Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [86]
"One always heard they had a therapeutic quality. They always had zoos in Mexico apparently--Moctezuma, courteous fellow, even showed stout Cortes around a zoo. The poor chap thought he was in the infernal regions." The Consul had discovered a scorpion on the wall.
"¿Alacrán?" Yvonne produced.
"It looks like a violin."
"A curious bird is the scorpion. He cares not for priest nor for poor peon... It's really a beautiful creature. Leave him be. He'll only sting himself to death anyway." The Consul swung his stick...
They climbed the Calle Nicaragua, always between the parallel swift streams, past the school with the grey tombstones and the swing like a gallows, past high mysterious walls, and hedges intertwined with crimson flowers, among which marmalade-coloured birds were trapezing, crying raucously. Hugh felt glad of his drinks now, remembering from his boyhood how the last day of the holidays was always worse if you went anywhere, how then time, that one had hoped to bemuse, would at any moment begin to glide after you like a shark following a swimmer.--¡Box! said an advertisement. Arena Tomalín. El Balón vs El Redondillo. The Balloon vs the Bouncing Ball--was that? Domingo... But that was for Sunday; while they were only going to a bullthrowing, a purpose in life whose object was not even worth advertising. 666: also said further advertisements for an insecticide, obscure yellow tin plates at the bottom of walls, to the quiet delight of the Consul. Hugh chuckled to himself. So far the Consul was doing superbly. His few "necessary drinks," reasonable or outrageous, had worked wonders. He was walking magnificently erect, shoulders thrown back, chest out: the best thing about it was his deceitful air of infallibility, of the unquestionable, especially when contrasted with what one must look like oneself in cowboy clothes. In his finely cut tweeds (the coat Hugh had borrowed was not much crumpled, and now Hugh had borrowed another one) and blue and white striped old Chagfordian tie, with the barbering Hugh had given him, his thick fair hair neatly slicked back, his freshly trimmed brownish greying beard, his stick, his dark glasses, who would say that he was not, unmistakably, a figure of complete respectability? And if this respectable figure, the Consul might have been saying, appeared to be undergoing from time to time a slight mutation, what of it? who noticed? It might be--for an Englishman in a foreign country always expects to meet another Englishman--merely of nautical origin. If not, his limp, obviously the result of an elephant hunt or an old brush with Pathans, excused it. The typhoon spun invisibly in the midst of a tumult of broken pavements: who was aware of its existence, let alone what landmarks in the brain it had destroyed? Hugh was laughing.
"Plingen, plangen, aufgefangen
Swingen, swangen at my side,
Poode, swoode, off to Boode,
Nemesis, a pleasant ride,"
said the Consul mysteriously, and added with heroism, glancing about him: "It's really an extraordinarily nice day to take a trip."
No se permite fijar anuncios...
Yvonne was in fact walking alone now: they climbed in a sort of single file, Yvonne ahead, the Consul and Hugh unevenly behind, and whatever their collective distraught soul might be thinking Hugh was oblivious of it, for he had become involved with a fit of laughing, which the Consul was trying not to find infectious. They walked in this manner because a boy was driving some cows past them down the hill, half running; and, as in a dream of a dying Hindu, steering them by their tails. Now there were some goats. Yvonne turned and smiled at him. Rut these goats were meek and sweet-looking, jangling little bells. Father is waiting for you though. Father has not forgotten. Behind the goats a woman with a black clenched face staggered past them under the weight of a basket loaded with carbon. A peon loped after her down the hill balancing a large barrel of ice-cream on his head and calling apparently for customers, with what hope of success one could not imagine, since he seemed so burdened as to be unable either to look from side to side or to halt.