Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [24]
--"Talking of corpses"--the Consul poured himself another whisky and was signing a chit book with a somewhat steadier hand while Yvonne sauntered towards the door--"personally I'd like to be buried next to William Blackstone--" He pushed the book back for Fernando, to whom mercifully he had not attempted to introduce her. "The man who went to live among the Indians. You know who he was, of course?" The Consul stood half turned towards her, doubtfully regarding this new drink he had not picked up.
"--Christ, if you want it, Alabama, go ahead and take it... I don't want it. But if you wish it, you go and take it."
"Absolutamente necesario--"
The Consul left half of it.
Outside, in the sunlight, in the backwash of tabid music from the still-continuing ball, Yvonne waited again, casting nervous glances over her shoulder at the main entrance of the hotel from which belated revellers like half-dazed wasps out of a hidden nest issued every few moments while, on the instant, correct, abrupt, army and navy, consular, the Consul, with scarce a tremor now, found a pair of dark glasses and put them on.
"Well," he said, "the taxis seem to have all disappeared. Shall we walk?"
"Why what's happened to the car?" So confused by apprehension of meeting any acquaintance was she, Yvonne had almost taken the arm of another man wearing dark glasses, a ragged young Mexican leaning against the hotel wall to whom the Consul, slapping his stick over his wrist and with something enigmatic in his voice observed: "Buenas tardes, señor." Yvonne started forward quickly. "Yes, let's walk."
The Consul took her arm with courtliness (the ragged Mexican with the dark glasses had been joined, she noticed, by another man with a shade over one eye and bare feet who had been leaning against the wall farther down, to whom the Consul also remarked "Buenas tardes," but there were no more guests coming out of the hotel, only the two men who'd politely called "Buenas" after them standing there nudging each other as if to say: "He said 'Buenas tardes', what a card he is!") and they set off obliquely through the square. The fiesta wouldn't start till much later and the streets that remembered so many other Days of the Dead were fairly deserted. The bright banners, the paper streamers, flashed: the great wheel brooded under the trees, brilliant, motionless. Even so the town around and below them was already full of sharp remote noises like explosions of rich colour. ¡Box! said an advertisement. ARENA TOMALÍN. Frente al Jardín Xicoténcatl. Domingo 8 de Noviembre de 1938. 4 Emocionantes Peleas.
Yvonne tried to keep herself from asking:
"Did you smack the car up again?"
"As a matter of fact I've lost it."
"Lost it!"
"It's a pity because--but look here, dash it all, aren't you terribly tired, Yvonne?"
"Not in the least! I should think you're the one to be--"
--¡ Box! Preliminar a 4 Rounds, El TURCO (Gonzalo Calderón de Par. de 52 kilos) vs EL OSO (de Par. de 53 kilos).
"I had a million hours of sleep on the boat! And I'd far rather walk, only--"
"Nothing. Just a touch of rheumatiz.--Or is it the sprue? I'm glad to get some circulation going in the old legs."
--¡Box! Evento Especial a 5 rounds, en los que el vencedor pasará al grupo de Semi-Finales, TOMA AGUERO (El Invencible Indio de Quauhnahuac de 57 kilos, que acaba de llegar de la Capital de la República). ARENA TOMALÍN. Frente al Jardín Xicoténcatl.
" It's a pity about the car because we might have gone to the boxing," said the Consul, who was walking almost exaggeratedly erect.
"I hate boxing."
"--But that's not till next Sunday anyhow... I heard they had some kind of a bullthrowing on today over at Tomalín.--Do you remember--"
"No!"
The Consul, with no more recognition than she, held up one finger in dubious greeting to an individual resembling a carpenter, running past them wagging his head and carrying a sawed length of grained board under his arm and who threw, almost chanted, a laughing word at him that sounded like: "¡Mescalito!"
The sunlight blazed down on them, blazed on the eternal ambulance whose headlights were momentarily transformed into a blinding magnifying glass, glazed on the volcanoes--she could not look at them now. Born in Hawaii, she'd had volcanoes in her life before, however. Seated on a park bench under a tree in the square, his feet barely touching the ground, the little public scribe was already crashing away on a giant typewriter.