Under the Volcano (32 page)

   
Then they were hissing along a good
stretch of oiled road through flat wooded country with neither volcano nor
ravine in sight. Yvonne had turned sideways and her clear profile sailed along
reflected in the window. The more even sounds of the bus wove into Hugh's brain
an idiotic syllogism: I am losing the Battle of the Ebro, I am also losing
Yvonne, therefore Yvonne is...
   
The camión was now somewhat fuller.
In addition to the pelado and the old women there were men dressed in their
Sunday best, white trousers and purple shirts, and one or two younger women in
mourning, probably going to the cemeteries. The poultry were a sad sight. All
alike had submitted to their fate; hens, cocks, and turkeys, whether in their
baskets, or still loose. With only an occasional flutter to show they were
alive they crouched passively under the long seats, their emphatic spindly
claws bound with cord. Two pullets lay, frightened and quivering, between the
hand brake and the clutch, their wings linked with the levers. Poor things,
they had signed then--Munich agreement too. One of the turkeys even looked
remarkably like Neville Chamberlain. Su salud estará a salvo no escupiendo en
el interior de este vehículo: these words, over the windscreen, ran the entire
breadth of the bus. Hugh concentrated upon different objects in the camion; the
driver's small mirror with the legend running round it--Cooperación de la Cruz
Roja, the three picture postcards of the Virgin Mary pinned beside it, the two
slim vases of marguerites over the dashboard, the gangrened fire extinguisher,
the dungaree jacket and whiskbroom under the seat where the pelado was
sitting--he watched him as they hit another bad stretch of road.
   
Swaying from side to side with his
eyes shut, the man was trying to tuck in his shirt. Now he was methodically
buttoning his coat on the wrong buttons. But it struck Hugh all this was merely
preparatory, a sort of grotesque toilet. For, still without opening his eyes,
he had now somehow found room to lie full length on the seat. It was extraordinary,
too, how, stretched out, a corpse, he yet preserved the appearance of knowing
everything that was going on. Despite his stupor, he was a man on guard. The
half-melon jumped from his hand, the chawed fragment full of seeds like raisins
rolled on the seat; those closed eyes saw it. His crucifix was slipping off; he
was conscious of it. The Homburg fell from his sombrero, slid to the floor, he
knew all about it, though he made no effort to pick the hat up. He was guarding
himself against theft, while at the same time gathering, strength for more
debauchery. In order to get into another cantina not his brother's he might
have to walk straight. Such prescience was worthy of admiration.
   
Nothing but pines, fircones, stones,
black earth. Yet that earth looked parched, those stones, unmistakably,
volcanic. Everywhere, quite as Prescott informed one, were attestations to
Popocatepetl's presence and antiquity. And here the damned thing was again! Why
were there volcanic eruptions? People pretended not to know. Because, they
might suggest tentatively, under the rocks beneath the surface of the earth,
steam, its pressure constantly rising, was generated; because the rocks and the
water, decomposing, formed gases, which combined with the molten material from
below; because the watery rocks near the surface were unable to restrain the
growing complex of pressures, and the whole mass exploded; the lava flooded
out, the gases escaped, and there was your eruption.--But not your explanation.
No, the whole thing was a complete mystery still. In movies of eruptions people
were always seen standing in the midst of the encroaching flood, delighted by
it. Walls fell over, churches collapsed, whole families moved away their
possessions in a panic, but there were always these people, jumping about
between the streams of molten lava, smoking cigarettes...
   
Christ! He hadn't realized how fast
they were going, in spite of the road and their being in a 1918 Chevrolet, and
it seemed to him that because of this a quite different atmosphere now pervaded
the little bus; the men were smiling, the old women gossiping knowingly and
chuckling, two boys, newcomers hanging on by their eyebrows at the back, were
whistling cheerfully--the bright shirts, the brighter serpentine confetti of
tickets, red, yellow, green, blue, dangling from a loop on the ceiling, all
contributed to a sense of gaiety, a feeling, almost, of the fiesta itself
again, that hadn't been there before.
   
But the boys were dropping off, one
by one, and the gaiety, short-lived as a burst of sunlight, departed.
Brutal-looking candelabra cactus swung past, a ruined church, full of pumpkins,
windows bearded with grass. Burned, perhaps, in the revolution, its exterior
was blackened with fire, and it had an air of being damned.
 
  
--The time has come for you to join your
comrades, to aid the workers, he told Christ, who agreed. It had been His idea
all the while, only until Hugh had rescued Him those hypocrites had kept him
shut up inside the burning church where He couldn't breathe. Hugh made a
speech. Stalin gave him a medal and listened sympathetically while he explained
what was on his mind. "True... I wasn't in time to save the Ebro, but I
did strike my blow--" He went off, the star of Lenin on his lapel; in his
pocket a certificate; Hero of the Soviet Republic, and the True Church, pride
and love in his heart--
   
Hugh looked out of the window. Well,
after all. Silly bastard. But the queer thing was, that love was real. Christ,
why can't we be simple, Christ Jesus why may we not be simple, why may we not
all be brothers?
   
Buses with odd names on them, a
procession out of a side-road, were bobbing past in the opposite direction:
buses to Tetecala, to Jujuta, to Xuitepec: buses to Xochitepec, to Xoxitepec--
   
Popocatepetl loomed, pyramidal, to
their right, one side beautifully curved as a woman's breast, the other
precipitous, jagged, ferocious. Cloud drifts were massing again, high-piled,
behind it. Ixtaccihuatl appeared...
   
--Xiutepecanochtitlantehuantepec,
Quintanarooroo, Tlacolula, Moctezuma, Juárez, Puebla, Tlampam--bong! suddenly
snarled the bus. They thundered on, passing little pigs trotting along the
road, an Indian screening sand, a bald boy, with ear-rings, sleepily scratching
his stomach and swinging madly on a hammock. Advertisements on ruined walls
swam by. ¡Atchis! ¡Instante! Resfriados, Dolores, Cafeasperina. Rechace
Imitaciones. Las Manos de Orlac. Con Peter Lorre.
   
When there was a bad patch the bus
rattled and sideslipped ominously, once it altogether ran off the road, but its
determination outweighed these waverings, one was pleased at last to have
transferred one's responsibilities to it, lulled into a state from which it
would be pain to waken.
   
Hedges, with low steep banks, in
which grew dusty trees, were hemming them in on either side. Without decreasing
pace they were running into a narrow, sunken section of road, winding, and so
reminiscent of England one expected at any point to see a sign: Public Footpath
to Lostwithiel.
   
¡Desviación! ¡Hombres Trabajando!
   
With a yelping of tyres and brakes
they made the detour leftward too quickly. But Hugh had seen a man, whom they'd
narrowly missed, apparently lying fast asleep under the hedge on the right side
of the road.
   
Neither Geoffrey nor Yvonne, staring
sleepily out of the opposite window, had seen him. Nor did anyone else, were
they aware of it, seem to think it peculiar a man should choose to sleep,
however perilous his position, in the sun on the main road.
   
Hugh leaned forward to call out,
hesitated, then tapped the driver on the shoulder; almost at the same moment
the bus leaped to a standstill.
   
Guiding the whining vehicle swiftly,
steering an erratic course with one hand, the driver, craning out of his seat
to watch the corners behind and before, reversed out of the detour back into
the narrow highway.
   
The friendly harsh smell of exhaust
gases was tempered with the hot tar smell from the repairs, ahead of them now,
where the road was broader with a wide grass margin between it and the hedge,
though nobody was working there, everyone knocked off for the day possibly
hours before, and there was nothing to be seen, just the soft, indigo carpet
sparkling and sweating away to itself.
   
There appeared now, standing alone in
a sort of rubbish heap where this grass margin stopped, opposite the detour, a
stone wayside cross. Beneath it lay a milk bottle, a funnel, a sock, and part
of an old suitcase.
   
And now, farther back still, in the
road, Hugh saw the man again. His face covered by a wide hat, he was lying
peacefully on his back with his arms stretched out towards this wayside cross,
in whose shadow, twenty feet away, he might have found a grassy bed. Nearby
stood a horse meekly cropping the hedge.
   
As the bus jerked to another stop the
pelado, who was still lying down, almost slid from the seat to the floor.
Managing to recover himself though, he not only reached his feet and an
equilibrium he contrived remarkably to maintain but had, with one strong
counter-movement, arrived half-way to the exit, crucifix fallen safely in place
around his neck, hats in one hand, what remained of the melon in the other.
With a look that might have withered at its inception any thought of stealing
them, he placed the hats carefully on a vacant seat near the door, then, with
exaggerated care, let himself down to the road. His eyes were still only half
open, and they preserved a dead glaze. Yet there could be no doubt he had
already taken in the whole situation. Throwing away the melon he started over
towards the man, stepping tentatively, as over imaginary obstacles. But his
course was straight, he held himself erect.
   
Hugh, Yvonne, the Consul, and two of
the male passengers got out and followed him. None of the old women moved.
   
It was stiflingly hot in the sunken
deserted road. Yvonne gave a nervous cry and turned on her heel; Hugh caught
her arm.
   
"Don't mind me. It's just that I
can't stand the sight of blood, damn it."
   
She was climbing back into the camión
as Hugh came up with the Consul and the two passengers.
   
The pelado was swaying gently over
the recumbent man who was dressed in the usual loose white garments of the
Indian.
   
There was not, however, much blood in
sight, save on one side of his hat.
   
But the man was certainly not
sleeping peacefully. His chest heaved like a spent swimmer's, his stomach
contracted and dilated rapidly, one fist clenched and unclenched in the dust...
   
Hugh and the Consul stood helplessly,
each, he thought, waiting for the other to remove the Indian's hat, to expose
the wound each felt must be there, checked from such action by a common
reluctance, perhaps an obscure courtesy. For each knew the other was also
thinking it would be better still should one of the passengers, even the
pelado, examine the man.
   
As nobody made any move at all Hugh
grew impatient. He shifted from foot to foot. He looked at the Consul
expectantly: he'd been in this country long enough to know what should be done,
moreover he was the one among them most nearly representing authority. Yet the
Consul seemed lost in reflection. Suddenly Hugh stepped forward impulsively and
bent over the Indian--one of the passengers plucked his sleeve.
   
"Har you throw your
cigarette?"
   
"Throw it away." The Consul
woke up. "Forest fires."
   
"So--, they have prohibidated
it."
   
Hugh stamped his cigarette out and
was about to bend over the man once more when the passenger again plucked his
sleeve:
   
"No, no," he said, tapping
his nose, "they har prohibidated that, también."
  
 
"You can't touch him--it's the law,"
said the Consul sharply, who looked now as though he would like to get as far
from this scene as possible, if necessary even by means of the Indian's horse.
"For his protection. Actually it's a sensible law. Otherwise you might
become an accessory after the fact."
   
The Indian's breathing sounded like
the sea dragging itself down a stone beach.
   
A single bird flew, high.
   
"But the man may be dy--"
Hugh muttered to Geoffrey.
   
"God, I feel terrible," the
Consul replied, though it was a fact he was about to take some action, when the
pelado anticipated him: he went down on one knee and, quick as lightning,
whipped off the Indian's hat.
   
They all peered over, seeing the
cruel wound on the side of his head, where the blood had almost coagulated, the
flushed moustachioed face turned aside, and before they stood back Hugh caught
a glimpse of a sum of money, four or five silver pesos and a handful of
centavos, that had been placed neatly under the loose collar to the man's
blouse, which partly concealed it. The pelado replaced the hat and,
straightening himself, made a hopeless gesture with hands now blotched with
half-dried blood.
   
How long had he been here, lying in
the road?
   
Hugh gazed after the pelado on his
way back to the camión, and then, once more, at the Indian, whose life, as they
talked, seemed gasping away from them all. "Diantre! ¿Donde buscamos un
medico?" he asked stupidly.
   
This time from the camión, the pelado
made again that gesture of hopelessness, which was also like a gesture of
sympathy: what could they do, he appeared trying to convey to them through the
window, how could they have known, when they got out, that they could do
nothing?