Under the Volcano (47 page)

   
--drawing the blanket he had secretly
brought down from the hotel room over his head, creeping out past the manager's
nephew--the escape!--past the hotel desk, not daring to look for mail--"it
is this silence that frightens me"--(can it be there? Is this me? Alas,
self-pitying miserable wretch, you old rascal) past
   
--the escape!--the Indian
night-watchman sleeping on the floor in the doorway, and like an Indian himself
now, clutching the few pesos he had left, out into the cold walled cobbled
city, past
   
--the escape through the secret
passage!--the open sewers in the mean streets, the few lone dim street lamps,
into the night, into the miracle that the coffins of houses, the landmarks were
still there, the escape down the poor broken sidewalks, groaning, groaning--and
how alike are the groans of love, to those of the dying, how alike, those of
love, to those of the dying!--and the houses so still, so cold, before dawn,
till he saw, rounding the corner safe, the one lamp of El Infierno glowing, that
was so like the Farolito, then, surprised once more he could ever have reached
it, standing inside the place with his back to the wall, and his blanket still
over his head, talking to the beggars, the early workers, the dirty
prostitutes, the pimps, the debris and detritus of the streets and the bottom
of the earth, but who were yet so much higher than he, drinking just as he had
done here in the Farolito, and telling lies, lying--the escape, still the
escape!--until the lilac-shaded dawn that should have brought death, and he
should have died now too; what have I done?
   
The Consul's eyes focused a calendar
behind the bed. He had reached his crisis at last, a crisis without possession,
almost without pleasure finally, and what he saw might have been, no, he was
sure it was, a picture of Canada. Under a brilliant full moon a stag stood by a
river down which a man and a woman were paddling a birch-bark canoe. This
calendar was set to the future, for next month, December: where would he be
then? In the dim blue light he even made out the names of the Saints for each
December day, printed by the numerals: Santa Natalia, Santa Bibiana, S.
Francisco Xavier, Santa Sabos, S. Nicolás de Bari, S. Ambrosio: thunder blew
the door open, the face of M. Laruelle faded in the door.
   
In the mingitorio a stench like
mercapatan clapped yellow hands on his face and now, from the urinal walls,
uninvited, he heard his voices again, hissing and shrieking and yammering at
him: "Now you've done it, now you've really done it, Geoffrey Firmin! Even
we can help you no longer... Just the same you might as well make the most of
it now, the night's still young..."
   
"You like María, you like?"
A man's voice--that of the chuckler, he recognized--came from the gloom and the
Consul, his knees trembling, gazed round him; all he saw at first were slashed
advertisements on the slimy feebly lit walls: Clínica Dr. Vigil, Enfermedades
Secretas de Ambos Sexos, Vias Urinarias, Trastornos Sexuales, Debilidad Sexual,
Derrame? Nocturnos, Emisiones Prematuras, Espermatorrea Impotencia, 666. His
versatile companion of this morning and last night might have been informing
him ironically all was not yet lost--unfortunately by now he would be well on
his way to Guanajuato. He distinguished an incredibly filthy man sitting
hunched in the corner on a lavatory seat, so short his trousered feet didn't
reach the littered, befouled floor. "You like María?" this man
croaked again. "I send. Me amigo." He farted. "Me fliend
Englisman all tine, all tine." "¿Qué hora?" asked the Consul,
shivering, noticing, in the runnel, a dead scorpion; a sparkle of
phosphorescence and it had gone, or had never been there. "What's the
time?" "Sick," answered the man. "No, it er ah half past
sick by the cock." "You mean half past six by the clock."
"Sí señor. Half past sick by the cock."
   
666.--The pricked peetroot, pickled
betroot; the Consul, arranging his dress, laughed grimly at the pimp's
reply--or was he some sort of stool pigeon, in the strictest sense of that
term? And who was it had said earlier, half past tree by the cock? How had the
man known he was English, he wondered, taking his laughter back through the
glass-paned rooms, out through the filling bar to the door again--perhaps he
worked for the Unión Militar, squatting at stool all day in the Seguridad jakes
eavesdropping on the prisoners" conversation, while pimping was just a
sideline. He might have found out from him about María, whether she was--but he
didn't want to know. He'd been right about the time though. The clock on the
Comisaria de Policía, annular, imperfectly luminous, said, as if it had just
moved forward with a jerk, a little after six-thirty, and the Consul corrected
his watch, which was slow. It was now quite dark. Yet the same ragged platoon
still seemed to be marching across the square. The corporal was no longer
writing, however. Outside the prison stood a single motionless sentinel. The
archway behind him was suddenly swept by wild light. Beyond, by the cells, the
shadow of a policeman's lantern was swinging against the wall. The evening was
filled by odd noises, like those of sleep. The roll of a drum somewhere was a
revolution, a cry down the street someone being murdered, brakes grinding far
away a soul in pain. The plucked chords of a guitar hung over his head. A bell
clanged frantically in the distance. Lightning twitched. Half past sick by the
cock... In British Columbia, in Canada, on cold Pineaus Lake, where his island
had long since become a wilderness of laurel and Indian Pipe, of wild strawberry
and Oregon holly, he remembered the strange Indian belief prevailing that a
cock would crow over a drowned body. How dread the validation that silver
February evening long ago when, as acting Lithuanian Consul to Vernon, he had
accompanied the search party in the boat, and the bored rooster had roused
himself to crow shrilly seven times! The dynamite charges had apparently
disturbed nothing, they were sombrely rowing for shore through the cloudy
twilight, when suddenly, protruding from the water, they had seen what looked
at first like a glove--the hand of the drowned Lithuanian. British Columbia,
the genteel Siberia, that was neither genteel nor a Siberia, but an
undiscovered, perhaps an undiscoverable paradise, that might have been a
solution, to return there, to build, if not on his island, somewhere there, a
new life with Yvonne. Why hadn't he thought of it before? Or why hadn't she? Or
had that been what she was getting at this afternoon, and which had half
communicated itself to his mind? My little grey home in the west. Now it seemed
to him he had often thought of it before, in this precise spot where he was
standing. But now too at least this much was clear. He couldn't go back to
Yvonne if he wanted to. The hope of any new life together, even were it
miraculously offered again, could scarcely survive in the arid air of an
estranged postponement to which it must now, on top of everything else, be
submitted for brutal hygienic reasons alone. True, those reasons were without
quite secure basis as yet, but for another purpose that eluded him they had to
remain unassailable. All solutions now came up against their great Chinese
wall, forgiveness among them. He laughed once more, feeling a strange release,
almost a sense of attainment. His mind was clear. Physically he seemed better
too. It was as if, out of an ultimate contamination, he had derived strength.
He felt free to devour what remained of his life in peace. At the same time a
certain gruesome gaiety was creeping into this mood, and, in an extraordinary
way, a certain lightheaded mischievousness. He was aware of a desire at once
for complete glutted oblivion and for an innocent youthful fling.
"Alas," a voice seemed to be saying also in his ear, "my poor
little child, you do not feel any of these things really, only lost, only
homeless."
   
He started. In front of him tied to a
small tree he hadn't noticed, though it was right opposite the cantina on the
other side of the path, stood a horse cropping the lush grass. Something
familiar about the beast made him walk over. Yes--exactly as he thought. He
could mistake by now neither the number seven branded on the rump nor the
leather saddle charactered in that fashion. It was the Indian's horse, the
horse of the man he'd first seen today riding it singing into the sunlit world,
then abandoned, left dying by the roadside. He patted the animal which twitched
its ears and went on cropping imperturbably--perhaps not so imperturbably; at a
rumble of thunder the horse, whose saddlebags he noticed had been mysteriously
restored, whinnied uneasily, shaking all over. When just as mysteriously those
saddlebags no longer chinked. Unbidden, an explanation of this afternoon's
events came to the Consul. Hadn't it turned out to be a policeman into which
all those abominations he'd observed a little while since had melted, a
policeman leading a horse in this direction? Why should not that horse be this
horse? It had been those vigilante hombres who'd turned up on the road this
afternoon, and here in Parián, as he'd told Hugh, was their headquarters. How
Hugh would relish this, could he be here! The police--ah, the fearful
police--or rather not the real police, he corrected himself, but those Unión
Militar fellows were at the bottom, in an insanely complicated manner but still
at the bottom, of the whole business. He felt suddenly sure of this. As if out
of some correspondence between the subnormal world itself and the abnormally
suspicious delirious one within him the truth had sprung--sprung like a shadow
however, which--
   
"¿Qué hacéis aquí?"
   
"Nada," he said, and smiled
at the man resembling a Mexican sergeant of police who had snatched the bridle
from his hands. "Nothing. Veo que la tierra anda; estoy esperando que pase
mi casa por aquí para meterme en ella," he brilliantly managed. The
brasswork on the amazed policeman's uniform buckles caught the light from the
doorway of the Farolito, then, as he turned, the leather on his sam-browne
caught it, so that it was glossy as a plantain leaf, and lastly his boots, which
shone like dull silver. The Consul laughed: just to glance at him was to feel
that mankind was on the point of being saved immediately. He repeated the good
Mexican joke, not quite right, in English, patting the policeman, whose jaw had
dropped in bewilderment and who was eyeing him blankly, on the arm. "I
learn that the world goes round so I am waiting here for my house to pass
by." He held out his hand."Amigo," he said.
   
The policeman grunted, brushing the
Consul's hand off. Then, giving him quick suspicious glances over his shoulder,
he fastened the horse more securely to the tree. In those swift glances there
was something serious indeed, the Consul was aware, something that bade him
escape at his peril. Slightly hurt, he now remembered too, the look Diosdado
had given him. But the Consul felt neither serious nor like escaping. Nor did
his feelings change as he found himself impelled by the policeman from behind
towards the cantina, beyond which, by lightning, the east briefly appeared, in
onrush, a towering thunderhead. Preceding him through the door, it actually
struck the Consul that the sergeant was trying to be polite. He stood aside
quite nimbly, bidding, with a gesture, the other go first. "Mi
amigo," he repeated. The policeman shoved him in and they made for one end
of the bar which was empty.
   
"¿Americano, eh?" this
policeman said now firmly. "Wait, aquí. ¿Comprende, señor?" He went
behind the bar to speak with Diosdado.
   
The Consul unsuccessfully tried to
intrude, on his conduct's behalf, a cordial note of explanation for the
Elephant, who appeared grim as if he'd just murdered another of his wives to
cure her neurasthenia. Meantime, A Few Fleas, temporarily otiose, and with
surprising charity, slid him a mescal along the counter. People were looking at
him again. Then the policeman confronted him from the other side of the bar.
"They say there ees trouble about you no pay," he said, "you no
pay for--ah--Mehican whisky. You no pay for Mehican girl. You no have money, hey?"
   
"Zicker," said the Consul,
whose Spanish, in spite of a temporary insurgence, he knew virtually gone.
"Sí. Yes. Mucho dinero," he added, placing a peso on the counter for
A Few Fleas. He saw that the policeman was a heavy-necked handsome man with a
black gritty moustache, flashing teeth, and a rather consciously swashbuckling
manner. He was joined at this moment by a tall slim man in well-cut American
tweeds with a hard sombre face and long beautiful hands. Glancing periodically
at the Consul he spoke in undertones with Diosdado and the policeman. This man,
who looked pure-bred Castilian, seemed familiar and the Consul wondered where
he had seen him before. The policeman, disengaging himself from him, leaned
over with his elbows on the bar, talking to the Consul. "You no have
money, hey, and now you steal my horse." He winked at the Godgiven.
"What for you ah run away with Mehican caballo? for to no pay Mehican
money--hey?"
   
The Consul stared at him. "No.
Decidedly not. Of course I wasn't going to steal your horse. I was merely
looking at it, admiring it."
   
"What for you want to look at
Mehican caballo? For why?" The policeman laughed suddenly, with real
merriment, slapping his thighs--obviously he was a good fellow and the Consul,
feeling the ice was broken, laughed too. But the policeman obviously enough was
also quite drunk, so it was difficult to gauge the quality of this laughter.
While the faces of both Diosdado and the man in tweeds remained black and
stern. "You make a the map of the Spain," the policeman persisted,
controlling his laughter finally." You know ah Spain?"
   
"Comment non," the Consul
said. So Diosdado had told him about the map, yet surely that was an innocently
sad enough thing to have done. "Oui. Es muy asombrosa," No, this
wasn't Pernambuco: definitely he ought not to speak Portuguese. "Jawohl.
Correcto, señor," he finished. "Yes, I know Spain."