Under the Volcano (10 page)

The Mexican taxi-driver, familiar too, who'd just picked up her bags — there'd been no taxi at the tiny Quauhnahuac airfield though, only the bumptious station wagon that insisted on taking her to the Bella Vista — put them down again on the pavement as to assure her: I know why you're here, but no one's recognized you except me, and I won't give you away.‘
Si señora
,' he chuckled.‘
Señora
-
El Cónsul
.' Sighing, he inclined his head with a certain admiration towards the bar window. ‘
!Qué hombre!
'

'— on the other hand, damn it, Fernando, why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't a corpse be transported by express?'

‘
Absolutamente necesario
'

‘
— just a bunch of Alladamnbama farmers!
'

The last was yet another voice. So the bar, open all night for the occasion, was evidently full. Ashamed, numb with nostalgia and anxiety, reluctant to enter the crowded bar, though equally reluctant to have the taxi-driver go in for her, Yvonne, her consciousness so lashed by wind and air and voyage she still seemed to be travelling, still sailing into Acapulco harbour yesterday evening through a hurricane of immense and gorgeous butterflies swooping seaward to greet the
Pennsylvania —
at first it was as though fountains of multicoloured stationery were being swept out of the saloon lounge — glanced defensively round the square, really tranquil in the midst of this commotion, of the
butterflies still zigzagging overhead or past the heavy open ports, endlessly vanishing astern,
their
square, motionless and brilliant in the seven o'clock morning sunlight, silent yet somehow poised, expectant, with one eye half open already, the merry-go-rounds, the Ferris wheel, lightly dreaming, looking forward to the
fiesta
later — the ranged rugged taxis too that were looking forward to something else, a taxi strike that afternoon, she'd been confidentially informed. The
zócalo
was just the same in spite of its air of slumbering Harlequin. The old bandstand stood empty, the equestrian statue of the turbulent Huerta rode under the nutant trees wild-eyed evermore, gazing over the valley beyond which, as if nothing had happened and it was November 1936 and not November 1938, rose, eternally, her volcanoes, her beautiful, beautiful volcanoes. Ah, how familiar it all was: Quauhnahuac, her town of cold mountain water swiftly running. Where the eagle stops! Or did it really mean, as Louis said, near the wood? The trees, the massive shining depths of these ancient fresno trees, how had she ever lived without them? She drew a deep breath, the air had yet a hint about it of dawn, the dawn this morning at Acapulco —green and deep purple high above and gold scrolled back to reveal a river of lapis where the horn of Venus burned so fiercely she could imagine her dim shadow cast from its light on the airfield, the vultures floating lazily up there above the brick-red horizon into whose peaceful foreboding the little plane of the Compañía Mexicana de Aviación had ascended, like a minute red demon, winged emissary of Lucifer, the windsock below streaming out its steadfast farewell.

She took in the
zócalo
with a long final look — the untenanted ambulance that might not have moved since she'd last been here, outside the Servicio de Ambulancia within Cortez Palace, the huge paper poster strung between two trees which said
Hotel Bella Vista Gran Baile Noviembre 1938 a Beneficio de la Cruz Roja. Los Mejores Artistas del radio en acción. No falte Vd
, beneath which some of the guests were returning home, pallid and exhausted as the music that struck up at this moment and reminded her the ball was still proceeding — then entered the bar silently, blinking, myopic in the swift leathery
perfumed alcoholic dusk, the sea that morning going in with her, rough and pure, the long dawn rollers advancing, rising, and crashing down to glide, sinking, in colourless ellipses over the sand, while early pelicans hunting turned and dived, dived and turned and dived again into the spume, moving with the precision of planets, the spent breakers racing back to their calm; flotsam was scattered all along the beach: she had heard, from the small boats tossing in the Spanish Main, the boys, like young Tritons, already beginning to blow on their mournful conch shells…

The bar was empty, however.

Or rather it contained one figure. Still in his dress clothes, which weren't particularly dishevelled, the Consul, a lock of fair hair falling over his eyes and one hand clasped in his short pointed beard, was sitting sideways with one foot on the rail of an adjacent stool at the small right-angled counter, half leaning over it and talking apparently to himself, for the barman, a sleek dark lad of about eighteen, stood at a little distance against a glass partition that divided the room (from yet another bar, she remembered now, giving on a side-street) and didn't have the air of listening. Yvonne stood there silently by the door, unable to make a move, watching, the roar of the plane still with her, the buffeting of wind and air as they left the sea behind, the roads below still climbing and dropping, the little towns still steadily passing with their humped churches. Quauhnahuac with all its cobalt swimming pools rising again obliquely to meet her. But the exhilaration of her flight, of mountain piled on mountain, the terrific onslaught of sunlight while the earth turned yet in shadow, a river flashing, a gorge winding darkly beneath, the volcanoes abruptly wheeling into view from the glowing east, the exhilaration and the longing had left her. Yvonne felt her spirit that had flown to meet this man's as if already sticking to the leather. She saw she was mistaken about the barman: he was listening after all. That is, while he mightn't understand what Geoffrey (who was, she noticed, wearing no socks) was talking about, he was waiting, his towelled hands overhauling the glasses ever more slowly, for an opening to say or do something. He set the glass he was
drying down. Then he picked up the Consul's cigarette, which was consuming itself in an ashtray at the counter edge, inhaled it deeply, closing his eyes with an expression of playful ecstasy, opened them and pointed, scarcely exhaling now the slow billowing smoke from his nostrils and mouth, at an advertisement for
Cafeaspirina
, a woman wearing a scarlet brassière lying on a scrolled divan, behind the upper row of
tequila añejo
bottles.‘
Absolutamente necesario
,' he said, and Yvonne realized it was the woman, not the
Cafeaspirina
, he meant (the Consul's phrase doubtless) was absolutely necessary. But he hadn't attracted the Consul's attention, so he closed his eyes again with the same expression, opened them, replaced the Consul's cigarette, and, still exuding smoke, pointed once more to the advertisement – next to it she noticed one for the local cinema, simply,
Las Manos de Orlac, con Peter Lorre
– and repeated: ‘
Absolutamente necesario
.'

‘A corpse, whether adult or child,' the Consul had resumed, after briefly pausing to laugh at this pantomime, and to agree, with a kind of agony, ‘
Sí, Fernando, absolutamente necesario
'– and it is a ritual, she thought, a ritual between them, as there were once rituals between us, only Geoffrey has gotten a little bored with it at last – resumed his study of a blue and red Mexican National Railways time-table. Then he looked up abruptly and saw her, peering shortsightedly about him before recognizing her, standing there, a little blurred probably because the sunlight was behind her, with one hand thrust through the handle of her scarlet bag resting on her hip, standing there as she knew he must see her, half jaunty, a little diffident.

Still holding the time-table the Consul built himself to his feet as she came forward.' —
Good
God.'

Yvonne hesitated but he made no move towards her; she slipped quietly on to a stool beside him; they did not kiss.

‘Surprise party. I've come back… My plane got in an hour ago.'

‘ –when Alabama comes through we ask nobody any questions,' came suddenly from the bar on the other side of the glass partition: ‘We come through with heels flying!'

‘ — From Acapulco, Hornos… I came by boat, Geoff, from San Pedro — Panama Pacific. The
Pennsylvania
. Geoff –'

‘– bull-headed Dutchmen! The sun parches the lips and they crack. Oh Christ, it's a shame! The horses all go away kicking in the dust! I wouldn't have it. They plugged 'em too. They don't miss it. They shoot first and ask questions later. You're goddam right. And that's a nice thing to say. I take a bunch of goddamned farmers, then ask them no questions. Righto I –smoke a cool cigarette –'

‘Don't you love these early mornings?' The Consul's voice, but not his hand, was perfectly steady as now he put the timetable down. ‘Have, as our friend next door suggests,' he inclined his head towards the partition, ‘a –' the name on the trembling, offered, and rejected cigarette package struck her: Alas!' –'

The Consul was saying with gravity: ‘Ah, Hornos. — But why come via Cape Horn? It has a bad habit of wagging its tail, sailors tell me. Or does it mean ovens?'

‘ –
Calle Nicaragua, cincuenta dos
.' Yvonne pressed a
tostón
on a dark god by this time in possession of her bags who bowed and disappeared obscurely.

‘What if I didn't live there any longer.' The Consul, sitting down again, was shaking so violently he had to hold the bottle of whisky he was pouring himself a drink from with both hands. ‘Have a drink?'

‘ –'

Or should she? She should: even though she hated drinking in the morning she undoubtedly should: it was what she had made up her mind to do if necessary, not to have one drink alone but a great many drinks with the Consul. But instead she could feel the smile leaving her face that was struggling to keep back the tears she had forbidden herself on any account, thinking and knowing Geoffrey knew she was thinking: ‘I was prepared for this, I was prepared for it.' ‘You have one and I'll cheer,' she found herself saying. (As a matter of fact she had been prepared for almost anything. After all, what could one expect? She had told herself all the way down on the ship, a ship because she would have time on board to persuade herself
her journey was neither thoughtless nor precipitate, and on the plane when she knew it was both, that she should have warned him, that it was abominably unfair to take him by surprise.) ‘Geoffrey,' she went on, wondering if she seemed pathetic sitting there, all her carefully thought-out speeches, her plans and tact so obviously vanishing in the gloom, or merely repellent –she felt slightly repellent — because she wouldn't have a drink. ‘What have you done? I wrote you and wrote you. I wrote till my heart broke. What have you done with your –'

‘–life,' came from beyond the glass partition. ‘What a life! Christ, it's a shame! Where I come from they don't run. We're going through busting this way –'

‘– No. I thought of course you'd returned to England, when you didn't answer. What have you done? Oh Geoff – have you resigned from the service?'

‘– went down to Fort Sale. Took your shoeshot. And took your Brownings.– Jump, jump, jump, jump, jump – see, get it –'

‘I ran into Louis in Santa Barbara. He said you were still here.'

‘– and like hell you can, you can't do it, and that's what you do in Alabama!'

‘Well, actually I've only been away once.' The Consul took a long shuddering drink, then sat down again beside her. ‘To Oaxaca. – Remember Oaxaca?'

‘–Oaxaca?–'

‘ – Oaxaca. –'

– The word was like a breaking heart, a sudden peal of stifled bells in a gale, the last syllables of one dying of thirst in the desert. Did she remember Oaxaca! The roses and the great tree, was that, the dust and the buses to Etla and Nochitlán? and: ‘
damas acompañadas de un caballero, gratis!
' Or at night their cries of love, rising into the ancient fragrant Mayan air, heard only by ghosts? In Oaxaca they had found each other once. She was watching the Consul who seemed less on the defensive than in process while straightening out the leaflets on the bar of changing mentally from the part played for Fernando to the part he would play for her, watching him almost with amazement: ‘Surely this cannot be us,' she cried in her heart
suddenly. ‘This cannot be us – dying, to sigh at last, with a kind of weary peace: Oaxaca —

—‘The strange thing about this little corpse, Yvonne,' the Consul was saying, ‘is that it must be accompanied by a person holding its hand: no, sorry. Apparently not its hand, just a first-class ticket.' He held up, smiling, his own right hand which shook as with a movement of wiping chalk from an imaginary blackboard. ‘It's really the shakes that make this kind of life insupportable. But they will stop: I was only drinking enough so they would. Just the necessary, the therapeutic drink.' Yvonne looked back at him.' —but the shakes are the worst of course,' he was going on. ‘You get to like the other after a while, and I'm really doing very well, I'm much better than I was six months ago, very much better than I was say, in Oaxaca' — noticing a curious familiar glare in his eyes that always frightened her, a glare turned inward now like one of those sombrely brilliant cluster-lamps down the hatches of the
Pennsylvania
on the work of unloading, only this was a work of spoliation: and she felt a sudden dread lest this glare, as of old, should swing outward, turn upon her.

‘God knows I've seen you like this before,' her thoughts were saying, her love was saying, through the gloom of the bar, ‘too many times for it to be a surprise anyhow. You are denying me again. But this time there is a profound difference. This is like an ultimate denial — oh Geoffrey, why can't you turn back? Must you go on and on for ever into this stupid darkness, seeking it, even now, where I cannot reach you, ever on into the darkness of the sundering, of the severance! — Oh Geoffrey, why do you do it!'