‘You’re very privileged,’ Montoya told her.
She asked him why.
‘It was a manta ray. You don’t often see them.’
He joined her at the window. They both stared through the glass at a world that now seemed empty, chilling. As if all life had fled.
He told her of the local fishermen’s beliefs. Rays stood guard over the oyster beds. They were feared by anyone who had ever dived for pearls. They could measure more than fifteen feet across, and were known for their guile and their ferocity. They would appear from nowhere and hover in the water above a diver, cutting his supply of sunlight out. Plunged in sudden darkness, the diver lost his bearings. Made blindly for the surface. But the ray would be lying in wait. It would wrap the diver in its powerful folds and crush the life out of his body. Some said it could devour a man with its horned beak. Others said that it killed for the joy of it and that, when the struggle was over, it simply left the corpse to other creatures of the deep. One thing was certain: a man who came across a manta ray was unlikely to be seen again.
She had been shuddering at the thought of being smothered in those cold blankets of flesh, and that phrase of his, killed for the joy of it, muttered like an incantation on the scene, and she had not noticed how he had moved nearer to her. Suddenly he was standing much too close. And had taken her hand and drawn it up towards his mouth. And was kissing the inside of her wrist, the place where excitement could be measured, the place where her life beat. Pulling away from him, she caught her dress on a handle and the sleeve tore. He took one step towards her, and then stopped. His eyes had darkened. She stood facing him, her back against the cold curve of the wall. Such fury possessed her that she was quite incapable of speech.
He reached up, touched a bright-red lever. ‘I could let the water in,’ he said, ‘and drown us both.’
It did not matter to him that he would be drowning his crew as well. Horses, men — all forms of life could be disposed of. Only he existed, and his love for her. There was no other world.
‘If you lay another hand on me,’ she said slowly, ‘I will see that you are whipped.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Like a dog,’ she added. She did not know where she had found the words.
He had been smiling, but then she saw some nerve give way. His eyes lightened, and he moved to the far side of the chamber, his chin turned in towards his shoulder.
‘All I ask is that you come away with me — ’
Her voice cut into his. ‘Turn the ship round. Take me back.’
‘If you could only see — ’
‘Take me back,’ she said. ‘This instant.’
He left the observation room, ducking through the narrow steel doorway. She was aware of having to sustain her fury and sustain it visibly, otherwise she might never leave this place.
Hours seemed to pass, with nothing happening. She turned round once, saw two men toiling over a wheel.
She put her face close to the window. At last a glimpse of sunlight, pure and undiluted. A rush of foam, fountaining against the glass. The torn edge of a wave. But she could not allow herself too much relief. Not until she stood on solid ground. She held her fury tight, a valuable possession, something nobody could take from her.
Footsteps rang on the metal floor behind her, and she knew that it was Montoya who had entered.
‘Your husband,’ she heard him say.
She did not look up. ‘What about my husband?’
‘He’s old.’ Montoya stared out through the window, smiling as the town came into view. ‘Soon he’ll be dead.’
She did not understand what he intended. Though she could see his horse rear back in its traces, a bullet driven deep into its brain. She could see the horse crumple on the ground. She could see its hind legs twitching and the creeping pool of blood.
‘And then,’ he said, ‘I’ll be waiting.’
She tried to keep her voice steady. ‘As soon as we get back, I am going to write to the Mexican Government,’ she said, ‘and have you removed.’
His smile remained. ‘I love you. You do not know how much.’
Through the foaming glass she saw the two arms of the harbour reach out to embrace the craft. It would not be long, she thought, before they were moored against the south quay. It would not be long at all.
Chapter 7
‘Wilson?’
He had heard her voice so many times. Shifting on his bed of stones at dawn. At midday, as silence settled like the wings of vultures on the land. At dusk too, in the crackle of a fire.
The ache that rose through him split him clean in two. He remembered the epileptic miner and his vision of a painted man. Later that night Pablo had mentioned some pictures on a cave wall a few miles north of town. Tall men. Each one painted in the way the epileptic had described. Half their bodies red, half black. And Pablo had told him why. Half of you belonged to this world, he said, half to the next. But maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe it was love that had done it. Maybe love had cut them down the middle.
‘Wilson? Is that you?’
He turned in his saddle. She stood below him in a lemon dress whose hem caressed the dust. Her face tilted upwards in expectation, her green eyes shining from beneath the shadow of her parasol.
But he could not look at her too closely. Instead he sent a swift glance looping across the iron rooftops of the town. And spoke away from her.
‘Did I miss much?’
She smiled up at him. ‘Only me, I hope.’
He allowed her this.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
He lifted an arm and pointed towards the graveyard. ‘South of here,’ he said, ‘then west.’
‘Were you successful?’
‘No.’ He stared down at his hands. The cracked leather of the reins chafed against the inside of his fingers. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I did find something.’
He reached into the saddlebag behind him. Took out a small parcel wrapped in cloth. And handed it to her.
‘For me?’
He nodded. ‘Open it.’
She begun to unwrap the parcel — carefully, as if even the rags were valuable. And now that she had turned her attention somewhere else he could look at her. He was surprised by what he saw. A brittleness. Something that could give at any moment. Like the clay that the Indians had to dig through for the copper. You could crumble her between finger and thumb.
‘It’s beautiful.’
She held up the piece of turquoise that he had given her. He had thought of her as soon as he found it. Some quality it had, she had it too. Turquoise was just a name for that place between blue and green. Close as you could get with something as clumsy as a word. He saw her the same way. Unnameable, inaccessible, unique.
Her eyes lifted the colour of the stone into her face.
‘Why have you been avoiding me?’ she said.
He denied it.
‘You have,’ she said. ‘You’ve been avoiding me.’
‘I’ve been away, that’s all.’
She was shaking her head. ‘You’ve never lied to me before. Don’t lie to me now.’ Something in her was crumbling, breaking up; she wrung her hands. She was the only person he had ever seen who actually wrung their hands.
He pointed at the turquoise, as if it were evidence of his good faith, but no words came to him. His hand faltered, moved up, adjusted the brim of his hat.
‘It was that letter,’ she said, ‘wasn’t it.’
He felt foolish, perched above her, looking down. A dumb man on a lame mule. He wished that he had never returned.
‘It shocked you.’
Then he was lying on his back. He thought he must have fallen from the saddle, but, looking up, he saw no mule, no sky. Just a ceiling. He was lying on his hotel bed. Fifty yards from where the dream had taken place.