Under the Volcano Read online

  Erect as Jim Taskerson, he thought, married now too, poor devil — restored, the Consul glided down the Calle Nicaragua.

  Within the house there was the sound of bathwater running out: he made a lightning toilet. Intercepting, Concepta (though not before he had added a tactful strychnine to her burden) with the breakfast tray, the Consul, innocently as a man who has committed a murder while dummy at bridge, entered Yvonne’s room. It was bright and tidy. A gaily coloured Oaxaqueñan scrape covered the low bed where Yvonne lay half asleep with her head resting on one hand.

  ‘How!’

  ‘How!’

  A magazine she’d been reading dropped to the floor. The Consul, inclined slightly forward over the orange juice and ranchero eggs, advanced boldly through a diversity of powerless emotions.

  ‘Are you comfortable there?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’ Yvonne accepted the tray smiling. The magazine was the amateur astronomy one she subscribed to and from the cover the huge domes of an observatory, haloed in gold and standing out in black silhouette like roman helmets, regarded the Consul waggishly.’ “The Mayas”,’ he read aloud, ‘“were far advanced in observational astronomy. But they did not suspect a Copernican system.”’ He threw the magazine back on the bed and sat easily in his chair, crossing his legs, the tips of his fingers meeting in a strange calm, his strychnine on the floor beside him. ‘Why should they?… What I like though are the “vague” years of the old Mayans. And their “pseudo years”, mustn’t overlook them! And their delicious names for the months. Pop. Uo. Zip. Zotz. Tzec. Xul. Yaxkin.’

  ‘Mac,’ Yvonne was laughing. ‘Isn’t there one called Mac?’

  ‘There’s Yax and Zac. And Uayeb: I like that one most of all, the month that only lasts five days.’

  ‘In receipt of yours dated Zip the first I –’

  ‘But where does it all get you in the end?’ The Consul sipped his strychnine that had yet to prove its adequacy as a chaser to the Burke’s Irish (now perhaps in the garage at the Bella Vista). ‘The knowledge, I mean. One of the first penances I ever imposed on myself was to learn the philosophical section of War and Peace by heart. That was of course before I could dodge about in the rigging of the Cabbala like a St Jago’s monkey. But then the other day I realized that the only thing I remembered about the whole book was that Napoleon’s leg twitched –’

  ‘Aren’t you going to eat anything yourself? You must be starved.’

  ‘I partook.’

  Yvonne who was herself breakfasting heartily asked:

  ‘How’s the market?’

  ‘Tom’s a bit fed up because they’ve confiscated some property of his in Tlaxcala, or Puebla, he thought he’d got away with. They haven’t my number yet, I’m not sure where I really do stand in that regard, now I’ve resigned the service –’

  ‘So you–’

  ‘By the by I must apologize for still being in these duds —dusty too — had show, I might have put on a blazer at least for your benefit!’ The Consul smiled inwardly at his accent, now become for undivulgeable reasons almost uncontrolledly ‘English’.

  ‘So you really have resigned!’

  ‘Oh absolutely! I’m thinking of becoming a Mexican subject, of going to live among the Indians, like William Black-stone. But for one’s habit of making money, don’t you know, all very mysterious to you, I suppose, outside looking in –’ The Consul stared round mildly at the pictures on the wall, mostly water-colours by his mother depicting scenes in Kashmir: a small grey stone enclosure encompassing several birch trees and a taller poplar was Lalla Rookh’s tomb, a picture of wild torrential scenery, vaguely Scottish, the gorge, the ravine at Gugganvir; the Shalimar looked more like the Cam than ever: a distant view of Nanga Parbat from Sind valley could have been painted on the porch here, Nanga Parbat might well have passed for old Popo… ‘ – outside looking in,’ he repeated,’ the result of so much worry, speculation, foresight, alimony, seigniorage –’

  ‘But–’ Yvonne had laid aside her breakfast tray and taken a cigarette from her own case beside the bed and lit it before the Consul could help her.

  ‘One might have already done so!’

  Yvonne lay back in bed smoking… In the end the Consul scarcely heard what she was saying — calmly, sensibly, courageously — for his awareness of an extraordinary thing that was happening in his mind. He saw in a flash, as if these were ships on the horizon, under a black lateral abstract sky, the occasion for desperate celebration (it didn’t matter he might be the only one to celebrate it) receding, while at the same time, coming closer, what could only be, what was — Good God! — his salvation…

  ‘Now?’ he found he had said gently. ‘But we can’t very well go away now can we, what with Hugh and you and me and one thing and another, don’t you think? It’s a little unfeasible, isn’t it?’ (For his salvation might not have seemed so large with menace had not the Burke’s Irish whiskey chosen suddenly to tighten, if almost imperceptibly, a screw. It was the soaring of this moment, conceived of as continuous, that felt itself threatened.) ‘Isn’t it?’ he repeated.

  ‘I’m sure Hugh’d understand–’

  ‘But that’s not quite the point!’

  ‘Geoffrey, this house has become somehow evil–’

  ‘ –I mean it’s rather a dirty trick –’

  Oh Jesus… The Consul slowly assumed an expression intended to be slightly bantering and at the same time assured, indicative of a final consular sanity. For this was it. Goethe’s church bell was looking him straight between the eyes; fortunately, he was prepared for it. ‘I remember a fellow I helped out in New York once’, he was saying with apparent irrelevance, ‘in some way, an out of work actor he was. “Why Mr Firmin,” he said, “it isn’t naturel here.” That’s exactly how he pronounced it: naturel. “Man wasn’t intended for it,” he complained. “All the streets are the same as this Tenth or Eleventh Street in Philadelphia too…”’ The Consul could feel his English accent leaving him and that of a Bleecker Street mummer taking its place. “‘But in Newcastle, Delaware, now that’s another thing again I Old cobbled roads… And Charleston: old Southern stuff… But oh my God this city — the noise! the chaos! If I could only get out! If only I knew where you could get to!”’ The Consul concluded with passion, with anguish, his voice quivering — though as it happened he had never met any such person, and the whole story had been told him by Tom, he shook violently with the emotion of the poor actor.

  ‘What’s the use of escaping’, he drew the moral with complete seriousness, ‘from ourselves?’

  Yvonne had sunk back in bed patiently. But now she stretched forward and stabbed out her cigarette in the tray of a tall grey tin-work ashstand shaped like an abstract representation of a swan. The swan’s neck had become slightly unravelled but it bowed gracefully, tremulously at her touch as she answered:

  ‘All right, Geoffrey: suppose we forget it until you’re feeling better: we can cope with it in a day or two, when you’re sober.’

  ‘But good lord!’

  The Consul sat perfectly still staring at the floor while the enormity of the insult passed into his soul. As if, as if, he were not sober now ! Yet there was some elusive subtlety in the impeachment that still escaped him. For he was not sober. No, he was not, not at this very moment he wasn’t ! But what had that to do with a minute before, or half an hour ago? And what right had Yvonne to assume it, assume either that he was not sober now, or that, far worse, in a day or two he would be sober? And even if he were not sober now, by what fabulous stages, comparable indeed only to the paths and spheres of the Holy Cabbala itself, had he reached this stage again, touched briefly once before this morning, this stage at which alone he could, as she put it, ‘cope’, this precarious precious stage, so arduous to maintain, of being drunk in which alone he was sober! What right had she, when he had sat suffering the tortures of the damned and the madhouse on her behalf for fully twenty-five minutes on end without having a decent drink, even to hint that he wa
s anything but, to her eyes, sober? Ah, a woman could not know the perils, the complications, yes, the importance of a drunkard’s life ! From what conceivable standpoint of rectitude did she imagine she could judge what was anterior to her arrival? And she knew nothing whatever of what all too recently he had gone through, his fall in the Calle Nicaragua, his aplomb, coolness, even bravery there — the Burke’s Irish whiskey ! What a world 1 And the trouble was she had now spoiled the moment. Because the Consul now felt that he might have been capable, remembering Yvonne’s ‘perhaps I’ll have one after breakfast’, and all that implied, of saying, in a minute (but for her remark and yes, in spite of any salvation), ‘Yes, by all means you are right: let us go!’ But who could agree with someone who was so certain you were going to be sober the day after tomorrow? It wasn’t as though either, upon the most superficial plane, it were not well known that no one could tell when he was drunk. Just like the Taskersons: God bless them. He was not the person to be seen reeling about in the street. True he might lie down in the street, if need be, like a gentleman, but he would not reel. Ah, what a world it was, that trampled down the truth and drunkards alike! A world full of bloodthirsty people, no less ! Bloodthirsty, did I hear you say bloodthirsty, Commander Firmin?

  ‘But my lord, Yvonne, surely you know by this time I can’t get drunk however much I drink,’ he said almost tragically, taking an abrupt swallow of strychnine. ‘Why, do you think I like swilling down this awful nux vomica or belladonna or whatever it is of Hugh’s?’ The Consul got up with his empty glass and began to walk around the room. He was not so much aware of having done by default anything fatal (it wasn’t as if, for instance, he’d thrown his whole life away) as something merely foolish, and at the same time, as it were, sad. Yet there seemed a call for some amends. He either thought or said:

  ‘Well, tomorrow perhaps I’ll drink beer only. There’s nothing like beer to straighten you out, and a little more strychnine, and then the next day just beer — I’m sure no one will object if I drink beer. This Mexican stuff is particularly full of vitamins, I gather… For I can see it really is going to be somewhat of an occasion, this reunion of us all, and then perhaps when my nerves are back to normal again, I’ll go off it completely. And then, who knows’, he brought up by the door, ‘I might get down to work again and finish my book!’

  But the door was still a door and it was shut: and now ajar. Through it, on the porch he saw the whisky bottle, slightly smaller and emptier of hope than the Burke’s Irish, standing forlornly. Yvonne had not opposed a snifter: he had been unjust to her. Yet was that any reason why he should be unjust also to the bottle? Nothing in the world was more terrible than an empty bottle! Unless it was an empty glass. But he could wait: yes, sometimes he knew when to leave it alone. He wandered back to the bed thinking or saying:

  ‘Yes: I can see the reviews now. Mr Firmin’s sensational new data on Atlantis! The most extraordinary thing of its kind since Donnelly ! Interrupted by his untimely death… Marvellous. And the chapters on the alchemists I Which beat the Bishop of Tasmania to a frazzle. Only that’s not quite the way they’ll put it. Pretty good, eh? I might even work in something about Coxcox and Noah. I’ve got a publisher interested too; in Chicago — interested but not concerned, if you understand me, for it’s really a mistake to imagine such a book could ever become popular. But it’s amazing when you come to think of it how the human spirit seems to blossom in the shadow of the abattoir ! How — to say nothing of all the poetry — not far enough below the stockyards to escape altogether the reek of the porterhouse of tomorrow, people can be living in cellars the life of the old alchemists of Prague ! Yes: living among the cohabitations of Faust himself, among the litharge and agate and hyacinth and pearls. A life which is amorphous, plastic and crystalline. What am I talking about? Copula Maritalis? Or from alcohol to alkahest. Can you tell me?… Or perhaps I might get myself another job, first of course being sure to insert an advertisement in the Universal: will accompany corpse to any place in the east!’

  Yvonne was sitting up half reading her magazine, her nightgown slightly pulled aside showing where her warm tan faded into the white skin of her breast, her arms outside the covers and one hand turned downward from the wrist hanging over the edge of the bed listlessly: as he approached she turned this hand palm upward in an involuntary movement, of irritation perhaps, but it was like an unconscious gesture of appeal: it was more: it seemed to epitomize, suddenly, all the old supplication, the whole queer secret dumb show of incommunicable tendernesses and loyalties and eternal hopes of their marriage. The Consul felt his tearducts quicken. But he had also felt a sudden peculiar sense of embarrassment, a sense, almost, of indecency that he, a stranger, should be in her room. This room ! He went to the door and looked out. The whisky bottle was still there.

  But he made no motion towards it, none at all, save to put on his dark glasses. He was conscious of new aches here and there, of, for the first time, the impact of the Calle Nicaragua. Vague images of grief and tragedy flickered in his mind. Somewhere a butterfly was flying out to sea: lost. La Fontaine’s duck had loved the white hen, yet after escaping together from the dreadful farmyard through the forest to the lake it was the duck that swam: the hen, following, drowned. In November 1895, in convict dress, from two o’clock in the afternoon till half past, handcuffed, recognized, Oscar Wilde stood on the centre platform at Clapham Junction…

  When the Consul returned to the bed and sat down on it Yvonne’s arms were under the covers while her face was turned to the wall. After a while he said with emotion, his voice grown hoarse again:

  ‘Do you remember how the night before you left we actually made a date like a couple of strangers to meet for dinner in Mexico City?’

  Yvonne gazed at the wall:

  ‘You didn’t keep it.’

  ‘That was because I couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant at the last moment. All I knew was that it was in the Via Dolorosa somewhere. It was the one we’d discovered together the last time we were in the city. I went into all the restaurants in the Via Dolorosa looking for you and not finding you I had a drink in each one.’

  ‘Poor Geoffrey.’

  ‘I must have phoned back the Hotel Canada from each restaurant. From the cantina of each restaurant. God knows how many times, for I thought you might have returned there. And each time they said the same thing, that you’d left to meet me, but they didn’t know where. And finally they became pretty damned annoyed. I can’t imagine why we stayed at the Canada instead of the Regis — do you remember how they kept mistaking me there, with my beard, for that wrestler?… Anyhow, there I was wandering around from place to place, wrestling, and thinking all the while I could prevent you from going the next morning, if I could only find you!’

  ‘Yes.’

  (If you could only find her ! Ah, how cold it was that night, and bitter, with a howling wind and wild steam blowing from the pavement gratings where the ragged children were making to sleep early under their poor newspapers. Yet none was more homeless than you, as it grew later and colder and darker, and still you had not found her ! And a sorrowful voice seemed to be wailing down the street at you with the wind calling its name: Via Dolorosa, Via Dolorosa! And then somehow it was early the next morning directly after she had left the Canada —you brought one of her suitcases down yourself though you didn’t see her off — and you were sitting in the hotel bar drinking mescal with ice in it that chilled your stomach, you kept swallowing the lemon pips, when suddenly a man with the look of an executioner came from the street dragging two little fawns shrieking with fright into the kitchen. And later you heard them screaming, being slaughtered probably. And you thought: better not remember what you thought. And later still, after Oaxaca, when you had returned here to Quauhnahuac, through the anguish of that return — circling down from the Tres Marías in the Plymouth, seeing the town below through the mist, and then the town itself, the landmarks, your soul dragged past them as at the tail of a runaway
horse — when you returned here–)

  ‘The cats had died’, he said, ‘when I got back — Pedro insisted it was typhoid. Or rather, poor old Oedipuss died the very day you left apparently, he’d already been thrown down the barranca while little Pathos was lying in the garden under the plantains when I arrived looking even sicker than when we first picked her out of the gutter; dying, though no one could make out what of: Maria claimed it was a broken heart –’

  ‘Cheery little matter,’ Yvonne answered in a lost hard tone with her face still turned to the wall.

  ‘Do you remember your song, I won’t sing it: “No work has been done by the little cat, no work has been done by the big cat, no work has been done, by an-y-one ! ”’ the Consul heard himself ask; tears of sorrow came to his eyes, he removed his dark glasses quickly and buried his face on her shoulder. No, but Hugh, she began — ‘Never mind Hugh,’ he had not meant to elicit this, to thrust her back against the pillows; he felt her body stiffen, becoming hard and cold. Yet her consent did not seem from weariness only, but to a solution for one shared instant beautiful as trumpets out of a clear sky…

  But he could feel now, too, trying the prelude, the preparatory nostalgic phrases on his wife’s senses, the image of his possession, like that jewelled gate the desperate neophyte, Yesod-bound, projects for the thousand time on the heavens to permit passage of his astral body, fading, and slowly, inexorably, that of a cantina, when in dead silence and peace it first opens in the morning, taking its place. It was one of those cantinas that would be opening now, at nine o’clock: and he was queerly conscious of his own presence there with the angry tragic words, the very words which might soon be spoken, glaring behind him. This image faded also: he was where he was, sweating now, glancing once — but never ceasing to play the prelude, the little one-fingered introduction to the unclassifiable composition that might still just follow — out of the window at the drive, fearful himself lest Hugh appear there, then he imagined he really saw him at the end of it coming through the gap, now that he distinctly heard his step in the gravel… No one. But now, now he wanted to go, passionately he wanted to go, aware that the peace of the cantina was changing to its first fevered preoccupation of the morning: the political exile in the corner discreetly sipping orange crush, the accountant arriving, accounts gloomily surveyed, the iceblock dragged in by a brigand with an iron scorpion, the one bartender slicing lemons, the other, sleep in his eyes, sorting beer bottles. And now, now he wanted to go, aware that the place was filling with people not at any other time part of the cantina’s community at all, people eructating, exploding, committing nuisances, lassoes over their shoulders, aware too of the debris from the night before, the dead matchboxes, lemon peel, cigarettes open like tortillas, the dead packages of them swarming in filth and sputum. Now that the clock over the mirror would say a little past nine, and the news-vendors of La Prensa and El Universal were stamping in, or standing in the corner at this very moment before the crowded grimed mingitorio with the shoeblacks who carried their shoe-stools in their hands, or had left them balanced between the burning foot-rail and the bar, now he wanted to go ! Ah none but he knew how beautiful it all was, the sunlight, sunlight, sunlight flooding the bar of El Puerto del Sol, flooding the watercress and oranges, or falling in a single golden line as if in the act of conceiving a God, falling like a lance straight into a block of ice —