_Corasmin and the Parrots_
One says Mexico: one means, after all, one little town away South in
the Republic: and in this little town, one rather crumbly adobe house
built round two sides of a garden _patio_: and of this house, one spot
on the deep, shady verandah facing inwards to the trees, where there
are an onyx table and three rocking-chairs and one little wooden chair,
a pot with carnations, and a person with a pen. We talk so grandly,
in capital letters, about Morning in Mexico. All it amounts to is one
little individual looking at a bit of sky and trees, then looking down
at the page of his exercise book.
It is a pity we don’t always remember this. When books come out with
grand titles, like _The Future of America_ or _The European Situation_,
it’s a pity we don’t immediately visualize a thin or a fat person, in
a chair or in bed, dictating to a bob-haired stenographer or making
little marks on paper with a fountain pen.
Still, it is morning, and it is Mexico. The sun shines. But then,
during the winter, it always shines. It is pleasant to sit out of doors
and write, just fresh enough, and just warm enough. But then it is
Christmas next week, so it ought to be just right.
There is a little smell of carnations, because they are the nearest
thing. And there is a resinous smell of ocote wood, and a smell of
coffee, and a faint smell of leaves, and of Morning, and even of
Mexico. Because when all is said and done, Mexico has a faint, physical
scent of her own, as each human being has. And this is a curious,
inexplicable scent, in which there are resin and perspiration and
sunburned earth and urine among other things.
And cocks are still crowing. The little mill where the natives have
their corn ground is puffing rather languidly. And because some women
are talking in the entrance-way, the two tame parrots in the trees have
started to whistle.
The parrots, even when I don’t listen to them, have an extraordinary
effect on me. They make my diaphragm convulse with little laughs,
almost mechanically. They are a quite commonplace pair of green birds,
with bits of bluey red, and round, disillusioned eyes, and heavy,
overhanging noses. But they listen intently. And they reproduce. The
pair whistle now like Rosalino, who is sweeping the _patio_ with a twig
broom; and yet it is so unlike him, to be whistling full vent, when any
of us is around, that one looks at him to see. And the moment one sees
him, with his black head bent rather drooping and hidden as he sweeps,
one laughs.
The parrots whistle exactly like Rosalino, only a little more so. And
this little-more-so is extremely, sardonically funny. With their sad
old long-jowled faces and their flat disillusioned eyes, they reproduce
Rosalino and a little-more-so without moving a muscle. And Rosalino,
sweeping the _patio_ with his twig broom, scraping the tittering leaves
into little heaps, covers himself more and more with the cloud of his
own obscurity. He doesn’t rebel. He is powerless. Up goes the wild,
sliding Indian whistle into the morning, very powerful, with an immense
energy seeming to drive behind it. And always, always a little more
than lifelike.
Then they break off into a cackling chatter, and one knows they are
shifting their clumsy legs, perhaps hanging on with their beaks and
clutching with their cold, slow claws, to climb to a higher bough,
like rather raggedy green buds climbing to the sun. And suddenly, the
penetrating, demonish mocking voices:
“Perro! Oh, Perro! Perr-rro! Oh, Perr-rro! Perro!”
They are imitating somebody calling the dog. _Perro_ means dog. But
that any creature should be able to pour such a suave, prussic-acid
sarcasm over the voice of a human being calling a dog, is incredible.
One’s diaphragm chuckles involuntarily. And one thinks: _Is it
possible?_ Is it possible that we are so absolutely, so innocently, so
_ab ovo_ ridiculous?
And not only is it possible, it is patent. We cover our heads in
confusion.
Now they are yapping like a dog: exactly like Corasmin. Corasmin is a
little fat, curly white dog who was lying in the sun a minute ago, and
has now come into the verandah shade, walking with slow resignation,
to lie against the wall near by my chair. “Yap-yap-yap! Wouf! Wouf!
Yapyapyapyap!!” go the parrots, exactly like Corasmin when some
stranger comes into the _zaguan_. Corasmin and a little-more-so.
With a grin on my face I look down at Corasmin. And with a silent,
abashed resignation in his yellow eyes, Corasmin looks up at me, with
a touch of reproach. His little white nose is sharp, and under his
eyes there are dark marks, as under the eyes of one who has known much
trouble. All day he does nothing but walk resignedly out of the sun,
when the sun gets too hot, and out of the shade, when the shade gets
too cool. And bite ineffectually in the region of his fleas.
Poor old Corasmin: he is only about six, but resigned, unspeakably
resigned. Only not humble. He does not kiss the rod. He rises in spirit
above it, letting his body lie.
“Perro! Oh, Perr-rro! Perr-rro! Perr-rr-rro!!” shriek the parrots, with
that strange penetrating, antediluvian malevolence that seems to make
even the trees prick their ears. It is a sound that penetrates one
straight at the diaphragm, belonging to the ages before brains were
invented. And Corasmin pushes his sharp little nose into his bushy
tail, closes his eyes because I am grinning, feigns to sleep; and then,
in an orgasm of self-consciousness, starts up to bite in the region of
his fleas.
“Perr-rro! Perr-rro!” And then a restrained, withheld sort of yapping.
The fiendish rolling of the Spanish “r,” malevolence rippling out
of all the vanished, spiteful æons. And following it, the small,
little-curly-dog sort of yapping. They can make their voices so
devilishly small and futile, like a little curly dog. And follow it
up with that ringing malevolence that swoops up the ladders of the
sunbeams right to the stars, rolling the Spanish “r.”
Corasmin slowly walks away from the verandah, his head drooped, and
flings himself down in the sun. No! He gets up again, in an agony of
self-control, and scratches the earth loose a little, to soften his
lie. Then flings himself down again.
Invictus! The still-unconquered Corasmin! The sad little white curly
pendulum oscillating ever slower between the shadow and the sun.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
But that is human bombast, and a little too ridiculous even for
Corasmin. Poor old Corasmin’s clear yellow eyes! He is going to be
master of his own soul, under all the vitriol those parrots pour over
him. But he’s not going to throw out his chest in a real lust of
self-pity. That belongs to the next cycle of evolution.
I wait for the day when the parrots will start throwing English at us,
in the pit of our stomachs. They cock their heads and listen to our
gabble. But so far they haven’t got it. It puzzles them. Castilian, and
Corasmin, and Rosalino come more natural.
Myself, I don’t believe in evolution, like a long string hooked on to
a First Cause, and being slowly twisted in unbroken continuity through
the ages. I prefer to believe in what the Aztecs called Suns: that is,
Worlds successively created and destroyed. The sun itself convulses,
and the worlds go out like so many candles when somebody coughs in the
middle of them. Then subtly, mysteriously, the sun convulses again, and
a new set of worlds begins to flicker alight.
This pleases my fancy better than the long and weary twisting of the
rope of Time and Evolution, hitched on to the revolving hook of a First
Cause. I like to think of the whole show going bust, _bang!_--and
nothing but bits of chaos flying about. Then out of the dark, new
little twinklings reviving from nowhere, nohow.
I like to think of the world going pop! when the lizards had grown
too unwieldy, and it was time they were taken down a peg or two. Then
the little humming birds beginning to spark in the darkness, and a
whole succession of birds shaking themselves clean of the dark matrix,
flamingoes rising upon one leg like dawn commencing, parrots shrieking
about at midday, _almost_ able to talk, then peacocks unfolding at
evening like the night with stars. And apart from these little, pure
birds, a lot of unwieldy skinny-necked monsters bigger than crocodiles,
barging through the mosses; till it was time to put a stop to them.
When someone mysteriously touched the button, and the sun went bang,
with smithereens of birds bursting in all directions. Only a few
parrots’ eggs and peacocks’ eggs and eggs of flamingoes smuggling in
some safe nook, to hatch on the next Day, when the animals arose.
Up reared the elephant, and shook the mud off his back. The birds
watched him in sheer stupefaction. What? _What in heaven’s name is this
wingless, beakless old perambulator?_
No good, oh birds! Curly, little white Corasmin ran yapping out of
the undergrowth, the new undergrowth, till parrots, going white at
the gills, flew off into the ancientest recesses. Then the terrific
neighing of the wild horse was heard in the twilight for the first
time, and the bellowing of lions through the night.
And the birds were sad. What is this? they said. A whole vast gamut of
new noises. A universe of new voices.
Then the birds under the leaves hung their heads and were dumb. No good
our making a sound, they said. We are superseded.
The great big, booming, half-naked birds were blown to smithereens.
Only the real little feathery individuals hatched out again and
remained. This was a consolation. The larks and warblers cheered up,
and began to say their little say, out of the old “Sun,” to the new
sun. But the peacock, and the turkey, and the raven, and the parrot
above all, they could not get over it. Because, in the old days of the
Sun of Birds, they had been the big guns. The parrot had been the old
boss of the flock. He was so clever.
Now he was, so to speak, up a tree. Nor dare he come down, because of
the toddling little curly white Corasmin, and such-like, down below.
He felt absolutely bitter. That wingless, beakless, featherless,
curly, misshapen bird’s nest of a Corasmin had usurped the face of the
earth, waddling about, whereas his Grace, the heavy-nosed old Duke of a
parrot, was forced to sit out of reach up a tree, dispossessed.
So, like the riff-raff up in the gallery at the theatre, aloft in
the Paradiso of the vanished Sun, he began to whistle and jeer.
“_Yap-yap!_” said his new little lordship of a Corasmin. “Ye Gods!”
cried the parrot. “Hear him forsooth! _Yap-yap!_ he says! Could
anything be more imbecile? Yap-yap! Oh, Sun of the Birds, hark at that!
_Yap-yap-yap!_ Perro! _Perro! Perr-rro!_ Oh, _Perr-rr-rro!_”
The parrot had found his cue. Stiff-nosed, heavy-nosed old duke of
the birds, he wasn’t going to give in and sing a new song, like those
fool brown thrushes and nightingales. Let them twitter and warble. The
parrot was a gentleman of the old school. He was going to jeer now!
Like an ineffectual old aristocrat.
“_Oh, Perr-rro! Perr-rro-o-o-o!_”
The Aztecs say there have been four Suns, and ours is the fifth. The
first Sun, a tiger, or a jaguar, a night-spotted monster of rage,
rose out of nowhere and swallowed it, with all its huge, mercifully
forgotten insects along with it. The second Sun blew up in a great
wind: that was when the big lizards must have collapsed. The third
Sun burst in water, and drowned all the animals that were considered
unnecessary, together with the first attempts at animal men.
Out of the floods rose our own Sun, and little naked man. “Hello!”
said the old elephant. “What’s that noise?” And he pricked his ears,
listening to a new voice on the face of the earth. The sound of man,
and _words_ for the first time. Terrible, unheard-of sound! The
elephant dropped his tail and ran into the deep jungle, and there stood
looking down his nose.
But little white curly Corasmin was fascinated. “_Come on! Perro!
Perro!_” called the naked two-legged one. And Corasmin, fascinated,
said to himself: “Can’t hold out against that name. Shall have to go!”
so off he trotted, at the heels of the naked one. Then came the horse,
then the elephant, spell-bound at being given a name. The other animals
ran for their lives, and stood quaking.
In the dust, however, the snake, the oldest dethroned king of all,
bit his tail once more and said to himself: “_Here’s another! No end
to these new lords of creation! But I’ll bruise his heel! Just as I
swallow the eggs of the parrot, and lick up the little Corasmin-pups._”
And in the branches, the parrot said to himself: “_Hello! What’s this
new sort of half-bird? Why, he’s got Corasmin trotting at his heels!
Must be a new sort of boss! Let’s listen to him, and see if I can’t
take him off._”
Perr-rro! Perr-rr-rro-oo! Oh, Perro!
The parrot had hit it.
And the monkey, cleverest of creatures, cried with rage when he heard
men speaking. “_Oh, why couldn’t I do it!_” he chattered. But no good,
he belonged to the old Sun. So he sat and gibbered across the invisible
gulf in time, which is the “other dimension” that clever people gas
about: calling it “fourth dimension,” as if you could measure it with a
foot-rule, the same as the obedient other three dimensions.
If you come to think of it, when you look at the monkey you are looking
straight into the other dimension. He’s got length and breadth and
height all right, and he’s in the same universe of Space and Time as
you are. But there’s another dimension. He’s different. There’s no rope
of evolution linking him to you, like a navel string. No! Between you
and him there’s a cataclysm and another dimension. It’s no good. You
can’t link him up. Never will. It’s the other dimension.
He mocks at you and gibes at you and imitates you. Sometimes he is even
more _like_ you than you are yourself. It’s funny, and you laugh just a
bit on the wrong side of your face. It’s the other dimension.
He stands in one Sun, you in another. He whisks his tail in one Day,
you scratch your head in another. He jeers at you, and is afraid of
you. You laugh at him and are frightened of him.
What’s the length and the breadth, what’s the height and the depths
between you and me? says the monkey.
You get out a tape-measure, and he flies into an obscene mockery of you.
It’s the other dimension, put the tape-measure away, it won’t serve.
“Perro! Oh, Perr-rro!” shrieks the parrot.
Corasmin looks up at me, as much as to say:
“It’s the other dimension. There’s no help for it. Let us agree about
it.”
And I look down into his yellow eyes, and say:
“You’re quite right, Corasmin, it’s the other dimension. You and I, we
admit it. But the parrot won’t, and the monkey won’t, and the crocodile
won’t, neither the earwig. They all wind themselves up and wriggle
inside the cage of the other dimension, hating it. And those that have
voices jeer, and those that have mouths bite, and the insects that
haven’t even mouths, they turn up their tails and nip with them, or
sting. Just behaving according to their own dimension: which, for me,
is the other dimension.”
And Corasmin wags his tail mildly, and looks at me with real wisdom in
his eyes. He and I, we understand each other in the wisdom of the other
dimension.
But the flat, saucer-eyed parrot won’t have it. Just won’t have it.
“Oh, Perro! Perr-rro! Perr-rro-o-o-o! Yap-yap-yap!”
And Rosalino, the Indian _mozo_, looks up at me with his eyes veiled
by their own blackness. We won’t have it either: he is hiding and
repudiating. Between us also is the gulf of the other dimension, and he
wants to bridge it with the foot-rule of the three-dimensional space.
He knows it can’t be done. So do I. Each of us knows the other knows.
But he can imitate me, even more than life-like. As the parrot can him.
And I have to laugh at his _me_, a bit on the wrong side of my face, as
he has to grin on the wrong side of his face when I catch his eye as
the parrot is whistling _him_. With a grin, with a laugh we pay tribute
to the other dimension. But Corasmin is wiser. In his clear, yellow
eyes is the self-possession of full admission.
The Aztecs said this world, our Sun, would blow up from inside, in
earthquakes. Then what will come, in the other dimension, when we are
superseded?