Part 34
And as the dance went on, Cipriano felt his strength increase and surge inside him. When all his limbs were glistening with sweat, and his spirit was at last satisfied, he was at once tired and surcharged with extraordinary power. Then he would throw his scarlet and dark sarape around him, and motion other men to fight, giving his spear and shield to another officer or soldier, going himself to sit down on the ground and watch, by the firelight. And then he felt his limbs and his whole body immense with power, he felt the black mystery of power go out of him over all his soldiers. And he sat there imperturbable, in silence, holding all those black-eyed men in the splendour of his own, silent self. His own dark consciousness seemed to radiate through their flesh and their bones, they were conscious, not through themselves but through him. And as a man’s instinct is to shield his own head, so that instinct was to shield Cipriano, for he was the most precious part of themselves to them. It was in him they were supreme. They got their splendour from his power and their greatest consciousness was his consciousness diffusing them.
“I am not of myself,” he would say to them. “I am of the red Huitzilopochtli and the power from behind the sun. And you are not of yourselves. Of yourselves you are nothing. You are of me, my men.”
He encouraged them to dance naked, with the breech-cloth, to rub themselves with the red earth-powder, over the oil.
“This is the oil of the stars. Rub it well into your limbs and you will be strong as the starry sky. This is the red blood of volcanos. Rub yourselves with it, you will have the power of the fire of the volcanoes, from the centre of the earth.”
He encouraged them to dance the silent, concentrated dances to the drum, to dance for hours, gathering power and strength.
“If you know how to tread the dance, you can tread deeper and deeper till you touch the middle of the earth with your foot. And when you touch the middle of the earth, you will have such power in your belly and your breast, no man will be able to overcome you. Get the second strength. Get it, get it out of the earth, get it from behind the sun. Get the second strength.”
He made long, rapid marches across the wild Mexican country, and through the mountains, moving light and swift. He liked to have his men camping in the open, with no tents: but the watch set, and the stars overhead. He pursued the bandits with swift movements. He stripped his captives and tied them up. But if it seemed a brave man, he would swear him in. If it seemed to him a knave, a treacherous cur, he stabbed him to the heart, saying:
“I am the red Huitzilopochtli, of the knife.”
Already he had got his own small, picked body of men out of the ignominious drab uniform, dressed in white with the scarlet sash and the scarlet ankle cords, and carrying the good, red and black sarape. And his men must be clean. On the march they would stop by some river, with the order for every man to strip and wash, and wash his clothing. Then the men, dark and ruddy, moved about naked, while the white clothing of strong white cotton dried on the earth. They moved on again, glittering with the peculiar whiteness of cotton clothes in Mexico, gun at their backs, sarape and small pack on their backs, wearing the heavy straw hats with the scarlet crowns on their heads.
“They must move!” he said to his officers. “They must learn again to move swiftly and untiringly, with the old power. They must not lie about. In the sleep hours, let them sleep. In the waking, let them work, or march, or drill, or dance.”
He divided his regiment up into little companies of a hundred each, with a centurion and a sergeant in command. Each company of a hundred must learn to act in perfect unison, freely and flexibly. “Perfect your hundred,” Cipriano insisted, “and I will perfect your thousands and your tens of thousands.”
“Listen!” he said. “For us, no trench and cannon warfare. My men are no cannon-fodder, nor trench-dung. Where cannon are, we move away. Our hundreds break up, and we attack where the cannon are not. That we are swift, that we are silent, that we have no burdens, and that the second strength is in us: that is all. We intend to put up no battle-front, but to attack at our own moment, and at a thousand points.”
And always he reiterated:
“If you can get the power from the heart of the earth, and the power from behind the sun; if you can summon the power of the red Huitzilopochtli into you, nobody can conquer you. Get the second strength.”
Ramón was pressing Cipriano now openly to assume the living Huitzilopochtli.
“Come!” he said. “It is time you let General Viedma be swallowed up in the red Huitzilopochtli. Don’t you think?”
“If I know what it means,” said Cipriano.
They were sitting on the mats in Ramón’s room, in the heat before the rain came, towards the end of the rainy season.
“Stand up!” said Ramón.
Cipriano stood up at once, with that soft, startling alertness in his movement.
Ramón came quickly to him, placed one of his hands over Cipriano’s eyes, closing them. Ramón stood behind Cipriano, who remained motionless in the warm dark, his consciousness reeling in strange concentric waves, towards a centre where it suddenly plunges into the bottomless deeps, like sleep.
“Cipriano?”--the voice sounded so far off.
“Yes.”
“Is it dark?”
“It is dark.”
“Is it alive? Is the darkness alive?”
“Surely it is alive.”
“Who lives?”
“I.”
“Where?”
“I know not. In the living darkness.”
Ramón then bound Cipriano’s eyes and head with a strip of black fur. Then again, with a warm, soft pressure, he pressed one naked hand over Cipriano’s naked breast, and one between his shoulders. Cipriano stood in profound darkness, erect and silent.
“Cipriano?”
“Yes.”
“Is it dark in your heart?”
“It is coming dark.”
Ramón felt the thud of the man’s heart slowly slackening. In Cipriano, another circle of darkness had started slowly to revolve, from his heart. It swung in widening rounds, like a greater sleep.
“Is it dark?”
“It is dark.”
“Who lives?”
“I.”
Ramón bound Cipriano’s arms at his sides, with a belt of fur round the breast. Then he put his one hand over the navel, his other hand in the small of the other man’s back, pressing with slow, warm, powerful pressure.
“Cipriano?”
“Yes.”
The voice and the answer going farther and farther away.
“Is it dark?”
“No, my Lord.”
Ramón knelt and pressed his arms close round Cipriano’s waist, pressing his black head against his side. And Cipriano began to feel as if his mind, his head were melting away in the darkness, like a pearl in black wine, the other circle of sleep began to swing, vast. And he was a man without a head, moving like a dark wind over the face of the dark waters.
“Is it perfect?”
“It is perfect.”
“Who lives?”
“Who--!”
Cipriano no longer knew.
Ramón bound him fast round the middle, then, pressing his head against the hip, folded the arms round Cipriano’s loins, closing with his hands the secret places.
“Cipriano?”
“Yes.”
“Is it all dark?”
But Cipriano could not answer. The last circle was sweeping round, and the breath upon the waters was sinking into the waters, there was no more utterance. Ramón kneeled with pressed head and arms and hands, for some moments still. Then he bound the loins, binding the wrists to the hips.
Cipriano stood rigid and motionless. Ramón clasped the two knees with his hands, till they were warm, and he felt them dark and asleep like two living stones, or two eggs. Then swiftly he bound them together, and grasped the ankles, as one might grasp the base of a young tree as it emerges from the earth. Crouching on the earth, he gripped them in an intense grip, resting his head on the feet. The moments passed, and both men were unconscious.
Then Ramón bound the ankles, lifted Cipriano suddenly, with a sleep-moving softness, laid him on the skin of a big mountain-lion, which was spread upon the blankets, threw over him the red and black sarape of Huitzilopochtli, and lay down at his feet, holding Cipriano’s feet to his own abdomen.
And both men passed into perfect unconsciousness, Cipriano within the womb of undisturbed creation, Ramón in the death sleep.
How long they were both dark, they never knew. It was twilight. Ramón was suddenly aroused by the jerking of Cipriano’s feet. He sat up, and took the blanket off Cipriano’s face.
“Is it night?” said Cipriano.
“Almost night,” said Ramón.
Silence followed, while Ramón unfastened the bonds, beginning at the feet. Before he unbound the eyes, he closed the window, so the room was almost dark. Then he unfastened the last binding, and Cipriano sat up, looking, then suddenly covering his eyes.
“Make it quite dark!” he said.
Ramón closed the shutters, and the room was complete night. Then he returned and sat on the mats by Cipriano. Cipriano was asleep again. After a while, Ramón left him.
He did not see him again till dawn. Then Ramón found him going down to the lake, to swim. The two men swam together, while the sun rose. With the rain, the lake was colder. They went to the house to rub oil in their limbs.
Cipriano looked at Ramón with black eyes which seemed to be looking at all space.
“I went far,” he said.
“To where there is no beyond?” said Ramón.
“Yes, there.”
And in a moment or two, Cipriano was wrapped in his blanket again, and asleep.
He did not wake till the afternoon. Then he ate, and took a boat, and rowed down the lake to Kate. He found her at home. She was surprised to see him, in his white clothes and with his sarape of Huitzilopochtli.
“I am going to be the living Huitzilopochtli,” he said.
“Are you? When? Does it feel queer?”--Kate was afraid of his eyes, they seemed inhuman.
“On Thursday. The day of Huitzilopochtli is to be Thursday. Won’t you sit beside me, and be wife of me when I am a god?”
“But do you feel you _are_ a god?” she asked, querulous.
He turned his eyes on her strangely.
“I have been,” he said. “And I have come back. But I belong there, where I went.”
“Where?”
“Where there is no beyond, and the darkness sinks into the water, and waking and sleeping are one thing.”
“No,” said Kate, afraid. “I never understood mystical things. They make me uneasy.”
“Is it mystical when I come in to you?”
“No,” said Kate. “Surely that is physical.”
“So is the other, only further. Won’t you be the bride of Huitzilopochtli?” he asked again.
“Not so soon,” said Kate.
“Not so soon!” he re-echoed.
There was a pause.
“Will you come back with me to Jamiltepec now?” he asked.
“Not now,” she said.
“Why not now?”
“Oh, I don’t know.--You treat me as if I had no life of my own,” she said. “But I have.”
“A life of your own? Who gave it you? Where did you get it?”
“I don’t know. But I have got it. And I must live it. I can’t be just swallowed up.”
“Why, Malintzi?” he said, giving her a name. “Why can’t you?”
“Be just swallowed up?” she said. “Well, I just can’t.”
“I am the living Huitzilopochtli,” he said. “And I am swallowed up. I thought, so could you be, Malintzi.”
“No! Not quite?” she said.
“Not quite! Not quite! Not now! Not just now! How often you say _Not_, to-day!--I must go back to Ramón.”
“Yes. Go back to him. You only care about him, and your living Quetzalcoatl and your living Huitzilopochtli.--I am only a woman.”
“No, Malintzi, you are more. You are more than Kate, you are Malintzi.”
“I am not! I am only Kate, and I am only a woman. I mistrust all that other stuff.”
“I am more than just a man, Malintzi.--Don’t you see that?”
“No!” said Kate. “I don’t see it. Why _should_ you be more than just a man?”
“Because I am the living Huitzilopochtli. Didn’t I tell you? You’ve got dust in your mouth to-day, Malintzi.”
He went away, leaving her rocking in anger on her terrace, in love again with her old self, and hostile to the new thing. She was thinking of London and Paris and New York, and all the people there.
“Oh!” she cried to herself, stifling. “For heaven’s sake let me get out of this, and back to simple human people. I loathe the very sound of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli. I would die rather than be mixed up in it any more. Horrible, really, both Ramón and Cipriano. And they want to put it over me, with their high-flown bunk, and their Malintzi. Malintzi! I am Kate Forrester, really. I am neither Kate Leslie nor Kate Tylor. I am sick of these men putting names over me. I was born Kate Forrester, and I shall die Kate Forrester. I want to go home. Loathsome, really, to be called Malintzi.--I’ve had it put over me.”
CHAP: XXIII. HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT.
They had the Huitzilopochtli ceremony at night, in the wide yard in front of the church. The guard of Huitzilopochtli, in sarapes of black, red and yellow stripes, striped like tigers or wasps, stood holding torches of blazing ocote. A tall bonfire was built, but unkindled, in the centre of the yard.
In the towers where the bells had been, fires were blazing and the heavy drum of Huitzilopochtli went rolling its deep, sinister notes. It had been sounding all the while since the sun went down.
The crowd gathered under the trees, outside the gates in front of the church. The church doors were closed.
There was a bang of four firework cannons exploding simultaneously, then four rockets shot up into the sky, leaning in the four directions, and exploding in showers of red, green, white and yellow.
The church doors opened, and Cipriano appeared, in his brilliant sarape of Huitzilopochtli, and with three green parrot feathers erect on his brow. He was carrying a torch. He stooped and lit the big bonfire, then plucked out four blazing brands, and tossed them to four of his men, who stood waiting, naked save for their black breech-cloths. The men caught the brands as they flew, and ran in the four directions, to kindle the four bonfires that waited, one in each corner of the yard.
The guard had taken off their blankets and blouses, and were naked to the red sash. The lighter drum began to beat for the dance, and the dance began, the half-naked men throwing their blazing torches whirling in the air, catching them as they came down, dancing all the while. Cipriano, in the centre, threw up brand after brand from the fire.
Now that he was stripped of his blanket, his body was seen painted in horizontal bars of red and black, while from his mouth went a thin green line, and from his eyes a band of yellow.
The five fires, built hollow of little towers of ocote faggots, sent pure flame in a rush up to the dark sky, illuminating the dancing men, who sang in deep voices as they danced.
The fires rushed rapidly upwards in flame. The drum beat without ceasing. And the men of Huitzilopochtli danced on, like demons. Meanwhile the crowd sat in the old Indian silence, their black eyes glittering in the firelight. And gradually the fires began to die down, the white façade of the church, that had danced also to the yellow flames, began to go bluish above, merging into the night, rose-coloured below, behind the dark shapes that danced to the sinking fires.
Suddenly the dance ceased, the men threw their sarapes around them, and sat down. Little ocote fires upon the cane tripods flickered here and there, in a silence that lasted for some minutes. Then the drum sounded, and a man began to sing, in a clear, defiant voice, the _First Song of Huitzilopochtli_:
“I am Huitzilopochtli, The Red Huitzilopochtli, The blood-red.
I am Huitzilopochtli, Yellow of the sun, Sun in the blood.
I am Huitzilopochtli, White of the bone, Bone in the blood.
I am Huitzilopochtli, With a blade of grass between my teeth.
I am Huitzilopochtli, sitting in the dark. With my redness staining the body of the dark.
I watch by the fire. I wait behind men.
In the stillness of my night The cactus sharpens his thorn. The grass feels with his roots for the other sun.
Deeper than the roots of the mango tree Down in the centre of the earth Is the yellow, serpent-yellow shining of my sun.
Oh, beware of him! Oh, beware of me! Who runs athwart my serpent-flame Gets bitten and must die.
I am the sleeping and waking Of the anger of the manhood of men. I am the leaping and quaking Of fire bent back again.”
The song came to an end. There was a pause. Then all the men of Huitzilopochtli took it up again, changing the “I” into “He.”
“He is Huitzilopochtli, The Red Huitzilopochtli, The blood-red.
He is Huitzilopochtli, Yellow of the sun, Sun in the blood.
He is Huitzilopochtli, White of the bone, Bone in the blood.
He is Huitzilopochtli, With a blade of green grass between his teeth.
He is Huitzilopochtli, sitting in the dark, With his redness staining the body of the night.
He is watching by the fire. Waiting behind men.
In the stillness of his night Cactuses sharpen their thorns. Grass feels downwards with his roots.
Deeper than the roots of the mango tree Down in the centre of the earth Shines the yellow, serpent-yellow shining of the sun.
Oh, men, take care, take care! Take care of him and it. Nor run aslant his rays. Who is bitten, dies.
He is Huitzilopochtli, sleeping or waking Serpent in the bellies of men. Huitzilopochtli, leaping and quaking Fire of the passion of men.”
The big fires had all died down. Only the little flames on the tripods lit up the scene with a ruddy glow. The guard withdrew to the outer wall of the yard, holding bayonets erect. The big drum was going alone, slowly.
The yard was now a clear space, with the glowing red heaps of the bonfires, and the ocote flames flapping. And now was seen a platform erected against the white wall of the church.
In the silence the big doors of the church opened, and Cipriano came out, in his bright sarape, holding in his hand a bunch of black leaves, or feathers, and with a tuft of scarlet feathers, black-tipped, rising from the back of his head. He mounted the platform and stood facing the crowd, the light of a torch on his face and on the brilliant feathers that rose like flames from the back of his head.
After him came a strange procession: a peon in floppy white clothes, led prisoner between two of the guards of Huitzilopochtli: who wore their sarapes with red and black and yellow and white and green stripes: then another peon prisoner: then another: in all, five, the fifth one tall, limping, and with a red cross painted on the breast of his white jacket. Last of all came a woman-prisoner, likewise between two guards, her hair flowing loose, over a red tunic.
They mounted the platform. The peons, prisoners, were placed in a row, their guards behind them. The limping peon was apart, with his two guards behind him: the woman again was apart, her two guards behind her.
The big drum ceased, and a bugle rang out, a long, loud triumphant note, repeated three times. Then the kettle-drums, or the small tom-toms like kettle-drums, rattled fierce as hail.
Cipriano lifted his hand, and there was silence.
Out of the silence he began to speak, in his short, martial sentences:
“Man that is man is more than a man. No man is man till he is more than a man. Till the power is in him Which is not his own.
The power is in me from behind the sun, And from middle earth. I am Huitzilopochtli. I am dark as the sunless under-earth, And yellow as the fire that consumes, And white as bone, And red as blood.
But I touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl. And between our fingers rose a blade of green grass. I touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl. Lo! I am lord of the watches of the night And the dream of the night rises from me like a red feather.
I am the watcher, and master of the dream. In the dream of the night I see the grey dogs prowling. Prowling to devour the dream.
In the night the soul of a coward creeps out of him Like a grey dog whose mouth is foul with rabies, Creeping among the sleeping and the dreaming, who are lapped in my dark, And in whom the dream sits up like a rabbit, lifting long ears tipped with night, On the dream-slopes browsing like a deer in the dusk.
In the night I see the grey dogs creeping, out of the sleeping men Who are cowards, who are liars, who are traitors, who have no dreams That prick their ears like a rabbit, or browse in the dark like deer, But whose dreams are dogs, grey dogs with yellow mouths.
From the liars, from the thieves, from the false and treacherous and mean I see the grey dogs creeping out, where my deer are browsing in the dark. Then I take my knife, and throw it upon the grey dog. And lo! it sticks between the ribs of a man! The house of the grey dog!
Beware! Beware! Of the men and the women who walk among you. You know not how many are houses of grey dogs. Men that seem harmless, women with fair words, Maybe they kennel the grey dog.”
The drums began to beat and the singer began to sing clear and pure:
The Song of the Grey Dog.
“When you sleep and know it not The grey dog creeps among you. In your sleep, you twist, your soul hurts you. The grey dog is chewing your entrails.
Then call on Huitzilopochtli: The grey dog caught me at the cross-roads As I went down the road of sleep And crossed the road of the uneasy.
The grey dog leapt at my entrails. Huitzilopochtli, call him off. _Lo!_ the Great One answers. _Track him down! Kill him in his unclean house._
Down the road of the uneasy You track the grey dog home To his house in the heart of a traitor, A thief, a murderer of dreams.
And you kill him there with one stroke, Crying: _Huitzilopochtli is this well done?_ That your sleep be not as a cemetery Where dogs creep unclean.”
The song ceased, and there was silence. Then Cipriano beckoned to the men to bring forward the peon with the black cross painted on his front and back. He limped forward.
Cipriano: “What man is that, limping?”
Guards: “It is Guillermo, overseer of Don Ramón, who betrayed Don Ramón, his master.”
Cipriano: “Why does he limp?”
Guards: “He fell from the window on to the rocks.”
Cipriano: “What made him wish to betray his master?”
Guards: “His heart is a grey dog, and a woman, a grey bitch, enticed him forth.”
Cipriano: “What woman enticed the grey dog forth?”
The guards came forward with the woman.
Guards: “This woman, Maruca, my Lord, with the grey bitch heart.”
Cipriano: “Is it she, indeed?”
Guards: “It is she.”
Cipriano: “The grey dog, and the grey bitch, we kill, for their mouths are yellow with poison? Is it well, men of Huitzilopochtli?”
Guards: “It is very well, my Lord.”
The guards stripped the peon Guillermo of his white clothes, leaving him naked, in a grey loin-cloth, with a grey-white cross painted on his naked breast. The woman, too, had a grey-white cross painted on her body. She stood in a short petticoat of grey wool.
Cipriano: “The grey dog, and the grey bitch shall run no more about the world. We will bury their bodies in quick-lime, till their souls are eaten, and their bodies, and nothing is left. For lime is the thirsty bone that swallows even a soul and is not slaked.--Bind them with the grey cords, put ash on their heads.”
The guards quickly obeyed. The prisoners, ash-grey, gazed with black, glittering eyes, making not a sound. A guard stood behind each of them. Cipriano gave a sign, and quick as lightning the guards had got the throats of the two victims in a grey cloth, and with a sharp jerk had broken their necks, lifting them backwards in one movement. The grey cloths they tied hard and tight round the throats, laying the twitching bodies on the floor.
Cipriano turned to the crowd: