Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [123]
Beyond the level-crossing the Tomalín road became smoother for a time. A cool breeze blew gratefully through the windows into the hot camión. Over the plains to their right wound now the interminable narrow-gauge railway, where--though there were twenty-one other paths they might have taken!--they had ridden home abreast. And there were the telegraph poles refusing, for ever, that final curve to the left, and striding straight ahead... In the square too they'd talked of nothing but the Consul. What a relief, and what a joyful relief for Yvonne, when he'd turned up at the Terminal after all!--But the road was rapidly growing much worse again, it was now well-nigh impossible to think, let alone talk--
They jogged on into ever rougher and rougher country. Popocatepetl came in view, an apparition already circling away, that beckoned them forward. The ravine appeared once more on the scene, patiently creeping after them in the distance. The camión crashed down a pothole with a deafening jolt that threw Hugh's soul between his teeth. And then crashed into, and over, a second series of deeper potholes:
"This is like driving over the moon," he tried to say to Yvonne.
She couldn't hear... He noticed new fine lines about her mouth, a weariness that had not been there in Paris. Poor Yvonne! May she be happy. May everything come, somehow, right. May we all be happy. God bless us. Hugh now wondered if he should produce, from his inside pocket, a very small pinch bottle of habanero he had acquired, against emergency, in the square, and frankly offer the Consul a drink. But he obviously didn't need it yet. A faint calm smile played about the Consul's lips which from time to time moved slightly, as if, in spite of the racket, the swaying and jolting, and their continually being sent sprawling against one another, he were solving a chess problem, or reciting something to himself.
Then they were hissing along a good stretch of oiled road through flat wooded country with neither volcano nor ravine in sight. Yvonne had turned sideways and her clear profile sailed along reflected in the window. The more even sounds of the bus wove into Hugh's brain an idiotic syllogism: I am losing the Battle of the Ebro, I am also losing Yvonne, therefore Yvonne is...
The camión was now somewhat fuller. In addition to the pelado and the old women there were men dressed in their Sunday best, white trousers and purple shirts, and one or two younger women in mourning, probably going to the cemeteries. The poultry were a sad sight. All alike had submitted to their fate; hens, cocks, and turkeys, whether in their baskets, or still loose. With only an occasional flutter to show they were alive they crouched passively under the long seats, their emphatic spindly claws bound with cord. Two pullets lay, frightened and quivering, between the hand brake and the clutch, their wings linked with the levers. Poor things, they had signed then--Munich agreement too. One of the turkeys even looked remarkably like Neville Chamberlain. Su salud estará a salvo no escupiendo en el interior de este vehículo: these words, over the windscreen, ran the entire breadth of the bus. Hugh concentrated upon different objects in the camion; the driver's small mirror with the legend running round it--Cooperación de la Cruz Roja, the three picture postcards of the Virgin Mary pinned beside it, the two slim vases of marguerites over the dashboard, the gangrened fire extinguisher, the dungaree jacket and whiskbroom