Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [43]
"The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it."
He lay back in his chair. Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, that image of the perfect marriage, lay now clear and beautiful on the horizon under an almost pure morning sky. Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life!
Enormously high too, he noted some vultures waiting, more graceful than eagles as they hovered there like burnt papers floating from a fire which suddenly are seen to be blowing swiftly upward, rocking.
The shadow of an immense weariness stole over him... The Consul fell asleep with a crash.
4
Daily Globe intelube londres presse collect following yesterdays head--coming antisemitic campaign mexpress propetition see tee emma mex-workers confederation proexpulsion exmexico quote small Jewish textile manufacturers unquote learned today perreliable source that german legation mexcity actively behind the campaign etstatement that legation gone length sending antisemitic propaganda mexdept interiorwards borne out pro-pamphlet possession local newspaperman stop pamphlet asserts jews influence unfavourably any country they live etemphasises quote their belief absolute power etthat they gain their ends without conscience or consideration unquote stop Firmin.
Reading it over once more, the carbon of his final dispatch (sent that morning from the Oficina Principal of the Compañía Telegráfica Mexicana Esq., San Juan de Letrán e Independencia, México, D.F.), Hugh Firmin less than sauntered, so slowly did he move, up the drive towards his brother's house, his brother's jacket balanced on his shoulder, one arm thrust almost to the elbow through the twin handles of his brother's small Gladstone bag, his pistol in the checkered holster lazily slapping his thigh: eyes in my feet, I must have, as well as straw, he thought, stopping on the edge of the deep pothole, and then his heart and the world stopped too; the horse half over the hurdle, the diver, the guillotine, the hanged man falling, the murderer's bullet, and the cannon's breath, in Spain or China frozen in mid-air, the wheel, the piston, poised--
Yvonne, or something woven from the filaments of the past that looked like her, was working in the garden, and at a little distance appeared clothed entirely in sunlight. Now she stood up straight--she was wearing yellow slacks--and was squinting at him, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun.
Hugh jumped over the pothole to the grass; disentangling himself from the bag he knew an instant's paralysed confusion, and reluctance to meet the past. The bag, decanted on the faded rustic seat, disgorged into its lid a bald toothbrush, a rusty safety-razor, his brother's shirt, and a second-hand copy of Jack London's Valley of the Moon , bought yesterday for fifteen centavos at the German bookstore opposite Sandborns in Mexico City. Yvonne was waving.
And he was advancing (just as on the Ebro they were retreating) the borrowed jacket still somehow balanced, half slung on his shoulder, his broad hat in one hand, the cable, folded, still somehow in the other.
"Hullo, Hugh. Gosh, I thought for a moment you were Bill Hodson--Geoffrey said you were here. How nice to see you again."
Yvonne brushed the dirt from her palms and held out her hand, which he did not grip, nor even feel at first, then dropped as if carelessly, becoming conscious of a pain in his heart and also of a faint giddiness.
"How absolutely something or other. When did you get here?"
"Just a little while ago." Yvonne was plucking the dead blossoms from some potted plants resembling zinnias, with fragrant delicate white and crimson flowers, that were ranged on a low wall; she took the cable Hugh had for some reason handed her along to the next flower pot: "I hear you've been in Texas. Have you become a drugstore cowboy?"
Hugh replaced his ten-gallon Stetson on the back of his head, laughing down, embarrassed, at his high-heeled boots, the too-tight trousers tucked inside them. "They impounded my clothes at the border. I meant to buy some new ones in the City but somehow never got around to it... You look awfully well!"