Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [151]
"Ha, the ubiquitous tartar," Hugh exclaimed.
"I think the spectral chicken of the house would be even more terrific, don't you?" Yvonne was laughing, the foregoing bawdry mostly over her head however, the Consul felt, and still she hadn't noticed anything.
"Probably served in its own ectoplasm."
"Sí, you like sea-sleeves in his ink? Or tunny fish? Or an exquisite mole? Maybe you like fashion melon to start? Fig mermelade? Brambleberry con crappe Gran Due? Omele he sourpusse, you like? You like to drink first a gin fish? Nice gin fish? Silver fish? Sparkenwein?"
"Madre?" the Consul asked, "What's this madre here?--You like to eat your mother, Yvonne?"
"Badre, señor. Fish también, Yautepec fish. Muy sabroso. You like?"
"What about it, Hugh--do you want to wait for the fish that dies?"
"I'd like a beer."
"Cerveza, si, Moctezuma? Dos Equis? Carta Blanca?"
At last they all decided on clam chowder, scrambled eggs, the spectral chicken of the house, beans, and beer. The Consul at first had ordered only shrimps and a hamburger sandwich but yielded to Yvonne's: "Darling, won't you eat more than that, I could eat a young horse," and their hands met across the table.
And then, for the second time that day, their eyes, in a long look, a long look of longing. Behind her eyes, beyond her, the Consul, an instant, saw Granada, and the train waltzing from Algeciras over the plains of Andalusia, chufferty pupperty, chufferty pupperty, the low dusty road from the station past the old bull-ring and the Hollywood bar and into the town, past the British Consulate and convent of Los Angeles up past the Washington Irving Hotel (You can't escape me, I can see you, England must return again to New England for her values!), the old number seven train running there: evening, and the stately horse cabs clamber up through the gardens slowly, plod through the arches, mounting past where the eternal beggar is playing on a guitar with three strings, through the gardens, gardens, gardens everywhere, up, up, to the marvellous traceries of the Alhambra (which bored him) past the well where they had met, to the América Pensión; and up, up, now they were climbing themselves, up to the Generalife Gardens, and now from the Generalife Gardens to the Moorish tomb on the extreme summit of the hill; here they plighted their troth...
The Consul dropped his eyes at last. How many bottles since then? In how many glasses, how many bottles had he hidden himself, since then alone? Suddenly he saw them, the bottles of aguardiente, of anís, of jerez, of Highland Queen, the glasses, a babel of glasses--towering, like the smoke from the train that day--built to the sky, then falling, the glasses toppling and crashing, falling downhill from the Generalife Gardens, the bottles breaking, bottles of Oporto, tinto, bianco, bottles of Pernod, Oxygénée, absinthe, bottles smashing, bottles cast aside, falling with a thud on the ground in parks, under benches, beds, cinema seats, hidden in drawers at Consulates, bottles of Calvados dropped and broken, or bursting into smithereens, tossed into garbage heaps, flung into the sea, the Mediterranean, the Caspian, the Caribbean, bottles floating in the ocean, dead Scotchmen on the Atlantic highlands--and now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning-bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whisky, blanc Canadien, the aperitifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions