Part 19

“The earth is alive. But he is very big, and we are very small, smaller than dust. But he is very big in his life, and sometimes he is angry. _These people, smaller than dust_, he says, _they stamp on me and say I am dead. Even to their asses they speak, and shout Harreh! Burro! But to me they speak no word. Therefore I will turn against them, like a woman who lies angry with her man in bed, and eats away his spirit with her anger, turning her back to him._

“That is what the earth says to us. He sends sorrow into our feet, and depression into our loins.

“Because as an angry woman in the house can make a man heavy, taking his life from him, so the earth can make us heavy, make our souls cold, and our life dreary in our feet.

“Speak then to the snake of the heart of the world, put oil on your fingers and lower your fingers for him to taste the oil of the earth, and let him send life into your feet and ankles and knees, like sap in the young maize pressing against the joints and making the milk of the maize bud among its hair.

“From the heart of the earth man feels his manhood rise up in him, like the maize that is proud, turning its green leaves outwards. Be proud like the maize, and let your roots go deep, deep, for the rains are here, and it is time for us to be growing in Mexico.”

Ramón ceased speaking, the drum softly pulsed. All the men of the ring were looking down at the earth and softly letting their left hands hang.

Carlota, who had not been able to hear, drifted up to Kate’s side, spell-bound by her husband. Kate unconsciously glanced down at the earth, and secretly let her fingers hang softly against her dress. But then she was afraid of what might happen to her, and she caught her hand up into her shawl.

Suddenly the drum began to give a very strong note, followed by a weak: a strange, exciting thud.

Everybody looked up. Ramón had flung his right arm tense into the air, and was looking up at the black dark sky. The men of the ring did the same, and the naked arms were thrust aloft like so many rockets.

“Up Up! Up!” said a wild voice.

“Up! Up!” cried the men of the ring, in a wild chorus.

And involuntarily the men in the crowd twitched, then shot their arms upwards, turning their faces to the dark heavens. Even some of the women boldly thrust up their naked arms, and relief entered their hearts as they did so.

But Kate would not lift her arm.

There was dead silence, even the drum was silent. Then the voice of Ramón was heard, speaking upwards to the black sky:

“Your big wings are dark, Bird, you are flying low to-night. You are flying low over Mexico, we shall soon feel the fan of your wings on our face.

“Ay, Bird! You fly about where you will. You fly past the stars, and you perch on the sun. You fly out of sight, and are gone beyond the white river of the sky. But you come back like the ducks of the north, looking for water and winter.

“You sit in the middle of the sun, and preen your feathers. You crouch in the river of stars, and make the star-dust rise around you. You fly away into the deepest hollow place of the sky, whence there seems no return.

“You come back to us, and hover overhead, and we feel your wings fanning our faces--”

Even as he spoke the wind rose, in sudden gusts, and a door could be heard slamming in the house, with a shivering of glass, and the trees gave off a tearing sound.

“Come then, Bird of the great sky!” Ramón called wildly. “Come! Oh Bird, settle a moment on my wrist, over my head, and give me power of the sky, and wisdom. Oh Bird! Bird of all the wide heavens, even if you drum your feathers in thunder, and drop the white snake of fire from your beak back to the earth again, where he can run in, deep down the rocks again, home: even if you come as the Thunderer, come! Settle on my wrist a moment, with the clutch of the power of thunder, and arch your wings over my head, like a shadow of clouds; and bend your breast to my brow, and bless me with the sun. Bird, roaming Bird of the Beyond, with thunder in your pinions and the snake of lightning in your beak, with the blue heaven in the socket of your wings and cloud in the arch of your neck, with sun in the burnt feathers of your breast and power in your feet, with terrible wisdom in your flight, swoop to me a moment, swoop!”

Sudden gusts of wind tore at the little fires of flame, till they could be heard to rustle, and the lake began to speak in a vast hollow noise, beyond the tearing of trees. Distant lightning was beating far off, over the black hills.

Ramón dropped his arm, which had been bent over his head. The drum began to beat. Then he said:

“Sit down a moment, before the Bird shakes water out of his wings. It will come soon. Sit down.”

There was a stir. Men put their serapes over their faces, women clutched their rebozos tighter, and all sat down on the ground. Only Kate and Carlota remained standing, on the outer edge. Gusts of wind tore at the flames, the men put their hats on the ground in front of them.

“The earth is alive, and the sky is alive,” said Ramón in his natural voice, “and between them, we live. Earth has kissed my knees, and put strength in my belly. Sky has perched on my wrist, and sent power into my breast.

“But as in the morning the Morning-star stands between earth and sky, a star can rise in us, and stand between the heart and the loins.

“That is the manhood of man, and for woman, her womanhood.

“You are not yet men. And women, you are not yet women.

“You run about and toss about and die, and still you have not found the star of your manhood rise within you, the stars of your womanhood shine out serene between your breasts, women.

“I tell you, for him that wishes it, the star of his manhood shall rise within him, and he shall be proud, and perfect even as the Morning-star is perfect.

“And the star of a woman’s womanhood can rise at last, from between the heavy rim of the earth and the lost grey void of the sky.

“But how? How shall we do it? How shall it be?

“How shall we men become Men of the Morning Star? And the women the Dawn-Star Women?

“Lower your fingers to the caress of the Snake of the earth.

“Lift your wrist for a perch to the far-lying Bird.

“Have the courage of both, the courage of lightning and the earthquake.

“And wisdom of both, the wisdom of the snake and the eagle.

“And the peace of both, the peace of the serpent and the sun.

“And the power of both, the power of the innermost earth and the outermost heaven.

“But on your brow, Men! the undimmed Morning Star, that neither day nor night, nor earth nor sky can swallow and put out.

“And between your breasts, Women! the Dawn-Star, that cannot be dimmed.

“And your home at last is the Morning Star. Neither heaven nor earth shall swallow you up at the last, but you shall pass into the place beyond both, into the bright star that is lonely yet feels itself never alone.

“The Morning Star is sending you a messenger, a god who died in Mexico. But he slept his sleep, and the invisible Ones washed his body with water of resurrection. So he has risen, and pushed the stone from the mouth of the tomb, and has stretched himself. And now he is striding across the horizons even quicker than the great stone from the tomb is tumbling back to the earth, to crush those that rolled it up.

“The Son of the Star is coming back to the Sons of Men, with big, bright strides.

“Prepare to receive him. And wash yourselves, and put oil on your hands and your feet, on your mouth and eyes and ears and nostrils, on your breast and navel and on the secret places of your body, that nothing of the dead days, no dust of skeletons and evil things may pass into you and make you unclean.

“Do not look with the eyes of yesterday, nor like yesterday listen, nor breathe, nor smell, nor taste, nor swallow food and drink. Do not kiss with the mouths of yesterday, nor touch with the hands, nor walk with yesterday’s feet. And let your navel know nothing of yesterday, and go into your women with a new body, enter the new body in her.

“For yesterday’s body is dead, and carrion, the Xopilote is hovering above it.

“Put yesterday’s body from off you, and have a new body. Even as your God who is coming. Quetzalcoatl is coming with a new body, like a star, from the shadows of death.

“Yes, even as you sit upon the earth this moment, with the round of your body touching the round of the earth, say: Earth! Earth! you are alive as the globes of my body are alive. Breathe the kiss of the inner earth upon me, even as I sit upon you.

“And so, it is said. The earth is stirring beneath you, the sky is rushing its wings above. Go home to your homes, in front of the waters that will fall and cut you off forever from your yesterdays.

“Go home, and hope to be Men of the Morning Star, Women of the Star of Dawn.

“You are not yet men and women----”

He rose up and waved to the people to be gone. And in a moment they were on their feet, scurrying and hastening with the quiet Mexican hurry, that seems to run low down upon the surface of the earth.

The black wind was all loose in the sky, tearing with the thin shriek of torn fabrics, in the mango trees. Men held their big hats on their heads and ran with bent knees, their serapes blowing. Women clutched their rebozos tighter and ran barefoot to the zaguan.

The big doors were open, a soldier stood with a gun across his back, holding a hurricane lamp. And the people fled like ghosts through the doors, and away up the black lane like bits of paper veering away into nothingness, blown out of their line of flight. In a moment, they had all silently gone.

Martin barred the great doors. The soldier put down his lamp on the wooden bench, and he and his comrades sat huddled in their dark shawls, in a little bunch like toadstools in the dark cavern of the zaguan. Already one had curled himself up on the wooden bench, wrapped like a snail in his blanket, head disappeared.

“The water is coming!” cried the servants excitedly, as Kate went upstairs with Doña Carlota.

The lake was quite black, like a great pit. The wind suddenly blew with violence, with a strange ripping sound in the mango trees, as if some membrane in the air were being ripped. The white-flowered oleanders in the garden below leaned over quite flat, their white flowers ghostly, going right down to the earth, in the pale beam of the lamp--like a street lamp--that shone on the wall at the front entrance. A young palm-tree bent and spread its leaves on the ground. Some invisible juggernaut car rolling in the dark over the outside world.

Away across the lake, south-west, lightning blazed and ran down the sky like some portentous writing. And soft, velvety thunder broke inwardly, strangely.

“It frightens me!” cried Doña Carlota, putting her hand over her eyes and hastening into a far corner of the bare salon.

Cipriano and Kate stood on the terrace, watching the coloured flowers in the pots shake and fly to bits, disappearing up into the void of darkness. Kate clutched her shawl. But the wind suddenly got under Cipriano’s blanket, and lifted it straight up in the air, then dropped it in a scarlet flare over his head. Kate watched his deep, strong Indian chest lift as his arms quickly fought to free his head. How dark he was, and how primitively physical, beautiful and deep-breasted, with soft, full flesh! But all, as it were, for himself. Nothing that came forth from him to meet with one outside. All oblivious of the outside, all for himself.

“Ah! the water!” he cried, holding down his serape.

The first great drops were flying darkly at the flowers, like arrows. Kate stood back into the doorway of the salon. A pure blaze of lightning slipped three-fold above the black hills, seemed to stand a moment, then slip back into the dark.

Down came the rain with a smash, as if some great vessel had broken. With it, came a waft of icy air. And all the time, first in one part of the sky, then in another, in quick succession the blue lightning, very blue, broke out of heaven and lit up the air for a blue, breathless moment, looming trees and ghost of a garden, then was gone, while thunder dropped and exploded continually.

Kate watched the dropping masses of water in wonder. Already, in the blue moments of lightning, she saw the garden below a pond, the walks were rushing rivers. It was cold. She turned indoors.

A servant was going round the rooms with a lantern, to look if scorpions were coming out. He found one scuttling across the floor of Kate’s room, and one fallen from the ceiling beams on to Carlota’s bed.

They sat in the salon in rocking chairs, Carlota and Kate, and rocked, smelling the good wetness, breathing the good, chilled air. Kate had already forgotten what really chill air was like. She wrapped her shawl tighter round her.

“Ah, yes, you feel cold! You must take care in the nights, now. Sometimes in the rainy season the nights are very cold. You must be ready with an extra blanket. And the servants, poor things, they just lie and shudder, and they get up in the morning like corpses.--But the sun soon warms them again, and they seem to think they must bear what comes. So they complain sometimes, but still they don’t provide.”

The wind had gone, suddenly. Kate was uneasy, uneasy, with the smell of water, almost of ice, in her nostrils, and her blood still hot and dark. She got up and went again to the terrace. Cipriano was still standing there, motionless and inscrutable, like a monument, in his red and dark serape.

The rain was abating. Down below in the garden, two barefooted women-servants were running through the water, in the faint light of the zaguan lamp, running across the garden and putting ollas, and square gasoline cans under the arching spouts of water that seethed down from the roof, then darting away while they filled, then struggling in with the frothy vessel. It would save making trips to the lake, for water.

“What do you think of us?” Cipriano said to her.

“It is strange to me,” she replied, wondering and a little awed by the night.

“Good, no?” he said, in an exultant tone.

“A little scaring,” she replied, with a slight laugh.

“When you are used to it,” he said, “it seems natural, no? It seems natural so--as it is. And when you go to a country like England, where all is so safe and ready-made, then you miss it. You keep saying to yourself: ‘What am I missing? What is it that is not here?’”

He seemed to be gloating in his native darkness. It was curious, that though he spoke such good English, it seemed always foreign to her, more foreign than Doña Carlota’s Spanish.

“I can’t understand that people want to have everything, all life, no?--so safe and ready-made as in England and America. It is good to be _awake_. On the _qui vive_, no?”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“So I like it,” he said, “when Ramón tells the people the earth is alive, and the sky has a big bird in it, that you don’t see. I think it is true. Certainly! And it is good to know it, because then one is on the _qui vive_, no?

“But it’s tiring to be always on the _qui vive_,” she said.

“Why? Why tiring? No, I think, on the contrary, it is refreshing.--Ah, you should marry, and live in Mexico. At last, I am sure, you would like it. You would keep waking up more and more to it.”

“Or else going more and more deadened,” she said. “That is how most foreigners go, it seems to me.”

“Why deadened?” he said to her. “I don’t understand. Why deadened? Here you have a country where night is night, and rain comes down and you know it. And you have a people with whom you must be on the _qui vive_ all the time, all the time. And that is very good, no? You don’t go sleepy. Like a pear! Don’t you say a pear goes sleepy, no?--cuando sé echa a perder?”

“Yes!” she said.

“And here you have also Ramón. How does Ramón seem to you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to say anything. But I do think he is almost too much: too far.--And I _don’t_ think he is Mexican.”

“Why not? Why not Mexican? He is Mexican.”

“Not as you are.”

“How not as I am? He is Mexican.”

“He seems to me to belong to the old, old Europe,” she said.

“And he seems to me to belong to the old, old Mexico--and also to the new,” he added quickly.

“But you don’t believe in him.”

“How?”

“You--yourself. You don’t believe in him. You think it is like everything else, a sort of game. Everything is a sort of game, a put-up job, to you Mexicans. You don’t _really_ believe, in anything.”

“How not believe? I not believe in Ramón?--Well, perhaps not, in that way of kneeling before him and spreading out my arms and shedding tears on his feet. But I--I believe in him, too. Not in your way, but in mine. I tell you why. Because he has the power to compel me. If he hadn’t the power to _compel_ me, how should I believe?”

“It is a queer sort of belief that is compelled,” she said.

“How else should one believe, except by being compelled? I like Ramón for that, that he can compel me. When I grew up, and my god-father could not compel me to believe, I was very unhappy. It made me very unhappy.--But Ramón _compels_ me, and that is very good. It makes me very happy, when I know I can’t escape. It would make you happy too.”

“To know I could not escape from Don Ramón?” she said ironically.

“Yes, that also. And to know you could not escape from Mexico. And even from such a man, as me.”

She paused in the dark before she answered, sardonically:

“I don’t think it would make me happy to feel I couldn’t escape from Mexico. No, I feel, unless I was sure I could get out any day, I couldn’t bear to be here.”

In her mind she thought: And perhaps Ramón is the only one I couldn’t quite escape from, because he really touches me somewhere inside. But from you, you little Cipriano, I should have no need even to escape, because I could not be caught by you.

“Ah!” he said quickly. “You think so. But then you don’t know. You can only think with American thoughts. It is natural. From your education, you have only American thoughts, U.S.A. thoughts, to think with. Nearly all women are like that: even Mexican women of the Spanish-Mexican class. They are all thinking nothing but U.S.A. thoughts, because those are the ones that go with the way they dress their hair. And so it is with you. You think like a modern woman, because you belong to the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic world, and dress your hair in a certain way, and have money, and are altogether free.--But you only think like this because you have had these thoughts put in your head, just as in Mexico you spend centavos and pesos, because that is the Mexican money you have put in your pocket. It’s what they give you at the bank.--So when you say you are free, you are _not_ free. You are compelled all the time to be thinking U.S.A. thoughts--_compelled_, I must say. You have not as much choice as a slave. As the peons must eat tortillas, tortillas, tortillas, because there is nothing else, you must think these U.S.A. thoughts, about being a woman and being free. Every day you must eat those tortillas, tortillas.--Till you don’t know how you would like something else.”

“What else should I like?” she said, with a grimace at the darkness.

“Other thoughts, other feelings.--You are afraid of such a man as me, because you think I should not treat you _à l’américaine_. You are quite right. I should not treat you as an American woman must be treated. Why should I? I don’t wish to. It doesn’t seem good to me.”

“You would treat a woman like a real old Mexican, would you? Keep her ignorant, and shut her up?” said Kate sarcastically.

“I could not keep her ignorant if she did not start ignorant. But what more I had to teach her wouldn’t be in the American style of teaching.”

“What then?”

“Quien sabe! Ça reste à voir.”

“Et continuera a y rester,” said Kate, laughing.

CHAP: XIV. HOME TO SAYULA.

The morning came perfectly blue, with a freshness in the air and a blue luminousness over the trees and the distant mountains, and birds so bright, absolutely like new-opened buds sparking in the air.

Cipriano was returning to Guadalajara in the automobile, and Carlota was going with him. Kate would be rowed home on the lake.

To Ramón, Carlota was still, at times, a torture. She seemed to have the power still to lacerate him, inside his bowels. Not in his mind or spirit, but in his old emotional, passional self: right in the middle of his belly, to tear him and make him feel he bled inwardly.

Because he had loved her, he had cared for her: for the affectionate, passionate, whimsical, sometimes elfish creature she had been. He had made much of her, and spoiled her, for many years.

But all the while, gradually, his nature was changing inside him. Not that he ceased to care for her, or wanted other women. That she could have understood. But inside him was a slow, blind imperative, urging him to cast his emotional and spiritual and mental self into the slow furnace, and smelt them into a new, whole being.

But he had Carlota to reckon with. She loved him, and that, to her, was the outstanding factor. She loved him, emotionally. And spiritually, she loved mankind. And mentally, she was sure she was quite right.

Yet as time went on, he had to change. He had to cast that emotional self, which she loved, into the furnace, to be smelted down to another self.

And she felt she was robbed, cheated. Why couldn’t he go on being gentle, good, and loving, and trying to make the whole world more gentle, good, and loving?

He couldn’t, because it was borne in upon him that the world had gone as far as it could go in the good, gentle, and loving direction, and anything further in that line meant perversity. So the time had come for the slow, great change to something else--what, he didn’t know.

The emotion of love, and the greater emotion of liberty for mankind seemed to go hard and congeal upon him, like the shell on a chrysalis. It was the old caterpillar stage of Christianity evolving into something else.

But Carlota felt this was all she had, this emotion of love, for her husband, her children, for her people, for the animals and birds and trees of the world. It was her all, her Christ, and her Blessed Virgin. How could she let it go?

So she continued to love him, and to love the world, steadily, pathetically, obstinately and devilishly. She prayed for him, and she engaged in works of charity.

But her love had turned from being the spontaneous flow, subject to the unforseen comings and goings of the Holy Ghost, and had turned into will. She loved now with her _will_: as the white world now tends to do. She became filled with charity: that cruel kindness.

Her winsomeness and her elvishness departed from her, she began to wither, she grew tense. And she blamed him, and prayed for him. Even as the spontaneous mystery died in her, the will hardened, till she was nothing but a will: a lost will.

She soon succeeded in drawing the life of her young boys all to herself, with her pathos and her subtle will. Ramón was too proud and angry to fight for them. They were her children. Let her have them.

They were the children of his old body. His new body had no children: would probably never have any.