_The Mozo_
Rosalino really goes with the house, though he has been in service
here only two months. When we went to look at the place, we saw him
lurking in the _patio_, and glancing furtively under his brows. He is
not one of the erect, bantam little Indians that stare with a black,
incomprehensible, but somewhat defiant stare. It may be Rosalino has a
distant strain of other Indian blood, not Zapotec. Or it may be he is
only a bit different. The difference lies in a certain sensitiveness
and aloneness, as if he were a mother’s boy. The way he drops his head
and looks sideways under his black lashes, apprehensive, apprehending,
feeling his way, as it were. Not the bold male glare of most of the
Indians, who seem as if they had never, never had mothers at all.
The Aztec gods and goddesses are, as far as we have known anything
about them, an unlovely and unlovable lot. In their myths there is
no grace or charm, no poetry. Only this perpetual grudge, grudge,
grudging, one god grudging another, the gods grudging men their
existence, and men grudging the animals. The goddess of love is goddess
of dirt and prostitution, a dirt-eater, a horror, without a touch of
tenderness. If the god wants to make love to her, she has to sprawl
down in front of him, blatant and accessible.
And then, after all, when she conceives and brings forth, what is it
she produces? What is the infant-god she tenderly bears? Guess, all ye
people, joyful and triumphant!
You never could.
It is a stone knife.
It is a razor-edged knife of blackish-green flint, the knife of all
knives, the veritable Paraclete of knives. It is the sacrificial knife
with which the priest makes a gash in his victim’s breast, before he
tears out the heart, to hold it smoking to the sun. And the Sun, the
Sun behind the sun, is supposed to suck the smoking heart greedily with
insatiable appetite.
This, then, is a pretty Christmas Eve. Lo, the goddess is gone to
bed, to bring forth her child. Lo! ye people, await the birth of the
saviour, the wife of a god is about to become a mother.
_Tarumm-tarah! Tarumm-tarah!_ blow the trumpets. The child is born.
Unto us a son is given. Bring him forth, lay him on a tender cushion.
Show him, then, to all the people. See! See! See him upon the cushion,
tenderly new-born and reposing! Ah, _qué bonito_! Oh, what a nice,
blackish, smooth, keen stone knife!
And to this day, most of the Mexican Indian women seem to bring forth
stone knives. Look at them, these sons of incomprehensible mothers,
with their black eyes like flints, and their stiff little bodies as
taut and as keen as knives of obsidian. Take care they don’t rip you up.
Our Rosalino is an exception. He drops his shoulders just a little.
He is a bit bigger, also, than the average Indian down here. He must
be about five feet four inches. And he hasn’t got the big, obsidian,
glaring eyes. His eyes are smaller, blacker, like the quick black eyes
of the lizard. They don’t look at one with the obsidian stare. They are
just a bit aware that there is another being, unknown, at the other
end of the glance. Hence he drops his head with a little apprehension,
screening himself as if he were vulnerable.
Usually, these people have no correspondence with one at all. To them
a white man or white woman is a sort of phenomenon, just as a monkey is
a sort of phenomenon; something to watch, and wonder at, and laugh at,
but not to be taken on one’s own plane.
Now the white man is a sort of extraordinary white monkey that, by
cunning, has learnt lots of semi-magical secrets of the universe, and
made himself boss of the show. Imagine a race of big white monkeys got
up in fantastic clothes, and able to kill a man by hissing at him; able
to leap through the air in great hops, covering a mile in each leap;
able to transmit his thoughts by a moment’s effort of concentration to
some great white monkey or monkeyess, a thousand miles away: and you
have, from our point of view, something of the picture that the Indian
has of us.
The white monkey has curious tricks. He knows, for example, the time.
Now to a Mexican, and an Indian, time is a vague, foggy reality. There
are only three times: _en la mañana_, _en la tarde_, _en la noche_: in
the morning, in the afternoon, in the night. There is even no midday,
and no evening.
But to the white monkey, horrible to relate, there are exact spots of
time, such as five o’clock, half-past nine. The day is a horrible
puzzle of exact spots of time.
The same with distance: horrible invisible distances called two miles,
ten miles. To the Indians, there is near and far, and very near and
very far. There is two days or one day. But two miles are as good as
twenty to him, for he goes entirely by his feeling. If a certain two
miles feels far to him, then it _is_ far, it is _muy lejos_! But if a
certain twenty miles _feels_ near and familiar, then it is not far. Oh,
no, it is just a little distance. And he will let you set off in the
evening, for night to overtake you in the wilderness, without a qualm.
It is not far.
But the white man has a horrible, truly horrible, monkey-like passion
for invisible exactitudes. _Mañana_, to the native, may mean to-morrow,
three days hence, six months hence, and never. There are no fixed
points in life, save birth, and death, and the _fiestas_. The fixed
points of birth and death evaporate spontaneously into vagueness. And
the priests fix the _fiestas_. From time immemorial priests have fixed
the _fiestas_, the festivals of the gods, and men have had no more to
do with time. What should men have to do with time?
The same with money. These _centavos_ and these _pesos_, what do they
mean, after all? Little discs that have no charm. The natives insist
on reckoning in invisible coins, coins that don’t exist here, like
_reales_ or _pesetas_. If you buy two eggs for a _real_, you have to
pay twelve and a half _centavos_. Since also half a _centavo_ doesn’t
exist, you or the vendor forfeit the non-existent.
The same with honesty, the _meum_ and the _tuum_. The white man has a
horrible way of remembering, even to a _centavo_, even to a thimbleful
of _mescal_. Horrible! The Indian, it seems to me, is not naturally
dishonest. He is not naturally avaricious, has not even any innate
cupidity. In this he is unlike the old people of the Mediterranean,
to whom possessions have a mystic meaning, and a silver coin a mystic
white halo, a _lueur_ of magic.
To the real Mexican, no! He doesn’t care. He doesn’t even _like_
keeping money. His deep instinct is to spend it at once, so that he
needn’t have it. He doesn’t really want to keep anything, not even his
wife and children. Nothing that he has to be responsible for. Strip,
strip, strip away the past and the future, leave the naked moment of
the present disentangled. Strip away memory, strip away forethought
and care; leave the moment, stark and sharp and without consciousness,
like the obsidian knife. The before and the after are the stuff of
consciousness. The instant moment is forever keen with a razor-edge of
oblivion, like the knife of sacrifice.
But the great white monkey has got hold of the keys of the world, and
the black-eyed Mexican has to serve the great white monkey, in order
to live. He has to learn the tricks of the white monkey-show: time of
the day, coin of money, machines that start at a second, work that
is meaningless and yet is paid for with exactitude, in exact coin.
A whole existence of monkey-tricks and monkey-virtues. The strange
monkey-virtue of charity, the white monkeys nosing round to _help_, to
_save_! Could any trick be more unnatural? Yet it is one of the tricks
of the great white monkey.
If an Indian is poor, he says to another: I have no food; give me to
eat. Then the other hands the hungry one a couple of _tortillas_. That
is natural. But when the white monkeys come round, they peer at the
house, at the woman, at the children. They say: Your child is sick.
_Si, Señor._ What have you done for it?--_Nothing. What is to be
done?_--You must make a poultice. I will show you how.
Well, it was very amusing, this making hot dough to dab on the baby.
Like plastering a house with mud. But why do it twice? Twice is not
amusing. The child will die. Well, then, it will be in Paradise. How
nice for it! That’s just what God wants of it, that it shall be a
cheerful little angel among the roses of Paradise. What could be better?
How tedious of the white monkey coming with the trick of salvation,
to rub oil on the baby, and put poultices on it, and make you give it
medicine in a spoon at morning, noon, and night. Why morning and noon
and night? Why not just anytime, anywhen? It will die to-morrow if you
don’t do these things to-day! But to-morrow is another day, and it is
not dead now, so if it dies at another time, it must be because the
other times are out of hand.
Oh, the tedious, exacting white monkeys, with their yesterdays and
to-days and to-morrows! To-morrow is always another day, and yesterday
is part of the encircling never. Why think outside the moment? And
inside the moment one does not think. So why pretend to think? It is
one of the white-monkey tricks. He is a clever monkey. But he is ugly,
and he has nasty white flesh. We are not ugly, with screwed-up faces,
and we have good warm-brown flesh. If we have to work for the white
monkey, we don’t care. His tricks are half-amusing. And one may as well
amuse oneself that way as any other. So long as one is amused.
So long as the devil does not rouse in us, seeing the white monkeys
forever mechanically bossing, with their incessant tick-tack of work.
Seeing them get the work out of us, the sweat, the money, and then
taking the very land from us, the very oil and metal out of our soil.
They do it! They do it all the time. Because they can’t help it.
Because grasshoppers can but hop, and ants can carry little sticks,
and white monkeys can go tick-tack, tick-tack, do this, do that, time
to work, time to eat, time to drink, time to sleep, time to walk, time
to ride, time to wash, time to look dirty, tick-tack, tick-tack, time,
time, time, time! time! Oh, cut off his nose and make him swallow it.
For the _moment_ is as changeless as an obsidian knife, and the heart
of the Indian is keen as the moment that divides past from future, and
sacrifices them both.
To Rosalino, too, the white monkey-tricks are amusing. He is ready
to work for the white monkeys, to learn some of their tricks, their
monkey-speech of Spanish, their tick-tack ways. He works for four
_pesos_ a month, and his food: a few _tortillas_. Four _pesos_ are two
American dollars: about nine shillings. He owns two cotton shirts, two
pairs of calico pantaloons, two blouses, one of pink cotton, one of
darkish flannelette, and a pair of sandals. Also, his straw hat that
he has curled up to look very jaunty, and a rather old, factory-made,
rather cheap shawl, or plaid rug with fringe. _Et præterea nihil._
His duty is to rise in the morning and sweep the street in front
of the house, and water it. Then he sweeps and waters the broad,
brick-tiled verandahs, and flicks the chairs with a sort of duster made
of fluffy reeds. After which he walks behind the cook--she is very
superior, had a Spanish grandfather, and Rosalino must address her as
_Señora_--carrying the basket to market. Returned from the market, he
sweeps the whole of the _patio_, gathers up the leaves and refuse,
fills the pannier-basket, hitches it up on to his shoulders, and holds
it by a band across his forehead, and thus, a beast of burden, goes
out to deposit the garbage at the side of one of the little roads
leading out of the city. Every _little_ road leaves the town between
heaps of garbage, an avenue of garbage blistering in the sun.
Returning, Rosalino waters the whole of the garden and sprinkles the
whole of the _patio_. This takes most of the morning. In the afternoon,
he sits without much to do. If the wind has blown or the day was
hot, he starts again at about three o’clock, sweeping up leaves, and
sprinkling everywhere with an old watering-can.
Then he retreats to the entrance-way, the _zaguan_, which, with its big
doors and its cobbled track, is big enough to admit an ox-wagon. The
_zaguan_ is his home: just the doorway. In one corner is a low wooden
bench about four feet long and eighteen inches wide. On this he screws
up and sleeps, in his clothes as he is, wrapped in the old _sarape_.
But this is anticipating. In the obscurity of the _zaguan_ he sits and
pores, pores, pores over a school-book, learning to read and write. He
can read a bit, and write a bit. He filled a large sheet of foolscap
with writing: quite nice. But I found out that what he had written
was a Spanish poem, a love-poem, with _no puedo olvidar_ and _voy a
cortar_--the rose, of course. He had written the thing straight ahead,
without verse-lines or capitals or punctuation at all, just a vast
string of words, a whole foolscap sheet full. When I read a few lines
aloud, he writhed and laughed in an agony of confused feelings. And of
what he had written he understood a small, small amount, parrot-wise,
from the top of his head. Actually, it meant just words, sound, noise,
to him: noise called Castellano, Castilian. Exactly like a parrot.
From seven to eight he goes to the night-school, to cover a bit more
of the foolscap. He has been going for two years. If he goes two years
more he will perhaps really be able to read and write six intelligible
sentences: but only Spanish, which is as foreign to him as Hindustani
would be to an English farm-boy. Then if he can speak his quantum of
Spanish, and read it and write it to a very uncertain extent, he will
return to his village two days’ journey on foot into the hills, and
then, in time, he may even rise to be an _alcalde_, or headman of the
village, responsible to the Government. If he were _alcalde_ he would
get a little salary. But far more important to him is the glory: being
able to boss.
He has a _paisano_, a fellow-countryman, to sleep with him in the
_zaguan_, to guard the doors. Whoever gets into the house or _patio_
must get through these big doors. There is no other entrance, not even
a needle’s eye. The windows to the street are heavily barred. Each
house is its own small fortress. Ours is a double square, the trees
and flowers in the first square, with the two wings of the house. And
in the second _patio_, the chickens, pigeons, guinea-pigs, and the big
heavy earthenware dish or tub, called an _apaxtle_, in which all the
servants can bathe themselves, like chickens in a saucer.
By half-past nine at night Rosalino is lying on his little bench,
screwed up, wrapped in his shawl, his sandals, called _huaraches_, on
the floor. Usually he takes off his _huaraches_ when he goes to bed.
That is all his preparation. In another corner, wrapped up, head and
all, like a mummy in his thin old blanket, the _paisano_, another lad
of about twenty, lies asleep on the cold stones. And at an altitude of
five thousand feet, the nights can be cold.
Usually everybody is in by half-past nine in our very quiet house. If
not, you may thunder at the big doors. It is hard to wake Rosalino.
You have to go close to him, and call. That will wake him. But don’t
touch him. That would startle him terribly. No one is touched unawares,
except to be robbed or murdered.
“Rosalino! _estan tocando!_”--“Rosalino! they are knocking!”
At last there starts up a strange, glaring, utterly lost Rosalino.
Perhaps he just has enough wit to pull the door-catch. One wonders
where he was, and what he was, in his sleep, he starts up so strange
and wild and lost.
The first time he had anything to do for me was when the van was come
to carry the bit of furniture to the house. There was Aurelio, the
dwarf _mozo_ of our friends, and Rosalino, and the man who drove the
wagon. But there _should_ have been also a _cargador_--a porter. “Help
them,” said I to Rosalino. “You give a hand to help.” But he winced
away, muttering, “_No quiero!_--I don’t want to.”
The fellow, I thought to myself, is a fool. He thinks it’s not his job,
and perhaps he is afraid of smashing the furniture. Nothing to be done
but to leave him alone.
We settled in, and Rosalino seemed to like doing things for us. He
liked learning his monkey-tricks from the white monkeys. And since we
started feeding him from our own meals, and for the first time in his
life he had real soups, meat-stews, or a fried egg, he loved to do
things in the kitchen. He would come with sparkling black eyes: “_Hé
comido el caldo. Grazias!_” (“I have eaten the soup. Thank you.”)--And
he would give a strange, excited little yelp of a laugh.
Came the day when we walked to Huayapa, on the Sunday, and he was very
thrilled. But at night, in the evening when we got home, he lay mute
on his bench--not that he was really tired. The Indian gloom, which
settles on them like a black marsh-fog, had settled on him. He did not
bring in the water--let me carry it by myself.
Monday morning, the same black, reptilian gloom, and a sense of hatred.
He hated us. This was a bit flabbergasting, because he had been so
thrilled and happy the day before. But the revulsion had come. He
didn’t forgive himself for having felt free and happy with us. He had
eaten what we had eaten, hard-boiled eggs and sardine sandwiches and
cheese; he had drunk out of the orange-peel _taza_, which delighted him
so much. He had had a bottle of _gazoosa_, fizz, with us, on the way
home, in San Felipe.
And now, the reaction. The flint knife. He had been happy, _therefore_
we were scheming to take another advantage of him. We had some devilish
white-monkey trick up our sleeve; we wanted to get at his _soul_, no
doubt, and do it the white monkey’s damage. We wanted to get at his
heart, did we? But his heart was an obsidian knife.
He hated us, and gave off a black steam of hate, that filled the
_patio_ and made one feel sick. He did not come to the kitchen, he did
not carry the water. Leave him alone.
At lunch-time on Monday he said he wanted to leave. Why? He said he
wanted to go back to his village.
Very well. He was to wait just a few days, till another _mozo_ was
found.
At this a glance of pure, reptilian hate from his black eyes.
He sat motionless on his bench all the afternoon, in the Indian stupor
of gloom and profound hate. In the evening, he cheered up a little and
said he would stay on, at least till Easter.
Tuesday morning. More stupor and gloom and hate. He wanted to go back
to his village at once. All right! No one wanted to keep him against
his will. Another _mozo_ would be found at once.
He went off in the numb stupor of gloom and hate, a very potent hate
that could affect one in the pit of one’s stomach with nausea.
Tuesday afternoon, and he thought he would stay.
Wednesday morning, and he wanted to go.
Very good. Enquiries made; another _mozo_ was coming on Friday morning.
It was settled.
Thursday was _fiesta_. Wednesday, therefore, we would go to market,
the Niña--that is the mistress--myself, and Rosalino with the basket.
He loved to go to market with the _patrones_. We would give him money
and send him off to bargain for oranges, _pitahayas_, potatoes, eggs,
a chicken, and so forth. This he simply loved to do. It put him into a
temper to see us buying without bargaining, and paying ghastly prices.
He bargained away, silent almost, muttering darkly. It took him a long
time, but he had far greater success than even Natividad, the cook. And
he came back in triumph, with much stuff and little money spent.
So again that afternoon, he was staying on. The spell was wearing off.
The Indians of the hills have a heavy, intense sort of attachment to
their villages; Rosalino had not been out of the little city for two
years. Suddenly finding himself in Huayapa, a real Indian hill-village,
the black Indian gloom of nostalgia must have made a crack in his
spirits. But he had been perfectly cheerful--perhaps too cheerful--till
we got home.
Again, the Señorita had taken a photograph of him. They are all crazy
to have their photographs taken. I had given him an envelope and a
stamp, to send a photograph to his mother. Because in his village he
had a widow mother, a brother, and a married sister. The family owned
a bit of land, with orange-trees. The best oranges come from the
hills, where it is cooler. Seeing the photograph, the mother, who had
completely forgotten her son, as far as any keen remembering goes,
suddenly, like a cracker going off inside her, wanted him: at that very
moment. So she sent an urgent message.
But already it was Wednesday afternoon. Arrived a little fellow in
white clothes, smiling hard. It was the brother from the hills. Now,
we thought, Rosalino will have someone to walk back with. On Friday,
after the _fiesta_, he would go.
Thursday, he escorted us with the basket to the _fiesta_. He bargained
for flowers, and for a _sarape_ which he didn’t get, for a carved
_jicara_ which he did get, and for a number of toys. He and the Niña
and the Señorita ate a great wafer of a pancake with sweet stuff on it.
The basket grew heavy. The brother appeared, to carry the hen and the
extra things. Bliss.
He was perfectly happy again. He didn’t want to go on Friday; he didn’t
want to go at all. He wanted to stay with us and come with us to
England when we went home.
So, another trip to the friend, the Mexican, who had found us the other
_mozo_. Now to put off the other boy again: but then, they are like
that.
And the Mexican, who had known Rosalino when he first came down from
the hills and could speak no Spanish, told us another thing about him.
In the last revolution--a year ago--the revolutionaries of the winning
side wanted more soldiers from the hills. The _alcalde_ of the
hill-village was told to pick out young men and send them down to the
barracks in the city. Rosalino was among the chosen.
But Rosalino refused, said again _No quiero!_ He is one of those, like
myself, who have a horror of serving in a mass of men, or even of being
mixed up with a mass of men. He obstinately refused. Whereupon the
recruiting soldiers beat him with the butt of their rifles till he lay
unconscious, apparently dead.
Then, because they wanted him at once, and he would now be no good for
some time, with his injured back, they left him, to get the revolution
over without him.
This explains his fear of furniture-carrying, and his fear of being
“caught.”
Yet that little Aurelio, the friend’s _mozo_, who is not above four
feet six in height, a tiny fellow, fared even worse. He, too, is from
the hills. In his village, a cousin of his gave some information to the
_losing_ side in the revolution. The cousin wisely disappeared.
But in the city, the winning side seized Aurelio, since he was the
_cousin_ of the delinquent. In spite of the fact that he was the
faithful _mozo_ of a foreign resident, he was flung into prison.
Prisoners in prison are not fed. Either friends or relatives bring
them food, or they go very, very thin. Aurelio had a married sister
in town, but _she_ was afraid to go to the prison, lest she and her
husband should be seized. The master, then, sent his new _mozo_ twice a
day to the prison with a basket; the huge, huge prison, for this little
town of a few thousands.
Meanwhile the master struggled and struggled with the
“authorities”--friends of the people--for Aurelio’s release. Nothing to
be done.
One day the new _mozo_ arrived at the prison with the basket, to find
no Aurelio. A friendly soldier gave the message Aurelio had left.
“Adios a mi patron. Me llevan.” Oh, fatal words: “_Me llevan_”--They
are taking me off. The master rushed to the train: it had gone, with
the dwarf, plucky little _mozo_, into the void.
Months later, Aurelio reappeared. He was in rags, haggard, and his
dark throat was swoollen up to the ears. He had been taken off, two
hundred miles into Vera Cruz State. He had been hung up by the neck,
with a fixed knot, and left hanging for hours. Why? To make the cousin
come and save his relative: put his own neck into a running noose. To
make the absolutely innocent fellow confess: what? Everybody knew he
was innocent. At any rate, to teach everybody better next time. Oh,
brotherly teaching!
Aurelio escaped, and took to the mountains. Sturdy little dwarf of a
fellow, he made his way back, begging _tortillas_ at the villages,
and arrived, haggard, with a great swoollen neck, to find his master
waiting, and another “party” in power. More friends of the people.
To-morrow is another day. The master nursed Aurelio well, and Aurelio
is a strong, if tiny, fellow, with big, brilliant black eyes that for
the moment will trust a foreigner, but none of his own people. A dwarf
in stature, but perfectly made, and very strong. And very intelligent,
far more quick and intelligent than Rosalino.
Is it any wonder that Aurelio and Rosalino, when they see the soldiers
with guns on their shoulders marching towards the prison with some
blanched prisoner between them--and one sees it every few days--stand
and gaze in a blank kind of horror, and look at the _patron_, to see if
there is any refuge?
Not to be _caught_! Not to be _caught_! It must have been the
prevailing motive of Indian-Mexico life since long before Montezuma
marched his prisoners to sacrifice.