Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [114]
"I'll say it returns," the Consul said, listening at this point. "There are other minor deliriums too, meteora, which you can pick out of the air before your eyes, like gnats. And this is what people seem to think is the end... But d.t.'s are only the beginning, the music round the portal of the Qliphoth, the overture, conducted by the God of Flies... Why do people see rats? These are the sort of questions that ought to concern the world, Jacques. Consider the word remorse. Remors. Mordeo, mordere. La Mordida! Agenbite too... And why rongeur? Why all this biting, all those rodents, in the etymology?"
"Facilis est descensus Averno... It's too easy."
"You deny the greatness of my battle? Even if I win. And I shall certainly win, if I want to," the Consul added, aware of a man near them standing on a step-ladder nailing a board to a tree.
"]e crois que le vautour est doux a Prométhée et que les Ixion se plaisent en Enfers."
--¡Box!
"To say nothing of what you lose, lose, lose, are losing, man. You fool, you stupid fool... You've even been insulated from the responsibility of genuine suffering... Even the suffering you do endure is largely unnecessary. Actually spurious. It lacks the very basis you require of it for its tragic nature. You deceive yourself. For instance that you're drowning your sorrows... Because of Yvonne and me. But Yvonne knows. And so do I. And so do you. That Yvonne wouldn't have been aware. If you hadn't been so drunk all the time. To know what she was doing. Or care. And what's more. The same thing is bound to happen again you fool it will happen again if you don't pull yourself together. I can see the writing on the wall. Hullo."
M. Laruelle wasn't there at all; he had been talking to himself. The Consul stood up and finished his tequila. But the writing was there, all right, if not on the wall. The man had nailed his board to the tree.
¿LE GUSTA ESTE JARDÍN?
The Consul realized, leaving the Paris, he was in a state of drunkenness, so to speak, rare with him. His steps teetered to the left, he could not make them incline to the right. He knew in which direction he was going, towards the Bus Terminal, or rather the little dark cantina adjacent to it kept by the widow Gregorio, who herself was half English and had lived in Manchester, and to whom he owed fifty centavos he'd suddenly made up his mind to pay back. But simply he could not steer a straight course there... Oh we all walk the wibberley wobberley--
Dies Faustus... The Consul looked at his watch. Just for one moment, one horrible moment in the Paris, he had thought it night, that it was one of those days the hours slid by like corks bobbing astern, and the morning was carried away by the wings of the angel of night, all in a trice, but tonight quite the reverse seemed to be happening: it was still only five to two. It was already the longest day in his entire experience, a lifetime; he had not only not missed the bus, he would have plenty of time for more drinks. If only he were not drunk! The Consul strongly disapproved of this drunkenness.
Children accompanied him, gleefully aware of his plight. Money, money, money, they gibbered. O.K. mistair! Where har you go? Their cries grew discouraged, fainter, utterly disappointed as they clung to his trousers leg. He would have liked to give them something. Yet he did not wish to draw more attention to himself. He had caught sight of Hugh and Yvonne, trying their hands at a shooting gallery. Hugh was shooting, Yvonne watched; phut, pssst, pfffing; and Hugh brought down a procession of wooden ducks.
The Consul stumbled on without being seen, passing a booth where you could have your photograph taken with your sweetheart against a terrifying thunderous background, lurid and green, with a charging bull, and Popocatepetl in eruption, past, his face averted, the shabby little closed British Consulate, where the lion and the unicorn