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By Root 9007 0

of this something." "I'm not going to drink," the Consul said, halting suddenly. "Or am I? Not mescal anyway." "Of course not, the bottle's just there, behind that bush. Pick it up." "I can't," he objected--"That's right, just take one drink, just the necessary, the therapeutic drink: perhaps two drinks." "God," the Consul said. "Ah. Good. God. Christ." "Then you can say it doesn't count." "It doesn't. It isn't mescal." "Of course not, it's tequila. You might have another." "Thanks, I will." The Consul palsiedly readjusted the bottle to his lips. "Bliss. Jesus. Sanctuary... Horror," he added. "--Stop. Put that bottle down, Geoffrey Firmin, what are you doing to yourself?" another voice said in his ear so loudly he turned round. On the path before him a little snake he had thought a twig was rustling off into the bushes and he watched it a moment through his dark glasses, fascinated. It was a real snake all right. Not that he was much bothered by anything so simple as snakes, he reflected with a degree of pride, gazing straight into the eyes of a dog. It was a pariah dog and disturbingly familiar. "Perro," he repeated, as it still stood there--but had not this incident occurred, was it not now, as it were, occurring an hour or two ago, he thought in a flash. Strange. He dropped the bottle which was of white corrugated glass--Tequila Añejo de Jalisco, it said on the label--out of sight into the undergrowth, looking about him. All seemed normal again. Anyway, both snake and dog had gone. And the voices had ceased...

The Consul now felt himself in a position to entertain, for a minute, the illusion that all really was "normal." Yvonne would probably be asleep: no point in disturbing her yet. And it was fortunate he'd remembered about the almost full tequila bottle: now he had a chance to straighten up a little, which he never could have done on the porch, before greeting her again. There was altogether too much difficulty involved, under the circumstances, in drinking on the porch; it was a good thing a man knew where to have a quiet drink when he wanted it, without being disturbed, etc. etc.... All these thoughts were passing through his mind--which, so to say, nodding gravely, accepted them with the most complete seriousness--while he gazed back up his garden. Oddly enough, it did not strike him as being nearly so "ruined" as it had earlier appeared. Such chaos as might exist even lent an added charm. He liked the exuberance of the unclipped growth at hand. Whereas farther away, the superb plantains flowering so finally and obscenely, the splendid trumpet vines, brave and stubborn pear trees, the papayas planted around the swimming-pool and beyond, the low white bungalow itself covered by bougainvillea, its long porch like the bridge of a ship, positively made a little vision of order, a vision, however, which inadvertently blended at this moment, as he turned by accident, into a strangely subaqueous view of the plains and the volcanoes with a huge indigo sun multitudinously blazing south-south-east. Or was it north-north-west? He noted it all without sorrow, even with a certain ecstasy, lighting a cigarette, an Alas (though he repeated the word "Alas!" aloud mechanically), then, the alcohol sweat pouring off his brows like water, he began to walk down the path towards the fence separating his garden from the little new public one beyond that truncated his property.

In this garden, which he hadn't looked at since the day Hugh arrived, when he'd hidden the bottle, and which seemed carefully and lovingly kept, there existed at the moment certain evidence of work left uncompleted: tools, unusual tools, a murderous machete, an oddly shaped fork, somehow nakedly impaling the mind, with its twisted tines glittering in the sunlight, were leaning against the fence, as also was something else, a sign uprooted or new, whose oblong pallid face stared through the wire at him. ¿Le gusta este jardín? it asked...

¿LE GUSTA ESTE JARDÍN?

¿QUE ES SUYO?

¡EVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LO DESTRUYAN!

The Consul stared back at the black words on the