Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [94]
"Almost exactly. Or: Japanese astride all roads from Shanghai. Americans evacuate... That kind of thing.--Sit still."
(One had not, however, played it from that day to this... No, nor been happy from that day to this either... A little self-knowledge is a dangerous thing. And anyway, without the guitar, was one any less in the limelight, any less interested in married women--so on, and so forth? One immediate result of giving it up was undoubtedly that second trip to sea, that series of articles, the first for the Globe, on the British Coasting Trade. Then yet another trip--coming to naught spiritually. I ended a passenger. But the articles were a success. Saltcaked smokestacks. Britannia rules the waves. In future my work was looked for with interest... On the other hand why have I always lacked real ambition as a newspaperman? Apparently I have never overcome that antipathy to journalists, the result of my early ardent courtship of them. Besides it cannot be said I shared with my colleagues the necessity of earning a living. There was always the income. As a roving hand I functioned fairly well, still, up to this day, have done so--yet becoming increasingly conscious of loneliness, isolation--aware too of an odd habit of thrusting myself to the fore, then subsiding--as if one remembered one hadn't the guitar after all... Maybe I bored people with my guitar. But in a sense--who cares?--it strung me to life--)
"Somebody quoted you in the Universal," the Consul was laughing, "some time ago. I just forget about what, I'm afraid... Hugh, how would you like, 'at a modest sacrifice,' an 'imported pair embroidered street extra large nearly new fur coat'?"
"Sit still."
"Or a Cadillac for 500 pesos. Original price 200... And what would this mean, do you suppose? 'And a white horse also.' Apply at box seven... Strange... Anti-alcoholic fish. Don't like the sound of that. But here's something for you. 'A centricle apartment suitable for love-nest.' Or alternatively, a 'serious, discrete--""
"--ha--"
"--apartment... Hugh, listen to this. "For a young European lady who must be pretty, acquaintanceship with a cultured man, not old, with good positions--"
The Consul was shaking with laughter only, it appeared, and Hugh, laughing too, paused, razor aloft.
"But the remains of Juan Ramirez, the famous singer, Hugh, are still wandering in a melancholy fashion from place to place... Hullo, it says here that "grave objections" have been made to the immodest behaviour of certain police chiefs in Quauhnahuac. "Grave objections to--" what's this?--"performing their private functions in public"--"
('Climbed the Parson's Nose," one had written, in the visitors" book at the little Welsh rock-climbing hotel, "in twenty minutes. Found the rocks very easy." "Came down the Parson's Nose," some immortal wag had added a day later, "in twenty seconds. Found the rocks very hard..".. So now, as I approach the second half of my life, unheralded, unsung, and without a guitar, I am going back to sea again: perhaps these days of waiting are more like that droll descent, to be survived in order to repeat the climb. At the top of the Parson's Nose you could walk home to tea over the hills if you wished, just as the actor in the Passion Play can get off his cross and go home to his hotel for a Pilsener. Yet in life ascending or descending you were perpetually involved with the mists, the cold and the overhangs, the treacherous rope and the slippery belay; only, while the rope slipped there was sometimes time to laugh. None the less, I am afraid... As I am also of a simple gate, and climbing windy masts in port... Will it be as bad as the first voyage, the harsh reality of which for some reason suggests Yvonne's farm? One wonders how she will feel the first time she sees someone stick a pig... Afraid; and yet not afraid; I know what the sea is like; can it be that I am returning to it with my dreams intact, nay, with dreams that, being without viciousness, are more child-like than