Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [52]
Out of the brewery itself, which at close quarters appeared quite different, more like a mill, sliced, oblong, which emitted a sudden mill-like clamour, and on which flitted and slid mill-wheel-like reflections of sunlight on water, cast from a nearby stream, out of a glimpse of its very machinery, now issued a pied man, visored, resembling a gamekeeper, bearing two foaming tankards of dark German beer. They had not dismounted and he handed the beer up to them.
"God, that's cold," Hugh said, "good though." The beer had a piercing taste, half metallic, half earthy, like distilled loam. It was so cold that it hurt.
"Buenos días, muchacha!" Yvonne, tankard in hand, was smiling down at the child with the armadillo. The gamekeeper vanished through an ostiole back into the machinery; closing away its clamour from them, as might an engineer on shipboard. The child was crouching on her haunches holding the armadillo and apprehensively eyeing the dog, who however lay at a safe distance watching the foals inspect the rear of the plant. Each time the armadillo ran off, as if on tiny wheels, the little girl would catch it by its long whip of a tail and turn it over. How astonishingly soft and helpless it appeared then! Now she righted the creature and set it going once more, some engine of destruction perhaps that after millions of years had come to this."¿Cuánto?" Yvonne asked. .
Catching the animal again the child piped:
"Cincuenta centavos?"
"You don't really want it, do you?" Hugh--like General Winfield Scott, he thought privately, after emerging from the ravines of the Cerro Gordo--was sitting with one leg athwart the pommel. Yvonne nodded in jest: "I'd adore it. It's perfectly sweet." "You couldn't make a pet of it. Neither can the kid: that's why she wants to sell it." Hugh sipped his beer. "I know about armadillos."
"Oh so do I!" Yvonne shook her head mockingly, opening her eyes very wide. "But everything!"
"Then you know that if you let the thing loose in your garden it'll merely tunnel down into the ground and never come back."
Yvonne was still half-mockingly shaking her head, her eyes wide. "Isn't he a darling?"
Hugh swung his leg back and sat now with his tankard propped on the pommel looking down at the creature with its big mischievous nose, iguana's tail, and helpless speckled belly, a Martian infant's toy. "No, muchas gracias," he said firmly to the little girl who, indifferent, did not retreat. "It'll not only never come back, Yvonne, but if you try to stop it it will do its damnedest to pull you down the hole too." He turned to her, eyebrows raised, and for a time they watched each other in silence. "As your friend W. H. Hudson, I think it was, found out to his cost," Hugh added. A leaf fell off a tree somewhere behind them with a crash, like a sudden footstep. Hugh drank a long cold draught. "Yvonne," he said, "do you mind if I ask you straight out if you are divorced from Geoff or not?"
Yvonne choked on her beer; she wasn't holding the reins at all, which were looped round her pommel, and her horse gave a small lurch forward, then halted before Hugh had time to reach for the bridle.
"Do you mean to go back to him or what? Or have you already gone back?" Hugh's mare had also taken a sympathetic step forward. "Forgive my being so blunt, but I feel in a horribly false position.--I'd like to know precisely what the situation is."
"So would I." Yvonne did not look at him.
"Then you don't know whether you have divorced him or not?"
"Oh, I've--divorced him," she answered unhappily.
"But you don't know whether you've gone back to him or not?"
"Yes. No... Yes. I've gone back to him all right all right." Hugh was silent while another leaf fell, crashed and hung tilted, balanced in the undergrowth. "Then wouldn't it be rather simpler for you if I went away immediately," he asked her gently, "instead of staying on a little while as I'd hoped?--I'd been thinking of going to Oaxaca for a day or two anyhow--"
Yvonne had raised her head at the word Oaxaca. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it might. Though, oh Hugh, I don't like to say it, only--"