Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [113]
Sí, hombre, but hadn't the police been called? But clearly somebody was already going for help. Chingar. One of them now should go for help, for the police. An ambulance--the Cruz Roja--where was the nearest phone?
But it was absurd to suppose the police were not on their way. How could the chingados be on their way when half of them were on strike? No it was only a quarter of them that were on strike. They would be on their way, all right though. A taxi? No, hombre, there was a strike there too.--But was there any truth, someone chimed in, in the rumour that the Servicio de Ambulancia had been suspended? It was not a red, but a green cross anyhow, and their business began only when they were informed. Get Dr. Figueroa. Un hombre noble. But there was no phone. Oh, there was a phone once, in Tomalín, but it had decomposed. No, Dr. Figueroa had a nice new phone. Pedro, the son of Pepe, whose mother-in-law was Josefina, who also knew, it was said, Vicente González, had carried it through the streets himself.
Hugh (who had wildly thought of Vigil playing tennis, of Guzmán, wildly of the habanero in his pocket) and the Consul also had their personal argument. For the fact remained, whoever had placed the Indian by the roadside--though in that case why not on the grass, by the cross?--who had slipped the money for safety in his collar--but perhaps it slipped there of its own accord--who had providently tied his horse to the tree in the hedge it was now cropping--yet was it necessarily his horse?--probably was, whoever he was, wherever he was--or they were, who acted with such wisdom and compassion--even now getting help.
There was no limit to their ingenuity. Though the most potent and final obstacle to doing anything about the Indian was this discovery that it wasn't one's own business, but someone else's. And looking round him, Hugh saw that this too was just what everyone else was arguing. It is not my business, but, as it were, yours, they all said, as they shook their heads, and no, not yours either, but someone else's, their objections becoming more and more involved, more and more theoretical, till at last the discussion began to take a political turn.
This turn, as it happened, made no sense to Hugh, who was thinking that had Joshua appeared at this moment to make the sun stand still, a more absolute dislocation of time could not have been created.
Yet it was not that time stood still. Rather was it time was moving at different speeds, the speed at which the man seemed dying contrasting oddly with the speed at which everybody was finding it impossible to make up their minds.
However the driver had given up blowing his horn, he was about to tinker with the engine, and leaving the unconscious man the Consul and Hugh walked over to the horse, which, with its cord reins, empty bucket saddle, and jangling heavy iron sheaths for stirrups, was calmly chewing the convolvulus in the hedge, looking innocent as only one of its species can when under mortal suspicion. Its eyes, that had shut blandly at their approach, now opened, wicked and plausible. There was a sore on its hipbone and on the beast's rump a branded number seven.
"Why--good God--this must be the horse Yvonne and I saw this morning!"
"You did, eh? Well." The Consul made to feel, though did not touch, the horse's surcingle. "That's funny... So did I. That is, I think I saw it." He glanced over at the Indian in the road as though trying to tear something out of his memory. "Did you notice if it had any saddlebags on when you saw it? It had when I think I saw it."
"It must be the same fellow."
"I don't suppose if the horse kicked the man to death it would have sufficient intelligence to kick its saddlebags off too, and hide them somewhere, do you--"
But the bus, with a terrific hooting, was going off without them.
It came at them a little, then stopped, in a wider part of the road, to let through two querulous expensive cars that had been held up behind. Hugh shouted at them to halt, the Consul half waved to someone who perhaps half recognized him, while the cars, that both bore upon their rear number-plates the sign "Diplom