with a noise like madness. Inside was the soft roll of the drum of
Quetzalcoatl. And the men from the crowd outside thronged slowly in,
between the guard of Quetzalcoatl.
A flute sounded the summons to close the doors. The drums of
Quetzalcoatl ceased, and from the towers was heard again the wild bugle
of Huitzilopochtli.
Then down the centre of the church, in silence, barefoot, came the
procession of Huitzilopochtli, naked save for the black loin-cloths
and the paint, and the scarlet feathers of the head-dresses. Cipriano
had his face painted with a white jaw, a thin band of green stretched
from his mouth, a band of black across his nose, yellow from his eyes,
and scarlet on his brow. One green feather rose from his forehead, and
behind his head a beautiful head-dress of scarlet feathers. A band of
red was painted round his breast, yellow round his middle. The rest was
ash-grey.
After him came his guard, their faces red, black and white, their
bodies painted as Cipriano’s, and a scarlet feather rising from
the back of their head. The hard, dry drum of Huitzilopochtli beat
monotonously.
As the Living Huitzilopochtli came near the altar steps, the Living
Quetzalcoatl rose and came to meet him. The two saluted, each covering
his eyes with his left hand for a moment, then touching fingers with
the right hand.
Cipriano stood before the statue of Huitzilopochtli, dipped his hand
in a stone bowl, and giving the loud cry or whoop of Huitzilopochtli,
lifted up his red hand. His guard uttered the loud cry, and quickly
filed past, each man dipping his hand and raising his wet, red fist.
The hard drums of Huitzilopochtli rattled like madness in the church,
then fell suddenly silent.
Ramón: “Why is your hand red, Huitzilopochtli, my brother?”
Cipriano: “It is the blood of the treacherous, Oh Quetzalcoatl.”
Ramón: “What have they betrayed?”
Cipriano: “The yellow sun and the heart of darkness; the hearts of
men, and the buds of women. While they lived, the Morning Star could
not be seen.”
Ramón: “And are they verily dead?”
Cipriano: “Verily dead, my Lord.”
Ramón: “Their blood is shed?”
Cipriano: “Yes, my Lord, save that the grey dogs shed no blood. Two
died the bloodless death of the grey dogs, three died in blood.”
Ramón: “Give me the blood of the three, my brother Huitzilopochtli, to
sprinkle the fire.”
Cipriano brought the stone bowl, and the little bunch of black leaves
from Huitzilopochtli’s idol. Ramón slowly, gently, sprinkled a little
blood on the fire, with the black leaves.
Ramón: “Darkness, drink the blood of expiation.
Sun, swallow up the blood of expiation.
Rise, Morning Star, between the divided sea.”
He gave back the bowl and the leaves to Huitzilopochtli, who placed
them by the black idol.
Ramón: “Thou who didst take the lives of the three, Huitzilopochtli,
my brother, what wilt thou do with the souls?”
Cipriano: “Even give them to thee, my Lord, Quetzalcoatl, my Lord of
the Morning Star.”
Ramón: “Yea, give them to me and I will wrap them in my breath and
send them the longest journey, to the sleep and the far awakening.”
Cipriano: “My Lord is lord of two ways.”
The naked, painted guard of Huitzilopochtli came and carried the dead
bodies of the three stabbed men, carried them on red biers, and laid
them at the foot of the Quetzalcoatl statue.
Ramón: “So, there is a long way to go, past the sun to the gate of
the Morning Star. And if the sun is angry he strikes swifter than a
jaguar, and the whirr of the winds is like an angry eagle, and the
upper waters strike in wrath like silver-coloured snakes. Ah, three
souls, make peace now with the sun and winds and waters, and go in
courage, with the breath of Quetzalcoatl around you like a cloak.
Fear not and shrink not and fail not; but come to the end of the
longest journey, and let the fountain cover your face. So shall all
at length be made new.”
When he had spoken to the dead, Ramón took incense and threw it on
the fire, so clouds of blue smoke arose. Then with a censer he swung
the blue smoke over the dead. Then he unfolded three blue cloths and
covered the dead. Then the guards of Quetzalcoatl lifted the biers, and
the flute of Quetzalcoatl sounded.
“Salute the Morning Star!” cried Ramón, turning to the light beyond
the statue of Quetzalcoatl, and throwing up his right arm in the
Quetzalcoatl prayer. Every man turned to the light and threw up his arm
in the passion. And the silence of the Morning Star filled the church.
The drum of Quetzalcoatl sounded: the guards slowly moved away with the
three blue-wrapped dead.
Then came the voice of the Living Huitzilopochtli:
“Upon the dead grey dogs the face of Quetzalcoatl cannot look. Upon the
corpses of grey dogs rises no Morning Star. But the fire of corpses
shall consume them.”
There was a sharp rattle of the dry drums of Huitzilopochtli. Ramón
remained with his back to the church, his arm upraised to the Morning
Star. And the guard of Huitzilopochtli lifted the strangled bodies,
laid them on biers, covered them with grey cloths, and bore them away.
The bugle of Huitzilopochtli sounded.
Cipriano: “The dead are on their way. Quetzalcoatl helps them on the
longest journey.--But the grey dogs sleep within the quick-lime, in the
slow corpse-fire.--It is finished.”
Ramón dropped his arm and turned to the church. All men dropped their
hands. The soft drums of Quetzalcoatl sounded, mingling with the hard
drums of Huitzilopochtli. Then both guards began to sing together:
Huitzilopochtli’s Watch.
“Red Huitzilopochtli
Keeps day and night apart.
Huitzilopochtli the golden
Guards life from death, and death from life.
No grey-dogs, cowards, pass him.
No spotted traitors crawl by,
False fair ones cannot slip through
Past him, from the one to the other.
Brave men have peace at nightfall,
True men look up at the dawn,
Men in their manhood walk out
Into blue day, past Huitzilopochtli.
Red Huitzilopochtli
Is the purifier.
Black Huitzilopochtli
Is doom.
Huitzilopochtli golden
Is the liberating fire.
White Huitzilopochtli
Is washed bone.
Green Huitzilopochtli
Is Malintzi’s blade of grass.”
At the beginning of each stanza, the Guard of Huitzilopochtli struck
their left palm with their scarlet right fist, and the drums gave a
great crash, a terrific splash of noise. When the song ended, the drums
gradually died down, like subsiding thunder, leaving the hearts of men
re-echoing.
Ramón: “Why is your hand so red, Huitzilopochtli?”
Cipriano: “With blood of slain men, Brother.”
Ramón: “Must it always be red?”
Cipriano: “Till green-robed Malintzi brings her water-bowl.”
The bugle and the flute both sounded. The guard of Huitzilopochtli put
out the red candles, one by one, the guard of Quetzalcoatl extinguished
the blue candles. The church was dark, save for the small, but
fierce blue-white light beyond the Quetzalcoatl statue, and the red
smouldering on the altar.
Ramón began slowly to speak:
“The dead are on their journey, the way is dark.
There is only the Morning Star.
Beyond the white of whiteness,
Beyond the blackness of black,
Beyond spoken day,
Beyond the unspoken passion of night,
The light which is fed from two vessels
From the black oil and the white
Shines at the gate.
A gate to the innermost place
Where the Breath and the Fountains commingle,
Where the dead are living, and the living are dead.
The deeps that life cannot fathom,
The Source and the End, of which we know
Only that it is, and its life is our life and our death.
All men cover their eyes
Before the unseen.
All men be lost in silence,
Within the noiseless.”
The church was utterly still, all men standing with a hand pressed over
their eyes.
Till there was one note of a silver gong, and the green candles of
Malintzi were being lighted in the altar place.--Ramón’s voice was
heard again:
“Like the green candles of Malintzi
Like a tree in new leaf.
The rain of blood is fallen, is gone into the earth.
The dead have gone the long journey
Beyond the star.
Huitzilopochtli has thrown his black mantle
To those who would sleep.
When the blue wind of Quetzalcoatl
Waves softly,
When the water of Malintzi falls
Making a greenness:
Count the red grains of the Huitzilopochtli
Fire in your hearts, Oh men.
And blow the ash away.
For the living live,
And the dead die.
But the fingers of all touch the fingers of all
In the Morning Star.”
CHAP: XXIV. MALINTZI.
When the women were shut out of the church, Kate went home gloomy and
uneasy. The executions shocked and depressed her. She knew that Ramón
and Cipriano did deliberately what they did: they believed in their
deeds, they acted with all their conscience. And as men, probably they
were right.
But they seemed nothing but men. When Cipriano said: _Man that is man
is more than a man_, he seemed to be driving the male significance to
its utmost, and beyond, with a sort of demonism. It seemed to her all
terrible _will_, the exertion of pure, awful will.
And deep in her soul came a revulsion against this manifestation of
pure will. It was fascinating also. There was something dark and
lustrous and fascinating to her in Cipriano, and in Ramón. The black,
relentless power, even passion of the will in men! The strange, sombre,
lustrous beauty of it! She knew herself under the spell.
At the same time, as is so often the case with any spell, it did not
bind her completely. She was spell-bound, but not utterly acquiescent.
In one corner of her soul was revulsion and a touch of nausea.
Ramón and Cipriano no doubt were right for themselves, for their people
and country. But for herself, ultimately, ultimately she belonged
elsewhere. Not to this terrible, natural _will_ which seemed to beat
its wings in the very air of the American continent. Always will, will,
will, without remorse or relenting. This was America to her: all the
Americas. Sheer will!
The Will of God! She began to understand that once fearsome phrase.
At the centre of all things, a dark, momentous Will sending out its
terrific rays and vibrations, like some vast octopus. And at the other
end of the vibration, men, created men, erect in the dark potency,
answering Will with will, like gods or demons.
It was wonderful too. But where was woman, in this terrible interchange
of will? Truly only a subservient, instrumental thing: the soft stone
on which the man sharpened the knife of his relentless volition:
the soft lodestone to magnetise his blade of steel and keep all its
molecules alive in the electric flow.
Ah yes, it was wonderful. It was, as Ramón said, a manifestation, a
manifestation of the Godhead. But to the Godhead as a sheer and awful
Will she could not respond.
Joachim, letting himself be bled to death for people who would
profit nothing by his sacrifice, he was the other extreme. The
black and magnificent pride of will which comes out of the volcanic
earth of Mexico had been unknown to him. He was one of the white,
self-sacrificing gods. Hence her bitterness. And hence, naturally, the
spell of beauty and lustrous satisfaction which Cipriano could cast
over her. She was in love with him, when he was with her; in his arms,
she was quite gone in his spell. She was the deep, slumbrous lodestone
which set all his bones glittering with the energy of relentless pride.
And she herself derived a great gratification in the embrace, a sense
of passive, downward-sinking power, profound.
Yet she could not be purely this, this thing of sheer reciprocity.
Surely, though her woman’s nature was reciprocal to his male, surely
it was more than that! Surely he and she were not two potent and
reciprocal currents between which the Morning Star flashed like a spark
out of nowhere. Surely this was not it? Surely she had one tiny Morning
Star inside her, which was herself, her own very soul and star-self!
But he would never admit this. The tiny star of her very self he would
never see. To him she was but the answer to his call, the sheath for
his blade, the cloud to his lightning, the earth to his rain, the fuel
to his fire.
Alone, she was nothing. Only as the pure female corresponding to his
pure male, did she signify.
As an isolated individual, she had little or no significance. As a
woman on her own, she was repulsive, and even evil, to him. She was not
real till she was reciprocal.
To a great extent this was true, and she knew it. To a great extent,
the same was true of him, and without her to give him the power, he too
would not achieve his own manhood and meaning. With her or without her,
he would be beyond ordinary men, because the power was in him. But
failing her, he would never make his ultimate achievement, he would
never be whole. He would be chiefly an instrument.
He knew this too: though perhaps not well enough. He would strive to
keep her, to have her, for his own fulfilment. He would not let her go.
But that little star of her own single self, would he ever recognize
that? Nay, did he even recognize any single star of his own being?
Did he not conceive of himself as a power and a potency on the face
of the earth, an embodied will, like a rushing dark wind? And hence,
inevitably, she was but the stone of rest to his potency, his bed of
sleep, the cave and lair of his male will.
What else? To him there was nothing else. The star! Don Ramón’s Morning
Star was something that sprung between him and her and hung shining,
the strange third thing that was both of them and neither of them,
between his night and her day.
Was it true? Was she nothing, nothing, by herself? And he, alone,
failing his last manhood, without her was he nothing, or next to
nothing? As a fig tree which grows up, but never comes to flower.
Was this thing true, the same of both of them?--that alone, they were
next to nothing? Each of them, separate, next to nothing. Apart in a
sort of grey, mechanical twilight, without a star?
And together, in strange reciprocity, flashing darkly till the Morning
Star rose between them?
He would say to her, as Ramón had said of Carlota: “Soul! No; you have
no soul of your own. You have at best only half a soul. It takes a man
and a woman together to make a soul. The soul is the Morning Star,
emerging from the two. One alone cannot have a soul.”
This Ramón said. And she knew it conveyed what Cipriano really felt.
Cipriano could not see Kate as a being by herself. And if he lived
a thousand more years, he would never see her as such. He would see
her only as reciprocal to himself. As the balance of him, and the
correspondence on the other side of heaven.
“Let the Morning Star rise between us,” he would say. “Alone you are
nothing, and I am _manqué_. But together we are the wings of the
Morning.”
Was it true? Was this the final answer to man’s assertion of
individuality?
Was it true? And was it her sacred duty to sit beside him in the green
dress of Malintzi, in the church, the goddess admitting her halfness?
Her halfness! Was there no star of the single soul? Was that all an
illusion?
Was the individual an illusion? Man, any man, every, man, by himself
just a fragment, knowing no Morning Star? And every woman the same;
by herself, starless and fragmentary. Even in the relation to the
innermost God, still fragmentary and unblest.
Was it true, that the gate was the Morning Star, the only entrance to
the Innermost? And the Morning Star rises between the two, and between
the many, but never from one alone.
And was a man but a dark and arrowy will, and woman the bow from which
the arrow is shot? The bow without the arrow was as nothing, and the
arrow without the bow only a short-range dart, ineffectual?
Poor Kate, it was hard to have to reflect this. It meant a submission
she had never made. It meant the death of her individual self. It
meant abandoning so much, even her own very foundations. For she had
believed truly that every man and every woman alike was founded on the
individual.
Now, must she admit that the individual was an illusion and a
falsification? There was no such animal. Except in the mechanical
world. In the world of machines, the individual machine is effectual.
The individual, like the perfect being, does not and cannot exist, in
the vivid world. We are all fragments. And at the best, halves. The
only whole thing is the Morning Star. Which can only rise between two:
or between many.
And men can only meet in the light of the Morning Star.
She thought again of Cipriano and the executions, and she covered her
hands over her face. Was this the knife to which she must be sheath?
Was it such a star of power and relentlessness that must rise between
her and him? Him naked and painted, with his soldiers, dancing and
sweating and shouting among them. Herself unseen and nowhere!
As she sat rocking in her terrible loneliness and misgiving, she heard
the drums on the towers, and the sound of rockets. She went to the
gate. Over the church, in the night sky, hung a spangling cloud of red
and blue fire, the colours of Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl. The
night of Huitzilopochtli would be over. The sky was dark again, and
there were all the stars, beyond, far, far beyond where the spangling
had been.
She went indoors again, to retire. The servants had all run out to see
the rockets. Ezequiel would be in with the men in church.
She heard footsteps on the gravel walk, and suddenly Cipriano stood in
the doorway, in his white clothes. He took off his hat, quickly. His
black eyes were sparkling, almost blazing to her, with a flashing of
light such as she had never seen. There were still smears of paint on
his face. In the blazing of his eyes he seemed to be smiling to her,
but in a dazzling, childish way.
“Malintzi,” he said to her in Spanish. “Oh, come! Come and put on the
green dress. I cannot be the Living Huitzilopochtli, without a bride. I
cannot be it, Malintzi!”
He stood before her, flickering and flashing and strangely young,
vulnerable, as young and boyish as flame. She saw that when the fire
came free in him, he would be like this always, flickering, flashing
with a flame of virgin youth. Now, not will at all. Sensitive as a boy.
And calling her only with his boyish flame. The living, flickering,
fiery _Wish_. This was first. The _Will_ she had seen was subsidiary
and instrumental, the _Wish_ in armour.
She had been so used to fighting for her own soul with individualistic
men, that for a moment she felt old, and uncertain. The strange,
flashing vulnerability in him, the nakedness of the living Wish,
disconcerted her. She was used to men who had themselves well in hand,
and were seeking their own ends as individuals.
“Where do you want me to come?” she said.
“To the church,” he said. “It is mine to-night. I am Huitzilopochtli:
but I cannot be it alone,” he added with quick, wistful, watchful
smile, as if all his flesh were flickering with delicate fire.
Kate wrapped herself in a dark tartan shawl and went with him. He
stepped quickly, in the short, Indian way. The night was very dark.
Down on the beach some fireworks were flaming, and the people were all
watching.
They entered the yard of the church from the back, by the priest’s
little gate. Soldiers were already rolled up in their blankets,
sleeping under the wall. Cipriano opened the little vestry door. Kate
passed into the darkness. He followed, lighting a candle.
“My soldiers know I am watching to-night in the church,” he said. “They
will keep guard.”
The body of the church was quite dark, but the bluish white light
burned above the statue of Quetzalcoatl, giving not much light.
Cipriano lifted his candle to the black statue of Huitzilopochtli. Then
he turned to Kate, his black eyes flashing.
“I am Huitzilopochtli, Malintzi,” he said in his low, Indian Spanish.
“But I cannot be it without you. Stay with me, Malintzi. Say you are
the bride of the Living Huitzilopochtli.”
“Yes!” she replied, “I say it.”
Convulsive flames of joy and triumph seemed to go over his face. He lit
two candles in front of Huitzilopochtli.
“Come!” he said. “Put on the green dress.”
He took her to the vestry, where were many folded sarapes, and the
silver bowl and other implements of the church, and left her while she
put on the dress of Malintzi she had worn when Ramón married them.
When she stepped out she found Cipriano naked and in his paint, before
the statue of Huitzilopochtli, on a rug of jaguar skins.
“I am the living Huitzilopochtli,” he murmured to her in a sort of
ecstasy.
“You are Malintzi,” he said. “The bride of Huitzilopochtli.”
The convulsion of exultance went over his face. He took her hand in his
left hand, and they stood facing the bluish light.
“Cover your face!” he said to her.
They covered their faces in the salute.
“Now salute Quetzalcoatl.” And he flung up his arm. She held out her
left hand, in the woman’s salute.
Then they turned to the statue of Huitzilopochtli.
“Salute Huitzilopochtli!” he said, bringing his right fist down with
a smash in the palm of his left hand. But this was the male salute. He
taught her to press her hands together in front of her breast, then
shoot them out towards the idol.
Then he put a little lamp of earthenware between the feet of
Huitzilopochtli. From the right knee of the idol he took a little black
vessel of oil, making her take a little white vessel from the god’s
left knee.
“Now,” he said, “together we fill the lamp.”
And together they poured the oil from their little pitchers, into the
saucer-shaped lamp.
“Now together we light it,” he said.
He took one of the two candles burning before the black idol, she took
the other, and with the flames dripping and leaping together, they
kindled the floating wick of the lamp. It burned in a round blue bud,
then rose higher.
“Blow out your candle,” he said. “It is our Morning Star.”
They blew out the two candles. It was almost dark now, with the slow
light, like a snow-drop, of their united lives floating between the
feet of Huitzilopochtli, and the everlasting light burning small and
bluish beyond the statue of Quetzalcoatl.
At the foot of the altar, beside the chair of Huitzilopochtli, a third
chair was placed.
“Sit in your throne of Malintzi,” he said to her.
They sat side by side, his hand holding her hand, in complete silence,
looking down the dark church. He had placed tufts of greenish flowers,
like thin, greenish lilac, above her chair, and their perfume was like
a dream, strong, overpoweringly sweet on the darkness.
Strange how naïve he was! He was not like Ramón, rather ponderous
and deliberate in his ceremonials. Cipriano in his own little deeds
to-night with her, was naïve like a child. She could hardly look at
that bud of light which he said meant their united lives, without
a catch at her heart. It burned so soft and round, and he had such
an implicit, childish satisfaction in its symbol. It all gave him a
certain wild, childish joy. The strange convulsions like flames of joy
and gratification went over his face!
“Ah, God!” she thought. “There are more ways than one of becoming like
a little child.”
The flaminess and the magnificence of the beginning: this was what
Cipriano wanted to bring to his marriage. The reeling, powerful perfume
of those invisible green flowers, that the peons call _buena de noche_:
good by night.
Strange--that which he brought to marriage was something flamey and
unabashed, forever virginal. Not, as she had always known in men,
yearning and seeking his own ends. Naively bringing his flame to her
flame.
As she sat in that darkened church in the intense perfume of flowers,
in the seat of Malintzi, watching the bud of her life united with his,
between the feet of the idol, and feeling his dark hand softly holding
her own, with the soft, deep Indian heat, she felt her own childhood
coming back on her. The years seemed to be reeling away in great
circles, falling away from her.
Leaving her sitting there like a girl in her first adolescence. The
Living Huitzilopochtli! Ah, easily he was the living Huitzilopochtli.
More than anything. More than Cipriano, more than a male man, he was
the living Huitzilopochtli. And she was the goddess bride, Malintzi of
the green dress.
Ah, yes, it was childish. But it was actually so. She was perhaps
fourteen years old, and he was fifteen. And he was the young
Huitzilopochtli, and she was the bride Malintzi, the bride-girl. She
had seen it. When the flame came up in him and licked him all over, he
was young and vulnerable as a boy of fifteen, and he would always be
so, even when he was seventy.