Under the Volcano (25 page)

   
"Somebody quoted you in the
Universal," the Consul was laughing, "some time ago. I just forget
about what, I'm afraid... Hugh, how would you like, 'at a modest sacrifice,' an
'imported pair embroidered street extra large nearly new fur coat'?"
   
"Sit still."
   
"Or a Cadillac for 500 pesos.
Original price 200... And what would this mean, do you suppose? 'And a white
horse also.' Apply at box seven... Strange... Anti-alcoholic fish. Don't like
the sound of that. But here's something for you. 'A centricle apartment
suitable for love-nest.' Or alternatively, a 'serious, discrete--""
   
"--ha--"
   
"--apartment... Hugh, listen to
this. "For a young European lady who must be pretty, acquaintanceship with
a cultured man, not old, with good positions--"
   
The Consul was shaking with laughter
only, it appeared, and Hugh, laughing too, paused, razor aloft.
   
"But the remains of Juan
Ramirez, the famous singer, Hugh, are still wandering in a melancholy fashion
from place to place... Hullo, it says here that "grave objections"
have been made to the immodest behaviour of certain police chiefs in
Quauhnahuac. "Grave objections to--" what's this?--"performing
their private functions in public"--"
 
  
('Climbed the Parson's Nose," one had written, in the
visitors" book at the little Welsh rock-climbing hotel, "in twenty
minutes. Found the rocks very easy." "Came down the Parson's Nose,"
some immortal wag had added a day later, "in twenty seconds. Found the
rocks very hard..".. So now, as I approach the second half of my life,
unheralded, unsung, and without a guitar, I am going back to sea again: perhaps
these days of waiting are more like that droll descent, to be survived in order
to repeat the climb. At the top of the Parson's Nose you could walk home to tea
over the hills if you wished, just as the actor in the Passion Play can get off
his cross and go home to his hotel for a Pilsener. Yet in life ascending or
descending you were perpetually involved with the mists, the cold and the
overhangs, the treacherous rope and the slippery belay; only, while the rope
slipped there was sometimes time to laugh. None the less, I am afraid... As I
am also of a simple gate, and climbing windy masts in port... Will it be as bad
as the first voyage, the harsh reality of which for some reason suggests
Yvonne's farm? One wonders how she will feel the first time she sees someone
stick a pig... Afraid; and yet not afraid; I know what the sea is like; can it
be that I am returning to it with my dreams intact, nay, with dreams that,
being without viciousness, are more child-like than before. I love the sea, the
pure Norwegian sea. My disillusionment once more is a pose. What am I trying to
prove by all this? Accept it; one is a sentimentalist, a muddler, a realist, a
dreamer, coward, hypocrite, hero, an Englishman in short, unable to follow out
his own metaphors. Tufthunter and pioneer in disguise. Iconoclast and explorer.
Undaunted bore undone by trivialities! Why, one asks, instead of feeling
stricken in that pub, didn't I set about learning some of those songs, those
precious revolutionary songs. What is to prevent one's learning more of such
songs now, new songs, different songs, anyhow, if only to recapture some early
joy in merely singing, and playing the guitar? What have I got out of my life?
Contacts with famous men... The occasion Einstein asked me the time, for
instance. That summer evening, strolling towards the tumultuous kitchen of St
John's--who is it that behind me has emerged from the rooms of the Professor
living in D4? And who is it also strolling towards the Porter's lodge--where,
our orbits crossing, asks me the time? Is this Einstein, up for an honours
degree? And who smiles when I say I don't know... And yet asked me. Yes: the
great Jew, who has upset the whole world's notions of time and space, once
leaned down over the side of his hammock strung between Aries and the Circlet
of the Western Fish, to ask me, befuddled ex-anti-Semite, and ragged freshman huddled
in his gown at the first approach of the evening star, the time. And smiled
again when I pointed out the clock neither of us had noticed--)
   
"--better than having them
perform their public functions in private anyhow, I should have thought,"
Hugh said.
   
"You might have hit on something
there. That is, those birds referred to are not police in the strict sense. As
a matter of fact the regular police are--"
   
"I know, they're on
strike."
   
"So of course they must be
democratic from your point of view... Just like the army. All right, it's a
democratic army... But meantime these other cads are throwing their weight
about a bit. It's a pity you're leaving. It might have been a story right down
your alley. Did you ever hear of the Unión Militar?"
   
"You mean the pre-war
thingmetight, in Spain?"
"I mean here in this state. It's affiliated to the Military Police, by
which they're covered, so to speak, because the Inspector-General, who is the
Military Police, is a member. So is the Jefe de Jardineros, I believe."
"I heard they were putting up a new statue to Diaz in Oaxaca."
"--Just the same," pursued the Consul, in a slightly lowered tone, as
their conversation continued in the next room, "there is this Unión
Militar, sinarquistas, whatever they're called, if you're interested, I'm not
personally--and their headquarters used to be in the policía de Seguridad here,
though it isn't any longer, but in Parián somewhere, I heard."
   
Finally the Consul was ready. The
only further help he had required was with his socks. Wearing a freshly pressed
shirt and a pair of tweed trousers with the jacket to them Hugh had borrowed
and now brought in from the porch, he stood gazing at himself in the mirror.
   
It was most surprising, not only did
the Consul now appear fresh and lively but to be dispossessed of any air of
dissipation whatsoever. True, he had not before the haggard look of a depraved
worn-out old man: why should he indeed, when he was only twelve years older
than Hugh himself? Yet it was as though fate had fixed his age at some
unidentifiable moment in the past, when his persistent objective self, perhaps
weary of standing askance and watching his downfall, had at last withdrawn from
him altogether, like a ship secretly leaving harbour at night. Sinister stories
as well as funny and heroic had been told about his brother, whose own early
poetic instincts clearly helped the legend. It occurred to Hugh that the poor
old chap might be, finally, helpless, in the grip of something against which
all his remarkable defences could avail him little. What use were his talons
and fangs to the dying tiger? In the clutches, say, to make matters worse, of a
boa-constrictor? But apparently this improbable tiger had no intention of dying
just yet. On the contrary, he intended taking a little walk, taking the
boa-constrictor with him, even to pretend, for a while, it wasn't there.
Indeed, on the face of it, this man of abnormal strength and constitution and
obscure ambition, whom Hugh would never know, could never deliver nor make
agreement to God for, but in his way loved and desired to help, had
triumphantly succeeded in pulling himself together. While what had given rise
to all these reflections was doubtless only the photograph on the wall both
were now studying, whose presence there at all must surely discount most of
those old stories, of a small camouflaged freighter, at which the Consul
suddenly gestured with replenished toothmug:
   
" Everything about the Samaritan
was a ruse. See those windlasses and bulkheads. That black entrance that looks
as though it might be the entrance to the forecastle, that's a shift
too--there's an anti-aircraft gun stowed away snugly in there. Over there,
that's the way you go down. Those were my quarters... There's your quartermaster's
alley. That galley--it could become a battery, before you could say Coclogenus
paca Mexico...
   
" Curiously enough though,"
the Consul peered closer, "I cut that picture out of a German
magazine," and Hugh too was scrutinizing the Gothic writing beneath the
photograph: Der englische Dampfer tragt Schutzfarben gegen deutsche U-boote.
"Only on the next page, I recall, was a picture of the Emdenk the Consul
went on, "with 'So verlies ich der Weltteil unserer Antipoden,' something
of that nature, under it. 'Our Antipodes.'" He gave Hugh a sharp glance
that might have meant anything. "Queer people. But I see you're interested
in my old books all of a sudden... Too bad... I left my Boehme in Paris."
   
"I was just looking."
   
At, for God's sake, A Treatise of
Sulphur: written by Michall Sandivogius i.e. anagramatically Divi Leschi Genus
Amo; at The Hermetical Triumph or the Victorious Philosophical Stone, a
Treatise more compleat and more intelligible than any has been yet, concerning
the Hermetical Magistery; at The Secrets Revealed or an Open Entrance to the
Sub-Palace of the King, containing the greatest Treasure in Chymistry never yet
so plainly discovered, composed by a most famous Englishman styling himself
Anonymus or Eyraeneus Philaletha Cosmopolita who by inspiration and reading
attained to the Philosopher's Stone at his age of twenty-three years Anno
Domini 1645; at The Musaeum Hermeticum, Reformatum et Amplificatum, Omnes
Sopho-Spagyricae artis Discipulos fidelissime erudiens, quo pacto Summa ilia vera
que Lapidis Philosophici Medicina, qua res omnes qualemcunque defectum
patientes, instaurantur, inveniri haberi queat, Continens.Trattatus
Chimicos xxi Francofurti, Apud Hermannum a Sande CID IDC LXXVIII; at
Sub-Mundanes, or the Elementaries of the Cabbala, reprinted from the text of
the Abbi de Villars: Physio-Astro-Mystic: with an Illustrative Appendix from
the work Demoniality, wherein is asserted that there are in existence on earth
rational creatures besides men...
   
"Are there?" Hugh said, holding
in his hand this last extraordinary old book--from which emanated a venerable
and remote smell--and reflecting: "Jewish knowledge!" while a sudden
absurd vision of Mr Bolowski in another life, in a caftan, with a long white
beard, and skull-cap, and passionate intent look, standing at a stall in a sort
of medieval New Compton Street, reading a sheet of music in which the notes
were Hebrew letters, was conjured to his mind.
   
"Erekia, the one who tears
asunder; and they who shriek with a long-drawn cry, Illirikim; Apelki, the
misleaders or turners aside; and those who attack their prey by tremulous
motion, Dresop; ah, and the distressful painbringing ones, Arekesoli; and one
must not forget, either, Burasin, the destroyers by stifling smoky breath; nor
Glesi, the one who glistens horribly like an insect; nor Effrigis, the one who
quivers in a horrible manner, you'd like Effrigis... nor yet the Mames, those
who move by backward motion, nor the movers with a particular creeping motion,
Ramisen..." the Consul was saying. "The flesh in-clothed and the evil
questioners. Perhaps you would not call them precisely rational. But all these
at one time or another have visited my bed."
   
They had all of them in a tremendous
hurry and the friendliest of humours set off for Tomalín. Hugh, himself
somewhat aware of his drinks, was listening in a dream to the Consul's voice
rambling on--Hitler, he pursued, as they stepped out into the Calle
Nicaragua--which might have been a story right down his alley, if only he'd shown
any interest before--merely wished to annihilate the Jews in order to obtain
just such arcana as could be found behind them in his bookshelves--when
suddenly in the house the telephone rang.
   
"No, let it ring," the
Consul said as Hugh started back. It went on ringing (for Concepta had gone
out), the tintinnabulation beating around the empty rooms like a trapped bird;
then it stopped.
   
As they moved on Yvonne said:
   
"Why no, Geoff, don't keep
bothering about me, I feel quite rested. But if Tomalín's too far for either of
you, why don't we go to the zoo?" She looked at them both darkly and
directly and beautifully with her candid eyes under the broad brow, eyes with
which she did not quite return Hugh's smile, though her mouth suggested one.
Perhaps she seriously interpreted Geoff's flow of conversation as a good sign.
And perhaps it was! Qualifying it with loyal interest, or at a quick
preoccupied tangent with observations upon impersonal change or decay, serapes
or carbon or ice, the weather--where was the wind now? they might have a nice
calm day after all without too much dust--Yvonne, apparently revived by her
swim and taking in everything about her afresh with an objective eye, walked
with swiftness and grace and independence, and as though really not tired; yet
it struck Hugh she walked by herself. Poor darling Yvonne! Greeting her when
she was ready had been like meeting her once again after long absence, but it
was also like parting. For Hugh's usefulness was exhausted, their "plot"
subtly lamed by small circumstances, of which not the least was his own
continued presence. It would seem impossible now as their old passion to seek
without imposture to be alone with her, even with Geoff's interest at heart.
Hugh cast a longing glance down the hill, the way they'd gone this morning. Now
they were hastening in the opposite direction. This morning might have been
already far in the past, like childhood or the days before the last war; the
future was beginning to unwind, the euchred stupid bloody terrific
guitar-playing future. Unsuitably girded against it, Hugh felt, noted with a
reporter's measure, Yvonne, barelegged, was wearing instead of her yellow
slacks a white tailored sharkskin suit with one button at the waist, and
beneath it a brilliant high-necked blouse, like a detail in a Rousseau; the
heels of her red shoes clicking laconically on the broken stones appeared
neither flat nor high, and she carried a bright red bag. Passing her one would
not have suspected agony. One would not have noticed lack of faith, nor
questioned that she knew where she was going, nor wondered if she were walking
in her sleep. How happy and pretty she looks, one would say. Probably she is
going to meet her lover in the Bella Vista!--Women of medium height, slenderly
built, mostly divorced, passionate but envious of the male--angel to him as he
is bright or dark, yet unconscious destructive succubus of his
ambitions--American women, with that rather graceful swift way of walking, with
the clean scrubbed tanned faces of children, the skin finely textured with a
satin sheen, their hair clean and shining as though just washed, and looking
like that, but carelessly done, the slim brown hands that do not rock the
cradle, the slender feet--how many centuries of oppression have produced them?
They do not care who is losing the Battle of the Ebro, for it is too soon for
them to outsnort Job's warhorse. They see no significance in it, only fools
going to death for a--