• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 8965 0

as his marriage and as wilfully slaughtered. The sun shining brilliantly now on all the world before him, its rays picking out the timberline of Popocatepetl as its summit like a gigantic surfacing whale shouldered out of the clouds again, all this could not lift his spirit. The sunlight could not share his burden of conscience, of sourceless sorrow. It did not know him. Down to his left beyond the plantains the gardener at the Argentinean ambassador's weekend residence was slashing his way through some tall grasses, clearing the ground for a badminton court, yet something about this innocent enough occupation contained a horrible threat against him. The broad leaves of the plantains themselves dropping gently seemed menacingly savage as the stretched wings of pelicans, shaking before they fold. The movements of some more little red birds in the garden, like animated rosebuds, appeared unbearably jittery and thievish. It was as though the creatures were attached by sensitive wires to his nerves. When the telephone rang his heart almost stopped beating.

As a matter of fact the telephone was ringing clearly and the Consul left the porch for the dining-room where, afraid of the furious thing, he started to speak into the receiver, then, sweating, into the mouthpiece, talking rapidly--for it was a trunk-call--not knowing what he was saying, hearing Tom's muted voice quite plainly but turning his questions into his own answers, apprehensive lest at any moment boiling oil pour into his eardrums or his mouth: "All right. Good-bye... Oh, say, Tom, what was the origin of that silver rumour that appeared in the papers yesterday denied by Washington? I wonder where it came from... What started it? Yes. All right. Good-bye. Yes, I have, terrible. Oh they did! Too bad. But after all they own it. Or don't they? Good-bye. They probably will. Yes, that's all right, that's all right. Good-bye; good-bye!.".. Christ. What does he want to ring me up at this hour of the morning for. What time is it in America? Erikson 43?

Christ... He hung up the receiver the wrong way and returned to the porch: no Yvonne; after a moment he heard her in the bathroom...

The Consul was guiltily climbing the Calle Nicaragua.

It was as if he were toiling up some endless staircase between houses. Or perhaps even old Popeye itself. Never had it seemed such a long way to the top of this hill. The road with its tossing broken stones stretched on for ever into the distance like a life of agony. He thought: 900 pesos = 100 bottles of whisky = 900 ditto tequila. Argal: one should drink neither tequila nor whisky but mescal. It was hot as a furnace too out on the street and the Consul sweated profusely. Away! Away! He was not going very far away, nor to the top of the hill. There was a lane branching to the left before you reached Jacques's house, leafy, no more than a cart-track at first, then a switchback, and some where along that lane to the right, not five minutes' walk, at a dusty corner, waited a cool nameless cantina with horses probably tethered outside, and a huge white tom cat sleeping below the counter of whom a whiskerando would say: "He ah work all night mistair and sleep all day!" And this cantina would be open.

This was where he was going (the lane was plainly in sight now, a dog guarding it) to have in peace a couple of necessary drinks unspecified in his mind, and be back again before Yvonne had finished her bath. It was just possible too of course that he might meet--

But suddenly the Calle Nicaragua rose up to meet him.

The Consul lay face downward on the deserted street.

--Hugh, is that you old chap lending the old boy a hand? Thank you so much. For it is perhaps indeed your turn these days to lend a hand. Not that I haven't always been delighted to help you! I was even delighted in Paris that time you arrived from Aden in a fix over your carte d'identité and the passport you so often seem to prefer travelling without and whose number I remember to this day is 21312. It perhaps gave me all the more pleasure in that it served a while to take