The bull pulled against the opposing forces of ropes a while longer, then subsided gloomily, swinging his head from side to side with those shuffling sweeps along the ground, into the dust where, temporarily defeated but watchful, he resembled some fantastic insect trapped at the centre of a huge vibrating web… Death, or a sort of death, just as it so often was in life; and now, once more, resurrection. The charros, making strange knotty passes at the bull with their lariats, were rigging him for his eventual rider, wherever, and whoever, he might be.
— ‘Thank you.’ Hugh had passed her the pinch bottle of habanero also absently. She took a sip and gave it to the Consul who sat holding the bottle gloomily in his hands without drinking. And had he not, too, met her at the Bus Terminal?
Yvonne glanced around the grandstand : there was not, so far as she could see, in this whole gathering one other woman save a gnarled old Mexican selling pulque. No, she was wrong. An American couple had just climbed up the scaffolding farther down, a woman in a dove-grey suit, and a man with hornrimmed spectacles, a slight stoop, and hair worn long at the back, who looked like an orchestra conductor; it was the couple Hugh and she had seen before in the zócalo, at a corner Novedades buying huaraches and strange rattles and masks, and then later, from the bus, on the church steps, watching the natives dancing. How happy they seemed in one another; lovers they were, or on their honeymoon. Their future would stretch out before them pure and untrammelled as a blue and peaceful lake, and thinking of this Yvonne’s heart felt suddenly light as that of a boy on his summer holidays, who rises in the morning and disappears into the sun.
Instantly Hugh’s shack began to take form in her mind. But it was not a shack — it was a home! It stood, on wide-girthed strong legs of pine, between the forest of pine and high, high waving alders and tall slim birches, and the sea. There was the narrow path that wound down through the forest from the store, with salmonberries and thimbleberries and wild blackberry bushes that on bright winter nights of frost reflected a million moons; behind the house was a dogwood tree that bloomed twice in the year with white stars. Daffodils and snowdrops grew in the little garden. There was a wide porch where they sat on spring mornings, and a pier going right out into the water. They would build this pier themselves when the tide was out, sinking the posts one by one down the steep slanting beach. Post by post they’d build it until one day they could dive from the end into the sea. The sea was blue and cold and they would swim every day, and every day climb back up a ladder on to their pier, and run straight along it into their house. She saw the house plainly now; it was small and made of silvery weathered shingles, it had a red door, and casement windows, open to the sun. She saw the curtains she had made herself, the Consul’s desk, his favourite old chair, the bed, covered with brilliant Indian blankets, the yellow light of the lamps against the strange blue of long June evenings, the crab-apple tree that half supported the open sunny platform where the Consul would work in summer, the wind in the dark trees above and the surf beating along the shore on stormy autumn nights; and then the mill-wheel reflections of sunlight on water, as Hugh described those on the Cervecería Quauhnahuac, only sliding down the front of their house, sliding, sliding, over the windows, the walls, the reflections that, above and behind the house, turned the pine boughs into green chenille: and at night they stood on their pier and watched the constellations, Scorpio and Triangulum, Bootes and the Great Bear, and then the millwheel reflections would be of moonlight on water ceaselessly sliding down the wooden walls of silver overlapping shingles, the moonlight that on the water also embroidered their waving windows —
And it was possible. It was possible ! It was all there, waiting for them. If only she were alone with Geoffrey so she could tell him of it! Hugh, his cowboy hat on the back of his head, his feet in their high-heeled boots on the seat in front, seemed now an interloper, a stranger, part of the scene below. He was watching the rigging of the bull with intense interest, but becoming conscious of her gaze, his eyelids drooped nervously and he sought and found his cigarette package, corroborating its emptiness more with his fingers than his eyes.
Down in the arena a bottle was passed among the men on horseback who handed it to the others working on the bull. Two of the horsemen galloped about the ring aimlessly. The spectators bought lemonade, fruit, potato chips, pulque. The Consul himself made as if to buy some pulque but changed his mind, fingering the habanero bottle.
More drunks interfered, wanting to ride the bull again; they lost interést, became sudden horse fanciers, lost that concern too, and were chased out, careening.
The giant returned with the belching squealing Rocket, vanished, was sucked away by it. The crowd grew silent, so silent she could almost make out some sounds that might have been the fair again, in Quauhnahuac.
Silence was as infectious as mirth, she thought, an awkward silence in one group begetting a loutish silence in another, which in turn induced a more general, meaningless silence in a third, until it had spread everywhere. Nothing in the world is more powerful than one of these sudden strange silences —
— the house, dappled with misty light that fell softly through the small new leaves, and then the mist rolling away across the water, and the mountains, still white with snow appearing sharp and clear against the blue sky, and blue wood-smoke from the driftwood fire curling out of the chimney; the sloping shingled woodshed on whose roof the dogwood blossoms fell, the wood packed with beauty inside; the axe, the trowels, the rake, the spade, the deep, cool well with its guardian figure, a flotsam, a wooden sculpture of the sea, fixed above it; the old kettle, the new kettle, the teapot, the coffee pot, the double boilers, the saucepans, the cupboard. Geoffrey worked outside, longhand, as he liked to do, and she sat typing at a desk by the window — for she would learn to type, and transcribe all his manuscripts from the slanting script with its queer familiar Greek e’s and odd t’s into neat clean pages — and as she worked she would see a seal rise out of the water, peer round, and sink soundlessly. Or a heron, that seemed made of cardboard and string, would flap past heavily, to alight majestically on a rock and stand there, tall and motionless. Kingfishers and swallows flitted past the eaves or perched on their pier. Or a seagull would glide past perched on a piece of floating driftwood, his head in his wing, rocking, rocking with the motion of the sea… They would buy all their food, just as Hugh said, from a store beyond the woods, and see nobody, save a few fishermen, whose white boats in winter they would see pitching at anchor in the bay. She would cook and clean and Geoffrey would chop the wood and bring the water from the well. And they would work and work on this book of Geoffrey’s, which would bring him world fame. But absurdly they would not care about this; they would continue to live, in simplicity and love, in their home between the forest and the sea. And at half-tide they would look down from their pier and see, in the shallow lucid water, turquoise and vermilion and purple starfish, and small brown velvet crabs sidling among barnacled stones brocaded like heart-shaped pin-cushions. While at weekends, out on the inlet, every little while, ferry-boats would pass ferrying song upstream —
The spectators sighed with relief, there was a leafy rustling among them, something, Yvonne couldn’t see what, had been accomplished down below. Voices began to buzz, the air to tingle once more with suggestions, eloquent insults, repartee.
The bull was clambering to its feet with its rider, a fat tousle-headed Mexican, who seemed rather impatient and irritated with the whole business. The bull too looked irritated and now stood quite still.
A string band in the grandstand opposite struck up Guadalajara out of tune. Guadalajara, Guadalajara, half the band was singing…
’Guadalajara,’ Hugh slowly pronounced each syllable.
Down up, down down up, down down up, banged the guitars, while the rider glowered at them, then, with a furious look, took a firmer grip of the rope round the bull’s neck, jerked it, and for a moment the animal actually did what was apparently expected of it, convulsing itse
lf violently, like a rocking-machine, and giving little leaps into the air with all four feet. But presently it relapsed into its old, cruising gait. Ceasing to participate altogether, it was no longer difficult to ride, and after one ponderous circuit of the arena, headed straight back for its pen which, opened by the pressure of the crowd on the fences, it’d doubtless been secretly longing for all the time, trotting back into it with suddenly positive, twinkling innocent hooves.
Everyone laughed as at a poor joke: it was laughter keyed to and somewhat increased by a further misfortune, the premature appearance of another bull, who, driven at a near gallop from the open pen by the cruel thrusts and pokes and blows intended to arrest him, on reaching the ring stumbled, and fell headlong into the dust.
The first bull’s rider, glum and discredited, had dismounted in the pen: and it was difficult not to feel sorry for him too, as he stood by the fence scratching his head, explaining his failure to one of the boys standing, marvellously balanced, on the top railing —
— and perhaps even this month, if there had been a late Indian summer, she would stand on their porch looking down over Geoffrey’s work, over his shoulder into the water and see an archipelago, islands of opalescent foam and branches of dead bracken — yet beautiful, beautiful — and the reflected alder trees, almost bare now, casting their sparse shadows over the brocaded stones like pincushions, over which the brocaded crabs scuttled among a few drowned leaves —
The second bull made two feeble attempts to get up, and lay down again; a lone horseman galloped across the ring swinging a rope and shouting at it in a husky tone: ‘Booa, shooa, booa’ — other charros appeared with more ropes; the little dog came scampering up from nowhere, scuttling about in circles; but it did no good. Nothing definite happened and nothing seemed likely to budge the second bull who was roped casually where it lay.
Everybody became resigned to another long wait, another long silence, while below, and with a bad conscience, they halfheartedly set about rigging the second bull.
‘See the old unhappy bull’, the Consul was saying, ‘in the plaza beautiful. Do you mind if I have a very small drink, darling, a poquitín… No? Thank you. Waiting with a wild surmise for the ropes that tantalize –’
— and gold leaves too, on the surface, and scarlet, one green, waltzing downstream with her cigarette, while a fierce autumn sun glared up from beneath the stones —
‘Or waiting with seven — why not? — wild surmises, for the rope which tantalizes. Stout Cortés ought to come into the next bit, gazing at the horrific, who was the least pacific of all men… Silent on a peak in Quauhnahuac. Christ, what a disgusting performance –’
‘Isn’t it?’ Yvonne said, and turning away thought she saw standing opposite below the band, the man in dark glasses who’d been outside the Bella Vista this morning and then later — or had she imagined it? — standing up beside Cortez Palace. ‘Geoffrey, who’s that man?’
‘Strange about the bull,’ the Consul said. ‘He’s so elusive. —There’s your enemy, but he doesn’t want to play ball today. He lies down… Or just falls down; see, he’s quite forgotten he’s your enemy now, so you think, and pat him… Actually… Next time you meet him you might not recognize him as an enemy at all.’
‘Es ist vielleicht an ox,’ Hugh muttered.
‘An oxymoron… Wisely foolish.’
The animal lay supine as before, but momentarily abandoned. People were huddled down below in argumentative groups. Horsemen also arguing continued to whoop about the ring. Yet there was no definite action, still less any indication that such was forthcoming. Who was going to ride the second bull? seemed the main question in the air. But then what of the first bull, who was raising Cain in the pen and was even with difficulty being restrained from taking the field again. Meanwhile the remarks around her echoed the contention in the arena. The first rider hadn’t been given a fair chance, verdad? No hombre, he shouldn’t even have been given that chance. No hombre, he should be given another. Imposseebly, another rider was scheduled. Vero, he wasn’t present, or couldn’t come, or was present but wasn’t going to ride, or wasn’t present but was trying hard to get here, verdad? — still, that didn’t change the arrangement or give the first rider his opportunity to try again.
Drunks were as anxious as ever to deputize; one was mounted on the bull now, pretending to ride it already, though it hadn’t moved a fraction. He was dissuaded by the first rider, who looked very sulky: just in time: at that moment the bull woke up and rolled over.
The first rider was on the point now, in spite of all comments, of trying again when — no; he had been too bitterly insulted, and wasn’t going to ride on any account. He walked away over towards the fence, to do some more explaining to the boy still balanced on top.
A man down below wearing an enormous sombrero had shouted for silence and paddling his arms was addressing them from the ring. They were being appealed to, either for their continued patience, or for a rider to volunteer.
Yvonne never found out which. For something extraordinary had happened, something ridiculous, yet with earth-shattering abruptness —
It was Hugh. Leaving his coat behind he had jumped from the scaffolding into the arena and was now running in the direction of the bull from which, perhaps in jest, or because they mistook him for the scheduled rider, the ropes were being whipped as by magic. Yvonne stood up: the Consul came to his feet beside her.
‘Good Christ, the bloody fool!’
The second bull, not indifferent as might have been supposed to the removal of the ropes, and perplexed by the confused uproar that greeted his rider’s arrival, had clambered up bellowing; Hugh was astride him and already cake-walking crazily in the middle of the ring.
‘God damn the stupid ass!’ the Consul said.
Hugh was holding the rigging tightly with one hand and beating the brute’s flanks with the other, and doing this with an expertness Yvonne was astonished to find she was still almost competent to judge. Yvonne and the Consul sat down again.
The bull jumped to the left, then to the right with both forelegs simultaneously, as though they were strung together. Then it sank to its knees. It clambered up, angry; Yvonne was aware of the Consul beside her drinking habanero and then of him corking the bottle.
‘Christ… Jesus.’
‘It’s all right, Geoff. Hugh knows what he’s doing.’
‘The bloody fool…’
‘Hugh’ll be all right — Wherever he learnt it.’
‘The pimp… the poxbox.’
It was true that the bull had really waked up and was doing its best to unseat him. It pawed the earth, galvanized itself like a frog, even crawled on its belly. Hugh held on fast. The spectators laughed and cheered, though Hugh, really indistinguishable from a Mexican now, looked serious, even grim. He leaned back, holding on determinedly, with feet splayed, heels knocking the sweaty flanks. The charros galloped across the arena.
‘I don’t think he means to show off,’ Yvonne smiled. No, he was simply submitting to that absurd necessity he felt for action, so wildly exacerbated by the dawdling inhuman day. All his thoughts now were bringing that miserable bull to its knees. ‘This is the way you like to play? This is the way I like to play. You don’t like the bull for some reason? Very well, I don’t like the bull either.’ She felt these sentiments helping to smite Hugh’s mind rigid with concentration upon the defeat of the bull. And somehow one had little anxiety watching him. One trusted him implicitly in this situation, just as one trusted in a trick diver, a tightrope walker, a steeplejack. One felt, even, half ironically, that this was the kind of thing Hugh might be best fitted to do and Yvonne was surprised to recall her instant’s panic this morning when he had jumped on the parapet of the bridge over the barranca.
Under the Volcano Page 33