Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [161]
"Just let a real war come along and then see how bloodthirsty chaps like you are!"
"Which would never do. Why all you people who talk about going to Spain and fighting for freedom--Cervantes!--should learn by heart what Tolstoy said about that kind of thing in War and Peace, that conversation with the volunteers in the train--"
"But anyhow that was in--"
"Where the first volunteer, I mean, turned out to be a bragging degenerate obviously convinced after he'd been drinking that he was doing something heroic--what are you laughing at, Hugh?"
"It's funny."
"And the second was a man who had tried everything and been a failure in all of them. And the third--" Yvonne abruptly returned and the Consul, who had been shouting, slightly lowered his voice, "an artillery man, was the only one who struck him at first favourably. Yet what did he turn out to be? A cadet who'd failed in his examinations. All of them, you see, misfits, all good for nothing, cowards, baboons, meek wolves, parasites, every man jack of them, people afraid to face their own responsibilities, fight their own fight, ready to go anywhere, as Tolstoy well perceived--"
"Quitters?" Hugh said. "Didn't Karamazov or whoever he was believe that the action of those volunteers was nevertheless an expression of the whole soul of the Russian people?--Mind you, I appreciate that a diplomatic corps which merely remains in San Sebastian hoping Franco will win quickly instead of returning to Madrid to tell the British Government the truth of what's really going on in Spain can't possibly consist of quitters!"
"Isn't your desire to fight for Spain, for fiddlededee, for Timbuktu, for China, for hypocrisy, for bugger all, for any hokery pokery that a few moose-headed idiot sons choose to call freedom--of course there is nothing of the sort, really--"
"If--"
"If you've really read War and Peace, as you claim you have, why haven't you the sense to profit by it, I repeat?"
"At any rate," said Hugh, "I profited by it to the extent of being able to distinguish it from Anna Karenina"
"Well, Anna Karenina then ..." the Consul paused.
"Cervantes!"--and Cervantes appeared, with his fighting cock, evidently fast asleep, under his arm. "Muy fuerte" he said, "muy terreebly," passing through the room, un bruto!--"But as I implied, you bloody people, mark my words, you don't mind your own business any better at home, let alone in foreign countries. Geoffrey darling, why don't you stop drinking, it isn't too late--that sort of thing. Why isn't it? Did I say so?" What was he saying? The Consul listened to himself almost in surprise at this sudden cruelty, this vulgarity. And in a moment it was going to get worse. "I thought it was all so splendidly and legally settled that it was. It's only you that insists it isn't."
"Oh Geoffrey--"
--Was the Consul saying this? Must he say it?--It seemed he must. "For all you know it's only the knowledge that it most certainly is too late that keeps me alive at all... You're all the same, all of you, Yvonne, Jacques, you, Hugh, trying to interfere with other people's lives, interfering, interfering--why should anyone have interfered with young Cervantes here, for example, given him an interest in cock fighting?--and that's precisely what's bringing about disaster in the world, to stretch a point, yes, quite a point, all because you haven't got the wisdom and the simplicity and the courage, yes, the courage, to take any of the, to take--"
"See here, Geoffrey--"
"What have you ever done for humanity, Hugh, with all your oratio obliqua about the capitalist system, except talk, and thrive on it, until your soul stinks?"
"Shut up, Geoff, for the love of Mike!"
"For that matter, both your souls stink! Cervantes!"
"Geoffrey, please sit down," Yvonne seemed to have said wearily, "you're making such a scene."
"No, I'm not, Yvonne. I'm talking very calmly. As when I ask you, what have