Read Online Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry - Free Book Online Page A

Orlac
, said a poster:
6 y 8.30. Las Manos de Orlac, con Peter Lorre
.
    The street lights came on again, though the theatre still remained dark. M. Laruelle fumbled for a cigarette. The hands of Orlac… How, in a flash, that had brought back the old days of the cinema, he thought, indeed his own delayed student days, the days of the
Student of Prague
, and Wiene and Werner Kraũss and Karl Grüne, the Ufa days when a defeated Germany was winning the respect of the cultured world by the pictures she was making. Only then it had been Conrad Veidt in
Orlac
. Strangely, that particular film had been scarcely better than the present version, a feeble Hollywood product he’d seen some years before in Mexico City or perhaps — M. Laruelle looked around him — perhaps at this very theatre. It was not impossible. But so far as he remembered not even Peter Lorrehad been able to salvage it and he didn’t want to see it again… Yet what a complicated endless tale it seemed to tell, of tyranny and sanctuary, that poster looming above him now, showing the murderer Orlac! An artist with a murderer’s hands; that was the ticket, the hieroglyphic of the times. For really it was Germany itself that, in the gruesome degradation of a bad cartoon, stood over him. — Or was it, by some uncomfortable stretch of the imagination, M. Laruelle himself?
    The manager of the
cine
was standing before him, cupping, with that same lightning-swift, fumbling-thwarting courtesy exhibited by Dr Vigil, by all Latin Americans, a match for his cigarette: his hair, innocent of raindrops, which seemed almost lacquered, and a heavy perfume emanating from him, betrayed his daily visit to the
peluquería;
he was impeccably dressed in striped trousers and a black coat, inflexibly
muy correcto
, like most Mexicans of his type, despite earthquake and thunderstorm. He threw the match away now with a gesture that was not wasted, for it amounted to a salute. ‘Come and have a drink,’ he said.
    â€˜The rainy season dies hard,’ M. Laruelle smiled as they elbowed their way through into a little
cantina
which abutted on the cinema without sharing its frontal shelter. The
cantina
, known as the Cervecería XX, and which was also Vigil’s ‘place where you know’, was lit by candles stuck in bottles on the bar and on the few tables along the walls. The tables were all full.
    â€˜
Chingar
,’ the manager said, under his breath, preoccupied, alert, and gazing about him: they took their places standing at the end of the short bar where there was room for two. ‘I am very sorry the function must be suspended. But the wires have decomposed.
Chingado
. Every blessed week something goes wrong with the lights. Last week it was much worse, really terrible. You know we had a troupe from Panama City here trying out a show for Mexico.’
    â€˜Do you mind my –’
    â€˜No,
hombre
,’ laughed the other — M. Laruelle had asked Sr Bustamente, who’d now succeeded in attracting the barman’s attention, hadn’t he seen the
Orlac
picture here before and if so had he revived it as a hit. ‘¿—
uno —
?’
    M. Laruelle hesitated:
Tequila
,’ then corrected himself:’
No, anís
—
anís, por favor, señor
.’
    â€˜
Y una —ah— gaseosa
,’ Sr Bustamente told the barman. ‘
No, señor
,’ he was fingering appraisingly, still preoccupied, the stuff of M. Laruelle’s scarcely wet tweed jacket. ‘
Compañero
, we have not revived it. It has only returned. The other day I show my latest news here too: believe it, the first newsreels from the Spanish war, that have come back again.’
    â€˜I see you get some modern pictures still though,’ M. Laruelle (he had just declined a seat in the
autoridades
box for the second showing, if any) glanced somewhat ironically at a garish three-sheet of a German film star, though the