"My secrets are of the grave, and must be kept." "And this is how I sometimes think of myself." "As a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world." "But the name of this land is hell." "It is not Mexico, of course, but in the heart." "I just couldn't see any way for Malcolm to got out except the way he did." "Drowned in his own vomit." "And I don't see anything wrong with that." "I think it's quiet in fitting and keeping with the way Malcolm lived." "I don't know whether it was suicide or what." " I don't think anybody found out." "No, I don't think so." "I think it was tablets and gin." " No, no, heart." " Heart?" "Heart failure." "Sudden or choking, I don't know which." "Heart failure I think." " My understanding of..." " On the 4th of July in 1957, an inquest into the death of Malcolm Lowry, a writer by profession, was convened in a Cornish courtroom, near the village of Ripe, in the south of England." "A key witness was his landlady." "There was a question of suicide, taking his life, because of bottle of sleeping pills was quiet empty." "Well, of course, poor old Marjorie may have been taking him and they, I suppose, inquest men whatever he was he kept talking back of those" ""Can you tell me anything about this?" "No, I can't"." "I know nothing, very little about their private lives, certainly not about their pills." "You must ask Marjorie." "The widow Marjorie had been terrified that the great national newspapers would descend on the village courtroom and broadcast to the world the sort of details of a great writer's death." "After all the times of London itself." "had once called him a genius." "In fact, only a single reporter from the local paper was on hand to record the event." "And to the local reporter," "Lowry was merely a gin so tack." "Who would've abused his wife swalled 50 tablets of sodium amytal, eaten a few bites of food, and dropped dead." "He was known to have a compulsion of stuffing things in his mouth indiscriminately, and so the Cornish jury decided that Malcolm had not committed suicide, but had merely suffered death by misadventure." "Towards evening, the rector who was an old saint came in and said "I've just came to tell you it's all right, I can give him blessing in the church"." "Years earlier, Malcolm Lowry had written his own epitaph." "Malcolm Lowry Late of the Bowery" "His prose was flowery And often glowery" "He lived, nightly, and drank daily" "And died, playing the ukelele." "Only seven persons attended the funeral, and afterwards an occasional friend would come to pay his respects." "Perhaps Malcolm Lowry had really died ten years earlier, when he had laid his innermost feelings out for everyone to study." "In a book called, "Under the Volcano"." "He told me he was doomed." "I believed him." "But the suffering he had to go through, in order to produce the "Volcano" that's the thing that simply as a human being makes one wonder whether the game is worth the candle." "I'd rather have the game and the candle." "I so far managed it, but Malcolm was one of these people doomed, as he said, he had to choose one or the other." "He chose, he was completely consistent, in a certain sense, he knew what he was about." "And he chose to live as he did and he produced the "Volcano"." "I chose to live in a different way and I didn't produce anything much." "That's not true; you produced a lot." "Well, yes, but I'm still alive, that's a big difference." "He's dead." "Lowry began to write the novel which both destroyed him and made him into a legend." "Under the shadow of the Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl." "In the book he compressed his entire experience, into a single day." "November 2nd, 1938." "The Mexican Day of the Dead." "I think I know good deal about physical suffering, but it is worst of all" "I wonder if it is because tonight my soul has really died that I feel at the moment, something like peace." "Or it is because right through hell there is a path." "And though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams," "I have been able to see it." "Suddenly from outside the bell spoke up, then ceased abruptly:" "dolente... dolore!" "Over the town, in the dark tempestuous night, backwards revolved the luminous wheel." "Malcolm Lowry was born in 1909, near Liverpool in the north of England." "His father was a wealthy cotton merchant." "He was the youngest of four sons." "The front lawn was five acres in size." "It contained a tennis court and a small golf course." "There was a maid, a cook and a nanny." "But Lowry always complained that his mother neglected him." "His closest companion was his brother Russell." "Nor did I love her at all, none of us did." "This is not a nice thing to say, but she was... she finely defeated all four of us." "And this is 100% not a very nice thing to do." "But in the earliest ages we were a very happy family." "So I would say we started off on a good affection on a domestic basis but he gradually take it away, I'm afraid." "It'd come back again in the end with the old man, he meant well." "He was just a Victorian father." "How do you think that he saw the boys?" "This I don't know." "He used to say "Uncle San took plan for all my boys."" "But he never said what they were." "His father was a compulsive body builder, who would won a medal for life saving in the icy waters of the Dee, and who once have been declared the best developed man in England." "The boys were expected to follow his example." "At 15 young Malcolm won the junior championship, but the fame Royal Liverpool golf club at Hoylake." "To all external appearances he was a healthy upper middle class English lad." "He later claimed that the was brutally beaten and half drowned by cruel nannies." "And was crippled and blind." "This appears to have been somewhat exaggerated." "He got ulcers on his eyes, on his cornea, on the inside." "We had put drops in his eyes." "He had this trouble for some time." "And eventually father took him down to London where he saw a doctor Hudson or mister Hudson, I suppose, who was named an oculist." "It was great for Malcolm's eyes, otherwise they bled, sound pretty grim." "And cleaned them up." "And that was the end of that." "And due course he was packed off to the inevitable public school." "It was the Lease." "A school named famous in the novel "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"." "But that lovable old school master failed to inspire young Malcolm." "What are you looking at?" "Academically, he was average." "He was very good looking." "All the Lowry were very good looking." "He didn't pay much attention to dress." "In fact, probably, tried to be as unusual as school regulations would allow." "And tended rather to... possibly... slunch a little about the place." "After I say "Grace" there will be one or two notices, and the meal won't be served until after those." "Benedictus benedicat." "Will William Jones please, stay to assist after lunch." "The six form ONA level candidates" "Baka, Claff, Hart, Hocken," "Lease, and Lowry, who is now muscle bound, cronically constipated, had very small hands, which he hated." "And was a figure of fun on bath nights, because of his tiny penis." "He was a sports reporter for the school magazine." "And wrote songs for school concerts." "With a scrawny young classmate named Grony Hill. Bow-sing bees, here comes the break" "Yes I've said so." "One two everything Chinese." "I've left my girl in Chackhard." "Said he marry me, my" "But as I knew the things she do" "It's bye bye old Shangai." "And we did this one song in particular and then it was all about, it was called "Hindu Babe"." "And while we did, he loved doing this one, it was with rather little brakes," ""Hindu Babe, I love you, love you, love you." Very jazzy." "And he used to do, used to put a fart in." "And so it would begun "Hindu babe I love you, fart, love you, fart, love you"." "Nodoby else in the world could do it." " Can you play it with the farts in?" " No, I can't." "I can't do it." "I made my mummings where the fart comes." "But it was a great talent." "At 17 Malcolm was delivered in a family limousine to the Liverpool Dockside." "Reporters were on hand to witness the event." "The little rich boy was shipping out to the China seas." "His six months as a decant would be largely spent serving tea." "But it also fed an imagination, that would one day transform that voyage into literature." "He remembered his freighter with the cargo of animals:" "There'd be not only lions but elephants, tigers, jaguars... all bound for a zoo." "The panthers died." "In the Indian Ocean at night, the lions roared, the elephants trumpeted and vomited so that none save the carpenter dared go forward." "When they smashed into the hurricane, the jaguars moaned in terror like frightened children." "No forest had ever plumed so deeply in the long bending winds as that ship." "The harbour bells of Cambridge whose fountains and moonlight and closed courts and cloisters whose enduring beauty and it's virtuous remote self-assurance seemed part, less of the loud mosaic of one's stupid life there, than the strange dream of some old monk," "eight hundred years dead." "A dream jealously guarded:" "Keep off the Grass." "A Yet whose unearthly built compelled one to say:" "God forgive me." "In 1929, Lowry had been unrolled at St. Katherine's College, Cambridge." "I was sitting up reading Plato, and suddenly he appeared." "Came up with this rolling gate who seemed wearing what once being a very good well cut suit." "But would no longer led." "He was carrying a kind of hold on and a ukelele." "We introduced each other." "I said I had pots and drink," "He said "So have I"." "And he produced half a bottle of rum." "So he settled down." "Within five minutes, he lying underneath the table, strumming his ukelele." "He became of Charlotte Holden's Fast Literary Set." "Armed with a ukelele and a regular injection of his fathers money, he was seldom seem at the university." "He had as he said "better things to do"." "The last man to see the student alive, had been his fellow undergraduate, Malcolm Lowry." "Lowry testified under oath that his friend had been depressed by an accumulation of gambling debts." "Years later he told the truth to this psychiatrist." "His fellow undergraduate... had... tried to have a homosexual relationship with him." "Malcolm Lowry thought this was extremely funny." "He thought it was a great joke, and when the young man said that if this was not possible he would commit suicide," "Malcolm Lowry told him, at any rate, that he said:" ""That's a good idea." "Why don't you go ahead?"" ""And you will probably much happier, better off dead than here."" "Next morning the young man was found to have committed suicide." "Now this haunted him for the rest of his days." "Paradise Street in Liverpool also haunted him for the rest of his days." "He'd been taken there when he was five years old." "And given a tour of the syphilis museum." "Pay attention to your trouser button." "And see him if you will for yourself." "The syphilitic as he strolls aimfully down Great Homer Street." "Look how everyone he touches smitten with a dye disease." "It is just that one little word." "The word that kills." "This is he, the human husk, the leaf of ash, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." "The college musical that year was "Laughing at Love"." "And that feature Malcolm Lowry as a cabaret artist." "He was also writing a novel, and short stories for college literary magazine." "edited by Huge Sykes Davis." "Malcolm was interesting and valuable to us as editors and we were imagining his first publish, when we published stuff of his." "Above all because he wrote in prose." "At that time, poetry was the fashionable thing." "The notion that you could write creative and imaginative prose was just because Joyce was in the background, we knew about all that," "But mostly contributors wrote stream of consciousness stuff of an unnatural boredom I cannot describe how shattered." "Malcolm came along doing the same kind of thing." "But his stuff was different." "I remember reading it, I still remember reading it." "that script of his, it's rather odd type writing, naturally it was odd." "My first murder was committed in a windmill." "I must say that riveted my attention, you know, I said "We ought to publish this stuff" and we did." "After a few years pursed of academic application," "Lowry managed to gain a English try-post degree, third class." "He also finished his novel, "Ultramarine"." "Of it the Times of London said:" ""If the art of writing is imitation, the author has mastered it"." "Nevertheless, it was good enough to get published." "And Lowry was a young man of accomplishment." "There is no evidence that his mother ever read the book." "Lowry had been seeing less and less of his family." "But he did return for his 21st birthday." "But we... father lays his rest and he drunk him up himself." "Then he get started with his collection." "And Malcolm, I as said, looked across at me and found and looked at the ceiling." "And said "As far as I can remember, my childhood was one perpetual gloom."" ""I was rather blind, constipated, or crippled."" "And... it didn't warm things up very much." "He was obviously trying to be unpleasant." "From the age of 25, he never saw a blood relative again." "One of his last visits was to the sister in law." "And then he called on me, shortly after we were married." "Steadily, picturesque, again." "Wearing an Alford Hope jersey." "Across a very impressive chest indeed." "I can't remember anything about his..." "The rest of his clothes shall we say it was negligee, to say the least." "And he talked very sweetly, for a short time." "And then said, "Oh, I seen you've got a garden."" ""One day I too will have a garden."" ""And I will grow nothing in it, but mushrooms."" ""Goodbye." And he left, and I never met him again." "Lowry left the genteel life forever." "Now he was in London, Paris, and Spain." "His father sent him money every week, his mother sent him the British Weekly." "And he shared his frequent hangovers with old pals from Cambridge, like Martin Kess." "He and I were walking along a street not far from here," "Fitzroy, a tavern one afternoon." "Those days were still horses, carts, we see it in the streets of London." "Well, there was just passing a horse, in a cart, and the horse, I don't think I can do it for you, I don't really know the kind of..." "I can't do it." "I can't do it." "Noise that they make with their lips." "And this horse made this and Malcolm saw as he passed." "Malcolm, without thinking, he just automatically thought "Damn, that thing is jeering at me"." "Came round this fist, about six inches, the horse felt it." "Practically knocked out." " Knocked in a horse with one punch?" " Yes." "He did a punch like that." "He was terribly distressed about it, because he was the kind that loved animals," ""My God I've caused him distress." "What do I do?"" "It was weeks before he forgot about it, and stopped talking about it." "Of course the horse wasn't hurt at all, picked itself up in no time." "It's a clink of blossom." "It isn't a question of being drunk from time to time, that's normal, that happens to a lot of good citizens and ordinary people." "Point was with him, and with his friend John Davenport from across this yard, how rarely they were totally sober." "It couldn't have amounted to more than one hour or two a month, you see?" "And it is this persistent drinking, not so that he's ever quarrelsome, he was always very gentle, delicate, polite." "They didn't get like that, but they got used to being tied." "But other friends were beginning to notice a strangeness in Lowry, which could not be explained by booze." "And he said, you know," ""They put a male nest on me to shadow me."" "And we said, "What you mean?"" "He said, "He was there this afternoon"." "We said, "Where?" He said, "At Tom Bay."" "In the middle of Tom Bay I turned over on my back to float and there he was, swimming towards me." "We said, "Where is he now?"" "Rupert said, "He's gone."" "Just like that." "He just appears and he disappears." "That was rarely the first time that one claimed to be a little speculative about it, you know?" "He had had little to do with women." "Now in Spain he met a beautiful American writer, named Jane Gabriel." "And fell in love." "He was all like, a little boy, rather shy, bubbling, all anxious to show off his new possessions to the best, best effect." "It was always a very charming act, very sweet, both of them." "They were married in 1934, but a few months later, Lowry was on the Queen Mary steaming towards New York, to try to find his wife." "Jane Gabriel had fled her new husband." "Now he was in New York, a city he described as having an existential fury." "And there was little to distinguish him from the other helpless children of the streets." "He found his wife, then they were together spasmodically." "But Jane Gabriel now realized that what he wanted was not a wife, but a mother." "I think that she was terribly distraught by his drinking and also by the fact that that a few" "fags were on his tail, you should forgive the expression." "At one point Malcolm had one of his choking attacks, and threw himself on the ground on his stomach." "Asking me to bang him on the back, which I did till he began to recover." "We finally reach the end, but instead of going to my room we went to Nancy's because it was bigger." "We locked the door and went to bed together." "He was very affectionate, much kissing but nothing else really." "He was not capable of it, probably due to the drink or possibly he was impotent." "About noon there was a knock on the door." "I called out, "Can't you understand when two men want to be alone together?"" "And they went away." "He awakened one morning, not knowing if a sexual act had taken place between himself and a man who was after him." "But he was worried about whether he had contracted a venereal disease and he asked me if I knew a doctor." "His deepening sense of sin and guilt went far beyond the occasional homosexual indiscretion." "It seemed to penetrate every corner of his being." "Drink help to appease the demons." "But he sensed that there was only one way they could be truly exorcised." "He could write them to death." "He goes into another saloon, from this he emerges, cunningly repaired." "Again the pilgrimage starts, perhaps like the poor cat who has lost an eye in the battle." "He is just looking for his sight." "Near him arrogant, bearded derelicts cringe over spittoons, and of these men he seems afraid." "He wanders from saloon to saloon as though searching for something." "But always keeping the hospital in sight." "Once he stops in a church, his lips something like a prayer." "Inside it is cool." "Around the walls are pictures of the stages with the cross." "Nobody seems to be looking." "He likes drinking in churchs particularly but afterwards he comes to a place not like a church at all." "This is the hospital." "All day he has hovered round it, now it looms up closer than ever." "Tilting the bottle to his mouth, he takes a long final drought." "With the dithering crack of a ship going on the rocks the door shuts behind him." "How do you know?" "You're not signing your name?" "How come you don't sign your name when you go to work?" "Don't you know?" "Don't you know your name?" "I know." "I know my name." "I know..." "And almost incoherent, Malcolm Lowry had been committed to the Belleville Psychiatric Hospital." "Here was a place that took cases no one else would touch." "How do you know you're there?" "You're not signing your name?" "I know." "Up to now he had been merely a poseur playing with ideas of madness and oblivion." "But this was no longer the rich world, where one fell about on soft grass." "Here were minds that were really rotted by alcohol, syphilis, hopelessness." "Here were things that kept on living despite the fact they were beyond repair." "Keys clashed like cymbals, the bathroom door banged open, the daily routine was beginning." "Presently the rooms were filled with the dreadful noise of shuffling feet." "Watching them, he gradually thought he understood the meaning of death, not as a sudden dispatch of violence, but as a function of life." "After three weeks of confinement, the immigration authorities began to take notice of Lowry." "It was possible he would be deported as an alien mad man." "He fled the hospital in terror." "Outside he felt no sense of release only in quietude." "He kept gazing back with a sort of longing at the billing that had been his home." "Returning to the saloon, he picked out a secluded place to sit where they brought his whiskey." "But feeling he was being watched even there, he moved later, drink in hand, to the very obscurest corner of the bar." "Where curled up like an embryo, he could not be seen at all." "And yet Malcolm Lowry would begin his great book, with the words of Sophocles" ""Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man."" "On the Day of the Dead, November 2nd, 1936," "Mister ans Misses Malcolm Lowry arrived in Mexico." "Lowry was 27 years of age, his passport described him as a writer." "But he considered his only book an embarrassment." "His life in fact was an embarrassment." "He looked to the sun." "But he had lost the sun: it was not his sun." "Like the truth, it was well-nigh impossible to face;" "he did not want to go anywhere near it, least of all, sit in its light, facing it." "Jane Gabriel was not spending too much time with Malcolm Lowry, she was sure she had married a genius but genius seemed largely bent on self-destruction." "At any rate, they settled in a small house on the Calle Humboldt." "The street set on the edge of a barranca a deep ravine that served as an open sewer." "For Lowry this became a mystical symbol, as did the twin volcanoes," "Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl, that sat on the horizon." "Here he began to write a story he called "Under the Volcano"." "He lay back in his chair." "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 graceful than eagles as they hovered there like burnt papers floating from a fire" "The shadow of an immense weariness stole over him..." "The Consul fell asleep with a crash." "Gradually a creature that Lowry called simply "The Consul"" "began to emerge." "Miraculously for he was still drinking as heavily as ever, and his marriage was in shreds." "Lowry began to write as he had never written before." "Perhaps this was his last hope, the justification and redemption of his largely worthless life." "For the Consul, who drinks mescal down to the worm, is not a creature of fiction at all, but Malcolm Lowry himself." "Oozing alcohol from every pore, the Consul stood at the open door of the Salón Ofélia." "How sensible to have had a mescal." "How sensible!" "For it was the right, the sole drink to have under the circumstances." "Moreover he had not only proved to himself he was not afraid of it, he was now fully awake, fully sober again, and well able to cope with anything that might come his way." "But for this slight continual twitching and hopping within his field of vision, as of innumerable sand fleas, he might have told himself he hadn't had a drink for months." "The only thing wrong with him, he was... too hot." "Lowry was writing about a defraud British diplomat in the final stages of alcoholic disintegration." "He was also writing, sometimes with good humor, about hell." "But look here, hang it all, it is not altogether darkness, you misunderstand me if you think it is altogether darkness I see, and if you insist on thinking so, how can I tell you why I do it?" "But if you look at that sunlight there, ah, then perhaps you'll get the answer, see, look." "Look at the way it falls through the window:" "what beauty can compare to that of a cantina in the early morning?" "Not even the gates of heaven, opening wide to receive me, could fill me with such celestial complicated and hopeless joy as the iron screen that rolls up with a crash." "I never saw him without it... All mystery, all hope, all disappointment, yes, all disaster, is here, beyond those swinging doors." "And, by the way, do you see that old woman from Tarasco sitting in the corner, how, unless you drink as I do, can you hope to understand the beauty of an old woman from Tarasco" "who plays dominoes at seven o'clock in the morning?" "Ah, a woman could not know the perils, the complications, yes, the importance of a drunkard's life!" "And then we went home and Lowry's old friend and fellow writer, Arthur Calder-Marshall, brough his wife to Mexico to meet Malcolm." "And I think it was three days later that we were rung before breakfast." "And told by that Malcolm hadn't come home." "She said: "I don't care about him but" ""he's taken the alarm clock out and he's drinking the alarm clock, and" ""I'll have to go to Mexico City to get another alarm clock and I cannot stand that!"" "And when I chance it: "Why did you take the alarm clock?"" "Malcolm said:" ""How should I know when not to stop working... without an alarm clock?"" "The Consul, an inconceivable anguish of horripilating hangover thunderclapping about his skull, and accompanied by a protective screen of demons gnattering in his ears, became aware that in the horrid event of his being observed by his neighbours it could" "hardly be supposed he was just sauntering down his garden with some innocent horticultural object in view." "Nor even that he was sauntering." "In vain he tried to check himself, plunging his hands, with an extraordinary attempt at nonchalance, in which he hoped might appear more than a hint of consular majesty, deeper into the sweat-soaked pockets of his dress trousers." "The day before him stretched out like an illimitable rolling wonderful desert in which one was going, though in a delightful way, to be lost." "And where now he was drawn on beautifully by the dissolving mirages past the skeletons like frozen wire and the wandering dreaming lions towards ineluctable personal disaster," "always in a delightful way of course." "She had a story she told us that night, about his courtship in Granada." "And she said that one evening he took her for a walk in the garden of the Generalife and he suddenly fell on top of her." "He lay on top of her and she was readying for a fate not worse than death." "And he then told her the plot of Ultramarine from beginning to end and they then went home." "I think she was very fond of him." "I don't think... you know, physically, Because he got so drunk that I think she would be worried" "Think might be drink made him a bit impotent." "She never actually said that but one could gather it." "Otherwise did she hop off with... various chaps?" "As Jane Gabriel hopped off with various chaps she had good reason." "Lowry sometimes seemed to throw her at other men and so the applied his talent to yet another facet of himself the cuckolding husband." "Was it here he had been betrayed?" "This very room, perhaps, had been filled with her cries of love." "But the abominable impact on his whole being at this moment of the fact that that hideously elongated cucumiform bundle of blue nerves and gills below the steaming un-selfconscious stomach had sought its pleasure in his wife's body brought him trembling to his feet." "How loathsome, how incredibly loathsome was reality." "It won't be long, before he realizes he's only one of the hundred or so other ninney-hammers with gills like codfish and veins like racehorses-- prime as goats all of them, hot as monkeys, salt as wolves in pride!" "What an uncommon time you two must have had, paddling palms and playing bubbles and titties all day under cover of saving me..." "Jesus." "Poor little defenceless me" "I've got my own piddling little fight for freedom on my hands." "Mummy, let me go back to the beautiful brothel!" "God... is it possible to suffer more than this, out of this suffering something must be born, and what would be born was his own death, for ah, how alike are the groans of love to those of the dying," "how alike, those of love, to those of the dying" "Jane Gabriel finally ran off forever with a man from Santa Barbara." "And Lowry was left alone in a town he described as having 400 swimming pools, 15 churches, and 57 cantinas, those small mexican drinking places, which did not open until noon." "Where I found Lowry was in a damn grocery store." "'Cause at that time wanting to go to cantinas was too expensive for him." "And at nine o'clock in the morning the cantinas weren't opened." "And these grocery stores were sort of... clandistine places, you know?" "I think he found it beautiful here because all alcoholics look for their hell and when they find it this is their place to go like no further." "Mexico itself." "Well, I think he personally found his place there." "At that time." "You mean sort of search out a place which will become your private hell." "Like crummiest, you know?" "You find this crummy place and that's it." "Hey, now I've found this." "I'm in hell, what more can God give me, you know?" "The entire landscape for Lowry was now monstrous." "And even letters to his friends were more like cries from the heart." "To John Davenport, 1936." "No words exist to describe the terrible condition I'm in." "I have since being here been in prison three times." "Everywhere I go I'm pursued, and even now as I write, no less than 5 policemen are watching me." "For obvious and oblivious reasons I cannot write to my family." "For reasons so obvious they're almost naked," "I may not write to my wife." "I looked around in the back recesses of what used to be a mind and saw two friends: yourself and Arthur Calder-Marshall." "I also saw something else, not so friendly." "Imminent insanity." "Another complication is that never in my whole life have I been to a place so fantastically beautiful as this, and in spite of it all it would be difficult for me to leave." "The people are lovely, gentle, polite, passionate, profound, and true." "Like Columbus, I've turned through one reality and discovered another." "But like Columbus also I thought Cuba was on the mainland and it was not." "And like Columbus also it is possible," "I'm leaving a heritage of destruction." "And not at all sure about this, but in the mexican prison you have to drink out of the piss pot sometimes." "Especially when you have no passport." "Part of this, of course, is imaginary as usual." "But for once it is not as imaginary as usual." "In fact, danger both to mind and body threatens from all sides." "This is not a cry of the boy who cried wolf." "It is the wolf itself who cries for help." "It is impossible to say that this is less of a cry than a howl." "What is impossible is to eat, sleep, work and I fear it may rapidly be becoming impossible also to live." "I cannot even remotely imagine that I'm writing these terrible words." "But here I am, and outside is the sun." "And inside God only knows, and he is already refused." "I cannot see Jenna, but for God sakes, see she's alright." "I foresaw my fate too deeply to involve her in it." "In the summer of 1938, Malcolm Lowry left Mexico under somewhat mysterious circumstances." "He had spent at least one Christmas in prison, and perhaps he was deported as an undesirable alien." "Possibly his father had thought young Malcolm should continue his disintegration closer to a Methodist church." "Or maybe Lowry made one of his rare independent decisions." "At any rate, after 20 months in Mexico," "Lowry departed carrying little with him but an unfinished novel." "Lowry was placed by his family in a small Los Angeles hotel." "As checks from his father were sent directly to the hotel management, he was virtually a prisoner." "He spent a year expanding his novel." "His brother still worked for the family firm." "He was a relentless man." "Was there any resentment amongst the family against him?" "None at all." "None, no." "And he used to write... and he was forever making trouble, he only used to go on some meetings, to be called into father's office, we wanted to get in there to get some letters signed," "one couldn't get on with life because Malcolm was on the way." "And..." "Father was paying Malcolm more to say out of the country than he was paying me to work like a slave in the office." "In August 1939," "Lowry's father suddenly ordered his son to head further north." "Lowry didn't even bother to pack his manuscript, the move was described as temporary." "It would last for 14 years." "Suppose you land in Vancouver, it has a sort of Pango Pango quality mingled with sausage and mash and generally a rather Puritan atmosphere." "Everyone is fast asleep and when you prick them a Union Jack flows out of the hole." "But no one in a certain sense lives there." "They merely as it were pass through." "Mine the country and quit." "Blast the land to pieces, knock down the trees and send them rolling down Burrard Inlet..." "As for drinking, by the way, that is beset, everywhere beset by perhaps favourable difficulties." "No bars, only beer parlours so uncomfortable and cold that serve beer so weak no self-respecting drunkard would show his nose in them." "You have to drink at home, and when you run short it's too far to get a bottle" "With the Second World War about to break out," "Lowry's father must have thought he would be safer under the British flag, and transferred his allowance to a Vancouver lawyer." "Without his manuscript to work on, he tried hard to overcome the difficulties of drinking in the dominion." "On top of everything else, he was once again in love." "While in Hollywood, he'd been introduced to a former starlet, Marjorie Bonner." "It was love at first sight." "And this man got off the bus and barked over and put his arms around me." "Said: "Marjorie!" and I said: "Malcolm!"" "So by the time Jack King got off the bus to introduce us, there we were standing on the corner of Hollywood and Western with our arms around each other." "And that's how we met." "Now she joined him in a small attic room in Vancouver, bringing with her the manuscript of Under the Volcano." "The Second World War had broken out." "Although Lowry was not enthusiastic, he made an attempt to enlist in the army." "He was rejected." "He was desperately short of money, and he looked for other sources of revenue." "He found one in John Buchan, a fellow writer, now Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor General of Canada." "We were very poor, of course." "And..." "Malcolm wrote John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, as one write it to another to try and help him out." "So Lord Tweedsmuir wrote him a very nice letter and send him a check and an introduction to editor of the Vancouver Province, I think it was." "And Malcolm wrote a few articles for them." "It wasn't easy for him, he wasn't... a reporter but it made us a little money which helped some." "While Marjorie searched for a cheap country cottage," "Lowry reworked his novel from beginning to end." "After ten months, he sent it off to a New York agent." "Dear Malcolm," "I regretfully come to the conclusion that I'm not going to find a publisher for Under the Volcano." "It has been rejected by Farrar  Rinehart, Harcourt Brace, Houghton Mifflin," "Alfred Knopf, J.B. Lippincott, Little Brown," "Random House, Scribner's, Simon  Schuster, Story Press." "I'm sorry that I wasn't successful in placing it for you." "And am holding the script here for your instructions." "Dear Hal," "I'm sorry I've only given you further disappointment with Under the Volcano so far, and it may be that the adverse conditions under which the book was finally written influenced me to think that it was an authentic triumph" "when it was only sort of a moral one." "So I'm rewriting it," "I think it foolish to embark in an absolute new project at this time." "Lowry lay in bed for four days, without eating, sleeping, speaking or even drinking." "Then he rose and looked out to this new surroundings." "The Lowry's had moved only ten miles, but had escaped the hated city." "They now lived in one of the squatter's shack, on the shores of Burrard Inlet, near the village of Dollarton." "Lowry built himself a pier, it was awkward and flimsy but to everyone's surprise it withstood the gales and tides, and towards it Lowry developed a particular affection." "This frail thing that could endure the storms of the world." "The Shell refinery you can see... the buildings over there in the distance, there used to be a very large sign in the lights" "Shell of which the S had been burned down, so that night this great huge sign "hell" would would shine through the darkness, through the mist from the refinery." "With the flashing light of the burning, whatever was going on there, and Malcolm very frequently used to refer to that refinery as "hell" or the city of dease." "It was always a source of a joy to him to look out of this paradise into the civilized part of the world which for him was hell." "And one night Malcolm was looking out of the window and he said," ""Oh twilight."" ""It's such a said time of day."" ""Isn't it?" And I turned to him and I said: "Malcolm, listen to me, look at me"." ""You never have to be lonely or sad again." "Twilight will be our happy time."" ""We'll pull the curtains, and light the lamps, and beat from the dark night withdrawn together."" "And he threw his arms around me and ever after that he insisted on cleaning the lamps, and oiling them, and filling them, and lighting them at twilight, it was a big ceremony." "Unlike Jane Gabriel," "Marjorie was willing to function both as a wife and a mother." "She watched over her man-child as he stood writing for twelve ours at the stretch, his legs developing varicose veins, his small hands pressed so hard against the table, that they developed eight plight pads." "If he occasionally fell into a bottle of gin, he would pick himself up in the morning, dredge up the dreadful memories of Mexico, and try again to write it all down." "The band struck up Guadalajara again in the wind, and the bull bellowed, his horns caught in the railings through which, helpless, he was being poked with sticks in what remained of his testicles, tickled with switches, a machete," "and, after getting clear and re-entangled, a garden rake;" "dust too and dung was thrown in his red eyes;" "and now there seemed no end to this childish cruelty." "Mexico was not laughing away her tragic history;" "Mexico was bored." "The bull was bored." "Everyone was bored, perhaps had been all the time." "As amid boredom the bull circled the arena and, boredom, he now finally sat down in a corner of it." "It was a tiresome and odious spectacle, really." "The only people happy were the drunks." "Gripping tequila or mescal bottles they tottered into the ring," "Yes, it struck her now that this whole business of the bull was like a life;" "the important birth, the fair chance, the tentative, then assured, then half-despairing circulations of the ring, an obstacle negotiated-- a feat improperly recognized-- boredom, resignation, collapse:" "then another, more convulsive birth, a new start;" "the circumspect endeavours to obtain one's bearings in a world now frankly hostile, followed by disaster, capitulation, disintegration" "Yes, then we he had reached a certain place, the end of a chapter, or a scene, or something, he would give me the script and I would type it for him." "And then I would read it over carefully and write my comments on it." "And then he would read it over and write his comments on it." "And we would sit down and have a big discussion." "And of course sometimes he would scream and say:" ""You cut out the best thing I've ever wrote in my life, it's bleeding, it's awful."" "And then he'd come down, then he'd read me what he thought about it, and I'd say what I thought." "And the end he's usually shake his head and say:" ""You were right, yes, I went out to a long dissertation, it needs cutting."" "On the morning of June 7th, 1944," "Lowry's shack burst into flame." "Inside was the fourth craft of Under the Volcano." "We didn't get any furniture, anything out, I rescued the Volcano." "What was Malcolm's immediate reaction?" " Was one of a heartbreak?" " He went to pieces." "He'd stop people on the street here afterwards and say:" ""My house burned down." "Do you realize?" "My house burned down."" "He was in terrible shape." "Even when we were in the city, he'd stop people and say: "My house burned down"." "He went into a state of shock." "Lowry would return to rebuild the shack." "But now he took his charred manuscript to Niagara Lake, where he worked through the winter." "On the 6th of June, 1945, after 8 years of writing, he once again sent his manuscript to a New York agent." "Of course it may be not any good at all, five years ago I deceived myself into thinking I'd pulled it off as of course I had not." "However, I feel now it may be a pretty good job, and myself justified in sending it to you since my impression is that the majority of its faults in the older version have been done away with." "Now he returned to the volcano itself, and he was afraid." "He was always afraid of immigration officers." "He was definitely a man to be denounced at borders." "He saw himself as a man who had failed at everything." "He had failed to support his wife, to fight in wars, he had left his house burn down." "Now he was afraid of being taken over by his own fiction." "What he noted in his diary, what if he were coming back to Mexico not to assert his own rejuvenation but to seek the death that had eluded him there eight years before." "Lowry showed Marjorie the scenes of the novel, but he waited with a gathering desperation for some word about his book." "He was devastated when a book on alcoholism, "The Last Weekend", became a smash best seller." "Dear old comrade, my novel "The Volcano", seems to have gone smack into the void." "No intelligent comment so far or encouragement." "I think it is really good, though "The Last Weekend" may have deprived it of some of its impact." "I lack prose justice." "One of the publishers to receive the manuscript was the great British house of Jonathan Cape." "These were the people who had published his first novel, thirteen years before." "But they had quite forgotten about Malcolm Lowry." "I'd hate to have the responsibility of reading that novel by an unknown man, when that came under my desk along with ten other piece of rubbish." "What happened is when originally it was sent in we got to read his report on it by then a resident reader, a man William Plomer, who died about a year ago." "And he wrote a report on the book, and Jonathan Cape sent a copy of the report to Lowry." "And he wrote to Lowry and said:" ""I'd like to publish your book."" ""If you undertake to try to correct some of the things pointed out, some of the faults pointed out on this report."" ""We definitely guarantee to do it."" ""If you don't, we might still publish it, but" "I'd be interested on your view."" "Now this brought forth perhaps one of the most extraordinary letters, perhaps the greatest letter I've ever seen by an author." "Which was a full exposition of the meaning and intention of that book." "Dear Mr. Cape, thank very much indeed for yours of the 29th November." "which did not reach me, however, until New Year's Eve, there are a thousand writers who can draw adequate characters till all is blue for one who can tell you anything new about hell-fire, and I am telling you something new about hell-fire." "At chapter twelve," "I have scarcely changed it since 1940, though I made some slight editions and subtractions in 1942, and substituted the passage, and here I quote:" ""how alike are the groans of love to those of the dying,"" "end of quote, etc, in 1944, for another one not so good." "I due think his deserve in this chapter is an almost biblical one." "Hasn't the guy had enough suffering?" "Surely we've reached the end now." "But no as... apparently it's only just when you get to the end if you've read carefully, you should want to turn back to the beginning again, where it is not impossible, too, that your eye might alight" "once more upon Sophocles'" "'Wonders of many, and none is more wonderful than man' just to cheer you up." "And I may say that Jonathan's answer to that was an immediate offer of a contract." "Dear Mr. Cape, you will have my approve soon, we are wallowing in success." "Feeling in fact like starving man whose eyes have been stuffed with potatoes." "Ever sincerely yours, Malcolm Lowry." "The same day, the great American editor, Albert Erskine, who had handed William Faulkner, John O'Hara, and James Michener, decided with his colleagues at Reynal  Hitchcock that they would publish the book." "On the day of publication," "Lowry arrived in New York." "It was a cold and ugly day, everything seemed to be a little bit off the key to me, for some reason." "I don't know if he has been drinking already, and I went to meet him at the Greyhound bus station." "Took him to their hotel." " Did you meet" " Went immediately to the bar." "Did you meet what you expected to meet or was it a surprise?" "It was a surprise." "Not query may ask:" "What are the reviews like in Albert district?" "There's never been anything like him, and there never had been, nobody had such reviews." "And it just about knocked him out." "He couldn't believe it." "That was the... thing that has been told over and over again about..." "Marjorie and me looking for him at bars and finally finding him in one at Lexington." "Having exhausted 3rd Avenue." "He walked in while we were there and said:" ""You know, I knew you'd be here"." "Were you aware of his drinking propensities before you met him?" "I assumed from the book that he had had some experience." "But I thought that... maybe he stopped." "The book seems to disapprove of it." "The book was soon out in 15 languagues." "The Germans called it a masterpiece." "The French called it "the greatest book since Ulisses"." "Tokyo's Mainichi Shinbo said:" ""It belongs to the centuries."" "From the prestigious journals of the English speaking world came unprecedented critical acclaim." "If there is morbidity here, it is akin to that of Elizabethan tragedy, born of an involved and passionate interest in the secrets of the fall of men." "So strong is the light which the author directs upon his central character that the shadow it casts is one of tragic dimensions." "I've never before used this word in a review, but I'm of the opinion that Under the Volcano is a work of genius." "Hounded by so many absurd calamities," "Lowry bequeathed us many courageous efforts, and one magnificent achievement." "Under the Volcano may have cost him everything, if so it was no waste." "And of course, everybody wanted to give parties for him and he just fell apart, he couldn't stand it." "He got drunk." "He backed against the wall like a threatened animal." "And stood there in a sort of stupor." "And said:" ""How do you do?" "Yes."" ""Thank you."" "And looked like a trapped animal." "The Lowrys returned to Dollarton, where his pier was still standing." "There was some confusion whether he was a British or a Canadian writer, and both sides laid claim to it." "It is rather discouraging very often being a writer in Canada." "Somebody put the Volcano in the Encyclopedia Britannica Year Book 1948-49, ranking it as the work of a Canadian over and above anything then current in American literature, but not one word did I ever hear of that here." "All I've ever heard was from my royalty report, namely that the sales in Canada from the end of 1947-49 were precisely 2 copies." "The Sun published only a few syndicated lines that called it a turgid novel full of self-destruction, not for the discerning (or something) reader..." "Lowry was exaggerating." "Although he was certainly not a household name in Canada, there was a band of disciples gathering around the resident genius." "The Lowry legend began to take shape." "So one night, the liquor was all gone, I could smell he was drunk." "But he said: "No, I am going to do to be Christ."" ""I'm gonna change water to wine."" "And he was so convinced, he was very convincing, and he had me convinced during this time, that he was able to do this." "See, there was this, he was... his charisma was so great that he got you really spellbind too." "So he went out to the kitchen tap, and he turned the tap on and he said: "This is wine."" ""Drink it"." "He gave it to me and I'll swear it was wine, that was just..." "That was the kind of influence he had on you at that time." " He had you believing you were drinking wine too." " He really did." " He really had the..." " You couldn't swear you were..." "And he believed it so." " He did too..." " He had to, it was the only thing there was to drink in the house." "It was water all the time." "Lowry was supposed to be writing books, they were waiting in London and New York." "And Lowry was stalling for time." "Among the work in progress was something called "October Ferry to Gabriola"." "Whenever Lowry could stall no longer, it went to New York in fragments." "Malcolm..." "I think we'd given him 3600 dollars in advance, we payed him 100 dollars a month for over two years." "But when..." "But it could be cut off if the book didn't seem to be going well." "And I knew that as soon as Bob Ross read any of this" ""October Ferry" the money was gonna be cut off." "So I didn't tell him I had it." "I found it sadistic, tedious as anything I've ever read." "And coming after the other book I couldn't understand it." "He was desperately afraid of being a one shot novelist, and tried to keep working." "But his publishers finally cut him off." "My Dear Albert," "I hate to break a long silence in this way, but can you somehow lend us 200 dollars immediately?" "I was always thought to began a short story like this." "It may interest you to know that there is a long broadcast tonight, or tomorrow night, on the subject of Malcolm Lowry," "Canada's greatest most successful writer." "Which we can't listen to because our radio has ran down, and can't afford to replenish the battery." "The unkindest cut of all." "Gradually the legend disintegrated." "He'd become a repulsive drunk, when everything else ran out, he drank after shave lotion." "Arold Burny the poet kicked him out." "Downy Kirk the school teacher kicked him out." "Dear Downy, this is a letter thanks to you and your wife for a wonderful evening, but also a letter of apology, so it's addressed to you alone." "Since I do not feel even worthy of addressing your wife for the moment," "I'm told I used bad language in front of your wife and Dorothy." "This is utterly inexcusable, of course." "I am deeply sorry." "Sincerely, Malcolm." "I've always felt that Marjorie had had enough, and I don't blame her." "It was a very cramped little place." "Who might blame her for didn't say?" "But it was a pretty dead kind of life." "She is a... she was a beautiful woman and lively, and I think she wanted a larger scene." "I think there was such a basic love and trust between them, and if she wanted that, and wanted badly enough, he would do what she wanted." "His only friends now are the old originals," "Sam the fisherman," "Jimmy Craig, Harvey Burt." "And the last time I saw Malcolm in Vancouver, was with old Jimmy Craig." "Old Jim had walked as far down the hallway leading to the plane as he could," "Malcolm turned just before they disappeared through the last door, he clung to Old Jim and he was almost swamp surrounded Old Jim." "But he just stood there and it seemed to me, the longest time, I heard them say nothing at all, but just the clinging of a child to his to its last parred, its last support." "And then he was gone, and disappeared, Jimmy never saw him again." "Success is like some horrible disaster, worse than your house burning, the sound of ruination as the roof tree falls following each other faster while you stand, the helpless witness of your damnation." "Fame like a drunkard consumes the house of the soul" "Exposing that you have worked for only this " "Ah, that I had never suffered this treacherous kiss" "And had been left in darkness for ever to founder and fail." "Break you heart..." "I don't get it." "What do you think sad about it?" "Well..." "The idea of such a talented man gone so wrong." "I'm sorry to get sentimental, but I always do and I always will." "It's a beautiful book." "And the writing is so tremendous." "That I would say it compares with Conrad or any of those." "But my God!" "Here's a guy that just..." "He could cope as long as he was drunk." "The minute he got sober, he couldn't cope with anything." "That made me sad." "He couldn't... get his ass in the gear!" "There were other admirers of Lowry of great academic distinction." "Twenty years later, there would be four full fledged biographies, and 147 doctoral thesis, dealing with the most arcane aspects of the man and his work." "It's very difficult to date." "I've come across ten drafts so far." "He could become very frustrated, because his determination was short lived." "And we're finding this from his lower loops, which are... you're going to find in Ys and Gs." "And they're very, they're made just barely." "And this also..." "And it is in fact, I would say a precursor of the French "Noveau roman"." "And Professor Day, of course, is a professor of comparative literature." "I'm not suggesting he doesn't know the Noveau roman." "But still he has not made this comparison, and I think he ought to do so." "Yes, it's rather far." "We... don't get many visitors here in order and cause of events because we're out of feet track, but in the summer people come out from many places, nice place to ride out with the family and walk." "And you get one or two who've come from good few thousand miles further sometimes, you see lurking in the background a sort of phd thesis beginning to fall on and I say:" ""Ha ha, Lowry", to myself." "And they say to me "Lowry" and I say "Yes"." "I show them were the grave is." "It is the satire, the grotesques." "The way this is... ...he uses in" "Under the Volcano, I mean it's physical, it has..." "Physical presence, but at the same time... almost fantasized... For what is actually seen is land exploding." "You see the volcanoes going off." "Volcanoes are dead no longer." "Now he smiled for snapshots in front of monuments, and carted with him thousands of pages of work, that he was ashamed to show to the rest of the world." "Nor was he spared the ultimate emasculation of the writer." "I have now reached a position where every night" "I write 5 novels in imagination, but am unable to write a word." "I cannot explain in human terms the incredible effort it has cost me to write even this silly little note." "And now the rain!" "Let it come." "The wind is rising too." "Both on the ocean, and in the stomach." "He could see the ceiling intensity of the man under certain circumstances when he wanted to say something or write something and he couldn't get anything out." "He could neither say it nor write it." "He wanted once to inscribe a book to me, I remember." "Under the Weather, he just couldn't get his name down." "And he was absolutely ridged... with fury at himself." "I think it was always at himself." "In the Spring of 1957, he returned at last to England." "Much of his time was spent in mental hospitals." "There was some question of a lobotomy, which would remove part of his brain, and reduce him to a vegetable." "But this was stopped." "All he had was an operation for piles, and he was occasionally well enough to join his old friend Bob Pocock, a radio producer, in a nearby pub." "And suddenly he said, cut across my conversation." "He said: "You changed to me, you changed."" "I say: "Good God, Malcolm!"" ""21 years!" "A lot has happened in that time, you know?"" "He said: "No, you changed, you changed."" "And he became progressively unhappier and unhappier." "And so he said "Oh well, I suppose I better go, he was clutching this copy, this battered copy of Under the Volcano, showing it to led lady who couldn't have known A from Z." "A distinguished psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Raymond, made a last attempt to stop his drinking." "Well, in those days, it was based entirely on the Pavlovian Principle." "It was namely that we're very strict regard to timing." "One gave an injection of apomorphine, which one knew perfectly well would produce nausea and vomiting." "In about 10 minutes, but it varied with the individual." "Having done that and having determined what was the nausea time, when then gave alcohol just before the nausea ensued." "And without any doubt at all it is relatively easy to produce a condition aversion to alcohol." "Night:" "and once again, the nightly grapple with death, the room shaking with daemonic orchestras, the snatches of fearful sleep, the voices outside the window, my name being continually repeated with scorn by imaginary parties arriving," "the dark's spinnets." "As if there were not enough real noises in these nights the colour of grey hair." "Not like the rending tumult of American cities, the noise of the unbandaging of great giants in agony." "But the howling pariah dogs, the cocks that herald dawn all night, the drumming, the moaning..." " Que material es este?" " Esto es madera." " Que precio tiene?" " 300 pesos." "He distinguished an incredibly filthy man sitting hunched in the corner on a lavatory seat, so short his trousered feet didn't reach the littered, befouled floor." ""You like María?" this man croaked again." ""I send." "Mi amigo."" "He farted." ""?" "Qué hora?" asked the Consul, shivering, noticing, in the runnel, a dead scorpion;" ""What's the time?"" ""Sick," answered the man." ""No, it er ah half past sick by the cock."" ""You mean half past six by the clock."" ""Sí señor." "Half past sick by the cock."" "The whole insect world had somehow moved nearer and now was closing, rushing in upon him." "A kind of seething, from which, as from the persistent rolling of drums heard by some great dying monarch, occasionally a half-recognizable voice dissociated itself:" "Those enormous Mega Cola." "Because of this he had a horror of stinking." "During this aversion, treatment did, which incidentally was only part of the treatment and a fairly minor part of his treatment." "But during this treatment, we used on those days to withhold fluid." "The only fluid the patients had was alcohol." "And during a lawn or at the end of one of these sessions, he was taking some milk." "And now he was very thirsty but first he used the milk to strap his fingernails and wash his hands." "And then he drank." "This was perhaps a..." "The Farolito!" "he said to himself." "The Lighthouse, the lighthouse that invites the storm, and lights it!" "It was a strange place, a place really of the late night and early dawn, which as a rule, did not open till four o'clock in the morning." "But today being the holiday for the dead it would not close." "The proprietor, Ramón Diosdado, known as the Elephant, who was reputed to have murdered his wife to cure her neurasthenia, the beggars, hacked by war and covered with sores, one of whom one night after four drinks from the Consul" "had taken him for the Christ," "The Consul that creature of Malcolm Lowry's spent his last night on Earth in the Farolito." "There he found himself surrounded by a group of irritated bureaucrats." "This did not surprise to Consul as he always considered himself the chief of sinners." "Then Sanabria spoke for the first time." ""I am afraid you must come to prison,"" "he said simply in English." "The Chief of Municipality rolled his hips and gripped the Consul's arm." ""You Al Capón." "You a Jew chingao."" ""We have found out--on the telephone-- is it right?" "that you are a criminal." "You want to be a policeman?" "I make you policeman in Mexico."" "The Chief of Rostrums took him by the coat." "Someone else seized him from behind." "In spite of his struggles he was being dragged towards the door." "The Chief of Rostrums was looking down at him." ""Norteamericano, eh," said the Chief." ""Ingles." "You Jew."" "He narrowed his eyes." "The Consul, shaking himself free, tore frantically at the horse's bridle." "The Chief of Rostrums stepped aside, hand on his holster." "He drew his pistol." "With his free hand he waved away some tentative onlookers." ""I blow you wide open from your knees up, you cabrón,"" "he said, "you pelado."" ""No, I wouldn't do that," said the Consul quietly, turning round." ""That's a Colt--17, isn't it?" "It throws a lot of steel shavings."" "The Chief of Rostrums pushed the Consul back out of the light, took two steps forward, and fired." "Lightning flashed like an inchworm going down the sky and the Consul, reeling, saw above him for a moment the shape of Popocatepetl, plumed with emerald snow and drenched with brilliance." "The Chief fired twice more, the shots spaced, deliberate." "Thunderclaps crashed on the mountains and then at hand." "Released, the horse reared; tossing its head, it wheeled round and plunged neighing into the forest." "At first the Consul felt a queer relief." "Now he realized he had been shot." "He fell on one knee, then, with a groan, flat on his face in the grass." ""Christ," he remarked, puzzled," ""this is a dingy way to die."" "A bell spoke out:" "Dolente... dolore!" "It was raining softly." "Shapes hovered by him, holding his hand, perhaps still trying to pick his pockets, or to help, or merely curious." "He could feel life slivering out of him like liver, ebbing into the tenderness of the grass." "He was alone." "Where was everybody?" "Or had there been no one?" "Suddenly he screamed, and it was as though this scream were being tossed from one tree to another, as its echoes returned, then, as though the trees themselves were crowding nearer, huddled together, closing over him, pitying..." "Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine." "The village of Ripe, in the south of England." "It was here that Lowry and his wife settled in final refuge." "The house was built in 1740," "Marjorie is having a wonderful time with the garden, as am I." "She's planting seeds destined to be blowing hollyhocks." "I sow in sweet peas, four seats in each row." "One for the rabbit, one for the cow, one for the mouse, and one to grow, as they say here." "While, meanwhile, I weed sentences full of contorted lousewort which I lay neatly in rose for use later, no doubt." "He was writing again, rallying whatever forces remained, in the full knowledge that after the Volcano, there might be nothing." "His landlady and neighbor was Miss Winnie Mason." "He used to sit like that gazing into space." "He did a lot of that, very often you felt like he's looking through you." "He's looking to something beyond." "He knew there was something beyond, if only he could reach it." "If only he could detain it." "Well, I don't know..." "No, don't bother." "I should have called him a great gentleman... to us." "He drank little now." "He would go with Marjorie to Charlie Baker's pub, and have a pined bitter and walk home." "He was always standing in the head trows," "There used to have a tree and he would stand in there for hours." "Andy would hang around in church hours, and he always had a grim." "Which everybody thought he was other..." "You know, not quite aware sometime." "You could wonder what he was up to." "Yes, I used to wonder he would grim if anyone came down." "He wasn't a man to talk at all." "No, he'd strike you off." "He'd ask you something." "And then he'd strike you off..." "He was a good listener." "Oh yeah, perfect listener." "No wonder he was a good book writer, I should think." "All good listeners are good book writers." "He took Marjorie to the lake district, not because it was a land of words worth but it reminded him of British Columbia, where he had once been a good book writer." "Dear Harvy," "I'm writing without my glasses so the contours of this note may be a little at rye." "Also I'm very tired." "I cannot believe our poor pier has been swept away." "That pier that gave so much happiness to many and us." "It was us, in a sense." "We risked our lives building it." "Nobody could understand how it survived so long not even engineers." "And he was nicknamed "The Crazy Wonder" on the beach." "Ramshackle for certain angles, there it was, and the handrails, pure rile." "But hold the washing, hung out there on the dine, like great white stationary birds, beating their wings against the gale." "Margie and I built it together with practically no tools, and I'm brokenhearted it's gone." "Shortly before seven o'clock, on the 27th of June, 1957." "Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Lowry walked from the You Three pub to white cottage of Ripe, carrying a bottle of gin." "Towards evening, he... it was in the bedroom, anyhow, he's had more than but... sufficient and she took the bottle of gin away from him." "And dashed it against the wall, the far side of the bed." "There was a mark for a long time till I had they had it re-papered." "He went for her with a chair, and she came in to me." "And she said: "Oh, Woodie"" "wouldn't use my real name, "I'm so frightened"" ""Malcolm's had some gin."" ""Could I sleep in here with you tonight?"" "Sometime during the night," "Malcolm Lowry, having consumed a half bottle of gin, eat a few morsels of food, and swallowed two bottles of perpetual sleeping pills." "I don't think she slept much and neither did I." "I met she dressed, and she said: "I suppose I must go and get poor old Malcolm a cup of tea."" "And she went in, came back very hurriedly," ""Woody, he's gone!"" "And I said: "What, up to Liverpool?"" ""No", she said, "he's dead"." "My secrets are of the grave and must be kept." "And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world:" "but the name of this land... is hell." "It is not Mexico of course but in the heart."