Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [143]
"Isn't your desire to fight for Spain, for fiddlededee, for Timbuktu, for China, for hypocrisy, for bugger all, for any hokery pokery that a few moose-headed idiot sons choose to call freedom--of course there is nothing of the sort, really--"
"If--"
"If you've really read War and Peace, as you claim you have, why haven't you the sense to profit by it, I repeat?"
"At any rate," said Hugh, "I profited by it to the extent of being able to distinguish it from Anna Karenina"
"Well, Anna Karenina then ..." the Consul paused.
"Cervantes!"--and Cervantes appeared, with his fighting cock, evidently fast asleep, under his arm. "Muy fuerte" he said, "muy terreebly," passing through the room, un bruto!--"But as I implied, you bloody people, mark my words, you don't mind your own business any better at home, let alone in foreign countries. Geoffrey darling, why don't you stop drinking, it isn't too late--that sort of thing. Why isn't it? Did I say so?" What was he saying? The Consul listened to himself almost in surprise at this sudden cruelty, this vulgarity. And in a moment it was going to get worse. "I thought it was all so splendidly and legally settled that it was. It's only you that insists it isn't."
"Oh Geoffrey--"
--Was the Consul saying this? Must he say it?--It seemed he must. "For all you know it's only the knowledge that it most certainly is too late that keeps me alive at all... You're all the same, all of you, Yvonne, Jacques, you, Hugh, trying to interfere with other people's lives, interfering, interfering--why should anyone have interfered with young Cervantes here, for example, given him an interest in cock fighting?--and that's precisely what's bringing about disaster in the world, to stretch a point, yes, quite a point, all because you haven't got the wisdom and the simplicity and the courage, yes, the courage, to take any of the, to take--"
"See here, Geoffrey--"
"What have you ever done for humanity, Hugh, with all your oratio obliqua about the capitalist system, except talk, and thrive on it, until your soul stinks?"
"Shut up, Geoff, for the love of Mike!"
"For that matter, both your souls stink! Cervantes!"
"Geoffrey, please sit down," Yvonne seemed to have said wearily, "you're making such a scene."
"No, I'm not, Yvonne. I'm talking very calmly. As when I ask you, what have you ever done for anyone but yourself?" Must the Consul say this? He was saying, had said it: "Where are the children I might have wanted? You may suppose I might have wanted them. Drowned. To the accompaniment of the rattling of a thousand douche bags. Mind you, you don't pretend to love 'humanity,' not a bit of it! You don't even need an illusion, though you do have some illusions unfortunately, to help you deny the only natural and good function you have. Though on second thoughts it might be better if women had no functions at all!"
"Don't be a bloody swine, Geoffrey." Hugh rose.
"Stay where you bloody are," ordered the Consul. "Of course I see the romantic predicament you two are in. But even if Hugh makes the most of it again it won't be long, it won't be long, before he realizes he's only one of the hundred or so other ninney-hammers with gills like codfish and veins like racehorses--prime as goats all of them, hot as monkeys, salt as wolves in pride! No, one will be enough."
A glass, fortunately empty, fell to the floor and was smashed.
"As if he plucked up kisses by the roots and then laid his leg over her thigh and sighed. What an uncommon time you two must have had, paddling palms and playing bubbies and titties all day under cover of saving me... Jesus. Poor little defenceless me--I hadn't thought of that. But, you see, it's perfectly logical, what it comes down to: I've got my own piddling little fight for freedom on my hands. Mummy, let me go back to the beautiful brothel! Back to where those triskeles are strumming, the infinite trismus..."
"True, I've been tempted to talk peace. I've been beguiled by your offers of a sober and non-alcoholic Paradise. At least I suppose that's what you've been working around towards all day. But now I've made up my melodramatic little mind, what's left of it, just enough to make up. Cervantes! That far from wanting it, thank you very much, on the contrary, I choose--Tlax--" Where was he?" Tlax--Tlax--"