Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [192]
Suddenly the Consul thought he saw an enormous rooster flapping before him, clawing and crowing. He raised his hands and it merded on his face. He struck the returning Jefe de Jardineros straight between the eyes. "Give me those letters back!" he heard himself shouting at the Chief of Rostrums, but the radio drowned his voice, and now a peal of thunder drowned the radio. "You poxboxes. You coxcoxes. You killed that Indian. You tried to kill him and make it look like an accident," he roared. "You're all in it. Then more of you came up and took his horse. Give me my papers back."
"Papers. Cabrón. You har no papers." Straightening himself the Consul saw in the Chief of Rostrum's expression a hint of M. Laruelle and he struck at it. Then he saw himself the Chief of Gardens again and struck that figure; then in the Chief of Municipality the policeman Hugh had refrained from striking this afternoon and he struck this figure too. The clock outside quickly chimed seven times. The cock flapped before his eyes, blinding him. The Chief of Rostrums took him by the coat. Someone else seized him from behind. In spite of his struggles he was being dragged towards the door. The fair man who had turned up again helped shove him towards it; and Diosdado, who had vaulted ponderously over the bar; and A Few Fleas, who kicked him viciously on die shins. The Consul snatched a machete lying on a table near the entrance and brandished it wildly. "Give me back those letters!" he cried. Where was that bloody cock? He would chop off its head. He stumbled backwards out into the road. People taking tables laden with gaseosas in from the storm stopped to watch. The beggars turned their heads dully. The sentinel outside the barracks stood motionless. The Consul didn't know what he was saying: "Only the poor, only through God, only the people you wipe your feet on, the poor in spirit, old men carrying their fathers and philosophers weeping in the dust. America perhaps, Don Quixote--" he was still brandishing the sword, it was that sabre really, he thought, in María's room--"if only you'd stop interfering, stop walking in your sleep, stop sleeping with my wife, only the beggars and the accursed." The machete fell with a rattle. The Consul felt himself stumbling backwards until he fell over a tussock of grass. "You stole that horse," he repeated.
The Chief of Rostrums was looking down at him. Sanabria stood by silent, grimly rubbing his cheek. "Norteamericano, eh," said the Chief. "Ingles. You Jew." He narrowed his eyes. "What the hell you think you do around here? You pelado, eh? It's no good for your health. I shoot de twenty people." It was half a threat, half confidential. "We have found out--on the telephone--is it right?--that you are a criminal. You want to be a policeman? I make you policeman in Mexico."
The Consul rose slowly to his feet, swaying. He caught sight of the horse, tethered near him. Only now he saw it more vividly and as a whole, electrified: the corded mouth, the shaved wooden pommel behind which tape was hanging, the saddlebags, the mats under the belt, the sore and the glossy shine on the hipbone, the number seven branded on the rump, the stud behind the saddlebuckle glittering like a topaz in the light from the cantina. He staggered towards it.
"I blow you wide open from your knees up, you Jew chingao," warned the Chief of Rostrums, grasping him by the collar, and the Chief of Gardens, standing by, nodded gravely. The Consul, shaking himself free, tore frantically at the horse's bridle. The Chief of Rostrums stepped aside, hand on his holster. He drew his pistol. With his free hand he waved away some tentative onlookers. "I blow you wide open from your knees up, you cabrón," he said, "you pelado."
"No, I wouldn't do that," said the Consul quietly, turning round. "That's a Colt--17, isn't it? It throws a lot of steel shavings."
The Chief of Rostrums pushed the Consul back out of the light, took two steps forward,