_Market Day_
This is the last Saturday before Christmas. The next year will be
momentous, one feels. This year is nearly gone. Dawn was windy, shaking
the leaves, and the rising sun shone under a gap of yellow cloud. But
at once it touched the yellow flowers that rise above the _patio_ wall,
and the swaying, glowing magenta of the bougainvillea, and the fierce
red outbursts of the poinsettia. The poinsettia is very splendid, the
flowers very big, and of a sure stainless red. They call them Noche
Buenas, flowers of Christmas Eve. These tufts throw out their scarlet
sharply, like red birds ruffling in the wind of dawn as if going
to bathe, all their feathers alert. This for Christmas, instead of
holly-berries. Christmas seems to need a red herald.
The yucca is tall, higher than the house. It is, too, in flower,
hanging an arm’s-length of soft creamy bells, like a yard-long
grape-cluster of foam. And the waxy bells break on their stems in the
wind, fall noiselessly from the long creamy bunch, that hardly sways.
The coffee-berries are turning red. The hibiscus flowers,
rose-coloured, sway at the tips of the thin branches, in rosettes of
soft red.
In the second _patio_, there is a tall tree of the flimsy acacia sort.
Above itself it puts up whitish fingers of flowers, naked on the blue
sky. And in the wind these fingers of flowers in the bare blue sky,
sway, sway with the reeling, roundward motion of tree-tips in a wind.
A restless morning, with clouds lower down, moving also with a larger
roundward motion. Everything moving. Best to go out in motion too, the
slow roundward motion like the hawks.
Everything seems slowly to circle and hover towards a central point,
the clouds, the mountains round the valley, the dust that rises,
the big, beautiful, white-barred hawks, _gabilanes_, and even the
snow-white flakes of flowers upon the dim _palo-blanco_ tree. Even the
organ cactus, rising in stock-straight clumps, and the candelabrum
cactus, seem to be slowly wheeling and pivoting upon a centre, close
upon it.
Strange that we should think in straight lines, when there are none,
and talk of straight courses, when every course, sooner or later, is
seen to be making the sweep round, swooping upon the centre. When space
is curved, and the cosmos is sphere within sphere, and the way from any
one point to any other point is round the bend of the inevitable, that
turns as the tips of the broad wings of the hawk turn upwards, leaning
upon the air like the invisible half of the ellipse. If I have a way to
go, it will be round the swoop of a bend impinging centripetal towards
the centre. The straight course is hacked out in wounds, against the
will of the world.
Yet the dust advances like a ghost along the road, down the valley
plain. The dry turf of the valley-bed gleams like soft skin, sunlit and
pinkish ochre, spreading wide between the mountains that seem to emit
their own darkness, a dark-blue vapor translucent, sombring them from
the humped crests downwards. The many-pleated, noiseless mountains of
Mexico.
And away on the footslope lie the white specks of Huayapa, among its
lake of trees. It is Saturday, and the white dots of men are threading
down the trail over the bare humps to the plain, following the dark
twinkle-movement of asses, the dark nodding of the woman’s head as she
rides between the baskets. Saturday and market-day, and morning, so the
white specks of men, like sea-gulls on plough-land, come ebbing like
sparks from the _palo-blanco_, over the fawn undulating of the valley
slope.
They are dressed in snow-white cotton, and they lift their knees in the
Indian trot, following the ass where the woman sits perched between the
huge baskets, her child tight in the _rebozo_, at the brown breast.
And girls in long, full, soiled cotton skirts running, trotting,
ebbing along after the twinkle-movement of the ass. Down they come
in families, in clusters, in solitary ones, threading with ebbing,
running, barefoot movement noiseless towards the town, that blows the
bubbles of its church-domes above the stagnant green of trees, away
under the opposite fawn-skin hills.
But down the valley middle comes the big road, almost straight. You
will know it by the tall walking of the dust, that hastens also towards
the town, overtaking, overpassing everybody. Overpassing all the dark
little figures and the white specks that thread tinily, in a sort of
underworld, to the town.
From the valley villages and from the mountains the peasants and the
Indians are coming in with supplies, the road is like a pilgrimage,
with the dust in greatest haste, dashing for town. Dark-eared asses
and running men, running women, running girls, running lads, twinkling
donkeys ambling on fine little feet, under twin great baskets with
tomatoes and gourds, twin great nets of bubble-shaped jars, twin
bundles of neat-cut faggots of wood, neat as bunches of cigarettes, and
twin net-sacks of charcoal. Donkeys, mules, on they come, great pannier
baskets making a rhythm under the perched woman, great bundles bouncing
against the sides of the slim-footed animals. A baby donkey trotting
naked after its piled-up dam, a white, sandal-footed man following with
the silent Indian haste, and a girl running again on light feet.
Onwards, on a strange current of haste. And slowly rowing among
the foot-travel, the ox-wagons rolling solid wheels below the high
net of the body. Slow oxen, with heads pressed down nosing to the
earth, swaying, swaying their great horns as a snake sways itself,
the shovel-shaped collar of solid wood pressing down on their necks
like a scoop. On, on between the burnt-up turf and the solid,
monumental green of the organ cactus. Past the rocks and the floating
_palo-blanco_ flowers, past the towsled dust of the _mesquite_ bushes.
While the dust once more, in a greater haste than anyone, comes tall
and rapid down the road, overpowering and obscuring all the little
people, as in a cataclysm.
They are mostly small people, of the Zapotec race: small men with
lifted chests and quick, lifted knees, advancing with heavy energy
in the midst of dust. And quiet, small, round-headed women running
barefoot, tightening their blue _rebozos_ round their shoulders, so
often with a baby in the fold. The white cotton clothes of the men so
white that their faces are invisible places of darkness under their
big hats. Clothed darkness, faces of night, quickly, silently, with
inexhaustible energy advancing to the town.
And many of the serranos, the Indians from the hills, wearing their
little conical black felt hats, seem capped with night, above the
straight white shoulders. Some have come far, walking all yesterday in
their little black hats and black-sheathed sandals. To-morrow they will
walk back. And their eyes will be just the same, black and bright and
wild, in the dark faces. They have no goal, any more than the hawks in
the air, and no course to run, any more than the clouds.
The market is a huge roofed-in place. Most extraordinary is the noise
that comes out, as you pass along the adjacent street. It is a huge
noise, yet you may never notice it. It sounds as if all the ghosts in
the world were talking to one another, in ghost-voices, within the
darkness of the market structure. It is a noise something like rain,
or banana leaves in a wind. The market, full of Indians, dark-faced,
silent-footed, hush-spoken, but pressing in in countless numbers. The
queer hissing murmurs of the Zapotec _idioma_, among the sounds of
Spanish, the quiet, aside-voices of the Mixtecas.
To buy and to sell, but above all, to commingle. In the old world, men
make themselves two great excuses for coming together to a centre, and
commingling freely in a mixed, unsuspicious host. Market and religion.
These alone bring men, unarmed, together since time began. A little
load of firewood, a woven blanket, a few eggs and tomatoes are excuse
enough for men, women, and children to cross the foot-weary miles
of valley and mountain. To buy, to sell, to barter, to exchange. To
exchange, above all things, human contact.
That is why they like you to bargain, even if it’s only the difference
of a centavo. Round the centre of the covered market, where there
is a basin of water, are the flowers: red, white, pink roses in
heaps, many-coloured little carnations, poppies, bits of larkspur,
lemon and orange marigolds, buds of madonna lilies, pansies, a few
forget-me-nots. They don’t bring the tropical flowers. Only the lilies
come wild from the hills, and the mauve red orchids.
“How much this bunch of cherry-pie heliotrope?”
“Fifteen centavos.”
“Ten.”
“Fifteen.”
You put back the cherry-pie, and depart. But the woman is quite
content. The contact, so short even, brisked her up.
“Pinks?”
“The red ones, Señorita? Thirty centavos.”
“No. I don’t want red ones. The mixed.”
“Ah!” The woman seizes a handful of little carnations of all colours,
carefully puts them together. “Look, Señorita! No more?”
“No, no more. How much?”
“The same. Thirty centavos.”
“It is much.”
“No, Señorita, it is not much. Look at this little bunch. It is eight
centavos.”--Displays a scrappy little bunch. “Come then, twenty-five.”
“No! Twenty-two.”
“Look!” She gathers up three or four more flowers, and claps them to
the bunch. “Two _reales_, Señorita.”
It is a bargain. Off you go with multicoloured pinks, and the woman has
had one more moment of contact, with a stranger, a perfect stranger. An
intermingling of voices, a threading together of different wills. It is
life. The centavos are an excuse.
The stalls go off in straight lines, to the right, brilliant
vegetables, to the left, bread and sweet buns. Away at the one end,
cheese, butter, eggs, chickens, turkeys, meat. At the other, the
native-woven blankets and _rebozos_, skirts, shirts, handkerchiefs.
Down the far-side, sandals and leather things.
The _sarape_ men spy you, and whistle to you like ferocious birds,
and call “Señor! Señor! Look!” Then with violence one flings open a
dazzling blanket, while another whistles more ear-piercingly still, to
make you look at _his_ blanket. It is the veritable den of lions and
tigers, that spot where the _sarape_ men have their blankets piled on
the ground. You shake your head, and flee.
To find yourself in the leather avenue.
“Señor! Señor! Look! Huaraches! Very fine, very finely made! Look,
Señor!”
The fat leather man jumps up and holds a pair of sandals at one’s
breast. They are of narrow woven strips of leather, in the newest Paris
style, but a style ancient to these natives. You take them in your
hand, and look at them quizzically, while the fat wife of the huarache
man reiterates, “Very fine work. Very fine. Much work!”
Leather men usually seem to have their wives with them.
“How much?”
“Twenty _reales_.”
“Twenty!”--in a voice of surprise and pained indignation.
“How much do you give?”
You refuse to answer. Instead you put the huaraches to your nose. The
huarache man looks at his wife, and they laugh aloud.
“They smell,” you say.
“No, Señor, they don’t smell!”--and the two go off into fits of
laughter.
“Yes, they smell. It is not American leather.”
“Yes, Señor, it is American leather. They don’t smell, Señor. No, they
don’t smell.” He coaxes you till you wouldn’t believe your own nose.
“Yes, they smell.”
“How much do you give?”
“Nothing, because they smell.”
And you give another sniff, though it is painfully unnecessary. And in
spite of your refusal to bid, the man and wife go into fits of laughter
to see you painfully sniffing.
You lay down the sandals and shake your head.
“How much do you offer?” reiterates the man, gaily.
You shake your head mournfully, and move away. The leather man and
his wife look at one another and go off into another fit of laughter,
because you smelt the huaraches, and said they stank.
They did. The natives use human excrement for tanning leather. When
Bernal Diaz came with Cortes to the great market-place of Mexico
City, in Montezuma’s day, he saw the little pots of human excrement
in rows for sale, and the leather-makers going round sniffing to
see which was the best, before they paid for it. It staggered even
a fifteenth-century Spaniard. Yet my leather man and his wife think
it screamingly funny that I smell the huaraches before buying them.
Everything has its own smell, and the natural smell of huaraches is
what it is. You might as well quarrel with an onion for smelling like
an onion.
The great press of the quiet natives, some of them bright and clean,
many in old rags, the brown flesh showing through the rents in the
dirty cotton. Many wild hillmen, in their little hats of conical
black felt, with their wild, staring eyes. And as they cluster
round the hat-stall, in a long, long suspense of indecision before
they can commit themselves, trying on a new hat, their black hair
gleams blue-black, and falls thick and rich over their foreheads,
like gleaming bluey-black feathers. And one is reminded again of the
blue-haired Buddha, with the lotus at his navel.
But already the fleas are travelling under one’s clothing.
Market lasts all day. The native inns are great dreary yards with
little sheds, and little rooms around. Some men and families who have
come from far, will sleep in one or other of the little stall-like
rooms. Many will sleep on the stones, on the earth, round the market,
anywhere. But the asses are there by the hundred, crowded in the
inn-yards, drooping their ears with the eternal patience of the beast
that knows better than any other beast that every road curves round to
the same centre of rest, and hither and thither means nothing.
And towards nightfall the dusty road will be thronged with shadowy
people and unladen asses and new-laden mules, urging silently into the
country again, their backs to the town, glad to get away from the town,
to see the cactus and the pleated hills, and the trees that mean a
village. In some village they will lie under a tree, or under a wall,
and sleep. Then the next day, home.
It is fulfilled, what they came to market for. They have sold and
bought. But more than that, they have had their moment of contact and
centripetal flow. They have been part of a great stream of men flowing
to a centre, to the vortex of the market-place. And here they have felt
life concentrate upon them, they have been jammed between the soft
hot bodies of strange men come from afar, they have had the sound of
stranger’s voices in their ears, they have asked and been answered in
unaccustomed ways.
There is no goal, and no abiding-place, and nothing is fixed, not even
the cathedral towers. The cathedral towers are slowly leaning, seeking
the curve of return. As the natives curved in a strong swirl, towards
the vortex of the market. Then on a strong swerve of repulsion, curved
out and away again, into space.
Nothing but the touch, the spark of contact. That, no more. That, which
is most elusive, still the only treasure. Come, and gone, and yet the
clue itself.
True, folded up in the handkerchief inside the shirt, are the copper
centavos, and maybe a few silver pesos. But these too will disappear
as the stars disappear at daybreak, as they are meant to disappear.
Everything is meant to disappear. Every curve plunges into the vortex
and is lost, re-emerges with a certain relief and takes to the open,
and there is lost again.
Only that which is utterly intangible, matters. The contact, the spark
of exchange. That which can never be fastened upon, forever gone,
forever coming, never to be detained: the spark of contact.
Like the evening star, when it is neither night nor day. Like the
evening star, between the sun and the moon, and swayed by neither of
them. The flashing intermediary, the evening star that is seen only
at the dividing of the day and night, but then is more wonderful than
either.