Under the Volcano Read Online Free PDF

house, where there would be a light in the window M. Laruelle didn't
want to see--for long after Adam had left the garden the light in Adam's house
burned on--and the gate was mended, past the school on the left, and the spot where
he had met Yvonne with Hugh and Geoffrey that day--and he imagined the rider as
not pausing even at Laruelle's own house, where his trunks lay mountainous and
still only half packed, but galloping recklessly round the corner into the
Calle Tierra del Fuego and on, his eyes wild as those soon to look on death,
through the town--and this too, he thought suddenly, this maniacal vision of
senseless frenzy, but controlled, not quite uncontrolled, somehow almost
admirable, this too, obscurely, was the Consul...
    M. Laruelle passed up the hill: he
stood, tired, in the town below the square. He had not, however, climbed the
Calle Nicaragua. In order to avoid his own house he had taken a cut to the left
just beyond the school, a steep broken circuitous path that wound round behind
the zócalo. People stared at him curiously as he sauntered down the Avenida de
la Revolucón, still encumbered with his tennis racket. This street, pursued far
enough, would lead back to the American highway again and the Casino de la Selva;
M. Laruelle smiled: at this rate he could go on travelling in an eccentric
orbit round his house for ever. Behind him now, the fair, which he'd given
scarcely a glance, whirled on. The town, colourful even at night, was
brilliantly lit, but only in patches, like a harbour. Windy shadows swept the
pavements. And occasional trees in the shadow seemed as if drenched in coal
dust, their branches bowed beneath a weight of soot. The little bus clanged by
him again, going the other way now, braking hard on the steep hill, and without
a tail light. The last bus to Tomalín. He passed Dr. Vigil's windows on the far
side: Dr. Arturo Diaz Vigil, Médico Cirujano y Partero, Facultad de México, de
la Escuela Médico Militar, Enfermedades de Niños, Indisposiciones nerviosas ~
and how politely all this differed from the notices one encountered in the
mingitorios!--Consultas de 12 a 2 y 4 a 7. A slight overstatement, he thought.
Newsboys ran past selling copies of Quauhnahuac Nuevo, the pro-Almazan,
pro-Axis sheet put out, they said, by the tiresome Unión Militar. Un avión de
combate Francis derribado por un caza Alemán. Los trabajadores de Australia
abogan por la paz. ¿Quiere Vd.?--a placard asked him in a shop window--vestirse
con elegancia y a la última moda de Europa y los Estados Unidos? M. Laruelle
walked on down the hill. Outside the barracks two soldiers, wearing French army
helmets and grey faded purple uniforms laced and interlaced with green lariats,
paced on sentry duty. He crossed the street. Approaching the cinema he became
conscious all was not as it should be, that there was a strange unnatural
excitement in the air, a kind of fever. It had grown on the instant much
cooler. And the cinema was dark, as though no picture were playing tonight. On
the other hand a large group of people, not a queue, but evidently some of the
patrons from the cine itself, who had come prematurely flooding out, were
standing on the pavement and under the arcature listening to a loudspeaker
mounted on a van blaring the Washington Post March. Suddenly there was a crash
of thunder and the street lights twitched off. So the lights of the cine had
gone already. Rain, M. Laruelle thought. But his desire to get wet had deserted
him. He put his tennis racket under his coat and ran. A troughing wind all at
once engulfed the street, scattering old newspapers and blowing the naphtha
flares on the tortilla stands flat: there was a savage scribble of lightning
over the hotel opposite the cinema, followed by another peal of thunder. The
wind was moaning, everywhere people were running, mostly laughing, for shelter.
M. Laruelle could hear the thunderclaps crashing on the mountains behind him.
He just reached the