He dropped to his knees beside her. Opening the lid of his tobacco tin, he held the shiny metal to her lips. The faintest smear of condensation formed. Now he was inches away from her he could see a weak pulse beating in her neck. He brought the water up to her mouth.
As he moistened her lips, her eyes opened. Rolled backwards, then seemed to focus. He felt that she could see him.
‘Suzanne?’
Her lips were scorched and split, dried blood in the ridges. But they had moved a fraction. He bent down close to her.
‘Who — ’ Her voice cracked.
‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Wilson.’
One of her hands curled in the dirt. Blood had blackened on her thumb. He had never imagined that she could be so injured.
‘You — ’
‘Slowly,’ he said. ‘Take it slow.’
His ear grazed her lips.
‘You came — ’
His eyes drifted, blurred.
Her face turned sideways; she was looking along the top of the ground. ‘I had so much love in me,’ she whispered, ‘and no one wanted it.’
He lowered his head. His tears fell among hot cinders.
Chapter 17
Suzanne could see a woman standing at the water’s edge. The woman wore nothing but a skirt of black pearls. The water washed across her feet and then withdrew. The woman smiled. A slow smile, a smile with pure pleasure in it. She knew where the power of life ended and the power of death began. She had drawn the line.
Suzanne lifted an arm to wave but her hand stayed motionless in the air beside her ear. She did not call out, not yet. She just waited, knowing it would not be long.
Slowly. Take it slow.
Life, she comes from nowhere. Behind, above, below. Some place our eyes are not looking at. Death, she walks right up to us. We see her coming. Every step, every sway of the hips. Every inch of the way. Death, she wears a black pearl skirt.
Suzanne opened her eyes. Until she opened them she had not known that they were closed. It was like having a choice. Two worlds. One on this side, one on the other. Her eyelids were the border, were the door. The sky was darkest blue in front of her. Then something landed on her face and made her blink. Not pearls, though almost as miraculous.
Rain.
Beads of it dropping all over her skin, her dress, the ground. Some necklace had broken up above. And the sky still darkest blue, and not a cloud in it.
The woman turned her face and smiled in recognition. A smile that said, One of our own. Turned and walked towards her, wrists knocking against her hips, hips swaying lazily. That smile. A skirt that swayed and clicked. The power of life.
Her feet left no prints on the sand.
She was thirteen and running in the long grass. The woods outside the town. That green smell of rain on leaves, rain on the trunks of trees. That hard sound, as if the rain were solid — not water falling from the sky, but coins or buttons. God’s purse, God’s sewing basket. Her friend ran beside her, and everything bad had been undone. All life handed back, all the simple joys released. The rain poured off her arms and legs, and she looked down at herself, among green leaves, among black trunks of trees. She looked as if she had been polished. She looked like something valuable. To be treasured. Something that would last for ever.
Drink it up. All up. It will keep you strong.
A man kneeling beside her. She knew him. He lifted his hat to her and wiped his hand on his trousers before he greeted her. He had come to take her to the cool green waters. She smiled behind her lips. It could not be far now. They were almost there.
Everything settling, everything arranged. All movements gradually diminishing. Even the rain seemed to be touching her more gently now, like the light from distant stars.
Her husband, whom she would always love.
She wanted to say something about happiness, such happiness as she had known. Her lips moved, came as close to words as they could. Which was not even close. The air stood still in her throat. Her tongue not even there.
She blessed him in his absence. She blessed him. He had never been anything less than kind.
So. Are you happy now?
The sky was darkest blue in front of her. The black pearls sown and scattered on the land. This knowledge had been revealed to her. A knowledge that would grow in her. The knowledge of her power.
The woman walked towards her, hips shifting lazily. Somebody who wanted her.
One of our own.
Chapter 18
The first rain in months. In years. And out of a clear heaven too. Wilson tipped his head back, felt it beat against his forehead, eyelids, teeth.
He had heard that this could happen. A chubasco, they called it. Canyons became rivers. Coyotes drowned; whole settlements were swept away. And afterwards a spring would come. A spring that was momentary, improvised. The barren landscape bristled with shoots and blossoms. The desert would turn green. That was what they said. He had listened but he had never known quite what to believe. Maybe it was no more than a traveller’s tale, the kind of lie his father used to tell.
But here it was, all round him. And not just drizzle either. Sheets of it between him and everything. Loud bucketfuls tumbling out of the sky. The mule had tipped her head to one side and she was snapping at the rain with her chipped teeth, the way a cat snaps at a blade of grass.
And then it stopped. As suddenly as it had started. The sky still clear above, the sky still blue. Before he had time to fill his canisters. Before he could even take his hat off and turn it upside-down. He listened to the land settling into its new shape. Creaking as the water ran over it and into it. It was already vanishing. Soon there would be no evidence that it had rained at all, and he would be another traveller with a tall tale.
He looked at Suzanne. Her face streaked with dust that had turned to mud, her blonde ringlets matted.
She was whispering something. He had to bend down, put his ear close to her mouth.
‘Water — ’
‘You want some water?’
She shook her head. ‘Green — ’
‘Green? Green what?’ He bent still closer. His ear grazed her lips.
She tried to swallow. ‘Green water — ’ Her chin lifted. ‘Ka — ’ She could not say it. All those syllables. Then her voice found its way clear. ‘You promised.’
He washed her face and neck with torn-off pieces of her own damp dress, then he threaded his hands beneath her body and carried her over to the mule. As he heaved her up into the saddle, her head fell back against his sleeve. He tried to coax a little water through her lips, but her throat was too swollen. It just spilled out again.
He climbed into the saddle in front of her. The mule staggered. He fitted his hand against the muscle of the mule’s shoulder. Spoke a few words into her ear. When she had found her balance, he lashed Suzanne to his back with a length of rope that circled them three times. Then he placed her arms around his waist. He had to keep her from slipping sideways, falling to the ground.
She was still trying to say the name.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I heard you.
‘I understand,’ he said.
He thought of the mission church, solid as the land itself, the masonry tinged with pink. He could remember sitting in the town square, beneath an Indian laurel tree. That huge vault of foliage. One of many men, just sitting. Relishing the shade. Father Lutz had offered him a pomegranate. ‘It’s from my garden.’ He could still taste that fruit, its jewelled pieces sweetened by the volcanic soil in which it had grown. He had stayed in a whitewashed room. Stone floors, the walls bare, the furniture carved from some dark wood he did not know. At dusk he had walked among the palms, beside still waters. He remembered how it had felt to be there. His thoughts seemed blessed. His life became a psalm.