She had been winding up more lamps while she talked, little ones whose clockwork hummed rather than clunked, setting them alongside our coffee, and one in the empty pineapple bowl. ‘Nearly walked off the cliff.’
‘Oh.’ I found myself doing what I’d always hated seeing other people do in China: glancing at Raphael for a secondary translation. The words made grammatical sense, but the undersense was hard to catch. Chinese tea farmers had always looked at my interpreter that way, it being broadly and well known that even quite fluent white men were nonetheless mad and not to be trusted with things like numbers and adding. They had used him like a cultural limbeck through which to filter everything I said, even though we had all been speaking Chinese.
Raphael didn’t see, though, because he didn’t look up.
‘Do you not have markayuq in England?’ she said.
‘No. Or I don’t think so.’
‘That’s unlucky,’ she said. ‘Perhaps they had to leave.’
Raphael was still watching the rainbow bubbles in his coffee and I felt sorry. To live wading through little myths and trying to hold markayuq and saints together in overlay for a congregation who thought statues lived because nobody could possibly put together stone like that, when he must have known that somewhere out across the sea was Rome, must have seen etchings of the Vatican – it was bleak.
‘But what happened to your leg?’ Inti said, motioning at my cane with her own cup.
‘Shrapnel.’
‘Are you in the army then?’
‘No, no, I’m a gardener. It was just an accident.’
‘Gives you trouble?’
‘Yes. But the doctors at home say there’s nothing much they can . . .’ I tried to check with Raphael again, but he didn’t help.
‘Oh, no, don’t be silly. Measure round above where it hurts, mark the place with your finger.’ She held out a length of red string.
‘Pardon?’
‘Do as I say. This is the biscuit of co-operation,’ she added, setting a biscuit down on the counter by my cup. I laughed and she winked. ‘Oh, Ra-cha,’ she said when I took the string. ‘Upstairs is getting a bit, you know, and I was wondering . . .’
‘I was going to ask . . .’ Raphael disappeared inside again and left me none the wiser.
She lifted her eyebrows at me. ‘Measure?’
I did and gave the string back to her with my nails pinched over the right place. She took it folded there and flicked a knot into it one-handed. She smiled.
‘Soon have you sorted out.’
‘In . . . what way, exactly?’
‘Oh, for a manacle. It helps with bones, you know?’ She held her arms out to show me the wooden bands around her wrists. They were whitewood, carved in forest patterns. ‘Grow you tall, if you wear them when you’re little, help with strain when you’re older.’
‘How does wood help?’
‘It’s a sort of magic. Anyway, come in, come and see the shop properly. Bring your coffee. I only make coffee so people will sit here and I can persuade them to buy things,’ she added, grinning. ‘It’s a lot of bother, with the goat, but it works out overall.’
‘Inti,’ Raphael’s voice said from somewhere above us. As I ducked in through the trapezium-shaped door, I passed a steep ladder that led up to a loft like the one in the church. The rungs to about head height were hung with dry laundry. Raphael had nudged things aside to make a narrow way up through the middle. ‘There are two black guinea pigs up here.’
‘I’m selling them to the doctor,’ she called ‘Give them some corn.’
‘I am not feeding them so the doctor can dismember them over an idiot with a chest cold.’
‘Oh, but—’
There was a clunk and a rush of cold air, then a firmer clunk. Inti winced. She was much taller than I’d expected her to be, nearly as tall as Raphael – everyone here was tall. ‘Did that sound to you like a man liberating two quite valuable guinea pigs onto my roof?’
I nodded.
‘The doctor pays quite a lot for them,’ she said, looking wistful. ‘Black ones have special properties, you see. But Ra-cha doesn’t approve. I suppose he’s right. It is a bit cruel,’ she concluded. ‘Come in.’
The smell of sawdust met us on the next threshold. For some reason I’d expected a toyshop, but it was more like a cabinetmaker’s; there was a section of banister along one wall, stacks of wood air-drying, planks with glass insets that looked like they were meant for another gantry. Low tables, stools – some very simple, some finely worked – door handles and bowls. There were toys too, tiny ships and spinning tops, and everything smelled of new sawdust. It was hard to see how she could have managed, but she had; the glass handles on her tools had all been shaped irregularly, to fit her good hand. As she led me through, something pattered against my ankle. It was sawdust. It floated an inch above the floor.
‘Inti – how is it doing that?’
‘It’s whitewood.’ She gave me a rough-cut chunk of timber. It felt much too light for its size. When I held it up, it was porous, full of miniature honeycomb chambers, the same as the wood at home. ‘Never put that in a fire, it—’
‘Explodes,’ I said. ‘I know.’
‘Don’t forget. All the gantries are whitewood. One match and whoomf. That’s why we have heating pipes instead of open fires indoors.’
‘Why are they whitewood, if it’s dangerous?’
‘To take all the weight of the buildings. It bears much more than kapok.’
‘It’s not even a hardwood,’ I protested. If I pressed hard I could put a clear nail mark in the grain, if it could even be called grain.
‘The forest is blessed by the markayuq. It’s one of their miracles.’
I gave up.
Raphael dropped an armful of laundry down the ladder and followed it. He disappeared briefly into the kitchen and I heard him grating soap, and then he collected up the clothes and came through with it soaking in a bowl of steaming water. He turned sideways to get past Inti and opened the next door outside with his elbow. Beyond it was a tiny garden with a goat and a vertiginous washing line, hung at either end with lamps. When Raphael set the bowl down in the snow and knelt to start washing everything, the goat clopped across to investigate, looking dangerously close to eating the laundry. Raphael threw the carrot we’d brought into the far corner to make it go away. It clopped off again, more enthusiastically. The whole thing had the look of a long-established protection racket.
‘You might as well stay for dinner now,’ Inti said happily. ‘It’ll take him a while to get through all that and my son will be back soon.’
‘Oh. I don’t want to intrude,’ I said, distracted because Raphael had sunk his hands straight into the hot water. If it was from the stove, it was boiling.
‘Rubbish! We hardly ever have proper guests.’ The front door closed. ‘Oh, that’s Aquila now. Now you have to stay. He’s Ra-cha’s clerk; he’ll be a priest one day. He needs to practise his proper Spanish.’
‘In that case – yes, sorry, hold on.’ I tapped on the window. It was thin enough to hear through.
Raphael looked up.
‘Put some snow in that. It’s too hot.’
He frowned but did as he was told.
‘He can’t feel it,’ Inti said.
‘But it must still be burning him.’
She looked sceptical but didn’t have time to argue.
‘I’m here, Mum,’ a boy’s voice called through from the kitchen. ‘I’ve brought Maria, I think she’d be better for a hot meal, so – oh?’ he said when he saw me. He was about twelve and I couldn’t see anything wrong with him; he was glass-bright and tall. The same boy who helped Raphael at the ceremony in fact. Behind him, Maria was hunched in her coat, hugging a doll.
‘He’s come with Raphael,’ Inti explained. ‘Merrick, this is Aquila; Aquila, Merrick. They’re staying for dinner,’ she added.
‘Hello,’ Maria said tentatively to me.
‘Come and sit down
, come and sit down,’ Inti told them, pleased to have more people. She opened the window next to us. ‘Ra-cha, probably better leave that to soak actually; will you make us some more coffee instead?’
‘Yes.’ He came back and narrowed his eyes at the goat when it bleated at him. ‘Christmas dinner,’ he said to it. ‘That’s what you are. No bloody turkeys round here.’
‘He speaks English when he’s unhappy,’ Inti explained. ‘Apparently it’s a good language for swearing. What’s he saying?’
‘He’s abusing the goat,’ I said.
She snorted. ‘It’s good for a person to be terrorised by a goat. Hard to get too high and mighty when there’s something chasing you for vegetables.’
I went to help him find cups.
‘Oh, sit down,’ Inti said, alarmed. ‘Aquila can help him.’
The boy was on the edge of getting up too. He looked as worried as his mother.
‘No, I need to keep moving anyway. Let’s see your hands,’ I added in English once Raphael and I were alone together in the little kitchen.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Why? I wouldn’t be confident of burns not being infected in Kensington, never mind the land of flesh-eating yuck and insects so big they have to file plans with the Admiralty before they set out – come on.’
‘I’m not burned.’ He held his hands out anyway.
They were covered in small scars; tiny burns and old grazes, even faint lines where he had pulled string too tightly and cut himself. His knuckles were red, but he was right. There was nothing new. He met my eyes but not for long. He was starting to seem like a skittish thing when there was nothing pressing that required him to be frightening.
‘All right. Where’s her coffee?’
We found it and he ground the beans while I ran hot water into a jug. Everything had to be washed up first; Inti’s approach to dishes seemed to be the same as mine to slugs in that she’d slung salt at them and hoped for the best. Raphael cleaned as we went. I nudged him with my elbow towards the stove so I could scour the worktop. There was only salt to clean with and it made everything smell of the Navy. I caught myself smiling at the brush, pleased to be doing something that was easy and useful at the same time.
Inti’s boy came in to shake hands. He was very cold, because he had gone out without a coat, although like Raphael he showed no sign of feeling it. I wondered, because they looked very alike, and wondered again because, although he was plainly pleased with the novelty of a new guest, it was Raphael who Aquila wanted to see; he was flustered and happy to have him there, and embarrassed.
‘I was going to clean everything up this afternoon. If you can believe it’s got like that since yesterday, she just—’
‘It’s your house,’ Raphael said, and Aquila wilted. Raphael gave him a cup. ‘Coffee.’
‘Thanks,’ he mumbled.
We carried the rest through with us. In the warm room among the pipes and under the creaking windmill it was cosy. Raphael went back outside to finish the laundry, but it turned into a dinner party once he returned and Aquila had finished cooking, which he did quickly. Inti brought out some wine and something brewed locally that tasted like turpentine and soon it was all a warm, laughing haze. Maria giggled when Aquila made her doll dance and gave it a voice, and Inti conjured a puppet to give it a dance partner. The dark came down outside and more lamps flared on around the stacks.
‘We had better go,’ Raphael said at last.
‘No more coffee?’ Inti said.
‘No, Maria needs to get home. And I need to take Quenti’s baby things over to Juan and Francesca. That reminds me, Aquila.’
The boy looked afraid that he’d forgotten to do something else.
‘I’ve got my hands full for a while, so you’ll have to go down to Azangaro at the end of the month to fetch the farmers’ wages from Mr Martel. This is a letter for him, it explains who you are.’ He passed a sealed envelope across the table. He had beautiful handwriting. ‘Give it to him and don’t take any rubbish from Quispe.’
Inti frowned. ‘He’s a bit young to be off by himself; can’t—’
‘It’s time he got used to it,’ Raphael said, not ungently, and there was a strange pause at the end of which Inti nodded, looking reflective.
Aquila couldn’t have seemed more pleased. ‘Should I bring more clocks if I can?’
‘If you can.’ Raphael didn’t sound overly fond of him, was briefer with him even than with me or Clem, but warmth seeped through the lines round his eyes. I couldn’t decide what had held him back. If he wanted children and Aquila wanted a father – there was no evidence of anyone else in the house – then it was hard to see the difficulty.
Maria squeezed her doll to make it lift its arms. ‘Do you think they might take you away again soon?’ she made it say to Raphael. ‘Is that why Aquila has to go?’
He made a sound that might have been anything.
‘Take you away?’ I echoed, not sure I’d heard properly.
Inti nodded. ‘Priests, you see,’ she said. ‘They always disappear in the end. The people in the woods take them back. They’re only borrowed, to help us. We thought Ra-cha had gone years ago, and there was nobody to replace him then. Everyone panicked; we thought we’d been abandoned. But then, pop, back he came, as if he didn’t know seventy years had gone by—’
‘Seventy years?’ I said.
Raphael stirred irkedly. ‘It was my uncle who was here before, how often do I have to say it was my uncle—’
‘My grandmother said it was you. She said you didn’t like goats then either,’ Inti laughed. ‘He thinks foreigners don’t know about magic,’ she added to me. ‘So he lies, so you’ll believe him about staying back from the salt and not think he’s mad.’
‘Inti . . .’
‘It’s sad,’ she said over him. While he was opposite her, it was difficult to see how he could be intimidating. It was plain that even if he had snapped at her, he’d only be told to settle down and finish his coffee. ‘But you know about it, don’t you? I expect your grandfather told you.’
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘I didn’t know him.’
‘We really are going now,’ Raphael said. ‘Come on.’
As we left, Inti stopped me to pass on her best wishes to my mother and I thought Raphael would have gone by the time I came out, but he was waiting for me outside with Maria. Like a little girl she reached out to hold my hand too, though she already had his.
‘Aquila seems like a nice sort of boy,’ I said, in Spanish still, because it would have been over Maria’s head otherwise.
‘He is.’
‘Is he yours?’
‘No.’ He didn’t seem offended. ‘We’re probably related, but they don’t leave family histories with you on the altar.’
‘Does that not cause . . .’
‘I’ve stopped worrying about it,’ he said.
‘Are you sure you shouldn’t start worrying about it again?’
We took Maria’s weight between us as she swung up the steps. She giggled when we lifted her up the last. She was round, in shiny good health, but she was tiny and it wasn’t much more difficult than lifting a real child.
‘We don’t know until it’s ten months too late,’ he pointed out. ‘And then what do you say? I know you’ve been married for years and you’re devoted and you’re desperate for children, but that’s an especially deformed, especially stupid baby, so maybe stop at one, just in case the next one turns out to be a crocodile?’
I laughed and he looked surprised before he smiled too.
‘This is my house,’ Maria reported.
‘Keep the fire lit at the church or the pipes will crack,’ he said to me, before I could offer to come in and help.
‘I will. Night, Maria.’
Her mother met us at the door and asked in an unhappy voice if someone couldn’t come and cook some soup.
‘Night night,’ Maria said, hugging her doll. When she didn’t make any move to turn inside, R
aphael towed her in backward by her apron strings. As I set out back to the church I heard them talking through the window. He was telling her how to cut vegetables, and her mother to sit down and be ill properly. I pushed my hand over my face, groggy with tiredness and Inti’s lethal wine and not sure I could have been trusted with a vegetable knife. Maria started to sing a song. It was the nursery rhyme whose words I’d forgotten, the one about the dragon. I hadn’t been able to fit the words to the tune because I’d been trying to do it in English. The Quechua fitted beautifully.
SEVENTEEN
I made some coffee at the church and drank it watching new snow float down outside. The wind spun it and the pollen in great frozen firework undulations between the pines, which creaked and leaned. I hoped Clem was all right. If he managed to keep up a good pace, he could have reached Crucero by now, although the snow must have slowed him down. With any luck, it hadn’t been so bad in the valleys.
Raphael came in with a blast of cold air and stray pollen motes. When I gave him some coffee, he looked at me in the way Navy wives do when their husbands get too much sea in them and start offering guests wine in mugs, but he drank it.
‘What Inti was talking about,’ he said, unprovoked. I turned back, surprised. I had been heating more milk for myself, hovering over the pan because everything boiled so low. ‘My uncle was the priest here seventy years ago. He was the . . . it’s complicated. There were thirty years between him and my mother so it’s odd, but he was my uncle. We look alike, says everyone. He disappeared in the woods. Priests do. We’re the only ones who can cross the border, and no one can cross to find us, so we tend to die out there. There are bears, wolves. That’s all it is.’ He sighed. ‘And people like telling stories. It’s not like there’s a playhouse to go to.’
‘Uh, shame. I was thinking how well you were doing for a hundred and ten.’
Raphael smiled, not wholly, as though it were a new and odd notion, to smile about it, with people who didn’t believe he had been stolen by fairies.
Not wanting to go to bed yet, I sat by the stove sketching a whitewood twig. He put a jug of water down next to it by way of telling me to be careful about sparks, so I put it in the jug for good measure. Opposite me he took out a ball of thread and tied one end of it to a hole bored in the table. He had Don Quixote open in front of him and he turned the page every so often. On to the main string sometimes went smaller strings, as if the main thought were having a side thought, and then sometimes the side strings had ancillary strings too, but not often.