he would consent to an interview with himself and Don Cipriano, and
would he name the place. The Bishop--who was an old friend and adviser
of Carlota, and who knew Ramón well enough, replied that he should be
pleased to see Don Ramón and the _Señor General_ the next day, if they
would be so good as to come to his house.
The Bishop no longer occupied the great episcopal palace. This was
turned into the post-office building. But he had a large house not far
from the Cathedral, which had been presented by the faithful.
Ramón and Cipriano found the thin old man in a dusty, uninteresting
library, waiting. He wore a simple black cassock, not too clean, with
purple buttons. He received Ramón, who was in a black town suit, and
Cipriano, who was in uniform, with an affable manner and suspicious
looks. But he played at being the lively, genial old bird.
“Ah, Don Ramón, it is long since I saw you! How goes it, eh? Well,
well? That is good! That is very good!” And he patted Ramón on the
sleeve like a fussy old uncle. “Ah, my General, much honour, much
honour! Welcome to this poor house of yours. It is the house of your
Honour! To serve you! Gentlemen! Won’t you take a seat?”
They all sat down, in the dusty, dreary room, in the old leather
chairs. The Bishop nervously looked at his thin old hands, at the fine,
but rather dull amethyst ring he wore.
“Good! Señores!” he said, glancing up with his little black eyes. “At
your service! Entirely at the service of your Honours.”
“Doña Carlota is in the city, Father. You have seen her?” said Ramón.
“Yes, son of mine,” said the Bishop.
“Then you know the latest news about me. She told you everything.”
“Somewhat! Somewhat! She spoke somewhat of you, the poor little thing.
Thanks to God she has her sons with her. They are safely back in their
native country, in good health.”
“Did you see them?”
“Yes! Yes! Two of my dearest children! Very sympathetic, very
intelligent, like their father; and, like him, promising to be of very
handsome presence. Yes! Yes! Smoke if you will, my General. Don’t
hesitate.”
Cipriano lit a cigarette. From old associations, he was nervous, albeit
amused.
“You know all about what I want to do, Father?” said Ramón.
“I don’t know all, son of mine, but I know enough. I wouldn’t want to
hear more. Eh!” he sighed. “It is very sad.”
“Not so very sad, Father, if we don’t make it sad. Why make a sad
thing out of it, Father? We are in Mexico for the most part Indians.
They cannot understand the high Christianity, Father, and the Church
knows it. Christianity is a religion of the spirit, and must needs be
understood if it is to have any effect. The Indians cannot understand
it, any more than the rabbits of the hills.”
“Very good! Very good! Son of mine! But we can convey it to them. The
rabbits of the hills are in the hands of God.”
“No, Father, it is impossible. And without a religion that will connect
them with the universe, they will all perish. Only religion will serve;
not socialism, nor education, nor anything.”
“Thou speakest well,” said the Bishop.
“The rabbits of the hills may be in the hands of God, Father. But they
are at the mercy of men. The same with Mexico. The people sink heavier
and heavier into inertia, and the Church cannot help them, because the
Church does not possess the key-word to the Mexican soul.”
“Doesn’t the Mexican Soul know the Voice of God?” said the Bishop.
“Your own children may know your voice, Father. But if you go out to
speak to the birds on the lake, or the deer among the mountains, will
they know your voice? Will they wait and listen?”
“Who knows? It is said they waited to listen to the Holy Francisco of
Assisi.”
“Now, Father, we must speak to the Mexicans in their own language, and
give them the clue-word to their own souls. I shall say _Quetzalcoatl_.
If I am wrong, let me perish. But I am not wrong.”
The Bishop fidgetted rather restlessly. He didn’t want to hear all
this. And he did not want to answer. He was impotent anyhow.
“Your Church is the Catholic Church, Father?”
“Surely!” said the Bishop.
“And Catholic Church means the Church of All, the Universal Church?”
“Surely, son of mine.”
“Then why not let it be really catholic? Why call it catholic, when
it is not only just one among many churches, but is even hostile to
all the rest of the churches? Father, why not let the Catholic Church
become really the universal Church?”
“It is the Universal Church of Christ, my son.”
“Why not let it be the Universal Church of Mohammet as well; since
ultimately, God is One God, but the peoples speak varying languages,
and each needs its own prophet to speak with its own tongue. The
Universal Church of Christ, and Mohammet, and Buddha, and Quetzalcoatl,
and all the others--_that_ would be a Catholic Church, Father.”
“You speak of things beyond me,” said the Bishop, turning his ring.
“Not beyond any man,” said Don Ramón. “A Catholic Church is a church
of all the religions, a home on earth for all the prophets and the
Christs. A big tree under which every man who acknowledges the greater
life of the soul can sit and be refreshed. Isn’t _that_ the Catholic
Church, Father?”
“Alas, my son, I know the Apostolic Church of Christ in Rome, of which
I am a humble servant. I do not understand these clever things you are
saying to me.”
“I am asking you for peace, Father. I am not one who hates the Church
of Christ, the _Roman_ Catholic Church. But in Mexico I think it has no
place. When my heart is not bitter, I am grateful forever to Christ,
the Son of God. The affair of the Judases grieves me more than it does
you, and the affairs of bloodshed are far bitterer to me.”
“I am no innovator, my son, to provoke bloodshed.”
“Listen! I am going to remove the holy images from the church at
Sayula, with reverence, and with reverence burn them upon the lake.
Then I shall put the image of Quetzalcoatl in the church at Sayula.”
The Bishop looked up furtively. For some moments he said nothing. But
his silence was furtive, cornered.
“Would you dare do that, Don Ramón?” he said.
“Yes! And I shall not be prevented. General Viedma is with me.”
The Bishop glanced sideways at Cipriano.
“Certainly,” said Cipriano.
“Nevertheless it is illegal,” said the Bishop, with acid bitterness.
“What is illegal in Mexico?” said Ramón. “What is weak is illegal. I
will not be weak, My Lord.”
“Lucky you!” said the Bishop, lifting his shoulders.
There was a break of silence.
“No!” said Ramón. “I come to ask you for peace. Tell the Archbishop
what I say. Let him tell the Cardinals and the Pope, that the time has
come for a Catholic Church of the Earth, the Catholic Church of All the
Sons of Men. The Saviours are more than one, and let us pray they will
still be increased. But God is one God, and the Saviours are the Sons
of the One God. Let the Tree of the Church spread its branches over all
the earth, and shelter the prophets in its shade, as they sit and speak
their knowledge of the beyond.”
“Are you one of these prophets, Don Ramón?”
“I surely am, Father. And I would speak about Quetzalcoatl in Mexico,
and build his Church here.”
“Nay! You would invade the Churches of Christ and the Blessed Virgin, I
heard you say.”
“You know my intentions. But I do not want to quarrel with the Church
of Rome, nor have bloodshed and enmity, Father. Can you not understand
me? Should there not be peace between the men who strive down their
different ways to the God-Mystery?”
“Once more desecrate the altars! Bring in strange idols. Burn the
images of Our Lord and Our Lady, and ask for peace?” said the poor
Bishop, who helplessly longed to be left alone.
“All that, Father,” said Ramón.
“Son, what can I answer? You are a good man smitten with the madness
of pride. Don Cipriano is one more Mexican general. I am the poor old
Bishop of this diocese, faithful servant of the Holy Church, humble
child of the Holy Father in Rome. What can I do? What can I answer?
Take me out to the cemetery and shoot me at once, General!”
“I don’t want to,” said Cipriano.
“It will end like that,” said the Bishop.
“But why?” cried Don Ramón. “Is there no sense in what I say? Cannot
you understand?”
“My son, my understanding goes no further than my faith, my duty, will
allow. I am not a clever man. I live by faith, and my duty to my sacred
office. Understand that I do not understand.”
“Good-day, Father!” said Ramón, suddenly rising.
“Go with God, my son,” said the Bishop, rising and lifting his fingers.
“Adios, Señor!” said Cipriano, clicking his spurs, and putting his hand
on his sword as he turned to the door.
“Adios, Señor General,” said the Bishop, darting after them his eyes of
old malice, which they could feel in their backs.
“He will say nothing,” said Cipriano, as he and Ramón went down the
steps. “The old jesuit, he only wants to keep his job and his power,
and prevent the heart’s beating. I know them. All they treasure, even
more than their money, is their centipede power over the frightened
people; especially over the women.”
“I didn’t know you hated them,” laughed Ramón.
“Waste no more breath on them, my dear one,” said Cipriano. “Go
forward, you can walk over broken snakes such as those.”
As they went on foot past the post-office square, where the modern
scribes at little tables under the arches sat tapping out letters on
their typewriters for the poor and illiterate, who waited with their
few centavos to have their messages turned into florid Castilian, Ramón
and Cipriano met with an almost startled respect.
“Why talk to the Bishop?--he doesn’t exist any more. I hear his Knights
of Cortes had a big dinner the other evening, and it is said--I don’t
believe it--that they drank oaths in blood to have my life and yours.
But I think the oaths of the Catholic Dames would frighten me more.
Why, if a man stops to unfasten his trousers to make water, the Knights
of Cortes run for their lives, thinking the pistol is pointed at them.
Don’t think about them, man! Don’t try to conciliate them. They will
only puff up and become insolent, thinking you are afraid of them. Six
soldiers will trample down all that dirt,” said the General.
It was the city, and the spirit of the city.
Cipriano had a suite in the big Palace on the Plaza de Armas.
“If I marry,” he said, as they passed into the stone patio, where
soldiers stood at attention, “I shall take a house in the colony, to be
more private.”
Cipriano in town was amusing. He seemed to exude pride and arrogant
authority as he walked about. But his black eyes, glancing above his
fine nose and that little goat beard, were not to be laughed at. They
seemed to get everything, in the stab of a glance. A demoniacal little
fellow.
CHAP: XVIII. AUTO DA FE.
Ramón saw Carlota and his boys in the city, but it was a rather
fruitless meeting. The elder boy was just uncomfortable in the presence
with his father, but the younger, Cyprian, who was delicate and very
intelligent, had a rather lofty air of displeasure with his parent.
“Do you know what they sing, papa?” he said.
“Not all the things they sing,” said Ramón.
“They sing--” the boy hesitated. Then, in his clear young voice, he
piped up, to the tune of _La Cucaracha_:
“Don Ramón don’t drink, don’t smoke.
Doña Carlota wished he would.
He’s going to wear the sky-blue cloak
That he’s stole from the Mother of God.”
“No, I’m not,” said Ramón, smiling. “Mine’s got a snake and a bird in
the middle, and black zigzags and a red fringe. You’d better come and
see it.”
“No, papa! I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to be mixed up in this affair. It makes us all look
ridiculous.”
“But how do you think you look, anyhow, in your striped little sailor
suit and your little saintly look? We’d better dress you as the Infant
Jesus.”
“No, papa! You are in bad taste. One doesn’t say those things.”
“Now you’ll have to confess to a fib. You say one doesn’t say those
things, when I, who am your father, said them only a moment ago, and
you heard me.”
“I mean good people don’t. Decent people.”
“Now you’ll have to confess again, for calling your father
indecent.--Terrible child!”
The child flushed, and tears rose to his eyes. There was silence for a
while.
“So you don’t want to come to Jamiltepec?” said Ramón, to his boys.
“Yes!” said the elder boy, slowly. “I want to come and bathe in the
lake, and have a boat. But--they say it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“They say you make yourself a peon, in your clothes.”--The boy was shy.
“They’re very nice clothes, you know. Nicer than those little breeches
of yours.”
“They say, also, that you pretend to be the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl.”
“Not at all. I only pretend that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl is coming
back to the Mexicans.”
“But, papa, it is not true.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“There never was any Quetzalcoatl, except idols.”
“Is there any Jesus, except images?”
“Yes, papa.”
“Where?”
“In heaven.”
“Then in heaven there is also Quetzalcoatl. And what is in heaven is
capable of coming back to earth. Don’t you believe me?”
“I can’t.”
“Then go unbelieving,” said the father, laughing at them and rising to
leave them.
“It is very bad that they sing songs about you, and put mama in; like
about Pancho Villa,” said the younger boy. “It hurts me very much.”
“Rub it with _Vapor-rub_, my pet,” said Ramón. “Rub it with
_Vapor-rub_, where it hurts you.”
“What a real bad man you are, papa!”
“What a real good child are you, my son! Isn’t that so?”
“I don’t know, papa. I only know you are bad.”
“Oh! Oh! Is that all they teach thee at thy American school?”
“Next term,” said Ciprianito, “I want to change my name. I don’t want
to be called Carrasco any more. When thou art in the newspapers, they
will laugh at us.”
“Oh! Oh! I am laughing at thee _now_, little frog! What name wilt thou
choose then? Espina, perhaps. Thou knowest Carrasco is a wild bush, on
the moors in Spain, where we come from. Wilt thou be the little thorn
on the bush? Call thyself Espina, thou art a sprig of the old tree.
Entonces, Adios! Señor Espina Espinita!”
“Adios!” said the boy abruptly, flushing with rage.
Ramón took a motor-car to Sayula, for there was a made road. But
already the rains were washing it away. The car lurched and bumped in
the great gaps. In one place, a camion lay on its back, where it had
overturned.
On the flat desert, there were already small smears of water, and the
pink cosmos flowers, and the yellow, were just sprouting their tufts of
buds. The hills in the distance were going opaque, as leaves came out
on the invisible trees and bushes. The earth was coming to life.
Ramón called in Sayula at Kate’s house. She was out, but the wild
Concha came scouring across the beach, to fetch her.--“There is Don
Ramón! There is Don Ramón!”
Kate hurried home, with sand in her shoes.
She thought Ramón looked tired, and, in his black suit, sinister.
“I didn’t expect you,” she said.
“I am on my way back from town.”
He sat very still, with that angry look on his creamy dark face, and he
kept pushing back his black moustache from his closed, angry lips.
“Did you see anybody in town?” she asked.
“I saw Don Cipriano--and Doña Carlota, and my boys!”
“Oh, how nice for you! Are they quite well?”
“In excellent health, I believe.”
She laughed suddenly.
“You are still cross,” she said. “Is it about the monkeys still?”
“Señora,” he said, leaning forward, so that his black hair dropped a
little on his brow, “in monkeydom, I don’t know who is prince. But in
the kingdom of fools, I believe it is I.”
“Why?” she said.
And as he did not answer, she added:
“It must be a comfort to be a prince, even of fools.”
He looked daggers at her, then burst into a laugh.
“Oh, Señora mia! What ails us men, when we are always wanting to be
_good_?”
“Are you repenting of it?” she laughed.
“Yes!” he said. “I am a prince of fools! Why have I started this
Quetzalcoatl business? Why? Pray tell me why?”
“I suppose you wanted to.”
He pondered for a time, pushing up his moustache.
“Perhaps it is better to be a monkey than a fool. I object to being
called a monkey, nevertheless. Carlota is a monkey, no more; and my two
boys are prize young monkeys in sailor suits. And I am a fool. Yet what
is the difference between a fool and a monkey?”
“Quien sabe?” said Kate.
“One wants to be good, and the other is sure he is good. So I make
a fool of myself. They are sure they are always good, so that makes
monkeys of them. Oh, if only the world would blow up like a bomb!”
“It won’t!” said Kate.
“True enough.--Ah, well!”
He drew himself erect, pulling himself together.
“Do you think, Señora Caterina, you might marry our mutual General?”
Ramón had put himself aside again.
“I--I don’t know!” stammered Kate. “I hardly think so.”
“He is not sympathetic to you at all?”
“Yes. He is. He is alive, and there is even a certain fascination about
him.--But one shouldn’t try marrying a man of another race, do you
think, even if he were more sympathetic?”
“Ah!” sighed Ramón. “It’s no good generalising. It’s no good marrying
anybody, unless there will be a real fusion somewhere.”
“And I feel there wouldn’t,” said Kate. “I feel he just wants something
of me; and perhaps I just want something of him. But he would never
meet me. He would never come forward himself, to meet me. He would come
to take something from me and I should have to let him. And I don’t
want merely that. I want a man who will come half-way, just half-way,
to meet me.”
Don Ramón pondered, and shook his head.
“You are right,” he said. “Yet, in these matters, one never knows what
is half-way, nor where it is. A woman who just wants to be taken, and
then to cling on, is a parasite. And a man who wants just to take,
without giving, is a creature of prey.”
“And I’m afraid Don Cipriano might be that,” said Kate.
“Possibly,” said Ramón. “He is not so with me. But perhaps he would
be, if we did not meet--perhaps it is our half-way--in some physical
belief that is at the very middle of us, and which we recognise in one
another. Don’t you think there might be that between you and him?”
“I doubt if he’d feel it necessary, with a woman. A woman wouldn’t be
important enough.”
Ramón was silent.
“Perhaps!” he said. “With a woman, a man always wants to let himself
go. And it is precisely with a woman that he should never let himself
go. It is precisely with a woman that he should never let himself go,
but stick to his innermost belief, and meet her just there. Because
when the innermost belief coincides in them both, if it’s physical,
there, and then, and nowhere else, they can meet. And it’s no good
unless there is a meeting. It’s no good a man ravishing a woman, and
it’s absolutely no good a woman ravishing a man. It’s a sin, that is.
There is such a thing as sin, and that’s the centre of it. Men and
women keep on ravishing one another. Absurd as it may sound, it is not
I who would ravish Carlota. It is she who would ravish me. Strange
and absurd and a little shameful, it is true.--Letting oneself go, is
either ravishing or being ravished. Oh, if we could only abide by our
own souls, and meet in the abiding place.--Señora, I have not a very
great respect for myself. Woman and I have failed with one another, and
it is a bad failure to have in the middle of oneself.”
Kate looked at him in wonder, with a little fear. Why was he confessing
to her? Was he going to love her? She almost suspended her breathing.
He looked at her with a sort of sorrow on his brow, and in his dark
eyes, anger, vexation, wisdom, and a dull pain.
“I am sorry,” he went on, “that Carlota and I are as we are with one
another. Who am I, even to talk about Quetzalcoatl, when my heart is
hollow with anger against the woman I have married and the children
she bore me.--We never met in our souls, she and I. At first I loved
her, and she wanted me to ravish her. Then after a while a man becomes
uneasy. He can’t keep on wanting to ravish a woman, the same woman.
He has revulsions. Then she loved me, and she wanted to ravish me.
And I liked it for a time. But she had revulsions too. The eldest boy
is really my boy, when I ravished her. And the youngest is her boy,
when she ravished me. See how miserable it is! And now we can never
meet; she turns to her crucified Jesus, and I to my uncrucified and
uncrucifiable Quetzalcoatl, who at least cannot be ravished.”
“And I’m sure you won’t make him a ravisher,” she said.
“Who knows? If I err, it will be on that side. But you know, Señora,
Quetzalcoatl is to me only the symbol of the best a man may be, in
the next days. The universe is a nest of dragons, with a perfectly
unfathomable life-mystery at the centre of it. If I call the mystery
the Morning Star, surely it doesn’t matter! A man’s blood can’t beat
in the abstract. And man is a creature who wins his own creation inch
by inch from the nest of the cosmic dragons. Or else he loses it
little by little, and goes to pieces. Now we are all losing it, in the
ravishing and ravished disintegration. We must pull ourselves together,
hard, both men and women, or we are all lost.--We must pull ourselves
together, hard.”
“But are you a man who needs a woman in his life?” she said.
“I am a man who yearns for the sensual fulfilment of my soul, Señora,”
he said. “I am a man who has no belief in abnegation of the blood
desires. I am a man who is always on the verge of taking wives and
concubines to live with me, so deep is my desire for that fulfilment.
Except that now I know that is useless--not momentarily useless, but in
the long run--my ravishing a woman with hot desire. No matter how much
she is in love with me and desires me to ravish her. It is no good, and
the very inside of me knows it is no good. Wine, woman, and song--all
that--all that game is up. Our insides won’t really have it any more.
Yet it is hard to pull ourselves together.”
“So that you really want a woman to be with you?” said Kate.
“Ah, Señora! If I could trust myself; and trust her! I am no longer a
young man, who can afford to make mistakes. I am forty-two years old,
and I am making my last--and perhaps in truth, my first great effort
as a man. I hope I may perish before I make a big mistake.”
“Why should you make a mistake? You needn’t?”
“I? It is very easy for me to make a mistake. Very easy, on the one
hand, for me to become arrogant and a ravisher. And very easy, on the
other hand, for me to deny myself, and make a sort of sacrifice of
my life. Which is being ravished. Easy to let myself, in a certain
sense, be ravished. I did it to a small degree even yesterday, with
the Bishop of Guadalajara. And it is bad. If I had to end my life in a
mistake, Señora, I had rather end it in being a ravisher, than in being
ravished. As a hot ravisher, I can still slash and cut at the disease
of the other thing, the horrible pandering and the desire men have to
be ravished, the hateful, ignoble desire they have.”
“But why don’t you do as you say, stick by the innermost soul that
is in you, and meet a woman there, meet her, as you say, where your
two souls coincide in their deepest desire? Not always that horrible
unbalance that you call ravishing.”
“Why don’t I? But which woman can I meet in the body, without that slow
degradation of ravishing, or being ravished, setting in? If I marry a
Spanish woman or a dark Mexican, she will give herself up to me to be
ravished. If I marry a woman of the Anglo-Saxon or any blonde northern
stock, she will want to ravish me, with the will of all the ancient
white demons. Those that want to be ravished are parasites on the soul,
and one has revulsions. Those that want to ravish a man are vampires.
And between the two, there is nothing.”
“Surely there are _some_ really good women?”
“Well, show me them. They are all potential Carlotas or--or--yes,
Caterinas. I am sure you ravished your Joachim till he died. No doubt
he wanted it; even more than you wanted it. It is not just sex. It
lies in the will. Victims and victimisers. The upper classes, craving
to be victims to the lower classes; or else craving to make victims of
the lower classes. The politicians, craving to make one people victims
to another. The Church, with its evil will for turning the people
into humble, writhing things that shall crave to be victimised, to be
ravished.--I tell you, the earth is a place of shame.”
“But if _you_ want to be different,” said Kate, “surely a few other
people do--really.”
“It may be,” he said, becoming calm. “It may be. I wish I kept myself
together better. I must keep myself together, keep myself within the
middle place, where I am still. My Morning Star. Now I am ashamed of
having talked like this to you, Señora Caterina.”
“Why?” she cried. And for the first time, the flush of hurt and
humiliation came into her face.
He saw it at once, and put his hand on hers for a moment.
“No,” he said. “I am not ashamed. I am relieved.”
She flushed deeply at his touch, and was silent. He rose hastily, to
leave, craving to be alone again with his own soul.