Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [83]
"Have another drink." Hugh replenished the toothmug, handed it to the Consul, and picked up for him a copy of El Universal lying on the floor. "I think a little more down the side with that beard, and at the base of the neck." Hugh stropped the razor thoughtfully.
"A communal drink." The Consul passed the toothmug over his shoulder. ""Clank of coins irritates at Forth Worth."
Holding the paper quite steadily the Consul read aloud from the English page: "'Kink unhappy in exile.' I don't believe it myself. 'Town counts dogs' noses.' I don't believe that either, do you, Hugh?..."
"And--ah--yes!" he went on, ""Eggs have been in a tree at Klamath Falls for a hundred years, lumberjacks estimate by rings of wood." Is that the kind of stuff you write nowadays?"
"Almost exactly. Or: Japanese astride all roads from Shanghai. Americans evacuate... That kind of thing.--Sit still."
(One had not, however, played it from that day to this... No, nor been happy from that day to this either... A little self-knowledge is a dangerous thing. And anyway, without the guitar, was one any less in the limelight, any less interested in married women--so on, and so forth? One immediate result of giving it up was undoubtedly that second trip to sea, that series of articles, the first for the Globe, on the British Coasting Trade. Then yet another trip--coming to naught spiritually. I ended a passenger. But the articles were a success. Saltcaked smokestacks. Britannia rules the waves. In future my work was looked for with interest... On the other hand why have I always lacked real ambition as a newspaperman? Apparently I have never overcome that antipathy to journalists, the result of my early ardent courtship of them. Besides it cannot be said I shared with my colleagues the necessity of earning a living. There was always the income. As a roving hand I functioned fairly well, still, up to this day, have done so--yet becoming increasingly conscious of loneliness, isolation--aware too of an odd habit of thrusting myself to the fore, then subsiding--as if one remembered one hadn't the guitar after all... Maybe I bored people with my guitar. But in a sense--who cares?--it strung me to life--)
"Somebody quoted you in the Universal," the Consul was laughing, "some time ago. I just forget about what, I'm afraid... Hugh, how would you like, 'at a modest sacrifice,' an 'imported pair embroidered street extra large nearly new fur coat'?"
"Sit still."
"Or a Cadillac for 500 pesos. Original price 200... And what would this mean, do you suppose? 'And a white horse also.' Apply at box seven... Strange... Anti-alcoholic fish. Don't like the sound of that. But here's something for you. 'A centricle apartment suitable for love-nest.' Or alternatively, a 'serious, discrete--""
"--ha--"
"--apartment... Hugh, listen to this. "For a young European lady who must be pretty, acquaintanceship with a cultured man, not old, with good positions--"
The Consul was shaking with laughter only, it appeared, and Hugh, laughing too, paused, razor aloft.
"But the remains of Juan Ramirez, the famous singer, Hugh, are still wandering in a melancholy fashion from place to place... Hullo, it says here that "grave objections" have been made to the immodest behaviour of certain police chiefs in Quauhnahuac. "Grave objections to--" what's this?--"performing their private functions in public"--"
('Climbed the Parson's Nose," one had written, in the visitors" book at the little Welsh rock-climbing hotel, "in twenty minutes. Found the rocks very easy." "Came down the Parson's Nose," some immortal wag had added a day later, "in twenty seconds. Found the rocks very hard..".. So now, as I approach the second half of my life, unheralded, unsung, and without a guitar, I am going back to sea again: perhaps these days of waiting are more like that droll descent, to be survived in order to repeat the climb. At the top of the Parson's Nose you could walk home to tea over the hills if you wished, just as the actor in the Passion Play can get off his cross and go home to his hotel for a Pilsener. Yet in life ascending or descending you were perpetually involved with the mists, the cold and the overhangs, the treacherous rope and the slippery belay; only, while the rope slipped there was sometimes time to laugh. None the less, I am afraid... As I am also of a simple gate, and climbing windy masts in port... Will it be as bad as the first voyage, the harsh reality of which for some reason suggests Yvonne's farm? One wonders how she will feel the first time she sees someone stick a pig... Afraid; and yet not afraid; I know what the sea is like; can it be that I am returning to it with my dreams intact, nay, with dreams that, being without viciousness, are more child-like than before. I love the sea, the pure Norwegian sea. My disillusionment once more is a pose. What am I trying to prove by all this? Accept it; one is a sentimentalist, a muddler, a realist, a dreamer, coward, hypocrite, hero, an Englishman in short, unable to follow out his own metaphors. Tufthunter and pioneer in disguise. Iconoclast and explorer. Undaunted bore undone by trivialities! Why, one asks, instead of feeling stricken in that pub, didn't I set about learning some of those songs, those precious revolutionary songs. What is to prevent one's learning more of such songs now, new songs, different songs, anyhow, if only to recapture some early joy in merely singing, and playing the guitar? What have I got out of my life? Contacts with famous men... The occasion Einstein asked me the time, for instance. That summer evening, strolling towards the tumultuous kitchen of St John's--who is it that behind me has emerged from the rooms of the Professor living in D4? And who is it also strolling towards the Porter's lodge--where, our orbits crossing, asks me the time? Is this Einstein, up for an honours degree? And who smiles when I say I don't know... And yet asked me. Yes: the great Jew, who has upset the whole world's notions of time and space, once leaned down over the side of his hammock strung between Aries and the Circlet of the Western Fish, to ask me, befuddled ex-anti-Semite, and ragged freshman huddled in his gown at the first approach of the evening star, the time. And smiled again when I pointed out the clock neither of us had noticed--)