Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [61]
"And I'm afraid it really is a jungle too," pursued the Consul, "in fact I expect Rousseau to come riding out of it at any moment on a tiger."
"What's that?" Mr Quincey said, frowning in a manner that might have meant: And God never drinks before breakfast either.
"On a tiger," the Consul repeated.
The other gazed at him a moment with the cold sardonic eye of the material world. "I expect so," he said sourly. "Plenty tigers. Plenty elephants too... Might I ask you if the next time you inspect your jungle you'd mind being sick on your own side of the fence?"
"Hicket," answered the Consul simply. "Hicket," he snarled, laughing, and, trying to take himself by surprise, he thwacked himself hard in the kidneys, a remedy which, strangely, seemed to work. "Sorry I gave that impression, it was merely this damned hiccups!--"
"So I observe," Mr Quincey said, and perhaps he too had cast a subtle glance towards the ambush of the tequila bottle.
"And the funny thing is," interrupted the Consul, "I scarcely touched anything more than Tehuacan water all night... By the way; how did you manage to survive the ball?"
Mr Quincey stared at him evenly, then began to refill his watering can from a hydrant nearby.
"Just Tehuacan," the Consul continued. "And a little gaseosa. That ought to take you back to dear old Soda Springs, eh?--tee hee!--yes, I've cut liquor right out these days."
The other resumed his watering, sternly moving on down the fence, and the Consul, not sorry to leave the fruit tree, to which he had noticed clinging the sinister carapace of a seven-year locust, followed him step by step.
"Yes, I'm on the wagon now," he commented, "in case you didn't know." "The funeral wagon, I'd say, Firmin," Mr Quincey muttered testily. "By the way, I saw one of those little garter snakes just a moment ago," the Consul broke out.
Mr Quincey coughed or snorted but said nothing.
"And it made me think... Do you know, Quincey, I've often wondered whether there isn't more in the old legend of the Garden of Eden, and so on, than meets the eye. What if Adam wasn't really banished from the place at all? That is, in the sense we used to understand it--" The walnut grower had looked up and was fixing him with a steady gaze that seemed, however, directed at a point rather below the Consul's midriff--"What if his punishment really consisted," the Consul continued with warmth, "in his having to go on living there , alone, of course--suffering, unseen, cut off from God... Or perhaps," he added,--in more cheerful vein, "perhaps Adam was the first property owner and God, the first agrarian, a kind of Cardenas, in fact--tee hee!--kicked him out. Eh? Yes," the Consul chuckled, aware, moreover, that all this was possibly not so amusing under the existing historical circumstances, "for it's obvious to everyone these days--don't you think so, Quincey?--that the original sin was to be an owner of property..."
The walnut grower was nodding at him, almost imperceptibly, but not it seemed in any agreement; his realpolitik eye was still concentrated upon that same spot below his midriff and looking down the Consul discovered his open fly. Licentia vatum indeed! "Pardon me, j'adoube," he said, and making the adjustment continued, laughing, returning to his first theme mysteriously unabashed by his recusancy. "Yes, indeed. Yes... And of course the real reason for that punishment--his being forced to go on living in the garden, I mean, might well have been that the poor fellow, who knows, secretly loathed the place! Simply hated it, and had done so all along. And that the Old Man found this out--"
"Was it my imagination, or did I see your wife up there a while ago?" patiently said Mr Quincey.
"--and no wonder! To hell with the place! Just think of all the scorpions and leafcutter ants--to mention only a few of the abominations he must have had to put up with! What?" the Consul exclaimed as the other repeated his question. "In the garden? Yes--that is, no. How do you know? No, she's asleep as far as I--"
"Been away quite a time, hasn't she?" the other asked mildly, leaning forward so that he could see, more clearly, the Consul's bungalow. "Your brother still here?"