Under the Volcano Read online

  ‘Sorry, it isn’t any good I’m afraid.’ The Consul shut the door behind him and a small rain of plaster showered on his head. A Don Quixote fell from the wall. He picked up the sad straw knight…

  And then the whisky bottle: he drank fiercely from it.

  He had not forgotten his glass however, and into it he was now pouring himself chaotically a long drink of his strychnine mixture, half by mistake, he’d meant to pour the whisky. ‘Strychnine is an aphrodisiac. Perhaps it will take immediate effect. It still may not be too late.’ He had sunk through, it almost felt, the green cane rocking-chair.

  He just managed to reach his glass left on the tray and held it now in his hands, weighing it, but — for he was trembling again, not slightly, but violently, like a man with Parkinson’s disease or palsy — unable to bring it to his lips. Then without drinking he set it on the parapet. After a while, his whole body quaking, he rose deliberately and poured, somehow, into the other unused tumbler Concepta had not removed, about a half quartern of whisky. Nació 1820 y siguiendo tan campante. Siguiendo. Born 1896 and still going flat. I love you, he murmured, gripping the bottle with both hands as he replaced it on the tray. He now brought the tumbler filled with whisky back to his chair and sat with it in his hands, thinking. Presently without having drunk from this glass either he set it on the parapet next to his strychnine. He sat watching both the glasses. Behind him in the room he heard Yvonne crying.

  ‘ – Have you forgotten the letters Geoffrey Firmin the letters she wrote till her heart broke why do you sit there trembling why do you not go back to her now she will understand after all it hasn’t always been that way toward the end perhaps but you could laugh at this you could laugh at it why do you think she is weeping it is not for that alone you have done this to her my boy the letters you not only have never answered you didn’t you did you didn’t you did then where is your reply but have never really read where are they now they are lost Geoffrey Firmin lost or left somewhere even we do not know where –’

  The Consul reached forward and absentmindedly managed a sip of whisky; the voice might have been either of his familiars or-

  Hullo, good morning.

  The instant the Consul saw the thing he knew it an hallucination and he sat, quite calmly now, waiting for the object shaped like a dead man and which seemed to be lying flat on its back by his swimming-pool, with a large sombrero over its face, to go away. So the ‘other’ had come again. And now gone, he thought: but no, not quite, for there was still something there, in some way connected with it, or here, at his elbow, or behind his back, in front of him now; no, that too, whatever it was, was going: perhaps it had only been the coppery-tailed trogon stirring in the bushes, his ‘ambiguous bird’ that was now departing quickly on creaking wings, like a pigeon once it was in flight, heading for its solitary home in the Canyon of the Wolves, away from the people with ideas.

  ‘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. Ixtaccihuad and Popocateped, 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.

  4

  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 Compañìa 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 a
t 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 L wouldn’t have to pay any head tax. Or worse,’ Hugh said, ‘England being persona non grata here, so to speak, after Cárdenas’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 café, 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 fiel
ds 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:’ Quauhnahuacl 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! I 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.