Under the Volcano: A Novel (P.S.)

This must be not unlike, he told himself, what some insane person suffers at those moments when, sitting benignly in the asylum grounds, madness suddenly ceases to be a refuge and becomes incarnate in the shattering sky and all his surroundings in the presence of which reason, already struck dumb, can only bow the head. Does the madman find solace

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.

“Hi there, Hugh, you old snake in the grass!”

“What’s the use of escaping,” he drew the moral with complete seriousness, “from ourselves?

In the final analysis there was no one you could trust to drink with you to the bottom of the bowl. A lonely thought.

Ah, a woman could not know the perils, the complications, yes, the importance of a drunkard’s life!

“Get this straight, Geoffrey, I’m thinking of Yvonne, not you.” “Get it a little straighter still. You’re thinking of yourself.

“What is it Goethe says about the horse?” he said. “‘Weary of liberty he suffered himself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death for his pains.

Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, that image of the perfect marriage, lay now clear and beautiful on the horizon under an almost pure morning sky. Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life! Enormously high too, he noted some vultures waiting, more gr