Under the Volcano (34 page)

   
A friend of his sprang on the bus.
They crouched, one on either side of the bonnet, by the two front mudguards,
every so often joining hands over the radiator cap, while the first man,
leaning dangerously outwards, looked back to see if one of the rear tyres,
which had acquired a slow puncture, was holding. Then he went on taking fares.
   
Dust, dust, dust--it filtered in
through the windows, a soft invasion of dissolution, filling the vehicle.
   
Suddenly the Consul was nudging Hugh,
inclining his head towards the pelado, whom Hugh had not forgotten however: he
had been sitting bolt upright all this time, fidgeting with something in his
lap, coat buttoned, both hats on, crucifix adjusted, and wearing much the same
expression as before, though after his oddly exemplary behaviour in the road,
he seemed much refreshed and sobered.
   
Hugh nodded, smiling, lost interest;
the Consul nudged him
   
again:
   
"Do you see what I see?"
   
"What is it?"
   
Hugh shook his head, looked
obediently towards the pelado, could see nothing, then saw, at first without
comprehending.
   
The pelado's smeared conquistador's
hands, that had clutched the melon, now clutched a sad bloodstained pile of
silver pesos and centavos.
   
The pelado had stolen the dying
Indian's money.
   
Moreover, surprised at this point by
the conductor grinning in the window, he carefully selected some coppers from
this little pile, smiled round at the preoccupied passengers as though he
almost expected some comment to be made upon his cleverness, and paid his fare
with them.
   
But no comment was made, for the good
reason none save the Consul and Hugh seemed aware quite how clever he was.
   
Hugh now produced the small pinch
bottle of habanero, handing it to Geoff, who passed it to Yvonne. She choked,
had still noticed nothing; and it was as simple as that; they all took a short
drink.
   
--What was so astonishing on second
thoughts was not that on an impulse the pelado should have stolen the money,
but that he was making now only this half-hearted effort to conceal it, that he
should be continually opening and closing his palm with the bloody silver and
copper coins for anyone to see who wished.
   
It occurred to Hugh he was not trying
to conceal it at all, that he was perhaps attempting to persuade the
passengers, even though they knew nothing about it, that he had acted from
motives explicable as just, that he had taken the money merely to keep it safe
which, as had just been shown by his own action, no money could reasonably be
called in a dying man's collar on the Tomalín road, in the shadow of the Sierra
Madre.
   
And further, suppose he were
suspected of being a thief, his eyes, that were now fully open, almost alert,
and full of mischief, said to them, and were arrested, what chance then would
the Indian should he survive have of seeing his money again? Of course, none,
as everyone well knew. The real police might be honourable, of the people. But
were he arrested by these deputies, these other fellows, they would simply steal
it from him, that much was certain, as they would even now be stealing it from
the Indian, but for his kindly action.
   
Nobody, therefore, who was genuinely
concerned about the Indian's money, must suspect anything of the sort, or at
any rate, must not think too clearly about it; even if now, in the camion, he
should choose to stop juggling the money from hand to hand, like that, or slip
part of it into his pocket, like that, or even supposing what remained happened
to slip accidentally into his other pocket, like that--and this performance was
undoubtedly rather for their own benefit, as witnesses and foreigners--no
significance attached to it, none of these gestures meant that he had been a
thief, or that, in spite of excellent intentions, he had decided to steal the
money after all, and become a thief.
   
And this remained true, whatever
happened to the money, since his possession of it was open and above board, for
all the world to know about. It was a recognized thing, like Abyssinia.
   
The conductor went on taking the
remaining fares and now, concluded, gave them to the driver. The bus trampled
on faster; the road narrowed again, becoming dangerous.
   
Downhill... The driver kept his hand
on the screaming emergency brake as they circled down into Tomalín. On the
right was a sheer unguarded drop, a huge scrub-covered dusty hill leaned from
the hollow below, with trees jutting out sideways--
   
Ixtaccihuatl had slipped out of sight
but as, descending, they circled round and round, Popocatepetl slid in and out
of view continually, never appearing the same twice, now far away, then vastly
near at hand, incalculably distant at one moment, at the next looming round the
corner with its splendid thickness of sloping fields, valleys, timber, its
summit swept by clouds, slashed by hail and snow...
   
Then a white church, and they were in
a town once more, a town of one long street, a cul-de-sac, and many paths, that
converged upon a small lake or reservoir ahead, in which people were swimming,
beyond which lay the forest. By this lake was the bus stop.
   
The three of them stood again in the
dust, dazzled by the whiteness, the blaze of the afternoon. The old women and
the other passengers had gone. From a doorway came the plangent chords of a
guitar, and at hand was the refreshing sound of rushing water, of a falls.
Geoff pointed the way and they set off in the direction of the Arena Tomalín.
   
But the driver and his acquaintance
were going into a pulquería. They were followed by the pelado. He walked very
straight, stepping high, and holding his hats on, as though the wind were
blowing, on his face a fatuous smile, not of triumph, almost of entreaty.
   
He would join them; some arrangement
would be made. ¿Quién sabe?
   
They stared after them as the twin
doors of the tavern swung to:--it had a pretty name, the Todos Contentos y Yo
También. The Consul said nobly:
   
"Everybody happy, including
me."
   
And including those, Hugh thought,
who effortlessly, beautifully, in the blue sky above them, floated, the
vultures--xopilotes, who wait only for the ratification of death.

   
Arena Tomalín...
   
--What a wonderful time everybody was
having, how happy they were, how happy everyone was! How merrily Mexico laughed
away its tragic history, the past, the underlying death!
   
It was as though she had never left
Geoffrey, never gone to America, never suffered the anguish of the last year,
as though even, Yvonne felt a moment, they were in Mexico again for the first
time; there was that same warm poignant happy sense, indefinable, illogically,
of sorrow that would be overcome, of hope--for had not Geoffrey met her at the
Bus Terminal?--above all of hope, of the future--
   
A smiling, bearded giant, a white
serape decorated with cobalt dragons flung over his shoulder, proclaimed it. He
was stalking importantly around the arena, where the boxing would be on Sunday,
propelling through the dust--the "Rocket" it might have been, the
first locomotive.
   
It was a marvellous peanut wagon. She
could see its little donkey engine toiling away minutely inside, furiously
grinding the peanuts. How delicious, how good, to feel oneself, in spite of all
the strain and stress of the day, the journey, the bus, and now the crowded
rickety grandstand, part of the brilliantly coloured serape of existence, part
of the sun, the smells, the laughter!
   
From time to time the peanut wagon's
siren jerked, its fluted smokestack belched, its polished whistle shrieked.
Apparently the giant didn't want to sell any peanuts. Simply, he couldn't
resist showing off this engine to everyone: see, this is my possession, my joy,
my faith, perhaps even (he would like it to be imagined) my invention! And
everyone loved him.
   
He was pushing the wagon, all of a
final triumphant belch and squeal, from the arena just as the bull shot out of
a gate on the opposite side.
   
A merry bull at heart too--obviously.
¿Por qué no? It knew it wasn't going to be killed, merely to play, to
participate in the gaiety. But the bull's merriment was controlled as yet;
after its explosive entrance it began to cruise round the edge of the ring
slowly, thoughtfully, though raising much dust. It was prepared to enjoy the
game as much as anyone, at its own expense if need be, only its dignity must
receive proper recognition first.
   
Nevertheless some people sitting on
the rude fence that enclosed the ring scarcely bothered to draw their legs up
at its approach, while others lying prone on the ground just outside, with
their heads as if thrust through luxurious stocks, did not withdraw an inch.
   
On the other hand some responsive
borrachos straying into the ring prematurely essayed to ride the bull. This was
not playing the game: the bull must be caught in a special way, fair play was
in order, and they were escorted off, tottering, weak-kneed, protesting, yet
always gay...
   
The crowd, in general more pleased
with the bull even than with the peanut vendor, started to cheer. Newcomers
gracefully swung up on to fences, to appear standing there, marvellously
balanced, on the top railings. Muscular hawkers lifted aloft, in one sinewy
stretch of the forearm, heavy trays brimmed with multi-coloured fruits. A boy
stood high upon the crotch of a tree, shading his eyes as he gazed over the
jungle at the volcanoes. He was looking for an airplane in the wrong direction;
she made it out herself, a droning hyphen in abyssal blue. Thunder was in the
air though, at her back somewhere, a tingle of electricity.
   
The bull repeated his tour of the
ring at a slightly increased though still steadily measured gait, deviating
only once when a smart little dog snapping at his heels made him forget where
he was going.
   
Yvonne straightened her back, pulled
down her hat, and began to powder her nose, peering into the traitorous mirror
of the bright enamel compact. It reminded her that only five minutes ago she
had been crying and imaged too, nearer, looking over her shoulder,
Popocatepetl.
   
The volcanoes! How sentimental one
could become about them! It was "volcano" now; however she moved the
mirror she couldn't get poor Ixta in, who, quite eclipsed, fell away sharply
into invisibility, while Popocatepetl seemed even more beautiful for being
reflected, its summit brilliant against pitch-massed cloud banks. Yvonne ran
one finger down her cheek, drew down an eyelid. It was stupid to have cried, in
front of the little man at the door of Las Novedades too, who'd told them it
"was half past three by the cock," then that it was
"imposseebly" to phone because Dr. Figueroa had gone to Xiutepec...
   
"--Forward to the bloody arena
then," the Consul had said savagely, and she had cried. Which was almost
as stupid as to have turned back this afternoon, not at the sight, but at the
mere suspicion of blood. That was her weakness though, and she remembered the
dog that was dying on the street in Honolulu, rivulets of blood streaked the
deserted pavement, and she had wanted to help, but fainted instead, just for a
minute, and then was so dismayed to find herself lying there alone on the
kerb--what if anyone had seen her?--she hurried away without a word, only to be
haunted by the memory of the wretched abandoned creature so that once--but what
was the good thinking of that? Besides, hadn't everything possible been done?
It wasn't as if they'd come to the bullthrowing without first making sure there
was no phone. And even had there been one! So far as she could make out, the
poor Indian was obviously being taken care of when they left, so now she
seriously thought of it, she couldn't understand why--She gave her hat a final
pat before the mirror, then blinked. Her eyes were tired and playing tricks.
For a second she'd had the awful sensation that, not Popocatepetl, but the old
woman with the dominoes that morning, was looking over her shoulder. She closed
the compact with a snap, and turned to the others smiling.
   
Both the Consul and Hugh were staring
gloomily at the arena.
   
From the grandstand around her came a
few groans, a few belches, a few half-hearted olés, as now the bull, with two
shuffling broom-like sweeps of the head along the ground, drove away the dog
again and resumed his circuit of the ring. But no gaiety, no applause. Some of
the rail sitters actually nodded with slumber. Someone else was tearing a
sombrero to pieces while another spectator was trying unsuccessfully to skim,
like a boomerang, a straw hat at a friend. Mexico was not laughing away her
tragic history; Mexico was bored. The bull was bored. Everyone was bored,
perhaps had been all the time. All that had happened was that Yvonne's drink in
the bus had taken effect and was now wearing off. As amid boredom the bull
circled the arena and, boredom, he now finally sat down in a corner of it.
   
"Just like Ferdinand--"
Yvonne began, still almost hopefully.
   
"Nandi," the Consul (and
ah, had he not taken her hand in the bus?) muttered, peering sideways with one
eye through cigarette smoke at the ring, "the bull, I christen him Nandi,
vehicle of Siva, from whose hair the River Ganges flows, and who has also been
identified with the Vedic storm-god Vindra--known to the ancient Mexicans as
Huracán."
   
"For Jesus' sake, papa,"
Hugh said, "thank you."
   
Yvonne sighed; it was a tiresome and
odious spectacle, really. The only people happy were the drunks. Gripping
tequila or mescal bottles they tottered into the ring, approached the recumbent
Nandi, and sliding and tripping over each other were chased out again by
several charros, who now attempted to drag the miserable bull to its feet.
   
But the bull would not be dragged. At
last a small boy no one had seen before appeared to nip its tail with his
teeth, and as the boy ran away, the animal clambered up convulsively. Instantly
it was lassoed by a cowboy mounted on a malicious-looking horse. The bull soon
kicked itself free: it had been roped only around one foot, and walked from the
scene shaking its head, then catching sight of the dog once more, wheeled, and
pursued it a short distance...
   
There was suddenly more activity in
the arena. Presently everyone there, whether on horseback, pompously, or on
foot--running or standing still, or swaying with an old serape or rug or even a
rag held out--was trying to attract the bull.
   
The poor old creature seemed now
indeed like someone being drawn, lured, into events of which he has no real
comprehension, by people with whom he wishes to be friendly, even to play, who
entice him by encouraging that wish and by whom, because they really despise
and desire to humiliate him, he is finally entangled.
   
... Yvonne's father made his way
towards her, through the seats, hovering, responding eagerly as a child to
anyone who held out a friendly hand, her father, whose laughter in memory still
sounded so warmly rich and generous, and whom the small sepia photograph she
still carried with her depicted as a young captain in the uniform of the
Spanish-American war, with earnest candid eyes beneath a high fine brow, a
full-lipped sensitive mouth beneath the dark silky moustache, and a cleft
chin--her father, with his fatal craze for invention, who had once so confidently
set out for Hawaii to make his fortune by raising pineapples. In this he had
not succeeded. Missing army life, and abetted by his friends, he wasted time
tinkering over elaborate projects. Yvonne had heard that he'd tried to make
synthetic hemp from the pineapple tops and even attempted to harness the
volcano behind their estate to run the hemp machine. He sat on the lanai
sipping okoolihao and singing plaintive Hawaiian songs, while the pineapples
rotted in the fields, and the native help gathered round to sing with him, or
slept through the cutting season, while the plantation ran into weeds and ruin,
and the whole place hopelessly into debt. That was the picture; Yvonne
remembered little of the period save her mother's death. Yvonne was then six.
The World War, together with the final foreclosure, was approaching, and with
it the figure of her Uncle Macintyre, her mother's brother, a wealthy Scotchman
with financial interests in South America, who had long prophesied his
brother-in-law's failure, and yet to whose large influence it was undoubtedly
due that, all at once and to everyone's surprise, Captain Constable became
American consul to Iquique.
   
--Consul to Iquique!... Or
Quauhnahuac! How many times in the misery of the last year had Yvonne not tried
to free herself of her love for Geoffrey by rationalizing it away, by analysing
it away, by telling herself--Christ, after she'd waited, and written at first
hopefully, with all her heart, then urgently, frantically, at last
despairingly, waited and watched every day for the letter--ah, that daily
crucifixion of the post!
   
She looked at the Consul, whose face
for a moment seemed to have assumed that brooding expression of her father's
she remembered so well during those long war years in Chile. Chile! It was as
if that republic of stupendous coastline yet narrow girth, where all thoughts
bring up at Cape Horn, or in the nitrate country, had had a certain attenuating
influence on his mind. For what, precisely, was her father brooding about all that
time, more spiritually isolated in the land of Bernardo O'Higgins than was once
Robinson Crusoe, only a few hundred miles from the same shores? Was it of the
outcome of the war itself, or of obscure trade agreements he perhaps initiated,
or the lot of American sailors stranded in the Tropic of Capricorn? No, it was
upon a single notion that had not, however, reached its fruition till after the
Armistice. Her father had invented a new kind of pipe, insanely complicated,
that one took to pieces for purposes of cleanliness. The pipes came into
something like seventeen pieces, came, and thus remained, since apparently none
save her father knew how to put them together again. It was a fact that the
Captain did not smoke a pipe himself. Nevertheless, as usual, he had been led
on and encouraged... When his factory in Hilo burned down within six weeks of
its completion he had returned to Ohio where he was born and for a time worked
in a wire-fence company.
   
And there, it had happened. The bull
was hopelessly entangled. Now one, two, three, four more lassoes, each launched
with a new marked lack of friendliness, caught him. The spectators stamped on
the wooden scaffolding, clapping rhythmically, without enthusiasm.--Yes, it
struck her now that this whole business of the bull was like a life; the
important birth, the fair chance, the tentative, then assured, then
half-despairing circulations of the ring, an obstacle negotiated--a feat
improperly recognized--boredom, resignation, collapse: then another, more convulsive
birth, a new start; the circumspect endeavours to obtain one's bearings in a
world now frankly hostile, the apparent but deceptive encouragement of one's
judges, half of whom were asleep, the swervings into the beginnings of disaster
because of that same negligible obstacle one had surely taken before at a
stride, the final enmeshment in the toils of enemies one was never quite
certain weren't friends more clumsy than actively ill-disposed, followed by
disaster, capitulation, disintegration--
   
--The failure of a wire-fence
company, the failure, rather less emphatic and final, of one's father's mind,
what were these things in the face of God or destiny? Captain Constable's
besetting illusion was that he'd been cashiered from the army; and everything started
up to this imagined disgrace. He set out on his way back yet once more to
Hawaii, the dementia that arrested him in Los Angeles however, where he
discovered he was penniless, being strictly alcoholic in character.