Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [146]
The El Petate, which from where she stood resembled a sort of complicated postage stamp, surcharged on its outside walls with its inevitable advertisements for Moctezuma, Criollo, Cafeaspirina, Mentholatum--no se rasque las picaduras de los insectos!--was about all remaining, the Consul and she'd once been told, of the formerly prosperous village of Anochtitlán, which had burned, but which at one time extended to the westward, on the other side of the stream.
In the smashing din she waited outside. Since leaving the Salón Ofelia and up to this point, Yvonne had felt herself possessed of the most complete detachment. But now, as Hugh joined the scene within the cantina--he was asking the two Mexicans questions, describing Geoffrey's beard to the barman, he was describing Geoffrey's beard to the Mexicans, he was asking the barman questions, who, with two fingers had assumed, jocosely, a beard--she became conscious she was laughing unnaturally to herself; at the same time she felt, crazily, as if something within her were smouldering, had taken fire, as if her whole being at any moment were going to explode.
She started back. She had stumbled over a wooden structure close to the Petate that seemed to spring at her. It was a wooden cage, she saw by the light from the windows, in which crouched a large bird.
It was a small eagle she had startled, and which was now shivering in the damp and dark of its prison. The cage was set between the cantina and a low thick tree, really two trees embracing one another: an amate and a sabina. The breeze blew spray in her face. The falls sounded. The intertwined roots of the two tree lovers flowed over the ground toward the stream, ecstatically seeking it, though they didn't really need it; the roots might as well have stayed where they were, for all around them nature was out-doing itself in extravagant fructification. In the taller trees beyond there was a cracking, a rebellious tearing, and a rattling, as of cordage; boughs like booms swung darkly and stiffly about her, broad leaves unfurled. There was a sense of black conspiracy, like ships in harbour before a storm, among these trees, suddenly through which, far up in the mountains, lightning flew, and the light in the cantina flickered off, then on again, then off. No thunder followed. The storm was a distance away once more. Yvonne waited in nervous apprehension: the lights came on and Hugh--how like a man, oh God! but perhaps it was her own fault for refusing to come in--was having a quick drink with the Mexicans. There the bird was still, a long-winged dark furious shape, a little world of fierce despairs and dreams, and memories of floating high above Popocatepetl, mile on mile, to drop through the wilderness and alight, watching, in the timberline ghosts of ravaged mountain trees. With hurried quivering hands Yvonne began to unfasten the cage. The bird fluttered out of it and alighted at her feet, hesitated, took flight to the roof of El Petate, then abruptly flew off through the dusk, not to the nearest tree, as might have been supposed, but up--she was right, it knew it was free--up soaring, with a sudden cleaving of pinions into the deep dark blue pure sky above, in which at that moment appeared one star. No compunction touched Yvonne. She felt only an inexplicable secret triumph and relief: no one would ever know she had done this; and then, stealing over her, the sense of utter heartbreak and loss.
Lamplight shone across the tree roots; the Mexicans stood in the open door with Hugh, nodding at the weather and pointing on down the path, while within the cantina the barman helped himself to a drink from under the bar.
--"No!... "Hugh shouted against the tumult. "He hasn't been there at all! We might try this other place though!"
"On the road!"
Beyond the El Petate their path veered to the right past a dog-kennel to which an anteater nuzzling the black earth was chained. Hugh took Yvonne's arm.
"See the anteater? Do you remember the armadillo?"
"I haven't forgotten, anything!"
Yvonne said this, as they fell into step, not knowing quite what she meant. Wild woodland creatures plunged past them in the undergrowth, and everywhere she looked in vain for her eagle, half hoping to see it once more. The jungle was thinning out gradually. Rotting vegetation lay about them, and there was a smell of decay; the barranca couldn't be far off. Then the air blew strangely warmer and sweeter, and the path was steeper. The last time Yvonne had come this way she'd heard a whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will, whip-peri-will, the plaintive lonely voice of spring at home had said, and calling one home--to where? To her father's home in Ohio? And what should a whip-poor-will be doing so far from home itself in a dark Mexican forest? But the whip-poor-will, like love and wisdom, had no home; and perhaps, as the Consul had then added, it was better here than routing around Cayenne, where it was supposed to winter.