...for in the Farolito mescal had taken it's toll on marksman and target alike...
It was some time before the Consul realised he was no longer in the Farolito, time which had stretched and shrunk like wet leather drying on a horse's girth, the horse so dramatically freed by himself in some time ago, mescal time in all probability yet beyond doubt some other time. A dead dog lay still beside him, quite sure of it's future on this propitious slow ledge some way below the barranca's rim and despite the mescal's glib assertions, on it's very own remarkable day, a day yet being celebrated with torch and candle, Death had overlooked the Consul.
Beside him the dead dog bled in mute affirmation of the Consul's recently announced crusade, or was it jihad, a search and quest certainly and one of great importance perhaps even religious significance to the Consul; but holy or wholesome? Clearly the dog was unsure and it mattered not for the Consul was leaving that last slow ledge on the barranca's rim, leaving albeit inadvertently as his rash attempt to stand initiated a slow inexorable slide down through the mud and vegetation lining the ravine. It was an unpleasant descent, characterized by a loss of dignity rather than by further injury, and in due course beneath wheeling stars far already from the Farolito's garden of delights and alive, the Consul came to rest on the floor of the barranca.
The Consul wavered slightly before the bar...though in any real sense it was scarcely that, more splintered trestle than the dark, bas relief carved, polished mahogany, Brazilian naturally, and burnished here and there on it's lubricious curves by the lambent glow from generously trimmed oil lamps, that fronted the cocktail lounge of that pub they once used, the Consul forced a slow and difficult recall from some distant time, yes that was it, scent of malt and hops from the brewery, and smoke, not the rounded expansive flavours of a fine post prandial cigar, but the bitter-thin acrid reek of cheap cigarettes, the Victoria Hotel, close by that local brewers in Leeds, and a place oft visited by the Taskersons on their sporadic yet always eventful forays into town...the barranca an elusive and not unpleasant memory, a relief from some by now vague sense of unease, and forced himself erect; it was quiet, and in dark corners rheumy eyes observed the crimson lake stains spreading ambitiously across his distressed linen shirt and jacket; around the edges blood was already beginning to dry, dark, burnt almost black in the cantina's inadequate guttering, smoky light. Silence had fallen, sharp and brittle, as the Consul rattled erratically through the thinning beaded curtain cutting off the bar from an aching actinic brightness flaying the dusted streets outside; a curling poster, lost in time and bold and blocky in revolutionary drab, emotive in it's formulaic desperation, ragged here and there, hung loosely behind the bar, waiting for a sympathetic draught to bring it to life, beneath it two desiccated fowl scratched and pecked hopelessly in the dust at the foot of the wall; it was the only sound.
'all buses will carry the dead'
The Consul was absolutely certain that this was so, but equally certain that he had no idea at all what the foundation for this certainty was; one thing was abundantly clear, he was no longer in the cantina. He found himself momentarily at a loss for words; 'one eyes' brief if labyrinthine farewell, goodbye, God be with you, adieu drop in time hovered on the edge of recall and his mind clutched erratically, with little effect at the remnants, a phantasmagorical lexicon of meaningless misshapes, constantly elusive and well beyond the Consul's current grasp. Fortuitously and no less erratically the bus hit an abyssal pothole on the stricken road, and it's very fabric rubbed shoulders briefly with extinction; it proved the stimulus the Consul had unknowingly been seeking...
“ all buses will carry the dead” One-eye's cheroot smoked breath seared the Consul's blank eyes, bleak fish on the slab, end of life gaze, and he pried the finally empty mescal glass from the Consul's firm, desperate, rigor grip, “ you must take the bus Senor, he did, Hugh did, you must.”
© bramblepress. all rights reserved.
We need your consent to load the translations
We use a third-party service to translate the website content that may collect data about your activity. Please review the details and accept the service to view the translations.