Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [93]
"Yes... But I refuse to see them."
But what on earth was he, the Consul, the Consul wondered, continuing to look out for there on those plains, in that tumulose landscape, through Jacques's binoculars? Was it for some figment of himself, who had once enjoyed such a simple healthy stupid good thing as golf, as blind holes, for example, driving up into a high wilderness of sand-dunes, yes, once with Jacques himself? To climb, and then to see, from an eminence, the ocean with the smoke on the horizon, then, far below, resting near the pin on the green, his new Silver King, twinkling. Ozone!--The Consul could no longer play golf: his few efforts of recent years had proved disastrous... I should have become a sort of Donne of the fairways at least. Poet of the unreplaced turf.--Who holds the flag while I hole out in three? Who hunts my Zodiac Zone along the shore? And who, upon that last and final green, though I hole out in four, accepts my ten and three score... Though I have more. The Consul dropped the glasses at last and turned round. And still he had not touched his drink.
"Alastor, Alastor," Hugh strolled over to him saying. "Who is, was, why, and/or wrote Alastor, anyway?"
"Percy Bysshe Shelley." The Consul leaned against the mirador beside Hugh. "Another fellow with ideas... The story I like about Shelley is the one where he just let himself sink to the bottom of the sea--taking several books with him of course--and just stayed there, rather than admit he couldn't swim."
"Geoffrey don't you think Hugh ought to see something of the fiesta," suddenly Yvonne was saying from the other side, "since it's his last day? Especially if there's native dancing?"
So it was Yvonne who was "extricating them from all this," just when the Consul was proposing to stay. "I wouldn't know," he said. "Won't we get native dancing and things in Tomalín? Would you like to, Hugh?"
"Sure. Of course. Anything you say." Hugh got down awkwardly from the parapet. "There's still about an hour before the bus leaves, isn't there?"
"I'm sure Jacques will forgive us if we rush off," Yvonne was saying almost desperately.
"Let me see you downstairs safely then." Jacques controlled his voice. "It's too early for the fête to be very much but you ought to see Rivera's murals, Hughes, if you haven't already."
"Aren't you coming, Geoffrey?" Yvonne turned on the staircase. "Please come," her eyes said.
"Well, fiestas aren't my strong suit. You run along and I'll meet you at the terminal in time for the bus. I have to talk to Jacques here anyway."
But they had all gone downstairs and the Consul was alone on the mirador. And yet not alone. For Yvonne had left a drink on the merlon by the angels, poor Jacques's was in one of the crenels, Hugh's was on the side parapet. And the cocktail shaker was not empty. Moreover the Consul had not touched his own drink. And still, now, he did not drink. The Consul felt with his right hand his left bicep under his coat. Strength--of a kind--but how to give oneself courage? That fine droll courage of Shelley's; no, that was pride. And pride bade one go on, either go on and kill oneself, or "straighten out," as so often before, by oneself, with the aid of thirty bottles of beer and staring at the ceiling. But this time it was different. What if courage here implied admission of total defeat, admission that one couldn't swim, admission indeed (though just for a second the thought was not too bad) into a sanatorium? No, to whatever end, it wasn't merely a matter of being "got away." No angels nor Yvonne nor Hugh could help him here. As for the demons, they were inside him as well as outside; quiet at the moment--taking their siesta perhaps--he was none the less surrounded by them and occupied; they were in possession. The Consul looked at the sun. But he had lost the sun: it was not his sun. Like the truth, it was well-nigh impossible to face; he did not want to go anywhere near it, least of all, sit in its light, facing it. "Yet I shall face it." How? When he not only lied to himself, but himself believed the lie and lied back again to those lying factions, among whom was not even their own honour. There was not even a consistent basis to his self-deceptions. How should there be then to his attempts at honesty? "Horror," he said. "Yet I will not give in." But who was I, how find that I, where had I gone? "Whatever I do, it shall be deliberately." And deliberately, it was true, the Consul still refrained from touching his drink. "The will of man is unconquerable." Eat? I should eat. So the Consul ate half a canap