Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [57]
"What is all this ex-splendour anyway?" he said.
"Maximilian's Palace. The summer one, I think. I believe all that grove effect by the brewery was once part of his grounds too." Yvonne looked suddenly ill at ease.
"Don't you want to stop here?" he had asked her.
"Sure. It's a good idea. I'd like a cigarette," she said hesitantly. "But we'll have to stroll down a ways for Carlotta's favourite view."
"The emperor's mirador certainly has seen better days." Hugh, rolling Yvonne a cigarette, glanced absently round the place, which appeared so reconciled to its own ruin no sadness touched it; birds perched on the blasted towers and dilapidated masonry over which clambered the inevitable blue convolvulus; the foals with their guardian dog resting near were meekly grazing in the chapel: it seemed safe to leave them...
"Maximilian and Carlotta, eh?" Hugh was saying. "Should Juarez have had the man shot or not?"
"It's an awfully tragic story."
"He should have had old thingmetight, Díaz, shot at the same time and made a job of it."
They came to the headland and stood gazing back the way they had come, over the plains, the scrub, the railway, the Tomalín road. It was blowing here, a dry steady wind. Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl. There they lay peacefully enough beyond the valley; the firing had ceased. Hugh felt a pang. On the way down he'd entertained a quite serious notion of finding time to climb Popo, perhaps even with Juan Cerillo--
"There's your moon for you still," he pointed it out again, a fragment blown out of the night by a cosmic storm.
"Weren't those wonderful names," she said, "the old astronomers gave the places on the moon?"
"The Marsh of Corruption. That's the only one I can remember."
"Sea of Darkness... Sea of Tranquillity..."
They stood side by side without speaking, the wind tearing cigarette smoke over their shoulders; from here the valley too resembled a sea, a galloping sea. Beyond the Tomalín road the country rolled and broke its barbarous waves of dunes and rocks in every direction. Above the foothills, spiked along their rims with firs, like broken bottles guarding a wall, a white onrush of clouds might have been poised breakers. But behind the volcanoes themselves he saw now that storm clouds were gathering. "Sokotra," he thought, "my mysterious island in the Arabian Sea, where the frankincense and myrrh used to come from, and no one has ever been--"
There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence born of that strength whose cry his whole being recognized as familiar, caught and threw back into the wind, some youthful password of courage and pride--the passionate, yet so nearly always hypocritical, affirmation of one's soul perhaps, he thought, of the desire to be, to do, good, what was right. It was as though he were gazing now beyond this expanse of plains and beyond the volcanoes out to the wide rolling blue ocean itself, feeling it in his heart still, the boundless impatience, the immeasurable longing.
5
Behind them walked the only living thing that shared their pilgrimage, the dog. And by degrees they reached the briny sea. Then, with souls well disciplined they reached the northern region, and beheld, with heaven aspiring hearts, the mighty mountain Himavat... Whereupon the lake was lapping, the lilacs were blowing, the chenars were budding, the mountains were glistening, the waterfalls were playing, the spring was green, the snow was white, the sky was blue, the fruit blossoms were clouds: and he was still thirsty. Then the snow was not glistening, the fruit blossoms were not clouds, they were mosquitoes, the Himalayas were hidden by dust, and he was thirstier than ever. Then the lake was blowing, the snow was blowing, the waterfalls were blowing, the fruit blossoms were blowing, the seasons were blowing--blowing away--he was blowing away himself, whirled by a storm of blossoms into the mountains, where now the rain was falling. But this rain, that fell only on the mountains, did not assuage his thirst. Nor was he after all in the mountains. He was standing, among cattle, in a stream. He was resting, with some ponies, knee-deep beside him in the cool marshes. He was lying face downward drinking from a lake that reflected the white-capped ranges, the clouds piled five miles high behind the mighty mountain Himavat: the purple chenars and a village nestling among the mulberries. Yet his thirst still remained unquenched. Perhaps because he was drinking, not water, but lightness, and promise of lightness--how could he be drinking promise of lightness? Perhaps because he was drinking, not water, but certainty of brightness--how could he be drinking certainty of brightness? Certainty of brightness, promise of lightness, of light, light, light, and again, of light, light, light, light, light!