Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [139]
"What's that, don't you want to go back now, to Tlaxcala?" said the Consul, perhaps too thickly.
"That's not it, Geoffrey."
Fortunately, Cervantes arrived at this moment with a saucer full of live shellfish and toothpicks. The Consul drank some beer that had been waiting for him. The drink situation was now this, was this: there had been one drink waiting for him and this drink of beer he had not yet quite drunk. On the other hand there had been until recently several drinks of mescal (why not?--the word did not intimidate him, eh?) waiting for him outside in a lemonade bottle and all these he both had and had not drunk: had drunk in fact, had not drunk so far as the others were concerned. And before that there had been two mescals that he both should and should not have drunk. Did they suspect? He had adjured Cervantes to silence; had the Tlaxcaltecan, unable to resist it, betrayed him? What had they really been talking about while he was outside? The Consul glanced up from his shellfish at Hugh; Hugh, like Yvonne, as well as quite tight, appeared angry and hurt. What were they up to? The Consul had not been away very long (he thought), no more than seven minutes all told, had reappeared washed and combed--who knows how?--his chicken was scarcely cold, while the others were only just finishing theirs... Et tu Brute! The Consul could feel his glance at Hugh becoming a cold look of hatred. Keeping his eyes fixed gimlet-like upon him he saw him as he had appeared that morning, smiling, the razor edge keen in sunlight. But now he was advancing as if to decapitate him. Then the vision darkened and Hugh was still advancing, but not upon him. Instead, back in the ring, he was bearing down upon an ox: now he had exchanged his razor for a sword. He thrust forward the sword to bring the ox to its knees... The Consul was fighting off an all but irresistible, senseless onrush of wild rage. Trembling, he felt, from nothing but this effort--the constructive effort too, for which no one would give him credit, to change the subject--he impaled one of the shellfish on a toothpick and held it up, almost hissing through his teeth:
"Now you see what sort of creatures we are, Hugh. Eating things alive. That's what we do. How can you have much respect for mankind, or any belief in the social struggle?"
Despite this, Hugh was apparently saying, remotely, calmly, after a while: "I once saw a Russian film about a revolt of some fishermen... A shark was netted with a shoal of other fish and killed... This struck me as a pretty good symbol of the Nazi system which, even though dead, continues to go on swallowing live struggling men and women!"
"It would do just as well for any other system... Including the Communist system."
"See here, Geoffrey--"
"See here, old bean," the Consul heard himself saying, "to have against you Franco, or Hider, is one thing, but to have
Actinium, Argon, Beryllium, Dysprosium, Nobium, Palladium, Praseodymium--"
" Look here, Geoff--"
"--Ruthenium, Samarium, Silicon, Tantalum, Tellurium, Terbium, Thorium--"
"See here--"
"--Thulium, Titanium, Uranium, Vanadium, Virginium, Xenon, Ytterbium, Yttrium, Zirconium, to say nothing of Europium and Germanium—ahip!--and Columbium!--against you, and all the others, is another." The Consul finished his beer.
Thunder suddenly sprang again outside with a clap and bang, slithering.
Despite which Hugh seemed to be saying, calmly, remotely, "See here, Geoffrey. Let's get this straight once and for all. Communism to me is not, essentially, whatever its present phase, a system at all. It is simply a new spirit, something which one day may or may not seem as natural as the air we breathe. I seem to have heard that phrase before. What I have to say isn't original either. In fact were I to say it five years from now it would probably be downright banal. But to the best of my knowledge, no one has yet called in Matthew Arnold to the support of their argument. So I am going to quote Matthew Arnold for you, partly because you don't think I am capable of quoting Matthew Arnold. But that's where you're quite wrong. My notion of what we call--"