Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [180]
the stairs, still not sure he wasn't on the landing--and the stab of panic and self-disgust when he thought of the cold shower-bath back on the left, used only once before, but that was enough--and the silent final trembling approach, respectable, his steps sinking into calamity (and it was this calamity he now, with María, penetrated, the only thing alive in him now this burning boiling crucified evil organ--God is it possible to suffer more than this, out of this suffering something must be born, and what would be born was his own death), for ah, how alike are the groans of love to those of the dying, how alike, those of love, to those of the dying--and his steps sinking, into his tremor, the sickening cold tremor, and into the dark well of the dining-room, with round the corner one dim light hovering above the desk, and the clock--too early--and the letters unwritten, powerless to write, and the calendar saying eternally, powerlessly, their wedding anniversary, and the manager's nephew asleep on the couch, waiting up to meet the early train from Mexico City; the darkness that murmured and was palpable, the cold aching loneliness in the high sounding dining-room, stiff with the dead white grey folded napkins, the weight of suffering and conscience greater (it seemed) than that borne by any man who had survived--the thirst that was not thirst, but itself heartbreak, and lust, was death, death, and death again and death the waiting in the cold hotel dining-room, half whispering to himself, waiting, since El Infierno, that other Farolito, did not open till four in the morning and one could scarcely wait outside--(and this calamity he was now penetrating, it was calamity, the calamity of his own life, the very essence of it he now penetrated, was penetrating, penetrated)--waiting for the Infierno whose one lamp of hope would soon be glowing beyond the dark open sewers, and on the table, in the hotel dining-room, difficult to distinguish, a carafe of water--trembling, trembling, carrying the carafe of water to his lips, but not far enough, it was too heavy, like his burden of sorrow--"you cannot drink of it"--he could only moisten his lips, and then--it must have been Jesus who sent me this, it was only He who was following me after all--the bottle of red French wine from Salina Cruz still standing there on the table set for breakfast, marked with someone else's room number, uncorked with difficulty and (watching to see the nephew wasn't watching) holding it with both hands, and letting the blessed ichor trickle down his throat, just a little, for after all one was an Englishman, and still sporting, and then subsiding on the couch too--his heart a cold ache warm to one side--into a cold shivering shell of palpitating loneliness--yet feeling the wine slightly more, as if one's chest were being filled with boiling ice now, or there were a bar of red-hot iron across one's chest, but cold in its effect, for the conscience that rages underneath anew and is bursting one's heart burns so fiercely with the fires of hell a bar of red-hot iron is as a mere chill to it--and the clock ticking forward, with his heart beating now like a snow-muffled drum, ticking, shaking, time shaking and ticking toward El Infierno then--the escape!
--drawing the blanket he had secretly brought down from the hotel room over his head, creeping out past the manager's nephew--the escape!--past the hotel desk, not daring to look for mail--"it is this silence that frightens me"--(can it be there? Is this me? Alas, self-pitying miserable wretch, you old rascal) past
--the escape!--the Indian night-watchman sleeping on the floor in the doorway, and like an Indian himself now, clutching the few pesos he had left, out into the cold walled cobbled city, past
--the escape through the secret passage!--the open sewers in the mean streets, the few lone dim street lamps, into the night, into the miracle that the coffins of houses, the landmarks were still there, the escape down the poor broken sidewalks, groaning, groaning--and how alike are the groans of love, to