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By Root 8933 0

But the abominable impact on his whole being at this moment of the fact that that hideously elongated cucumiform bundle of blue nerves and gills below the steaming un-selfconscious stomach had sought its pleasure in his wife's body brought him trembling to his feet. How loathsome, how incredibly loathsome was reality. He began to walk around the room, his knees giving way every step with a jerk. Books, too many books. The Consul still didn't see his Elizabethan plays. Yet there was everything else, from Les Joyeuses Bourgeoises de Windsor to Agrippa d'Aubigné and Collin d'Harleville, from Shelley to Touchard-Lafosse and Tristan l'Hermite. Beaucoup de bruit pour rien! Might a soul bathe there or quench its draught? It might. Yet in none of these books would one find one's own suffering. Nor could they show you how to look at an ox-eye daisy. "But what could have made you tell Vigil I was here, if you didn't know he knew me?" he asked, almost with a sob.

M. Laruelle, overpowered by steam, explanatory fingers in his ears, hadn't heard: "What did you find to talk about, you two? Vigil and yourself?"

"Alcohol. Insanity. Medullary compression of the gibbus. Our agreements were more or less bilateral." The Consul, shaking frankly now, normally, peered out through the open doors of the balcony at the volcanoes over which once more hovered puffs of smoke, accompanied by the rattle of musketry; and once he cast a passionate glance up at the mirador, where his untouched drinks lay. "Mass reflexes, but only the erections of guns, disseminating death," he said, noticing too that the sounds of the fair were getting louder.

"What was that?"

"How were you proposing to entertain the others supposing they had stayed," the Consul almost shrieked soundlessly, for he had himself dreadful memories of showers that slithered all over him like soap slipping from quivering fingers, "by taking a shower?"

And the observation plane was coming back, or Jesus, yes, here, here, out of nowhere, she came whizzing, straight at the balcony, at the Consul, looking for him perhaps, zooming... Aaaaaaaah! Berumph.

M. Laruelle shook his head; he hadn't heard a sound, a word. Now he came out of the shower and into another little recess screened by a curtain which he used as a dressing-room:

"Lovely day, isn't it?... I think we shall have thunder."

"No."

The Consul on a sudden went to the telephone, also in a kind of recess (the house seemed fuller of such recesses today than usual), found the telephone book, and now, shaking all over, opened it; not Vigil, no, not Vigil, his nerves gibbered, but Guzmán. A.B.C.G. He was sweating now, terribly; it was suddenly as hot in this little niche as in a telephone booth in New York during a heat wave; his hands trembled frantically; 666, Cafeasperina; Guzmán. Erikson 34. He had the number, had forgotten it: the name Zuzugoitea, Zuzugoitea, then Sanabria, came starting out of the book at him: Erikson 35. Zuzugoitea. He'd already forgotten the number, forgotten the number, 34, 35, 666: he was turning back the leaves, a large drop of sweat splashed on the book--this time he thought he saw Vigil's name. But he'd already taken the receiver off the hook, the receiver off the hook, off the hook, he held it the wrong way up, speaking, splashing into the earhole, the mouth-hole, he could not hear--could they hear? see?--the earhole as before: "¿Qué quieres? Who do you want... God!" he shouted, hanging up. He would need a drink to do this. He ran for the staircase but half-way up, shuddering, in a frenzy, started down again; I brought the tray down. No, the drinks are still up there. He came on the mirador and drank down all the drinks in sight. He heard music. Suddenly about three hundred head of cattle, dead, frozen stiff in the postures of the living, sprang on the slope before the house, were gone. The Consul finished the contents of the cocktail shaker and came downstairs quietly, picked up a paper-backed book lying on the table, sat down and opened it with a long sigh. It was Jean Cocteau's La Machine infernale. "Out,