Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [133]
"--snow goggles and an alpenstock. You'd look awfully nice with--"
"--and my face all covered with grease. And a woollen cap pulled right down over my eyes--"
Hugh's voice came again, then Yvonne's, they were dressing, and conversing loudly over the tops of their bathing boxes, not six feet away, beyond the wall:
"--hungry now, aren't you?"
"--a couple of raisins and half a prune!" "--not forgetting the limes--"
The Consul finished his mescal: all a pathetic joke, of course, still, this plan to climb Popo, if just the kind of thing Hugh would have found out about before arriving, while neglecting so much else: yet could it be that the notion of climbing the volcano had somehow struck them as having the significance of a lifetime together? Yes, there it rose up before them, with all its hidden dangers, pitfalls, ambiguities, deceptions, portentous as what they could imagine for the poor brief self-deceived space of a cigarette was their own destiny--or was Yvonne simply, alas, happy?
"--where is it we start from, Amecameca--" "To prevent mountain sickness."
"--though quite a pilgrimage at that, I gather! Geoff and I thought of doing it, years ago. You go on horseback first, to Tlamancas--"
"--at midnight, at the Hotel Fausto!"
"What would you all prefer? Cauliflowers or pootootsies," the Consul, innocent, drinkless in a booth, greeted them, frowning; the supper at Emmaus, he felt, trying to disguise his distant mescal voice as he studied the bill of fare provided him by Cervantes. "Or extramapee syrup. Onans in garlic soup on egg...
"Pep with milk? Or what about a nice Filete de Huachinango rebozado tartar con German friends?"
Cervantes had handed Yvonne and Hugh each a menu but they were sharing hers: "Dr. Moise von Schmidthaus's special soup," Yvonne pronounced the words with gusto.
"I think a pepped petroot would be about my mark," said the Consul, "after those onans."
"Just one," the Consul went on, anxious, since Hugh was laughing so loudly, for Cervantes's feelings, "but please note the German friends. They even get into the filet."
"What about the tartar?" Hugh inquired.
"Tlaxcala!" Cervantes, smiling, debated between them with trembling pencil. "Sí, I am Tlaxcaltecan... You like eggs, Señora. Stepped on eggs. Muy sabrosos. Divorced eggs? For fish, sliced of filet with peas. Vol-au-vent a la reine. Somersaults for the queen. Or you like poxy eggs, poxy in toast. Or veal liver tavernman? Pimesan chike chup? Or spectral chicken of the house? Youn' pigeon. Red snappers with a fried tartar, you like?"
"Ha, the ubiquitous tartar," Hugh exclaimed.
"I think the spectral chicken of the house would be even more terrific, don't you?" Yvonne was laughing, the foregoing bawdry mostly over her head however, the Consul felt, and still she hadn't noticed anything.
"Probably served in its own ectoplasm."
"Sí, you like sea-sleeves in his ink? Or tunny fish? Or an exquisite mole? Maybe you like fashion melon to start? Fig mermelade? Brambleberry con crappe Gran Due? Omele he sourpusse, you like? You like to drink first a gin fish? Nice gin fish? Silver fish? Sparkenwein?"
"Madre?" the Consul asked, "What's this madre here?--You like to eat your mother, Yvonne?"
"Badre, señor. Fish también, Yautepec fish. Muy sabroso. You like?"
"What about it, Hugh--do you want to wait for the fish that dies?"
"I'd like a beer."
"Cerveza, si, Moctezuma? Dos Equis? Carta Blanca?"
At last they all decided on clam chowder, scrambled eggs, the spectral chicken of the house, beans, and beer. The Consul at first had ordered only shrimps and a hamburger sandwich but yielded to Yvonne's: "Darling, won't you eat more than that, I could eat a young horse," and their hands met across the table.
And then, for the second time that day, their eyes, in a long look, a long look of longing. Behind her eyes, beyond her, the Consul, an instant, saw Granada, and the train waltzing from Algeciras over the plains of Andalusia, chufferty pupperty, chufferty pupperty, the low dusty road from the station past the old bull-ring and the Hollywood bar and into the town, past the British Consulate and convent of Los Angeles up past the Washington Irving Hotel (You can't escape me, I can see you, England must return again to New England for her values!), the old number seven train running there: evening, and the stately horse cabs clamber up through the gardens slowly, plod through the arches, mounting past where the eternal beggar is playing on a guitar with three strings, through the gardens, gardens, gardens everywhere, up, up, to the marvellous traceries of the Alhambra (which bored him) past the well where they had met, to the Am