Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [152]
Stop! Look! Listen! How drunk, or how drunkly sober un-drunk, can you calculate you are now, at any rate? There had been those drinks at Señora Gregorio's, no more than two certainly. And before? Ah, before! But later, in the bus, he'd only had that sip of Hugh's habanero, then, at the bullthrowing, almost finished it. It was this that made him tight again, but tight in a way he didn't like, in a worse way than in the square even, the tightness of impending unconsciousness, of seasickness, and it was from this sort of tightness--was it?--he'd tried to sober up by taking those mescalitos on the sly. But the mescal, the Consul realized, had succeeded in a manner somewhat outside his calculations. The strange truth was, he had another hangover. There was something in fact almost beautiful about the frightful extremity of that condition the Consul now found himself in. It was a hangover like a great dark ocean swell finally rolled up against a foundering steamer, by countless gales to windward that have long since blown themselves out. And from all this it was not so much necessary to sober up again, as once more to wake, yes, as to wake, so much as to--
"Do you remember this morning, Yvonne, when we were crossing the river, there was a pulquería on the other side, called La Sepultura or something, and there was an Indian sitting with his back against the wall, with his hat over his face, and his horse tethered to a tree, and there was a number seven branded on the horse's hipbone--"
"--saddlebags--"
... Cave of the Winds, seat of all great decisions, little Cythère of childhood, eternal library, sanctuary bought for a penny or nothing, where else could man absorb and divest himself of so much at the same time? The Consul was awake all right, but he was not, at the moment apparently, having dinner with the others, though their voices came plainly enough. The toilet was all of grey stone, and looked like a tomb--even the seat was cold stone. "It is what I deserve... It is what I am," thought the Consul. "Cervantes," he called, and Cervantes, surprisingly, appeared, half round the corner--there was no door to the stone tomb--with the fighting cock, pretending to struggle, under his arm, chuckling:
"--Tlaxcala!"
"--or perhaps it was on his rump--"
After a moment, comprehending the Consul's plight, Cervantes advised:
"A stone, hombre, I bring you a stone."
"Cervantes!"
"--branded--"
.".. clean yourself on a stone, señor?
--The meal had started well too, he remembered now, a minute or so since, despite everything, and: "Dangerous Clam Magoo," he had remarked at the onset of the chowder. "And our poor spoiling brains and eggs at home!" had he not commiserated, at the apparition, swimming in exquisite mole, of the spectral chicken of the house? They had been discussing the man by the roadside and the thief in the bus, then: "Excusado." And this, this grey final Consulate, this Franklin Island of the soul, was the excusado. Set apart from the bathing places, convenient yet hidden from view, it was doubtless a purely Tlaxcaltecan fantasy, Cervantes's own work, built to remind him of some cold mountain village in a mist. The Consul sat, fully dressed however, not moving a muscle. Why was he here? Why was he always more or less, here? He would have been glad of a mirror, to ask himself that question. But there was no mirror. Nothing but stone. Perhaps there was no time either, in this stone retreat. Perhaps this was the eternity that he'd been making