no softness in the air, never. Either hard heat or hard chill. Hard,
straight lies and zigzags, wounding the breast. No soft, sweet smell
of earth. The smell of Mexico, however subtle, suggested violence and
things in chemical conflict.
And Kate felt herself filled with an anger of resentment. She would sit
under a willow tree by the lake, reading a Pio Baroja novel that was
angry and full of No! No! No!--ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!
But she herself was so much angrier and fuller of repudiation than Pio
Baroja. Spain cannot stand for No! as Mexico can.
The tree hung fleecy above her. She sat on the warm sand in the shadow,
careful not to let even her ankles lie in the biting shine of the
sun. There was a faint, old smell of urine. The lake was so still and
filmy as to be almost invisible. In the near distance, some dark women
were kneeling on the edge of the lake, dressed only in their long wet
chemises in which they had bathed. Some were washing garments, some
were pouring water over themselves, scooping it up in gourd scoops and
pouring it over their black heads and ruddy-dark shoulders, in the
intense pressure of the sunshine. On her left were two big trees, and
a cane fence, and little straw huts of Indians. There the beach itself
ended, and the little Indian plots of land went down to the lake-front.
Glancing around in the great light, she seemed to be sitting isolated
in a dark core of shadow, while the world moved in inconsequential
specks through the hollow glare. She noticed a dark urchin, nearly
naked, marching with naked, manly solemnity down to the water’s edge.
He would be about four years’ old, but more manly than an adult man.
With sex comes a certain vulnerability which these round-faced,
black-headed, stiff-backed infant men have not got. Kate knew the
urchin. She knew his tattered rag of a red shirt, and the weird rags
that were his little man’s white trousers. She knew his black round
head, his stiff, sturdy march of a walk, his round eyes, and his swift,
scuttling run, like a bolting animal.
“What’s the brat got,” she said to herself, gazing at the moving little
figure within the great light.
Dangling from his tiny outstretched arm, held by the webbed toe,
head down and feebly flapping its out-sinking wings, was a bird, a
water-fowl. It was a black mud-chick with a white bar across the
under-wing, one of the many dark fowl that bobbed in little flocks
along the edge of the sun-stunned lake.
The urchin marched stiffly down to the water’s edge, holding the
upside-down bird, that seemed big as an eagle in the tiny fist. Another
brat came scuttling after. The two infant men paddled a yard into the
warm, lapping water, under the great light, and gravely stooping,
like old men, set the fowl on the water. It floated, but could hardly
paddle. The lift of the ripples moved it. The urchins dragged it in,
like a rag, by a string tied to its leg.
So quiet, so still, so dark, like tiny, chubby little infant men, the
two solemn figures with the rag of a bird!
Kate turned uneasily to her book, her nerves on edge. She heard the
splash of a stone. The bird was on the water, but apparently the string
that held it by the leg was tied to a stone. It lay wavering, a couple
of yards out. And the two little he-men, with sober steadfastness and
a quiet, dark lust, were picking up stones, and throwing them with the
fierce Indian aim at the feebly fluttering bird: right down upon it.
Like a little warrior stood the mite in the red rag, his arm upraised,
to throw the stone with all his might down on the tethered bird.
In a whiff, Kate was darting down the beach.
“Ugly boys! Ugly children! Go! Go away, ugly children, ugly boys!” she
said on one breath, with quiet intensity.
The round-headed dot gave her one black glance from his manly eyes,
then the two of them scuttled up the beach into invisibility.
Kate went into the water, and lifted the wet, warm bird. The bit of
coarse fibre-string hung from its limp, greenish, water-fowl’s ankle.
It feebly tried to bite her.
She rapidly stepped out of the water and stood in the sun to unfasten
the string. The bird was about as big as a pigeon. It lay in her hand
with the absolute motionlessness of a caught wild thing.
Kate stooped and pulled off her shoes and stockings. She looked round.
No sign of life from the reed huts dark in the shadow of the trees.
She lifted her skirts and staggered out barefoot in the hot shallows
of the water, almost falling on the cruel stones under the water. The
lake-side was very shallow. She staggered on and on, in agony, holding
up her skirts in one hand, holding the warm, wet, motionless bird in
the other. Till at last she was up to her knees. Then she launched the
greeny-black bird, and gave it a little push to the uprearing expanse
of filmy water, that was almost dim, invisible with the glare of light.
It lay wet and draggled on the pale, moving sperm of the water, like a
buoyant rag.
“Swim then! Swim!” she said, trying to urge it away into the lake.
Either it couldn’t or wouldn’t. Anyhow it didn’t.
But it was out of reach of those urchins. Kate struggled back from
those stones, to her tree, to her shade, to her book, away from the
rage of the sun. Silent with slow anger, she kept glancing up at the
floating bird, and sideways at the reed huts of the Indians in the
black shadow.
Yes, the bird was dipping its beak in the water, and shaking its head.
It was coming to itself. But it did not paddle. It let itself be
lifted, lifted on the ripples, and the ripples would drift it ashore.
“Fool of a thing!” said Kate nervously, using all her consciousness to
make it paddle away into the lake.
Two companions, two black dots with white specks of faces, were coming
out of the pale glare of the lake. Two mud-chicks swam busily forward.
The first swam up and poked its beak at the inert bird, as if to say
_Hello! What’s up?_ Then immediately it turned away and paddled in
complete oblivion to the shore, its companion following.
Kate watched the rag of feathered misery anxiously. Would it not rouse
itself, wouldn’t it follow?
No! There it lay, slowly, inertly drifting on the ripples, only
sometimes shaking its head.
The other two alert birds waded confidently, busily among the stones.
Kate read a bit more.
When she looked again, she could not see her bird. But the other two
were walking among the stones, jauntily.
She read a bit more.
The next thing was a rather loutish youth of eighteen or so, in overall
trousers, running with big strides towards the water, and the stiff
little man-brat scuttling after with determined bare feet. Her heart
stood still.
The two busy mud-chicks rose in flight and went low over the water into
the blare of light. Gone!
But the lout in the big hat and overall trousers and those stiff Indian
shoulders she sometimes hated so much, was peering among the stones.
She, however, was sure her bird had gone.
No! Actually no! The stiff-shoulder lout stooped and picked up the damp
thing. It had let itself drift back.
He turned, dangling it like a rag from the end of one wing, and handed
it to the man-brat. Then he stalked self-satisfied up the shore.
Ugh! and that moment how Kate hated these people: their terrible
lowness, _à terre, à terre_. Their stiff broad American shoulders, and
high chests, and above all, their walk, their prancing, insentient
walk. As if some motor-engine drove them at the bottom of their back.
Stooping rather forward and looking at the ground so that he could
turn his eyes sideways to her, without showing her his face, the lout
returned to the shadow of the huts. And after him, diminutive, the
dot of a man marched stiffly, hurriedly, dangling the wretched bird,
that stirred very feebly, downwards from the tip of one wing. And from
time to time turning his round, black-eyed face in Kate’s direction,
vindictively, apprehensively, lest she should swoop down on him again.
Black, apprehensive male defiance of the great, white, weird female.
Kate glared back from under her tree.
“If looks would kill you, brat, I’d kill you,” she said. And the urchin
turned his face like clockwork at her from time to time, as he strutted
palpitating towards the gap in the cane hedge, into which the youth had
disappeared.
Kate debated whether to rescue the foolish bird again. But what was the
good!
This country would have its victim. America would have its victim. As
long as time lasts, it will be the continent divided between Victims
and Victimisers. What is the good of trying to interfere!
She rose up in detestation of the flabby bird, and of the sulky-faced
brat turning his full moon on her in apprehension.
Lumps of women were by the water’s edge. Westwards, down the glare,
rose the broken-looking villas and the white twin towers of the church,
holding up its two fingers in mockery above the scarlet flame-trees and
the dark mangoes. She saw the rather lousy shore, and smelt the smell
of Mexico, come out in the hot sun after the rains: excrement, human
and animal dried in the sun on a dry, dry earth; and dry leaves; and
mango leaves; and pure air with a little refuse-smoke in it.
“But the day will come when I shall go away,” she said to herself.
And sitting rocking once more on her verandah, hearing the clap-clap of
tortillas from the far end of the patio, the odd, metallic noises of
birds, and feeling the clouds already assembling in the west, with a
weight of unborn thunder upon them, she felt she could bear it no more:
the vacuity, and the pressure: the horrible uncreate elementality, so
uncouth, even sun and rain uncouth, uncouth.
And she wondered over the black vision in the eyes of that urchin. The
curious void.
He could not see that the bird was a real living creature with a life
of its own. This, his race had never seen. With black eyes they stared
out on an elemental world, where the elements were monstrous and cruel,
as the sun was monstrous, and the cold, crushing black water of the
rain was monstrous, and the dry, dry, cruel earth.
And among the monstrosity of the elements flickered and towered other
presences: terrible uncouth things called gringos, white people, and
dressed up monsters of rich people, with powers like gods, but uncouth,
demonish gods. And uncouth things like birds that could fly and snakes
that could crawl and fish that could swim and bite. An uncouth,
monstrous universe of monsters big and little, in which man held his
own by sheer resistance and guardedness, never, never going forth from
his own darkness.
And sometimes, it was good to have revenge on the monsters that
fluttered and strode. The monsters big and the monsters little. Even
the monster of that bird, which had its own monstrous bird-nature. On
this the mite could wreck the long human vengeance, and for once be
master.
Blind to the creature as a soft, struggling thing finding its own
fluttering way through life. Seeing only another monster of the outer
void.
Walking forever through a menace of monsters, blind to the sympathy in
things, holding one’s own, and not giving in, nor going forth. Hence
the lifted chests and the prancing walk. Hence the stiff, insentient
spines, the rich physique, and the heavy, dreary natures, heavy like
the dark-grey mud-bricks, with a terrible obstinate ponderosity and a
dry sort of gloom.
CHAP: XV. THE WRITTEN HYMNS OF QUETZALCOATL.
The electric light in Sayula was as inconstant as everything else. It
would come on at half-past six in the evening, and it _might_ bravely
burn till ten at night, when the village went dark with a click. But
usually it did no such thing. Often it refused to sputter into being
till seven, or half-past, or even eight o’clock. But its worst trick
was that of popping out just in the middle of supper, or just when you
were writing a letter. All of a sudden, the black Mexican night came
down on you with a thud. And then everybody running blindly for matches
and candles, with a calling of frightened voices. Why were they always
frightened? Then the electric light, like a wounded thing, would try
to revive, and a red glow would burn in the bulbs, sinister. All held
their breath--was it coming or not? Sometimes it expired for good,
sometimes it got its breath back and shone, rather dully, but better
than nothing.
Once the rainy season had set in, it was hopeless. Night after night
it collapsed. And Kate would sit with her weary, fluttering candle,
while blue lightning revealed the dark shapes of things in the patio.
And half-seen people went swiftly down to Juana’s end of the patio,
secretly.
On such a night Kate sat on her verandah facing the deepness of the
black night. A candle shone in her desert salon. Now and again she saw
the oleanders and the papaya in the patio garden, by the blue gleam of
lightning that fell with a noiseless splash into the pitch darkness.
There was a distant noise of thunders, several storms prowling round
like hungry jaguars, above the lake.
And several times the gate clicked, and crunching steps came along the
gravel, someone passed on the gravel walk, saluting her, going down to
Juana’s quarters, where the dull light of a floating oil wick shone
through the grated window-hole. Then there was a low, monotonous sound
of a voice, reciting or reading. And as the wind blew and the lightning
alighted again like a blue bird among the plants, there would come the
sharp noise of the round _cuentas_ falling from the cuenta tree.
Kate was uneasy and a bit forlorn. She felt something was happening
down in the servants’ corner, something secret in the dark. And she was
stranded in her isolation on her terrace.
But after all, it was her house, and she had a right to know what her
own people were up to. She rose from her rocking chair and walked down
the verandah and round the dining-room bay. The dining-room, which had
its own two doors on the patio, was already locked up.
In the far corner beyond the well, she saw a group sitting on the
ground, outside the doorway of Juana’s kitchen-hole. Out of this little
kitchen-shed shone the light of the floating-wick lamp, and a voice was
slowly intoning, all the faces were looking into the dim light, the
women dark-hooded in rebozos, the men with their hats on, their sarapes
over their shoulders.
When they heard Kate’s footsteps, the faces looked her way, and a voice
murmured in warning. Juana struggled to her feet.
“It is the Niña!” she said. “Come, then, Niña, you poor innocent all
alone in the evening.”
The men in the group rose to their feet--she recognized the young
Ezequiel, taking his hat off to her. And there was Maria del Carmen,
the bride. And inside the little shed, with the wick-lamp on the floor,
was Julio, the bridegroom of a few weeks ago. Concha and little Maria
were there, and a couple of strangers.
“I could hear the voice--” said Kate. “I didn’t know it was you, Julio.
How do you do?--And I wondered so much what it was.”
There was a moment’s dead silence. Then Juana plunged in.
“Yes, Niña! Come! It’s very nice that you come. Concha, the chair for
the Niña!”
Concha got up rather unwillingly, and fetched the little low chair
which formed Juana’s sole article of furniture, save the one bed.
“I don’t disturb you?” said Kate.
“No, Niña, you are a friend of Don Ramón, _verdad_?”
“Yes,” said Kate.
“And we--we are reading the Hymns.”
“Yes?” said Kate.
“The Hymns of Quetzalcoatl,” said Ezequiel, in his barking young voice,
with sudden bravado.
“Do go on! May I listen!”
“You hear! The Niña wants to listen. Read, Julio, read! Read then.”
They all sat down once more on the ground, and Julio sat down by the
lamp, but he hung his head, hiding his face in the shadow of his big
hat.
“_Entonces!_--Read then,” said Juana.
“He is afraid,” murmured Maria del Carmen, laying her hand on the young
man’s knee. “However, read, Julio! Because the Niña wants to hear.”
And after a moment’s struggle, Julio said in a muffled voice:
“Do I begin from the beginning.”
“Yes, from the beginning! Read!” said Juana.
The young man took a sheet of paper, like an advertisement leaflet,
from under his blanket. At the top it had the Quetzalcoatl symbol,
called the Eye, the ring with the bird-shape standing in the middle.
He began to read in a rather muffled voice:
“I am Quetzalcoatl with the dark face, who lived in Mexico in other
days.
“Till there came a stranger from over the seas, and his face was white,
and he spoke with strange words. He showed his hands and his feet, that
in both there were holes. And he said: ‘My name is Jesus, and they
called me Christ. Men crucified me on a Cross till I died. But I rose
up out of the place where they put me, and I went up to heaven to my
Father. Now my Father has told me to come to Mexico.’
“_Quetzalcoatl said_: You alone?
“_Jesus said_: My mother is here. She shed many tears for me, seeing
me crucify. So she will hold the Sons of Mexico on her lap, and soothe
them when they suffer, and when the women of Mexico weep, she will take
them on her bosom and comfort them. And when she cries to the Father
for her people, He will make everything well.
“_Quetzalcoatl said_: That is well. And Brother with the name Jesus,
what will you do in Mexico?
“_Jesus said_: I will bring peace into Mexico. And on the naked I will
put clothes, and food between the lips of the hungry, and gifts in all
men’s hands, and peace and love in their hearts.
“_Quetzalcoatl said_: It is very good. I am old. I could not do so
much. I must go now. Farewell, people of Mexico. Farewell, strange
brother called Jesus. Farewell, woman called Mary. It is time for me to
go.
“So Quetzalcoatl looked at his people; and he embraced Jesus, the Son
of Heaven; and he embraced Maria, the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Mother
of Jesus, and he turned away. Slowly he went. But in his ears was the
sound of the tearing down of his temples in Mexico. Nevertheless he
went on slowly, being old, and weary with much living. He climbed the
steep of the mountain, and over the white snow of the volcano. As he
went, behind him rose a cry of people dying, and a flame of places
burning. He said to himself: Surely those are Mexicans crying! Yet I
must not hear, for Jesus has come to the land, and he will wipe the
tears from all eyes, and his Mother will make them all glad.
“He also said: Surely that is Mexico burning. But I must not look, for
all men will be brothers, now Jesus has come to the land, and the women
will sit by the blue skirts of Mary, smiling with peace and with love.
“So the old god reached the top of the mountain, and looked up into
the blue house of heaven. And through a door in the blue wall he saw a
great darkness, and stars and a moon shining. And beyond the darkness
he saw one great star, like a bright gateway.
“Then fire rose from the volcano around the old Quetzalcoatl, in wings
and glittering feathers. And with the wings of fire and the glitter of
sparks Quetzalcoatl flew up, up, like a wafting fire, like a glittering
bird, up, into the space, and away to the white steps of heaven, that
lead to the blue walls, where is the door to the dark. So he entered in
and was gone.
“Night fell, and Quetzalcoatl was gone, and men in the world saw only a
star travelling back into heaven, departing under the low branches of
darkness.
“Then men in Mexico said: Quetzalcoatl has gone. Even his star has
departed. We must listen to this Jesus, who speaks in a foreign tongue.
“So they learned a new speech from the priests that came from upon the
great waters to the east. And they became Christians.”
Julio, who had become absorbed, ended abruptly, as the tale of the
leaflet was ended.
“It is beautiful,” said Kate.
“And it is true!” cried the sceptical Juana.
“It seems to me true,” said Kate.
“Señora!” yelled Concha. “Is it true that heaven is up there, and you
come down steps like clouds to the edge of the sky, like the steps from
the mole into the lake? Is it true that El Señor comes and stands on
the steps and looks down at us like we look down into the lake to see
the charales?”
Concha shoved up her fierce swarthy face, and shook her masses of hair,
glaring at Kate, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know everything,” laughed Kate. “But it seems to me true.”
“She believes it,” said Concha, turning her face to her mother.
“And is it true,” asked Juana, “that El Señor, El Cristo del Mundo, is
a gringo, and that He comes from your country, with His Holy Mother?”
“Not from my country, but from a country near.”
“Listen!” exclaimed Juana, awestruck. “El Señor is a gringito, and His
Holy Mother is a gringita. Yes, one really knows. Look! Look at the
feet of the Niña! Pure feet of the Santísima! Look!” Kate was barefoot,
wearing sandals with a simple strap across the foot. Juana touched one
of the Niña’s white feet, fascinated. “Feet of the Santísima. And She,
the Holy Mary is a gringita. She came over the sea, like you, Niña?”
“Yes, she came over the sea!”
“Ah! You know it?”
“Yes. We know that.”
“Think of it! The Santísima is a gringita, and She came over the Sea
like the Niña, from the countries of the Niña!” Juana spoke in a wicked
wonder, horrified, delighted, mocking.
“And the Lord is a Gringito--pure Gringito?” barked Concha.
“And Niña--It was the gringos who killed El Señor? It wasn’t the
Mexicans? It was those other gringos who put Him on the Cross?”
“Yes!” said Kate. “It wasn’t the Mexicans.”
“The gringos?”
“Yes, the gringos.”
“And He Himself was a Gringo?”
“Yes!” said Kate, not knowing what else to say.
“Look!” said Juana, in her hushed, awed, malevolent voice. “He was a
Gringo, and the gringos put him on the Cross.”
“But a long time ago,” said Kate hastily.
“A long time ago, says the Niña,” echoed Juana, in her awed voice.
There was a moment of silence. The dark faces of the girls and men
seated on the ground were turned up to Kate, watching her fixedly, in
the half light, counting every word. In the outer air, thunder muttered
in different places.
“And now, Niña,” came the cool, clear voice of Maria del Carmen, “El
Señor is going back again to His Father, and our Quetzalcoatl is coming
back to us?”
“And the Santísima is leaving us?” put in the hurried voice of Juana.
“Think of it! The Santísima is leaving us, and this Quetzalcoatl is
coming! He has no mother, he!”
“Perhaps he has a wife,” said Kate.
“Quien sabe!” murmured Juana.
“They say,” said the bold Concha, “that in Paradise he has grown young.”
“Who?” asked Juana.
“I don’t know how they call him,” muttered Concha, ashamed to say the
word.
“Quetzalcoatl!” said Ezequiel, in his barking strong young voice. “Yes,
he is young. He is a god in the flower of life, and finely built.”
“They say so! They say so!” murmured Juana. “Think of it!”
“Here it says so!” cried Ezequiel. “Here it is written. In the second
Hymn.”
“Read it then, Julio.”
And Julio, now nothing loth, took out a second paper.
“I, Quetzalcoatl, of Mexico, I travelled the longest journey.
“Beyond the blue outer wall of heaven, beyond the bright place of the
Sun, across the plains of darkness where the stars spread out like
trees, like trees and bushes, far away to the heart of all the worlds,
low down like the Morning Star.
“And at the heart of all the worlds those were waiting whose faces I
could not see. And in voices like bees they murmured among themselves:
_This is Quetzalcoatl whose hair is white with fanning the fires of
life. He comes alone, and slowly._
“Then with hands I could not see, they took my hands, and in their arms
that I could not see, at last I died.
“But when I was dead, and bone, they cast not my bones away, they did
not give me up to the four winds, nor to the six. No, not even to the
wind that blows down to the middle of earth, nor to him that blows
upward like a finger pointing, did they give me.
“_He is dead_, they said, _but unrelinquished_.
“So they took the oil of the darkness, and laid it on my brow and my
eyes, they put it in my ears and nostrils and my mouth, they put it on
the two-fold silence of my breasts, and on my sunken navel, and on my
secret places, before and behind: and in the palms of my hands, and on
the mounds of my knees, and under the tread of my feet.
“Lastly, they anointed all my head with the oil that comes out of the
darkness. Then they said: He is sealed up. Lay him away.
“So they laid me in the fountain that bubbles darkly at the heart of
the worlds, far, far behind the sun, and there lay I, Quetzalcoatl, in
warm oblivion.
“I slept the great sleep, and dreamed not.