Part 10

I lay lazily on the slanting prow of the punt, the sun burnt down on my back, and I wondered whether one would be content to live all one’s days in a boat drifting along somnolently in the sun. Dick more active, with an improvised paddle, thought he was making the boat go. Narrow canoes slipped past us, full to the brim with scarlet carnations. Our guide proved to be efficient and friendly. He took us to a restaurant on an island, where we had an unedible luncheon, which we shared with about eight famished dogs. Our table was under an arbor on a bridge at the junction of three streams. Nearby we landed, and were shown an electric plant which never interests me, and a garden that was enchanting but more Dutch than ever. Trees were clipped into bird shapes, and some climbing monkeys. The place was dense with strange sad looking Indians, who were digging out a canal. We lingered on the lakes until nearly four o’clock, and then our guide, devoted to the end, insisted we should visit the village church. The doors were wide open, but from the brilliant sun outside ones eyes had to accustom themselves to the dimness within. There were a few Indian women kneeling on the wooden floor, and some sort of chant was going on. One woman was intoning in a shrill flat metallic voice. The crudest painted figures of the Christ dressed in white muslin “shorts” edged with lace; face and body covered with blood; hair black and matted: legs emaciated and contorted, stared out at us from every corner. Dick suddenly exclaimed in a terrified whisper “I _must_ go--I’ve got to go--” and made for the sunlight at full speed with resonant steps. I followed him, and out in the court yard was a rickety Crucifix with human legbones tied crossways on it. Louise commented, and Dick quick to overhear, asked: “Are they real bones...? What is a Crucifix? What is it for...? Why...? Tell me about Christ, please tell me, tell me about Christ,” and as we waited on a seat in the Public Garden, for the tramway, Dick insisted upon hearing the whole story of Christ. He says his prayers to God, and the two have no connection in his mind. And now I realize what Dick’s first and earliest impression of Christ will be, it is indelible,...

SUNDAY, JULY 10, 1921.--_Mexico City._

I have at last found a friend. She is an English woman, married to a Mexican. I met her in England, but never realized she lived in Mexico. Great was my surprise and pleasure, when she made a sign of life to me. Through her I have come in touch with the English and American Colony. They are very nice to me, and anxious to help me to see all there is to see. My Anglo-Mexican friends had a picnic lunch for me today, at their place in Tocubaya just outside the City. It is called “The Molino” and is the oldest mill in America, North or South. They hold the titles of the estate from the first Viceroy.

Now they no longer live there. The house is deserted and unfurnished, the chapel bereft of its old carved pews. The granaries are empty, one is a hollow shell, the result of a fire. Only in the garden are there signs of renaissance. This is the result of Revolution. Two thousand men and 1500 horses were billeted there for five months, at the time when Obregon came into power. From all descriptions, they destroyed everything and took what they did not destroy. The trees were cut down. Even the Church pews were stacked onto a cart and left when the soldiers left. “The best Obusson Chair” in which the Colonel used to sit, and to which he had become attached was piled onto the top of the coke cart! Listening to all this, I felt I might be hearing the complaint of people against the Bolsheviks! It is a point of view that I do not often hear, and it interests me as all points of view do. For awhile my sympathy was with these landowners. Their suffering sounded so futile and this form of destruction helps none. The working man does not gain by it. Nothing is arrived at except an unrest, a lack of confidence, an apprehension for the future, and a resignation of despair on the part of property owners. Some one gains: Presumably the individual who loots.--I asked, “What was your ambition and your aim, before all this happened...?” and the answer was: “The ambition of every decent Mexican, to make a lot of money and go and live abroad.” Precisely what the Russian bourgeois did. And how, I asked, does Mexico expect to put her house in order, if the ambition of every decent Mexican is to live outside his country...?

The Conways were among those invited to this rather sumptuous picnic, which was served elaborately under the pergola in the garden. The Conways are English and he is at the head of the electric light and tramway company. The workshops have been on strike for sometime, and now the tramway personnel threaten to come out in sympathy, on Thursday next. Yesterday there was a demonstration of tramway workers, and they deposited a red flag on Mr. Conway’s doorstep! The situation is an anxious one, and keeps him overworked. He arrived late for lunch from a Government conference, and had to leave again almost immediately after.

While the rest of the party played poker, I rocked in a perfectly good hammock, and Dick sailed his boat in a 23 ft. deep swimming tank. The sun came out fitfully, and the day was cold.

The weather I am assured is “unusual”.... On the way home we passed a trolley car full of men. It was at a standstill and there seemed to be a good-humored dispute going on, between one of the men in the trolley and another who was attempting to board it. The man in the trolley threatened the other by brandishing an iron bar. The other disregarding him continued his efforts to climb. With a resounding blow, which we could hear above the sound of our motor, the iron bar smote the man on the temple, so that he dropped, stunned to the ground. A woman screamed and ran to pick him up. But he picked himself up, and two small rocks at the same time. Our car turned a corner, and the sequel was lost to view.

“They hold life very lightly,” Mrs. Conway said with indifference. She has lived here for some years.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 1921.

Mrs. Conway fetched me in the morning and we went to the National Museum. I was in search of the War God Huitzil, the one that Cortez threw down from the height of the Teocali after the great fight. Mr. Terry’s guide book says it is in the Museum, but I could find it nowhere. Upon inquiry one person said it was in a Convent, another that it was built into the walls of the Cathedral, a third that it was among the foundations of the National Palace! But if I failed in discovering my god, the accumulation of Gods and of sculptured stone contained in that small gallery in the National Museum was a revelation. The moment I walked in I was amazed. This is work that rivets one’s attention. The people who created these things have the right to a very important place in art. The Aztec calendar stone one knows well, it has been so often reproduced, but the reliefs on the sacrificial stones, are equally wonderful,--almost pure Assyrian in feeling.

The great flat screenlike stone, representing the goddess of the Moon, is full of design, beauty and terror. They demanded much, these Gods, and I imagine they were served more out of fear than of love. Theirs was a jealous god, and a god of vengeance. There was Chauticalli, the crouching tiger, demanding the votive offering of human hearts, for which he carries a cup sunk in his own back.

Of all the gods, Chac-Mosl, the Lord of Life, brought from Yucatan, is the one that is least barbaric. Almost it might be the work of a modern archaic sculptor. But through everything there runs a note of deep tragedy, of awful distress. The people who worshipped Soxhipili, the Goddess of Spring and Flowers, who lifts up a pained and tearstained face to heaven,--are the same people who today worship the bloodstained painted plaster figure of Christ. They are still idolaters, but they call it Christ today, and their souls react to all the pain, and all the blood, and all the horror, that centuries ago was carved in stone, and stained with the blood of human hearts. Going to that Museum, seeing, even without understanding, has opened up to me a whole new interest in the Mexican people. Not lightly can the world dismiss as brigands descendants of a civilization that produced such sculpture. What was this civilization? The America of the United States has no such ancestry, no such relics.

And who are these people of today, called Mexican Indians, whose great dignity and impassivity and melancholy remind one of the Russian peasant? Is it explained in either case by centuries of oppression? Perhaps I will understand a little later on, but at present I am lost in the mysticism of it.

At six o’clock, Madame Malbran, the wife of the Argentine Minister and Madame de Bonilla, took me to a reception given by the Pani’s. He is the Minister for Foreign Affairs. After my morning spent with the gods, and the atmosphere of Aztec culture, it was a strange contrast to go to this centre of political modernism. The party might have been in Paris or Rome. It was a perfectly cosmopolitan gathering, and one heard every language around one. To the accompaniment of a jazz-band we danced in two big empty rooms, the walls of which were covered with pictures. I had already heard a good deal of discussion and comment about Alberto Pani’s collection of Old Masters, but whatever people may say, and whatever they may be, they are extremely attractive pictures collected by some one with a cultured eye. Here I met a very charming cosmopolitan Mexican called the Marquis de Guadalupe. He had other names, but they were beyond my intelligence. Guadalupe, I can remember because I’ve been to the Cathedral of...! He talked like an Englishman and said he had been educated at Stonyhurst. He asked me if I had seen any Mexican sports,--one of which is called “Haripego” ... he told me he did it himself and described it to me: As far as I could make out wild Mexicans on wild horses pursue a wild bull, catch it by the tail, and throw it! My informant with sleek grey hair, and immaculately civilized clothes, looked like anything but a wild Mexican. He assured me he was one, however, in everything but appearance. He then went up to Pani and asked if they could get up a show for me. There was some discussion in Spanish, there was nothing to do, I understood, but to buy “a few wild horses and some bulls” ... that’s all ...! and Pani, turning to me, said I had “but to command!” So I commanded with all possible entreaty and was promised that it should be arranged as soon as possible for next week. I also expressed a wish to climb up Popocatapetl, and Pani invited me to lunch on Saturday to meet someone who will make it possible for me. Thus encouraged I rushed back to the Hotel to find Mrs. Conway with an American from Monterey, waiting to take me out to dinner. Afterwards we went and watched a game of Peloto--. This is the Spanish name for “ball”--It was a wonderful game, a species of squash rackets. The players wear long narrow basket sheafs in which they miraculously catch the ball, hardly ever missing it. A miss counts a score for the opponent. The curious scoop shape of the basket (I thought for the first moment that they were hollowed elephant tusks!) enables them to hurl the ball from a great distance and with great force. It is extremely beautiful to watch and is the fastest ball game in the world. All the while a tremendous lot of betting goes on, and the bookies in their red caps make a maddening din shouting the odds. The onlookers, who are more gamblers than sportsmen, are full of denunciatory exclamations over bad play and seldom, if ever, appreciative of any particular good stroke. Played without any professional betting it would be a very sporting game, as well as a very highly scientific one.

FRIDAY, JULY 15, 1921. _Mexico City._

Mr. Conway having last night at midnight settled his tramway strike to his satisfaction, we started off at 9 A.M. in his car, with a friend of his and made for the Pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacan. It was very cold at the start and by the time we got to San Cristobal the sun was out and we stopped to photograph the monument to Morelos, the Mexican revolutionary patriot. He is buried here, opposite his house. The monument, which is thoroughly modern, simple and forceful, resembles some of the new Russian revolutionary sculpture. Further on we stopped again and looked at a church. It stands alone in a wind-swept plain which had once been flooded. The floods had raised the earth about twelve feet above the original surface, so the carvings of the beautiful archway were low down on the ground instead of being high up. It had been an old Monastery, and the cloisters had just recently been excavated. It is amazing the way one comes upon a perfect gem of Spanish Renaissance architecture, in the wilds among fields of cactus. Sometimes there is not even a village in the vicinity. The inside of the church, with its rather Moorish vaulted roof and its Italian frescoed walls would have been very lovely, but for the usual additions that characterize either the Spanish or the Mexican Romanism, of which I have already complained. The one illumination to this gloom was the quantities of song birds inside the church that flew about the roof and among the altars, fanning the noses of the melancholy Saints, whilst their songs reverberated through the echoing building. Outside the door, an iridescent humming-bird was sucking honey from a wild flower. Among the loose stones of the old cemetery wall, we picked up a small terra-cotta Aztec head of an ape. Beyond this place we got hopelessly lost for some time and wandered through villages of which the roads seemed all alike. These villages are built of adobe or mud bricks, and the houses are square, flat roofed and windowless. They probably have been this way ever since Aztec times. The people we saw were pure Indian, without any drop of Spanish blood. There seems to be a great deal of lameness and blindness, especially the latter, owing to the prevalence of disease among the parents. Infant mortality in Mexico, is, I am told on reliable authority, higher than that of any other country in the world. But to continue ... our lost way was extremely interesting. Sometimes our road lay hemmed in on either side by high impenetrable hedges, formed by the organ cactus, which the Indians plant to wall in their gardens or farm yards. Hardly any of the road was road at all, it was either rock or stream, on a tract among the plantations of the pulque cactus. The car was an 8-cylinder Cadillac. It seemed to take anything competently and uncomplainingly. Never have I seen an owner so fatalistic, or a driver so calm under adversity. I felt we _must_ turn over sometimes, but we did not, nor did we stick in the mud, nor did the streams drown the machine, nor did the springs break, nor did we puncture! When Mr. Conway pointed in a direction and said to the chauffeur: “That is where we want to go ...” we went quite regardless of whether there was a road or not. “Is that a road?” I asked once or twice, and was told it was! When nearly at our destination, and having taken three hours instead of two, we had a final delay: In a lane we met three galloping soldiers, who signalled to us to stop. We were made to draw up onto the grassy roadside and there we stood for half an hour, while at least eighteen, if not twenty, guns went by, drawn by their mule teams of six each. It was very picturesque, the men riding the teams shouted and urged and beat their mules, trumpeters galloped by, officers stood escort by our car while they passed. The soldiers were dressed in coarse white linen uniforms, and white leggings and hats, with red cord and tassels on their shoulders. They looked rather dilapidated individually, but very picturesque collectively. I did not dare photograph them, as it might have been a troop movement. The papers this morning are full of the insurrection of the troops under Gen. Herrera near Tampico in the state of Vera Cruz, Huasteca District, and there seems to be something in the air ... who knows, trouble again perhaps? But no one troubles.

At last we arrived in the wonderful valley. It seemed completely deserted except for the workmen who are digging the excavations, and some big eyed barefooted silent children who watched us. Instantly on arrival we climbed up to the top of the pyramid of the Sun. Its base measurement is said to be that of the Pyramids of Egypt, but it is not so high, nor so pointed. It has been flattened out on the top, for the sacrifices. The human bodies, after their hearts were cut out, were simply thrown over the edge, and there are supposed to have been men stationed on each platform below, to pitchfork them on and over down to the next until finally at the bottom, they were collected by those to whom they proudly belonged, and taken away, ... it having been a great honor to be sacrificed.

The view from the summit was awesome. Great mountain peaks dwarfed us, and a little way beyond stood the pyramid of the Moon, and the “Road of the Dead” with its small sentinel Teocalis all along the way, leading from the “Moon” past us, to the distant so-called Citadel. We lunched nearby in a great natural cave, which had long zigzagging steps that led down into it, and made one feel rather theatrical and Ali-Babaish! After luncheon we went to this “Citadel,” where the new excavations and restorations are taking place. No one is allowed to go near it, and little is known about it as yet. The discoveries are going on apace, and promise to be among the most dramatically interesting in the American Continent. I suppose some day the world will awaken to the wonders here, and will give it their attention instead of constantly re-treading the well worn paths of archaeological Europe and Egypt.

Sheltered, hidden, protected behind an Aztec Teocali, there has just been revealed another of infinitely earlier date of which little, if anything, is as yet surmised. To date, four tiers of sculptured walls have been unearthed and in between these terraces straight up from the base to the as yet uncovered summit, are wide steep stone steps, the side slopes of which are punctuated by enormous dragon heads. These same heads, slightly varied, stood out from the wall of the four terraces, one above the other, from a low relief background. The eyes of the great stone dragon-heads are set with obsidian, a black volcanic glass which the district produces. There are signs of color on these sculptures. The whole thing is barbaric, and overwhelmingly effective. It suggested to my mind something very definitely Chinese. It was a great privilege to be able to see this new discovery and to be allowed to take photographs. We were told by an official to whom Mr. Conway gave his name, that we might climb anywhere, and take what photographs we pleased. This, after our first reception by an officious but dutiful underling, who forbade us to do anything we wanted to do, was a heaven sent relief!

Around us in a gigantic square, walls, and steps and Teocalis were being restored. The centre may prove to have been a gigantic arena, that was what the space and its shape suggested to me, but all conjecture in this place is futile. No one knows ... it is no good asking or seeking or imagining. It is the great mystery of the World’s History. Perhaps if the fanatical first Spanish Viceroy had not burnt all the Indian records something might be known. As it is, unless something is revealed, we shall continue in ignorance. A little feeling of pride came over me, as I viewed these monuments from the top of the Teocali, and realized that sculpture had survived where painting, and life, and race, and history and tradition even had faded away. Almost one might dare to say that sculpture that is monumental is immortal.

SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1921. _Mexico City._

Alberto Pani gave a luncheon for me, which proved unexpectedly pleasant. We were three women and seven men, among whom was José Vasconselos, the Rector of the University, a very brilliant man for whom the Government has created a portfolio; Enciso, the Guardian of Ancient Buildings; Martinez, the head of the Academia of Belles Artes, Mantenegro, a painter of great distinction. I sat between my host, whom I find understanding and easy to talk to and on my other side a man called Dr. Atl. His name isn’t really Atl at all, but as he is called that and was introduced to me under that name he may as well remain Atl. He is the man who was especially asked to meet me, to tell me about Popocatapetl. He has been up to the crater a great many times. In fact the love and the obsession of his life is said to be the great White Mountain! He was explained to me as being a painter, a poet, a Bolshevik, a Bohemian.... He certainly has individuality, and was not a bit surprised when I told him he was a Russian type, and that in fact he talks French as the Russians I have known talked it. He knew it, but denied any Russian blood.... Anyway to my great delight, he says it is perfectly possible to do the ascent at this, the rainy season. So many people have been telling me that it was an impossibility! He promises to take me next week.[9] With my host I had an interesting talk, about things here, as well as in Russia. He asked me what my impression was of Lenin, and I told him.... We discussed opinions very openly, and at the end of it I asked him, laughingly: “Am I a Bolshevik ...?” and he said “No,--you are _une femme intelligente_, with good judgment!” Above all we talked about Mexico and I think he was pleased by my enthusiasm and my interest. I amused them all, by telling them (to illustrate the prevailing ignorance of Mexico) that my “in-laws” had had a conference on the matter of my having dared to risk Dick’s life by bringing him to Mexico, as a result of which they had decided that on my return to England, Dick should be removed from my custody. An excellent reason, as they pointed out, for not returning to England, but remaining in Mexico! “All the same,” Pani admitted, “we have had terrible times here, when really one only went out at the risk of one’s life, and the outside world hears only of our upheavals.” He said laughingly that Popocatapetl was very emblematical of Mexico.... “We are a volcanic country, ready at any moment to erupt.” I like their sense of humor about themselves. When I said I wanted to meet General Villa, they all laughed, and said “Well, if you want to meet Mexican Generals, your time will be well taken up, there are about six thousand of them!”

SUNDAY, JULY 17, 1921. _Mexico City._