“ Mescal ,” the Consul said, almost absentmindedly. What had he said? Never mind. Nothing less than mescal would do. But it mustn’t be a serious mescal, he persuaded himself. “No, Señor Cervantes,” he whispered, “mescal, poquito.”

Nevertheless, the Consul thought, it was not merely that he shouldn’t have, not merely that, no, it was more as if he had lost or missed something, or rather, not precisely lost, not necessarily missed.—It was as if, more, he were waiting for something, and then again, not waiting.—It was as if, almost, he stood (instead of upon the threshold of the Salón Ofélia, gazing at the calm pool where Yvonne and Hugh were about to swim) once more upon that black open station platform, with the cornflowers and meadowsweet growing on the far side, where after drinking all night he had gone to meet Lee Maitland returning from Virginia at 7:40 in the morning, gone, light-headed, light-footed, and in that state of being where Baudelaire’s angel indeed wakes, desiring to meet trains perhaps, but to meet no trains that stop, for in the angel’s mind are no trains that stop, and from such trains none descends, not even another angel, not even a fair-haired one, like Lee Maitland.—Was the train late? Why was he pacing the platform? Was it the second or third train from Suspension Bridge— Suspension! —the Station Master had said would be her train? What had the porter said? Could she be on this train? Who was she? It was impossible that Lee Maitland could be on any such train. And besides, all these trains were expresses. The railway lines went into the far distance uphill. A lone bird flapped across the lines far away. To the right of the level-crossing, at a little distance, stood a tree like a green exploding sea-mine, frozen. The dehydrated onion factory by the sidings awoke, then the coal companies. It’s a black business but we use you white: Daemon’s Coal . . . A delicious smell of onion soup in sidestreets of Vavin impregnated the early morning. Grimed sweeps at hand trundled barrows, or were screening coal. Rows of dead lamps like erect snakes poised to strike along the platform. On the other side were cornflowers, dandelions, a garbage-can like a brazier blazing furiously all by itself among meadowsweet. The morning grew hot. And now, one after one, the terrible trains appeared on top of the raised horizon, shimmering now, in mirage: first the distant wail, then, the frightful spouting and spindling of black smoke, a sourceless towering pillar, motionless, then a round hull, as if not on the lines, as if going the other way, or as if stopping, as if not stopping, or as if slipping away over the fields, as if stopping; oh God, not stopping; downhill: clipperty-one clipperty-one: clipperty-two clipperty-two: clipperty-three clipperty-three: clipperty-four clipperty-four : alas, thank God, not stopping, and the lines shaking, the station flying, the coal dust, black bituminous: lickety-cut lickety-cut lickety-cut : and then another train, clipperty-one clipperty-one , coming in the other direction, swaying, whizzing, two feet above the lines, flying, clipperty-two , with one light burning against the morning, clipperty-three clipperty-three, a single useless strange eye, red-gold: trains, trains, trains, each driven by a banshee playing a shrieking nose-organ in D Minor; lickety-cut lickety-cut lickety-cut . But not his train; and not her train. Still, the train would come doubtless—had the Station Master said the third or fourth train from which way? Which was north, west? And, anyhow, whose north, whose west? . . . And he must pick flowers to greet the angel, the fair Virginian descending from the train. But the embankment flowers would not pick, spurting sap, sticky, the flowers were on the wrong end of the stalks (and he on the wrong side of the tracks), he nearly fell into the brazier, the cornflowers grew in the middle of their stalks, the stalks of meadowsweet—or was it queen’s lace?—were too long, his bouquet was a failure. And how to get back across the tracks—here was a train now coming in the wrong direction again, clipperty-one clipperty-one, the lines unreal, not there, walking on air; or rails that did lead somewhere, to unreal life, or, perhaps, Hamilton, Ontario.—Fool, he was trying to walk along a single line, like a boy on the curb: clipperty-two clipperty-two: clipperty-three clipperty-three: clipperty-four clipperty-four : clipperty-five clipperty-five : clipperty-six clipperty-six : clipperty-seven ; clipperty-seven—trains, trains, trains, trains, converging upon him from all sides of the horizon, each wailing for its demon lover. Life had no time to waste. Why, then, should it waste so much of everything else? With the dead cornflowers before him, at evening—the next moment—the Consul sat in the station tavern with a man who’d just tried to sell him three loose teeth. Was it to-morrow he was supposed to meet the train? What had the Station Master said? Had that been Lee Maitland herself waving at him frantically from the express? And who had flung the soiled bundle of tissue papers out of the window? What had he lost? Why was that idiot sitting there, in a dirty grey suit, and trousers baggy at the knees, with one bicycle clip, in his long, long baggy grey jacket, and grey cloth cap, and brown boots, with his thick fleshy grey face, from which three upper teeth, perhaps the very three teeth, were missing, all on one side, and thick neck, saying, every few minutes to anyone who came in: “I’m watching you.” “I can see you . . .” “You won’t escape me.”—“If you only kept quiet, Claus, no one’d know you were crazy.” . . . That was the time too, in the storm country, when “the lightning is peeling the poles, Mr. Firmin, and biting the wires, sir—you can taste it afterwards too, in the water, pure sulphur,”—that at four o’clock each afternoon, preceded, out of the adjacent cemetery, by the gravedigger—sweating, heavy-footed, bowed, long-jawed and trembling, and carrying his special tools of death—he would come to this same tavern to meet Mr. Quattras, the Negro bookie from Codrington, in the Barbados. “I’m a race-track man and I was brought up with whites, so the blacks don’t like me.” Mr. Quattras, grinning and sad, feared deportation . . . But that battle against death had been won. And he had saved Mr. Quattras. That very night, had it been?—with a heart like a cold brazier standing by a railway platform among meadowsweet wet with dew: they are beautiful and terrifying, these shadows of cars that sweep down fences, and sweep zebra-like across the grass path in the avenue of dark oaks under the moon: a single shadow, like an umbrella on rails, travelling down a picket fence; portents of doom, of the heart failing . . . Gone. Eaten up in reverse by night. And the moon gone. C’etait pendant l’horreur d’une profonde nuit. And the deserted cemetery in the starlight, forsaken by the gravedigger, drunk now, wandering home across the fields—“I can dig a grave in three hours if they’ll let me,”—the cemetery in the dappled moonlight of a single street lamp, the deep thick grass, the towering obelisk lost in the Milky Way. Jull, it said on the monument. What had the Station Master said? The dead. Do they sleep? Why should they, when we cannot. Mais tout dort, et l’armée, et les vents, et Neptune. And he had placed the poor ragged cornflowers reverently on a neglected grave . . . That was Oakville.—But Oaxaca or Oakville, what difference? Or between a tavern that opened at four o’clock in the afternoon, and one that opened (save on holidays) at four o’clock in the morning? . . . “ I ain’t telling you the word of a lie but once I had a whole vault dug up for $100 and sent to Cleveland! ”

A corpse will be transported by express . . .

Oozing alcohol from every pore, the Consul stood at the open door of the Salón Ofélia. How sensible to have had a mescal. How sensible! For it was the right, the sole drink to have under the circumstances. Moreover he had not only proved to himself he was not afraid of it, he was now fully awake, fully sober again, and well able to cope with anything that might come his way. But for this slight continual twitching and hopping within his field of vision, as of innumerable sand fleas, he might have told himself he hadn’t had a drink for months. The only thing wrong with him, he was too hot.

A natural waterfall crashing down into a sort of reservoir built on two levels—he found the sight less cooling than grotesquely suggestive of some agonised ultimate sweat; the lower level made a pool where Hugh and Yvonne were still not yet swimming. The water on the turbulent upper level raced over an artificial falls beyond which, becoming a swift stream, it wound through thick jungle to spill down a much larger natural cascada out of sight. After that it dispersed, he recalled, lost its identity, dribbled, at various places, into the barranca. A path followed the stream through the jungle and at one place another path branched off to the right which went to Parián: and the Farolito. Though the first path led you to rich cantina country too. God knows why. Once, perhaps, in hacienda days, Tomalín had held some irrigational importance. Then, after the burning of the sugar plantations, schemes, cleavable and lustrous, evolved for a spa, were abandoned sulphurously. Later, vague dreams of hydro-electric power hovered in the air, though nothing had been done about them. Parián was an even greater mystery. Originally settled by a scattering of those fierce forbears of Cervantes who had succeeded in making Mexico great even in her betrayal, the traitorous Tlaxcalans, the nominal capital of the state had been quite eclipsed by Quauhnahuac since the revolution, and while still an obscure administrative centre, no one had ever adequately explained its continued existence to him. One met people going there; few, now he thought about it, ever coming back. Of course they’d come back, he had himself: there was an explanation. But why didn’t a bus run there, or only grudgingly, and by a strange route? The Consul started.

Near him lurked some hooded photographers. They were waiting by their tattered machines for the bathers to leave their boxes. Now two girls were squealing as they came down to the water in their ancient, hired costumes. Their escorts swaggered along a grey parapet dividing the pool from the rapids above, obviously deciding not to dive in, pointing for excuse up at a ladderless springboard, derelict, like some forgotten victim of tidal catastrophe, in a weeping pepper tree. After a time they rushed howling down a concrete incline into the pool. The girls bridled, but waded in after, tittering. Nervous gusts agitated the surface of the baths. Magenta clouds piled higher against the horizon, though overhead the sky remained clear.

Hugh and Yvonne appeared, grotesquely costumed. They stood laughing on the brink of the pool—shivering, though the horizontal rays of the sun lay on them all with solid heat.

The photographers took photographs.

“Why,” Yvonne called out, “this is like the Horseshoe Falls in Wales.”

“Or Niagara,” observed the Consul, “circa 1900. What about a trip on the Maid of the Mist, seventy-five cents with oilskins.”

Hugh turned round gingerly, hands on knees.

“Yeah. To where the rainbow ends.”

“The Cave of the Winds. The Cascada Sagrada.”

There were, in fact, rainbows. Though without them the mescal (which Yvonne couldn’t of course have noticed) would have already invested the place with a magic. The magic was of Niagara Falls itself, not its elemental majesty, the honeymoon town; in a sweet, tawdry, even hoydenish sense of love that haunted this nostalgic spray-blown spot. But now the mescal struck a discord, then a succession of plaintive discords to which the drifting mists all seemed to be dancing, through the elusive subtleties of ribboned light, among the detached shreds of rainbows floating. It was a phantom dance of souls, baffled by these deceptive blends, yet still seeking permanence in the midst of what was only perpetually evanescent, or eternally lost. Or it was a dance of the seeker and his goal, here pursuing still the gay colours he did not know he had assumed, there striving to identify the finer scene of which he might never realise he was already a part . . .

Dark coils of shadows lay in the deserted barroom. They sprang at him. “Otro mescalito. Un poquito.” The voice seemed to come from above the counter where two wild yellow eyes pierced the gloom. The scarlet comb, the wattles, then the bronze green metallic feathers of some fowl standing on the bar, materialised, and Cervantes, rising playfully from behind it, greeted him with Tlaxcaltecan pleasure: “Muy fuerte. Muy terreebly,” he cackled.

Was this the face that launched five hundred ships, and betrayed Christ into being in the Western Hemisphere? But the bird appeared tame enough. Half past tree by the cock, that other fellow had said. And here was the cock. It was a fighting cock. Cervantes was training it for a fight in Tlaxcala, but the Consul couldn’t be interested. Cervantes’ cockerels always lost—he’d attended drunkenly one session in Cuautla; the vicious little man-made battles, cruel and destructive, yet somehow bedraggledly inconclusive, each brief as some hideously mismanaged act of intercourse, disgusted and bored him. Cervantes took the cock away. “Un bruto,” he added.

The subdued roar of the falls filled the room like a ship’s engine . . . Eternity . . . The Consul, cooler, leaned on the bar, staring into his second glass of the colorless ether-smelling liquid. To drink or not to drink.—But without mescal, he imagined, he had forgotten eternity, forgotten their world’s voyage, that the earth was a ship, lashed by the Horn’s tail, doomed never to make her Valparaiso. Or that it was like a golf ball, launched at Hercules’ Butterfly, wildly hooked by a giant out of an asylum window in hell. Or that it was a bus, making its erratic journey to Tomalín and nothing. Or that it was like—whatever it would be shortly, after the next mescal.

Still, there had not yet been a “next” mescal. The Consul stood, his hand as if part of the glass, listening, remembering . . . Suddenly he heard, above the roar, the clear sweet voices of the young Mexicans outside: the voice of Yvonne too, clear, intolerable—and different, after the first mescal—shortly to be lost.

Why lost? . . . The voices were as if confused now with the blinding torrent of sunlight which poured across the open doorway, turning the scarlet flowers along the path into flaming swords. Even almost bad poetry is better than life, the muddle of voices might have been saying, as, now, he drank half his drink.

The Consul was aware of another roaring, though it came from inside his head: clipperty-one : the American Express, swaying, bears the corpse through the green meadows. What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse? The soul! Ah, and did she not too have her savage and traitorous Tlaxcalans, her Cortez and her noches tristes, and, sitting within her innermost citadel in chains, drinking chocolate, her pale Moctezuma?

The roaring rose, died away, rose again; guitar chords mingled with the shouting of many voices, calling, chanting, like native women in Kashmir, pleading, above the noise of the maelstrom: “Borrrrraaacho,” they wailed. And the dark room with its flashing doorway rocked under his feet.

“—what do you think, Yvonne, if sometime we climb that baby, Popo I mean—”

“Good heavens why! Haven’t you had enough exercise for one—”

“—might be a good idea to harden your muscles first, try a few small peaks.”

They were joking. But the Consul was not joking. His second mescal had become serious. He left it still unfinished on the counter, Señor Cervantes was beckoning from a far corner.

A shabby little man with a black shade over one eye, wearing a black coat, but a beautiful sombrero with long gay tassels down the back, he seemed, however savage at heart, in almost as highly nervous a state as himself. What magnetism drew these quaking ruined creatures into his orbit? Cervantes led the way behind the bar, ascended two steps, and pulled a curtain aside. Poor lonely fellow, he wanted to show him round his house again. The Consul made the steps with difficulty. One small room occupied by a huge brass bedstead. Rusty rifles in a rack on the wall. In one corner, before a tiny porcelain Virgin, burned a little lamp. Really a sacramental candle, it diffused a ruby shimmer through its glass into the room, and cast a broad yellow flickering cone on the ceiling: the wick was burning low. “Mistair,” Cervantes tremulously pointed to it. “Señor. My grandfather tell me never to let her go out.” Mescal tears came to the Consul’s eyes, and he remembered sometime during last night’s debauch going with Dr. Vigil to a church in Quauhnahuac he didn’t know, with sombre tapestries, and strange votive pictures, a compassionate Virgin floating in the gloom, to whom he prayed, with muddily beating heart, he might have Yvonne again. Dark figures, tragic and isolated, stood about the church, or were kneeling—only the bereaved and lonely went there. “She is the Virgin for those who have nobody with,” the doctor told him, inclining his head toward the image. “And for mariners on the sea.” Then he knelt in the dirt and placing his pistol—for Dr. Vigil always went armed to Red Cross Balls—on the floor beside him, said sadly, “Nobody come here, only those who have nobody them with.” Now the Consul made this Virgin the other who had answered his prayer and as they stood in silence before her, prayed again. “Nothing is altered and in spite of God’s mercy I am still alone. Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony. There is no explanation of my life.” Indeed there was not, nor was this what he’d meant to convey. “Please let Yvonne have her dream—dream?—of a new life with me—please let me believe that all that is not an abominable self-deception,” he tried . . . “Please let me make her happy, deliver me from this dreadful tyranny of self. I have sunk low. Let me sink lower still, that I may know the truth. Teach me to love again, to love life.” That wouldn’t do either . . . “Where is love? Let me truly suffer. Give me back my purity, the knowledge of the Mysteries, that I have betrayed and lost.—Let me be truly lonely, that I may honestly pray. Let us be happy again somewhere, if it’s only together, if it’s only out of this terrible world. Destroy the world!” he cried in his heart. The Virgin’s eyes were turned down in benediction, but perhaps she hadn’t heard.—The Consul had scarcely noticed that Cervantes had picked up one of the rifles. “I love hunting.” After replacing it he opened the bottom drawer of a wardrobe which was squeezed in another corner. The drawer was chock full of books, including the History of Tlaxcala, in ten volumes. He shut it immediately. “I am an insignificant man, and I do not read these books to prove my insignificance,” he said proudly. “Sí, hombre,” he went on, as they descended to the bar again, “as I told you, I obey my grandfather. He tell me to marry my wife. So I call my wife my mother.” He produced a photograph of a child lying in a coffin and laid it on the counter. “I drank all day.”

“—snow goggles and an alpenstock. You’d look awfully nice with—”

“—and my face all covered with grease. And a woolen cap pulled right down over my eyes—”

Hugh’s voice came again, then Yvonne’s, they were dressing, and conversing loudly over the tops of their bathing boxes, not six feet away, beyond the wall:

“—hungry now, aren’t you?”

“—a couple of raisins and half a prune!”

“—not forgetting the limes—”

The Consul finished his mescal: all a pathetic joke, of course, still, this plan to climb Popo, if just the kind of thing Hugh would have found out about before arriving, while neglecting so much else: yet could it be that the notion of climbing the volcano had somehow struck them as having the significance of a lifetime together? Yes, there it rose up before them, with all its hidden dangers, pitfalls, ambiguities, deceptions, portentous as what they could imagine for the poor brief self-deceived space of a cigarette was their own destiny—or was Yvonne simply, alas, happy?

“—where is it we start from, Amecameca—”

“To prevent mountain sickness.”

“—though quite a pilgrimage at that, I gather! Geoff and I thought of doing it, years ago. You go on horseback first, to Tlamancas—”

“—at midnight, at the Hotel Fausto!”

“What would you all prefer? Cawliflowers or pootootsies,” the Consul, innocent, drinkless in a booth, greeted them, frowning; the supper at Emmaeus, he felt, trying to disguise his distant mescal voice as he studied the bill of fare provided him by Cervantes. “Or extramapee syrup. Onans in garlic soup on egg . . .

“Pep with milk? Or what about a nice Filete de Huachinango rebozado tartar con German friends?”

Cervantes had handed Yvonne and Hugh each a menu but they were sharing hers: “Dr. Moise von Schmidthaus’ special soup,” Yvonne pronounced the words with gusto.

“I think a pepped petroot would be about my mark,” said the Consul, “after those onans.”

“Just one,” the Consul went on, anxious, since Hugh was laughing so loudly, for Cervantes’ feelings, “but please note the German friends. They even get into the filet.”

“What about the tartar?” Hugh inquired.

“Tlaxcala!” Cervantes, smiling, debated between them with trembling pencil. “Sí, I am Tlaxcaltecan . . . You like eggs, señora. Stepped on eggs. Muy sabrosos. Divorced eggs? For fish, sliced of filet with peas. Vol-au-vent à la reine. Somersaults for the queen. Or you like poxy eggs, poxy in toast. Or veal liver tavernman? Pimesan chike chup? Or spectral chicken of the house? Youn’ pigeon. Red snappers with a fried tartar, you like?”

“Ha, the ubiquitous tartar,” Hugh exclaimed.

“I think the spectral chicken of the house would be even more terrific, don’t you?” Yvonne was laughing, the foregoing bawdry mostly over her head however, the Consul felt, and still she hadn’t noticed anything.

“Probably served in its own ectoplasm.”

“Sí, you like sea-sleeves in his ink? Or tunny fish? Or an exquisite mole? Maybe you like fashion melon to start? Fig mermelade? Brambleberry con crappe Gran Duc? Omele he sourpusse, you like? You like to drink first a gin fish? Nice gin fish? Silver fish? Sparkenwein?”

“Madre?” the Consul asked, “What’s this madre here?—You like to eat your mother, Yvonne?”

“Badre, señor. Fish también. Yautepec fish. Muy sabroso. You like?”

“What about it, Hugh—do you want to wait for the fish that dies?”

“I’d like a beer.”

“Cerveza, sí. Moctezuma? Dos Equis? Carta Blanca?”

At last they all decided on clam chowder, scrambled eggs, the spectral chicken of the house, beans, and beer. The Consul at first had ordered only shrimps and a hamburger sandwich but yielded to Yvonne’s: “Darling, won’t you eat more than that, I could eat a youn’ horse,” and their hands met across the table.

And then, for the second time that day, their eyes, in a long look, a long look of longing. Behind her eyes, beyond her, the Consul, an instant, saw Granada, and the train waltzing from Algeciras over the plains of Andalusia, chufferty pupperty , chufferty pupperty , the low dusty road from the station past the old bull ring and the Hollywood bar and into the town, past the British Consulate and the convent of Los Angeles up past the Washington Irving Hotel (You can’t escape me, I can see you, England must return again to New England for her values!), the old number seven train running there: evening, and the stately horse cabs clamber up through the gardens slowly, plod through the arches, mounting past where the eternal beggar is playing on a guitar with three strings, through the gardens, gardens, gardens everywhere, up, up, to the marvellous traceries of the Alhambra (which bored him) past the well where they had met, to the América Pensión; and up, up, now they were climbing themselves, up to the Generalife Gardens, and now from the Generalife Gardens to the Moorish tomb on the extreme summit of the hill; here they plighted their troth . . .

The Consul dropped his eyes at last. How many bottles since then? In how many glasses, how many bottles had he hidden himself, since then alone? Suddenly he saw them, the bottles of aguardiente, of anís, of jerez, of Highland Queen, the glasses, a babel of glasses—towering, like the smoke from the train that day—built to the sky, then falling, the glasses toppling and crashing, falling downhill from the Generalife Gardens, the bottles breaking, bottles of Oporto, tinto, blanco, bottles of Pernod, Oxygènée, absinthe, bottles smashing, bottles cast aside, falling with a thud on the ground in parks, under benches, beds, cinema seats, hidden in drawers at Consulates, bottles of Calvados dropped and broken, or bursting into smithereens, tossed into garbage heaps, flung into the sea, the Mediterranean, the Caspian, the Caribbean, bottles floating in the ocean, dead Scotchmen on the Atlantic highlands—and now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning—bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whiskey blanc Canadien, the apéritifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions of gourds of beautiful mescal . . . The Consul sat very still. His conscience sounded muffled with the roar of water. It whacked and whined round the wooden frame house with the spasmodic breeze, massed, with the thunderclouds over the trees, seen through the windows, its factions. How indeed could he hope to find himself, to begin again when, somewhere, perhaps, in one of those lost or broken bottles, in one of those glasses, lay, forever, the solitary clue to his identity? How could he go back and look now, scrabble among the broken glass, under the eternal bars, under the oceans?

Stop! Look! Listen! How drunk, or how drunkly sober undrunk, can you calculate you are now , at any rate? There had been those drinks at Señora Gregorio’s, no more than two certainly. And before? Ah, before! But later, in the bus, he’d only had that sip of Hugh’s habanero, then, at the bullthrowing, almost finished it. It was this that made him tight again, but tight in a way he didn’t like, in a worse way than in the square even, the tightness of impending unconsciousness, of seasickness, and it was from this sort of tightness—was it?—he’d tried to sober up by taking those mescalitos on the sly. But the mescal, the Consul realized, had succeeded in a manner somewhat outside his calculations. The strange truth was, he had another hangover. There was something in fact almost beautiful about the frightful extremity of that condition the Consul now found himself in. It was a hangover like a great dark ocean swell finally rolled up against a foundering steamer, by countless gales to windward that have long since blown themselves out. And from all this it was not so much necessary to sober up again, as once more to wake, yes, as to wake, so much as to—

“Do you remember this morning, Yvonne, when we were crossing the river, there was a pulquería on the other side, called La Sepultura or something, and there was an Indian sitting with his back against the wall, with his hat over his face, and his horse tethered to a tree, and there was a number seven branded on the horse’s hipbone—”

“—saddlebags—”

. . . Cave of the Winds, seat of all great decisions, little Cythère of childhood, eternal library, sanctuary bought for a penny or nothing, where else could man absorb and divest himself of so much at the same time? The Consul was awake all right, but he was not, at the moment apparently, having dinner with the others, though their voices came plainly enough. The toilet was all of grey stone, and looked like a tomb—even the seat was cold stone. “It is what I deserve . . . It is what I am,” thought the Consul. “Cervantes,” he called, and Cervantes, surprisingly, appeared, half round the corner—there was no door to the stone tomb—with the fighting cock, pretending to struggle, under his arm, chuckling:

“—Tlaxcala!”

“—or perhaps it was on his rump—”

After a moment, comprehending the Consul’s plight, Cervantes advised:

“A stone, hombre, I bring you a stone.”

“Cervantes!”

“— branded —”

“. . . clean yourself on a stone, señor.”

—The meal had started well too, he remembered now, a minute or so since, despite everything, and: “Dangerous Clam Magoo,” he had remarked at the onset of the chowder. “And our poor spoiling brains and eggs at home!” had he not commiserated, at the apparition, swimming in exquisite mole, of the spectral chicken of the house? They had been discussing the man by the roadside and the thief in the bus, then: “Excusado.” And this, this grey final Consulate, this Franklin Island of the soul, was the excusado. Set apart from the bathing places, convenient yet hidden from view, it was doubtless a purely Tlaxcaltecan fantasy, Cervantes’ own work, built to remind him of some cold mountain village in a mist. The Consul sat, fully dressed however, not moving a muscle. Why was he here? Why was he always more or less, here? He would have been glad of a mirror, to ask himself that question. But there was no mirror. Nothing but stone. Perhaps there was no time either, in this stone retreat. Perhaps this was the eternity that he’d been making so much fuss about, eternity already, of the Svidrigailov variety, only instead of a bath house in the country full of spiders, here it turned out to be a stone monastic cell wherein sat—strange!—who but himself?

“—Pulquería—”

“—and then there was this Indian—”

SEAT OF THE HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST

VISIT TLAXCALA!

read the Consul. (And how was it that, beside him, was standing a lemonade bottle half full of mescal, how had he obtained it so quickly, or Cervantes, repenting, thank God, of the stone, together with the tourist folder, to which was affixed a railway and bus timetable, brought it—or had he purchased it before, and if so, when?)

¡VISITE VD. TLAXCALA!

Sus Monumentos, Sitios Históricos y De Bellezas Naturales. Lugar De Descanso, El Mejor Clima. El Aire Más Puro. El Cielo Más Azul.

¡TLAXCALA! SEDE DE LA HISTORIA DE LA CONQUISTA

“—this morning, Yvonne, when we were crossing the river there was this pulquería on the other side—”

“. . . La Sepultura?”

“—Indian sitting with his back against the wall—”

GEOGRAPHIC SITUATION

The State is located between 19° 06′ 10″ and 19° 44′ 00″ North latitude and between 0° 23′ 38″ and 1° 30′ 34″ Eastern longitude from Mexico’s meridian. Being its boundaries to the North-West and South with Puebla State, to the West with Mexico State and to the North-West with Hidalgo State. Its territorial extension is of 4.132 square kilometres. Its population is about 220,000 inhibitants, giving a density of 53 inhibitants to the square kilometre. It is situated in a valley surrounded by mountains, among them are those called Matlalcueyatl and Ixtaccihuatl.

“—Surely you remember, Yvonne, there was this pulquería—”

“—What a glorious morning it was!—”

CLIMATE

Intertropical and proper of highlands, regular and healthy. The malarial sickness is unknown.

“—well, Geoff said he was a Spaniard, for one thing—”

“—but what difference—”

“So that the man beside the road may be an Indian, of course,” the Consul suddenly called from his stone retreat, though it was strange, nobody seemed to have heard him. “And why an Indian? So that the incident may have some social significance to him, so that it should appear a kind of latter-day repercussion of the Conquest, and a repercussion of the Conquest, if you please, so that that may in turn seem a repercussion of—”

“—crossing the river, a windmill—”

“Cervantes!”

“A stone . . . You want a stone, señor?”

HYDROGRAPHY

Zahuapan River—Streaming from Atoyac river and bordering the City of Tlaxcala, it supplies a great quantity of power to several factories; among the lagoons, the Acuitlapilco is the most notable and is lying two kilometres South from Tlaxcala City . . . Plenty of web-footed fowl is found in the first lagoon.

“—Geoff said the pub he came out of was a fascist joint. The El Amor de los Amores. What I gathered was he used to be the owner of it, though I think he’s come down in the world and he just works there now . . . Have another bottle of beer?”

“Why not? Let’s do.”

“What if this man by the roadside had been a fascist and your Spaniard a communist?”—In his stone retreat the Consul took a sip of mescal.—“Never mind, I think your thief is a fascist, though of some ignominious sort, probably a spy on other spies or—”

“The way I feel, Hugh, I thought he must be just some poor man riding from market who’d taken too much pulque, and fell off his horse, and was being taken care of, but then we arrived, and he was robbed . . . Though do you know, I didn’t notice a thing . . . I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Move his hat further down though, so he can get some air.”

“—outside La Sepultura.”

CITY OF TLAXCALA

The Capital of the State, said to be like Granada, the Capital of the State, said to be like Granada, said to be like Granada, Granada, the Capital of the State said to be like Granada , is of a pleasant appearances, straight streets, archaic buildings, neat fine climate, efficient public electric light, and up to date Hotel for tourists. It has a beautiful Central Park named “Francisco I Madero” covered by stricken in years trees, ash-trees being the majority, a garden clothed by many beautiful flowers; seats all over, four clean, seats all over , four clean and well-arranged lateral avenues. During the days the birds are singing melodiously among the foliage of the trees. Its whole gives a sight of emotional majesty, emotional majesty without losing the tranquillity and rest appearance. The Zahuapan River causeway with an extension of 200 metres long, has on both sides corpulent ash-trees along the river, in some parts there are built ramparts, giving the impression of dikes, in the middle part of the causeway is a wood where there are found “Senadores” (pic-nic-eaters) in order to make easier the rest days to walkers. From this causeway one can admire the suggestive sceneries showing the Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl.

“—or he didn’t pay for his pulque at the El Amor de los Amores and the pubkeeper’s brother followed him and claimed the reckoning. I see the extraordinary likelihood of that.”

“. . . What is the Ejidal, Hugh?”

“—a bank that advances money to finance collective effort in the villages . . . These messengers have a dangerous job. I have that friend in Oaxaca . . . Sometimes they travel disguised as, well, peons . . . From something Geoff said . . . Putting two and two together . . . I thought the poor man might have been a bank messenger . . . But he was the same chap we saw this morning, at any rate, it was the same horse, do you remember if it had any saddlebags on it, when we saw it?”

“That is, I think I saw it . . . It had when I think I saw it.”

“—Why, I think there’s a bank like that in Quauhnahuac, Hugh, just by Cortez Palace.”

“—lots of people who don’t like the Credit Banks and don’t like Cárdenas either, as you know, or have any use for his agrarian reform laws—”

SAN FRANCISCO CONVENT

Within the city limits of Tlaxcala is one of the oldest churches of the New World. This place was the residence of the first Apostolical See, named “Carolence” in honor of the Spanish King Carlos V, being the first Bishop Don Fray Julián Garcés, on the year 1526. In said Convent, according to tradition, were baptised the four Senators of the Tlaxcaltecan Republic, existing still on the right side of the Church the Baptismal Font, being their God-Fathers the conqueror Hernán Cortés and several of his Captains. The main entrance of the Convent offers a magnificent series of arches and in the inside there is a secret passage, secret passage . On the right side of the entrance is erected a majestic tower, which is rated as the only one through America. The Convent’s altars are of a churrigueresque (overloaded) style and they are decorated with paintings drew by the most celebrated Artists, such as Cabrera, Echave, Juaréz, etc. In the chapel of the right side there is still the famous pulpit from where was preached in the New World, for first time, the Gospel. The ceiling of the Convent’s Church shows magnificent carved cedar panels and decorations forming golden stars. The ceiling is the only one in the whole Spanish America.

“—in spite of what I’ve been working on and my friend Weber, and what Geoff said about the Unión Militar, I still don’t think the fascists have any hold here to speak of.”

“Oh Hugh, for heaven’s sake—”

THE CITY PARISH

The church is erected in the same place where the Spaniards built the first Hermitage consecrated to Virgin Mary. Some of the altars are decorated with overloaded art work. The portico of the church is of beautiful and severe appearance.

“ Ha ha ha! ”

“ Ha ha ha! ”

“I am very sorry you cannot come me with.”

“For she is the Virgin for those who have nobody with.”

“Nobody come here, only those who have nobody them with.”

“—who have nobody with—”

“—who have nobody them with—”

TLAXCALA ROYAL CHAPEL

Opposite to Francisco I Madero Park could be seen the ruins of the Royal Chapel, where the Tlaxcaltecan Senators, for first time, prayed to the Conqueror’s God. It has been left only the portico, showing the Pope’s shield, as well as those of the Mexican Pontificate and King Carlos V. History relates that the construction of the Royal Chapel was built at a cost amounting to $200,000.00—

“A Nazi may not be a fascist, but there’re certainly plenty of them around, Yvonne. Beekeepers, miners, chemists. And keepers of pubs. The pubs themselves of course make ideal headquarters. In the Pilsener Kindl, for instance, in Mexico City—”

“Not to mention in Parián, Hugh,” said the Consul, sipping mescal, though nobody seemed to have heard him save a hummingbird, who at this moment snored into his stone retreat, whirred, jittering, in the entrance and bounced out almost into the face of the godson of the Conqueror himself, Cervantes, who came gliding past again, carrying his fighting cock. “In the Farolito—”

SANTUARIO OCOTLÁN IN TLAXCALA

It is a Sanctuary whose white and embellished steeples 38.7 meters high, of an overloading style, gives an imposing and majestic impression. The frontage trimmed with sacred Archangels, St. Francis and the epithet of Virgin Mary statues. Its construcción is made out of carved work in perfect dimensions decorated with allegorical symbols and flowers. It was constructed on the colonial epoch. Its central altar is of an overloaded and embellished style. The most admirable is the vestry, arched, decorated with graceful carved works, prevailing the green, red, and golden colours. In the highest part inside of the cúpula are carved the twelve apostles. The whole is of a singular beauty, not found in any church of the Republic.

“—I don’t agree with you, Hugh. We go back a few years—”

“—forgetting, of course, the Miztecs, the Toltecs, Quetzelcoatl—”

“—not necessarily—”

“—oh yes you do! And you say first, Spaniard exploits Indian, then, when he had children, he exploited the halfbreed, then the pure-blooded Mexican Spaniard, the criollo, then the mestizo exploits everybody, foreigners, Indians, and all. Then the Germans and Americans exploited him: now the final chapter, the exploitation of everybody by everybody else—”

Historic Places — san buenaventura atempam

In this town was built and tried in a dike the ships used for the conquerors in the attack to Tenochtitlán the great capital of the Moctezuma’s Empire.

“ Mar Cantábrico. ”

“All right, I heard you, the Conquest took place in an organised community in which naturally there was exploitation already.”

“Well—”

“. . . no, the point is, Yvonne, that the Conquest took place in a civilisation which was as good if not better than that of the conquerors, a deep-rooted structure. The people weren’t all savages or nomadic tribes, footloose and wandering—”

“—suggesting that had they been footloose and wandering there would never have been any exploitation?”

“Have another bottle of beer . . . Carta Blanca?”

“Moctezuma . . . Dos Equis.”

“Or is it Montezuma?”

“Moctezuma on the bottle.”

“That’s all he is now—”

TIZATLÁN

In this town, very near to Tlaxcala City, are still erected the ruins of the Palace, residence of Senator Xicohtencatl, father of the warrior by the same name. In said ruins could be still appreciated the stone blocks where were offered the sacrifices to their Gods . . . In the same town, a long time ago, were the headquarters of the Tlaxcaltecan warriors . . .

“I’m watching you . . . You can’t escape me.”

“—this is not just escaping. I mean, let’s start again, really and cleanly.”

“I think I know the place.”

“I can see you.”

“—where are the letters, Geoffrey Firmin, the letters she wrote till her heart broke—”

“But in Newcastle, Delaware, now that’s another thing again!”

“—the letters you not only have never answered you didn’t you did you didn’t you did then where is your reply—”

“—but oh my God, this city—the noise! the chaos! If I could only get out! If I only knew where you could get to!”

OCOTELULCO

In this town near Tlaxcala existed, long back, the Maxixcatzin Palace. In that place, according to tradition took place the baptism of the first Christian Indian.

“It will be like a rebirth.”

“I’m thinking of becoming a Mexican subject, of going to live among the Indians, like William Blackstone.”

“Napoleon’s leg twitched.”

“—might have run over you, there must be something wrong, what? No, going to—”

“Guanajuato—the streets—how can you resist the names of the streets—the Street of Kisses—”

MATLALCUEYATL

This mountain are still the ruins of the shrine dedicated to the God of Waters, Tlaloc, which vestiges are almost lost, therefore, are no longer visited by tourists, and it is referred that on this place, young Xicohtencatl harangued his soldiers, telling them to fight the conquerors to the limit, dying if necessary.

“. . . no pasarán.”

“Madrid.”

“They plugged ’em too. They shoot first and ask questions later.”

“I can see you.”

“I’m watching you.”

“You can’t escape me.”

“Guzmán . . . Erikson 43.”

“A corpse will be transported by—”

RAILROAD AND BUS SERVICE

(MEXICO—TLAXCALA)

. . . And now, once more, their eyes met across the table. But this time there was, as it were, a mist between them, and through the mist the Consul seemed to see not Granada but Tlaxcala. It was a white beautiful cathedral city toward which the Consul’s soul yearned and which indeed in many respects was like Granada; only it appeared to him, just as in the photographs in the folder, perfectly empty. That was the queerest thing about it, and at the same time the most beautiful; there was nobody there, no one—and in this it also somewhat resembled Tortu—to interfere with the business of drinking, not even Yvonne, who, so far as she was in evidence at all, was drinking with him. The white sanctuary of the church in Ocotlán, of an overloaded style, rose up before them: white towers with a white clock and no one there. While the clock itself was timeless. They walked, carrying white bottles, twirling walk canes and ash plants, in the neat fine better climate, the purer air, among the corpulent ash-trees, the stricken in years trees, through the deserted park. They walked, happy as toads in a thunderstorm, arm-in-arm down the four clean and well-arranged lateral avenues. They stood, drunk as larks, in the deserted convent of San Francisco before the empty chapel where was preached, for the first time in the New World, the Gospel. At night they slept in cold white sheets among the white bottles at the Hotel Tlaxcala. And in the town too were innumerable white cantinas, where one could drink forever on credit, with the door open and the wind blowing. “We could go straight there,” he was saying, “straight to Tlaxcala. Or we could all spend the night in Santa Ana Chiautempan, transferring in both ways of course, and go to Vera Cruz in the morning. Of course that means going—” he looked at his watch “—straight back now . . . We could catch the next bus . . . We’ll have time for a few drinks,” he added consularly.

The mist had cleared, but Yvonne’s eyes were full of tears, and she was pale.

Something was wrong, was very wrong. For one thing both Hugh and Yvonne seemed quite surprisingly tight.

“What’s that, don’t you want to go back now, to Tlaxcala,” said the Consul, perhaps too thickly.

“That’s not it, Geoffrey.”

Fortunately, Cervantes arrived at this moment with a saucer full of live shellfish and toothpicks. The Consul drank some beer that had been waiting for him. The drink situation was now this, was this: there had been one drink waiting for him and this drink of beer he had not yet quite drunk. On the other hand there had been until recently several drinks of mescal (why not?—the word did not intimidate him, eh?) waiting for him outside in a lemonade bottle and all these he both had and had not drunk: had drunk in fact, had not drunk so far as the others were concerned. And before that there had been two mescals that he both should and should not have drunk. Did they suspect? He had adjured Cervantes to silence; had the Tlaxcaltecan, unable to resist it, betrayed him? What had they really been talking about while he was outside? The Consul glanced up from his shellfish at Hugh; Hugh, like Yvonne, as well as quite tight, appeared angry and hurt. What were they up to? The Consul had not been away very long (he thought), no more than seven minutes all told, had reappeared washed and combed—who knows how?—his chicken was scarcely cold, while the others were only just finishing theirs . . . Et tu Bruto! The Consul could feel his glance at Hugh becoming a cold look of hatred. Keeping his eyes fixed gimlet-like upon him he saw him as he had appeared that morning, smiling, the razor edge keen in sunlight. But now he was advancing as if to decapitate him. Then the vision darkened and Hugh was still advancing, but not upon him. Instead, back in the ring, he was bearing down upon an ox: now he had exchanged his razor for a sword. He thrust forward the sword to bring the ox to its knees . . . The Consul was fighting off an all but irresistible, senseless onrush of wild rage. Trembling, he felt, from nothing but this effort—the constructive effort too, for which no one would give him credit, to change the subject—he impaled one of the shellfish on a toothpick and held it up, almost hissing through his teeth:

“Now you see what sort of creatures we are, Hugh. Eating things alive. That’s what we do. How can you have much respect for mankind, or any belief in the social struggle?”

Despite this, Hugh was apparently saying, remotely, calmly, after a while: “I once saw a Russian film about a revolt of some fishermen . . . A shark was netted with a shoal of other fish and killed . . . This struck me as a pretty good symbol of the Nazi system which, even though dead, continues to go on swallowing live struggling men and women!”

“It would do just as well for any other system . . . Including the communist system.”

“See here, Geoffrey—”

“See here, old bean,” the Consul heard himself saying, “to have against you Franco, or Hitler, is one thing, but to have Actinium, Argon, Beryllium, Dysprosium, Niobium, Palladium, Praseodymium—”

“Look here, Geoff—”

“—Ruthenium, Samarium, Silicon, Tantalum, Tellurium, Terbium, Thorium—”

“See here—”

“—Thulium, Titanium, Uranium, Vanadium, Virginium, Xenon, Ytterbium, Yttrium, Zirconium, to say nothing of Europium and Germanium—ahip!—and Columbium!—against you, and all the others, is another.” The Consul finished his beer.

Thunder suddenly sprang again outside with a clap and bang, slithering.

Despite which Hugh seemed to be saying, calmly, remotely, “See here, Geoffrey. Let’s get this straight once and for all. Communism to me is not, essentially, whatever its present phase, a system at all. It is simply a new spirit, something which one day may or may not seem as natural as the air we breathe. I seem to have heard that phrase before. What I have to say isn’t original either. In fact were I to say it five years from now it would probably be downright banal. But to the best of my knowledge, no one has yet called in Matthew Arnold to the support of their argument. So I am going to quote Matthew Arnold for you, partly because you don’t think I am capable of quoting Matthew Arnold. But that’s where you’re quite wrong. My notion of what we call—”

“Cervantes!”

“—is a spirit in the modern world playing a part analogous to that of Christianity in the old. Matthew Arnold says, in his essay on Marcus Aurelius—”

“Cervantes, por Christ sake—”

“ ‘Far from this, the Christianity which those emperors aimed at repressing was, in their conception of it, something philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally abominable. As men they sincerely regarded it much as well-conditioned people, with us, regard Mormonism: as rulers, they regarded it much as liberal statesmen, with us, regard the Jesuits. A kind of Mormonism—’ ”

“—”

“ ‘—constituted as a vast secret society, with obscure aims of political and social subversion, was what Antonius Pius—’ ”

“ Cervantes! ”

“ ‘The inner and moving cause of the representation lay, no doubt, in this, that Christianity was a new spirit in the Roman world, destined to act in that world as its dissolvent; and it was inevitable that Christianity—’ ”

“Cervantes,” the Consul interrupted, “you are Oaxaqueñan?”

“No, señor. I am Tlaxcalan, Tlaxcala.”

“You are,” said the Consul. “Well, hombre, and are there not stricken in years trees in Tlaxcala?”

“Sí, Sí, hombre. Stricken in years trees. Many trees.”

“And Ocotlán. Santuario de Ocotlán. Is not that in Tlaxcala?”

“Sí, sí, Señor, sí, Santuario de Ocotlán,” said Cervantes, moving back toward the counter.

“And Matlalcueyatl.”

“Sí, hombre. Matlalcuayatl . . . Tlaxcala.”

“And lagoons?”

“Sí . . . many lagoons.”

“And are there not many web-footed fowl in these lagoons?”

“Sí, señor. Muy fuerte . . . in Tlaxcala.”

“Well then,” said the Consul, turning round on the others, “what’s wrong with my plan? What’s wrong with all you people? Aren’t you going to Vera Cruz after all, Hugh?”

Suddenly a man started to play the guitar in the doorway angrily, and once again Cervantes came forward: “Black Flowers is the name of that song.” Cervantes was about to beckon the man to come in. “It say:—I suffer, because your lips say only lies and they have death in a kiss.”

“Tell him to go away,” the Consul said. “Hugh—cuántos trenes hay el día para Vera Cruz?”

The guitar player changed his tune:

“This is a farmer’s song,” said Cervantes, “for oxen.”

“Oxen, we’ve had enough oxen for one day. Tell him to go far away, por favor,” said the Consul. “My God, what’s wrong with you people? Yvonne, Hugh . . . It’s a perfectly good idea, a most practical idea. Don’t you see it’ll kill two birds with one stone—a stone, Cervantes! . . . Tlaxcala is on the way to Vera Cruz, Hugh, the true cross . . . This is the last time we’ll be seeing you, old fellow. For all I know . . . We could have a celebration. Come on now, you can’t lie to me, I’m watching you . . . Change at San Martín Texmelucán in both ways . . .”

Thunder, single, exploded in midair just outside the door and Cervantes came hurrying forward with the coffee: he struck matches for their cigarettes: “La superstición dice,” he smiled, striking a fresh one for the Consul, “que cuando tres amigos prenden su cigarro con la misma cerilla, el último muere antes que los otros dos.”

“You have that superstition in Mexico?” Hugh asked.

“Sí, señor,” Cervantes nodded, “the fantasy is that when three friends take fire with the same match, the last die before the other two. But in war it is impossible because many soldiers have only one match.”

“Feurstick,” said Hugh, shielding yet another light for the Consul. “The Norwegians have a better name for matches.”

—It was growing darker, the guitar player, it seemed, was sitting in the corner, wearing dark glasses, they had missed this bus back, if they’d meant to take it, the bus that was going to take them home to Tlaxcala, but it seemed to the Consul that, over the coffee, he had, all at once, begun to talk soberly, brilliantly, and fluently again, that he was, indeed, in top form, a fact he was sure was making Yvonne, opposite him, happy once more. Feurstick, Hugh’s Norwegian word, was still in his head. And the Consul was talking about the Indo-Aryans, the Iranians and the sacred fire, Agni, called down from heaven, with his firesticks, by the priest. He was talking of soma, Amrita, the nectar of immortality, praised in one whole book of the Rig Veda— bhang , which was, perhaps, much the same thing as mescal itself, and, changing the subject here, delicately, he was talking of Norwegian architecture, or rather how much architecture, in Kashmir, was almost, so to speak, Norwegian, the Hamadan mosque for instance, wooden, with its tall tapering spires, and ornaments pendulous from the eaves. He was talking of the Borda gardens in Quauhnahuac, opposite Bustamente’s cinema, and how much they, for some reason, always reminded him of the terrace of the Nishat Bagh. The Consul was talking about the Vedic Gods, who were not properly anthropomorphised, whereas Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl . . . Or were they not? In any event the Consul, once more, was talking about the sacred fire, the sacrificial fire, of the stone soma press, the sacrifices of cakes and oxen and horses, the priest chanting from the Veda, how the drinking rites, simple at first, became more and more complicated as time went on, the ritual having to be carried out with meticulous care, since one slip— tee hee! —would render the sacrifice invalid. Soma, bhang, mescal, ah yes, mescal, he was back upon that subject again, and now from it, had departed almost as cunningly as before. He was talking of the immolation of wives, and the fact that, at the time he was referring to, in Taxila, at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, the widow of a childless man might contract a Levirate marriage with her brother-in-law. The Consul found himself claiming to see an obscure relation, apart from any purely verbal one, between Taxila and Tlaxcala itself: for when that great pupil of Aristotle’s—Yvonne—Alexander, arrived in Taxila, had he not Cortez-like already been in communication with Ambhi, Taxila’s king, who likewise had seen in an alliance with a foreign conqueror, an excellent chance of undoing a rival, in this case not Moctezuma but the Paurave monarch, who ruled the country between the Jhelma and the Chenab? Tlaxcala . . . The Consul was talking, like Sir Thomas Browne, of Archimedes, Moses, Achilles, Methuselah, Charles V and Pontius Pilate. The Consul was talking furthermore of Jesus Christ, or rather of Yus Asaf who, according to the Kashmiri legend, was Christ—Christ, who had, after being taken down from the cross, wandered to Kashmir in search of the lost tribes of Israel, and died there, in Srinagar—

But there was a slight mistake. The Consul was not talking. Apparently not. The Consul had not uttered a single word. It was all an illusion, a whirling cerebral chaos, out of which, at last, at long last, at this very instant, emerged, rounded and complete, order:

“The act of a madman or a drunkard, old bean,” he said, “or of a man labouring under violent excitement seems less free and more inevitable to the one who knows the mental condition of the man who performed the action, and more free and less inevitable to the one who does not know it.”

It was like a piece on a piano, it was like that little bit in seven flats, on the black keys—it was what, more or less, he now remembered, he’d gone to the excusado in the first place in order to remember, to bring off pat—it was perhaps also like Hugh’s quotation from Matthew Arnold on Marcus Aurelius, like that little piece one had learned, so laboriously, years ago, only to forget whenever one particularly wanted to play it, until one day one got drunk in such a way that one’s fingers themselves recalled the combination and, miraculously, perfectly, unlocked the wealth of melody; only here Tolstoy had supplied no melody.

“What?” Hugh said.

“Not at all. I always come back to the point, and take a thing up where it has been left off. How else should I have maintained myself so long as Consul? When we have absolutely no understanding of the causes of an action—I am referring, in case your mind has wandered to the subject of your own conversation, to the events of the afternoon—the causes, whether vicious or virtuous or what not, we ascribe, according to Tolstoy, a greater element of free will to it. According to Tolstoy then, we should have had less reluctance in interfering than we did . . .

“ ‘All cases without exception in which our conception of free will and necessity varies depend on three considerations’,” the Consul said. “You can’t get away from it.

“Moreover, according to Tolstoy,” he went on, “before we pass judgment on the thief—if thief he were—we would have to ask ourselves: what were his connections with other thieves, ties of family, his place in time, if we know even that, his relation to the external world, and to the consequences leading to the act . . . Cervantes!”

“Of course we’re taking time to find out all this while the poor fellow just goes on dying in the road,” Hugh was saying. “How did we get onto this? No one had an opportunity to interfere till after the deed was done. None of us saw him steal the money, to the best of my knowledge. Which crime are you talking about anyway, Geoff? If other crime there were . . . And the fact that we did nothing to stop the thief is surely beside the point that we did nothing really to save the man’s life.”

“Precisely,” said the Consul. “I was talking about interference in general, I think. Why should we have done anything to save his life? Hadn’t he a right to die, if he wanted to? . . . Cervantes—mescal—no, parras, por favor . . . Why should anybody interfere with anybody? Why should anybody have interfered with the Tlaxcalans, for example, who were perfectly happy by their own stricken in years trees, among the web-footed fowl in the first lagoon—”

“What web-footed fowl in what lagoon?”

“Or more specifically perhaps, Hugh, I was talking of nothing at all . . . Since supposing we settled anything—ah, ignoratio elenchi , Hugh, that’s what. Or the fallacy of supposing a point proved or disproved by argument which proves or disproves something not at issue. Like these wars. For it seems to me that almost everywhere in the world these days there has long since ceased to be anything fundamental to man at issue at all . . . Ah, you people with ideas!

“Ah, ignoratio elenchi ! . . . All this, for instance, about going to fight for Spain . . . and poor little defenceless China! Can’t you see there’s a sort of determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run.”

“Well . . .”

A gust of wind moaned round the house with an eerie sound like a northerner prowling among the tennis nets in England, jingling the rings.

“Not exactly original.”

“Not long ago it was poor little defenceless Ethiopia. Before that, poor little defenceless Flanders. To say nothing of course of the poor little defenceless Belgian Congo. And to-morrow it will be poor little defenceless Latvia. Or Finland. Or Piddledeedee. Or even Russia. Read history. Go back a thousand years. What is the use of interfering with its worthless stupid course? Like a barranca, a ravine, choked up with refuse, that winds through the ages, and peters out in a—What in God’s name has all the heroic resistance put up by poor little defenceless peoples all rendered defenceless in the first place for some well-calculated and criminal reason—”

“Hell, I told you that—”

“—to do with the survival of the human spirit? Nothing whatsoever. Less than nothing. Countries, civilisations, empires, great hordes, perish for no reason at all, and their soul and meaning with them, that one old man perhaps you never heard of, and who never heard of them, sitting boiling in Timbuctoo, proving the existence of the mathematical correlative of ignoratio elenchi with obsolete instruments, may survive.”

“For Christ sake,” said Hugh.

“Just go back to Tolstoy’s day—Yvonne, where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Then it was poor little defenceless Montenegro. Poor little defenceless Serbia. Or back a little further still, Hugh, to your Shelley’s, when it was poor little defenceless Greece—Cervantes!—As it will be again, of course. Or to Boswell’s—poor little defenceless Corsica! Shades of Paoli and Monboddo. Applesquires and fairies strong for freedom. As always. And Rousseau—not douanier—knew he was talking nonsense—”

“I should like to know what the bloody hell it is you imagine you’re talking!”

“Why can’t people mind their own damned business!”

“Or say what they mean?”

“It was something else, I grant you. The dishonest mass rationalisation of motive , justification of the common pathological itch. Of the motives for interference; merely a passion for fatality half the time. Curiosity. Experience—very natural . . . But nothing constructive at bottom, only acceptance really, a piddling contemptible acceptance of the state of affairs that flatters one into feeling thus noble or useful!”

“But my God it’s against such a state of affairs that people like the Loyalists—”

“But with calamity at the end of it! There must be calamity because otherwise the people who did the interfering would have to come back and cope with their responsibilities for a change—”

“Just let a real war come along and then see how blood-thirsty chaps like you are!”

“Which would never do. Why all you people who talk about going to Spain and fighting for freedom—Cervantes!—should learn by heart what Tolstoy said about that kind of thing in War and Peace , that conversation with the volunteers in the train—”

“But anyhow that was in—”

“Where the first volunteer, I mean, turned out to be a bragging degenerate obviously convinced after he’d been drinking that he was doing something heroic—what are you laughing at, Hugh?”

“It’s funny.”

“And the second was a man who had tried everything and been a failure in all of them. And the third—” Yvonne abruptly returned and the Consul, who had been shouting, slightly lowered his voice, “an artillery man, was the only one who struck him at first favorably. Yet what did he turn out to be? A cadet who’d failed in his examinations. All of them, you see, misfits, all good for nothing, cowards, baboons, meek wolves, parasites, every man jack of them, people afraid to face their own responsibilities, fight their own fight, ready to go anywhere, as Tolstoy well perceived—”

“Quitters?” Hugh said. “Didn’t Katamasov or whoever he was believe that the action of those volunteers was nevertheless an expression of the whole soul of the Russian people?—Mind you, I appreciate that a diplomatic corps which merely remains in San Sebastian hoping Franco will win quickly instead of returning to Madrid to tell the British Government the truth of what’s really going on in Spain can’t possibly consist of quitters!”

“Isn’t your desire to fight for Spain, for fiddledee, for Timbuctoo, for China, for hypocrisy, for bugger all, for any hokery pokery that a few moose-headed idiot sons choose to call freedom—of course there is nothing of the sort, really—”

“If—”

“If you’ve really read War and Peace , as you claim you have, why haven’t you the sense to profit by it, I repeat?”

“At any rate,” said Hugh, “I profited by it to the extent of being able to distinguish it from Anna Karenina .”

“Well, Anna Karenina then . . .” the Consul paused. “Cervantes!”—and Cervantes appeared, with his fighting cock, evidently fast asleep, under his arm. “Muy fuerte,” he said, “muy terreebly,” passing through the room, “un bruto.”—“But as I implied, you bloody people, mark my words, you don’t mind your own business any better at home, let alone in foreign countries. Geoffrey darling, why don’t you stop drinking, it isn’t too late—that sort of thing. Why isn’t it? Did I say so?” What was he saying? The Consul listened to himself almost in surprise at this sudden cruelty, this vulgarity. And in a moment it was going to get worse. “I thought it was all so splendidly and legally settled that it was. It’s only you that insists it isn’t.”

“Oh Geoffrey—”

—Was the Consul saying this? Must he say it?—It seemed he must. “For all you know it’s only the knowledge that it most certainly is too late that keeps me alive at all . . . You’re all the same, all of you, Yvonne, Jacques, you, Hugh, trying to interfere with other people’s lives, interfering, interfering—why should anyone have interfered with young Cervantes here, for example, given him an interest in cock fighting?—and that’s precisely what’s bringing about disaster in the world, to stretch a point, yes, quite a point, all because you haven’t got the wisdom and the simplicity and the courage, yes, the courage, to take any of the, to take—”

“See here, Geoffrey—”

“What have you ever done for humanity, Hugh, with all your oratio obliqua about the capitalist system, except talk, and thrive on it, until your soul stinks.”

“Shut up, Geoff, for the love of mike!”

“For that matter, both your souls stink! Cervantes!”

“Geoffrey, please sit down,” Yvonne seemed to have said wearily, “you’re making such a scene.”

“No, I’m not, Yvonne. I’m talking very calmly. As when I ask you, what have you ever done for anyone but yourself.” Must the Consul say this? He was saying, had said it: “Where are the children I might have wanted? You may suppose I might have wanted them. Drowned. To the accompaniment of the rattling of a thousand douche bags. Mind you, you don’t pretend to love ‘humanity,’ not a bit of it! You don’t even need an illusion, though you do have some illusions unfortunately, to help you deny the only natural and good function you have. Though on second thoughts it might be better if women had no functions at all!”

“Don’t be a bloody swine, Geoffrey.” Hugh rose.

“Stay where you bloody are,” ordered the Consul. “Of course I see the romantic predicament you two are in. But even if Hugh makes the most of it again it won’t be long, it won’t be long, before he realises he’s only one of the hundred or so other ninneyhammers with gills like codfish and veins like racehorses—prime as goats all of them, hot as monkeys, salt as wolves in pride! No, one will be enough . . .”

A glass, fortunately empty, fell to the floor and was smashed.

“As if he plucked up kisses by the roots and then laid his leg over her thigh and sighed. What an uncommon time you two must have had, paddling palms and playing bubbies and titties all day under cover of saving me . . . Jesus. Poor little defenceless me—I hadn’t thought of that. But, you see, it’s perfectly logical, what it comes down to: I’ve got my own piddling little fight for freedom on my hands. Mummy, let me go back to the beautiful brothel! Back to where those triskeles are strumming, the infinite trismus . . .

“True, I’ve been tempted to talk peace. I’ve been beguiled by your offers of a sober and non-alcoholic Paradise. At least I suppose that’s what you’ve been working around towards all day. But now I’ve made up my melodramatic little mind, what’s left of it, just enough to make up. Cervantes! That far from wanting it, thank you very much, on the contrary, I choose—Tlax—” Where was he? “Tlax—Tlax—”

. . . It was as if, almost, he were standing upon that black open station platform, where he had gone— had he gone?—that day after drinking all night to meet Lee Maitland returning from Virginia at 7:40 in the morning, gone, light-headed, light-footed, and in that state of being where Baudelaire’s angel indeed wakes, desiring to meet trains perhaps, but to meet no trains that stop, for in the angel’s mind are no trains that stop, and from such trains no one descends, not even another angel, nor even a fair-haired one, like Lee Maitland.—Was the train late? Why was he pacing the platform? Was it the second or third train from Suspension Bridge—Suspension!—“Tlax—” the Consul repeated. “I choose—”

He was in a room, and suddenly in this room, matter was disjunct: a doorknob was standing a little way out from the door. A curtain floated in by itself, unfastened, unattached to anything. The idea struck him it had come in to strangle him. An orderly little clock behind the bar called him to his senses, its ticking very loud: Tlax : tlax : tlax : tlax : . . . Half past five. Was that all? “Hell,” he finished absurdly. “Because—” He produced a twenty-peso note and laid it on the table.

“I like it,” he called to them, through the open window, from outside. Cervantes stood behind the bar, with scared eyes, holding the cockerel. “I love hell. I can’t wait to get back there. In fact I’m running, I’m almost back there already.”

He was running too, in spite of his limp, calling back to them crazily, and the queer thing was, he wasn’t quite serious, running toward the forest, which was growing darker and darker, tumultuous above—a rush of air swept out of it, and the weeping pepper tree roared.

He stopped after a while: all was calm. No one had come after him. Was that good? Yes, it was good, he thought, his heart pounding. And since it was so good he would take the path to Parián, to the Farolito.

Before him the volcanoes, precipitous, seemed to have drawn nearer. They towered up over the jungle, into the lowering sky—massive interests moving up in the background.LinesMEXICOTLAXCALARatesMexico-Vera Cruz RailroadLv7:30Ar18:50Ar12:00$7.50Mexico-Puebla RailroadLv16:05Ar11:05Ar20:007.75Transfer in Santa Ana Chiautempan in both ways.Buses Flecha Roja. Leaving every hour from 5 to 19 hours.Pullmans Estrella de Oro leaving every hour from 7 to 22.Transfer in San Martín Texmelucán in both ways.