Under the Volcano (49 page)

   
The Consul freed himself: the pimp
clutched him again. Almost for succour, he gazed about him. The Chief of
Municipality was still engaged. In the bar the Chief of Rostrums was telephoning
once more; Sanabria stood at his elbow directing. Squeezed against the pimp's
chair another man the Consul took for American, who was continually squinting
over his shoulder as though expecting somebody, was saying to no one in
especial: "Winchester! Hell, that's something else. Don't tell me. Righto!
The Black Swan is in Winchester. They captured me on the German side of the
camp and at the same side of the place where they captured me is a girls'
school. A girl teacher. She gave it to me. And you can take it. And you can
have it."
   
"Ah," said the pimp, still
clutching the Consul. He was speaking across him, half to the sailor. "My
friend--was a matter for you? My looking for you all tine. My England man, all
tine, all tine, sure, sure. Excu. This man telling me my friend for you all
tine. You like he?--This man very much money. This man--right or wrong, sure;
Mexican is my friend or Ingles. American god damn son of a bitch for you or for
me, or for any tine."
   
The Consul was drinking with these macabre
people inextricably. When he gazed round on this occasion he met, cognizant of
him, the Chief of Municipality's hard little cruel eyes. He gave up trying to
understand what the illiterate sailor, who seemed an even obscurer fellow than
the stool pigeon, was talking about. He consulted his watch: still only a
quarter to seven. Time was circumfluent again too, mescal-drugged. Feeling the
eyes of Señor Zuzugoitea still boring into his neck he produced once more,
importantly, defensively, Yvonne's letters. With his dark glasses on they
appeared for some reason clearer.
   
"And the off of man here what
there will be let the Lord be with us all the time," bellowed the sailor,
"there's my religion spoke in those few words. Mozart was the man that
writ the Bible. Mozart wrote the old testimony. Stay by that and you'll be all
right. Mozart was a lawyer."
   
--"Without you I am cast out,
severed. I am an outcast from myself, a shadow"--
   
"Weber's my name. They captured
me in Flanders. You would doubt me more or less. But if they captured me
now!--When Alabama came through, we came through with heels flying. We ask
nobody no questions because down there. We don't run. Christ, if you want lem
go ahead and take 'em. But if you want Alabama, that bunch." The Consul
looked up; the man, Weber, was singing. "I'm just a country b-hoy. I don't
know a damn thing." He saluted his reflection in the mirror. "Soldat
de la Légion Étrangère."
   
--"There I met some people I
must tell you about, for perhaps the thought of these people held before us
like a prayer for absolution may strengthen us once more to nourish the flame
which can never go out, but burns now so fearfully low."
   
--"Yes sir. Mozart was a lawyer.
And don't dispute me no more. Here to the off of God. I would dispute my
incomprehensible stuff !"
   
"--de la Légion Étrangère. Vous
n'avez pas de nation, ha France est votre mère. Thirty miles out of Tangier,
banging in pretty well. Captain Dupont's orderly... He was a son of a bitch
from Texas. Never will tell his name. It was Fort Adamant."
   
"--¡Mar Cantábrico!--"
   
--"You are one born to walk in
the light. Plunging your head out of the white sky you flounder in an alien
element. You think you are lost, but it is not so, for the spirits of light
will help you and bear you up in spite of yourself and beyond all opposition
you may offer. Do I sound mad? I sometimes think I am. Seize the immense
potential strength you fight, which is within your body and ever so much more
strongly within your soul, restore to me the sanity that left when you forgot
me, when you sent me away, when you turned your footsteps towards a different
path, a stranger route which you have trod apart..."
   
"He turreted out this
underground place here. Fifth squadron of the French Foreign Legion. They give
'em the spreadeagle. Soldat de la Légion Étrangère." Weber saluted himself
in the mirror again and clicked his heels. "The sun parches the lips and
they crack. Oh Christ, it's a shame: the horses all go away kicking in the
dust. I wouldn't have it. They plugged 'em too."
   
--"I am perhaps God's loneliest
mortal. I do not have the companionship in drink you find, however
unsatisfactory. My wretchedness is locked up within me. You used to cry to me
to help you. The plea I send to you is far more desperate. Help me, yes, save
me, from all that is enveloping, threatening, trembling, and ready to pour over
my head."
   
"--man what wrote the Bible. You
got to study deep down to know that Mozart writ the Bible. But I'll tell you,
you can't think with me. I've got an awful mind," the sailor was telling
the Consul. "And I hope you the same. I hope you will have good. Only to
hell on me," he added, and suddenly despairing, this sailor rose and
reeled out.
   
"American no good for me no.
American no good for Mexican. These donkey, these man," the pimp said
contemplatively, staring after him, and then at the legionnaire, who was
examining a pistol that lay in his palm like a bright jewel. "All my,
Mexican man. All tine England man, my friend Mexican." He summoned A Few
Fleas and, ordering more drinks, indicated the Consul would pay. "I don't
care son of a bitch American no-good for you, or for me. My Mexican, all tine,
all tine, all tine: eh?" he declared.
   
"¿Quiere usted la salvación de
México?" suddenly asked a radio from somewhere behind the bar.
"¿Quiere usted que Cristo sea nuestro Rey?" and the Consul saw that
the Chief of Rostrums had stopped phoning but was still standing in the same
place with the Chief of Gardens.
   
"No."
   
--"Geoffrey, why don't you
answer me? I can only believe that my letters have not reached you. I have put
aside all my pride to beg your forgiveness, to offer you mine. I cannot, I will
not believe that you have ceased to love me, have forgotten me. Or can it be
that you have some misguided idea that I am better off without you, that you
are sacrificing yourself that I may find happiness with someone else? Darling,
sweetheart, don't you realize that is impossible? We can give each other so
much more than most people can, we can marry again, we can build
forward..."
   
--"You are my friend for all
tine. Me pay for you and for me and for this man. This man is friend for me and
for this man," and the pimp slapped the Consul, at this moment taking a
long drink, calamitously on the back. "Want he?"
   
--"And if you no longer love me
and do not wish me to come back to you, will you not write and tell me so? It
is the silence that is killing me, the suspense that reaches out of that
silence and possesses my strength and my spirit. Write and tell me that your
life is the one you want, that you are gay, or are wretched, or are content or
restless. If you have lost the feel of me write of the weather, or the people
we know, the streets you walk in, the altitude.--Where are you, Geoffrey? I do
not know where you are. Oh, it is all too cruel. Where did we go, I wonder? In
what far place do we still walk, hand in hand?"--
   
The voice of the stool pigeon now
became clear, rising above the clamour--the Babel, he thought, the confusion of
tongues, remembering again as he distinguished the sailor's remote, returning
voice, the trip to Cholula: "You telling me or am I telling you? Japan no
good for U.S., for America...No bueno. Mehican, diez y ocho. All tine Mehican
gone in war for U.S.A. Sure, sure, yes... Give me cigarette for me. Give me
match for my. My Mehican war gone for England all tine--"
   
--"Where are you, Geoffrey? If I
only knew where you were, if I only knew that you wanted me, you know I would
have long since been with you. For my life is irrevocably and forever bound to
yours. Never think that by releasing me you will be free. You would only
condemn us to an ultimate hell on earth. You would only free something else to
destroy us both. I am frightened, Geoffrey. Why do you not tell me what has
happened? What do you need? And my God, what do you wait for? What release can
be compared to the release of love? My thighs ache to embrace you. The
emptiness of my body is the famished need of you. My tongue is dry in my mouth
for the want of our speech. If you let anything happen to yourself you will be
harming my flesh and mind. I am in your hands now. Save--"
   
"Mexican works, England works,
Mexican works, sure, French works. Why speak English? Mine Mexican. Mexican
United States he sees Negros--de comprende--Detroit, Houston, Dallas..."
   
"¿Quiere usted la salvación de
México? ¿Quiere usted que Cristo sea nuestro Rey?"
   
"No."
   
The Consul looked up, pocketing his
letters. Someone near him was playing a fiddle loudly. A patriarchal toothless
old Mexican with a thin wiry beard, encouraged ironically from behind by the
Chief of Municipality, was sawing away almost in his ear at the Star Spangled
Banner. But he was also saying something to him privately. ¿Americano? This bad
place for you. Deese hombres malos, Cacos. Bad people here. Brutos. No bueno
for anyone. Comprendo. I am a potter," he pursued urgently, his face close
to the Consul's. "I take you to my home. I ah wait outside." The old
man, still playing wildly though rather out of tune, had gone, way was being
made for him through the crowd, but his place, somehow between the Consul and
the pimp, had been taken by an old woman who, though respectably enough dressed
with a fine rebozo thrown over her shoulders, was behaving in a distressing
fashion, plunging her hand restlessly into the Consul's pocket, which he as
restlessly removed, thinking she wanted to rob him. Then he realized she too
wanted to help. "No good for you," she whispered. "Bad place.
Muy malo. These man no friend of Mexican people." She nodded toward the
bar, in which the Chief of Rostrums and Sanabria still stood. "They no
policía. They diablos. Murderers. He kill ten old men. He kill twenty
viejos." She peered behind her nervously, to see if the Chief of
Municipality was watching her, then took from her shawl a clockwork skeleton.
She set this on the counter before A Few Fleas, who was watching intently,
munching a marzipan coffin. "Vámonos," she muttered to the Consul, as
the skeleton, set in motion, jigged on the bar, to collapse flaccidly. But the
Consul only raised his glass. "Gracias, buena amigo," he said,
without expression. Then the old woman had gone. Meantime the conversation
about him had grown even more foolish and intemperate. The pimp was pawing at
the Consul from the other side, where the sailor had been. Diosdado was serving
ochas, raw alcohol in steaming herb tea: there was the pungent smell too, from
the glass rooms, of marijuana. "All deese men and women telling me these
men my friend for you. Ah me gusta gusta gusta... You like me like? I pay for
dis man all tine" the pimp rebuked the legionnaire, who was on the point
of offering the Consul a drink. "My friend of England man! My for Mexican
all! American no good for me no. American no good for Mexican. These donkey,
these man. These donkey. No savee nada. Me pay for all you drinkee. You no
American. You England. O.K. Life for your pipe?"
   
"No gracias," the Consul
said lighting it himself and looking meaningly at Diosdado, from whose shirt
pocket his other pipe was protruding again, "I happen to be American, and
I'm getting rather bored by your insults." "¿Quiere usted la
salvación de México? ¿Quiere usted que Cristo sea nuestro Rey?"
   
"No."
   
"These donkey. Goddamn son of a
bitch for my."
   
"One, two, tree, four, five,
twelve, sixee, seven--it's a long, longy, longy, longy--way to
Tipperaire."
   
"Noch ein habanero--"
   
"--Bolshevisten--"
   
"Buenas tardes, señores,"
the Consul greeted the Chief of Gardens and the Chief of Rostrums returning
from the phone.
   
They were standing beside him. Soon,
preposterous things were being said between them again without adequate reason:
answers, it seemed to him, given by him to questions that while they had
perhaps not been asked, nevertheless hung in the air. And as for some answers
others gave, when he turned round, no one was there. Lingeringly, the bar was
emptying for la comida; yet a handful of mysterious strangers had already
entered to take the others' places. No thought of escape now touched the
Consul's mind. Both his will, and time, which hadn't advanced five minutes
since he was last conscious of it, were paralysed. The Consul saw someone he
recognized: the driver of the bus that afternoon. He had arrived at that stage
of drunkenness where it becomes necessary to shake hands with everyone. The
Consul too found himself shaking hands with the driver. "¿Donde están
vuestras palomas?" he asked him. Suddenly, at a nod from Sanabria, the
Chief of Rostrums plunged his hands into the Consul's pockets. "Time you
pay for--ah--Mehican whisky," he said loudly, taking out the Consul's
notecase with a wink at Diosdado. The Chief of Municipality made his obscene
circular movement of the hips. "Progresión al culo--" he began. The
Chief of Rostrums had abstracted the package of Yvonne's letters: he glanced
sideways at this without removing the elastic the Consul had replaced.
"Chingado, cabrón." His eyes consulted Sanabria who, silent, stern,
nodded again. The Chief brought out another paper, and a card he didn't know he
possessed, from the Consul's jacket pocket. The three policemen put their heads
together over the bar, reading the paper. Now the Consul, baffled, was reading
this paper himself: