Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [51]
Yvonne turned, smiling, though her eyes were troubled and perplexed: "What about the war?" she said.
"That was the point. I fell out of an ambulance with three dozen beer bottles and six journalists on top of me and that's when I decided it might be healthier to go to California." Hugh glanced suspiciously at a billy goat which had been following them on their right along the grass margin between the road and a wire fence, and which now stood there motionless, regarding them with patriarchal contempt. "No, they're the lowest form of animal life, except possibly--look out!--my God, I knew it--" The goat had charged and Hugh felt the sudden intoxicating terrified incidence and warmth of Yvonne's body as the animal missed them, skidded, slithered round the abrupt leftward bend the road took at this point over a low stone bridge, and disappeared beyond up a hill, furiously trailing its tether. "Goats," he said, twisting Yvonne firmly out of his arms. "Even when there are no wars think of the damage they do," he went on, through something nervous, mutually dependent still, about their mirth. "I mean journalists, not goats. There's no punishment on earth fit for them. Only the Malebolge... And here is the Malebolge."
The Malebolge was the barranca, the ravine which wound through the country, narrow here--but its momentousness successfully prescinded their minds from the goat. The little stone bridge on which they stood crossed it. Trees, their tops below them, grew down into the gulch, their foliage partly obscuring the terrific drop. From the bottom came a faint chuckling of water.
"This ought to be about the place, if Alcapancingo's over there," Hugh said, "where Bernal Diaz and his Tlaxcalans got across to beat up Quauhnahuac. Superb name for a dance-band: Bernal Diaz and his Tlaxcalans... Or didn't you get around to Prescott at the University of Hawaii?"
"Mm hm," Yvonne said, meaning yes or no to the meaningless question, and peering down the ravine with a shudder.
"I understand it made even old Diaz's head swim."
"I shouldn't wonder."
"You can't see them, but it's chock full of defunct newspapermen, still spying through keyholes and persuading themselves they're acting in the best interests of democracy. But I'd forgotten you didn't read the papers. Eh?" Hugh laughed. "Journalism equals intellectual male prostitution of speech and writing, Yvonne. That's one point on which I'm in complete agreement with Spengler. Hullo." Hugh looked up suddenly at a sound, unpleasantly familiar, as of a thousand carpets being simultaneously beaten in the distance: the uproar, seeming to emanate from the direction of the volcanoes, which had almost imperceptibly come into view on the horizon, was followed presently by the prolonged twang-piiing of its echo.
"Target practice," Yvonne said. "They're at it again."
Parachutes of smoke were drifting over the mountains; they watched a minute in silence. Hugh sighed and started to roll a cigarette.
"I had an English friend fighting in Spain, and if he's dead I expect he's still there." Hugh licked the fold of paper, sealed it and lit it, the cigarette drawing hot and fast. "As a matter of fact he was reported dead twice but he turned up again the last two times. He was there in thirty-six. While they were waiting for Franco to attack he lay with his machine-gun in the library at University City reading De Quincey, whom he hadn't read before. I may be exaggerating about the machine-gun though: I don't think they had one between them. He was a Communist and approximately the best man I've ever met. He had a taste for Vin Rosé d'Anjou. He also had a dog named Harpo, back in London. You probably wouldn't have expected a Communist to have a dog named Harpo--or would you?"
"Or would you?"
Hugh put one foot up on the parapet and regarded his cigarette that seemed bent, like humanity, on consuming itself as quickly as possible.
"I had another friend who went to China,