Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [42]
"Sorry, it isn't any good I'm afraid." The Consul shut the door behind him and a small rain of plaster showered on his head. A Don Quixote fell from the wall. He picked up the sad straw knight...
And then the whisky bottle: he drank fiercely from it.
He had not forgotten his glass however, and into it he was now pouring himself chaotically a long drink of his strychnine mixture, half by mistake, he'd meant to pour the whisky. "Strychnine is an aphrodisiac. Perhaps it will take immediate effect. It still may not be too late." He had sunk through, it almost felt, the green cane rocking-chair.
He just managed to reach his glass left on the tray and held it now in his hands, weighing it, but--for he was trembling again, not slightly, but violently, like a man with Parkinson's disease or palsy--unable to bring it to his lips. Then without drinking he set it on the parapet. After a while, his whole body quaking, he rose deliberately and poured, somehow, into the other unused tumbler Concepta had not removed, about a half quartern of whisky. Nació 1820 y siguiendo tan campante. Siguiendo. Born 1896 and still going flat. I love you, he murmured, gripping the bottle with both hands as he replaced it on the tray. He now brought the tumbler filled with whisky back to his chair and sat with it in his hands, thinking. Presently without having drunk from this glass either he set it on the parapet next to his strychnine. He sat watching both the glasses. Behind him in the room he heard Yvonne crying.
"--Have you forgotten the letters Geoffrey Firmin the letters she wrote till her heart broke why do you sit there trembling why do you not go back to her now she will understand after all it hasn't always been that way toward the end perhaps but you could laugh at this you could laugh at it why do you think she is weeping it is not for that alone you have done this to her my boy the letters you not only have never answered you didn't you did you didn't you did then where is your reply but have never really read where are they now they are lost Geoffrey Firmin lost or left somewhere even we do not know where--"
The Consul reached forward and absentmindedly managed a sip of whisky; the voice might have been either of his familiars or--
Hullo, good morning.
The instant the Consul saw the thing he knew it an hallucination and he sat, quite calmly now, waiting for the object shaped like a dead man and which seemed to be lying flat on its back by his swimming-pool, with a large sombrero over its face, to go away. So the "other" had come again. And now gone, he thought: but no, not quite, for there was still something there, in some way connected with it, or here, at his elbow, or behind his back, in front of him now; no, that too, whatever it was, was going: perhaps it had only been the coppery-tailed trogon stirring in the bushes, his "ambiguous bird" that was now departing quickly on creaking wings, like a pigeon once it was in flight, heading for its solitary home in the Canyon of the Wolves, away from the people with ideas.
"Damn it, I feel pretty well," he thought suddenly, finishing his half quartern. He stretched out for the whisky bottle, failed to reach it, rose again and poured himself another finger. "My hand is much steadier already." He finished this whisky and taking the glass and the bottle of Johnny Walker, which was fuller than he'd imagined, crossed the porch to its farthest corner and placed them in a cupboard. There were two old golf balls in the cupboard.
"Play with me I can still carry the eighth green in three. I am tapering off," he said. "What am I talking about? Even I know I am being fatuous."
"I shall sober up." He returned and poured some more strychnine into the other glass, filling it, then moved the strychnine bottle from the tray into a more prominent position on the parapet. "After all I have been out all night: what could one expect?"
"I am too sober. I have lost my familiars, my guardian angels. I am straightening out," he added, sitting down again opposite the strychnine bottle with his glass. "In a sense what happened was a sign of my fidelity, my loyalty; any other man would have spent this last year in a very different manner. At least I have no disease," he cried in his heart, the cry seeming to end on a somewhat doubtful note, however. "And perhaps it's fortunate I've had some whisky since alcohol is an aphrodisiac too. One must never forget either that alcohol is a food. How can a man be expected to perform his marital duties without food? Marital? At all events I am progressing, slowly but surely. Instead of immediately rushing out to the Bella Vista and getting drunk as I did the last time all this happened and we had that disastrous quarrel about Jacques and I smashed the electric-light bulb, I have stayed here. True, I had the car before and it was easier. But here I am. I am not escaping. And what's more I intend to have a hell of a sight better time staying." The Consul sipped his strychnine, then put his glass on the floor.