Under the Volcano (13 page)

   
"Damn it, I feel pretty
well," he thought suddenly, finishing his half quartern. He stretched out
for the whisky bottle, failed to reach it, rose again and poured himself
another finger. "My hand is much steadier already." He finished this
whisky and taking the glass and the bottle of Johnny Walker, which was fuller
than he'd imagined, crossed the porch to its farthest corner and placed them in
a cupboard. There were two old golf balls in the cupboard.
   
"Play with me I can still carry
the eighth green in three. I am tapering off," he said. "What am I
talking about? Even I know I am being fatuous."
   
"I shall sober up." He
returned and poured some more strychnine into the other glass, filling it, then
moved the strychnine bottle from the tray into a more prominent position on the
parapet. "After all I have been out all night: what could one expect?"
   
"I am too sober. I have lost my
familiars, my guardian angels. I am straightening out," he added, sitting
down again opposite the strychnine bottle with his glass. "In a sense what
happened was a sign of my fidelity, my loyalty; any other man would have spent
this last year in a very different manner. At least I have no disease," he
cried in his heart, the cry seeming to end on a somewhat doubtful note,
however. "And perhaps it's fortunate I've had some whisky since alcohol is
an aphrodisiac too. One must never forget either that alcohol is a food. How
can a man be expected to perform his marital duties without food? Marital? At
all events I am progressing, slowly but surely. Instead of immediately rushing
out to the Bella Vista and getting drunk as I did the last time all this
happened and we had that disastrous quarrel about Jacques and I smashed the
electric-light bulb, I have stayed here. True, I had the car before and it was
easier. But here I am. I am not escaping. And what's more I intend to have a
hell of a sight better time staying." The Consul sipped his strychnine,
then put his glass on the floor.
   
"The will of man is
unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it."
   
He lay back in his chair.
Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, that image of the perfect marriage, lay now
clear and beautiful on the horizon under an almost pure morning sky. Far above
him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all
morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life!
   
Enormously high too, he noted some
vultures waiting, more graceful than eagles as they hovered there like burnt
papers floating from a fire which suddenly are seen to be blowing swiftly
upward, rocking.
   
The shadow of an immense weariness
stole over him... The Consul fell asleep with a crash.

   
 
Daily Globe intelube londres presse
collect following yesterdays head--coming antisemitic campaign mexpress
propetition see tee emma mex-workers confederation proexpulsion exmexico quote
small Jewish textile manufacturers unquote learned today perreliable source
that german legation mexcity actively behind the campaign etstatement that
legation gone length sending antisemitic propaganda mexdept interiorwards borne
out pro-pamphlet possession local newspaperman stop pamphlet asserts jews
influence unfavourably any country they live etemphasises quote their belief
absolute power etthat they gain their ends without conscience or consideration
unquote stop Firmin.
   
Reading it over once more, the carbon
of his final dispatch (sent that morning from the Oficina Principal of the
Compañía Telegráfica Mexicana Esq., San Juan de Letrán e Independencia, México,
D.F.), Hugh Firmin less than sauntered, so slowly did he move, up the drive
towards his brother's house, his brother's jacket balanced on his shoulder, one
arm thrust almost to the elbow through the twin handles of his brother's small
Gladstone bag, his pistol in the checkered holster lazily slapping his thigh:
eyes in my feet, I must have, as well as straw, he thought, stopping on the
edge of the deep pothole, and then his heart and the world stopped too; the
horse half over the hurdle, the diver, the guillotine, the hanged man falling,
the murderer's bullet, and the cannon's breath, in Spain or China frozen in
mid-air, the wheel, the piston, poised--
   
Yvonne, or something woven from the
filaments of the past that looked like her, was working in the garden, and at a
little distance appeared clothed entirely in sunlight. Now she stood up
straight--she was wearing yellow slacks--and was squinting at him, one hand
raised to shield her eyes from the sun.
   
Hugh jumped over the pothole to the
grass; disentangling himself from the bag he knew an instant's paralysed
confusion, and reluctance to meet the past. The bag, decanted on the faded
rustic seat, disgorged into its lid a bald toothbrush, a rusty safety-razor,
his brother's shirt, and a second-hand copy of Jack London's
 
Valley of the Moon , bought yesterday for
fifteen centavos at the German bookstore opposite Sandborns in Mexico City.
Yvonne was waving.
   
And he was advancing (just as on the
Ebro they were retreating) the borrowed jacket still somehow balanced, half
slung on his shoulder, his broad hat in one hand, the cable, folded, still
somehow in the other.
   
"Hullo, Hugh. Gosh, I thought
for a moment you were Bill Hodson--Geoffrey said you were here. How nice to see
you again."
   
Yvonne brushed the dirt from her
palms and held out her hand, which he did not grip, nor even feel at first,
then dropped as if carelessly, becoming conscious of a pain in his heart and
also of a faint giddiness.
   
"How absolutely something or
other. When did you get here?"
   
"Just a little while ago."
Yvonne was plucking the dead blossoms from some potted plants resembling
zinnias, with fragrant delicate white and crimson flowers, that were ranged on
a low wall; she took the cable Hugh had for some reason handed her along to the
next flower pot: "I hear you've been in Texas. Have you become a drugstore
cowboy?"
   
Hugh replaced his ten-gallon Stetson
on the back of his head, laughing down, embarrassed, at his high-heeled boots,
the too-tight trousers tucked inside them. "They impounded my clothes at
the border. I meant to buy some new ones in the City but somehow never got around
to it... You look awfully well!"
   
"And you!"
   
He began to button his shirt, which
was open to the waist, revealing, above the two belts, the skin more black than
brown with sun; he patted the bandolier below his lower belt, which slanted
diagonally to the holster resting on his hip-bone and attached to his right leg
by a flat leather thong, patted the thong (he was secretly enormously proud of
his whole outfit), then the breast pocket of his shirt, where he found a loose
rolled cigarette he was lighting when Yvonne said:
   
"What's this, the new message
from Garcia?"
   
"The C.T.M." Hugh glanced
over his shoulder at his cable, "the Confederation of Mexican Workers,
have sent a petition. They object to certain Teutonic huggermugger in this
state. As I see it, they are right to object. Hugh gazed about the garden;
where was Geoff? Why was she here? She is too casual. Are they not separated or
divorced after all? What is the point? Yvonne handed back the cable and Hugh
slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. "That," he said, climbing
into it, since they were now standing in the shade, "is the last cable I
send the Globe."
   
"So Geoffrey--" Yvonne
stared at him: she pulled the jacket down at the back (knowing it Geoff's), the
sleeves were too short: her eyes seemed hurt and unhappy, but vaguely amused:
her expression as she went on paring blossoms managed to be both speculative
and indifferent; she asked: "What's all this I hear about you travelling
on a cattle truck?" "I entered Mexico disguised as a cow so they'd
think I was a Texan at the border and I wouldn't have to pay any head tax. Or
worse," Hugh said, "England being persona non grata here, so to
speak, after Cardenas's oil shindig. Morally of course we're at war with
Mexico, in case you didn't know--where's our ruddy monarch?"
   
"--Geoffrey's asleep,"
Yvonne said, not meaning plastered by any chance, Hugh thought. "But
doesn't your paper take care of those things?"
   
"Well. It's muy complicado...
I'd sent my resignation in to the
 
Globe
 
from the States but they
hadn't replied--here, let me do that--"
   
Yvonne was trying to thrust back a
stubborn branch of bougainvillea blocking some steps he hadn't noticed before.
"I take it you heard we were in Quauhnahuac?" "I'd discovered I
might kill several birds with one stone by coming to Mexico... Of course it was
a surprise you
 
weren't
 
here--"
   
" Isn't the garden a wreck
?" Yvonne said suddenly.
   
"It looks quite beautiful to me,
considering Geoffrey hasn't had a gardener for so long." Hugh had mastered
the branch--they are losing the Battle of the Ebro because I did that--and
there were the steps; Yvonne grimaced, moving down them, and halted near the
bottom to inspect an oleander that looked reasonably poisonous, and was even
still in bloom:
   
"And your friend, was he a
cattleman or disguised as a cow too?"
   
"A smuggler, I think. Geoff told
you about Weber, eh?" Hugh chuckled. "I strongly suspect him of
running ammunition. Anyhow I got into an argument with the fellow in a dive in
El Paso and it turned out he'd somehow arranged to go as far as Chihuahua by
cattle truck, which seemed a good idea, and then fly to Mexico City. Actually
we did fly, from some place with a weird name, like Cusihuriachic, arguing all
the way down, you know--he was one of these American semi-Fascist blokes, been
in the Foreign Legion, God knows what. But Parián was where he really wanted to
go so he sat us down conveniently in the field here. It was quite a trip."
   
"Hugh, how like you!"
   
Yvonne stood below smiling up at him,
hands in the pockets of her slacks, feet wide apart like a boy. Her breasts
stood up under her blouse embroidered with birds and flowers and pyramids she
had probably bought or brought for Geoff's benefit, and once more Hugh felt the
pain in his heart and looked away. "I probably should have shot the
bastardo out of hand: only he was a decent sort of swine--"
   
"You can see Parián from here
sometimes."
   
Hugh was offering the thin air a
cigarette. "Isn't it rather indefatigably English or something of Geoff's
to be asleep?" He followed Yvonne down the path. "Here, it's my last
machine-made one."
   
"Geoffrey was at the Red Cross
Ball last night. He's pretty tired, poor dear." They walked on together,
smoking, Yvonne pausing every few steps to uproot some weed or other until,
suddenly, she stopped, gazing down at a flower-bed that was completely, grossly
strangled by a coarse green vine. "My God, this used to be a beautiful
garden. It was like Paradise."
   
"Let's get the hell out of it then.
Unless you're too tired for a walk." A snore, ricocheting, agonized,
embittered, but controlled, single, was wafted to his ears: the muted voice of
England long asleep.
   
Yvonne glanced hastily around as if
fearful Geoff might come catapulting out of the window, bed and all, unless he
was on the porch, and hesitated. "Not a bit," she said brightly,
warmly. "Let's do..." She started down the path before him.
"What are we waiting for?"
   
Unconsciously, he had been watching
her, her bare brown neck and arms, the yellow slacks, and the vivid scarlet
flowers behind her, the brown hair circling her ears, the graceful swift
movements of her yellow sandals in which she seemed to dance, to be floating
rather than walking. He caught up with her and once more they walked on
together, avoiding a long-tailed bird that glided down to alight near them like
a spent arrow.
   
The bird swaggered ahead of them now
down the cratered drive, through the gateless gateway, where it was joined by a
crimson and white turkey, a pirate attempting to escape under full sail, and
into the dusty street. They were laughing at the birds, but the things they
might have gone on to say under somewhat different circumstances, as: I wonder
what's happened to our bikes, or, do you remember, in Paris, that cafe, With
the tables up the trees, in Robinson, remained unspoken.
   
They turned to the left, away from
the town. The road declined sharply below them. At the bottom rose purple
hills. Why is this not bitter, he thought, why is it not indeed, it was
already: Hugh was aware for the first time of the other gnawing, as the Calle
Nicaragua, the walls of the large residences left behind, became an almost
unnavigable chaos of loose stones and potholes. Yvonne's bicycle wouldn't have
been much use here. "What on earth were you doing in Texas, Hugh?"
"Stalking Okies. That is, I was after them in Oklahoma. I thought the
Globe ought to be interested in Okies. Then I went down to this ranch in Texas.
That's where I'd heard about these chaps from the dust bowl not being allowed
to cross the border."
   
"What an old Nosey Parker you
are!"
   
"I landed in Frisco just in time
for Munich." Hugh stared over to the left where in the distance the
latticed watchtower of the Alcapancingo prison had just appeared with little
figures on top gazing east and west through binoculars.
   
"They're just playing. The
police here love to be mysterious, like you. Where were you before that? We
must have just missed each other in Frisco."
   
A lizard vanished into the
bougainvillea growing along the roadbank, wild bougainvillea now, an overflux,
followed by a second lizard. Under the bank gaped a half-shored-in hole,
another entrance to the mine perhaps. Precipitous fields fell away down to
their right, tilting violently at every angle. Far beyond them, cupped by
hills, he made out the old bull-ring and again he heard Weber's voice in the
plane, shouting, yelling in his ear, as they passed the pinch-bottle of
habanero between them:"
 
Quauhnahuac. That's where they crucified the women in the bull-rings
during the revolution and set the bulls at them. And that's a nice thing to
say! The blood ran down the gutters and they barbecued the dogs in the market
place. They shoot first and ask questions later! You're goddamn right-- "
But there was no revolution in Quauhnahuac now and in the stillness the purple
slopes before them, the fields, even the watchtower and the bull-ring, seemed
to be murmuring of peace, of paradise indeed. "China," he said.
   
Yvonne turned, smiling, though her
eyes were troubled and perplexed: "What about the war?" she said.
   
"That was the point. I fell out
of an ambulance with three dozen beer bottles and six journalists on top of me
and that's when I decided it might be healthier to go to California." Hugh
glanced suspiciously at a billy goat which had been following them on their
right along the grass margin between the road and a wire fence, and which now
stood there motionless, regarding them with patriarchal contempt. "No,
they're the lowest form of animal life, except possibly--look out!--my God, I
knew it--" The goat had charged and Hugh felt the sudden intoxicating
terrified incidence and warmth of Yvonne's body as the animal missed them,
skidded, slithered round the abrupt leftward bend the road took at this point
over a low stone bridge, and disappeared beyond up a hill, furiously trailing
its tether. "Goats," he said, twisting Yvonne firmly out of his arms.
"Even when there are no wars think of the damage they do," he went
on, through something nervous, mutually dependent still, about their mirth.
"I mean journalists, not goats. There's no punishment on earth fit for
them. Only the Malebolge... And here is the Malebolge."
   
The Malebolge was the barranca, the
ravine which wound through the country, narrow here--but its momentousness
successfully prescinded their minds from the goat. The little stone bridge on
which they stood crossed it. Trees, their tops below them, grew down into the
gulch, their foliage partly obscuring the terrific drop. From the bottom came a
faint chuckling of water.