Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [162]
"Don't be a bloody swine, Geoffrey." Hugh rose.
"Stay where you bloody are," ordered the Consul. "Of course I see the romantic predicament you two are in. But even if Hugh makes the most of it again it won't be long, it won't be long, before he realizes he's only one of the hundred or so other ninney-hammers with gills like codfish and veins like racehorses--prime as goats all of them, hot as monkeys, salt as wolves in pride! No, one will be enough."
A glass, fortunately empty, fell to the floor and was smashed.
"As if he plucked up kisses by the roots and then laid his leg over her thigh and sighed. What an uncommon time you two must have had, paddling palms and playing bubbies and titties all day under cover of saving me... Jesus. Poor little defenceless me--I hadn't thought of that. But, you see, it's perfectly logical, what it comes down to: I've got my own piddling little fight for freedom on my hands. Mummy, let me go back to the beautiful brothel! Back to where those triskeles are strumming, the infinite trismus..."
"True, I've been tempted to talk peace. I've been beguiled by your offers of a sober and non-alcoholic Paradise. At least I suppose that's what you've been working around towards all day. But now I've made up my melodramatic little mind, what's left of it, just enough to make up. Cervantes! That far from wanting it, thank you very much, on the contrary, I choose--Tlax--" Where was he?" Tlax--Tlax--"
... It was as if, almost, he were standing upon that black open station platform, where he had gone--had he gone?--that day after drinking all night to meet Lee Maitland returning from Virginia at 7.40 in the morning, gone, light-headed, light-footed, and in that state of being where Baudelaire's angel indeed wakes, desiring to meet trains perhaps, but to meet no trains that stop, for in the angel's mind are no trains that stop, and from such trains no one descends, not even another angel, nor even a fair-haired one, like Lee Maitland.--Was the train late? Why was he pacing the platform? Was it the second or third train from Suspension Bridge--Suspensión!--" Tlax--" the Consul repeated. "I choose--"
He was in a room, and suddenly in this room, matter was disjunct: a doorknob was standing a little way out from the door. A curtain floated in by itself, unfastened, unattached to anything. The idea struck him it had come in to strangle him. An orderly little clock behind the bar called him to his senses, its ticking very loud; Tlax: tlax: tlax: tlax... Half past five. Was that all? "Hell," he finished absurdly. "Because--" He produced a twenty-peso note and laid it on the table.
"I like it," he called to them, through the open window, from outside. Cervantes stood behind the bar, with scared eyes, holding the cockerel. "I love hell. I can't wait to get back there. In fact I'm running. I'm almost back there already."
He was running too, in spite of his limp, calling back to them crazily, and the queer thing was, he wasn't quite serious, running toward the forest, which was growing darker and darker, tumultuous above--a rush of air swept out of it, and the weeping pepper tree roared.
He stopped after a while: all was calm. No one had come after him. Was that good? Yes, it was good, he thought, his heart pounding. And since it was so good he would take the path to Parián, to the Farolito.
Before him the volcanoes, precipitous, seemed to have drawn nearer. They towered up over the jungle, into the lowering sky--massive interests moving up in the background.
11
Sunset.