Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [140]
"Cervantes!"
"--is a spirit in the modern world playing a part analogous to that of Christianity in the old. Matthew Arnold says, in his essay on Marcus Aurelius--"
"Cervantes, por Christ sake--"
"Far from this, the Christianity which those emperors aimed at repressing was, in their conception of it, something philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally abominable. As men they sincerely regarded it much as well-conditioned people, with us, regard Mormonism: as rulers, they regarded it much as liberal statesmen, with us, regard the Jesuits. A kind of Mormonism--"
"--constituted as a vast secret society, with obscure aims of political and social subversion, was what Antoninus Pius--"
"Cervantes!"
"The inner and moving cause of the representation lay, no doubt, in this, that Christianity was a new spirit in the Roman world, destined to act in that world as its dissolvent; and it was inevitable that Christianity--"
"Cervantes," the Consul interrupted, "you are Oaxaquenian?"
"No, señor, I am Tlaxcalan, Tlaxcala."
"You are," said the Consul. "Well, hombre, and are there not stricken in years trees in Tlaxcala?"
"Sí, sí, hombre. Stricken in years trees. Many trees."
"And Ocotlán. Santuario de Ocotlán. Is not that in Tlaxcala?"
"Sí, sí, señor, si, Santuario de Ocotlán," said Cervantes, moving back toward the counter.
"And Matlalcuayatl."
"Sí, hombre. Matlaicuayatl... Tlaxcala."
"And lagoons?"
"So--... many lagoons."
"And are there not many web-footed fowl in these lagoons?"
"Sí, señor. Muy fuerte... In Tlaxcala."
"Well then," said the Consul, turning round on the others, "what's wrong with my plan? What's wrong with all you people? Aren't you going to Vera Cruz after all, Hugh?"
Suddenly a man started to play the guitar in the doorway angrily, and once again Cervantes came forward: "Black Flowers is the name of that song." Cervantes was about to beckon the man to come in. "It say: I suffer, because your lips say only lies and they have death in a kiss."
"Tell him to go away," the Consul said. "Hugh--cuantos trenes hay el día para Vera Cruz?" The guitar player changed his tune: "This is a farmer's song," said Cervantes, "for oxen."
"Oxen, we've had enough oxen for one day. Tell him to go far away, por favor," said the Consul. "My God, what's wrong with you people? Yvonne, Hugh... It's a perfectly good idea, a most practical idea. Don't you see it'll kill two birds with one stone--a stone, Cervantes!... Tlaxcala is on the way to Vera Cruz, Hugh, the true cross... This is the last time we'll be seeing you, old fellow. For all I know... We could have a celebration. Come on now, you can't lie to me, I'm watching you... Change at San Martin Texmelucan in both ways..."
Thunder, single, exploded in mid-air just outside the door and Cervantes came hurrying forward with the coffee: he struck matches for their cigarettes: "La superstición dice," he smiled, striking a fresh one for the Consul, "que cuando tres amigos prenden su cigarro con la misma cerilla, el ultimo muere antes que los otros dos."
"You have that superstition in Mexico?" Hugh asked.
"Sí, señor," Cervantes nodded, "the fantasy is that when three friends take fire with the same match, the last die before the other two. But in war it is impossible because many soldiers have only one match."
"Feurstick," said Hugh, shielding yet another light for the Consul. "The Norwegians have a better name for matches."
--It was growing darker, the guitar player, it seemed, was sitting in the corner, wearing dark glasses, they had missed this bus back, if they'd meant to take it, the bus that was going to take them home to Tlaxcala, but it seemed to the Consul that, over the coffee, he had, all at once, begun to talk soberly, brilliantly, and fluently again, that he was, indeed, in top form, a fact he was sure was making Yvonne, opposite him, happy once more. Feurstick, Hugh's Norwegian word, was still in his head. And the Consul was taking about the Indo-Aryans, the Iranians and the sacred fire, Agni, called down from heaven, with his firesticks, by the priest. He was talking of soma, Amrita, the nectar of immortality, praised in one whole book of the Rig Veda--bhang, which was, perhaps, much the same thing as mescal itself, and, changing the subject here, delicately, he was talking of Norwegian architecture, or rather how much architecture, in Kashmir, was almost, so to speak, Norwegian, the Hamadan mosque for instance, wooden, with its tall tapering spires, and ornaments pendulous from the eaves. He was talking of the Borda gardens in Quauhnahuac, opposite Bustamente's cinema, and how much they, for some reason, always reminded him of the terrace of the Nishat Bagh. The Consul was talking about the Vedic Gods, who were not properly anthropomorphized, whereas Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl... Or were they not? In any event the Consul, once more, was talking about the sacred fire, the sacrificial fire, of the stone soma press, the sacrifices of cakes and oxen and horses, the priest chanting from the Veda, how the drinking rites, simple at first, became more and more complicated as time went on, the ritual having to be carried out with meticulous care, since one slip--tee hee!--would render the sacrifice invalid. Soma, bhang, mescal, ah yes, mescal, he was back upon that subject again, and now from it, had departed almost as cunningly as before. He was talking of the immolation of wives, and the fact that, at the time he was referring to, in Taxila, at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, the widow of a childless man might contract a Levirate marriage with her brother-in-law. The Consul found himself claiming to see an obscure relation, apart from any purely verbal one, between Taxila and Tlaxcala itself: for when that great pupil of Aristotle's--Yvonne--Alexander, arrived in Taxila, had he not Cortez-like already been in communication with Ambhi, Taxila's king, who likewise had seen in an alliance with a foreign conqueror, an excellent chance of undoing a rival, in this case not Moctezuma but the Paurave monarch, who ruled the country between the Jhelma and the Chenab? Tlaxcala... The Consul was talking, like Sir Thomas Browne, of Archimedes, Moses, Achilles, Methuselah, Charles V, and Pontius Pilate. The Consul was talking furthermore of Jesus Christ, or rather of Yus Asaf who, according to the Kashmiri legend, was Christ--Christ, who had, after being taken down from the cross, wandered to Kashmir in search of the lost tribes of Israel, and died there, in Srinagar--