Under The Volcano Part 4

Daily Globe intelube londres presse collect following yesterdays head--coming antisemitic campaign mexpress propet.i.tion see tee emma mex-workers confederation proexpulsion exmexico quote small Jewish textile manufacturers unquote learned today perreliable source that german legation mexcity actively behind the campaign etstatement that legation gone length sending antisemitic propaganda mexdept interiorwards borne out pro-pamphlet possession local newspaperman stop pamphlet a.s.serts jews influence unfavourably any country they live etemphasises quote their belief absolute power etthat they gain their ends without conscience or consideration unquote stop Firmin.

Reading it over once more, the carbon of his final dispatch (sent that morning from the Oficina Princ.i.p.al of the Compania Telegrafica Mexicana Esq., San Juan de Letran e Independencia, Mexico, D.F.), Hugh Firmin less than sauntered, so slowly did he move, up the drive towards his brother's house, his brother's jacket balanced on his shoulder, one arm thrust almost to the elbow through the twin handles of his brother's small Gladstone bag, his pistol in the checkered holster lazily slapping his thigh: eyes in my feet, I must have, as well as straw, he thought, stopping on the edge of the deep pothole, and then his heart and the world stopped too; the horse half over the hurdle, the diver, the guillotine, the hanged man falling, the murderer's bullet, and the cannon's breath, in Spain or China frozen in mid-air, the wheel, the piston, poised-- Yvonne, or something woven from the filaments of the past that looked like her, was working in the garden, and at a little distance appeared clothed entirely in sunlight. Now she stood up straight--she was wearing yellow slacks--and was squinting at him, one hand raised to s.h.i.+eld her eyes from the sun.

Hugh jumped over the pothole to the gra.s.s; disentangling himself from the bag he knew an instant's paralysed confusion, and reluctance to meet the past. The bag, decanted on the faded rustic seat, disgorged into its lid a bald toothbrush, a rusty safety-razor, his brother's s.h.i.+rt, and a second-hand copy of Jack London's Valley of the Moon , bought yesterday for fifteen centavos at the German bookstore opposite Sandborns in Mexico City. Yvonne was waving.

And he was advancing (just as on the Ebro they were retreating) the borrowed jacket still somehow balanced, half slung on his shoulder, his broad hat in one hand, the cable, folded, still somehow in the other.

"Hullo, Hugh. Gosh, I thought for a moment you were Bill Hodson--Geoffrey said you were here. How nice to see you again."

Yvonne brushed the dirt from her palms and held out her hand, which he did not grip, nor even feel at first, then dropped as if carelessly, becoming conscious of a pain in his heart and also of a faint giddiness.

"How absolutely something or other. When did you get here?"

"Just a little while ago." Yvonne was plucking the dead blossoms from some potted plants resembling zinnias, with fragrant delicate white and crimson flowers, that were ranged on a low wall; she took the cable Hugh had for some reason handed her along to the next flower pot: "I hear you've been in Texas. Have you become a drugstore cowboy?"

Hugh replaced his ten-gallon Stetson on the back of his head, laughing down, embarra.s.sed, at his high-heeled boots, the too-tight trousers tucked inside them. "They impounded my clothes at the border. I meant to buy some new ones in the City but somehow never got around to it... You look awfully well!"

"And you!"

He began to b.u.t.ton his s.h.i.+rt, which was open to the waist, revealing, above the two belts, the skin more black than brown with sun; he patted the bandolier below his lower belt, which slanted diagonally to the holster resting on his hip-bone and attached to his right leg by a flat leather thong, patted the thong (he was secretly enormously proud of his whole outfit), then the breast pocket of his s.h.i.+rt, where he found a loose rolled cigarette he was lighting when Yvonne said: "What's this, the new message from Garcia?"

"The C.T.M." Hugh glanced over his shoulder at his cable, "the Confederation of Mexican Workers, have sent a pet.i.tion. They object to certain Teutonic huggermugger in this state. As I see it, they are right to object. Hugh gazed about the garden; where was Geoff? Why was she here? She is too casual. Are they not separated or divorced after all? What is the point? Yvonne handed back the cable and Hugh slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. "That," he said, climbing into it, since they were now standing in the shade, "is the last cable I send the Globe."

"So Geoffrey--" Yvonne stared at him: she pulled the jacket down at the back (knowing it Geoff's), the sleeves were too short: her eyes seemed hurt and unhappy, but vaguely amused: her expression as she went on paring blossoms managed to be both speculative and indifferent; she asked: "What's all this I hear about you travelling on a cattle truck?" "I entered Mexico disguised as a cow so they'd think I was a Texan at the border and I wouldn't have to pay any head tax. Or worse," Hugh said, "England being persona non grata here, so to speak, after Cardenas's oil s.h.i.+ndig. Morally of course we're at war with Mexico, in case you didn't know--where's our ruddy monarch?"

"--Geoffrey's asleep," Yvonne said, not meaning plastered by any chance, Hugh thought. "But doesn't your paper take care of those things?"

"Well. It's muy complicado... I'd sent my resignation in to the Globe from the States but they hadn't replied--here, let me do that--"

Yvonne was trying to thrust back a stubborn branch of bougainvillea blocking some steps he hadn't noticed before. "I take it you heard we were in Quauhnahuac?" "I'd discovered I might kill several birds with one stone by coming to Mexico... Of course it was a surprise you weren't here--"

" Isn't the garden a wreck ?" Yvonne said suddenly.

"It looks quite beautiful to me, considering Geoffrey hasn't had a gardener for so long." Hugh had mastered the branch--they are losing the Battle of the Ebro because I did that--and there were the steps; Yvonne grimaced, moving down them, and halted near the bottom to inspect an oleander that looked reasonably poisonous, and was even still in bloom: "And your friend, was he a cattleman or disguised as a cow too?"

"A smuggler, I think. Geoff told you about Weber, eh?" Hugh chuckled. "I strongly suspect him of running ammunition. Anyhow I got into an argument with the fellow in a dive in El Paso and it turned out he'd somehow arranged to go as far as Chihuahua by cattle truck, which seemed a good idea, and then fly to Mexico City. Actually we did fly, from some place with a weird name, like Cusihuriachic, arguing all the way down, you know--he was one of these American semi-Fascist blokes, been in the Foreign Legion, G.o.d knows what. But Parian was where he really wanted to go so he sat us down conveniently in the field here. It was quite a trip."

"Hugh, how like you!"

Yvonne stood below smiling up at him, hands in the pockets of her slacks, feet wide apart like a boy. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s stood up under her blouse embroidered with birds and flowers and pyramids she had probably bought or brought for Geoff's benefit, and once more Hugh felt the pain in his heart and looked away. "I probably should have shot the b.a.s.t.a.r.do out of hand: only he was a decent sort of swine--"

"You can see Parian from here sometimes."

Hugh was offering the thin air a cigarette. "Isn't it rather indefatigably English or something of Geoff's to be asleep?" He followed Yvonne down the path. "Here, it's my last machine-made one."

"Geoffrey was at the Red Cross Ball last night. He's pretty tired, poor dear." They walked on together, smoking, Yvonne pausing every few steps to uproot some weed or other until, suddenly, she stopped, gazing down at a flower-bed that was completely, grossly strangled by a coa.r.s.e green vine. "My G.o.d, this used to be a beautiful garden. It was like Paradise."

"Let's get the h.e.l.l out of it then. Unless you're too tired for a walk." A snore, ricocheting, agonized, embittered, but controlled, single, was wafted to his ears: the muted voice of England long asleep.

Yvonne glanced hastily around as if fearful Geoff might come catapulting out of the window, bed and all, unless he was on the porch, and hesitated. "Not a bit," she said brightly, warmly. "Let's do..." She started down the path before him. "What are we waiting for?"

Unconsciously, he had been watching her, her bare brown neck and arms, the yellow slacks, and the vivid scarlet flowers behind her, the brown hair circling her ears, the graceful swift movements of her yellow sandals in which she seemed to dance, to be floating rather than walking. He caught up with her and once more they walked on together, avoiding a long-tailed bird that glided down to alight near them like a spent arrow.

The bird swaggered ahead of them now down the cratered drive, through the gateless gateway, where it was joined by a crimson and white turkey, a pirate attempting to escape under full sail, and into the dusty street. They were laughing at the birds, but the things they might have gone on to say under somewhat different circ.u.mstances, as: I wonder what's happened to our bikes, or, do you remember, in Paris, that cafe, With the tables up the trees, in Robinson, remained unspoken.

They turned to the left, away from the town. The road declined sharply below them. At the bottom rose purple hills. Why is this not bitter, he thought, why is it not indeed, it was already: Hugh was aware for the first time of the other gnawing, as the Calle Nicaragua, the walls of the large residences left behind, became an almost unnavigable chaos of loose stones and potholes. Yvonne's bicycle wouldn't have been much use here. "What on earth were you doing in Texas, Hugh?" "Stalking Okies. That is, I was after them in Oklahoma. I thought the Globe ought to be interested in Okies. Then I went down to this ranch in Texas. That's where I'd heard about these chaps from the dust bowl not being allowed to cross the border."

"What an old Nosey Parker you are!"

"I landed in Frisco just in time for Munich." Hugh stared over to the left where in the distance the latticed watchtower of the Alcapancingo prison had just appeared with little figures on top gazing east and west through binoculars.

"They're just playing. The police here love to be mysterious, like you. Where were you before that? We must have just missed each other in Frisco."

A lizard vanished into the bougainvillea growing along the roadbank, wild bougainvillea now, an overflux, followed by a second lizard. Under the bank gaped a half-sh.o.r.ed-in hole, another entrance to the mine perhaps. Precipitous fields fell away down to their right, tilting violently at every angle. Far beyond them, cupped by hills, he made out the old bull-ring and again he heard Weber's voice in the plane, shouting, yelling in his ear, as they pa.s.sed the pinch-bottle of habanero between them:" Quauhnahuac. That's where they crucified the women in the bull-rings during the revolution and set the bulls at them. And that's a nice thing to say! The blood ran down the gutters and they barbecued the dogs in the market place. They shoot first and ask questions later! You're G.o.dd.a.m.n right-- " But there was no revolution in Quauhnahuac now and in the stillness the purple slopes before them, the fields, even the watchtower and the bull-ring, seemed to be murmuring of peace, of paradise indeed. "China," he said.

Yvonne turned, smiling, though her eyes were troubled and perplexed: "What about the war?" she said.

"That was the point. I fell out of an ambulance with three dozen beer bottles and six journalists on top of me and that's when I decided it might be healthier to go to California." Hugh glanced suspiciously at a billy goat which had been following them on their right along the gra.s.s margin between the road and a wire fence, and which now stood there motionless, regarding them with patriarchal contempt. "No, they're the lowest form of animal life, except possibly--look out!--my G.o.d, I knew it--" The goat had charged and Hugh felt the sudden intoxicating terrified incidence and warmth of Yvonne's body as the animal missed them, skidded, slithered round the abrupt leftward bend the road took at this point over a low stone bridge, and disappeared beyond up a hill, furiously trailing its tether. "Goats," he said, twisting Yvonne firmly out of his arms. "Even when there are no wars think of the damage they do," he went on, through something nervous, mutually dependent still, about their mirth. "I mean journalists, not goats. There's no punishment on earth fit for them. Only the Malebolge... And here is the Malebolge."

The Malebolge was the barranca, the ravine which wound through the country, narrow here--but its momentousness successfully prescinded their minds from the goat. The little stone bridge on which they stood crossed it. Trees, their tops below them, grew down into the gulch, their foliage partly obscuring the terrific drop. From the bottom came a faint chuckling of water.

"This ought to be about the place, if Alcapancingo's over there," Hugh said, "where Bernal Diaz and his Tlaxcalans got across to beat up Quauhnahuac. Superb name for a dance-band: Bernal Diaz and his Tlaxcalans... Or didn't you get around to Prescott at the University of Hawaii?"

"Mm hm," Yvonne said, meaning yes or no to the meaningless question, and peering down the ravine with a shudder.

"I understand it made even old Diaz's head swim."

"I shouldn't wonder."

"You can't see them, but it's chock full of defunct newspapermen, still spying through keyholes and persuading themselves they're acting in the best interests of democracy. But I'd forgotten you didn't read the papers. Eh?" Hugh laughed. "Journalism equals intellectual male prost.i.tution of speech and writing, Yvonne. That's one point on which I'm in complete agreement with Spengler. Hullo." Hugh looked up suddenly at a sound, unpleasantly familiar, as of a thousand carpets being simultaneously beaten in the distance: the uproar, seeming to emanate from the direction of the volcanoes, which had almost imperceptibly come into view on the horizon, was followed presently by the prolonged tw.a.n.g-piiing of its echo.

"Target practice," Yvonne said. "They're at it again."

Parachutes of smoke were drifting over the mountains; they watched a minute in silence. Hugh sighed and started to roll a cigarette.

"I had an English friend fighting in Spain, and if he's dead I expect he's still there." Hugh licked the fold of paper, sealed it and lit it, the cigarette drawing hot and fast. "As a matter of fact he was reported dead twice but he turned up again the last two times. He was there in thirty-six. While they were waiting for Franco to attack he lay with his machine-gun in the library at University City reading De Quincey, whom he hadn't read before. I may be exaggerating about the machine-gun though: I don't think they had one between them. He was a Communist and approximately the best man I've ever met. He had a taste for Vin Rose d'Anjou. He also had a dog named Harpo, back in London. You probably wouldn't have expected a Communist to have a dog named Harpo--or would you?"

"Or would you?"

Hugh put one foot up on the parapet and regarded his cigarette that seemed bent, like humanity, on consuming itself as quickly as possible.

"I had another friend who went to China, but didn't know what to make of that, or they didn't of him, so he went to Spain too as a volunteer. He was killed by a stray sh.e.l.l before seeing any action at all. Both these fellows had perfectly good lives at home. They hadn't robbed the bank." He was lamely silent.

"Of course we left Spain about a year before it started, but Geoffrey used to say there was far too much sentiment about this whole business of going to die for the Loyalists. In fact, he said he thought it would be much better if the Fascists just won and got it over with--"

"He has a new line now. He says when the Fascists win there'll only be a sort of 'freezing' of culture in Spain--by the way, is that the moon up there?--well, freezing anyway. Which will presumably thaw at some future date when it will be discovered, if you please, simply to have been in a state of suspended animation. I dare say it's true as far as that goes. Incidentally, did you know I was in Spain?"

"No," Yvonne said, startled.

"Oh yes. I fell out of an ambulance there with only two dozen beer bottles and five journalists on top of me, all heading for Paris. That wasn't so very long after I last saw you. The thing was, just as the Madrid show was really getting under way, as it turned out, it seemed all up, so the Globe told me to beat it... And like a heel I went, though they sent me back again afterwards for a time. I didn't go to China until after Brihuega."

Yvonne gave him an odd look, then said: "Hugh, you're not thinking of going back to Spain now are you, by any chance?"

Hugh shook his head, laughing: he meticulously dropped his ravaged cigarette down the ravine. "Cui bono? To stand in for the n.o.ble army of pimps and experts, who've already gone home to practise the little sneers with which they propose to discredit the whole thing--the first moment it becomes fas.h.i.+onable not to be a Communist fence. No, muchas gracias. And I'm completely through with newspaper work, it isn't a pose." Hugh put his thumbs under his belt. "So--since they got the Internationals out five weeks ago, on the twenty-eighth of September to be precise--two days before Chamberlain went to G.o.desberg and neatly crimped the Ebro offensive--and with half the last bunch of volunteers still rotting in goal in Perpignan, how do you suppose one could get in anyway, at this late date?"

"Then what did Geoffrey mean by saying that you 'wanted action' and all that?... And what's this mysterious other purpose you came down here for?"

"It's really rather tedious," Hugh answered. "As a matter of fact I'm going back to sea for a while. If all goes well I'll be sailing from Vera Cruz in about a week. As quartermaster, you knew I had an A.B.'s ticket didn't you? Well, I might have got a s.h.i.+p in Galveston but it's not so easy as it used to be. Anyway it'll be more amusing to sail from Vera Cruz. Havana, perhaps Na.s.sau and then, you know, down to the West Indies and So Paulo. I've always wanted to take a look at Trinidad--might be some real fun coming out of Trinidad one day. Geoff helped me with a couple of introductions but no more than that, I didn't want to make him responsible. No, I'm merely fed to the teeth with myself, that's all. Try persuading the world not to cut its throat for half a decade or more, like me, under one name or another, and it'll begin to dawn on you that even your behaviour's part of its plan. I ask you, what do we know?"

And Hugh thought: the S.S. Noemijolea , 6,000 tons, leaving Vera Cruz on the night of 13-14 (?) November 1938, with antimony and coffee, bound for Freetown, British West Africa, will proceed thither, oddly enough, from Tzuc.o.x on the Yucatan coast, and also in a north-easterly direction: in spite of which she will still emerge through the pa.s.sages named Windward and Crooked into the Atlantic Ocean: where after many days out of sight of land she will make eventually the mountainous landfall of Madeira: whence, avoiding Port Lyautey and carefully keeping her destination in Sierra Leone some 1,800 miles to the south-east, she will pa.s.s, with luck, through the straits of Gibraltar. Whence again, negotiating, it is profoundly to be hoped, Franco's blockade, she will proceed with the utmost caution into the Mediterranean Sea, leaving first Cape de Gata, then Cape de Palos, then Cape de la Nao, well aft: thence, the Pityusae Isles sighted, she will roll through the Gulf of Valencia and so northwards past Carlos de la Rapita, and the mouth of the Ebro until the rocky Garraf coast looms abaft the beam where finally, still rolling, at Vallcara, twenty miles south of Barcelona, she will discharge her cargo of T.N.T. for the hard-pressed Loyalist armies and probably be blown to smithereens-- Yvonne was staring down the barranca, her hair hanging over her face: "I know Geoff sounds pretty foul sometimes," she was saying, "but there's one point where I do agree with him, these romantic notions about the International Brigade--"

But Hugh was standing at the wheel: Potato Firmin or Columbus in reverse: below him the foredeck of the Noemijolea lay over in the blue trough and spray slowly exploded through the lee scuppers into the eyes of the seaman chipping a winch: on the forecastle head the look-out echoed one bell, struck by Hugh a moment before, and the seaman gathered up his tools: Hugh's heart was lifting with the s.h.i.+p, he was aware that the officer on duty had changed from white to blue for winter but at the same time of exhilaration, the limitless purification of the sea-- Yvonne flung back her hair impatiently and stood up. "If they'd stayed out of it the war would have been over long ago!"

"Well, there ain't no brigade no mo," Hugh said absently, for it was not a s.h.i.+p he was steering now, but the world, out of the Western Ocean of its misery. "If the paths of glory lead but to the grave--I once made such an excursion into poetry--then Spain's the grave where England's glory led."

"Fiddlesticks!"

Hugh suddenly laughed, not loud, probably at nothing at all: he straightened himself with a swift movement and jumped on the parapet.

"Hugh!"

"My G.o.d! Horses," Hugh said, glancing and stretching himself to his full mental height of six feet two (he was five feet eleven).

"Where?"

He was pointing. "Over there."

"Of course," Yvonne said slowly, "I'd forgotten--they belong to the Casino de la Selva: they put them out there to pasture or something. If we go up the hill a ways we'll come to the place--"

... On a gentle slope to their left now, colts with glossy coats were rolling in the gra.s.s. They turned off the Calle Nicaragua along a narrow shady lane leading down one side of the paddock. The stables were part of what appeared to be a model dairy farm. It stretched away behind the stables on level ground where tall English-looking trees lined either side of a gra.s.sy wheel-rutted avenue. In the distance a few rather large cows, which, however, like Texas longhorns, bore a disturbing resemblance to stags (you've got your cattle again, I see, Yvonne said) were lying under the trees. A row of s.h.i.+ning milkpails stood outside the stables in the sun. A sweet smell of milk and vanilla and wild flowers hung about the quiet place. And the sun was over all.

"Isn't it an adorable farm?" Yvonne said. "I believe it's some government experiment. I'd love to have a farm like that."

"--perhaps you'd like to hire a couple of those greater kudus over there instead?"

Their horses proved two pesos an hour apiece. "Muy correcto," the stable boy's dark eyes flashed good-humouredly at Hugh's boots as he turned swiftly to adjust Yvonne's deep leather stirrups. Hugh didn't know why, but this lad reminded him of how, in Mexico City, if you stand at a certain place on the Paseo de la Reforma in the early morning, suddenly everyone in sight will seem to be running, laughing, to work, in the sunlight, past the statue of Pasteur... "Muy incorrecto," Yvonne surveyed her slacks: she swung, swung twice into the saddle. "We've never ridden together before, have we?" She leaned forward to pat her mare's neck as they swayed forward.

They ambled up the lane, accompanied by two foals, which had followed their mothers out of the paddock, and an affectionate scrubbed woolly white dog belonging to the farm. After a while the lane branched off into a main road. They seemed to be in Alcapancingo itself, a sort of straggling suburb. The watchtower, nearer, taller, bloomed above a wood, through which they just made out the high prison walls. On the other side, to their left, Geoffrey's house came in sight, almost a bird's-eye view, the bungalow crouching, very tiny, before the trees, the long garden below descending steeply, parallel with which on different levels obliquely climbing the hill, all the other gardens of the contiguous residences, each with its cobalt oblong of swimming-pool, also descended steeply towards the barranca, the land sweeping away at the top of the Calle Nicaragua back up to the pre-eminence of Cortez Palace. Could that white dot down there be Geoffrey himself? Possibly to avoid coming to a place where, by the entrance to the public garden, they must be almost directly opposite the house, they trotted into another lane that inclined to their right. Hugh was pleased to see that Yvonne rode cowboy-fas.h.i.+on, jammed to the saddle, and not, as Juan Cerillo put it, "as in gardens." The prison was now behind them and he imagined themselves jogging into enormous focus for the inquisitive binoculars up there on the watchtower; "Guapa," one policeman would say. "Ah, muy hermosa," another might call, delighted with Yvonne and smacking his lips. The world was always within the binoculars of the police. Meantime the foals, which perhaps were not fully aware that a road was a means of getting somewhere and not, like a field, something to roll on or eat, kept straying into the undergrowth on either hand. Then the mares whinnied after them anxiously and they scrambled back again. Presently the mares grew tired of whinnying, so in a way he had learned Hugh whistled instead. He had pledged himself to guard the foals but actually the dog was guarding all of them. Evidently trained to detect snakes, he would run ahead then double back to make sure all were safe before loping on once more. Hugh watched him a moment. It was certainly hard to reconcile this dog with the pariahs one saw in town, those dreadful creatures that seemed to shadow his brother everywhere.

"You do sound astonis.h.i.+ngly like a horse," Yvonne said suddenly. "Wherever did you learn that?"

"Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wheeee-u," Hugh whistled again. "In Texas." Why had he said Texas? He had learned the trick in Spain, from Juan Cerillo. Hugh took off his jacket and laid it across the horse's withers in front of the saddle. Turning round as the foals came obediently plunging out of the bushes he added: "It's the wheee-u that does it. The dying fall of the whinny." They pa.s.sed the goat, two fierce cornucopias over a hedge. There could be no mistaking it. Laughing they tried to decide if it had turned off the Calle Nicaragua at the other lane or at its juncture with the Alcapancingo road. The goat was cropping at the edge of a field and lifted towards them, now, a Machiavellian eye, but did not move farther, watching them. I may have missed that time. I am still on the warpath however. The new lane, peaceful, quite shady, deep-rutted, and despite the dry spell full of pools, beautifully reflecting the sky, wandered on between clumps of trees and broken hedges screening indeterminate fields, and now it was as though they were a company, a caravan, carrying, for their greater security, a little world of love with them as they rode along. Earlier it had promised to be too hot: but just enough sun warmed them, a soft breeze caressed their faces, the countryside on either hand smiled upon them with deceptive innocence, a drowsy hum rose up from the morning, the mares nodded, there were the foals, here was the dog, and it is all a b.l.o.o.d.y lie, he thought: we have fallen inevitably into it, it is as if, upon this one day in the year, the dead come to life, or so one was reliably informed on the bus, this day of visions and miracles, by some contrariety we have been allowed for one hour a glimpse of what never was at all, of what never can be since brotherhood was betrayed, the image of our happiness, of that it would be better to think could not have been. Another thought struck Hugh. And yet I do not expect, ever in my life, to be happier than I am now. No peace I shall ever find but will be poisoned as these moments are poisoned-- "Firmin, you are a poor sort of good man." The voice might have come from an imaginary member of their caravan, and Hugh pictured Juan Cerillo distinctly now, tall, and riding a horse much too small for him, without stirrups, so that his feet nearly touched the ground, his wide ribboned hat on the back of his head, and a typewriter in a box slung around his neck resting on the pommel; in one free hand he held a bag of money, and a boy was running along beside him in the dust. Juan Cerillo! He had been one of the fairly rare overt human symbols in Spain of the generous help Mexico had actually given; he had returned home before Brihuega. Trained as a chemist, he worked for a Credit Bank in Oaxaca with the Ejido, delivering money on horseback to finance the collective effort of remote Zapotecan villages; frequently beset by bandits murderously yelling Viva el Cristo Rey, shot at by enemies of Cardenas in reverberating church towers, his daily job was equally an adventure in a human cause, which Hugh had been invited to share. For Juan had written, express, his letter in a bravely stamped envelope of thumbnail size--the stamps showed archers shooting at the sun--written that he was well, back at work, less than a hundred miles away, and now as each glimpse of the mysterious mountains seemed to mourn this opportunity lost to Geoff and the Noemijolea , Hugh seemed to hear his good friend rebuking him. It was the same plangent voice that had said once, in Spain, of his horse left in Cuscatlan: "My poor horse, she will be biting, biting all the time." But now it spoke of the Mexico of Juan's childhood, of the year Hugh was born. Juarez had lived and died. Yet was it a country with free speech, and the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? A country of brilliantly muralled schools, and where even each little cold mountain village had its stone open-air stage, and the land was owned by its people free to express their native genius? A country of model farms; of hope?--It was a country of slavery, where human beings were sold like cattle, and its native peoples, the Yaquis, the Papagos, the Tomasachics, exterminated through deportation, or reduced to worse than peonage, their lands in thrall or the hands of foreigners. And in Oaxaca lay the terrible Valle Nacional where Juan himself, a bona-fide slave aged seven, had seen an older brother beaten to death, and another, bought for forty-five pesos, starved to death in seven months, because it was cheaper this should happen, and the slave-holder buy another slave, than simply have one slave better fed merely worked to death in a year. All this spelt Porfirio Diaz: rurales everywhere, jefes politicos, and murder, the extirpation of liberal political inst.i.tutions, the army an engine of ma.s.sacre, an instrument of exile. Juan knew this, having suffered it; and more. For later in the revolution, his mother was murdered. And later still Juan himself killed his father, who had fought with Huerta, but turned traitor. Ah, guilt and sorrow had dogged Juan's footsteps too, for he was not a Catholic who could rise refreshed from the cold bath of confession. Yet the ba.n.a.lity stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future. For man, every man, Juan seemed to be telling him, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle upward. What was life but a warfare and a stranger's sojourn? Revolution rages too in the tierra caliente of each human soul. No peace but that must pay full toll to h.e.l.l-- "Is that so?"

"Is that so?"

They were all plodding downhill towards a river--even the dog, lulled in a woolly soliloquy, was plodding--and now they were in it, the first cautious heavy step forward, then the hesitation, then the surging onward, the lurching surefootedness below one that was yet so delicate there derived a certain sensation of lightness, as if the mare were swimming, or floating through the air, bearing one across with the divine surety of a Cristoferus, rather than by fallible instinct. The dog swam ahead, fatuously important; the foals, nodding solemnly, swayed along behind up to their necks: sunlight sparkled on the calm water, which further downstream where the river narrowed broke into furious little waves, swirling and eddying close insh.o.r.e against black rocks, giving an effect of wildness, almost of rapids; low over their heads an ecstatic lightning of strange birds manoeuvred, looping-the-loop and immelmaning at unbelievable speed, aerobatic as new-born dragon-flies. The opposite sh.o.r.e was thickly wooded. Beyond the gently sloping bank, a little to the left of what was apparently the cavernous entrance to the continuation of their lane, stood a pulqueria, decorated, above its wooden twin swing-doors (which from a distance looked not unlike the immensely magnificent chevrons of an American army sergeant), with gaily coloured fluttering ribbons. Pulques Finos, it said in faded blue letters on the oyster-white adobe wall: La Sepultura. A grim name: but doubtless it had some humorous connotation. An Indian sat with his back against the wall, his broad hat half down over his face, rested outside in the suns.h.i.+ne. His horse, or a horse, was tethered near him to a tree and Hugh could see from midstream the number seven branded on its rump. An advertis.e.m.e.nt for the local cinema was stuck on the tree: Las Manos de Orlac con Peter Lorre. On the roof of the pulqueria a toy windmill, of the kind one saw in Cape Cod, Ma.s.sachusetts, was twirling restlessly in the breeze. Hugh said: "Your horse doesn't want to drink, Yvonne, just to look at her reflection. Let her. Don't yank at her head."

"I wasn't. I know that too," Yvonne said, with an ironic little smile.

They zigzagged slowly across the river; the dog, swimming like an otter, had almost reached the opposite bank. Hugh became aware of a question in the air.

"--you're our house guest, you know."

"Por favor." Hugh inclined his head.

"--would you like to have dinner out and go to a movie? Or will you brave Concepta's cooking?"

"What what?" Hugh had been thinking, for some reason, of his first week at his public school in England, a week of not knowing what one was supposed to do or to answer to any question, but of being carried on by a sort of pressure of shared ignorance into crowded halls, activities, marathons, even exclusive isolations, as when he had found himself once riding on horseback with the headmaster's wife, a reward, he was told, but for what he had never found out. "No, I think I should hate to go to a movie, thank you very much," he laughed.

"It's a strange little place--you might find it fun. The news-reels used to be about two years old and I shouldn't think it's changed any. And the same features come back over and over again. Cimarron and the Gold Diggers of 1930 and oh--last year we saw a travelogue, Come to Sunny Andalusia by way of news from Spain--"

"Blimey," Hugh said.

"And the lighting is always failing."

"I think I've seen the Peter Lorre movie somewhere. He's a great actor but it's a lousy picture. Your horse doesn't want to drink, Yvonne. It's all about a pianist who has a sense of guilt because he thinks his hands are a murderer's or something and keeps was.h.i.+ng the blood off them. Perhaps they really are a murderer's, but I forget."

"It sounds creepy."

"I know, but it isn't."

On the other side of the river their horses did want to drink and they paused to let them. Then they rode up the bank into the lane. This time the hedges were taller and thicker and twined with convolvulus. For that matter they might have been in England, exploring some little-known bypath of Devon or Ches.h.i.+re. There was little to contradict the impression save an occasional huddled conclave of vultures up a tree. After climbing steeply through woodland the lane levelled off. Presently they reached more open country and fell into a canter.--Christ, how marvellous this was, or rather Christ, how he wanted to be deceived about it, as must have Judas, he thought--and here it was again, d.a.m.n it--if ever Judas had a horse, or borrowed, stole one more likely, after that Madrugada of all Madrugadas, regretting then that he had given the thirty pieces of silver back--what is that to us, see thou to that, the b.a.s.t.a.r.dos had said--when now he probably wanted a drink, thirty drinks (like Geoff undoubtedly would this morning), and perhaps even so he had managed a few on credit, smelling the good smells of leather and sweat, listening to the pleasant clopping of the horses' hooves and thinking, how joyous all this could be, riding on like this under the dazzling sky of Jerusalem--and forgetting for an instant, so that it really was joyous--how splendid it all might be had I only not betrayed that man last night, even though I know perfectly well I was going to, how good indeed, if only it had not happened though, if only it were not so absolutely necessary to go out and hang oneself-- And here indeed it was again, the temptation, the cowardly, the future-corruptive serpent: trample on it, stupid fool. Be Mexico. Have you not pa.s.sed through the river? In the name of G.o.d be dead. And Hugh actually did ride over a dead garter snake, embossed on the path like a belt to a pair of bathing trunks. Or perhaps it was a Gila monster.

They had emerged on the outermost edge of what looked like a s.p.a.cious, somewhat neglected park, spreading down on their right, or what had once been a huge grove, planted with lofty majestic trees. They reined in and Hugh, behind, rode slowly by himself for a while... The foals separated him from Yvonne, who was staring blankly ahead as if insensible to their surroundings. The grove seemed to be irrigated by artificially banked streams, which were choked with leaves--though by no means all the trees were deciduous and underneath were frequent dark pools of shadow--and was lined with walks. Their lane had in fact become one of these walks. A noise of shunting sounded on the left; the station couldn't be far off; probably it was hidden behind that hillock over which hung a plume of white steam. But a railway track, raised above scrub-land, gleamed through the trees to their right; the line apparently made a wide detour round the whole place. They rode past a dried-up fountain below some broken steps, its basin filled with twigs and leaves. Hugh sniffed: a strong raw smell, he couldn't identify at first, pervaded the air. They were entering the vague precincts of what might have been a French chateau. The building, half hidden by trees, lay in a sort of courtyard at the end of the grove, which was closed by a row of cypresses growing behind a high wall, in which a ma.s.sive gate, straight ahead of them, stood open. Dust was blowing across the gap. Cerveceria Quauhnahuac: Hugh now saw written in white letters on the side of the chateau. He halloed and waved at Yvonne to halt. So the chateau was a brewery, but of a very odd type--one that hadn't quite made up its mind not to be an open-air restaurant and beer garden. Outside in the courtyard two or three round tables (more likely to provide against the occasional visits of semi-official "tasters"), blackened and leaf covered, were set beneath immense trees not quite familiar enough for oaks, not quite strangely tropical either, which were perhaps not really very old, but possessed an indefinable air of being immemorial, of having been planted centuries ago by some emperor, at least, with a golden trowel. Under these trees, where their cavalcade stopped, a little girl was playing with an armadillo.

Out of the brewery itself, which at close quarters appeared quite different, more like a mill, sliced, oblong, which emitted a sudden mill-like clamour, and on which flitted and slid mill-wheel-like reflections of sunlight on water, cast from a nearby stream, out of a glimpse of its very machinery, now issued a pied man, visored, resembling a gamekeeper, bearing two foaming tankards of dark German beer. They had not dismounted and he handed the beer up to them.

"G.o.d, that's cold," Hugh said, "good though." The beer had a piercing taste, half metallic, half earthy, like distilled loam. It was so cold that it hurt.

"Buenos dias, muchacha!" Yvonne, tankard in hand, was smiling down at the child with the armadillo. The gamekeeper vanished through an ostiole back into the machinery; closing away its clamour from them, as might an engineer on s.h.i.+pboard. The child was crouching on her haunches holding the armadillo and apprehensively eyeing the dog, who however lay at a safe distance watching the foals inspect the rear of the plant. Each time the armadillo ran off, as if on tiny wheels, the little girl would catch it by its long whip of a tail and turn it over. How astonis.h.i.+ngly soft and helpless it appeared then! Now she righted the creature and set it going once more, some engine of destruction perhaps that after millions of years had come to this."Cuanto?" Yvonne asked. .

Catching the animal again the child piped: "Cincuenta centavos?"

"You don't really want it, do you?" Hugh--like General Winfield Scott, he thought privately, after emerging from the ravines of the Cerro Gordo--was sitting with one leg athwart the pommel. Yvonne nodded in jest: "I'd adore it. It's perfectly sweet." "You couldn't make a pet of it. Neither can the kid: that's why she wants to sell it." Hugh sipped his beer. "I know about armadillos."

"Oh so do I!" Yvonne shook her head mockingly, opening her eyes very wide. "But everything!"

"Then you know that if you let the thing loose in your garden it'll merely tunnel down into the ground and never come back."

Yvonne was still half-mockingly shaking her head, her eyes wide. "Isn't he a darling?"

Hugh swung his leg back and sat now with his tankard propped on the pommel looking down at the creature with its big mischievous nose, iguana's tail, and helpless speckled belly, a Martian infant's toy. "No, muchas gracias," he said firmly to the little girl who, indifferent, did not retreat. "It'll not only never come back, Yvonne, but if you try to stop it it will do its d.a.m.nedest to pull you down the hole too." He turned to her, eyebrows raised, and for a time they watched each other in silence. "As your friend W. H. Hudson, I think it was, found out to his cost," Hugh added. A leaf fell off a tree somewhere behind them with a crash, like a sudden footstep. Hugh drank a long cold draught. "Yvonne," he said, "do you mind if I ask you straight out if you are divorced from Geoff or not?"

Yvonne choked on her beer; she wasn't holding the reins at all, which were looped round her pommel, and her horse gave a small lurch forward, then halted before Hugh had time to reach for the bridle.

"Do you mean to go back to him or what? Or have you already gone back?" Hugh's mare had also taken a sympathetic step forward. "Forgive my being so blunt, but I feel in a horribly false position.--I'd like to know precisely what the situation is."