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By Root 8871 0

dirt and placing his pistol--for Dr. Vigil always went armed to Red Cross Balls--on the floor beside him, said sadly, "Nobody come here, only those who have nobody them with." Now the Consul made this Virgin the other who had answered his prayer and as they stood in silence before her, prayed again. "Nothing is altered and in spite of God's mercy I am still alone. Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony. There is no explanation of my life." Indeed there was not, nor was this what he'd meant to convey. "Please let Yvonne have her dream--dream?--of a new life with me--please let me believe that all that is not an abominable self-deception," he tried... "Please let me make her happy, deliver me from this dreadful tyranny of self. I have sunk low. Let me sink lower still, that I may know the truth. Teach me to love again, to love life." That wouldn't do either... "Where is love? Let me truly suffer. Give me back my purity, the knowledge of the Mysteries, that I have betrayed and lost.--Let me be truly lonely, that I may honestly pray. Let us be happy again somewhere, if it's only together, if it's only out of this terrible world. Destroy the world!" he cried in his heart. The Virgin's eyes were turned down in benediction, but perhaps she hadn't heard.--The Consul had scarcely noticed that Cervantes had picked up one of the rifles. "I love hunting." After replacing it he opened the bottom drawer of a wardrobe which was squeezed in another corner. The drawer was chock full of books, including the History of Tlaxcala, in ten volumes. He shut it immediately. "I am an insignificant man, and I do not read these books to prove my insignificance," he said proudly. "Sí hombre," he went on, as they descended to the bar again, "as I told you, I obey my grandfather. He tell me to marry my wife. So I call my wife my mother." He produced a photograph of a child lying in a coffin and laid it on the counter. "I drank all day."

"--snow goggles and an alpenstock. You'd look awfully nice with--"

"--and my face all covered with grease. And a woollen cap pulled right down over my eyes--"

Hugh's voice came again, then Yvonne's, they were dressing, and conversing loudly over the tops of their bathing boxes, not six feet away, beyond the wall:

"--hungry now, aren't you?"

"--a couple of raisins and half a prune!" "--not forgetting the limes--"

The Consul finished his mescal: all a pathetic joke, of course, still, this plan to climb Popo, if just the kind of thing Hugh would have found out about before arriving, while neglecting so much else: yet could it be that the notion of climbing the volcano had somehow struck them as having the significance of a lifetime together? Yes, there it rose up before them, with all its hidden dangers, pitfalls, ambiguities, deceptions, portentous as what they could imagine for the poor brief self-deceived space of a cigarette was their own destiny--or was Yvonne simply, alas, happy?

"--where is it we start from, Amecameca--" "To prevent mountain sickness."

"--though quite a pilgrimage at that, I gather! Geoff and I thought of doing it, years ago. You go on horseback first, to Tlamancas--"

"--at midnight, at the Hotel Fausto!"

"What would you all prefer? Cauliflowers or pootootsies," the Consul, innocent, drinkless in a booth, greeted them, frowning; the supper at Emmaus, he felt, trying to disguise his distant mescal voice as he studied the bill of fare provided him by Cervantes. "Or extramapee syrup. Onans in garlic soup on egg...

"Pep with milk? Or what about a nice Filete de Huachinango rebozado tartar con German friends?"

Cervantes had handed Yvonne and Hugh each a menu but they were sharing hers: "Dr. Moise von Schmidthaus's special soup," Yvonne pronounced the words with gusto.

"I think a pepped petroot would be about my mark," said the Consul, "after those onans."

"Just one," the Consul went on, anxious, since Hugh was laughing so loudly, for Cervantes's feelings, "but please note the German friends. They even get into the filet."

"What about the tartar?" Hugh inquired.

"Tlaxcala!"