Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [106]
He held out his hand, then dropped it--Good God, what had come over him? For an instant he'd thought he was looking at his own mother. Now he found himself struggling with his tears, that he wanted to embrace Señora Gregorio, to cry like a child, to hide his face on her bosom. " Adiós," he said, and seeing a tequila on the counter just the same, he drank it rapidly.
Señora Gregorio took his hand and held it. "Life changes, you know," she said, gazing at him intently. "You can never drink of it. I think I see you with your esposa again soon. I see you laughing together in some kernice place where you laugh." She smiled. "Far away. In some kernice place where all those troubles you har now will har--" The Consul started: what was Señora Gregorio saying? "Adiós," she added in Spanish, "I have no house only a shadow. But whenever you are in need of a shadow, my shadow is yours."
"Thank you."
"Sank you."
"Not sank you, Señora Gregorio, thank you."
"Sank you."
The coast looked clear: yet when the Consul pushed out cautiously through the jalousie doors he almost fell over Dr. Vigil. Fresh and impeccable in his tennis clothes, he was hurrying by, accompanied by Mr Quincey and the local cinema manager, Señor Bustamente. The Consul drew back, fearful now of Vigil, of Quincey, of being seen coming out of the cantina, but they appeared not to notice him as they glided past the Tomalín camion, which had just arrived, their elbows working like jockeys, chattering unceasingly. He suspected their conversation to be entirely about him; what could be done with him, they were asking, how many drinks had he put away at the Gran Baile last night? Yes, there they were, even going towards the Bella Vista itself, to get a few more "opinions" about him. They flitted here and there, vanished...
Es inevitable la muerte del Papa.
8
DOWNHILL...
"Let in the clutch, step on the gas," the driver threw a smile over his shoulder. "Sure, Mike," he went on Irish-American for them.
The bus, a 1918 Chevrolet, jerked forward with a noise like startled poultry. It wasn't full, save for the Consul, who spread himself, in a good mood, drunk-sober-uninhibited; Yvonne sat neutral but smiling: they'd started anyhow. No wind; yet a gust lifted the awnings along the street. Soon they were rolling in a heavy sea of chaotic stone. They passed tall hexagonal stands pasted with advertisements for Yvonne's cinema: Las Manos de Orlac. Elsewhere posters for the same film showed a murderer's hands laced with blood.
They advanced slowly, past the Baños de la Libertad, the Casa Brandes (La Primera en el Ramo de Electricidad), a hooded hooting intruder through the narrow tilted streets. At the market they stopped for a group of Indian women with baskets of live fowl. The women's strong faces were the colour of dark ceramic ware. There was a massiveness in their movements as they settled themselves. Two or three had cigarette stubs behind their ears, another chewed an old pipe. Their good-humoured faces of old idols were wrinkled with sun but they did not smile.
--"Look! O.K." the driver of the bus invited Hugh and Yvonne, who were changing places, producing, from beneath his shirt where they'd been nestling, little secret ambassadors of peace, of love, two beautiful white tame pigeons. "My--ah--my aerial pigeons."
They had to scratch the heads of the birds who, arching their backs proudly, shone as with fresh white paint. (Could he have known, as Hugh, from merely smelling the latest headlines had known, how much nearer even in these moments the Government were to losing the Ebro, that it would now be a matter of days before Modesto withdrew altogether?) The driver replaced the pigeons under his white open shirt: "To keep them warm. Sure, Mike. Yes, sir," he told them."Vámonos!"
Someone laughed as the bus lurched off; the faces of the other passengers slowly cracked into mirth, the camión was welding the old women into a community. The clock over the market arch, like the one in Rupert Brooke, said ten to three; but it was twenty to. They rambled and bounced into the main highway, the Avenida de la Revoluci