Under the Volcano (33 page)

   
"Move his hat farther down
though so that he can get some air," the Consul said, in a voice that
betrayed a trembling tongue; Hugh did this and, so swiftly he did not have time
to see the money again, also placed the Consul's handkerchief over the wound,
leaving it held in place by the balanced sombrero.
   
The driver now came for a look, tall,
in his white shirt sleeves, and soiled whipcord breeches like bellows,, inside
high-laced, dirty boots. With his bare tousled head, laughing dissipated
intelligent face, shambling yet athletic gait, there was something lonely and
likeable about this man whom Hugh had seen twice before walking by himself in
the town.
   
Instinctively you trusted him. Yet
here, his indifference seemed remarkable; still, he had the responsibility of
the bus, and what could he do, with his pigeons?
   
From somewhere above the clouds a
lone plane let down a single sheaf of sound.
   
--"Pobrecito."
   
--"Chingar!"
   
Hugh was aware that gradually these
remarks had been taken up as a kind of refrain around him--for their presence,
together with the camión having stopped at all, had ratified approach at least
to the extent that another male passenger, and two peasants hitherto unnoticed,
and who knew nothing, had joined the group about the stricken man whom nobody
touched again--a quiet rustling of futility, a rustling of whispers, in which
the dust, the heat, the bus itself with its load of immobile old women and
doomed poultry, might have been conspiring, while only these two words, the one
of compassion, the other of obscene contempt, were audible above the Indian's
breathing.
   
The driver, having returned to his
camión, evidently satisfied all was as it should be save he had stopped on the
wrong side of the road, now began to blow his horn, yet far from this producing
the desired effect, the rustling punctuated by a heckling accompaniment of
indifferent blasts, turned into a general argument.
   
Was it robbery, attempted murder, or
both? The Indian had probably ridden from market, where he'd sold his wares,
with much more than that four or five pesos hidden by the hat, with mucho
dinero, so that a good way to avoid suspicion of theft was to leave a little of
the money, as had been done. Perhaps it wasn't robbery at all, he had only been
thrown from his horse? Posseebly. Imposseebly.
   
Sí, hombre, but hadn't the police
been called? But clearly somebody was already going for help. Chingar. One of
them now should go for help, for the police. An ambulance--the Cruz Roja--where
was the nearest phone?
   
But it was absurd to suppose the
police were not on their way. How could the chingados be on their way when half
of them were on strike? No it was only a quarter of them that were on strike.
They would be on their way, all right though. A taxi? No, hombre, there was a
strike there too.--But was there any truth, someone chimed in, in the rumour
that the Servicio de Ambulancia had been suspended? It was not a red, but a
green cross anyhow, and their business began only when they were informed. Get
Dr. Figueroa. Un hombre noble. But there was no phone. Oh, there was a phone
once, in Tomalín, but it had decomposed. No, Dr. Figueroa had a nice new phone.
Pedro, the son of Pepe, whose mother-in-law was Josefina, who also knew, it was
said, Vicente González, had carried it through the streets himself.
   
Hugh (who had wildly thought of Vigil
playing tennis, of Guzmán, wildly of the habanero in his pocket) and the Consul
also had their personal argument. For the fact remained, whoever had placed the
Indian by the roadside--though in that case why not on the grass, by the
cross?--who had slipped the money for safety in his collar--but perhaps it
slipped there of its own accord--who had providently tied his horse to the tree
in the hedge it was now cropping--yet was it necessarily his horse?--probably
was, whoever he was, wherever he was--or they were, who acted with such wisdom
and compassion--even now getting help.
   
There was no limit to their
ingenuity. Though the most potent and final obstacle to doing anything about
the Indian was this discovery that it wasn't one's own business, but someone
else's. And looking round him, Hugh saw that this too was just what everyone
else was arguing. It is not my business, but, as it were, yours, they all said,
as they shook their heads, and no, not yours either, but someone else's, their
objections becoming more and more involved, more and more theoretical, till at
last the discussion began to take a political turn.
   
This turn, as it happened, made no
sense to Hugh, who was thinking that had Joshua appeared at this moment to make
the sun stand still, a more absolute dislocation of time could not have been
created.
   
Yet it was not that time stood still.
Rather was it time was moving at different speeds, the speed at which the man
seemed dying contrasting oddly with the speed at which everybody was finding it
impossible to make up their minds.
   
However the driver had given up
blowing his horn, he was about to tinker with the engine, and leaving the
unconscious man the Consul and Hugh walked over to the horse, which, with its
cord reins, empty bucket saddle, and jangling heavy iron sheaths for stirrups,
was calmly chewing the convolvulus in the hedge, looking innocent as only one
of its species can when under mortal suspicion. Its eyes, that had shut blandly
at their approach, now opened, wicked and plausible. There was a sore on its
hipbone and on the beast's rump a branded number seven.
   
"Why--good God--this must be the
horse Yvonne and I saw this morning!"
   
"You did, eh? Well." The
Consul made to feel, though did not touch, the horse's surcingle. "That's
funny... So did I. That is, I think I saw it." He glanced over at the
Indian in the road as though trying to tear something out of his memory.
"Did you notice if it had any saddlebags on when you saw it? It had when I
think I saw it."
   
"It must be the same
fellow."
   
"I don't suppose if the horse
kicked the man to death it would have sufficient intelligence to kick its
saddlebags off too, and hide them somewhere, do you--"
   
But the bus, with a terrific hooting,
was going off without them.
   
It came at them a little, then
stopped, in a wider part of the road, to let through two querulous expensive
cars that had been held up behind. Hugh shouted at them to halt, the Consul
half waved to someone who perhaps half recognized him, while the cars, that
both bore upon their rear number-plates the sign "Diplomático,"
surged on past, bouncing on their springs, and brushing the hedges, to
disappear ahead in a cloud of dust. From the second car's rear seat a Scotch
terrier barked at them merrily.
   
"The diplomatic thing,
doubtless."
   
The Consul went to see to Yvonne; the
other passengers, shielding their faces against the dust, climbed on board the
bus which had continued to the detour where, stalled, it waited still as death,
as a hearse. Hugh ran to the Indian. His breathing sounded fainter, and yet
more laboured. An uncontrollable desire to see his face again seized Hugh and
he stooped over him. Simultaneously the Indian's right hand raised itself in a
blind groping gesture, the hat was partially pushed away, a voice muttered or
groaned one word: "Compañero."
   
--"The hell they won't,"
Hugh was saying, why he scarcely knew, a moment later to the Consul. But he'd
detained the camion, whose engine had started once more, a little longer, and
he watched the three smiling vigilantes approach, tramping through the dust,
with their holsters slapping their thighs.
   
"Come on, Hugh, they won't let
you on the bus with him, and you'll only get hauled into jail and entangled in
red tape for Christ knows how long," the Consul was saying. "They're
not the pukka police anyhow, only those birds I told you about... Hugh--"
   
"Momentito--" Hugh was
almost immediately expostulating with one of the vigilantes--the other two had
gone over to the Indian--while the driver, wearily, patiently, honked. Then the
policeman pushed Hugh towards the bus: Hugh pushed back. The policeman dropped
his hand and began to fumble with his holster: it was a manoeuvre, not to be
taken seriously. With his other hand he gave Hugh a further shove, so that, to
maintain balance, Hugh was forced to ascend the rear step of the bus which, at
that instant suddenly, violently, moved away with them. Hugh would have jumped
down only the Consul, exerting his strength, held him pinned to a stanchion.
   
"Never mind, old boy, it would
have been worse than the windmills."--"What windmills?"
   
Dust obliterated the scene...
   
The bus thundered on, reeling,
cannonading, drunk. Hugh sat staring at the quaking, shaking floor.
   
--Something like a tree stump with a
tourniquet on it, a severed leg in an army boot that someone picked up, tried
to unlace, and then put down, in a sickening smell of petrol and blood, half
reverently on the road; a face that gasped for a cigarette, turned grey, and
was cancelled; headless things, that sat, with protruding windpipes, fallen
scalps, bolt upright in motor cars; children piled up, many hundreds; screaming
burning things; like the creatures, perhaps, in Geoff's dreams; among the
stupid props of war's senseless Titus Andronicus, the horrors that could not
even make a good story, but which had been, in a flash, evoked by Yvonne when
they got out, Hugh moderately case-hardened, could have acquitted himself, have
done something, have not done nothing...
   
Keep the patient absolutely quiet in
a darkened room. Brandy may sometimes be given to the dying.
   
Hugh guiltily caught the eye of an
old woman. Her face was completely expressionless... Ah, how sensible were
these old women, who at least knew their own mind, who had made a silent
communal decision to have nothing to do with the whole affair. No hesitation,
no fluster, no fuss. With what solidarity, sensing danger, they had clutched
their baskets of poultry to them, when they stopped, or peered round to
identify their property, then had sat, as now, motionless. Perhaps they
remembered the days of revolution in the valley, the blackened buildings, the
communications cut off, those crucified and gored in the bull-ring, the pariah
dogs barbecued in the market place. There was no callousness in their faces, no
cruelty. Death they knew, better than the law, and their memories were long.
They sat ranked now, motionless, frozen, discussing nothing, without a word,
turned to stone. It was natural to have left the matter to the men. And yet, in
these old women it was as if, through the various tragedies of Mexican history,
pity, the impulse to approach, and terror, the impulse to escape (as one had
learned at college), having replaced it, had finally been reconciled by
prudence, the conviction it is better to stay where you are.
   
And what of the other passengers, the
younger women in mourning--there were no women in mourning; they'd all got out,
apparently, and walked; since death, by the roadside, must not be allowed to
interfere with one's plans for resurrection, in the cemetery. And the men in
the purple shirts, who'd had a good look at what was going on, yet hadn't
stirred from the bus? Mystery. No one could be more courageous than a Mexican.
But this was not clearly a situation demanding courage. Frijoles for all:
Tierra. Libertad. Justicia y Ley. Did all that mean anything? ¿Quién sabe? They
weren't sure of anything save that it was foolish to get mixed up with the
police, especially if they weren't proper police; and this went equally for the
man who'd plucked Hugh's sleeve, and the two other passengers who'd joined in
the argument around the Indian, now all dropping off the bus going full speed,
in their graceful, devil-may-care fashion.
   
While as for him, the hero of the
Soviet Republic and the True Church, what or, him, old camarado, had he been
found wanting? Not a bit of it. With the unerring instinct of all war
correspondents with any first-aid training he had been only too ready to
produce the wet blue bag, the lunar caustic, the earner's hair brush.
   
He had remembered instantly that the
word shelter must be understood as including an extra wrap or umbrella or
temporary protection against the rays of the sun. He had been on the lookout
immediately for possible clues to diagnosis such as broken ladders, stains of
blood, moving machinery, and restive horses. He had, but it hadn't done any
good, unfortunately.
   
And the truth was, it was perhaps one
of those occasions when nothing would have done any good. Which only made it
worse than ever. Hugh raised his head and half looked at Yvonne. The Consul had
taken her hand and she was holding his hand tightly.
   
The camión, hastening towards
Tomalín, rolled and swayed as before. Some more boys had jumped on the rear,
and were whistling. The bright tickets winked with the bright colours. There
were more passengers, they came running across the fields, and the men looked
at each other with an air of agreement, the bus was out-doing itself, it had
never before gone so fast, which must be because it too knew today was a
holiday.
   
An acquaintance of the driver's,
perhaps the driver for the return journey, had by now added himself to the
vehicle. He dodged round the outside of the bus with native skill, taking the
fares through the open windows. Once, when they were breasting an incline, he
even dropped off to the road on the left, swerved round behind the camión at a
run, to appear again on the rights grinning in at them clownishly.