Part 18

“Why do white people always want peace?” he asked.

“Surely peace is natural! Don’t all people want it? Don’t you?”

“Peace is only the rest after war,” he said. “So it is not more natural than fighting: perhaps not so natural.”

“No, but there is another peace: the peace that passes all understanding. Don’t you know that?”

“I don’t think I do,” he said.

“What a pity!” she cried.

“Ah!” he said. “You want to teach me! But to me it is different. Each man has two spirits in him. The one is like the early morning in the time of rain, very quiet, and sweet, moist, no?--with the mocking-bird singing, and birds flying about, very fresh. And the other is like the dry season, the steady, strong hot light of the day, which seems as if it will never change.”

“But you like the first better,” she cried.

“I don’t know!” he replied. “The other lasts longer.”

“I am sure you like the fresh morning better,” she said.

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” He smiled a crumpled sort of smile, and she could tell he really did _not_ know. “In the first time, you can feel the flowers on their stem, the stem very strong and full of sap, no?--and the flower opening on top like a face that has the perfume of desire. And a woman might be like that.--But this passes, and the sun begins to shine very strong, very hot, no? Then everything inside a man changes, goes dark, no! And the flowers crumple up, and the breast of a man becomes like a steel mirror. And he is all darkness inside, coiling and uncoiling like a snake. All the flowers withered up on shrunk stems, no? And then women don’t exist for a man. They disappear like the flowers.”

“And then what does he want?” said Kate.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he wants to be a very big man, and master all the people.”

“Then why doesn’t he?” said Kate.

He lifted his shoulders.

“And you,” he said to her. “You seem to me like that morning I told you about.”

“I am just forty years old,” she laughed shakily.

Again he lifted his shoulders.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It is the same. Your body seems to me like the stem of the flower I told you about, and in your face it will always be morning, of the time of the rains.”

“Why do you say that to me?” she said, as an involuntary strange shudder shook her.

“Why not say it!” he replied. “You are like the cool morning, very fresh. In Mexico, we are the end of the hot dry day.”

He watched her, with a strange lingering desire in his black eyes, and what seemed to her a curious, lurking sort of insolence. She dropped her head to hide from him, and rocked in her chair.

“I would like to marry you,” he said; “if ever you will marry. I would like to marry you.”

“I don’t think I shall _ever_ marry again,” she flashed, her bosom heaving like suffocation, and a dark flush suffusing over her face, against her will.

“Who knows!” said he.

Ramón was coming down the terrace, his fine white serape folded over his naked shoulder, with its blue-and-dark pattern at the borders, and its long scarlet fringe dangling and swaying as he walked. He leaned against one of the pillars of the terrace, and looked down at Kate and Cipriano. Cipriano glanced up with that peculiar glance of primitive intimacy.

“I told the Señora Caterina,” he said, “if ever she wanted to marry a man, she should marry me.”

“It is plain talk,” said Ramón, glancing at Cipriano with the same intimacy, and smiling.

Then he looked at Kate, with a slow smile in his brown eyes, and a shadow of curious knowledge on his face. He folded his arms over his breast, as the natives do when it is cold and they are protecting themselves; and the cream-brown flesh, like opium, lifted the bosses of his breast, full and smooth.

“Don Cipriano says that white people always want peace,” she said, looking up at Ramón with haunted eyes. “Don’t you consider yourselves white people?” she asked, with a slight, deliberate impertinence.

“No whiter than we are,” smiled Ramón. “Not lily-white, at least.”

“And don’t you want peace?” she asked.

“I? I shouldn’t think of it. The meek have inherited the earth, according to prophecy. But who am I, that I should envy them their peace! No, Señora. Do I look like a gospel of peace?--or a gospel of war either? Life doesn’t split down that division, for me.”

“I don’t know what you want,” said she, looking up at him with haunted eyes.

“We only half know ourselves,” he replied, smiling with changeful eyes. “Perhaps not so much as half.”

There was a certain vulnerable kindliness about him, which made her wonder, startled, if she had ever realised what real fatherliness meant. The mystery, the nobility, the inaccessibility, and the vulnerable compassion of man in his separate fatherhood.

“You don’t like brown-skinned people?” he asked her gently.

“I think it is beautiful to look at,” she said. “But”--with a faint shudder--“I am glad I am white.”

“You feel there could be no contact?” he said, simply.

“Yes!” she said. “I mean that.”

“It is as you feel,” he said.

And as he said it, she knew he was more beautiful to her than any blond white man, and that, in a remote, far-off way, the contact with him was more precious than any contact she had known.

But then, though he cast over her a certain shadow, he would never encroach on her, he would never seek any close contact. It was the incompleteness in Cipriano that sought her out, and seemed to trespass on her.

Hearing Ramón’s voice, Carlota appeared uneasily in a doorway. Hearing him speak English, she disappeared again, on a gust of anger. But after a little while, she came once more, with a little vase containing the creamy-coloured, thick flowers that are coloured like freesias, and that smell very sweet.

“Oh, how nice!” said Kate. “They are temple flowers! In Ceylon the natives tiptoe into the little temples and lay one flower on the table at the foot of the big Buddha statues. And the tables of offering are all covered with these flowers, all put so neatly. The natives have that delicate oriental way of putting things down.”

“Ah!” said Carlota, setting the vase on the table. “I did not bring them for any gods, especially strange ones. I brought them for you, Señora. They smell so sweet.”

“Don’t they!” said Kate.

The two men went away, Ramón laughing.

“Ah, Señora!” said Carlota, sitting down tense at the table. “Could you follow Ramón? Could _you_ give up the Blessed Virgin?--I could sooner die!”

“Ha!” said Kate, with a little weariness. “Surely we don’t want any _more_ gods.”

“More gods, Señora!” said Doña Carlota, shocked. “But how is it possible!--Don Ramón is in mortal sin.”

Kate was silent.

“And he wants to lead more and more people into the same,” continued Carlota. “It is the sin of pride. Men wise in their own conceit!--The cardinal sin of men. Ah, I have told him.--And I am so glad, Señora, that you feel as I feel. I am so afraid of American women, women like that. They wish to have men’s minds, so they accept all the follies and wickedness of men.--You are Catholic, Señora?”

“I was educated in a convent,” said Kate.

“Ah, of course! Of course!--Ah, Señora, as if a woman who had ever known the Blessed Virgin could ever part from her again. Ah, Señora, what woman would have the heart to put Christ back on the Cross, to crucify him twice! But men, men! This Quetzalcoatl business! What buffoonery, Señora; if it were not horrible sin! And two clever, well-educated men! Wise in their own conceit!”

“Men usually are,” said Kate.

It was sunset, with a big level cloud like fur overhead, only the sides of the horizon fairly clear. The sun was not visible. It had gone down in a thick, rose-red fume behind the wavy ridge of the mountains. Now the hills stood up bluish, all the air was a salmon-red flush, the fawn water had pinkish ripples. Boys and men, bathing a little way along the shore, were the colour of deep flame.

Kate and Carlota had climbed up to the azotea, the flat roof, from the stone stairway at the end of the terrace. They could see the world: the hacienda with its courtyard like a fortress, the road between deep trees, the black mud huts near the broken highroad, and little naked fires already twinkling outside the doors. All the air was pinkish, melting to a lavender blue, and the willows on the shore, in the pink light, were apple-green and glowing. The hills behind rose abruptly, like mounds, dry and pinky. Away in the distance, down the lake, the two white obelisk towers of Sayula glinted among the trees, and villas peeped out. Boats were creeping into the shadow, from the outer brightness of the lake.

And in one of these boats was Juana, being rowed, disconsolate, home.

CHAP: XIII. THE FIRST RAIN.

Ramón and Cipriano were out by the lake. Cipriano also had changed into the white clothes and sandals, and he looked better than when in uniform.

“I had a talk with Montes when he came to Guadalajara,” Cipriano said to Ramón. Montes was the President of the Republic.

“And what did he say?”

“He is careful. But he doesn’t like his colleagues. I think he feels lonely. I think he would like to know you better.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps that you could give him your moral support. Perhaps that you might be Secretary, and President when Montes’ term is up.”

“I like Montes,” said Ramón. “He is sincere and passionate. Did you like him?”

“Yes!” said Cipriano. “More or less. He is suspicious, and jealous for fear anyone else might want to share in his power. He has the cravings of a dictator. He wanted to find out if I would stick to him.”

“You let him know you would?”

“I told him that all I cared for was for you and for Mexico.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, he is no fool. He said: ‘Don Ramón sees the world with different eyes from mine. Who knows which of us is right. I want to save my country from poverty and unenlightenment, he wants to save its soul. I say, a hungry and ignorant man has no place for a soul. An empty belly grinds upon itself, so does an empty mind, and the soul doesn’t exist. Don Ramón says, if a man has no soul, it doesn’t matter whether he is hungry or ignorant. Well, he can go his way, and I mine. We shall never hinder one another, I believe. I give you my word I won’t have him interfered with. He sweeps the patio and I sweep the street.’”

“Sensible!” said Ramón. “And honest in his convictions.”

“Why should you not be Secretary in a few months’ time? And follow to the Presidency?” said Cipriano.

“You know I don’t want that. I must stand in another world, and act in another world.--Politics must go their own way, and society must do as it will. Leave me alone, Cipriano. I know you want me to be another Porfirio Diaz, or something like that. But for me that would be failure pure and simple.”

Cipriano was watching Ramón with black, guarded eyes, in which was an element of love, and of fear, and of trust, but also incomprehension, and the suspicion that goes with incomprehension.

“I don’t understand, myself, _what_ you want,” he muttered.

“Yes, yes, you do. Politics, and all this _social_ religion that Montes has got is like washing the outside of the egg, to make it look clean. But I, myself, I want to get inside the egg, right to the middle, to start it growing into a new bird. Ay! Cipriano! Mexico is like an old, old egg that the bird of Time laid long ago; and she has been sitting on it for centuries, till it looks foul in the nest of the world. But still, Cipriano, it is a good egg. It is not addled. Only the spark of fire has never gone into the middle of it, to start it.--Montes wants to clean the nest and wash the egg. But meanwhile, the egg will go cold and die. The more you save these people from poverty and ignorance, the quicker they will die: like a dirty egg that you take from under the hen-eagle, to wash it. While you wash the egg, it chills and dies. Poor old Montes, all his ideas are American and European. And the old Dove of Europe will never hatch the egg of dark-skinned America. The United States can’t die, because it isn’t alive. It is a nestful of china eggs, made of pot. So they can be kept clean.--But here, Cipriano, here, let us hatch the chick before we start cleaning up the nest.”

Cipriano hung his head. He was always testing Ramón, to see if he could change him. When he found he couldn’t, then he submitted, and new little fires of joy sprang up in him. But meanwhile, he had to try, and try again.

“It is no good, trying to mix the two things. At this stage of affairs, at least, they won’t mix. We have to shut our eyes and sink down, sink away from the surface, away, like shadows, down to the bottom. Like the pearl divers. But you keep bobbing up like a cork.”

Cipriano smiled subtly. He knew well enough.

“We’ve got to open the oyster of the cosmos, and get our manhood out of it. Till we’ve got the pearl, we are only gnats on the surface of the ocean,” said Ramón.

“My manhood is like a devil inside me,” said Cipriano.

“It’s very true,” said Ramón. “That’s because the old oyster has him shut up, like a black pearl. You must let him walk out.”

“Ramón,” said Cipriano, “Wouldn’t it be good to be a serpent, and be big enough to wrap one’s folds round the globe of the world, and crush it like that egg?”

Ramón looked at him and laughed.

“I believe we could do that,” said Cipriano, a slow smile curling round his mouth. “And wouldn’t it be good?”

Ramón shook his head, laughing.

“There would be _one_ good moment, at least,” he said.

“Who asks for more!” said Cipriano.

A spark flashed out of Ramón’s eyes too. Then he checked himself, and gathered himself together.

“What would be the good!” he said heavily. “If the egg was crushed, and we remained, what could we do but go howling down the empty passages of darkness. What’s the good, Cipriano?”

Ramón got up and walked away. The sun had set, the night was falling. And in his soul the great, writhing anger was alive again. Carlota provoked it into life: the two women seemed to breathe life into the black monster of his inward rage, till it began to lash again. And Cipriano stirred it up till it howled with desire.

“My manhood is like a demon howling inside me,” said Ramón to himself, in Cipriano’s words.

And he admitted the justice of the howling, his manhood being pent up, humiliated, goaded with insult inside him. And rage came over him, against Carlota, against Cipriano, against his own people, against all mankind, till he was filled with rage like the devil.

His people would betray him, he knew that. Cipriano would betray him. Given one little vulnerable chink, they would pierce him. They would leap at the place out of nowhere, like a tarantula, and bite in the poison.

While ever there was one little vulnerable chink. And what man can be invulnerable?

He went upstairs by the outer stairway, through the iron door at the side of the house, under the heavy trees, up to his room, and sat on his bed. The night was hot, heavy, and ominously still.

“The waters are coming,” he heard a servant say. He shut the doors of his room till it was black dark inside. Then he threw aside his clothing, saying: I put off the world with my clothes. And standing nude and invisible in the centre of his room he thrust his clenched fist upwards, with all his might, feeling he would break the walls of his chest. And his left hand hung loose, the fingers softly curving downwards.

And tense like the gush of a soundless fountain, he thrust up and reached down in the invisible dark, convulsed with passion. Till the black waves began to wash over his consciousness, over his mind, waves of darkness broke over his memory, over his being, like an incoming tide, till at last it was full tide, and he trembled, and fell to rest. Invisible in the darkness, he stood soft and relaxed, staring with wide eyes at the dark, and feeling the dark fecundity of the inner tide washing over his heart, over his belly, his mind dissolved away in the greater, dark mind, which is undisturbed by thoughts.

He covered his face with his hands, and stood still, in pure unconsciousness, neither hearing nor feeling nor knowing, like a dark sea-weed deep in the sea. With no Time and no World, in the deeps that are timeless and worldless.

Then when his heart and his belly were restored, his mind began to flicker again softly, like a soft flame flowing without departing.

So he wiped his face with his hands, and put his serape over his head, and, silent inside an aura of pain, he went out and took the drum, carrying it downstairs.

Martin, the man who loved him, was hovering in the zaguan.

“_Ya, Patrón?_” he said.

“_Ya!_” said Ramón.

The man ran indoors, where a lamp was burning in the big, dark kitchen, and ran out again with an armful of the woven straw mats.

“Where, Patrón?” he said.

Ramón hesitated in the centre of the courtyard, and looked at the sky.

“_Viene el agua?_” he said.

“_Creo que si, Patrón._”

They went to the shed where the bananas had been packed and carried away on donkeys. There the man threw down the petates. Ramón arranged them. Guisleno ran with canes. He was going to make lights, the simplest possible. Three pieces of thick cane, tied at the neck with a cord, stood up three-legged, waist high. In the three-pronged fork at the top he laid a piece of flat, slightly hollow lava stone. Then he came running from the house with a bit of burning ocote wood. Three or four bits of ocote, each bit no bigger than a long finger, flickered and rose in quick flames from the stone, and the courtyard danced with shadow.

Ramón took off his serape, folded it, and sat upon it. Guisleno lit another tripod-torch. Ramón sat with his back to the wall, the firelight dancing on his dark brows, that were sunk in a sort of frown. His breast shone like gold in the flame. He took the drum and sounded the summons, slow, monotonous, rather sad. In a moment two or three men came running. The drummer came, Ramón stood up and handed him the drum. He ran with it to the great outer doorway, and out into the dark lane, and there sounded the summons, quick, sharp.

Ramón put on his serape, whose scarlet fringe touched his knees, and stood motionless, with ruffled hair. Round his shoulders went the woven snake, and his head was through the middle of the blue, woven bird.

Cipriano came from the house. He was wearing a serape all scarlet and dark brown, a great scarlet sun at the centre, deep scarlet zigzags at the borders, and dark brown fringe at his knees. He came and stood at Ramón’s side, glancing up into Ramón’s face. But the other man’s brows were low, his eyes were fixed in the darkness of the sheds away across the courtyard. He was looking into the heart of the world; because the faces of men, and the hearts of men are helpless quicksands. Only in the heart of the cosmos man can look for strength. And if he can keep his soul in touch with the heart of the world, then from the heart of the world new blood will beat in strength and stillness into him, fulfilling his manhood.

Cipriano turned his black eyes to the courtyard. His soldiers had drawn near, in a little group. Three or four men were standing in dark serapes, round the fire. Cipriano stood brilliant like a cardinal bird, next to Ramón. Even his sandals were bright, sealing-wax red, and his loose linen trousers were bound at the ankles with red and black bands. His face looked very dark and ruddy in the firelight, his little black tuft of a beard hung odd and devilish, his eyes were glittering sardonically. But he caught Ramón’s hand in his small hand, and stood holding it.

The peons were coming through the entrance-way, balancing their big hats. Women were hurrying barefoot, swishing their full skirts, carrying babies inside the dark wrap of their rebozos, children running after. They all clustered towards the flame-light, like wild animals gazing in at the circle of men in dark sarapes, Ramón, magnificent in his white and blue and shadow, poising his beautiful head, Cipriano at his side like a glittering cardinal bird.

Carlota and Kate emerged from the inner doorway of the house. But there Carlota remained, wrapped in a black silk shawl, seated on a wooden bench where the soldiers usually sat, looking across at the ruddy flare of light, the circle of dark men, the tall beauty of her husband, the poppy-petal glitter of red, of Cipriano, the group of little, dust-coloured soldiers, and the solid throng of peons and women and children, standing gazing like animals. While through the gate men still came hurrying, and from outside, the drum sounded, and a high voice sang again and again:

“Someone will enter between the gates, Now, at this moment, Ay! See the light on the man that waits. Shall you? Shall I?

Someone will come to the place of fire, Now, at this moment, Ay! And hark to the words of their heart’s desire. Shall you? Shall I?

Someone will knock when the door is shut, Ay! in a moment, Ay! Hear a voice saying: I know you not! Shall you? Shall I?

There was a queer, wild yell each time on the _Ay!_ and like a bugle refrain: _Shall you? Shall I?_ It made Carlota shiver.

Kate, wrapping her yellow shawl round her, walked slowly towards the group.

The drum outside gave a rapid shudder, and was finished. The drummer came in, the great doors were shut and barred, the drummer took his place in the ring of standing men. A dead silence supervened.

Ramón continued to gaze from under lowered brows, into space. Then in a quiet, inward voice, he said:

“As I take off this cover, I put away the day that is gone from upon me.”

He took off his serape, and stood with it over his arm. All the men in the circle did the same, till they stood with naked breasts and shoulders, Cipriano very dark and strong-looking, in his smallness, beside Ramón.

“I put away the day that is gone,” Ramón continued, in the same still, inward voice, “and stand with my heart uncovered in the night of the gods.”

Then he looked down at the ground.

“Serpent of the earth,” he said; “snake that lies in the fire at the heart of the world, come! Come! Snake of the fire of the heart of the world, coil like gold round my ankles, and rise like life around my knee, and lay your head against my thigh. Come, put your head in my hand, cradle your head in my fingers, snake of the deeps. Kiss my feet and my ankles with your mouth of gold, kiss my knees and my inner thigh, snake branded with flame and shadow, come! and rest your head in my finger-basket! So!”

The voice was soft and hypnotic. It died upon a stillness. And it seemed as if really a mysterious presence had entered unseen from the underworld. It seemed to the peons as if really they saw a snake of brilliant gold and living blackness softly coiled around Ramón’s ankle and knee, and resting its head in his fingers, licking his palm with forked tongue.

He looked out at the big, dilated, glittering eyes of his people, and his own eyes were wide and uncanny.

“I tell you,” he said, “and I tell you truly. At the heart of this earth sleeps a great serpent, in the midst of fire. Those that go down in mines feel the heat and the sweat of him, they feel him move. It is the living fire of the earth, for the earth is alive. The snake of the world is huge, and the rocks are his scales, trees grow between them. I tell you the earth you dig is alive as a snake that sleeps. So vast a serpent you walk on, this lake lies between his folds as a drop of rain in the folds of a sleeping rattlesnake. Yet he none the less lives. The earth is alive.

“And if he died, we should all perish. Only his living keeps the soil sweet, that grows you maize. From the roots of his scales we dig silver and gold, and the trees have root in him, as the hair of my face has root in my lips.