Under the Volcano (30 page)

(Why did I stop playing the guitar? Certainly not because, belatedly, one had come to see the point of Phillipson's picture, the cruel truth it contained… They are losing the Battle of the Ebro – And yet, one might well have seen one's continuing to play as but another form of publicity stunt, a means of keeping oneself in the limelight, as if those weekly articles for the
News of the World
were not limelight enough! Or myself with the thing destined to be some kind of incurable ‘love-object', or eternal troubadour, jongleur, interested only in married women – why? – incapable finally of love altogether… Bloody little man. Who, anyhow, no longer wrote songs. While the guitar as an end in itself at least seemed simply futile; no longer even fun – certainly a childish thing to be put away –)

‘Is that right?'

‘Is what right?'

‘Do you see that poor exiled maple tree outside there,' asked the Consul, ‘propped up with those crutches of cedar?'

‘No — luckily for you –'

‘One of these days, when the wind blows from the other direction, it's going to collapse.' The Consul spoke haltingly while Hugh shaved his neck. ‘And do you see that sunflower looking in through the bedroom window? It stares into my room all day.'

‘It strolled into your room, do you say?'

‘Stares. Fiercely. All day. Like God!'

(The last time I played it… Strumming in the King of Bohemia, London. Benskin's Fine Ales and Stouts. And waking, after passing out, to find John and the rest singing unaccompanied that song about the balgine run. What, anyhow, is a balgine run? Revolutionary songs; bogus bolshy; — but why had one never heard such songs before? Or, for that matter, in England, seen such rich spontaneous enjoyment in singing? Perhaps because at any given gathering, one had always been singing oneself. Sordid songs:
I Ain't Got Nobody
. Loveless songs:
The One That I Love Loves Me
… Though John ‘and the rest' were not, to one's own experience at least, bogus: no more than who, at sunset walking with the crowd, or receiving bad news, witnessing injustice, once turned and thought, did not believe, turned back and questioned, decided to act… They are winning the Battle of the Ebro! Not for me, perhaps. Yet no wonder indeed if these friends, some of whom now lie dead on Spanish soil, had, as I then understood, really been bored by my pseudo-American twanging, not even good twanging finally, and had only been listening out of politeness — twanging —)

‘Have another drink.' Hugh replenished the toothmug, handed it to the Consul, and picked up for him a copy of
El Universal
lying on the floor. ‘I think a little more down the side with that beard, and at the base of the neck.' Hugh stropped the razor thoughtfully.

‘A communal drink.' The Consul passed the toothmug over his shoulder. ‘“Clank of coins irritates at Forth Worth.”'
Holding the paper quite steadily the Consul read aloud from the English page: ‘“Kink unhappy in exile.” I don't believe it myself. “Town counts dogs' noses.” I don't believe that either, do you, Hugh?…

‘And — ah — yes!' he went on,‘ “Eggs have been in a tree at Klamanth Falls for a hundred years, lumberjacks estimate by rings of wood.” Is that the kind of stuff you write nowadays?'

‘Almost exactly. Or: Japanese astride all roads from Shanghai. Americans evacuate… That kind of thing. — Sit still.'

(One had not, however, played it from that day to this… No, nor been happy from that day to this either… A little self-knowledge is a dangerous thing. And anyway, without the guitar, was one any less in the limelight, any less interested in married women — so on, and so forth? One immediate result of giving it up was undoubtedly that second trip to sea, that series of articles, the first for the
Globe
, on the British Coasting Trade. Then yet another trip — coming to naught spiritually. I ended a passenger. But the articles were a success. Saltcaked smokestacks. Britannia rules the waves. In future my work was looked for with interest… On the other hand why have I always lacked real ambition as a newspaperman? Apparently I have never overcome that antipathy to journalists, the result of my early ardent courtship of them. Besides it cannot be said I shared with my colleagues the necessity of earning a living. There was always the income. As a roving hand I functioned fairly well, still, up to this day, have done so — yet becoming increasingly conscious of loneliness, isolation — aware too of an odd habit of thrusting myself to the fore, then subsiding — as if one remembered one hadn't the guitar after all… Maybe I bored people with my guitar. But in a sense — who cares? — it strung me to life —)

‘Somebody quoted you in the
Universal
', the Consul was laughing, ‘some time ago. I just forget about what, I'm afraid… Hugh, how would you like, “at a modest sacrifice”, an “imported pair embroidered street extra large nearly new fur coat”?'

‘Sit still.'

‘Or a Cadillac for 500 pesos. Original price 200… And what
would this mean, do you suppose? “And a white horse also.” Apply at box seven… Strange… Anti-alcoholic fish. Don't like the sound of that. But here's something for you. “A centricle apartment suitable for love-nest.” Or alternatively, a “serious,
discrete
–”'

‘ – ha –'

‘ – apartment… Hugh, listen to this. “For a young European lady who must be pretty, acquaintanceship with a cultured man, not old, with good
positions
— ”'

The Consul was shaking with laughter only, it appeared, and Hugh, laughing too, paused, razor aloft.

‘But the remains of Juan Ramírez, the famous singer, Hugh, are still wandering in a melancholy fashion from place to place… Hullo, it says here that “grave objections” have been made to the immodest behaviour of certain police chiefs in Quauhnahuac. “Grave objections to – ” what's this? — “performing their private functions in public” –'

(‘Climbed the Parson's Nose', one had written, in the visitors' book at the little Welsh rock-climbing hotel, ‘in twenty minutes. Found the rocks very easy.' ‘Came down the Parson's Nose', some immortal wag had added a day later, ‘in twenty seconds. Found the rocks very hard.'… So now, as I approach the second half of my life, unheralded, unsung, and without a guitar, I am going back to sea again: perhaps these days of waiting are more like that droll descent, to be survived in order to repeat the climb. At the top of the Parson's Nose you could walk home to tea over the hills if you wished, just as the actor in the Passion Play can get off his cross and go home to his hotel for a Pilsener. Yet in life ascending or descending you were perpetually involved with the mists, the cold and the overhangs, the treacherous rope and the slippery belay; only, while the rope slipped there was sometimes time to laugh. None the less, I am afraid… As I am also of a simple gate, and climbing windy masts in port… Will it be as bad as the first voyage, the harsh reality of which for some reason suggests Yvonne's farm? One wonders how she will feel the first time she sees someone stick a pig… Afraid; and yet not afraid; I know what the sea is like; can it be that I am returning to it with my dreams intact, nay, with
dreams that, being without viciousness, are more child-like than before. I love the sea, the pure Norwegian sea. My disillusionment once more is a pose. What am I trying to prove by all this? Accept it; one is a sentimentalist, a muddler, a realist, a dreamer, coward, hypocrite, hero, an Englishman in short, unable to follow out his own metaphors. Tufthunter and pioneer in disguise. Iconoclast and explorer. Undaunted bore undone by trivialities! Why, one asks, instead of feeling stricken in that pub, didn't I set about learning some of those songs, those precious revolutionary songs. What is to prevent one's learning more of such songs now, new songs, different songs, anyhow, if only to recapture some early joy in merely singing, and playing the guitar? What have I got out of my life? Contacts with famous men… The occasion Einstein asked me the time, for instance. That summer evening, strolling towards the tumultuous kitchen of St John's — who is it that behind me has emerged from the rooms of the Professor living in D4? And who is it also strolling towards the Porter's lodge — where, our orbits crossing, asks me the time? Is this Einstein, up for an honours degree? And who smiles when I say I don't know… And yet asked me. Yes: the great Jew, who has upset the whole world's notions of time and space, once leaned down over the side of his hammock strung between Aries and the Circlet of the Western Fish, to ask me, befuddled ex-anti-Semite, and ragged freshman huddled in his gown at the first approach of the evening star, the time. And smiled again when I pointed out the clock neither of us had noticed —)

‘ – better than having them perform their public functions in private anyhow, I should have thought,' Hugh said.

‘You might have hit on something there. That is, those birds referred to are not police in the strict sense. As a matter of fact the regular police are –'

‘I know, they're on strike.'

‘So of course they must be democratic from your point of view… Just like the army. All right, it's a democratic army… But meantime these other cads are throwing their weight about a bit. It's a pity you're leaving. It might have been a story right down your alley. Did you ever hear of the Union Militar?'

‘You mean the pre-war thingmetight, in Spain?'

‘I mean here in this state. It's affiliated to the Military Police, by which they're covered, so to speak, because the Inspector-General, who
is
the Military Police, is a member. So is the Jefe de Jardineros, I believe.'

‘I heard they were putting up a new statue to Díaz in Oaxaca.'

‘ –Just the same,' pursued the Consul, in a slightly lowered tone, as their conversation continued in the next room, ‘there is this Union Militar,
sinarquistas
, whatever they're called, if you're interested, I'm not personally — and their headquarters used to be in the policía de Séguridad here, though it isn't any longer, but in Parián somewhere, I heard.'

Finally the Consul was ready. The only further help he had required was with his socks. Wearing a freshly pressed shirt and a pair of tweed trousers with the jacket to them Hugh had borrowed and now brought in from the porch, he stood gazing at himself in the mirror.

It was most surprising, not only did the Consul now appear fresh and lively but to be dispossessed of any air of dissipation whatsoever. True, he had not before the haggard look of a depraved worn-out old man: why should he indeed, when he was only twelve years older than Hugh himself? Yet it was as though fate had fixed his age at some unidentifiable moment in the past, when his persistent objective self, perhaps weary of standing askance and watching his downfall, had at last withdrawn from him altogether, like a ship secretly leaving harbour at night. Sinister stories as well as funny and heroic had been told about his brother, whose own early poetic instincts clearly helped the legend. It occurred to Hugh that the poor old chap might be, finally, helpless, in the grip of something against which all his remarkable defences could avail him little. What use were his talons and fangs to the dying tiger? In the clutches, say, to make matters worse, of a boa-constrictor? But apparently this improbable tiger had no intention of dying just yet. On the contrary, he intended taking a little walk, taking the boa-constrictor with him, even to pretend, for a while, it wasn't there. Indeed, on the face of it, this man of abnormal strength and constitution and obscure ambition, whom Hugh would never
know, could never deliver nor make agreement to God for, but in his way loved and desired to help, had triumphantly succeeded in pulling himself together. While what had given rise to all these reflections was doubtless only the photograph on the wall both were now studying, whose presence there at all must surely discount most of those old stories, of a small camouflaged freighter, at which the Consul suddenly gestured with replenished toothmug:

‘Everything about the
Samaritan
was a ruse. See those windlasses and bulkheads. That black entrance that looks as though it might be the entrance to the forecastle, that's a shift too — there's an anti-aircraft gun stowed away snugly in there. Over there, that's the way you go down. Those were my quarters… There's your quartermaster's alley. That galley — it could become a battery, before you could say
Coclogenus paca Mexico
…

‘Curiously enough though,' the Consul peered closer, ‘I cut that picture out of a German magazine,' and Hugh too was scrutinizing the Gothic writing beneath the photograph:
Der
englische Dampfer tragt Schutzfarben gegen deutsche U-boote
.
‘Only on the next page, I recall, was a picture of the
Emden
', the Consul went on, ‘with “
So verlies ich der Weltteil unserer Antipoden
”, something of that nature, under it. “Our Antipodes”.' He gave Hugh a sharp glance that might have meant anything. ‘Queer people. But I see you're interested in my old books all of a sudden… Too bad… I left my Boehme in Paris.'

‘I was just looking.'

At, for God's sake,
A Treatise of Sulphur
:
written by Michall Sandivogius i.e. anagramatically Divi Leschi Genus Amo; at The Hermetical Triumph or the Victorious Philosophical Stone, a Treatise more compleat and more intelligible than any has been yet, concerning the Hermetical Magistery
; at
The Secrets Revealed or an Open Entrance to the Sub-Palace of the King, containing the greatest Treasure in Chymistry never yet so plainly discovered, composed by a most famous Englishman styling himself Anonymus or Eyraeneus Philaletha Cosmopolita who by inspiration and reading attained to the Philosopher's Stone at his age of twenty-three years Anno Domini 1645;
at
The Musaeum Hermeticum, Reformatum et Amplificatum
,
Omnes Sopho-Spagyricae artis Discipulos fidelissime erudiens, que pacto Summa illa vera que Lapidis Philosophici Medicina, qua res omnes qualemcunque defectum patientes, instaurantur, inveniri & haberi queat, Continens Tractatus Chimicos xxi Fran-cofurti, Apud Hermannum à Sande
LXXVIII
; at
Sub-Mundanes, or the Elementaries of the Cabbala, reprinted from the text of the Abbé de Villars: Physio-Astro-Mystic: with an Illustrative Appendix from the work Demoniality, wherein is asserted that there are in existence on earth rational creatures besides men…