Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [87]
"It's true that at Cambridge," the Consul was saying, tapping Hugh on the shoulder, "you may have learned about Guelphs and so on... But did you know that no angel with six wings is ever transformed?"
"I seem to have learned that no bird ever flew with one--"
"Or that Thomas Burnet, author of the Telluris Theoria Sacra, entered Christs in--Cáscaras Caracoles! Virgen Santísima! Ave María! Fuego, fuego! Ay, qué me matan!
With a shattering and fearful tumult a plane slammed down upon them, skimmed the frightened trees, zooming, narrowly missed a mirador, and was gone the next moment, headed in the direction of the volcanoes, from which rolled again the monotonous sound of artillery.
"Acabó se," sighed the Consul.
Hugh suddenly noticed that a tall man (who must have stepped out of the side-road Yvonne had seemed anxious they should take) with sloping shoulders and handsome, rather swarthy features, though he was obviously a European, doubtless in some state of exile, was confronting them, and it was as though die whole of this man, by some curious fiction, reached up to the crown of his perpendicularly raised Panama hat, for the gap below seemed to Hugh still occupied by something, a sort of halo or spiritual property of his body, or the essence of some guilty secret perhaps that he kept under the hat but which was now momentarily exposed, fluttering and embarrassed. He was confronting them, though smiling, it appeared, at Yvonne alone, his blue, bold protuberant eyes expressing an incredulous dismay, his black eyebrows frozen in a comedian's arch: he hesitated: then this man, who wore his coat open and trousers very high over a stomach they had probably been designed to conceal but merely succeeded in giving the character of an independent tumescence of the lower part of his body, came forward with eyes flashing and mouth under its small black moustache curved in a smile at once false and engaging, yet somehow protective--and somehow, also, increasingly grave--came forward as it were impelled by clockwork, hand out, automatically ingratiating:
" Why Yvonne, what a delightful surprise. Why goodness me, I thought; oh, hullo, old bean--"
"Hugh, this is Jacques Laruelle," the Consul was saying. "You've probably heard me speak about him at one time or another. Jacques, my young brother Hugh: ditto... ,"/ vient d'arriver... or vice versa. How goes it, Jacques? You look as though you needed a drink rather badly."
"—"
"—"
A minute later M. Laruelle, whose name struck only a very distant chord for Hugh, had taken Yvonne's arm and was walking in the middle of the road with her up the hill. Probably there was no significance in this. But the Consul's introduction had been brusque to say the least. Hugh himself felt half hurt and, whatever the cause, a slight appalling sense of tension as the Consul and he slowly fell behind again. Meantime M. Laruelle was saying:
"Why do we not all drop into my "madhouse"; that would be good fun, don't you think Geoffrey--ah--ah--Hughes?"
"No," softly remarked the Consul, behind, to Hugh, who on the other hand now felt almost disposed to laugh once more.
For the Consul was also saying something cloacal very quietly to himself over and over again. They were following Yvonne and her friend through the dust which now, chased by a lonely gust of wind, was moving along with them up the road, sizzling in petulant ground-swirls to blow away like rain. When the wind died away the water rushing headlong down the gutters here was like a sudden force in the opposite direction. M. Laruelle was saying attentively, ahead of them, to Yvonne: "Yes... Yes... But your bus won't leave till two-thirty. You have over an hour."
--"But that does sound like an unusual bloody miracle," Hugh said." You mean after all these years--"
"Yeah. It was a great coincidence our meeting here," the Consul told Hugh in a changed even tone. "But I really think you two ought to get together, you have something in common. Seriously you might enjoy his house, it's always mildly amusing." "Good," said Hugh.
"Why, here comes the cartero," Yvonne called out ahead, half turning round and disengaging her arm from M. Laruelle's. She was pointing to the corner on the left at the top of the hill where the Calle Nicaragua met the Calle Tierra del Fuego." He's simply amazing," she was saying volubly. "The funny thing is that all the postmen in Quauhnahuac look exactly alike. Apparently they're all from the same family and have been postmen for positively generations. I think this one's grandfather was a cartero at the time of Maximilian. Isn't it delightful to think of the post-office collecting all these grotesque little creatures like so many carrier pigeons to dispatch at their will?"