked like flies caught in some sticky spider’s web.
‘Are they all company employees?’ Wilson asked.
The doctor nodded. ‘Most of them.’
‘I hadn’t realised there were so many injuries.’
‘We’re doing what we can,’ the doctor said, ‘to improve the safety of the mines.’
Wilson recognised the change in tone, similar to the way in which a man reaches for his rifle when he sees a stranger about to trespass on his property. He resolved to keep more of his thoughts to himself.
At the far end of the ward the doctor held the door open for him, and they passed into the surgery. A long table with a veined marble top stood in the centre of the room. There was a stone sink in the corner, and a row of shelves that glittered with the tools of a doctor’s trade — scalpels, knives and saws. There was only one window, high in the wall.