“It is very far and very empty. But I believe, my son, that the hearts
of living men are the very middle of the sky. And there God is; and
Paradise; inside the hearts of living men and women. And there the
souls of the dead come to rest, there, at the very centre, where the
blood turns and returns; that is where the dead sleep best.”
There was a very blank pause.
“And wilt thou go on saying thou art the Living Quetzalcoatl?” said
Cyprian.
“Surely! And when you are a little older, perhaps you will come to me
and say it too.”
“Never! Thou hast killed our mother, and we shall hate thee. When we
are men we ought to kill thee.”
“Nay, that is bombast, child! Why wilt thou listen only to servants
and priests and people of that sort? Are they not thy inferiors, since
thou art my son, and thy mother’s son? Why dost thou take the talk of
servants and inferiors into thy mouth? Hast thou no room for the speech
of brave men? Thou wilt not kill me, neither will thy brother. For I
would not allow you, even if you wished it. And you do not wish it.
Talk no more of this empty lackey-talk to me, Cyprian, for I will not
hear it. Art thou already a little lackey, or a priest? Come, thou art
vulgar. Thou art a little vulgarian. We had better speak English; or
thy French. Castilian is too good a language to turn into this currish
talk.”
Ramón rose and went to the window to look out at the lake. The drums on
the church were sounding for mid-day, when every man should glance at
the sun, and stand silent with a little prayer.
“The sun has climbed the hill, the day is on the downward slope.
Between the morning and the afternoon, stand I here with my soul,
and lift it up.
My soul is heavy with sunshine, and steeped with strength.
The sunbeams have filled me like a honeycomb,
It is the moment of fulness,
And the top of the morning.”
Ramón turned and repeated the Mid-day verse to his boys. They listened
in confused silence.
“Come!” he said. “Why are you confused? If I talked to you about your
new boots, or ten pesos, you would not be confused. But if I speak of
the sun and your own souls filled from the sun like honeycombs, you
sulk. You had better go back to your school in America, to learn to
be business men. You had better say to everybody: Oh, no! we have no
father! Our mother died, but we never had a father. We are children of
an immaculate conception, so we should make excellent business men.”
“I shall be a priest,” said Cyprian.
“And I a doctor,” said Pedro.
“Very good! Very good! _Shall-be_ is far from _am_, and to-morrow is
another day. Come to me when your heart tells you to come. You are my
little boys, whatever you say, and I shall stroke your hair and laugh
at you. Come! Come here!”
He looked at them, and they dared not refuse to obey, his power was so
much greater than theirs.
He took his eldest son in his arms and stroked his head.
“There!” he said. “Thou art my eldest son, and I am thy father, who
calls himself The Living Quetzalcoatl. When they say: ‘Is it thy father
who calls himself The Living Quetzalcoatl?’--say to them: ‘Yes, he is
my father.’ And when they ask you what you think of such a father, say:
‘I am young, and I do not understand him yet. But I do not judge my
father without understanding him.’ Wilt thou say that, my boy, Pedro,
my son?” And Ramón stroked the boy’s hair with the gentleness and
tenderness which filled the child with a sort of awe.
“Yes, papa! I will say that,” said the boy, relieved.
“It is well,” said Ramón, laying his hand on the child’s head for a
moment, like a blessing.
Then he turned to the younger son.
“Come then,” he said, “and let me stroke thy upstanding hair.”
“If I love thee, I cannot love mama!” said Cyprian.
“Nay, is thy heart so narrow? Love not at all, if it makes thee petty.”
“But I do not want to come to thee, papa.”
“Then stay away, my son, and come when thou dost want it.”
“I do not think thou lovest me, papa.”
“Nay, when thou art an obstinate monkey, I love thee not. But when thy
real manhood comes upon thee, and thou art brave and daring, rather
than rash and impudent, then thou wilt be lovable. How can I love thee
if thou art not lovable?”
“Mama always loved me.”
“She called thee her own. I do not call thee mine own. Thou art
thyself. When thou art lovable, I can love thee. When thou art rash and
impudent, nay, I cannot. The mill will not spin when the wind does not
blow.”
The boys went away. Ramón watched them as they stood in their black
clothes and bare knees upon the jetty, and his heart yearned over them.
“Ah, the poor little devils!” he said to himself. And then:
“But I can do no more than keep my soul like a castle for them, to be a
stronghold to them when they need it--if ever they do.”
These days Kate often sat by the lake shore, in the early light of
the morning. Between the rains, the day came very clear, she could
see every wrinkle in the great hills opposite, and the fold, or pass,
through which a river came, away at Tuliapan, was so vivid to her she
felt she had walked it. The red birds looked as if rains had freshened
even their poppy-buds, and in the morning frogs were whirring.
But the world was somehow different; all different. No jingle of bells
from the church, no striking of the clock. The clock was taken away.
And instead, the drums. At dawn, the heavy drum rolling its sound on
the air. Then the sound of the Dawn-Verse chanted from the tower, in a
strong man’s voice:
“The dark is dividing, the sun is coming past the wall.
Day is at hand.
Lift your hand, say Farewell! say Welcome!
Then be silent.
Let the darkness leave you, let the light come into you,
Man in the twilight.”
The voice, and the great drum ceased. And in the dawn the men who had
risen stood silent, with arm uplifted, in the moment of change, the
women covered their faces and bent their heads. All was changeless
still for the moment of change.
Then the light drum rattled swiftly, as the first sparkle of the bright
sun flashed in sheer light from the crest of the great hills. The day
had begun. People of the world moved on their way.
At about nine o’clock the light drum rattled quickly, and the voice in
the tower cried:
“Half way! Half way up the slope of the morning!”
There was the heavy drum at noon, the light drum again at about three
o’clock, with the cry:
“Half way! Half way down the slope of afternoon.”
And at sunset again, the great drum rolling, and the voice crying:
“Leave off! Leave off! Leave off!
Lift your hand, say Farewell! say Welcome!
Man in the twilight.
The sun is in the outer porch, cry to him: Thanks! Oh, Thanks!
Then be silent.
You belong to the night.”
And again in the sunset everywhere men stood with lifted faces and
hand, and women covered their faces and stood with bowed heads, all was
changeless still for the moment of change.
Then the lighter drums suddenly beat, and people moved on into the
night.
The world was different, different. The drums seemed to leave the air
soft and vulnerable, as if it were alive. Above all, no clang of metal
on metal, during the moments of change.
“Metal for resistance.
Drums for the beating heart.
The heart ceases not.”
This was one of Ramón’s little verses.
Strange, the change that was taking place in the world. Always the air
had a softer, more velvety silence, it seemed alive. And there were no
hours. Dawn and noon and sunset, mid-morning, or the up-slope middle,
and mid-afternoon, or the downslope middle, this was the day, with
the watches of the night. They began to call the four watches of the
day the watch of the rabbit, the watch of the hawk, the watch of the
turkey-buzzard and the watch of the deer. And the four quarters of the
night were the watch of the frog, the watch of the firefly, the watch
of the fish, the watch of the squirrel.
“I shall come for you,” wrote Cipriano to her, “when the deer is
thrusting his last foot towards the forest.”
That meant, she knew, in the last quarter of the hours of the deer;
something after five o’clock.
It was as if, from Ramón and Cipriano, from Jamiltepec and the lake
region, a new world was unfolding, unrolling, as softly and subtly as
twilight falling and removing the clutter of day. It was a soft, twilit
newness slowly spreading and penetrating the world, even into the
cities. Now, even in the cities the blue serapes of Quetzalcoatl were
seen, and the drums were heard at the Hours, casting a strange mesh of
twilight over the clash of bells and the clash of traffic. Even in the
capital the big drum rolled again, and men, even men in city clothes,
would stand still with uplifted faces and arm upstretched, listening
for the noon-verse, which they knew in their hearts, and trying not to
hear the clash of metal.
“Metal for resistance.
Drums for the beating heart.”
But it was a world of metal, and a world of resistance. Cipriano,
strangely powerful with the soldiers, in spite of the hatred he aroused
in other officials, was for meeting metal with metal. For getting
Montes to declare: The Religion of Quetzalcoatl is the religion of
Mexico, official and declared.--Then backing up the declaration with
the army.
But no! no! said Ramón. Let it spread of itself. And wait awhile, till
you can be declared the living Huitzilopochtli, and your men can have
the red and black blanket, with the snake-curve. Then perhaps we can
have the open wedding with Caterina, and she will be a mother among the
gods.
All the time, Ramón tried as far as possible to avoid arousing
resistance and hate. He wrote open letters to the clergy, saying:
“Who am I, that I should be enemy of the One Church? I am catholic of
catholics. I would have One Church of all the world, with Rome for the
Central City, if Rome wish.
“But different peoples must have different Saviours, as they have
different speech and different colour. The final mystery is one
mystery. But the manifestations are many.
“God must come to Mexico in a blanket and in huaraches, else He is no
God of the Mexicans, they cannot know Him. Naked, all men are but
men. But the touch, the look, the word that goes from one naked man to
another is the mystery of living. We live by manifestations.
“And men are fragile, and fragments, and strangely grouped in their
fragmentariness. The invisible God has done it to us, darkened some
faces and whitened others, and grouped us in groups, even as the
zopilote is a bird, and the parrot of the hot lands is a bird, and
the little oriole is a bird. But the angel of the zopilotes must be a
zopilote, and the angel of the parrots a parrot. And to one, the dead
carcase will ever smell good; to the other, the fruit.
“Priests who will come to me do not forsake either faith or God. They
change their manner of speech and vestments, as the peon calls with one
cry to the oxen, and with another cry to the mules. Each responds to
its own call in its own way--”
To the socialists and agitators he wrote:
“What do you want? Would you make all men as you are? And when every
peon in Mexico wears an American suit of clothes and shiny black
shoes, and looks for life in the newspaper and for his manhood to the
government, will you be satisfied? Did the government, then, give you
your manhood, that you expect it to give it to these others?
“It is time to forget. It is time to put away the grudge and the pity.
No man was ever the better for being pitied, and every man is the worse
for a grudge.
“We can do nothing with life, except live it.
“Let us seek life where it is to be found. And, having found it, life
will solve the problems. But every time we deny the living life, in
order to solve a problem, we cause ten problems to spring up where was
one before. Solving the problems of the people, we lose the people in a
poisonous forest of problems.
“Life makes, and moulds, and changes the problem. The problem will
always be there, and will always be different. So nothing can be
solved, even by life and living, for life dissolves and resolves,
solving it leaves alone.
“Therefore we turn to life; and from the clock to the sun and the
stars, and from metal to membrane.
“This way we hope the problem will dissolve, since it can never be
solved. When men seek life first, they will not seek land nor gold. The
lands will lie on the lap of the gods, where men lie. And if the old
communal system comes back, and the village and the land are one, it
will be very good. For truly, no man can possess lands.
“But when we are deep in a bog, it is no use attempting to gallop. We
can only wade out with toil. And in our haste to have a child, it is no
good tearing the babe from the womb.
“Seek life, and life will bring the change.
“Seek life itself, even pause at dawn and at sunset, and life will come
back into us and prompt us through the transitions.
“Lay forcible hands on nothing, only be ready to resist, if forcible
hands should be laid on you. For the new shoots of life are tender, and
better ten deaths than that they should be torn or trampled down by the
bullies of the world. When it comes to fighting for the tender shoots
of life, fight as the jaguar fights for her young, as the she-bear for
her cubs.
“That which is life is vulnerable, only metal is invulnerable. Fight
for the vulnerable unfolding of life. But for that, fight never to
yield.”
Cipriano, too, was always speaking to his soldiers, always with the
same cry:
“We are men! We are fighters!
“But what can we do?
“Shall we march to simple death?
“No! No! We must march to life.
“The gringos are here. We have let them come. We must let them stay,
for we cannot drive them out. With guns and swords and bayonets we can
never drive them out, for they have a thousand where we have one. And
if they come in peace, let them stay in peace.
“But we have not lost Mexico yet. We have not lost each other.
“We are the blood of America. We are the blood of Montezuma.
“What is my hand for? Is it to turn the handle of machine alone?
“My hand is to salute the God of Mexicans, beyond the sky.
“My hand is to touch the hand of a brave man.
“My hand is to hold a gun.
“My hand is to make the corn grow out of the ground.
“What are my knees for?
“My knees are to hold me proud and erect.
“My knees are for marching on my way.
“My knees are the knees of a man.
“Our god is Quetzalcoatl of the blue sky, and Huitzilopochtli red at
the gates, watching.
“Our gods hate a kneeling man. They shout _Ho! Erect!_
“Then what can we do?
“Wait!
“I am a man, naked inside my clothes as you are.
“Am I a big man? Am I a tall and powerful man, from Tlascala, for
example?
“I am not. I am little. I am from the south. I am small--
“Yet am I not your general?
“Why?
“Why am I a general, and you only soldiers?
“I will tell you.
“I found the other strength.
“There are two strengths; the strength which is the strength of oxen
and mules and iron, of machines and guns, and of men who cannot get the
second strength.
“Then there is the second strength. It is the strength you want. And
you can get it, whether you are small or big. It is the strength
that comes from behind the sun. And you can get it; you can get it
here!”--he struck his breast--“and here!”--he struck his belly--“and
here!”--he struck his loins. “The strength that comes from back of the
sun.”
When Cipriano was roused, his eyes flashed, and it was as if dark
feathers, like pinions, were starting out of him, out of his shoulders
and back, as if these dark pinions clashed and flashed like a roused
eagle. His men seemed to see him, as by second sight, with the demonish
clashing and dashing of wings, like an old god. And they murmured,
their eyes flashing:
“It is Cipriano! It is he! We are Ciprianistos, we are his children.”
“We are men! We are men!” cried Cipriano.
“But listen. There are two kinds of men. There are men with the second
strength, and men without it.
“When the first gringos came, we lost our second strength. And the
padres taught us: Submit! Submit!
“The gringos had got the second strength!
“How?
“Like cunning ones, they stole it on the sly. They kept very still,
like a tarantula in his hole. Then when neither sun nor moon nor stars
knew he was there, Biff!--the tarantula sprang across, and bit, and
left the poison and sucked the secret.
“So they got the secrets of the air and the water, and they got the
secrets out of the earth. So the metals were theirs, and they made guns
and machines and ships, and they made trains and telegrams and radio.
“Why? Why did they make all these things? How could they do it?
“Because, by cunning, they had got the secret of the second strength,
which comes from behind the sun.
“And we had to be slaves, because we had only got the first strength,
we had lost the second strength.
“Now we are getting it back. We have found our way again to the secret
sun behind the sun. There sat Quetzalcoatl, and at last Don Ramón found
him. There sits the red Huitzilopochtli, and _I_ have found him. For
_I_ have found the second strength.
“When he comes, all you who strive shall find the second strength.
“And when you have it, where will you feel it?
“Not here!”--and he struck his forehead. “Not where the cunning gringos
have it, in the head, and in their books. Not we. We are men, we are
not spiders.
“We shall have it here!”--he struck his breast--“and here!”--he struck
his belly--“and here!”--he struck his loins.
“Are we men? Can we not get the second strength? Can we not? Have we
lost it forever?
“I say no! Quetzalcoatl is among us. I have found the red
Huitzilopochtli. The second strength!
“When you walk or sit, when you work or lie down, when you eat or
sleep, think of the second strength, that you must have it.
“Be very quiet. It is shy as a bird in a dark tree.
“Be very clean, clean in your bodies and your clothes. It is like a
star, that will not shine in dirt.
“Be very brave, and do not drink till you are drunk, nor soil yourself
with bad women, nor steal. Because a drunken man has lost his second
strength, and a man loses his strength in bad women, and a thief is a
coward, and the red Huitzilopochtli hates a coward.
“Try! Try for the second strength. When we have it, the others will
lose it.”
Cipriano struggled hard with his army. The curse of any army is the
having nothing to do. Cipriano made all his men cook and wash for
themselves, clean and paint the barracks, make a great garden to grow
vegetables, and plant trees wherever there was water. And he himself
took a passionate interest in what they did. A dirty tunic, a sore
foot, a badly-made huarache did not escape him. But even when they
cooked their meals he went among them.
“Give me something to eat,” he would say. “Give me an enchilada!”
Then he praised the cooking, or said it was bad.
Like all savages, they liked doing small things. And, like most
Mexicans, once they were a little sure of what they were doing, they
loved doing it well.
Cipriano was determined to get some discipline into them. Discipline
is what Mexico needs, and what the whole world needs. But it is the
discipline from the inside that matters. The machine discipline, from
the outside, breaks down.
He had the wild Indians from the north beat their drums in the
barracks-yard, and start the old dances again. The dance, the dance
which has meaning, is a deep discipline in itself. The old Indians of
the north still have the secret of animistic dancing. They dance to
gain power; power over the _living_ forces or potencies of the earth.
And these dances need intense dark concentration, and immense endurance.
Cipriano encouraged the dances more than anything. He learned them
himself, with curious passion. The shield and spear dance, the
knife dance, the dance of ambush and the surprise dance, he learned
them in the savage villages of the north, and he danced them in the
barracks-yard, by the bonfire, at night, when the great doors were
shut.
Then, naked save for a black breech-cloth, his body smeared with oil
and red earth-powder, he would face some heavy naked Indian and with
shield and spear dance the dance of the two warriors, champions in
the midst of the dense ring of soldiers. And the silent, rhythmic
concentration of this duel in subtlety and rapidity kept the feet
softly beating with the drum, the naked body suave and subtle, circling
with suave, primitive stealth, then crouching and leaping like a
panther, with the spear poised, to a clash of shields, parting again
with the crowing yell of defiance and exultance.
In this dance, no one was more suave and sudden than Cipriano. He could
swerve along the ground with bent, naked back, as invisible as a lynx,
circling round his opponent, his feet beating and his suave body subtly
lilting to the drum. Then in a flash he was in the air, his spear
pointing down at the collar-bone of his enemy and gliding over his
shoulder, as the opponent swerved under, and the war-yell resounded.
The soldiers in the deep circle watched, fascinated, uttering the old
low cries.
And as the dance went on, Cipriano felt his strength increase and
surge inside him. When all his limbs were glistening with sweat, and
his spirit was at last satisfied, he was at once tired and surcharged
with extraordinary power. Then he would throw his scarlet and dark
sarape around him, and motion other men to fight, giving his spear and
shield to another officer or soldier, going himself to sit down on the
ground and watch, by the firelight. And then he felt his limbs and his
whole body immense with power, he felt the black mystery of power go
out of him over all his soldiers. And he sat there imperturbable, in
silence, holding all those black-eyed men in the splendour of his own,
silent self. His own dark consciousness seemed to radiate through their
flesh and their bones, they were conscious, not through themselves
but through him. And as a man’s instinct is to shield his own head,
so that instinct was to shield Cipriano, for he was the most precious
part of themselves to them. It was in him they were supreme. They got
their splendour from his power and their greatest consciousness was his
consciousness diffusing them.
“I am not of myself,” he would say to them. “I am of the red
Huitzilopochtli and the power from behind the sun. And you are not of
yourselves. Of yourselves you are nothing. You are of me, my men.”
He encouraged them to dance naked, with the breech-cloth, to rub
themselves with the red earth-powder, over the oil.
“This is the oil of the stars. Rub it well into your limbs and you
will be strong as the starry sky. This is the red blood of volcanos.
Rub yourselves with it, you will have the power of the fire of the
volcanoes, from the centre of the earth.”
He encouraged them to dance the silent, concentrated dances to the
drum, to dance for hours, gathering power and strength.
“If you know how to tread the dance, you can tread deeper and deeper
till you touch the middle of the earth with your foot. And when you
touch the middle of the earth, you will have such power in your belly
and your breast, no man will be able to overcome you. Get the second
strength. Get it, get it out of the earth, get it from behind the sun.
Get the second strength.”
He made long, rapid marches across the wild Mexican country, and
through the mountains, moving light and swift. He liked to have his men
camping in the open, with no tents: but the watch set, and the stars
overhead. He pursued the bandits with swift movements. He stripped his
captives and tied them up. But if it seemed a brave man, he would swear
him in. If it seemed to him a knave, a treacherous cur, he stabbed him
to the heart, saying:
“I am the red Huitzilopochtli, of the knife.”
Already he had got his own small, picked body of men out of the
ignominious drab uniform, dressed in white with the scarlet sash and
the scarlet ankle cords, and carrying the good, red and black sarape.
And his men must be clean. On the march they would stop by some
river, with the order for every man to strip and wash, and wash his
clothing. Then the men, dark and ruddy, moved about naked, while the
white clothing of strong white cotton dried on the earth. They moved
on again, glittering with the peculiar whiteness of cotton clothes
in Mexico, gun at their backs, sarape and small pack on their backs,
wearing the heavy straw hats with the scarlet crowns on their heads.
“They must move!” he said to his officers. “They must learn again to
move swiftly and untiringly, with the old power. They must not lie
about. In the sleep hours, let them sleep. In the waking, let them
work, or march, or drill, or dance.”