Rather than go back to her own house, Inti stayed with us at the church and sat by the stove for a long time. She must have known I was on the edge of crossing the salt, because she brought her brother, who could have stopped me just by standing in the doorway. He was a quietly mannered man, polite, but there was no escaping why he was there and in a graceless and resentful sort of way I made them both coffee and watched them wince over it. Neither of them had as much difficulty moving about as I did.
‘We’re going to have to get his things together,’ she said to me. ‘Aquila will live here now.’
‘Inti, it’s been less than a day,’ I said. ‘He might—’
‘He disappeared for seventy years last time,’ she interrupted. ‘It doesn’t get shorter. If he comes back at all, it won’t be in our lifetimes.’ Then, more gently, ‘He’s gone, Merry-cha. Everyone knew it would happen sooner or later. Honestly, I think he was just holding on until Aquila was old enough.’
‘So you’re going to move everything of his out and install Aquila? What if he does come back?’
‘We’ll put it all back again. But he won’t come back. And I don’t think he’s got much, anyway. I’ll get started in a minute.’
I knew I couldn’t claim to have got an especially detailed understanding of him in a week, and he might not have minded in the least, but it struck me as something Raphael would mind a great deal, for Inti to see where he slept. He was in and out for twenty hours a day, with no privacy except in that tiny loft beside the bells. It would have been horrible enough anyway that he should have to offer that up as well, but given that he must have vowed chastity as well as poverty and service, it was infernal. I couldn’t think of anything less sacerdotal than letting a brisk pretty woman go through his clothes. The idea of having to explain it to him when he came back made me push my fingernails into the wooden ladder.
‘I’ll do it,’ I said.
‘No—’
I hooked my cane over a rung of the ladder by way of staking a claim. When I climbed up to the loft, I expected it to be full of the furniture and clutter that wasn’t downstairs, but there was hardly anything at all. There was a bed, a pallet exactly the same as the ones set up in the chapel, and by its side was a falling-apart copy of the Bible in Latin. Opposite, built into the wall, was a wardrobe, which was bare. There were shelves under the round window, empty and dusted. In the corner, once I’d wound up the lamp, I found a box. There were books inside, packed up, all in Latin. The bookplates on the flyleaves had the seals of the Vatican printed on them. Raphael’s name was written in, although they were thoroughly second-hand; the publication dates were from the seventeen hundreds. Harry’s letter was there too, and some sewing things; leather like the statues wore. He was making something for one of them, halfway through the riveting of a seam. Under those were his own clothes, clean and folded. That was it. I had to keep my head down because the bells were right above me. They moved slightly in the draught, not nearly enough to knock together, but the bronze hummed and gave a metal edge to quiet.
‘There’s nothing left to do,’ I called down. ‘Just a box. He’s . . . packed everything away already.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ Inti said unhappily from below. ‘All ready for Aquila then. He must have known it would be soon.’
‘Mind if I visit?’ Clem said.
‘Plenty of space. But mind your head.’ I propped my cane against the wall and sat down on the bare floorboards. It was cold. There were no pipes. The ladder creaked as Clem climbed, and when he appeared his breath steamed. He looked around and then lifted his eyebrows at me.
‘Heavens. He really has packed up.’
‘He knew he was going,’ I said. ‘Did Inti tell you the story, about how the priests always disappear?’
‘She did.’ He came to sit next to me on the floor. Together we looked like something from an abandoned toyshop. He was all round and gold and I had to sit with my good leg folded and the bad one crooked, like a puppet someone had dropped from a height. Listen, ‘I don’t think there are wild Indians in the woods, Em. I think there are henchmen from the quinine barons. There’ll be a semi-permanent camp out there. They feed the border myth, which is the perfect excuse for them to shoot anyone who strays in, no questions asked. We’ve been planning to go around, but we might not be able to, if Martel’s men can’t clear the snow. So Raphael’s gone in to warn them we might try to go straight through.’
‘But I don’t see why he would be packed up like this.’
‘He probably wants to get out of here as soon as his duty’s done. It must be coercion. He’s clearly not getting a cut.’
I pushed my hand over my face. ‘But it would be dangerous to keep a camp out there. I mean maybe it is quinine men, but there are Indians round here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Martel said it was . . .’
‘What if they’ve been cleared out? It’s such a good set-up. The people living here keep anyone from crossing the border because they believe it’s blasphemy. It’s self-policed; it’s brilliant. They’re not surprised if someone who crosses doesn’t come back, so there’s no murder accusation. Stop seeing the frills and look at the actual result of what’s going on. Someone inside the forest is stopping people from crossing, and killing those who do. What do we know is on the other side? Quinine. Come on, Em. Wake up.’
I pulled my clasped hands apart and then again. It made the joints hurt but I couldn’t keep myself from it.
‘He could have just told us that. Don’t go in the forest here, there are quinine thugs with guns. That’s far simpler than Indians and abandoned children and walking statues. And . . . much more likely. I’d have believed that.’
‘Yes, but Em, what an Indian man born and raised in the middle of nowhere imagines to be likely or necessary isn’t what you or I would. I should think he didn’t think quinine men sounded frightening enough.’ He paused. ‘Look, take it from me: there’s almost no point in trying to work out why the natives do some things. Their way of thinking is so far from ours that no effort at translation will ever have more subtlety than smoke signals over a canyon. There will be factors here we don’t know, cultural, religious, all sorts. He speaks English but he thinks like a Quechua Indian, you know he does. Think about that past-in-front business. That won’t be the only difference, just the symptom of something much wider.’
I didn’t say that I thought Clem was a bad translator, or that I didn’t believe there was any such thing as an impassable gulf in the thinking of two human beings. Of course you couldn’t translate everything, but you could damn well explicate, particularly if you both spoke such a sprawling monster of a language as English. ‘What’s gone before you, and what will come after,’ I said instead.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘The past ahead. Time is like a river and you float with the current. Your ancestors set off before you did, so they’re far ahead. Your descendants will sail it after.’
‘No need to nitpick, old man, you know what I mean.’
I nodded, not wanting to have a fight under the bells. It would have resounded. ‘Sorry.’
‘Actually, this is rather good,’ Clem said cheerfully. ‘I think we ought to seize the day, don’t you?’