with a centurion and a sergeant in command. Each company of a hundred
must learn to act in perfect unison, freely and flexibly. “Perfect your
hundred,” Cipriano insisted, “and I will perfect your thousands and
your tens of thousands.”
“Listen!” he said. “For us, no trench and cannon warfare. My men are
no cannon-fodder, nor trench-dung. Where cannon are, we move away. Our
hundreds break up, and we attack where the cannon are not. That we are
swift, that we are silent, that we have no burdens, and that the second
strength is in us: that is all. We intend to put up no battle-front,
but to attack at our own moment, and at a thousand points.”
And always he reiterated:
“If you can get the power from the heart of the earth, and the
power from behind the sun; if you can summon the power of the red
Huitzilopochtli into you, nobody can conquer you. Get the second
strength.”
Ramón was pressing Cipriano now openly to assume the living
Huitzilopochtli.
“Come!” he said. “It is time you let General Viedma be swallowed up in
the red Huitzilopochtli. Don’t you think?”
“If I know what it means,” said Cipriano.
They were sitting on the mats in Ramón’s room, in the heat before the
rain came, towards the end of the rainy season.
“Stand up!” said Ramón.
Cipriano stood up at once, with that soft, startling alertness in his
movement.
Ramón came quickly to him, placed one of his hands over Cipriano’s
eyes, closing them. Ramón stood behind Cipriano, who remained
motionless in the warm dark, his consciousness reeling in strange
concentric waves, towards a centre where it suddenly plunges into the
bottomless deeps, like sleep.
“Cipriano?”--the voice sounded so far off.
“Yes.”
“Is it dark?”
“It is dark.”
“Is it alive? Is the darkness alive?”
“Surely it is alive.”
“Who lives?”
“I.”
“Where?”
“I know not. In the living darkness.”
Ramón then bound Cipriano’s eyes and head with a strip of black fur.
Then again, with a warm, soft pressure, he pressed one naked hand over
Cipriano’s naked breast, and one between his shoulders. Cipriano stood
in profound darkness, erect and silent.
“Cipriano?”
“Yes.”
“Is it dark in your heart?”
“It is coming dark.”
Ramón felt the thud of the man’s heart slowly slackening. In Cipriano,
another circle of darkness had started slowly to revolve, from his
heart. It swung in widening rounds, like a greater sleep.
“Is it dark?”
“It is dark.”
“Who lives?”
“I.”
Ramón bound Cipriano’s arms at his sides, with a belt of fur round the
breast. Then he put his one hand over the navel, his other hand in
the small of the other man’s back, pressing with slow, warm, powerful
pressure.
“Cipriano?”
“Yes.”
The voice and the answer going farther and farther away.
“Is it dark?”
“No, my Lord.”
Ramón knelt and pressed his arms close round Cipriano’s waist, pressing
his black head against his side. And Cipriano began to feel as if his
mind, his head were melting away in the darkness, like a pearl in black
wine, the other circle of sleep began to swing, vast. And he was a
man without a head, moving like a dark wind over the face of the dark
waters.
“Is it perfect?”
“It is perfect.”
“Who lives?”
“Who--!”
Cipriano no longer knew.
Ramón bound him fast round the middle, then, pressing his head against
the hip, folded the arms round Cipriano’s loins, closing with his hands
the secret places.
“Cipriano?”
“Yes.”
“Is it all dark?”
But Cipriano could not answer. The last circle was sweeping round, and
the breath upon the waters was sinking into the waters, there was no
more utterance. Ramón kneeled with pressed head and arms and hands, for
some moments still. Then he bound the loins, binding the wrists to the
hips.
Cipriano stood rigid and motionless. Ramón clasped the two knees with
his hands, till they were warm, and he felt them dark and asleep like
two living stones, or two eggs. Then swiftly he bound them together,
and grasped the ankles, as one might grasp the base of a young tree as
it emerges from the earth. Crouching on the earth, he gripped them in
an intense grip, resting his head on the feet. The moments passed, and
both men were unconscious.
Then Ramón bound the ankles, lifted Cipriano suddenly, with a
sleep-moving softness, laid him on the skin of a big mountain-lion,
which was spread upon the blankets, threw over him the red and black
sarape of Huitzilopochtli, and lay down at his feet, holding Cipriano’s
feet to his own abdomen.
And both men passed into perfect unconsciousness, Cipriano within the
womb of undisturbed creation, Ramón in the death sleep.
How long they were both dark, they never knew. It was twilight. Ramón
was suddenly aroused by the jerking of Cipriano’s feet. He sat up, and
took the blanket off Cipriano’s face.
“Is it night?” said Cipriano.
“Almost night,” said Ramón.
Silence followed, while Ramón unfastened the bonds, beginning at the
feet. Before he unbound the eyes, he closed the window, so the room
was almost dark. Then he unfastened the last binding, and Cipriano sat
up, looking, then suddenly covering his eyes.
“Make it quite dark!” he said.
Ramón closed the shutters, and the room was complete night. Then he
returned and sat on the mats by Cipriano. Cipriano was asleep again.
After a while, Ramón left him.
He did not see him again till dawn. Then Ramón found him going down to
the lake, to swim. The two men swam together, while the sun rose. With
the rain, the lake was colder. They went to the house to rub oil in
their limbs.
Cipriano looked at Ramón with black eyes which seemed to be looking at
all space.
“I went far,” he said.
“To where there is no beyond?” said Ramón.
“Yes, there.”
And in a moment or two, Cipriano was wrapped in his blanket again, and
asleep.
He did not wake till the afternoon. Then he ate, and took a boat, and
rowed down the lake to Kate. He found her at home. She was surprised to
see him, in his white clothes and with his sarape of Huitzilopochtli.
“I am going to be the living Huitzilopochtli,” he said.
“Are you? When? Does it feel queer?”--Kate was afraid of his eyes, they
seemed inhuman.
“On Thursday. The day of Huitzilopochtli is to be Thursday. Won’t you
sit beside me, and be wife of me when I am a god?”
“But do you feel you _are_ a god?” she asked, querulous.
He turned his eyes on her strangely.
“I have been,” he said. “And I have come back. But I belong there,
where I went.”
“Where?”
“Where there is no beyond, and the darkness sinks into the water, and
waking and sleeping are one thing.”
“No,” said Kate, afraid. “I never understood mystical things. They make
me uneasy.”
“Is it mystical when I come in to you?”
“No,” said Kate. “Surely that is physical.”
“So is the other, only further. Won’t you be the bride of
Huitzilopochtli?” he asked again.
“Not so soon,” said Kate.
“Not so soon!” he re-echoed.
There was a pause.
“Will you come back with me to Jamiltepec now?” he asked.
“Not now,” she said.
“Why not now?”
“Oh, I don’t know.--You treat me as if I had no life of my own,” she
said. “But I have.”
“A life of your own? Who gave it you? Where did you get it?”
“I don’t know. But I have got it. And I must live it. I can’t be just
swallowed up.”
“Why, Malintzi?” he said, giving her a name. “Why can’t you?”
“Be just swallowed up?” she said. “Well, I just can’t.”
“I am the living Huitzilopochtli,” he said. “And I am swallowed up. I
thought, so could you be, Malintzi.”
“No! Not quite?” she said.
“Not quite! Not quite! Not now! Not just now! How often you say _Not_,
to-day!--I must go back to Ramón.”
“Yes. Go back to him. You only care about him, and your living
Quetzalcoatl and your living Huitzilopochtli.--I am only a woman.”
“No, Malintzi, you are more. You are more than Kate, you are Malintzi.”
“I am not! I am only Kate, and I am only a woman. I mistrust all that
other stuff.”
“I am more than just a man, Malintzi.--Don’t you see that?”
“No!” said Kate. “I don’t see it. Why _should_ you be more than just a
man?”
“Because I am the living Huitzilopochtli. Didn’t I tell you? You’ve got
dust in your mouth to-day, Malintzi.”
He went away, leaving her rocking in anger on her terrace, in love
again with her old self, and hostile to the new thing. She was thinking
of London and Paris and New York, and all the people there.
“Oh!” she cried to herself, stifling. “For heaven’s sake let me get
out of this, and back to simple human people. I loathe the very sound
of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli. I would die rather than be mixed
up in it any more. Horrible, really, both Ramón and Cipriano. And they
want to put it over me, with their high-flown bunk, and their Malintzi.
Malintzi! I am Kate Forrester, really. I am neither Kate Leslie nor
Kate Tylor. I am sick of these men putting names over me. I was born
Kate Forrester, and I shall die Kate Forrester. I want to go home.
Loathsome, really, to be called Malintzi.--I’ve had it put over me.”
CHAP: XXIII. HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT.
They had the Huitzilopochtli ceremony at night, in the wide yard in
front of the church. The guard of Huitzilopochtli, in sarapes of black,
red and yellow stripes, striped like tigers or wasps, stood holding
torches of blazing ocote. A tall bonfire was built, but unkindled, in
the centre of the yard.
In the towers where the bells had been, fires were blazing and the
heavy drum of Huitzilopochtli went rolling its deep, sinister notes. It
had been sounding all the while since the sun went down.
The crowd gathered under the trees, outside the gates in front of the
church. The church doors were closed.
There was a bang of four firework cannons exploding simultaneously,
then four rockets shot up into the sky, leaning in the four directions,
and exploding in showers of red, green, white and yellow.
The church doors opened, and Cipriano appeared, in his brilliant sarape
of Huitzilopochtli, and with three green parrot feathers erect on his
brow. He was carrying a torch. He stooped and lit the big bonfire,
then plucked out four blazing brands, and tossed them to four of his
men, who stood waiting, naked save for their black breech-cloths. The
men caught the brands as they flew, and ran in the four directions, to
kindle the four bonfires that waited, one in each corner of the yard.
The guard had taken off their blankets and blouses, and were naked to
the red sash. The lighter drum began to beat for the dance, and the
dance began, the half-naked men throwing their blazing torches whirling
in the air, catching them as they came down, dancing all the while.
Cipriano, in the centre, threw up brand after brand from the fire.
Now that he was stripped of his blanket, his body was seen painted in
horizontal bars of red and black, while from his mouth went a thin
green line, and from his eyes a band of yellow.
The five fires, built hollow of little towers of ocote faggots, sent
pure flame in a rush up to the dark sky, illuminating the dancing men,
who sang in deep voices as they danced.
The fires rushed rapidly upwards in flame. The drum beat without
ceasing. And the men of Huitzilopochtli danced on, like demons.
Meanwhile the crowd sat in the old Indian silence, their black eyes
glittering in the firelight. And gradually the fires began to die down,
the white façade of the church, that had danced also to the yellow
flames, began to go bluish above, merging into the night, rose-coloured
below, behind the dark shapes that danced to the sinking fires.
Suddenly the dance ceased, the men threw their sarapes around them,
and sat down. Little ocote fires upon the cane tripods flickered here
and there, in a silence that lasted for some minutes. Then the drum
sounded, and a man began to sing, in a clear, defiant voice, the _First
Song of Huitzilopochtli_:
“I am Huitzilopochtli,
The Red Huitzilopochtli,
The blood-red.
I am Huitzilopochtli,
Yellow of the sun,
Sun in the blood.
I am Huitzilopochtli,
White of the bone,
Bone in the blood.
I am Huitzilopochtli,
With a blade of grass between my teeth.
I am Huitzilopochtli, sitting in the dark.
With my redness staining the body of the dark.
I watch by the fire.
I wait behind men.
In the stillness of my night
The cactus sharpens his thorn.
The grass feels with his roots for the other sun.
Deeper than the roots of the mango tree
Down in the centre of the earth
Is the yellow, serpent-yellow shining of my sun.
Oh, beware of him!
Oh, beware of me!
Who runs athwart my serpent-flame
Gets bitten and must die.
I am the sleeping and waking
Of the anger of the manhood of men.
I am the leaping and quaking
Of fire bent back again.”
The song came to an end. There was a pause. Then all the men of
Huitzilopochtli took it up again, changing the “I” into “He.”
“He is Huitzilopochtli,
The Red Huitzilopochtli,
The blood-red.
He is Huitzilopochtli,
Yellow of the sun,
Sun in the blood.
He is Huitzilopochtli,
White of the bone,
Bone in the blood.
He is Huitzilopochtli,
With a blade of green grass between his teeth.
He is Huitzilopochtli, sitting in the dark,
With his redness staining the body of the night.
He is watching by the fire.
Waiting behind men.
In the stillness of his night
Cactuses sharpen their thorns.
Grass feels downwards with his roots.
Deeper than the roots of the mango tree
Down in the centre of the earth
Shines the yellow, serpent-yellow shining of the sun.
Oh, men, take care, take care!
Take care of him and it.
Nor run aslant his rays.
Who is bitten, dies.
He is Huitzilopochtli, sleeping or waking
Serpent in the bellies of men.
Huitzilopochtli, leaping and quaking
Fire of the passion of men.”
The big fires had all died down. Only the little flames on the tripods
lit up the scene with a ruddy glow. The guard withdrew to the outer
wall of the yard, holding bayonets erect. The big drum was going alone,
slowly.
The yard was now a clear space, with the glowing red heaps of the
bonfires, and the ocote flames flapping. And now was seen a platform
erected against the white wall of the church.
In the silence the big doors of the church opened, and Cipriano came
out, in his bright sarape, holding in his hand a bunch of black leaves,
or feathers, and with a tuft of scarlet feathers, black-tipped, rising
from the back of his head. He mounted the platform and stood facing the
crowd, the light of a torch on his face and on the brilliant feathers
that rose like flames from the back of his head.
After him came a strange procession: a peon in floppy white clothes,
led prisoner between two of the guards of Huitzilopochtli: who wore
their sarapes with red and black and yellow and white and green
stripes: then another peon prisoner: then another: in all, five, the
fifth one tall, limping, and with a red cross painted on the breast of
his white jacket. Last of all came a woman-prisoner, likewise between
two guards, her hair flowing loose, over a red tunic.
They mounted the platform. The peons, prisoners, were placed in a row,
their guards behind them. The limping peon was apart, with his two
guards behind him: the woman again was apart, her two guards behind her.
The big drum ceased, and a bugle rang out, a long, loud triumphant
note, repeated three times. Then the kettle-drums, or the small
tom-toms like kettle-drums, rattled fierce as hail.
Cipriano lifted his hand, and there was silence.
Out of the silence he began to speak, in his short, martial sentences:
“Man that is man is more than a man.
No man is man till he is more than a man.
Till the power is in him
Which is not his own.
The power is in me from behind the sun,
And from middle earth.
I am Huitzilopochtli.
I am dark as the sunless under-earth,
And yellow as the fire that consumes,
And white as bone,
And red as blood.
But I touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl.
And between our fingers rose a blade of green grass.
I touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl.
Lo! I am lord of the watches of the night
And the dream of the night rises from me like a red feather.
I am the watcher, and master of the dream.
In the dream of the night I see the grey dogs prowling.
Prowling to devour the dream.
In the night the soul of a coward creeps out of him
Like a grey dog whose mouth is foul with rabies,
Creeping among the sleeping and the dreaming, who are lapped in my
dark,
And in whom the dream sits up like a rabbit, lifting long ears
tipped with night,
On the dream-slopes browsing like a deer in the dusk.
In the night I see the grey dogs creeping, out of the sleeping men
Who are cowards, who are liars, who are traitors, who have no dreams
That prick their ears like a rabbit, or browse in the dark like
deer,
But whose dreams are dogs, grey dogs with yellow mouths.
From the liars, from the thieves, from the false and treacherous and
mean
I see the grey dogs creeping out, where my deer are browsing in the
dark.
Then I take my knife, and throw it upon the grey dog.
And lo! it sticks between the ribs of a man!
The house of the grey dog!
Beware! Beware!
Of the men and the women who walk among you.
You know not how many are houses of grey dogs.
Men that seem harmless, women with fair words,
Maybe they kennel the grey dog.”
The drums began to beat and the singer began to sing clear and pure:
The Song of the Grey Dog.
“When you sleep and know it not
The grey dog creeps among you.
In your sleep, you twist, your soul hurts you.
The grey dog is chewing your entrails.
Then call on Huitzilopochtli:
The grey dog caught me at the cross-roads
As I went down the road of sleep
And crossed the road of the uneasy.
The grey dog leapt at my entrails.
Huitzilopochtli, call him off.
_Lo!_ the Great One answers. _Track him down!
Kill him in his unclean house._
Down the road of the uneasy
You track the grey dog home
To his house in the heart of a traitor,
A thief, a murderer of dreams.
And you kill him there with one stroke,
Crying: _Huitzilopochtli is this well done?_
That your sleep be not as a cemetery
Where dogs creep unclean.”
The song ceased, and there was silence. Then Cipriano beckoned to the
men to bring forward the peon with the black cross painted on his front
and back. He limped forward.
Cipriano: “What man is that, limping?”
Guards: “It is Guillermo, overseer of Don Ramón, who betrayed Don
Ramón, his master.”
Cipriano: “Why does he limp?”
Guards: “He fell from the window on to the rocks.”
Cipriano: “What made him wish to betray his master?”
Guards: “His heart is a grey dog, and a woman, a grey bitch, enticed
him forth.”
Cipriano: “What woman enticed the grey dog forth?”
The guards came forward with the woman.
Guards: “This woman, Maruca, my Lord, with the grey bitch heart.”
Cipriano: “Is it she, indeed?”
Guards: “It is she.”
Cipriano: “The grey dog, and the grey bitch, we kill, for their mouths
are yellow with poison? Is it well, men of Huitzilopochtli?”
Guards: “It is very well, my Lord.”
The guards stripped the peon Guillermo of his white clothes, leaving
him naked, in a grey loin-cloth, with a grey-white cross painted on his
naked breast. The woman, too, had a grey-white cross painted on her
body. She stood in a short petticoat of grey wool.
Cipriano: “The grey dog, and the grey bitch shall run no more about
the world. We will bury their bodies in quick-lime, till their souls
are eaten, and their bodies, and nothing is left. For lime is the
thirsty bone that swallows even a soul and is not slaked.--Bind them
with the grey cords, put ash on their heads.”
The guards quickly obeyed. The prisoners, ash-grey, gazed with black,
glittering eyes, making not a sound. A guard stood behind each of them.
Cipriano gave a sign, and quick as lightning the guards had got the
throats of the two victims in a grey cloth, and with a sharp jerk had
broken their necks, lifting them backwards in one movement. The grey
cloths they tied hard and tight round the throats, laying the twitching
bodies on the floor.
Cipriano turned to the crowd:
“The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.
Blue is the breath of Quetzalcoatl.
Red is Huitzilopochtli’s blood.
But the grey dog belongs to the ash of the world.
The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.
Dead are the grey dogs.
Living are the Lords of Life.
Blue is the deep sky and the deep water.
Red is the blood and the fire.
Yellow is the flame.
The bone is white and alive.
The hair of night is dark over our faces.
But the grey dogs are among the ashes.
The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.”
Then he turned once more, to the other, imprisoned peons.
Cipriano: “Who are these four?”
Guards: “Four who came to kill Don Ramón.”
Cipriano: “Four men, against one man?”
Guards: “They were more than four, my Lord.”
Cipriano: “When many men come against one, what is the name of the
many?”
Guards: “Cowards, my Lord.”
Cipriano: “Cowards it is. They are less than men. Men that are less
than men are not good enough for the light of the sun. If men that
are men will live, men that are less than men must be put away, lest
they multiply too much. Men that are more than men have the judgment
of men that are less than men. Shall they die?”
Guards: “They shall surely die, my Lord.”
Cipriano: “Yet my hand has touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl, and among
the black leaves one sprung green, with the colour of Malintzi.”
An attendant came and lifted Cipriano’s sarape over his head, leaving
his body bare to the waist. The guards likewise took off their sarapes.
Cipriano lifted up his fist, in which he held a little tuft of black
feathers, or leaves.
Then he said slowly:
“Huitzilopochtli gives the black blade of death.
Take it bravely.
Take death bravely.
Go bravely across the border, admitting your mistake.
Determine to go on and on, till you enter the Morning Star.
Quetzalcoatl will show you the way.
Malintzi of the green dress will open the door.
In the fountain you will lie down.
If you reach the fountain, and lie down
And the fountain covers your face, forever,
You will have departed forever from your mistake.
And the man that is more than a man in you
Will wake at last from the clean forgetting
And stand up, and look about him,
Ready again for the business of being a man.
But Huitzilopochtli touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl
And one green leaf sprang among the black.
The green leaf of Malintzi
Who pardons once, and no more.”
Cipriano turned to the four peons. He held out his fist with the four
black twigs, to the first. This first one, a little man, peered at the
leaves curiously.
“There is no green one,” he said sceptically.
“Good!” said Cipriano. “Then receive a black.”
And he handed him a black leaf.
“I knew it,” said the man, and he threw the leaf away with contempt and
defiance.
The second man drew a black leaf. He stood gazing at it, as if
fascinated, turning it round.
The third man drew a leaf whose lower half was green.
“See!” said Cipriano. “The green leaf of Malintzi!”
And he handed the last black leaf to the last man.
“Have I got to die?” said the last man.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to die, _Patrón_.”
“You played with death, and it has sprung upon you.”
The eyes of the three men were blindfolded with black cloths, their
blouses and pantaloons were taken away. Cipriano took a bright, thin
dagger.
“The Lords of Life are Masters of Death,” he said in a loud, clear
voice.
And swift as lightning he stabbed the blindfolded men to the heart,
with three swift, heavy stabs. Then he lifted the red dagger and threw
it down.
“The Lords of Life are Masters of Death,” he repeated.
The guards lifted the bleeding bodies one by one, and carried them into
the church. There remained only the one prisoner, with the green leaf.
“Put the green leaf of Malintzi between his brows; for Malintzi pardons
once, and no more,” said Cipriano.
“Yes, my Lord!” replied the guard.
And they led the man away into the church.
Cipriano followed, the last of his guard after him.
In a few minutes the drums began to beat and men came slowly streaming
into the church. Women were not admitted. All the interior was hung
with red and black banners. At the side of the chancel was a new idol:
a heavy, seated figure of Huitzilopochtli, done in black lava stone.
And round him burned twelve red candles. The idol held the bunch of
black strips, or leaves in his hand. And at his feet lay the five dead
bodies.
The fire on the altar was flickering high, to the dark statue of
Quetzalcoatl. On his little throne Ramón sat, wearing his blue and
white colours of Quetzalcoatl. There was another corresponding throne
next him, but it was empty. Six of the guard of Quetzalcoatl stood by
Ramón: but Huitzilopochtli’s side of the chancel was empty save for the
dead.