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By Root 9011 0

was possible. But had they ever led a normal happy life? Had such a thing as a normal happy life ever been possible for them? It had... Yet what about that belated postcard, now under Laruelle's pillow? It proved the lonely torment unnecessary, proved, even, he must have wanted it. Would anything really have been changed had he received the card at the right time? He doubted it. After all, her other letters--Christ, again, where were they?--had not changed anything. If he had not read them properly, perhaps. But he had not read them properly. And soon he would forget about what had been done with the card. Nevertheless the desire remained--like an echo of Yvonne's own--to find her, to find her now, to reverse their doom, it was a desire amounting almost to a resolution... Raise your head, Geoffrey Firmin, breathe your prayer of thankfulness, act before it is too late. But the weight of a great hand seemed to be pressing his head down. The desire passed. At the same time, as though a cloud had come over the sun, the aspect of the fair had completely altered for him. The merry grinding of the roller skates, the cheerful if ironic music, the cries of the little children on their goose-necked steeds, the procession of queer pictures--all this had suddenly become transcendentally awful and tragic, distant, transmuted, as it were some final impression on the senses of what the earth was like, carried over into an obscure region of death, a gathering thunder of immedicable sorrow; the Consul needed a drink...

--"Tequila," he said.

"¿Una?" the boy said sharply, and M. Laruelle called for gaseosa.

"Sí, señores." The boy swept the table. "Una tequila y una gaseosa." He brought immediately a bottle of El Nilo for M. Laruelle together with salt, chile, and a saucer of sliced lemons.

The café, which was in the centre of a little railed-in garden at the edge of the square among trees, was called the Paris. And in feet it was reminiscent of Paris. A simple fountain dripped near. The boy brought them camarones, red shrimps in a saucer, and had to be told again to get the tequila.

At last it arrived.

"Ah--" the Consul said, though it was the chalcedony ring that had been shaking.

"Do you really like it?" M. Laruelle asked him, and the Consul, sucking a lemon, felt the fire of the tequila run down his spine like lightning striking a tree which thereupon, miraculously, blossoms.

"What are you shaking for?" the Consul asked him.

M. Laruelle stared at him, he gave a nervous glance over his shoulder, he made as if absurdly to twang his tennis racket on his toe, but remembering the press, stood it up against his chair awkwardly.

"What are you afraid of--" the Consul was mocking him.

"I admit, I feel confused..." M. Laruelle cast a more protracted glance over his shoulder. "Here, give me some of your poison." He leaned forward and took a sip of the Consul's tequila and remained bent over the thimble-shaped glass of terrors, a moment since brimming.

"Like it?"

"--like Oxygénée, and petrol... If I ever start to drink that stuff, Geoffrey, you'll know I'm done for."

"It's mescal with me... Tequila, no, that is healthful... and delightful. Just like beer. Good for you. But if I ever start to drink mescal again, I'm afraid, yes, that would be the end," the Consul said dreamily.

"Name of a name of God," shuddered M. Laruelle.

"You're not afraid of Hugh, are you?" The Consul, mocking, pursued--while it struck him that all the desolation of the months following Yvonne's departure were now mirrored in the other's eyes. "Not jealous of him, by any chance, are you?"

"Why should--"

"But you are thinking, aren't you, that in all this time I have never once told you the truth about my life," the Consul said, "isn't that right?"

"No... For perhaps once or twice, Geoffrey, without knowing it, you have told the truth. No, I truly want to help. But, as usual, you don't give me a chance."

"I have never told you the truth. I know it, it is worse than terrible. But as Shelley says, the cold world shall not know. And the tequila hasn't cured your