Under the Volcano (31 page)

‘Are there?' Hugh said, holding in his hand this last extraordinary old book — from which emanated a venerable and remote smell — and reflecting: ‘Jewish knowledge!' while a sudden absurd vision of Mr Bolowski in another life, in a caftan, with a long white beard, and skull-cap, and passionate intent look, standing at a stall in a sort of medieval New Compton Street, reading a sheet of music in which the notes were Hebrew letters, was conjured to his mind.

‘Erekia, the one who tears asunder; and they who shriek with a long-drawn cry, Illirikim; Apelki, the misleaders or turners aside; and those who attack their prey by tremulous motion, Dresop; ah, and the distressful painbringing ones, Arekesoli; and one must not forget, either, Burasin, the destroyers by stifling smoky breath; nor Glesi, the one who glistens horribly like an insect; nor Effrigis, the one who quivers in a horrible manner, you'd like Effrigis… nor yet the Mames, those who move by backward motion, nor the movers with a particular creeping motion, Ramisen…' the Consul was saying. ‘The flesh in-clothed and the evil questioners. Perhaps you would not call them precisely rational. But all these at one time or another have visited my bed.'

They had all of them in a tremendous hurry and the friendliest of humours set off for Tomalín. Hugh, himself somewhat aware of his drinks, was listening in a dream to the Consul's voice rambling on — Hitler, he pursued, as they stepped out into the Calle Nicaragua — which might have been a story right down his alley, if only he'd shown any interest before — merely wished to annihilate the Jews in order to obtain just such arcana
as could be found behind them in his bookshelves — when suddenly in the house the telephone rang.

‘No, let it ring,' the Consul said as Hugh started back. It went on ringing (for Concepta had gone out), the tintinnabulation beating around the empty rooms like a trapped bird; then it stopped.

As they moved on Yvonne said:

‘Why no, Geoff, don't keep bothering about me, I feel quite rested. But if Tomalín's too far for either of you, why don't we go to the zoo?' She looked at them both darkly and directly and beautifully with her candid eyes under the broad brow, eyes with which she did not quite return Hugh's smile, though her mouth suggested one. Perhaps she seriously interpreted Geoff's flow of conversation as a good sign. And perhaps it was! Qualifying it with loyal interest, or at a quick preoccupied tangent with observations upon impersonal change or decay, serapes or carbon or ice, the weather — where was the wind now? they might have a nice calm day after all without too much dust –Yvonne, apparently revived by her swim and taking in everything about her afresh with an objective eye, walked with swiftness and grace and independence, and as though really not tired; yet it struck Hugh she walked by herself. Poor darling Yvonne! Greeting her when she was ready had been like meeting her once again after long absence, but it was also like parting. For Hugh's usefulness was exhausted, their ‘plot' subtly lamed by small circumstances, of which not the least was his own continued presence. It would seem impossible now as their old passion to seek without imposture to be alone with her, even with Geoff's interest at heart. Hugh cast a longing glance down the hill, the way they'd gone this morning. Now they were hastening in the opposite direction. This morning might have been already far in the past, like childhood or the days before the last war; the future was beginning to unwind, the euchred stupid bloody terrific guitar-playing future. Unsuitably girded against it, Hugh felt, noted with a reporter's measure, Yvonne, barelegged, was wearing instead of her yellow slacks a white tailored sharkskin suit with one button at the waist, and beneath it a brilliant high-necked blouse, like a detail in a Rousseau; the
heels of her red shoes clicking laconically on the broken stones appeared neither flat nor high, and she carried a bright red bag. Passing her one would not have suspected agony. One would not have noticed lack of faith, nor questioned that she knew where she was going, nor wondered if she were walking in her sleep. How happy and pretty she looks, one would say. Probably she is going to meet her lover in the Bella Vista! — Women of medium height, slenderly built, mostly divorced, passionate but envious of the male — angel to him as he is bright or dark, yet unconscious destructive succubus of his ambitions — American women, with that rather graceful swift way of walking, with the clean scrubbed tanned faces of children, the skin finely textured with a satin sheen, their hair clean and shining as though just washed, and looking like that, but carelessly done, the slim brown hands that do not rock the cradle, the slender feet — how many centuries of oppression have produced them? They do not care who is losing the Battle of the Ebro, for it is too soon for them to outsnort Job's warhorse. They see no significance in it, only fools going to death for a —

‘One always heard they had a therapeutic quality. They always had zoos in Mexico apparently — Moctezuma, courteous fellow, even showed stout Cortés around a zoo. The poor chap thought he was in the infernal regions.' The Consul had discovered a scorpion on the wall.

‘
¿Alacrán
?' Yvonne produced.

‘It looks like a violin.'

‘A curious bird is the scorpion. He cares not for priest nor for poor peon… It's really a beautiful creature. Leave him be. He'll only sting himself to death anyway.' The Consul swung his stick…

They climbed the Calle Nicaragua, always between the parallel swift streams, past the school with the grey tombstones and the swing like a gallows, past high mysterious walls, and hedges intertwined with crimson flowers, among which marmalade-coloured birds were trapezing, crying raucously. Hugh felt glad of his drinks now, remembering from his boyhood how the last day of the holidays was always worse if you went anywhere, how then time, that one had hoped to bemuse, would at any
moment begin to glide after you like a shark following a swimmer. —
¡Boxl
said an advertisement.
Arena Tomalín. El Balón vs El Redondillo
. The Balloon vs the Bouncing Ball — was that? Domingo… But that was for Sunday; while they were only going to a bullthrowing, a purpose in life whose object was not even worth advertising. 666: also said further advertisements for an insecticide, obscure yellow tin plates at the bottom of walls, to the quiet delight of the Consul. Hugh chuckled to himself. So far the Consul was doing superbly. His few ‘necessary drinks', reasonable or outrageous, had worked wonders. He was walking magnificently erect, shoulders thrown back, chest out: the best thing about it was his deceitful air of infallibility, of the unquestionable, especially when contrasted with what one must look like oneself in cowboy clothes. In his finely cut tweeds (the coat Hugh had borrowed was not much crumpled, and now Hugh had borrowed another one) and blue and white striped old Chagfordian tie, with the barbering Hugh had given him, his thick fair hair neatly slicked back, his freshly trimmed brownish greying beard, his stick, his dark glasses, who would say that he was not, unmistakably, a figure of complete respectability? And if this respectable figure, the Consul might have been saying, appeared to be undergoing from time to time a slight mutation, what of it? who noticed? It might be — for an Englishman in a foreign country always expects to meet another Englishman — merely of nautical origin. If not, his limp, obviously the result of an elephant hunt or an old brush with Padians, excused it. The typhoon spun invisibly in the midst of a tumult of broken pavements: who was aware of its existence, let alone what landmarks in the brain it had destroyed? Hugh was laughing.

‘Plingen, plangen, aufgefangen
Swingen, swangen at my side,
Pootle, swootle, off to Bootle,
Nemesis, a pleasant ride,'

said the Consul mysteriously, and added with heroism, glancing about him:

‘It's really an extraordinarily nice day to take a trip.'

No se permite fijar anuncios
…

Yvonne was in fact walking alone now: they climbed in a sort of single file, Yvonne ahead, the Consul and Hugh unevenly behind, and whatever their collective distraught soul might be thinking Hugh was oblivious of it, for he had become involved with a fit of laughing, which the Consul was trying not to find infectious. They walked in this manner because a boy was driving some cows past them down the hill, half running; and, as in a dream of a dying Hindu, steering them by their tails. Now there were some goats. Yvonne turned and smiled at him. But these goats were meek and sweet-looking, jangling little bells.
Father is waiting for you though. Father has not forgotten
. Behind the goats a woman with a black clenched face staggered past them under the weight of a basket loaded with carbon. A peon loped after her down the hill balancing a large barrel of ice-cream on his head and calling apparently for customers, with what hope of success one could not imagine, since he seemed so burdened as to be unable either to look from side to side or to halt.

‘It's true that at Cambridge', the Consul was saying, tapping Hugh on the shoulder, ‘you may have learned about Guelphs and so on… But did you know that no angel with six wings is ever transformed?'

‘I seem to have learned that no bird ever flew with one –'

‘Or that Thomas Burnet, author of the
Telluris Theoria Sacra
, entered Christs in —
Cáscaras! Caracoles! Virgen Santísima! Ave María! Fuego, fuego! Ay, qué me matan
!'

With a shattering and fearful tumult a plane slammed down upon them, skimmed the frightened trees, zooming, narrowly missed a mirador, and was gone the next moment, headed in the direction of the volcanoes, from which rolled again the monotonous sound of artillery.

‘
Acabóse
,' sighed the Consul.

Hugh suddenly noticed that a tall man (who must have stepped out of the side-road Yvonne had seemed anxious they should take) with sloping shoulders and handsome, rather swarthy features, though he was obviously a European, doubtless in some state of exile, was confronting them, and it was as though
the whole of this man, by some curious fiction, reached up to the crown of his perpendicularly raised Panama hat, for the gap below seemed to Hugh still occupied by something, a sort of halo or spiritual property of his body, or the essence of some guilty secret perhaps that he kept under the hat but which was now momentarily exposed, fluttering and embarrassed. He was confronting them, though smiling, it appeared, at Yvonne alone, his blue, bold protuberant eyes expressing an incredulous dismay, his black eyebrows frozen in a comedian's arch: he hesitated: then this man, who wore his coat open and trousers very high over a stomach they had probably been designed to conceal but merely succeeded in giving the character of an independent tumescence of the lower part of his body, came forward with eyes flashing and mouth under its small black moustache curved in a smile at once false and engaging, yet somehow protective – and somehow, also, increasingly grave — came forward as it were impelled by clockwork, hand out, automatically ingratiating:

‘Why Yvonne, what a delightful surprise. Why goodness me, I thought; oh, hullo, old bean –'

‘Hugh, this is Jacques Laruelle,' the Consul was saying. ‘You've probably heard me speak about him at one time or another. Jacques, my young brother Hugh: ditto…
Il vient d'arriver
… or vice versa. How goes it, Jacques? You look as though you needed a drink rather badly.'

‘ –'

‘ –'

A minute later M. Laruelle, whose name struck only a very distant chord for Hugh, had taken Yvonne's arm and was walking in the middle of the road with her up the hill. Probably there was no significance in this. But the Consul's introduction had been brusque to say the least. Hugh himself felt half hurt and, whatever the cause, a slight appalling sense of tension as the Consul and he slowly fell behind again. Meantime M. Laruelle was saying:

‘Why do we not all drop into my “madhouse”; that would be good fun, don't you think Geoffrey — ah — ah — Hughes?'

‘No,' softly remarked the Consul, behind, to Hugh, who on the other hand now felt almost disposed to laugh once more.

For the Consul was also saying something cloacal very quietly to himself over and over again. They were following Yvonne and her friend through the dust which now, chased by a lonely gust of wind, was moving along with them up the road, sizzling in petulant ground-swirls to blow away like rain. When the wind died away the water rushing headlong down the gutters here was like a sudden force in the opposite direction.

M. Laruelle was saying attentively, ahead of them, to Yvonne:

‘Yes… Yes… But your bus won't leave till two-thirty. You have over an hour.'

— ‘But that does sound like an unusual bloody miracle,' Hugh said. ‘You mean after all these years –'

‘Yeah. It was a great coincidence our meeting here,' the Consul told Hugh in a changed even tone. ‘But I really think you two ought to get together, you have something in common. Seriously you might enjoy his house, it's always mildly amusing.'

‘Good,' said Hugh.

‘Why, here comes the
cartero
', Yvonne called out ahead, half turning round and disengaging her arm from M. Laruelle's. She was pointing to the corner on the left at the top of the hill where the Calle Nicaragua met the Calle Tierra del Fuego. ‘He's simply amazing,' she was saying volubly. ‘The funny thing is that all the postmen in Quauhnahuac look exactly alike. Apparently they're all from the same family and have been postmen for positively generations. I think this one's grandfather was a
cartero
at the time of Maximilian. Isn't it delightful to think of the post-office collecting all these grotesque little creatures like so many carrier pigeons to dispatch at their will?'

Why are you so voluble? Hugh wondered: ‘How delightful, for the post-office,' he said politely. They were all watching the
cartero‘s
approach. Hugh happened not to have observed any of these unique postmen before. He could not have been five feet in height, and from a distance appeared like an unclassifiable but somehow pleasing animal advancing on all fours. He was wearing a colourless dungaree suit and a battered official cap and Hugh now saw he had a tiny goatee beard. Upon his small wizened face as he lunged down the street towards them in his
inhuman yet endearing fashion there was the friendliest expression imaginable. Seeing them he stopped, unshouldered the bag and began to unbuckle it.