Under the Volcano (15 page)

This was where he was going (the lane was plainly in sight now, a dog guarding it) to have in peace a couple of necessary drinks unspecified in his mind, and be back again before Yvonne had finished her bath. It was just possible too of course that he might meet —

But suddenly the Calle Nicaragua rose up to meet him.

The Consul lay face downward on the deserted street.

-Hugh, is that you old chap lending the old boy a hand? Thank you so much. For it is perhaps indeed your turn these days to lend a hand. Not that I haven't always been delighted to help you! I was even delighted in Paris that time you arrived from Aden in a fix over your
carte d'identité
and the passport you so often seem to prefer travelling without and whose number I remember to this day is 21312. It perhaps gave me all the more pleasure in that it served a while to take my mind from my own tangled affairs and moreover proved to my satisfaction, though some of my colleagues were even then beginning to doubt it, that I was still not so divorced from life as to be incapable of discharging such duties with dispatch. Why do I say this? — Is it in part that you should see that I also recognize how close Yvonne and I had already been brought to disaster before your meeting! Are you listening, Hugh — do I make myself clear? Clear that I forgive you, as somehow I have never wholly been able to forgive Yvonne, and that I can still love you as a brother and respect you as a man. Clear, that I would help you, ungrudgingly, again. In fact ever since Father went up into the White Alps alone and failed to return, though they happened to be the Himalayas, and more often than I care to think these volcanoes remind me of them, just as this valley does of the Valley of the Indus, and as those old turbaned trees in Taxco do of Srinigar, and just as Xochimilco — are you listening, Hugh? — of all places when I first came here, reminded me of those houseboats on the Shalimar you cannot remember,
and your mother, my step-mother died, all those dreadful things seeming to happen at once as though the in-laws of catastrophe had suddenly arrived from nowhere, or, perhaps, Damchok, and moved in on us bag and baggage — there has been all too little opportunity to act, so to say, as a brother to you. Mind you I have perhaps acted as a father: but you were only an infant then, and seasick, upon the P. and O., the old erratic
Cocanada
. But after that and once back in England there were too many guardians, too many surrogates in Harrogate, too many establishments and schools, not to mention the war, the struggle to win which, for as you say rightly it is not yet over, I continue in a bottle and you with the ideas I hope may prove less calamitous to you than did our father's to him, or for that matter mine to myself. However all this may be — still there, Hugh, lending a hand? — I ought to point out in no uncertain terms that I never dreamed for a moment such a thing as did happen would or could happen. That I had forfeited Yvonne's trust did not necessarily mean she had forfeited mine, of which one had a rather different conception. And that I trusted you goes without saying. Far less could I have dreamed you would attempt morally to justify yourself on the grounds that I was absorbed in a debauch: there are certain reasons too, to be revealed only at the day of reckoning, why you should not have stood in judgement upon me. Yet I am afraid — are you listening, Hugh? — that long before that day what you did impulsively and have tried to forget in the cruel abstraction of youth will begin to strike you in a new and darker light. I am sadly afraid that you may indeed, precisely because you are a good and simple person at bottom and genuinely respect more than most the principles and decencies that might have prevented it, fall heir, as you grow older and your conscience less robust, to a suffering on account of it more abominable than any you have caused me. How may I help you? How ward it off? How shall the murdered man convince his assassin he will not haunt him? Ah, the past is filled up quicker than we know and God has little patience with remorse! Yet does this help, what I am trying to tell you, that
I
realize to what degree I brought all this upon myself? Help, that I am admitting moreover that to have cast
Yvonne upon you in that fashion was a reckless action, almost, I was going to say, a clownish one, inviting in return the inevitable bladder on the brain, the mouthful and heartful of sawdust. I sincerely hope so… Meantime, however, old fellow, my mind, staggering under the influence of the last half-hour's strychnine, of the several therapeutic drinks before that, of the numerous distinctly untherapeutic drinks with Dr Vigil before that, you must meet Dr Vigil, I say nothing of his friend Jacques Laruelle to whom for various reasons I have hitherto avoided introducing you — please remind me to get back my Elizabethan plays from him — of the two days' and one night's continuous drinking before that, of the seven hundred and seventy-five and a half — but why go on? My mind, I repeat, must somehow, drugged though it is, like Don Quixote avoiding a town invested with his abhorrence because of his excesses there, take a clear cut around — did I say Dr Vigil? –'

‘I say I say what's the matter there?' The English ‘King's, Parade' voice, scarcely above him, called out from behind the steering wheel, the Consul saw now, of an extremely long low car drawn up beside him, murmurous: an
M.G.
Magna, or some such.

‘Nothing.' The Consul sprang to his feet instantly sober as a judge. ‘Absolutely all right.'

‘Can't be all right, you were lying right down in the road there, what?' The English face, now turned up toward him, was rubicund, merry, kindly, but worried, above the English striped tie, mnemonic of a fountain in a great court.

The Consul brushed the dust from his clothes; he sought for wounds in vain; there was not a scratch. He saw the fountain distinctly.
Might a soul bathe there and be clean or slake its drought
?

‘All right, apparently,' he said, ‘thanks very much.'

‘But damn it all I say you were lying right down in the road there, might have run over you, there must be something wrong, what? No?' The Englishman switched his engine off. ‘I say, haven't I seen you before or something.'

‘ –'

‘ –'

‘Trinity.' The Consul found his own voice becoming involuntarily a little more ‘English'. ‘Unless–'

‘Caius.'

‘But you're wearing a Trinity tie-' the Consul remarked with a polite note of triumph.

‘Trinity?… Yes. It's my cousin's, as a matter of fact.' The Englishman peered down his chin at the tie, his red merry face become a shade redder. ‘We're going to Guatemala… Wonderful country this. Pity about all this oil business, isn't it? Bad show. — Are you sure there's no bones broken or anything, old man?'

‘No. There are no bones broken,' the Consul said. But he was trembling.

The Englishman leaned forward fumbling as for the engine switch again. ‘Sure you're all right? We're staying at the Bella Vista Hotel, not leaving until this afternoon. I could take you along there for a little shuteye… Deuced nice pub I must say but deuced awful row going on all night. I suppose you were at the ball — is that it? Going the wrong way though, aren't you? I always keep a bottle of something in the car for an emergency… No. Not Scotch. Irish. Burke's Irish. Have a nip? But perhaps you'd-'

‘Ah…' The Consul was taking a long draught. ‘Thanks a million.'

‘Go ahead… Go ahead…'

‘Thanks.' The Consul handed back the bottle. ‘A million.'

‘Well, cheerio.' The Englishman restarted his engine. ‘Cheerio man. Don't go lying down in roads. Bless my soul you'll get run over or run in or something, damn it all. Dreadful road too. Splendid weather, isn't it?' The Englishman drove away up the hill, waving his hand.

‘If you're ever in any kind of a jam yourself,' the Consul cried after him recklessly,' I'm — wait, here's my card –'

‘Bungho!'

— It was not Dr Vigil's card the Consul still held in his hand: but it was certainly not his own.
Compliments of the Venezuelan Government
. What was this?
The Venezuelan Government will appreciate
… Wherever could this have sprung from?
The
Venezuelan Government will appreciate an acknowledgement to the Mnisterio de Relaciones Exteriores. Caracas, Venezuela
. Well, now, Caracas — well, why not?

Erect as Jim Taskerson, he thought, married now too, poor devil — restored, the Consul glided down the Calle Nicaragua.

Within the house there was the sound of bathwater running out: he made a lightning toilet. Intercepting, Concepta (though not before he had added a tactful strychnine to her burden) with the breakfast tray, the Consul, innocently as a man who has committed a murder while dummy at bridge, entered Yvonne's room. It was bright and tidy. A gaily coloured Oaxaqueñan scrape covered the low bed where Yvonne lay half asleep with her head resting on one hand.

‘How!'

‘How!'

A magazine she'd been reading dropped to the floor. The Consul, inclined slightly forward over the orange juice and ranchero eggs, advanced boldly through a diversity of powerless emotions.

‘Are you comfortable there?'

‘Fine, thanks.' Yvonne accepted the tray smiling. The magazine was the amateur astronomy one she subscribed to and from the cover the huge domes of an observatory, haloed in gold and standing out in black silhouette like roman helmets, regarded the Consul waggishly.' “The Mayas”,' he read aloud, ‘“were far advanced in observational astronomy. But they did not suspect a Copernican system.”' He threw the magazine back on the bed and sat easily in his chair, crossing his legs, the tips of his fingers meeting in a strange calm, his strychnine on the floor beside him. ‘Why should they?… What I like though are the “vague” years of the old Mayans. And their “pseudo years”, mustn't overlook them! And their delicious names for the months. Pop. Uo. Zip. Zotz. Tzec. Xul. Yaxkin.'

‘Mac,' Yvonne was laughing. ‘Isn't there one called Mac?'

‘There's Yax and Zac. And Uayeb: I like that one most of all, the month that only lasts five days.'

‘In receipt of yours dated Zip the first I –'

‘But where does it all get you in the end?' The Consul sipped
his strychnine that had yet to prove its adequacy as a chaser to the Burke's Irish (now perhaps in the garage at the Bella Vista). ‘The knowledge, I mean. One of the first penances I ever imposed on myself was to learn the philosophical section of
War and Peace
by heart. That was of course before I could dodge about in the rigging of the Cabbala like a St Jago's monkey. But then the other day I realized that the only thing I remembered about the whole book was that Napoleon's leg twitched –'

‘Aren't you going to eat anything yourself? You must be starved.'

‘I partook.'

Yvonne who was herself breakfasting heartily asked:

‘How's the market?'

‘Tom's a bit fed up because they've confiscated some property of his in Tlaxcala, or Puebla, he thought he'd got away with. They haven't my number yet, I'm not sure where I really do stand in that regard, now I've resigned the service –'

‘So you–'

‘By the by I must apologize for still being in these duds —dusty too — had show, I might have put on a blazer at least for your benefit!' The Consul smiled inwardly at his accent, now become for undivulgeable reasons almost uncontrolledly ‘English'.

‘So you really have resigned!'

‘Oh absolutely! I'm thinking of becoming a Mexican subject, of going to live among the Indians, like William Black-stone. But for one's habit of making money, don't you know, all very mysterious to you, I suppose, outside looking in –' The Consul stared round mildly at the pictures on the wall, mostly water-colours by his mother depicting scenes in Kashmir: a small grey stone enclosure encompassing several birch trees and a taller poplar was Lalla Rookh's tomb, a picture of wild torrential scenery, vaguely Scottish, the gorge, the ravine at Gugganvir; the Shalimar looked more like the Cam than ever: a distant view of Nanga Parbat from Sind valley could have been painted on the porch here, Nanga Parbat might well have passed for old Popo… ‘ – outside looking in,' he repeated,' the result of so much worry, speculation, foresight, alimony, seigniorage –'

‘But–' Yvonne had laid aside her breakfast tray and taken a cigarette from her own case beside the bed and lit it before the Consul could help her.

‘One might have already done so!'

Yvonne lay back in bed smoking… In the end the Consul scarcely heard what she was saying — calmly, sensibly, courageously — for his awareness of an extraordinary thing that was happening in his mind. He saw in a flash, as if these were ships on the horizon, under a black lateral abstract sky, the occasion for desperate celebration (it didn't matter he might be the only one to celebrate it) receding, while at the same time, coming closer, what could only be, what was — Good God! — his salvation…

‘
Now
?' he found he had said gently. ‘But we can't very well go away
now
can we, what with Hugh and you and me and one thing and another, don't you think? It's a little unfeasible, isn't it?' (For his salvation might not have seemed so large with menace had not the Burke's Irish whiskey chosen suddenly to tighten, if almost imperceptibly, a screw. It was the soaring of this moment, conceived of as continuous, that felt itself threatened.) ‘Isn't it?' he repeated.

‘I'm sure Hugh'd understand–'

‘But that's not quite the point!'

‘Geoffrey, this house has become somehow evil–'

‘ –I mean it's rather a dirty trick –'

Oh Jesus… The Consul slowly assumed an expression intended to be slightly bantering and at the same time assured, indicative of a final consular sanity. For this was it. Goethe's church bell was looking him straight between the eyes; fortunately, he was prepared for it. ‘I remember a fellow I helped out in New York once', he was saying with apparent irrelevance, ‘in some way, an out of work actor he was. “Why Mr Firmin,” he said, “it isn't naturel here.” That's exactly how he pronounced it: naturel. “Man wasn't intended for it,” he complained. “All the streets are the same as this Tenth or Eleventh Street in Philadelphia too…”' The Consul could feel his English accent leaving him and that of a Bleecker Street mummer taking its place. “‘But in Newcastle, Delaware, now that's
another thing again I Old cobbled roads… And Charleston: old Southern stuff… But oh my God this city — the noise! the chaos! If I could only get out! If only I knew where you could get to!”' The Consul concluded with passion, with anguish, his voice quivering — though as it happened he had never met any such person, and the whole story had been told him by Tom, he shook violently with the emotion of the poor actor.