Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [84]
"--better than having them perform their public functions in private anyhow, I should have thought," Hugh said.
"You might have hit on something there. That is, those birds referred to are not police in the strict sense. As a matter of fact the regular police are--"
"I know, they're on strike."
"So of course they must be democratic from your point of view... Just like the army. All right, it's a democratic army... But meantime these other cads are throwing their weight about a bit. It's a pity you're leaving. It might have been a story right down your alley. Did you ever hear of the Unión Militar?"
"You mean the pre-war thingmetight, in Spain?"
"I mean here in this state. It's affiliated to the Military Police, by which they're covered, so to speak, because the Inspector-General, who is the Military Police, is a member. So is the Jefe de Jardineros, I believe."
"I heard they were putting up a new statue to Diaz in Oaxaca."
"--Just the same," pursued the Consul, in a slightly lowered tone, as their conversation continued in the next room, "there is this Unión Militar, sinarquistas, whatever they're called, if you're interested, I'm not personally--and their headquarters used to be in the policía de Seguridad here, though it isn't any longer, but in Parián somewhere, I heard."
Finally the Consul was ready. The only further help he had required was with his socks. Wearing a freshly pressed shirt and a pair of tweed trousers with the jacket to them Hugh had borrowed and now brought in from the porch, he stood gazing at himself in the mirror.
It was most surprising, not only did the Consul now appear fresh and lively but to be dispossessed of any air of dissipation whatsoever. True, he had not before the haggard look of a depraved worn-out old man: why should he indeed, when he was only twelve years older than Hugh himself? Yet it was as though fate had fixed his age at some unidentifiable moment in the past, when his persistent objective self, perhaps weary of standing askance and watching his downfall, had at last withdrawn from him altogether, like a ship secretly leaving harbour at night. Sinister stories as well as funny and heroic had been told about his brother, whose own early poetic instincts clearly helped the legend. It occurred to Hugh that the poor old chap might be, finally, helpless, in the grip of something against which all his remarkable defences could avail him little. What use were his talons and fangs to the dying tiger? In the clutches, say, to make matters worse, of a boa-constrictor? But apparently this improbable tiger had no intention of dying just yet. On the contrary, he intended taking a little walk, taking the boa-constrictor with him, even to pretend, for a while, it wasn't there. Indeed, on the face of it, this man of abnormal strength and constitution and obscure ambition, whom Hugh would never know, could never deliver nor make agreement to God for, but in his way loved and desired to help, had triumphantly succeeded in pulling himself together. While what had given rise to all these reflections was doubtless only the photograph on the wall both were now studying, whose presence there at all must surely discount most of those old stories, of a small camouflaged freighter, at which the Consul suddenly gestured with replenished toothmug:
" Everything about the Samaritan was a ruse. See those windlasses and bulkheads. That black entrance that looks as though it might be the entrance to the forecastle, that's a shift too--there's an anti-aircraft gun stowed away snugly in there. Over there, that's the way you go down. Those were my quarters... There's your quartermaster's alley. That galley--it could become a battery, before you could say Coclogenus paca Mexico...
" Curiously enough though," the Consul peered closer, "I cut that picture out of a German magazine," and Hugh too was scrutinizing the Gothic writing beneath the photograph: Der englische Dampfer tragt Schutzfarben gegen deutsche U-boote. "Only on the next page, I recall, was a picture of the Emdenk the Consul went on, "with 'So verlies ich der Weltteil unserer Antipoden,' something of that nature, under it. 'Our Antipodes.'" He gave Hugh a sharp glance that might have meant anything. "Queer people. But I see you're interested in my old books all of a sudden... Too bad... I left my Boehme in Paris."