Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [126]
Hugh, Yvonne, the Consul, and two of the male passengers got out and followed him. None of the old women moved.
It was stiflingly hot in the sunken deserted road. Yvonne gave a nervous cry and turned on her heel; Hugh caught her arm.
"Don't mind me. It's just that I can't stand the sight of blood, damn it."
She was climbing back into the camión as Hugh came up with the Consul and the two passengers.
The pelado was swaying gently over the recumbent man who was dressed in the usual loose white garments of the Indian.
There was not, however, much blood in sight, save on one side of his hat.
But the man was certainly not sleeping peacefully. His chest heaved like a spent swimmer's, his stomach contracted and dilated rapidly, one fist clenched and unclenched in the dust...
Hugh and the Consul stood helplessly, each, he thought, waiting for the other to remove the Indian's hat, to expose the wound each felt must be there, checked from such action by a common reluctance, perhaps an obscure courtesy. For each knew the other was also thinking it would be better still should one of the passengers, even the pelado, examine the man.
As nobody made any move at all Hugh grew impatient. He shifted from foot to foot. He looked at the Consul expectantly: he'd been in this country long enough to know what should be done, moreover he was the one among them most nearly representing authority. Yet the Consul seemed lost in reflection. Suddenly Hugh stepped forward impulsively and bent over the Indian--one of the passengers plucked his sleeve.
"Har you throw your cigarette?"
"Throw it away." The Consul woke up. "Forest fires."
"So--, they have prohibidated it."
Hugh stamped his cigarette out and was about to bend over the man once more when the passenger again plucked his sleeve:
"No, no," he said, tapping his nose, "they har prohibidated that, también."
"You can't touch him--it's the law," said the Consul sharply, who looked now as though he would like to get as far from this scene as possible, if necessary even by means of the Indian's horse. "For his protection. Actually it's a sensible law. Otherwise you might become an accessory after the fact."
The Indian's breathing sounded like the sea dragging itself down a stone beach.
A single bird flew, high.
"But the man may be dy--" Hugh muttered to Geoffrey.
"God, I feel terrible," the Consul replied, though it was a fact he was about to take some action, when the pelado anticipated him: he went down on one knee and, quick as lightning, whipped off the Indian's hat.
They all peered over, seeing the cruel wound on the side of his head, where the blood had almost coagulated, the flushed moustachioed face turned aside, and before they stood back Hugh caught a glimpse of a sum of money, four or five silver pesos and a handful of centavos, that had been placed neatly under the loose collar to the man's blouse, which partly concealed it. The pelado replaced the hat and, straightening himself, made a hopeless gesture with hands now blotched with half-dried blood.
How long had he been here, lying in the road?
Hugh gazed after the pelado on his way back to the camión, and then, once more, at the Indian, whose life, as they talked, seemed gasping away from them all. "Diantre! ¿Donde buscamos un medico?" he asked stupidly.
This time from the camión, the pelado made again that gesture of hopelessness, which was also like a gesture of sympathy: what could they do, he appeared trying to convey to them through the window, how could they have known, when they got out, that they could do nothing?
"Move his hat farther down though so that he can get some air," the Consul said, in a voice that betrayed a trembling tongue; Hugh did this and, so swiftly he did not have time to see the money again, also placed the Consul's handkerchief over the wound, leaving it held in place by the balanced sombrero.
The driver now came for a look, tall, in his white shirt sleeves, and soiled whipcord breeches like bellows,, inside high-laced, dirty boots. With his bare tousled head, laughing dissipated intelligent