‘And she’s a friend of yours,’ he said, ‘this prostitute?’
Wilson demurred. ‘More of an acquaintance.’
‘An acquaintance?’ Monsieur de Romblay smiled. ‘In France, of course, it’s an art, to be accomplished in love.’
‘In America,’ Wilson said, ‘we don’t generally talk about it.’
He had to keep love in mind, though, as he laboured: love’s requirements, love’s demands. He cut stairs that would be wide enough for any drunken sailor’s boot. He reinforced the handrail; it would not give, even if someone leaned against it, vomiting. And the balcony could take the weight of half a dozen men with ease (for those nights when La Huesuda entertained the garrison).
She still could not believe it. Most days she walked into the middle of the street and stood there staring up, her hands spread on her hips, jaw dangling. Then, as she got used to the idea, even thrilled by it, she began to reward him with glimpses of her skinny body; robes fell open by mistake — or sometimes she would just forget to dress. These were the favours that Pablo had predicted. When Wilson politely turned her down, she laughed. ‘What’s the matter, American? Afraid you might break something else?’
From where he was working, two storeys up, he could watch her go about her business. Out along the waterfront, with her wishbone legs and her eyes like avocado skins gone bad. One hand thrown up in front of her, the fingers splayed, her body tilted at the waist, she would taunt the crews of ships that lay moored along the quay, then swirl away, her bones rolling and jumping inside her dress. La Huesuda.
‘So tell me, Wilson. What kind of women do you like?’ Suzanne’s voice. Softened by white wine from underneath the house.
‘You, Suzanne.’ He must have blushed.
He looked inland, towards the ruined church. Its fire-blackened walls, its windows emptied of their glass.
‘You.’
A slow smile had spread across her face. ‘You’re a gentleman,’ she said. ‘Really. You are.’
He shook his head. She thought that he had seen her question as a chance to pay her a compliment, and she had been genuinely flattered by what he had said. She had not realised. It was not a compliment; it was a declaration. It was the torture he had inadvertently devised for himself, that he could never allow her to understand him.
At the time, in the impotence of knowing that he loved her, it had frustrated him. Now, though, he could only see her simple absence of resentment, a touching gratitude. Life had been too watery, too grudging — too meagre altogether. He stared at the blackened walls, the spire leaning to one side. If he had been her husband, he would have built a church, not for some remote god, but for her, in her honour, to her glory, and would have considered it no blasphemy at all.
He put in long hours on La Huesuda’s house. His hands blistered and then hardened. He could feel his body strengthening. The details gave him pleasure: a dovetail joint, an edge planed level. The steps climbed steadily heavenward.
Some mornings Jesús would stop by with a baguette. When Wilson snapped the bread in half, steam drifted upwards from the soft interior. Other times the Vum Buá girls would visit. They had not forgotten his story, but he was still lost for an ending. One day they came to him with a proposaclass="underline" suppose the beautiful woman decided to marry the poor man, not for money or for jewels, but simply because he made her happy. Wilson thought this an admirable solution. The girls promptly invented a new game: the wedding. Wilson had to be the poor man, of course, and he was told to kneel on the ground throughout the ceremony. The girls took it in turns to be the beautiful woman, standing at his shoulder. First always played the priest, since only she knew the words. For confetti the bridesmaids used sawdust, which there was plenty of. In the middle of one wedding, just at the moment when the rings were being exchanged, long shadows fell across the bride and groom. Still on his knees, Wilson looked round. La Huesuda’s brothers stared down at him, their foreheads dented in the sunlight. The girls scattered; Wilson reached slowly backwards for a hammer. But the two faces opened, and rows of stained teeth showed. ‘No hard feelings, mister.’
July slipped by, and his thoughts began to move northwards. There was a kind of nostalgia lodged in the wood itself. The scent that it released into his nostrils as he worked put him in mind of Upper California. He could see forests of fir trees climbing the slopes behind a town, the tip of each tree sharp, the sweep of the forest even in the glittering fall light. He could hear the deep tolling of the surf at night as the ocean rolled shorewards, and the absolute silence between each breaking wave. He could feel the tug of the land in his blood.
Wilson sat on the doctor’s veranda sipping tea from a china cup. When he had told Bardou, the day before, that he would soon be leaving (Monsieur de Romblay had secured him passage on a steamer bound for San Diego), the doctor had insisted on a full medical examination. Wilson had spent most of that afternoon reclining on a bed in the surgery while the doctor peered into his throat, tapped his kneecaps, scrutinised his pupils, measured his pulse, took his temperature and listened to his chest. After almost an hour, Bardou stood back. His hair, his waistcoat and his teeth conspired in an effortless display of brilliance.
‘You are healthy,’ he declared. ‘You have my permission to leave town.’
Wilson helped himself to another slice of lemon sponge, then turned to Madame Bardou. She was pouring him a second cup of the almond infusion which, according to the doctor, was not only refreshing, but extremely beneficial to the liver.
‘This cake is delicious,’ he said.
Madame Bardou’s wide forehead lowered. Her smile had scarcely reached her lips before it was gone.
The doctor echoed Wilson’s compliment, then steered the conversation from cake to bread. Since Señor Pompano had mastered the baguette, the doctor’s life had become, he said, a model of contentment. In fact, things were looking up generally. Only yesterday, five of his waistcoats had been recovered. In poor condition, admittedly, but what could you expect when Indians had worn them into battle? Wilson asked him what he proposed to do with the waistcoats.
The doctor did not hesitate. ‘I will frame them.’
When Wilson suggested this might be a little gruesome, the doctor disagreed. He argued that it was his duty to preserve the waistcoats.
‘After all,’ he said, tilting his face towards Wilson, the tips of his fingers joined beneath his chin, ‘they have become a part of history, have they not?’
Wilson pictured the brocade. Punctured, ribboned, stained with blood. The brutal evidence of musket-shot and sabre-blades. Men had believed in that glittering cloth. It had betrayed them. Maybe the doctor was right. It was a kind of lesson. History.
He shifted on his chair. ‘That reminds me,’ he said. And, reaching into his pocket, he took out a piece of malachite.
Looking at the crystal, he had to smile. He could remember how the gold had looked when he first found it. Large pieces, in a perfectly smooth, pure state. Stream-rounded, almost. He had forgotten about it until the day he was discharged from hospital and he was handed his possessions. When he undid the straps on his knapsack and reached inside, his hand emerged with a piece of malachite. He reached inside again. Some copper ore. He shook the contents of his knapsack out on the hospital veranda and sat back on his heels. At first he thought he had been robbed — but what thief would have bothered to replace gold with rocks, let alone with malachite and copper? Besides, the nurse assured him that his possessions had been kept under lock and key. No, his eyes had played a trick on him that afternoon. The sun, slanting low across the desert, had lit both the crystals and the ore with a deceitful yellow glow. Some would make fine beads if they were carved and drilled. Others would turn the flames of a fire green. But they were not what his father had been looking for.