Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [99]
--"Tequila," he said.
"¿Una?" the boy said sharply, and M. Laruelle called for gaseosa.
"Sí, señores." The boy swept the table. "Una tequila y una gaseosa." He brought immediately a bottle of El Nilo for M. Laruelle together with salt, chile, and a saucer of sliced lemons.
The café, which was in the centre of a little railed-in garden at the edge of the square among trees, was called the Paris. And in feet it was reminiscent of Paris. A simple fountain dripped near. The boy brought them camarones, red shrimps in a saucer, and had to be told again to get the tequila.
At last it arrived.
"Ah--" the Consul said, though it was the chalcedony ring that had been shaking.
"Do you really like it?" M. Laruelle asked him, and the Consul, sucking a lemon, felt the fire of the tequila run down his spine like lightning striking a tree which thereupon, miraculously, blossoms.
"What are you shaking for?" the Consul asked him.
M. Laruelle stared at him, he gave a nervous glance over his shoulder, he made as if absurdly to twang his tennis racket on his toe, but remembering the press, stood it up against his chair awkwardly.
"What are you afraid of--" the Consul was mocking him.
"I admit, I feel confused..." M. Laruelle cast a more protracted glance over his shoulder. "Here, give me some of your poison." He leaned forward and took a sip of the Consul's tequila and remained bent over the thimble-shaped glass of terrors, a moment since brimming.
"Like it?"
"--like Oxygénée, and petrol... If I ever start to drink that stuff, Geoffrey, you'll know I'm done for."
"It's mescal with me... Tequila, no, that is healthful... and delightful. Just like beer. Good for you. But if I ever start to drink mescal again, I'm afraid, yes, that would be the end," the Consul said dreamily.
"Name of a name of God," shuddered M. Laruelle.
"You're not afraid of Hugh, are you?" The Consul, mocking, pursued--while it struck him that all the desolation of the months following Yvonne's departure were now mirrored in the other's eyes. "Not jealous of him, by any chance, are you?"
"Why should--"
"But you are thinking, aren't you, that in all this time I have never once told you the truth about my life," the Consul said, "isn't that right?"
"No... For perhaps once or twice, Geoffrey, without knowing it, you have told the truth. No, I truly want to help. But, as usual, you don't give me a chance."
"I have never told you the truth. I know it, it is worse than terrible. But as Shelley says, the cold world shall not know. And the tequila hasn't cured your trembling."
"No, I am afraid," M. Laruelle said.
"But I thought you were never afraid... Un otro tequila," the Consul told the boy, who came running, repeating sharply, "--uno?"
M. Laruelle glanced round after the boy as if it had been in his mind to say "dos": "I'm afraid of you," he said, "Old Bean."
The Consul heard, after half the second tequila, every now and then, familiar well-meaning phrases. "It's hard to say this. As man to man, I don't care who she is. Even if the miracle has occurred. Unless you cut it out altogether."
The Consul however was looking past M. Laruelle at the flying-boats which were at a little distance: the machine itself was feminine, graceful as a ballet dancer, its iron skirts of gondolas whirling higher and higher. Finally it whizzed round with a tense whipping and whining, then its skirts drooped chastely again when for a time there was stillness, only the breeze stirring them. And how beautiful, beautiful, beautiful--
"For God's sake. Go home to bed... Or stay here. I'll find the others. And tell them you're not going..."
"But I am going," the Consul said, commencing to take one of the shrimps apart. "Not camarones," he added. "Cabrones. That's what the Mexicans call them." Placing his thumbs at the base of both ears he waggled his fingers. "Cabrón. You too, perhaps... Venus is a horned star."
"What about the damage you've done, to her life... After all your howling... If you've got her back!--If you've got this chance--"
"You are interfering with my great battle," the Consul said, gazing past M. Laruelle at an advertisement at the foot of the fountain: Peter Lorre en Las Manos de Orlac, a las 6.30 p.m. "I have to have a drink or two now, myself--so long as it isn't mescal of course--else I shall become confused, like yourself."