shut up, like a black pearl. You must let him walk out.”
“Ramón,” said Cipriano, “Wouldn’t it be good to be a serpent, and be
big enough to wrap one’s folds round the globe of the world, and crush
it like that egg?”
Ramón looked at him and laughed.
“I believe we could do that,” said Cipriano, a slow smile curling round
his mouth. “And wouldn’t it be good?”
Ramón shook his head, laughing.
“There would be _one_ good moment, at least,” he said.
“Who asks for more!” said Cipriano.
A spark flashed out of Ramón’s eyes too. Then he checked himself, and
gathered himself together.
“What would be the good!” he said heavily. “If the egg was crushed, and
we remained, what could we do but go howling down the empty passages of
darkness. What’s the good, Cipriano?”
Ramón got up and walked away. The sun had set, the night was falling.
And in his soul the great, writhing anger was alive again. Carlota
provoked it into life: the two women seemed to breathe life into the
black monster of his inward rage, till it began to lash again. And
Cipriano stirred it up till it howled with desire.
“My manhood is like a demon howling inside me,” said Ramón to himself,
in Cipriano’s words.
And he admitted the justice of the howling, his manhood being pent up,
humiliated, goaded with insult inside him. And rage came over him,
against Carlota, against Cipriano, against his own people, against all
mankind, till he was filled with rage like the devil.
His people would betray him, he knew that. Cipriano would betray him.
Given one little vulnerable chink, they would pierce him. They would
leap at the place out of nowhere, like a tarantula, and bite in the
poison.
While ever there was one little vulnerable chink. And what man can be
invulnerable?
He went upstairs by the outer stairway, through the iron door at the
side of the house, under the heavy trees, up to his room, and sat on
his bed. The night was hot, heavy, and ominously still.
“The waters are coming,” he heard a servant say. He shut the doors
of his room till it was black dark inside. Then he threw aside his
clothing, saying: I put off the world with my clothes. And standing
nude and invisible in the centre of his room he thrust his clenched
fist upwards, with all his might, feeling he would break the walls of
his chest. And his left hand hung loose, the fingers softly curving
downwards.
And tense like the gush of a soundless fountain, he thrust up and
reached down in the invisible dark, convulsed with passion. Till the
black waves began to wash over his consciousness, over his mind, waves
of darkness broke over his memory, over his being, like an incoming
tide, till at last it was full tide, and he trembled, and fell to rest.
Invisible in the darkness, he stood soft and relaxed, staring with wide
eyes at the dark, and feeling the dark fecundity of the inner tide
washing over his heart, over his belly, his mind dissolved away in the
greater, dark mind, which is undisturbed by thoughts.
He covered his face with his hands, and stood still, in pure
unconsciousness, neither hearing nor feeling nor knowing, like a dark
sea-weed deep in the sea. With no Time and no World, in the deeps that
are timeless and worldless.
Then when his heart and his belly were restored, his mind began to
flicker again softly, like a soft flame flowing without departing.
So he wiped his face with his hands, and put his serape over his head,
and, silent inside an aura of pain, he went out and took the drum,
carrying it downstairs.
Martin, the man who loved him, was hovering in the zaguan.
“_Ya, Patrón?_” he said.
“_Ya!_” said Ramón.
The man ran indoors, where a lamp was burning in the big, dark kitchen,
and ran out again with an armful of the woven straw mats.
“Where, Patrón?” he said.
Ramón hesitated in the centre of the courtyard, and looked at the sky.
“_Viene el agua?_” he said.
“_Creo que si, Patrón._”
They went to the shed where the bananas had been packed and carried
away on donkeys. There the man threw down the petates. Ramón arranged
them. Guisleno ran with canes. He was going to make lights, the
simplest possible. Three pieces of thick cane, tied at the neck with a
cord, stood up three-legged, waist high. In the three-pronged fork at
the top he laid a piece of flat, slightly hollow lava stone. Then he
came running from the house with a bit of burning ocote wood. Three or
four bits of ocote, each bit no bigger than a long finger, flickered
and rose in quick flames from the stone, and the courtyard danced with
shadow.
Ramón took off his serape, folded it, and sat upon it. Guisleno
lit another tripod-torch. Ramón sat with his back to the wall, the
firelight dancing on his dark brows, that were sunk in a sort of frown.
His breast shone like gold in the flame. He took the drum and sounded
the summons, slow, monotonous, rather sad. In a moment two or three men
came running. The drummer came, Ramón stood up and handed him the drum.
He ran with it to the great outer doorway, and out into the dark lane,
and there sounded the summons, quick, sharp.
Ramón put on his serape, whose scarlet fringe touched his knees, and
stood motionless, with ruffled hair. Round his shoulders went the woven
snake, and his head was through the middle of the blue, woven bird.
Cipriano came from the house. He was wearing a serape all scarlet and
dark brown, a great scarlet sun at the centre, deep scarlet zigzags at
the borders, and dark brown fringe at his knees. He came and stood at
Ramón’s side, glancing up into Ramón’s face. But the other man’s brows
were low, his eyes were fixed in the darkness of the sheds away across
the courtyard. He was looking into the heart of the world; because the
faces of men, and the hearts of men are helpless quicksands. Only in
the heart of the cosmos man can look for strength. And if he can keep
his soul in touch with the heart of the world, then from the heart
of the world new blood will beat in strength and stillness into him,
fulfilling his manhood.
Cipriano turned his black eyes to the courtyard. His soldiers had
drawn near, in a little group. Three or four men were standing in dark
serapes, round the fire. Cipriano stood brilliant like a cardinal bird,
next to Ramón. Even his sandals were bright, sealing-wax red, and
his loose linen trousers were bound at the ankles with red and black
bands. His face looked very dark and ruddy in the firelight, his little
black tuft of a beard hung odd and devilish, his eyes were glittering
sardonically. But he caught Ramón’s hand in his small hand, and stood
holding it.
The peons were coming through the entrance-way, balancing their big
hats. Women were hurrying barefoot, swishing their full skirts,
carrying babies inside the dark wrap of their rebozos, children running
after. They all clustered towards the flame-light, like wild animals
gazing in at the circle of men in dark sarapes, Ramón, magnificent in
his white and blue and shadow, poising his beautiful head, Cipriano at
his side like a glittering cardinal bird.
Carlota and Kate emerged from the inner doorway of the house. But
there Carlota remained, wrapped in a black silk shawl, seated on a
wooden bench where the soldiers usually sat, looking across at the
ruddy flare of light, the circle of dark men, the tall beauty of her
husband, the poppy-petal glitter of red, of Cipriano, the group of
little, dust-coloured soldiers, and the solid throng of peons and women
and children, standing gazing like animals. While through the gate men
still came hurrying, and from outside, the drum sounded, and a high
voice sang again and again:
“Someone will enter between the gates,
Now, at this moment, Ay!
See the light on the man that waits.
Shall you? Shall I?
Someone will come to the place of fire,
Now, at this moment, Ay!
And hark to the words of their heart’s desire.
Shall you? Shall I?
Someone will knock when the door is shut,
Ay! in a moment, Ay!
Hear a voice saying: I know you not!
Shall you? Shall I?
There was a queer, wild yell each time on the _Ay!_ and like a bugle
refrain: _Shall you? Shall I?_ It made Carlota shiver.
Kate, wrapping her yellow shawl round her, walked slowly towards the
group.
The drum outside gave a rapid shudder, and was finished. The drummer
came in, the great doors were shut and barred, the drummer took his
place in the ring of standing men. A dead silence supervened.
Ramón continued to gaze from under lowered brows, into space. Then in a
quiet, inward voice, he said:
“As I take off this cover, I put away the day that is gone from upon
me.”
He took off his serape, and stood with it over his arm. All the men
in the circle did the same, till they stood with naked breasts and
shoulders, Cipriano very dark and strong-looking, in his smallness,
beside Ramón.
“I put away the day that is gone,” Ramón continued, in the same still,
inward voice, “and stand with my heart uncovered in the night of the
gods.”
Then he looked down at the ground.
“Serpent of the earth,” he said; “snake that lies in the fire at the
heart of the world, come! Come! Snake of the fire of the heart of
the world, coil like gold round my ankles, and rise like life around
my knee, and lay your head against my thigh. Come, put your head in
my hand, cradle your head in my fingers, snake of the deeps. Kiss my
feet and my ankles with your mouth of gold, kiss my knees and my inner
thigh, snake branded with flame and shadow, come! and rest your head in
my finger-basket! So!”
The voice was soft and hypnotic. It died upon a stillness. And it
seemed as if really a mysterious presence had entered unseen from the
underworld. It seemed to the peons as if really they saw a snake of
brilliant gold and living blackness softly coiled around Ramón’s ankle
and knee, and resting its head in his fingers, licking his palm with
forked tongue.
He looked out at the big, dilated, glittering eyes of his people, and
his own eyes were wide and uncanny.
“I tell you,” he said, “and I tell you truly. At the heart of this
earth sleeps a great serpent, in the midst of fire. Those that go down
in mines feel the heat and the sweat of him, they feel him move. It is
the living fire of the earth, for the earth is alive. The snake of the
world is huge, and the rocks are his scales, trees grow between them. I
tell you the earth you dig is alive as a snake that sleeps. So vast a
serpent you walk on, this lake lies between his folds as a drop of rain
in the folds of a sleeping rattlesnake. Yet he none the less lives. The
earth is alive.
“And if he died, we should all perish. Only his living keeps the soil
sweet, that grows you maize. From the roots of his scales we dig silver
and gold, and the trees have root in him, as the hair of my face has
root in my lips.
“The earth is alive. But he is very big, and we are very small, smaller
than dust. But he is very big in his life, and sometimes he is angry.
_These people, smaller than dust_, he says, _they stamp on me and say I
am dead. Even to their asses they speak, and shout Harreh! Burro! But
to me they speak no word. Therefore I will turn against them, like a
woman who lies angry with her man in bed, and eats away his spirit with
her anger, turning her back to him._
“That is what the earth says to us. He sends sorrow into our feet, and
depression into our loins.
“Because as an angry woman in the house can make a man heavy, taking
his life from him, so the earth can make us heavy, make our souls cold,
and our life dreary in our feet.
“Speak then to the snake of the heart of the world, put oil on your
fingers and lower your fingers for him to taste the oil of the earth,
and let him send life into your feet and ankles and knees, like sap in
the young maize pressing against the joints and making the milk of the
maize bud among its hair.
“From the heart of the earth man feels his manhood rise up in him, like
the maize that is proud, turning its green leaves outwards. Be proud
like the maize, and let your roots go deep, deep, for the rains are
here, and it is time for us to be growing in Mexico.”
Ramón ceased speaking, the drum softly pulsed. All the men of the ring
were looking down at the earth and softly letting their left hands
hang.
Carlota, who had not been able to hear, drifted up to Kate’s side,
spell-bound by her husband. Kate unconsciously glanced down at the
earth, and secretly let her fingers hang softly against her dress. But
then she was afraid of what might happen to her, and she caught her
hand up into her shawl.
Suddenly the drum began to give a very strong note, followed by a weak:
a strange, exciting thud.
Everybody looked up. Ramón had flung his right arm tense into the air,
and was looking up at the black dark sky. The men of the ring did the
same, and the naked arms were thrust aloft like so many rockets.
“Up Up! Up!” said a wild voice.
“Up! Up!” cried the men of the ring, in a wild chorus.
And involuntarily the men in the crowd twitched, then shot their arms
upwards, turning their faces to the dark heavens. Even some of the
women boldly thrust up their naked arms, and relief entered their
hearts as they did so.
But Kate would not lift her arm.
There was dead silence, even the drum was silent. Then the voice of
Ramón was heard, speaking upwards to the black sky:
“Your big wings are dark, Bird, you are flying low to-night. You are
flying low over Mexico, we shall soon feel the fan of your wings on our
face.
“Ay, Bird! You fly about where you will. You fly past the stars, and
you perch on the sun. You fly out of sight, and are gone beyond the
white river of the sky. But you come back like the ducks of the north,
looking for water and winter.
“You sit in the middle of the sun, and preen your feathers. You crouch
in the river of stars, and make the star-dust rise around you. You fly
away into the deepest hollow place of the sky, whence there seems no
return.
“You come back to us, and hover overhead, and we feel your wings
fanning our faces--”
Even as he spoke the wind rose, in sudden gusts, and a door could be
heard slamming in the house, with a shivering of glass, and the trees
gave off a tearing sound.
“Come then, Bird of the great sky!” Ramón called wildly. “Come! Oh
Bird, settle a moment on my wrist, over my head, and give me power of
the sky, and wisdom. Oh Bird! Bird of all the wide heavens, even if
you drum your feathers in thunder, and drop the white snake of fire
from your beak back to the earth again, where he can run in, deep down
the rocks again, home: even if you come as the Thunderer, come! Settle
on my wrist a moment, with the clutch of the power of thunder, and
arch your wings over my head, like a shadow of clouds; and bend your
breast to my brow, and bless me with the sun. Bird, roaming Bird of the
Beyond, with thunder in your pinions and the snake of lightning in your
beak, with the blue heaven in the socket of your wings and cloud in the
arch of your neck, with sun in the burnt feathers of your breast and
power in your feet, with terrible wisdom in your flight, swoop to me a
moment, swoop!”
Sudden gusts of wind tore at the little fires of flame, till they could
be heard to rustle, and the lake began to speak in a vast hollow noise,
beyond the tearing of trees. Distant lightning was beating far off,
over the black hills.
Ramón dropped his arm, which had been bent over his head. The drum
began to beat. Then he said:
“Sit down a moment, before the Bird shakes water out of his wings. It
will come soon. Sit down.”
There was a stir. Men put their serapes over their faces, women
clutched their rebozos tighter, and all sat down on the ground. Only
Kate and Carlota remained standing, on the outer edge. Gusts of wind
tore at the flames, the men put their hats on the ground in front of
them.
“The earth is alive, and the sky is alive,” said Ramón in his natural
voice, “and between them, we live. Earth has kissed my knees, and put
strength in my belly. Sky has perched on my wrist, and sent power into
my breast.
“But as in the morning the Morning-star stands between earth and sky, a
star can rise in us, and stand between the heart and the loins.
“That is the manhood of man, and for woman, her womanhood.
“You are not yet men. And women, you are not yet women.
“You run about and toss about and die, and still you have not found
the star of your manhood rise within you, the stars of your womanhood
shine out serene between your breasts, women.
“I tell you, for him that wishes it, the star of his manhood shall rise
within him, and he shall be proud, and perfect even as the Morning-star
is perfect.
“And the star of a woman’s womanhood can rise at last, from between the
heavy rim of the earth and the lost grey void of the sky.
“But how? How shall we do it? How shall it be?
“How shall we men become Men of the Morning Star? And the women the
Dawn-Star Women?
“Lower your fingers to the caress of the Snake of the earth.
“Lift your wrist for a perch to the far-lying Bird.
“Have the courage of both, the courage of lightning and the earthquake.
“And wisdom of both, the wisdom of the snake and the eagle.
“And the peace of both, the peace of the serpent and the sun.
“And the power of both, the power of the innermost earth and the
outermost heaven.
“But on your brow, Men! the undimmed Morning Star, that neither day nor
night, nor earth nor sky can swallow and put out.
“And between your breasts, Women! the Dawn-Star, that cannot be dimmed.
“And your home at last is the Morning Star. Neither heaven nor earth
shall swallow you up at the last, but you shall pass into the place
beyond both, into the bright star that is lonely yet feels itself never
alone.
“The Morning Star is sending you a messenger, a god who died in Mexico.
But he slept his sleep, and the invisible Ones washed his body with
water of resurrection. So he has risen, and pushed the stone from the
mouth of the tomb, and has stretched himself. And now he is striding
across the horizons even quicker than the great stone from the tomb is
tumbling back to the earth, to crush those that rolled it up.
“The Son of the Star is coming back to the Sons of Men, with big,
bright strides.
“Prepare to receive him. And wash yourselves, and put oil on your hands
and your feet, on your mouth and eyes and ears and nostrils, on your
breast and navel and on the secret places of your body, that nothing of
the dead days, no dust of skeletons and evil things may pass into you
and make you unclean.
“Do not look with the eyes of yesterday, nor like yesterday listen, nor
breathe, nor smell, nor taste, nor swallow food and drink. Do not kiss
with the mouths of yesterday, nor touch with the hands, nor walk with
yesterday’s feet. And let your navel know nothing of yesterday, and go
into your women with a new body, enter the new body in her.
“For yesterday’s body is dead, and carrion, the Xopilote is hovering
above it.
“Put yesterday’s body from off you, and have a new body. Even as your
God who is coming. Quetzalcoatl is coming with a new body, like a star,
from the shadows of death.
“Yes, even as you sit upon the earth this moment, with the round of
your body touching the round of the earth, say: Earth! Earth! you are
alive as the globes of my body are alive. Breathe the kiss of the inner
earth upon me, even as I sit upon you.
“And so, it is said. The earth is stirring beneath you, the sky is
rushing its wings above. Go home to your homes, in front of the waters
that will fall and cut you off forever from your yesterdays.
“Go home, and hope to be Men of the Morning Star, Women of the Star of
Dawn.
“You are not yet men and women----”
He rose up and waved to the people to be gone. And in a moment they
were on their feet, scurrying and hastening with the quiet Mexican
hurry, that seems to run low down upon the surface of the earth.
The black wind was all loose in the sky, tearing with the thin shriek
of torn fabrics, in the mango trees. Men held their big hats on their
heads and ran with bent knees, their serapes blowing. Women clutched
their rebozos tighter and ran barefoot to the zaguan.
The big doors were open, a soldier stood with a gun across his back,
holding a hurricane lamp. And the people fled like ghosts through the
doors, and away up the black lane like bits of paper veering away into
nothingness, blown out of their line of flight. In a moment, they had
all silently gone.
Martin barred the great doors. The soldier put down his lamp on the
wooden bench, and he and his comrades sat huddled in their dark shawls,
in a little bunch like toadstools in the dark cavern of the zaguan.
Already one had curled himself up on the wooden bench, wrapped like a
snail in his blanket, head disappeared.
“The water is coming!” cried the servants excitedly, as Kate went
upstairs with Doña Carlota.
The lake was quite black, like a great pit. The wind suddenly blew with
violence, with a strange ripping sound in the mango trees, as if some
membrane in the air were being ripped. The white-flowered oleanders in
the garden below leaned over quite flat, their white flowers ghostly,
going right down to the earth, in the pale beam of the lamp--like a
street lamp--that shone on the wall at the front entrance. A young
palm-tree bent and spread its leaves on the ground. Some invisible
juggernaut car rolling in the dark over the outside world.
Away across the lake, south-west, lightning blazed and ran down the sky
like some portentous writing. And soft, velvety thunder broke inwardly,
strangely.
“It frightens me!” cried Doña Carlota, putting her hand over her eyes
and hastening into a far corner of the bare salon.
Cipriano and Kate stood on the terrace, watching the coloured flowers
in the pots shake and fly to bits, disappearing up into the void of
darkness. Kate clutched her shawl. But the wind suddenly got under
Cipriano’s blanket, and lifted it straight up in the air, then dropped
it in a scarlet flare over his head. Kate watched his deep, strong
Indian chest lift as his arms quickly fought to free his head. How dark
he was, and how primitively physical, beautiful and deep-breasted, with
soft, full flesh! But all, as it were, for himself. Nothing that came
forth from him to meet with one outside. All oblivious of the outside,
all for himself.
“Ah! the water!” he cried, holding down his serape.
The first great drops were flying darkly at the flowers, like arrows.
Kate stood back into the doorway of the salon. A pure blaze of
lightning slipped three-fold above the black hills, seemed to stand a
moment, then slip back into the dark.
Down came the rain with a smash, as if some great vessel had broken.
With it, came a waft of icy air. And all the time, first in one part of
the sky, then in another, in quick succession the blue lightning, very
blue, broke out of heaven and lit up the air for a blue, breathless
moment, looming trees and ghost of a garden, then was gone, while
thunder dropped and exploded continually.
Kate watched the dropping masses of water in wonder. Already, in the
blue moments of lightning, she saw the garden below a pond, the walks
were rushing rivers. It was cold. She turned indoors.
A servant was going round the rooms with a lantern, to look if
scorpions were coming out. He found one scuttling across the floor of
Kate’s room, and one fallen from the ceiling beams on to Carlota’s bed.
They sat in the salon in rocking chairs, Carlota and Kate, and rocked,
smelling the good wetness, breathing the good, chilled air. Kate had
already forgotten what really chill air was like. She wrapped her shawl
tighter round her.
“Ah, yes, you feel cold! You must take care in the nights, now.
Sometimes in the rainy season the nights are very cold. You must be
ready with an extra blanket. And the servants, poor things, they just
lie and shudder, and they get up in the morning like corpses.--But the
sun soon warms them again, and they seem to think they must bear what
comes. So they complain sometimes, but still they don’t provide.”
The wind had gone, suddenly. Kate was uneasy, uneasy, with the smell
of water, almost of ice, in her nostrils, and her blood still hot and
dark. She got up and went again to the terrace. Cipriano was still
standing there, motionless and inscrutable, like a monument, in his red
and dark serape.
The rain was abating. Down below in the garden, two barefooted
women-servants were running through the water, in the faint light
of the zaguan lamp, running across the garden and putting ollas,
and square gasoline cans under the arching spouts of water that
seethed down from the roof, then darting away while they filled, then
struggling in with the frothy vessel. It would save making trips to the
lake, for water.