Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [133]
Both the Consul and Hugh were staring gloomily at the arena.
From the grandstand around her came a few groans, a few belches, a few half-hearted olés, as now the bull, with two shuffling broom-like sweeps of the head along the ground, drove away the dog again and resumed his circuit of the ring. But no gaiety, no applause. Some of the rail sitters actually nodded with slumber. Someone else was tearing a sombrero to pieces while another spectator was trying unsuccessfully to skim, like a boomerang, a straw hat at a friend. Mexico was not laughing away her tragic history; Mexico was bored. The bull was bored. Everyone was bored, perhaps had been all the time. All that had happened was that Yvonne's drink in the bus had taken effect and was now wearing off. As amid boredom the bull circled the arena and, boredom, he now finally sat down in a corner of it.
"Just like Ferdinand--" Yvonne began, still almost hopefully.
"Nandi," the Consul (and ah, had he not taken her hand in the bus?) muttered, peering sideways with one eye through cigarette smoke at the ring, "the bull, I christen him Nandi, vehicle of Siva, from whose hair the River Ganges flows, and who has also been identified with the Vedic storm-god Vindra--known to the ancient Mexicans as Huracán."
"For Jesus' sake, papa," Hugh said, "thank you."
Yvonne sighed; it was a tiresome and odious spectacle, really. The only people happy were the drunks. Gripping tequila or mescal bottles they tottered into the ring, approached the recumbent Nandi, and sliding and tripping over each other were chased out again by several charros, who now attempted to drag the miserable bull to its feet.
But the bull would not be dragged. At last a small boy no one had seen before appeared to nip its tail with his teeth, and as the boy ran away, the animal clambered up convulsively. Instantly it was lassoed by a cowboy mounted on a malicious-looking horse. The bull soon kicked itself free: it had been roped only around one foot, and walked from the scene shaking its head, then catching sight of the dog once more, wheeled, and pursued it a short distance...
There was suddenly more activity in the arena. Presently everyone there, whether on horseback, pompously, or on foot--running or standing still, or swaying with an old serape or rug or even a rag held out--was trying to attract the bull.
The poor old creature seemed now indeed like someone being drawn, lured, into events of which he has no real comprehension, by people with whom he wishes to be friendly, even to play, who entice him by encouraging that wish and by whom, because they really despise and desire to humiliate him, he is finally entangled.
... Yvonne's father made his way towards her, through the seats, hovering, responding eagerly as a child to anyone who held out a friendly hand, her father, whose laughter in memory still sounded so warmly rich and generous, and whom the small sepia photograph she still carried with her depicted as a young captain in the uniform of the Spanish-American war, with earnest candid eyes beneath a high fine brow, a full-lipped sensitive mouth beneath the dark silky moustache, and a cleft chin--her father, with his fatal craze for invention, who had once so confidently set out for Hawaii to make his fortune by raising pineapples. In this he had not succeeded. Missing army life, and abetted by his friends, he wasted time tinkering over elaborate projects. Yvonne had heard that he'd tried to make synthetic hemp from the pineapple tops and even attempted to harness the volcano behind their estate to run the hemp machine. He sat on the lanai sipping okoolihao and singing plaintive Hawaiian songs, while the pineapples rotted in the fields, and the native