Part 16

Our days pass, and our nights, and some nights are darker than others, otherwise they are all the same and no one of our days is less good than another. They vary only in the variety of our expeditions and every new place reveals a beauty equal to the first. This morning I allowed Dick to visit the secret place amidstream where I come to write. He took off his garment to bathe, and standing naked in the sun, on a rock above the waterfall, his body burnt brown, and, with his pet ant-eater round his neck, he looked the embodiment of Mowglie in Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book,” the boy who was suckled by the she-wolf, and grew up in the woods, and could speak the language of the animals.

Mowglie could look into the eyes of the Black Panther and make him blink and turn his head away. Mowglie defeated the Tiger, he led the wolves. Mowglie, the Man-cub, learned great wisdom and philosophy from the jungle. This new primæval life seems to have revealed something even to me.

At this moment lying full length in the sun on my rock, I am out of sight, and well out of sound of any human (Oh! No I am not! Here comes an Indian--he is going to cross the stream--he has not seen me--he stops to sharpen his knife on a stone--he has cut a hazel switch--he has crossed the stream--he is gone--)....

I lie here contemplatively, and find myself saying: “If I were a man!....” It is revealed to me that to be a man must be a wonderful accident of birth. To be the right kind of man is to be a king. Now to be a queen, one need not necessarily be the best kind of woman, and being a queen is not worth while anyway. Whereas to be a king means Power. “King by Divine Right.” That defines the finest type of man.

If I were a man: I mean young, sound of mind and limb, body well conditioned and muscled--indefatigable. Equipped mentally with a moral code and a sense of honor, and fearless. I would feel that I could hold my own with anyone in the world. That I would not be unfairly matched with any other physical force. That in the fight, in play, in competition, I had but to exert my capacity to the utmost to be sure of the issue. Though I were unendowed I would own the world.

If I were a man, I would awake in the morning, stretch my limbs and say: “Thank God!” When I was a girl, I wished I were a boy, and a man (I have never forgotten, though I was very young) said to me: “As wishing won’t change you, you had better try to become the best kind of woman,” but at best, what is to be a woman?

My short hair and man’s garb have temporarily added an aggressive personality to my six foot stature and my strength. But, at a turn in the road I am likely to meet a physical strength greater than my own, which in conflict would utterly defeat me. The world is not mine, it is another’s to whom I am obliged to entrust myself. I am a childbearer, and of what worth are my physical powers of endurance?

I am a woman; I am vain, jealous, changeable, dependant, and ever must remain so.

Oh God! I pray, in my next incarnation, make me the best kind of man, and meanwhile as a compensation give me the consolation of having made one.

MEXICO. _In Camp._

I have lost all track of days and dates. I get no papers, I receive no letters, no one knows where I am, I hardly can locate myself.

It is a rough primitive life, and the situation necessitating a long walk on a hilly stony track with rivers to cross has tested the material of my four friends.

The Scotchman never came at all, we left him in the village when we came to camp. He was invaluable in organizing our needs and dispatching the mule train, but there was no cold beer in these regions and he went back to Tampico.

The Mexican started with us, but turned back half way.

The Irishman is a man of affairs, he comes and goes--comes whenever he can snatch a spare few days.

The Canadian has been able to remain.

Dick calls it “home”--and I suppose for him it is the nearest thing approaching a “home” that he has had since we left England, or anyway New York. For me also it has somewhat of a home feeling. It is so primitive, so simple, so poetic. One comes to it with an appreciation that is very nearly love.

How little one needs, if the climate is kind, a house with walls is no longer a necessity, nor is fuel. All one needs is a roof to shade one from sun and rain, and for furniture just books, heaps and heaps of books. One wants all the books one has longed for time to read, and all the books one loves that one dreams of re-reading.

Our kind hosts, the man and wife Mexican peons, are allowing us to share their roof. It is a high thatch of palm leaves, it might be an open barn or hayrick. And under this roof, we have pitched our tent. At one end there is a room walled off transparently with battens like a birdcage, this is lent to us for a storeroom and the Japanese cook and his wife sleep in it.

Behind a screen of wattles, on a plank, sleep the owners of the roof. I wonder if they will live all their lives in this place to die some day on the plank bed behind the wattle screen. They are a charming couple, so happy and devoted. He makes money by growing some sugar cane on the island, and a few feet away from our thatched barn is another, under it a primitive press in which they squeeze the juice out of the cane. Under that roof another tent is pitched, and there the men sleep. I don’t know who they all are, but they come and go, and some remain--they are all workers in the Tampico firm.

Our island camp is like a miniature United States, composed of a variety of nationalities, but all submerged into a family unionism.

The Irishman is the real Commandant, but he is obliged to be away most of the time. He sends in his absence members of his firm, those who need a rest or a holiday, and are a protective force.

These men are of varying types, most of them simple hardworking people whose literary tastes run no further than detective stories and who do not deeply think nor discuss the world’s problems! They have a certain kind of humor which usually consists of teasing the cook, or telling stories about getting drunk. The only cultured one among them is the Irishman, who reads Schopenhauer and Ibsen.

He has just arrived for two days. This morning we walked down to the foot of the island, crossed two rivers, by means of felled trees, and walked back along the mainland, expecting to be able to recross the river opposite the camp without going back the way we came. We had a pleasant and varied walk, half in the water to our knees--so that my top boots became like water bottles--and then to our waists, all to no purpose, the river was unfordable. Eventually being hot and weary we plunged in up to our necks.

It is a lovely climate that enables one to do these things, which in England would produce pneumonia. Finally in desperation at not accomplishing our purpose, we resolutely stepped out, into the shallowest of the rapids to effect our crossing. I watched the man walking rather insecurely, trying the riverbed ahead of me; at each footmove one’s leg with great difficulty withstood the current. We seemed to be nearly over the worst, when I had a sensation of wavering, I put out my hand, he grabbed it, and together we were carried off our feet and rushed like tumbling logs down-stream. Everything seemed dark and chaotic. I was not conscious of my head being under water. The only thing that impressed me was our utter helplessness and the futility of his strong grasp. Very clearly I said to myself “This is the end.” It must come some day, somehow, and this was the day and this was the way. I wondered how long it would take and if it would hurt.

Then in the muddle when one seemed to be turning over and round, any sort of way, a mere bundle of rubbish, I came on top, and saw the river bank quite close--I snatched at grass, at roots, all failed, and then something held--“I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” I shouted in triumph, and when we regained our feet, and stood waist deep, spluttering we looked at one another, without a word, in great surprise, and laughed, but my laughter was very nearly tears.

We triumphed in the end, I would not return the way we came, so from the mainland opposite our camp, the Irishman got across hand over hand, on a wire hawser that spanned the river. It used to serve the ferry which now lies wrecked and derelict half a mile down-stream; once across he improvised a boat, out of a big wooden box and came across to fetch me.

We were rather silent at supper; there seemed some food for thought.

It is a beautiful but awesome thing, this river. Higher up just around the bend of the mountain it cascades for half a mile: thunderous and forceful. It approaches our island, almost like a flood, diverting into varying streams, creating islands, engulfing trees, there is not a sight of it that does not contain a waterfall and a fast current that pours over rapids. Everywhere there are waterfalls, usually six at a time from every direction. Dick says all the rivers in the world have joined us here. It is an hypnotic, wondrous, fearful thing. Sometimes I hate it, always I fear it, several times it has tried to snatch Dick from me. Always I think it wants to take Dick, and he loves it so, is always in it, fearlessly going out of his depth, by hanging on the swiftly floating logs.

The river has the spirit of a passionate irresponsible creature that knows no laws.

It thunders and foams, roars and rages, laughs, is uncontrollable and wild one minute, the next, gentle as a little child, a thing of moods, untameable. There are people with the spirit of the river. They are genius’s or revolutionaries. Some of them are mad.... I hate, I love, I admire, I fear the river.

SEPTEMBER, 1921. _In Camp._

He left today (the Irishman I mean); I walked with him to Micos station. The train was due at 7 a.m. by starting at 9:30 a.m. he only had 3 hours to wait. (Such are the Mexican trains). It was a hot long climb, I had not been back to the village since I left it. When we got there we found that it was Sunday.

Instead of the little peaceful half asleep village I had known, it was thronged with people, the stores were doing a roaring trade. The meat-sellers had it hanging in streamers from a pole, the fruit-sellers had them on a handkerchief in the mud. Everyone from the neighboring country had come to town. The women looked at me pityingly, their men gave them dresses and shoes and shawls but I, poor thing, my man gave me only his old clothes and boots to wear.

The most successful seller was the fellow who had a lump of ice and sold colored drinks. I drank and drank, my man gave me that unstintingly! he gave me colored drinks, a penknife, twelve handkerchiefs, and a straw hat--it was not ungenerous!

While thus engaged a cadaverous unshaved grey-haired man in a blue shirt, split shoes, and one large iron spur, introduced himself. “It isn’t often one finds Americans here, let me shake your hand.” He said he was American, had lived here many years, on a ranch, and that he was a Doctor. Three finger nails were missing from the right hand. He wore spectacles but had a distant look as if he saw not what he saw. A living Rip van Winkle. “Going to Tampico? a three days trip”--he said. “Three days? you mean ten hours.” “Three days” he repeated--“on a good horse”--so!--the train was not for him.

“The train breaks down” he said contemptuously, as though anyone would entrust themselves to a train who had a good horse. He limped away without another word. We crossed the street to another store and a young man with an American accent waylaid us “Pardon me is your party complete? a white man’s body lies drowned a short way up the river”--he said it in a tone of perfect detachment and indifference. The body was there and must be identified. We hesitated a moment, looked round at our party, there were three or four odd members of our camp--we were complete.

Further down the village street a horse was lying with its four feet tied together and two men operating on its mouth with a big carving knife. The horse groaned and sniffed and sighed and blood flowed.

Approaching us on all fours was a child of five or six. Like a quadruped it walked, a cursed thing, doomed from birth. It looked at us cross-eyed, and its face was the face of a little wild animal.

We did not go to see the corpse, the others went laughing and whistling, cracking grim jokes,--the law in Mexico is that no body may be removed from the water until identified.

They told us on their return, that it had been in the water two weeks, it was floating on its stomach, fishes had eaten the face, vultures were hovering about the back. “Someone drowned”--and that’s all that mattered, but on a Sunday morning how diverting for the village!

SEPTEMBER, 1921. _In Camp--Mexico._

Last week we were joined by an Anglo-French-Dutch-American born in Chicago--a man with a close cropped head looking like a convict; he was reputed an anarchist and a dynamiter. He did not fit in with the spirit of our camp. He said of me that I was a poor Socialist, too imperious in tone. I said of him that he was a poor Anarchist, too autocratic. He talked to the servants like dogs, and to his equals as subordinates. Within 15 minutes of his arrival, the camp was simmering with indignation.

Pedro, the lad of the village, who offered his services and was taken as waiter, and who always smiles when asked for anything, opened wide his black eyes, and looked wonderingly at this strange new personality.

The Jap cook--who shoots wild parrots with a revolver, and whose Mexican girl wife spends her time feeding the small wild birds that her husband has caged--were both on the verge of a general strike. As a result of which the A. F. D. American said he would “chuck the Jap into the river” and looked as if he meant it.

We have permanently attached to us two half-Mexican Texas boys--they wear sloppy clothes, red knotted handkerchiefs round their necks, and loud blue check shirts. One of them with black hair standing up on end and a three days’ growth on his chin, looks like the most dangerous type of Apache. I overheard these two by the light of a lanthorne discussing the newly arisen situation. They were not going to accept any orders from one their equal. “He may have been in the firm 20 years, and he trades on it but that does not make us his subordinates”--they argued what should be done: not fight him with fists they agreed, as he had done some quite shining light boxing in his day--“we will get him into the river!”--Here I interfered, I assured them they were here to take care of me, and there must be no tragedies and no rows. I left them when they had sworn to keep the peace.

The worst thing the A. F. D. American had against me was that I offered him the eggs after General Barragan had tasted them. General Barragan is my parrot. So beautiful, so spoiled. He has a passion for poached eggs, and always comes onto the table at breakfast. Who could mind eating out of the dish after General Barragan? But whatever I did was wrong, in the unrelenting eyes of the A. F. D. American. So I got the Canadian, who is senior to him, to send him back as soon as possible to Tampico on some pretext of an errand. We breathed more freely when he was gone.

The Swede who took his place was sent, I think, as a practical joke, for the poor man could be of no value to us and he was miserable in a life that was perfectly alien to him. A rather thin, chetif man; he hated the effort of the long rough walk to get here. Hated the tent, the bugs, the heat, washing in the river, the absence of movies and restaurants.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked him--Oh yes, he agreed it was beautiful. “Peaceful?” Oh yes, it was peaceful. “Restful?” Yes, it was restful, but he was not in search of beauty, peace or rest, and he left us at his earliest opportunity.

One night, however, we broke the spell. There was neither rest nor peace. We gave a dance!

In a way it was unpremeditated, and grew by itself, as those things sometimes do. It began by engaging two musicians, a violinist and a mandolin player and by inviting the milkman’s daughter and two nieces.

The news spread like wildfire, and we who imagined we were far from human habitations, suddenly found ourselves with about 50 men on our hands! They appeared at dusk from every direction. They hailed the ferry on both sides of the mainland, they arrived all smartened up, and by the light of our lanterns and our few colored paper lights, we saw rows of white bloused Indians in their best hats. Our dance floor had been especially arranged for the occasion--all the weeds and creeping water melon and small palms had been grubbed; the earth levelled and quite a big space in between the two barns was rolled and ready. Four felled tree trunks were the seats that outlined it--and on these, the Indians sat in rows, like birds contemplatively.

The arrival on the dance ground of the four specially invited women was full of formal ceremony. They were preceded by the wife of our landlord and by the cook’s wife--one behind the other, in silence they walked. At sight of them the row of men on the nearest tree rose and fled as one man, and distributed themselves elsewhere like magic, leaving the seat to the women, who sat on it all in a solemn row.

When the music tuned up, the bravest men walked across the ground, selected their partners with a bow and a fine sweep of Mexican sombrero, and before dancing they paraded round and round the ground two by two. They never smiled. The women kept their heads bowed and their eyes glued to the ground. When spoken to they did not answer,--their whole attitude was maddeningly submissive and full of humility.

When they danced it was a very fast two step, and the man held his girl at a very respectful distance. She did not appear to lean on him or touch him. They also danced a little country dance, monotonous and dull, of little shifting steps in lines opposite one another. I danced once with my landlord, and the rest of the time with the Texas “Apache” boy. I am told the evening was a success. It looked to me dull and sad in the extreme. One hoped up to the last moment that the party would cheer up and get merry, but even rum served all round did not stimulate them. I am told the Indians are like that. Stoically melancholy. Such an evening compares curiously with the same as it would be in Italy, Spain or Russia--there is hardly a country one can think where the native is not stirred by national dances and music. The men as well as the women looked rather apathetic and passive and stupid--out of the lot I noticed only one man who had individuality, stature and fine features. He had the appearance of a stage bandit and assurance of manner that set him conspicuously apart from the others. He wore high boots and immaculate white linen coat and a large revolver in a holster on his belt. I asked about him--he kept a store some way down the river.

The great mystery was: where did these people all come from? Not from Micos, the village afar off--but just from plain thatched huts “not half as fine as ours!” among the woods and hillside.

The supper we provided in haste from our tinned store was greatly appreciated. Hands dived into the apricot or sardine tin as their choice selected--and when they left hours later, volleys were fired from the mainland, which, as I had gone to bed and was fast asleep, woke me up with a bewildering start.

SEPTEMBER, 1921. _In Camp. Mexico._

The strange Anglo-French-Dutch-American anarchist whom we sent, sullen and protesting from our camp, must have cursed us, as he went. He is the seventh child of a seventh child, and what he knows--he knows.

I think he cursed the Canadian, who sent him back. Cursed me for getting him sent. Cursed Dick for being mine. The very next day after his departure the Canadian had fever, and a temperature of 104. Dick had a suppurating bloodshot eye and could not see, and I went to bed with some mysterious poisoning which may be of an insect or of a weed, but cannot be identified.

That was seven days ago. I am still in bed, suffering as if I had been scalded. A cradle over me, of reeds, protects me from the unbearable touch even of the sheet.

The Canadian for whose life we feared at one moment, wanders about, still with a high temperature, lies restlessly on the river bank, gasping for air and praying for ice.

Dick is able to go out today, but with a bandage. It is a dreadful anti-climax, this last week of our camping days. For a month everything has been so perfect. One had not reckoned on the snake in Paradise.

A doctor came 20 kilometers on mule-back. He stayed the night and doctored us all, but without any apparent result.

I feel as though I were on fire, and I am nearly mad. At first I could drag myself to the river and plunge in and get temporary relief, but for two days now the river has been in flood; muddy, opaque, and raging; two nights of thunder-storms achieved this result. Storms, which relieved for me the endless monotony of a sleepless night.

I have my bed close up to the open tent flap, and I could see the land lit up by lightning flashes that lasted sometimes a minute at a time. The thunder was stupendous; if it could have been linked to music it would have been super-Wagnerian; it rethundered from mountain-side to mountain-side, followed by a death-like lull.

One imagined all was over. Then with dramatic suddenness--an earth-shaking crash, as if God in a temper had slammed His door. This drama took about three hours from the night, and the river has risen yet another foot.

SEPTEMBER 9, 1921. _In Camp. Mexico._

The cycle has come round. Again it is my birthday, just a year ago I bought my ticket for Russia.

Dick managed somehow to get a bunch of gigantic mauve convolvulous flowers that were growing up a palmtree. He brought them to me with great sentiment, so my birthday was, after all, a birthday!

Tonight is the third night of thunder storms (I am writing by torch light in the midst of it).

After nights of pain and sleeplessness one begins to think stupid things: I feel as if this beautiful valley were a valley of death; I have thought for sometime that the valley meant to keep me. Even the way I came to it was strange and uncanny--almost called to it from the train window. It cast a spell on me then, a spell strong enough to enforce my return.

Ever since I came it has been suggested to me that I stay forever, why go away?

The suggestion first came from man. Then the beauty of the place set itself to lure me. Then the river tried to catch me. It has tried to catch Dick too. Having slipped through that, I am now poisoned unmercifully. I shall get over that but then there’s still the river, and every storm makes the water rise, and the strong current grows swifter. In the end I can only leave the island by ferry, and the river is getting more and more impassable. After a month of Paradise weather suddenly these storms, on purpose to stop me going. I must go in four days. I will be well enough to go in four days. I will go in four days whether I am well enough or not ... but, in the end there’s the river to cross.

I might have known it was uncanny, this beauty. This enticing stillness, this holiness of peace--it is a trap. It is a valley of death. It is full of spirits and mysteries. I must get out--I am mad. No, I am not mad, I am sick.

SEPTEMBER 11. _In Camp. Mexico._

The Irishman returned this evening for the week-end, his errand being to help us start on our way on Tuesday next. His train was late--he arrived just before daylight faded. I heard them say, “He has some one with him, who can it be...?” It was the Swede again, poor man having been prevailed upon to return.