Under the Volcano (44 page)

‘Good Christ, the bloody fool!'

The second bull, not indifferent as might have been supposed to the removal of the ropes, and perplexed by the confused uproar that greeted his rider's arrival, had clambered up bellowing; Hugh was astride him and already cake-walking crazily in the middle of the ring.

‘God damn the stupid ass!' the Consul said.

Hugh was holding the rigging tightly with one hand and beating the brute's flanks with the other, and doing this with an expertness Yvonne was astonished to find she was still almost competent to judge. Yvonne and the Consul sat down again.

The bull jumped to the left, then to the right with both forelegs simultaneously, as though they were strung together. Then it sank to its knees. It clambered up, angry; Yvonne was aware of the Consul beside her drinking habanero and then of him corking the bottle.

‘Christ… Jesus.'

‘It's all right, Geoff. Hugh knows what he's doing.'

‘The bloody fool…'

‘Hugh'll be all right — Wherever he learnt it.'

‘The pimp… the poxbox.'

It was true that the bull had really waked up and was doing its best to unseat him. It pawed the earth, galvanized itself like a frog, even crawled on its belly. Hugh held on fast. The spectators laughed and cheered, though Hugh, really indistinguishable from a Mexican now, looked serious, even grim. He leaned back, holding on determinedly, with feet splayed, heels knocking the sweaty flanks. The
charros
galloped across the arena.

‘I don't think he means to show off,' Yvonne smiled. No, he was simply submitting to that absurd necessity he felt for action, so wildly exacerbated by the dawdling inhuman day. All his thoughts now were bringing that miserable bull to its knees. ‘This is the way you like to play? This is the way I like to play. You don't like the bull for some reason? Very well, I don't like the bull either.' She felt these sentiments helping to smite Hugh's mind rigid with concentration upon the defeat of the bull. And somehow one had little anxiety watching him. One trusted him implicitly in this situation, just as one trusted in a trick diver, a tightrope walker, a steeplejack. One felt, even, half ironically, that this was the kind of thing Hugh might be best fitted to do and Yvonne was surprised to recall her instant's panic this morning when he had jumped on the parapet of the bridge over the
barranca
.

‘The risk… the fool,' the Consul said, drinking habanero.

Hugh's troubles, in fact, were only beginning. The
charros
, the man in the
sombrero
, the child who'd bitten the first bull's tail, the
serape
and rag
hombres
, even the little dog who came sneaking in again under the fence, were all closing in to increase them; all had their part.

Yvonne was abruptly aware that there were black clouds climbing the sky from the north-east, a temporary ominous darkness that lent a sense of evening, thunder sounded in the mountains, a single grumble, metallic, and a gust of wind raced through the trees, bending them: the scene itself possessed a remote strange beauty; the white trousers and bright
serapes
of the men enticing the bull shining against the dark trees and lowering sky, the horses, transformed instantly into clouds of dust by their riders with their scorpion-tailed whips, who leaned far out of their bucket saddles to throw wildly, ropes anywhere, everywhere. Hugh's impossible yet somehow splendid performance in the midst of it all, the boy, whose hair was blowing madly over his face, high up in the tree.

The band struck up
Guadalajara
again in the wind, and the bull bellowed, his horns caught in the railings through which, helpless, he was being poked with sticks in what remained of his testicles, tickled with switches, a machete, and, after getting clear and re-entangled, a garden rake; dust too and dung was thrown in his red eyes; and now there seemed no end to this childish cruelty.

‘Darling,' Yvonne whispered suddenly, ‘Geoffrey — look at me. Listen to me, I've been… there isn't anything to keep us here any longer… Geoffrey…'

The Consul, pale, without his dark glasses, was looking at her piteously; he was sweating, his whole frame was trembling. ‘No,' he said. ‘No…
No
,' he added, almost hysterically.

‘Geoffrey darling… don't tremble… what are you afraid of? Why don't we go away, now, tomorrow, today… what's to stop us?'

‘No…'

‘Ah, how good you've been –'

The Consul put his arm around her shoulders, leaning his damp head against her hair like a child, and for a moment it was as if a spirit of intercession and tenderness hovered over them, guarding, watching. He said wearily:

‘Why not. Let's for Jesus Christ's sweet sake get away. A thousand, a million miles away, Yvonne, anywhere, so long as it's away. Just away. Away from all this. Christ, from this.'

— into a wild sky full of stars at rising, and Venus and the golden moon at sunrise, and at noon blue mountains with snow and blue cold rough water — ‘Do you
mean
it?'

‘Do I mean it!'

‘Darling…' It ran in Yvonne's mind that all at once they were talking — agreeing hastily — like prisoners who do not have much time to talk; the Consul took her hand. They sat closely, hands clasped, with their shoulders touching. In the arena Hugh tugged'; the bull tugged, was free, but furious now, throwing himself at any place on the fence that reminded him of the pen he'd so prematurely left, and now, tired, persecuted beyond measure, finding it, hurling himself at the gate time after time with an incensed, regressive bitterness until, the little dog barking at his heels, he'd lost it again… Hugh rode the tiring bull round and round the ring.

‘This isn't just escaping, I mean, let's start again
really
, Geoffrey, really and cleanly somewhere. It could be like a rebirth.'

‘Yes. Yes it could.'

‘I think I know, I've got it all clear in my mind at last. Oh Geoffrey, at last I think I have.'

‘Yes, I think I know too.'

Below them, the bull's horns again involved the fence.

‘Darling…' They would arrive at their destination by train, a train that wandered through an evening land of fields beside water, an arm of the Pacific —

‘Yvonne?'

‘Yes, darling?'

‘I've fallen down, you know… Somewhat.'

‘Never mind, darling.'

‘… Yvonne?'

‘Yes?'

‘I love you… Yvonne?'

‘Oh, I love you too!'

‘My dear one… My sweetheart.'

‘Oh, Geoffrey. We
could
be happy, we
could
–'

‘Yes… We could.'

— and far across the water, the little house, waiting —

There was a sudden roar of applause followed by the accelerated clangour of guitars deploying downwind; the bull had pulled away from the fence and once more the scene was becoming animated: Hugh and the bull tussled for a moment in the center of a small fixed circle the others created by their exclusion from it within the arena; then the whole was veiled in dust; the pen gate to their left had broken open again, freeing all the other bulls, including the first one, who was probably responsible; they were charging out amid cheers, snorting, scattering in every direction.

Hugh was eclipsed for a while, wrestling with his bull in a far corner: suddenly someone on that side screamed. Yvonne pulled herself from the Consul and stood up.

‘Hugh… Something's happened.'

The Consul stood up unsteadily. He was drinking from the habanero bottle, drinking, till he almost finished it. Then he said:

‘I can't see. But I think it's the bull.'

It was still impossible to make out what was happening on the far side in the dusty confusion of horsemen, bulls, and ropes. Then Yvonne saw yes it was the bull, which, played out, was lying in the dust again. Hugh calmly walked off it, bowed to the cheering spectators, and, dodging other bulls, vaulted over the distant fence. Someone restored his hat to him.

‘Geoffrey –' Yvonne began hurriedly, ‘I don't expect you to — I mean — I know it's going to be –'

But the Consul was finishing the habanero. He left a little for Hugh, however.

… The sky was blue again overhead as they went down into Tomalín; dark clouds still gathered behind Popocatepetl, their purple masses shot through with the bright late sunlight, that fell too on another little silver lake glittering cool, fresh, and inviting before them, Yvonne had neither seen on the way, nor remembered.

‘The Bishop of Tasmania,' the Consul was saying, ‘or somebody dying of thirst in the Tasmanian desert, had a similar experience. The distant prospect of Cradle Mountain had consoled him a while, and then he saw this water… Unfortunately it
turned out to be sunlight blazing on myriads of broken bottles.'

The lake was a broken greenhouse roof belonging to El Jardín Xicotancatl : only weeds lived in the greenhouse.

But their house was in her mind now as she walked: their home was real: Yvonne saw it at sunrise, in the long afternoons of south-west winds, and at nightfall she saw it in starlight and moonlight, covered with snow: she saw it from above, in the forest, with the chimney and the roof below her, and the foreshortened pier: she saw it from the beach rising above her, and she saw it, tiny, in the distance, a haven and a beacon against the trees, from the sea. It was only that the little boat of their conversation had been moored precariously; she could hear it banging against the rocks; later she would drag it up farther, where it was safe. — Why was it though, that right in the centre of her brain, there should be a figure of a woman having hysterics, jerking like a puppet and banging her fists upon the ground?

‘Forward to the Salón Ofelia,' cried the Consul.

A hot thundery wind launched itself at them, spent itself, and somewhere a bell beat out wild tripthongs.

Their shadows crawled before them in the dust, slid down white thirsty walls of houses, were caught violently for a moment in an elliptical shade, the turning wrenched wheel of a boy's bicycle.

The spoked shadow of the wheel, enormous, insolent, swept away.

Now their own shadows fell full across the square to the raised twin doors of the tavern, Todos Contentos y Yo También: under the doors they noticed what looked like the bottom of a crutch, someone leaving. The crutch didn't move; its owner was having an argument at the door, a last drink perhaps. Then it disappeared: one door of the
cantina
was propped back, something emerged.

Bent double, groaning with the weight, an old lame Indian was carrying on his back, by means of a strap looped over his forehead, another poor Indian, yet older and more decrepit than himself. He carried the older man and his crutches, trembling in every limb under this weight of the past, he carried both their burdens.

They all stood watching the Indian as he disappeared with the old man round a bend of the road, into the evening, shuffling through the grey white dust in his poor sandals…

‘M
ESCAL,'
the Consul said, almost absent-mindedly. What had he said? Never mind. Nothing less than mescal would do. But it musn't be a serious mescal, he persuaded himself. ‘
No, Señor Cervantes
,' he whispered, ‘
mescal, poquito
.'

Nevertheless, the Consul thought, it was not merely that he shouldn't have, not merely that, no, it was more as if he had lost or missed something, or rather, not precisely lost, not necessarily missed. — It was as if, more, he were waiting for something, and then again, not waiting. — It was as if, almost, he stood (instead of upon the threshold of the Salón Ofélia, gazing at the calm pool where Yvonne and Hugh were about to swim) once more upon that black open station platform, with the cornflowers and meadowsweet growing on the far side, where after drinking all night he had gone to meet Lee Maitland returning from Virginia at 7.40 in the morning, gone, light-headed, light-footed, and in that state of being where Baudelaire's angel indeed wakes, desiring to meet trains perhaps, but to meet no trains that stop, for in the angel's mind are no trains that stop, and from such trains none descends, not even another angel, not even a fair-haired one, like Lee Maitland. — Was the train late? Why was he pacing the platform? Was it the second or third train from. Suspension Bridge —
Suspension ! —the
Station Master had said would be her train? What had the porter said? Could she be on this train? Who was she? It was impossible that Lee Maitland could be on any such train. And besides, all these trains were expresses. The railway lines went into the far distance uphill. A lone bird flapped across the lines far away. To the right of the level-crossing, at a little distance, stood a tree like a green exploding sea-mine, frozen. The dehydrated onion factory by the sidings awoke, then the coal companies.
It's a black business but we use you white: Daemon's Coal
… A delicious smell of onion soup in side-streets of Vavin impregnated the early morning. Grimed
sweeps at hand trundled barrows, or were screening coal. Rows of dead lamps like erect snakes poised to strike along the platform. On the other side were cornflowers, dandelions, a garbage-can like a brazier blazing furiously all by itself among meadowsweet. The morning grew hot. And now, one after one, the terrible trains appeared on top of the raised horizon, shimmering now, in mirage: first the distant wail, then, the frightful spouting and spindling of black smoke, a sourceless towering pillar, motionless, then a round hull, as if not on the lines, as if going the other way, or as if stopping, as if not stopping, or as if slipping away over the fields, as if stopping; oh God, not stopping; downhill:
clipperty-one
clipperty-one:
clipperty-two
clipperty-two:
clipperety-three
clipperty-three:
clipperty-four clipperty-four
: alas, thank God, not stopping, and the lines shaking, the station flying, the coal dust, black bituminous:
lickety-cut lickety-cut:
and men another train,
clipperty-one clipperty-one
, coming in the other direction, swaying, whizzing, two feet above the lines, flying,
clipperty-two
, with one light burning against the morning,
clipperty-three
clipperty-three, a single useless strange eye, red-gold: trains, trains, trains, each driven by a banshee playing a shrieking nose-organ in D minor;
lickety-cut lickety-cut lickety-cut
. But not his train; and not her train. Still, the train would come doubtless–had the Station Master said the third or fourth train from which way? Which was north, west? And anyhow, whose north, whose west?… And he must pick flowers to greet the angel, the fair Virginian descending from the train. But the embankment flowers would not pick, spurting sap, sticky, the flowers were on the wrong end of the stalks (and he on the wrong side of the tracks), he nearly fell into the brazier, the cornflowers grew in the middle of their stalks, the stalks of meadowsweet — or was it queen's lace? — were too long, his bouquet was a failure. And how to get back across the tracks — here Was a train now coming in the wrong direction again,
clipperty-one
clipperty-one, the lines unreal, not there, walking on air; or rails that did lead somewhere, to unreal life, or, perhaps, Hamilton, Ontario. — Fool, he was trying to walk along a single line, like a boy on the kerb :
clipperty-two
clipperty-two:
clipperty-three
clipperty-three:
clipperty-four clipperty-four
:
clipperty-five clipperty-five: clipperty-six clipperty-six
:
clipperty-seven
; clipperty seven — trains, trains, trains, trains, converging upon him from all sides of the horizon, each wailing for its demon lover. Life had no time to waste. Why, then, should it waste so much of everything else? With the dead cornflowers before him, at evening — the next moment — the Consul sat in the station tavern with a man who'd just tried to sell him three loose teeth. Was it tomorrow he was supposed to meet the train? What had the Station Master said? Had that been Lee Maitland herself waving at him frantically from the express? And who had flung the soiled bundle of tissue papers out of the window? What had he lost? Why was that idiot sitting there, in a dirty grey suit, and trousers baggy at the knees, with one bicycle clip, in his long, long baggy grey jacket, and grey cloth cap, and brown boots, with his thick fleshy grey face, from which three upper teeth, perhaps the
very
three teeth, were missing, all on one side, and thick neck, saying, every few minutes to anyone who came in: ‘I'm watching you.' ‘I can see you…' ‘You won't escape me.' — ‘If you only kept quiet, Claus, no one'd know you were crazy.'… That was the time too, in the storm country, when ‘the lightning is peeling the poles, Mr Firmin, and biting the wires, sir — you can taste it afterwards too, in the water, pure sulphur,' — that at four o'clock each afternoon, preceded, out of the adjacent cemetery, by the gravedigger — sweating, heavy-footed, bowed, long-jawed and trembling, and carrying his special tools of death — he would come to this same tavern to meet Mr Quattras, the Negro bookie from Codrington, in the Barbados. ‘I'm a race-track man and I was brought up with whites, so the blacks don't like me.' Mr. Quattras, grinning and sad, feared deportation… But that battle against death had been won. And he had saved Mr Quattras. That very night, had it been? — with a heart like a cold brazier standing by a railway platform among meadowsweet wet with dew: they are beautiful and terrifying, these shadows of cars that sweep down fences, and sweep zebra-like across the grass path in the avenue of dark oaks under the moon: a single shadow, like an umbrella on rails, travelling down a picket fence; portents of doom, of the heart failing… Gone. Eaten up in reverse by night. And the
moon gone.
Cétait pendant I'horreur d'une profonde nuit
. And the deserted cemetery in the starlight, forsaken by the gravedigger, drunk now, wandering home across the fields — ‘I can dig a grave in the three hours if they'll let me,' — the cemetery in the dappled moonlight of a single street lamp, the deep thick grass, the towering obelisk lost in the Milky Way.
Jull
, it said on the monument. What had the Station Master said? The dead. Do they sleep? Why should they, when we cannot?
Mais tout dort, et I'armée, et les vents, et Neptune
. And he had placed the poor ragged cornflowers reverently on a neglected grave… That was Oakville. — But Oaxaca or Oakville, what difference? Or between a tavern that opened at four o'clock in the afternoon, and one that opened (save on holidays) at four o'clock in the morning?…‘
I ain't telling you the word of a lie but once I had a whole vault dug up for $100 and sent to Cleveland!
'