Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [44]
"But my lord, Yvonne, surely you know by this time I can't get drunk however much I drink," he said almost tragically, taking an abrupt swallow of strychnine. "Why, do you think I like swilling down this awful nux vomica or belladonna or whatever it is of Hugh's?" The Consul got up with his empty glass and began to walk around the room. He was not so much aware of having done by default anything fatal (it wasn't as if, for instance, he'd thrown his whole life away) as something merely foolish, and at the same time, as it were, sad. Yet there seemed a call for some amends. He either thought or said:
"Well, tomorrow perhaps I'll drink beer only. There's nothing like beer to straighten you out, and a little more strychnine, and then the next day just beer--I'm sure no one will object if I drink beer. This Mexican stuff is particularly full of vitamins, I gather... For I can see it really is going to be somewhat of an occasion, this reunion of us all, and then perhaps when my nerves are back to normal again, I'll go off it completely. And then, who knows," he brought up by the door, "I might get down to work again and finish my book!"
But the door was still a door and it was shut: and now ajar. Through it, on the porch he saw the whisky bottle, slightly smaller and emptier of hope than the Burke's Irish, standing forlornly. Yvonne had not opposed a snifter: he had been unjust to her. Yet was that any reason why he should be unjust also to the bottle? Nothing in the world was more terrible than an empty bottle! Unless it was an empty glass. But he could wait: yes, sometimes he knew when to leave it alone. He wandered back to the bed thinking or saying:
"Yes: I can see the reviews now. Mr Firmin's sensational new data on Atlantis! The most extraordinary thing of its kind since Donnelly! Interrupted by his untimely death... Marvellous. And the chapters on the alchemists! Which beat the Bishop of Tasmania to a frazzle. Only that's not quite the way they'll put it. Pretty good, eh? I might even work in something about Coxcox and Noah. I've got a publisher interested too; in Chicago--interested but not concerned, if you understand me, for it's really a mistake to imagine such a book could ever become popular. But it's amazing when you come to think of it how the human spirit seems to blossom in the shadow of the abattoir! How--to say nothing of all the poetry--not far enough below the stockyards to escape altogether the reek of the porterhouse of tomorrow, people can be living in cellars the life of the old alchemists of Prague! Yes: living among the cohabitations of Faust himself, among the litharge and agate and hyacinth and pearls. A life which is amorphous, plastic and crystalline. What am I talking about? Copula Maritalis? Or from alcohol to alkahest. Can you tell me?... Or perhaps I might get myself another job, first of course being sure to insert an advertisement in the Universal : will accompany corpse to any place in the east!"
Yvonne was sitting up half reading her magazine, her nightgown slightly pulled aside showing where her warm tan faded into the white skin of her breast, her arms outside the covers and one hand turned downward from the wrist hanging over the edge of the bed listlessly: as he approached she turned this hand palm upward in an involuntary movement, of irritation perhaps, but it was like an unconscious gesture of appeal: it was more: it seemed to epitomize, suddenly, all the old supplication, the whole queer secret dumb