Ramón saw Carlota and his boys in the city, but it was a
rather fruitless meeting. The elder boy was just uncomfortable
in the presence with his father, but the younger,
Cyprian, who was delicate and very intelligent, had a rather
lofty air of displeasure with his parent.
“Do you know what they sing, papa?” he said.
“Not all the things they sing,” said Ramón.
“They sing—” the boy hesitated. Then, in his clear
young voice, he piped up, to the tune of La Cucaracha:
“No, I’m not,” said Ramón, smiling. “Mine’s got a
snake and a bird in the middle, and black zigzags and a red
fringe. You’d better come and see it.”
“No, papa! I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to be mixed up in this affair. It makes
us all look ridiculous.”
“But how do you think you look, anyhow, in your striped
little sailor suit and your little saintly look? We’d better
dress you as the Infant Jesus.”
“No, papa! You are in bad taste. One doesn’t say
those things.”
“Now you’ll have to confess to a fib. You say one
doesn’t say those things, when I, who am your father, said
them only a moment ago, and you heard me.”
“I mean good people don’t. Decent people.”
“Now you’ll have to confess again, for calling your
father indecent.—Terrible child!”
The child flushed, and tears rose to his eyes. There was
silence for a while.
“So you don’t want to come to Jamiltepec?” said
Ramón, to his boys.
“Yes!” said the elder boy, slowly. “I want to come
and bathe in the lake, and have a boat. But—they say it
is impossible.”
“Why?”
“They say you make yourself a peon, in your clothes.”—The
boy was shy.
“They’re very nice clothes, you know. Nicer than those
little breeches of yours.”
“They say, also, that you pretend to be the Aztec god
Quetzalcoatl.”
“Not at all. I only pretend that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl
is coming back to the Mexicans.”
“But, papa, it is not true.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“There never was any Quetzalcoatl, except idols.”
“Is there any Jesus, except images?”
“Yes, papa.”
“Where?”
“In heaven.”
“Then in heaven there is also Quetzalcoatl. And what
is in heaven is capable of coming back to earth. Don’t you
believe me?”
“I can’t.”
“Then go unbelieving,” said the father, laughing at them
and rising to leave them.
“It is very bad that they sing songs about you, and
put mama in; like about Pancho Villa,” said the younger
boy. “It hurts me very much.”
“Rub it with Vapor-rub, my pet,” said Ramón. “Rub
it with Vapor-rub, where it hurts you.”
“What a real bad man you are, papa!”
“What a real good child are you, my son! Isn’t that
so?”
“I don’t know, papa. I only know you are bad.”
“Oh! Oh! Is that all they teach thee at thy American
school?”
“Next term,” said Ciprianito, “I want to change my
name. I don’t want to be called Carrasco any more. When
thou art in the newspapers, they will laugh at us.”
“Oh! Oh! I am laughing at thee now, little frog!
What name wilt thou choose then? Espina, perhaps. Thou
knowest Carrasco is a wild bush, on the moors in Spain,
where we come from. Wilt thou be the little thorn on the
bush? Call thyself Espina, thou art a sprig of the old tree.
Entonces, Adios! Señor Espina Espinita!”
“Adios!” said the boy abruptly, flushing with rage.
Ramón took a motor-car to Sayula, for there was a made
road. But already the rains were washing it away. The
car lurched and bumped in the great gaps. In one place, a
camion lay on its back, where it had overturned.
On the flat desert, there were already small smears of
water, and the pink cosmos flowers, and the yellow, were
just sprouting their tufts of buds. The hills in the distance
were going opaque, as leaves came out on the invisible trees
and bushes. The earth was coming to life.
Ramón called in Sayula at Kate’s house. She was out,
but the wild Concha came scouring across the beach, to fetch
her.—“There is Don Ramón! There is Don Ramón!”
Kate hurried home, with sand in her shoes.
She thought Ramón looked tired, and, in his black suit,
sinister.
“I didn’t expect you,” she said.
“I am on my way back from town.”
He sat very still, with that angry look on his creamy
dark face, and he kept pushing back his black moustache
from his closed, angry lips.
“Did you see anybody in town?” she asked.
“I saw Don Cipriano—and Doña Carlota, and my boys!”
“Oh, how nice for you! Are they quite well?”
“In excellent health, I believe.”
She laughed suddenly.
“You are still cross,” she said. “Is it about the monkeys
still?”
“Señora,” he said, leaning forward, so that his black
hair dropped a little on his brow, “in monkeydom, I don’t
know who is prince. But in the kingdom of fools, I believe
it is I.”
“Why?” she said.
And as he did not answer, she added:
“It must be a comfort to be a prince, even of fools.”
He looked daggers at her, then burst into a laugh.
“Oh, Señora mia! What ails us men, when we are
always wanting to be good?”
“Are you repenting of it?” she laughed.
“Yes!” he said. “I am a prince of fools! Why have
I started this Quetzalcoatl business? Why? Pray tell me
why?”
“I suppose you wanted to.”
He pondered for a time, pushing up his moustache.
“Perhaps it is better to be a monkey than a fool. I
object to being called a monkey, nevertheless. Carlota is
a monkey, no more; and my two boys are prize young
monkeys in sailor suits. And I am a fool. Yet what is the
difference between a fool and a monkey?”
“Quien sabe?” said Kate.
“One wants to be good, and the other is sure he is
good. So I make a fool of myself. They are sure they are
always good, so that makes monkeys of them. Oh, if only
the world would blow up like a bomb!”
“It won’t!” said Kate.
“True enough.—Ah, well!”
He drew himself erect, pulling himself together.
“Do you think, Señora Caterina, you might marry our
mutual General?” Ramón had put himself aside again.
“I—I don’t know!” stammered Kate. “I hardly
think so.”
“He is not sympathetic to you at all?”
“Yes. He is. He is alive, and there is even a certain
fascination about him.—But one shouldn’t try marrying a
man of another race, do you think, even if he were more
sympathetic?”
“Ah!” sighed Ramón. “It’s no good generalising. It’s
no good marrying anybody, unless there will be a real fusion
somewhere.”
“And I feel there wouldn’t,” said Kate. “I feel he just
wants something of me; and perhaps I just want something
of him. But he would never meet me. He would never
come forward himself, to meet me. He would come to take
something from me and I should have to let him. And I
don’t want merely that. I want a man who will come half-way,
just half-way, to meet me.”
Don Ramón pondered, and shook his head.
“You are right,” he said. “Yet, in these matters, one
never knows what is half-way, nor where it is. A woman
who just wants to be taken, and then to cling on, is a
parasite. And a man who wants just to take, without
giving, is a creature of prey.”
“And I’m afraid Don Cipriano might be that,” said Kate.
“Possibly,” said Ramón. “He is not so with me. But
perhaps he would be, if we did not meet—perhaps it is our
half-way—in some physical belief that is at the very middle
of us, and which we recognise in one another. Don’t you
think there might be that between you and him?”
“I doubt if he’d feel it necessary, with a woman. A
woman wouldn’t be important enough.”
Ramón was silent.
“Perhaps!” he said. “With a woman, a man always
wants to let himself go. And it is precisely with a woman
that he should never let himself go. It is precisely with a
woman that he should never let himself go, but stick to his
innermost belief, and meet her just there. Because when
the innermost belief coincides in them both, if it’s physical,
there, and then, and nowhere else, they can meet. And it’s
no good unless there is a meeting. It’s no good a man
ravishing a woman, and it’s absolutely no good a woman
ravishing a man. It’s a sin, that is. There is such a thing
as sin, and that’s the centre of it. Men and women keep on
ravishing one another. Absurd as it may sound, it is not I
who would ravish Carlota. It is she who would ravish me.
Strange and absurd and a little shameful, it is true.—Letting
oneself go, is either ravishing or being ravished. Oh, if we
could only abide by our own souls, and meet in the abiding
place.—Señora, I have not a very great respect for myself.
Woman and I have failed with one another, and it is a bad
failure to have in the middle of oneself.”
Kate looked at him in wonder, with a little fear. Why
was he confessing to her? Was he going to love her? She
almost suspended her breathing. He looked at her with a
sort of sorrow on his brow, and in his dark eyes, anger,
vexation, wisdom, and a dull pain.
“I am sorry,” he went on, “that Carlota and I are as
we are with one another. Who am I, even to talk about
Quetzalcoatl, when my heart is hollow with anger against
the woman I have married and the children she bore me.—We
never met in our souls, she and I. At first I loved her,
and she wanted me to ravish her. Then after a while a
man becomes uneasy. He can’t keep on wanting to ravish
a woman, the same woman. He has revulsions. Then she
loved me, and she wanted to ravish me. And I liked it for
a time. But she had revulsions too. The eldest boy is
really my boy, when I ravished her. And the youngest is
her boy, when she ravished me. See how miserable it is!
And now we can never meet; she turns to her crucified
Jesus, and I to my uncrucified and uncrucifiable Quetzalcoatl,
who at least cannot be ravished.”
“And I’m sure you won’t make him a ravisher,” she
said.
“Who knows? If I err, it will be on that side. But
you know, Señora, Quetzalcoatl is to me only the symbol of
the best a man may be, in the next days. The universe
is a nest of dragons, with a perfectly unfathomable life-mystery
at the centre of it. If I call the mystery the
Morning Star, surely it doesn’t matter! A man’s blood
can’t beat in the abstract. And man is a creature who wins
his own creation inch by inch from the nest of the cosmic
dragons. Or else he loses it little by little, and goes to
pieces. Now we are all losing it, in the ravishing and
ravished disintegration. We must pull ourselves together,
hard, both men and women, or we are all lost.—We must
pull ourselves together, hard.”
“But are you a man who needs a woman in his life?”
she said.
“I am a man who yearns for the sensual fulfilment of
my soul, Señora,” he said. “I am a man who has no
belief in abnegation of the blood desires. I am a man who
is always on the verge of taking wives and concubines to
live with me, so deep is my desire for that fulfilment.
Except that now I know that is useless—not momentarily
useless, but in the long run—my ravishing a woman with
hot desire. No matter how much she is in love with me
and desires me to ravish her. It is no good, and the very
inside of me knows it is no good. Wine, woman, and song—all
that—all that game is up. Our insides won’t really have
it any more. Yet it is hard to pull ourselves together.”
“So that you really want a woman to be with you?”
said Kate.
“Ah, Señora! If I could trust myself; and trust her! I
am no longer a young man, who can afford to make mistakes.
I am forty-two years old, and I am making my last—and
perhaps in truth, my first great effort as a man. I hope I
may perish before I make a big mistake.”
“Why should you make a mistake? You needn’t?”
“I? It is very easy for me to make a mistake. Very
easy, on the one hand, for me to become arrogant and a
ravisher. And very easy, on the other hand, for me to
deny myself, and make a sort of sacrifice of my life. Which
is being ravished. Easy to let myself, in a certain sense,
be ravished. I did it to a small degree even yesterday,
with the Bishop of Guadalajara. And it is bad. If I had
to end my life in a mistake, Señora, I had rather end it in
being a ravisher, than in being ravished. As a hot ravisher,
I can still slash and cut at the disease of the other thing,
the horrible pandering and the desire men have to be
ravished, the hateful, ignoble desire they have.”
“But why don’t you do as you say, stick by the innermost
soul that is in you, and meet a woman there, meet
her, as you say, where your two souls coincide in their
deepest desire? Not always that horrible unbalance that
you call ravishing.”
“Why don’t I? But which woman can I meet in the
body, without that slow degradation of ravishing, or being
ravished, setting in? If I marry a Spanish woman or a
dark Mexican, she will give herself up to me to be ravished.
If I marry a woman of the Anglo-Saxon or any blonde
northern stock, she will want to ravish me, with the will of all
the ancient white demons. Those that want to be ravished
are parasites on the soul, and one has revulsions. Those
that want to ravish a man are vampires. And between the
two, there is nothing.”
“Surely there are some really good women?”
“Well, show me them. They are all potential Carlotas
or—or—yes, Caterinas. I am sure you ravished your
Joachim till he died. No doubt he wanted it; even more
than you wanted it. It is not just sex. It lies in the will.
Victims and victimisers. The upper classes, craving to be
victims to the lower classes; or else craving to make victims
of the lower classes. The politicians, craving to make one
people victims to another. The Church, with its evil will
for turning the people into humble, writhing things that shall
crave to be victimised, to be ravished.—I tell you, the earth
is a place of shame.”
“But if you want to be different,” said Kate, “surely
a few other people do—really.”
“It may be,” he said, becoming calm. “It may be.
I wish I kept myself together better. I must keep myself
together, keep myself within the middle place, where I am
still. My Morning Star. Now I am ashamed of having
talked like this to you, Señora Caterina.”
“Why?” she cried. And for the first time, the flush
of hurt and humiliation came into her face.
He saw it at once, and put his hand on hers for a moment.
“No,” he said. “I am not ashamed. I am relieved.”
She flushed deeply at his touch, and was silent. He rose
hastily, to leave, craving to be alone again with his own soul.
“On Sunday,” he said, “will you come into the plaza,
in the morning, when the drum sounds? Will you come?”
“What for?” she said.
“Well! Come, and you will see.”
He was gone in a flash.
There were many soldiers in the village. When she went
to the post-office, she saw the men in their cotton uniforms
lying about in the entrance to the military station. There
must have been fifty or more, little men, not the tall soldiers
in slouched hats. These were little, quick, compact men,
like Cipriano, and they talked in a strange Indian language,
very subdued. They were very rarely seen in the streets.
They kept out of sight.
But at night, everyone was requested to be indoors by
ten o’clock, and through the darkness Kate heard the patrols
of horse-soldiers riding round.
There was an air of excitement and mystery in the place.
The parish priest, a rather overbearing, fat man of fifty or
so, had preached a famous Saturday evening sermon against
Ramón and Quetzalcoatl, forbidding the heathen name to
be mentioned, threatening with all the penalties any
parishioner who read the Hymns, or even listened.
So, of course, he was attacked when he left the church,
and had to be rescued by soldiers who were in the doorway.
They marched him safely home. But his criada, the old
woman who served him, was told by more women than one
that the next time the padre opened his mouth against
Quetzalcoatl, he would have a few inches of machete in
his fat guts.
So his reverence stayed at home, and a curate officiated.
Practically all the people who came over the lake in boats
on Saturdays, went to mass in Sayula church. The great
doors stood open all the day. Men as they passed to and fro
to the lake, took off their big hats, with a curious cringing
gesture, as they went by the gateway of the church. All day
long, scattered people were kneeling in the aisles or among
the benches, the men kneeling erect, their big hats down by
their knees, their curious tall-shaped Indian heads with the
thick black hair also erect; only the kneeling legs, close
together, humble. The women hooded themselves in their
dark rebozos and spread their elbows as they kneeled at a
bench, in a slack sort of voluptuousness.
On Saturday night, a great ruddy flickering of many
candle-points, away down the dark cavern of the church;
and a clustering of dark men’s heads, a shuffling of women,
a come and go of men arriving from the lake, of men departing
to the market. A hush, not exactly of worship, but of a
certain voluptuous admiration of the loftiness and glitter, a
sensual, almost victimised self-abandon to the god of death,
the Crucified streaked with blood, or to the pretty white
woman in a blue mantle, with her little doll’s face under her
crown, Mary, the doll of dolls, Niña of Niñas.
It was not worship. It was a sort of numbness and letting
the soul sink uncontrolled. And it was a luxury, after all
the week of unwashed dullness in their squalid villages of
straw huts. But it irritated Kate.
The men got up and tiptoed away in their sandals, crossing
themselves front and back, on the navel and on the back
of the head, with holy water. And their black eyes shone
with a loose, sensuous look. Instead of having gathered
themselves together and become graver, stronger, more collected
and deep in their own integrity, they emerged only
the more loose and sloppy and uncontrolled.
Oh, if there is one thing men need to learn, but the
Mexican Indians especially, it is to collect each man his own
soul together deep inside him, and to abide by it. The
Church, instead of helping men to this, pushes them more
and more into a soft, emotional helplessness, with the unpleasant
sensuous gratification of feeling themselves victims,
victimised, victimised, but at the same time with the lurking
sardonic consciousness that in the end a victim is stronger
than the victimiser. In the end, the victims pull down their
victimiser, like a pack of hyænas on an unwary lion. They
know it. Cursed are the falsely meek, for they are inheriting
the earth.
On Sunday morning there was early mass at sunrise,
another mass at seven o’clock, another at nine, another at
eleven. Then there was a little band of violins and ’cellos,
playing old-fashioned dance music; there was, especially
early in the morning, a solid mass of peons and women,
kneeling on the floor; and a flapping of dusky candles, a
smell of the exhaust air of candles, a heavy, rolling fume of
incense, and the heavy choir of men’s voices, solid, powerful,
impressive, from the gallery.
And the people went away in sensuous looseness, which
soon turned, in the market, to hate, the old, unfathomable
hate which lies at the bottom of the Indian heart, and which
always rises black and turbid when they have swayed awhile
in sensuous gratification.
The church inside was a dead interior, like all Mexican
churches, even the gorgeous Puebla cathedral. The interior
of almost any Mexican church gives the impression
of cynical barrenness, cynical meaninglessness, an empty,
cynical, mocking shell. The Italian churches are built much
in the same style, and yet in them lingers a shadow and
stillness of old, mysterious holiness. The hush.
But not in Mexico. The churches outside are impressive.
Inside, and it is curious to define it, they are blatant; void
of sound and yet with no hush, simple, and yet completely
vulgar, barren, sterile. More barren than a bank or a
schoolroom or an empty concert-hall, less mysterious than
any of these. You get a sense of plaster, of mortar, of
whitewash, of smeared blue-wash or grey-wash; and of gilt
laid on and ready to peel off. Even in the most gorgeous
churches, the gilt is hatefully gilt, never golden. Nothing
is soft nor mellow.
So the interior of Sayula church; and Kate had often
been in. The white exterior was charming, and so valuable
in the landscape, with the twin white pagoda-towers peering
out of the green willow trees. But inside, it seemed nothing
but whitewash, stencilled over with grey scroll-work decorations.
The windows were high, and many, letting in the
light as into a schoolroom. Jesus, streaked with blood, was
in one of the transepts, and the Virgin, a doll in faded satin,
stood startled inside a glass case. There were rag flowers
and paper flowers, coarse lace and silver that looked like
tin.
Nevertheless, it was quite clean, and very much frequented.
The Month of Mary had gone by, the blue and white
paper ribbons were all taken down, the palm trees in pots
were all removed from the aisle, the little girls in white
dresses and little crowns of flowers no longer came with
posies in their hand, at evening. Curious, the old gentle
ceremonials of Europe, how trashy they seem in Mexico,
just a cheap sort of charade.
The day of Corpus Christi came, with high mass and the
church full to the doors with kneeling peons, from dawn till
noon. Then a feeble little procession of children within the
church, because the law forbids religious processions outside.
But all, somehow, for nothing. Just so that the people could
call it a fiesta, and so have an excuse to be more slack,
more sloshy and uncontrolled than ever. The one Mexican
desire; to let themselves go in sloppy inertia.
And this was the all-in-all of the religion. Instead of doing
as it should, collecting the soul into its own strength and
integrity, the religious day left it all the more decomposed
and degenerate.
However, the weeks passed, the crowd in the church
seemed the same as ever. But the crowd in the church
one hour was the crowd of Quetzalcoatl the next hour. Just
a sensation.
Till the more socialistic Readers mingled a little anti-clerical
bitterness in their reading. And all the peons
began to say: was El Señor a gringo, and the Santísima, was
she nothing but a gringita?
This provoked retaliation on the part of the priests, first
mere admonitions, then at last the loud denunciations and
threat of that sermon. Which meant war.
Everybody waited for Saturday. Saturday came, and
the church remained shut. Saturday night, the church was
dark and closed. Sunday, the church was silent and the
doors blank fastened.
Something like consternation spread through the market
host. They had nowhere to go!—But among the consternation
was a piqued curiosity. Perhaps something exciting
was going to happen.
Things had happened before. In the revolutions, many
of the churches in Mexico have been used for stables and for
barracks. And churches are turned into schools, and concert
halls, and cinematograph theatres. The convents and the
monasteries are most of them barracks for the rag-tag-and-bobtail
soldiers. The world changes, is bound to change.
The second Saturday of the closed church was, as it
happened, a big market. Much fruit and stuff had come up
the lake, from the south from far distances, even from
Colima. There were men with lacquer wooden bowls, and
women with glazed pottery. And as usual, men crouching
in guard over twenty centavos worth of nauseous tropical
plums, or chiles, or mangoes, in tiny pyramids along the
roadway.
A crowded market, with the much and the little of the
Indians. And the church doors shut and locked, the church
bells silent, even the clock stopped. True, the clock was
always stopping. But not with such a final arrest.
No mass, no confession, no little orgy of incense and slack
emotion! The low rumble of murmuring tones, the quick,
apprehensive glances around. Vendors by the causeway
squatted tight, as if to make themselves dense and small,
squatting down on their haunches with their knees up to
their shoulders, like the Aztec idols. And soldiers in twos
and threes sprinkled everywhere. And Señoras and
Señoritas, in their black gauze scarves or mantillas, tripping
to the church for mass and shrilling round the gateway of
the church, all a bubble and a froth of chatter; though they
had known quite well the church was shut.
But it was Sunday morning, and something was due to
happen.
At about half-past ten, a boat appeared, and men in snow-white
clothes got out, one carrying a drum. They marched
quickly through the people, under the old trees on the sand,
across to the church. They passed through the broken
iron gates into the stone courtyard in front of the church.
At the church doors, which were still shut, they took off
their blouses, and stood in a ring, with dark naked shoulders
and the blue-and-black sashes of Quetzalcoatl round their
waists.
The drum began to beat, with a powerful, pounding note,
as the men stood bareheaded and bare-breasted in a circle
outside the church doors; a strange ring of lustrous, bluey-black
heads and dark shoulders, above the snowy white
pantaloons. Monotonously the drum beat, on and on. Then
the little clay flute with the husky sound wheezed a clear
melody.
The whole market pressed densely towards the gateways
of the church. But there, soldiers stood guard. And on
the inside of the stone yard in front of the church, soldiers
quietly guarded the low walls, letting nobody mount. So
that outside, under the old willow and pepper trees, in the
hot morning sun, the dense crowd stood gazing at the church
doors. They were mostly men in big hats; but some townsmen
were there, and some women, and Kate with a parasol
lined with dark blue. A close, silent, tense throng under
the spangled shade, pressing round the trunks of the palm
trees, climbing on the roots of the pepper trees. And behind
were the camions and the motor-cars drawn up.
The drum shuddered and went still, and the earthen
flute was silent. The lake could be heard lapping, and a
clink of glasses and a sound of chauffeurs’ voices at the little
cantina-booth. For the rest, the silent breathing of the
crowd.—Soldiers were quickly distributing a few leaflets
among the crowd. A strong, far-carrying male voice began
to sing to the softened thud of the drum.
Jesus’ Farewell.
While this was singing, another boat had arrived, and
soldiers made way through the crowd for Ramón, in his
white sarape with the blue edges and scarlet fringe, and a
young priest of the church in a black cassock, and six men
in dark sarapes with the blue borders of Quetzalcoatl. This
strange procession marched through the crowd and through
the gateways of the yard.
As they approached, the ring of men round the drum
opened, and spread into a crescent. Ramón stood tall
behind the drum, the six men in dark sarapes divided and
went to the wings of the crescent, the young, slim priest
in a black cassock stood alone, in front of the crescent,
facing the crowd.
He lifted his hand; Ramón took off his hat; all the men
in the crowd took off their hats.
The priest turned, met Ramón at the centre of the
crescent, and, across the drum, handed him the key of the
church. Then the priest waited.
Ramón unlocked the church doors and flung them open.
The men in front of the crowd kneeled down suddenly, seeing
the church dark like a cavern, but a trembling blaze of
many candles, away, seemingly far down the mysterious
darkness, shuddering with dark, rippling flame, like the
Presence of the burning bush.
The crowd swayed and rustled, and subsided, kneeling.
Only here and there a labourer, a chauffeur or a railway
man stood erect.
The priest raised his hand a little higher, returning
towards the people.
“My children,” he said; and as he spoke the lake seemed
to rustle; “God the Almighty has called home His Son, and
the Holy Mother of the Son. Their days are over in Mexico.
They go back to the Father.
The men in the circle said a deep Adios! And from the
soldiers, and from the kneeling crowd, a ragged, muttered,
strange repeating of Adios! again and again, like a sort of
storm.
Suddenly, in a blast, down the darkness of the church
into which the kneeling people were staring, the burning
bush of candles was gone, there was only darkness. Across
the sunshine, lit here and there by a frail light of a taper,
was a cave of darkness.
Men in the crowd exclaimed and groaned.
Then the drum softly touched, and two men in the
crescent began to sing, in magnificent, terrible voices, the
Farewell Hymn again. They were men whom Ramón, or
his followers, had found in low drinking dens in Mexico
City, men with trained and amazing voices, the powerful
Mexican tenor that seemed to tear the earth open. Men
whom the “times” have reduced to singing in low city
dives. And now they sang with all the terrible desperation
that was in them, the hopeless, demonish recklessness.
When they finished, the priest again lifted his hand, and
gave the benediction; adding in a quiet voice:
“And now, with all the saints, let Me go, saith Jesus.
For I go back to my Father which is in heaven, and I lead
my Mother in my right hand, home to peace.”
He turned and went into the church. Ramón followed.
Then slowly, all the men of the crescent. Overhead the
church bell rang a little while, on the deathly silence. It
ceased.
And in a moment, from the depths of the church sounded
a drum, with a remote, fearsome thud, and a slow monotony.
The priest, in his white vestments with rich lace, appeared
in the doorway of the church, bearing a tall crucifix. He
hesitated, then came into the sun. The kneeling people
clasped their hands.
Candles in the dark church were clustering towards the
door, lonely flames. Don Ramón came out of the dark,
naked to the waist, his sarape over one shoulder, bearing
the front pole of the great bier whereon lies, within a glass
case, the lifelike, terrible dead Christ of Holy Week. A tall,
dark man, naked to the waist, held the other end of the
pole on his shoulder. The crowd moaned and crossed themselves.
The lifelike Dead Christ seemed really dead, as he
passed the gates. As He entered the crowd, kneeling men
and women lifted sightless faces and flung their arms wide
apart, and so remained, arms rigid and outflung, in an unspeakable
ecstasy of fear, supplication, acknowledgement
of death.
After the bier of the Dead Christ, a slow procession of
men naked to the waist, carrying litter after litter. First
the terrible scourged Christ, with naked body striped like a
tiger with blood. Then the image of the Saviour of the
Sacred Heart, the well-known figure from the side altar,
with long hair and outstretched hands. Then the image
of Jesus of Nazareth, with a crown of Thorns.
Then the Virgin with the blue mantle and lace, and the
golden crown. The women began to moan as she emerged
rather trashily into the blazing sunlight. Behind her, in the
church, the candles were one by one going out.
Then came brown Saint Anthony of Padua, with a child
in his arms. Then Saint Francis, looking strangely at a
cross in his hand. Then Saint Anna. And last, Saint
Joaquin. And as he emerged, the last candles in the dark
church went out, there were only open doors upon a darkness.
The images on the shoulders of the brown-skinned men
rode rather childishly out through the blazing sun, into the
shadow of trees. The drum followed last, slowly thudding.
On the glass case of the big Dead Christ the sun flashed
with startling flashes, as the powerful men carrying it turned
towards the water. The crowd murmured and swayed on its
knees. Women cried: Purisima! Purisima! Don’t leave
us! and some men ejaculated in strangled anguish, over and
over again: Señor! Señor! Señor!
But the strange procession made its way slowly under
the trees, to the coarse sands, and descended again into the
great light towards the lake. There was a little breeze under
a blaze of sun. Folded sarapes on naked, soft shoulders
swung unevenly, the images rocked and tottered a little.
But onwards to the edge of the water went the tall crucifix,
then the flashing glass box. And after, came Jesus in a red
silk robe, fluttering, then a wooden Jesus all paint and
streaks, then Jesus in white with a purple mantle that blew
like a kerchief, Mary in lace that fluttered upon stiff white
and blue satin. But the saints were only painted; painted
wood.
The slim, lace-smocked priest staggered down the sand
under the heavy crucifix, which had a white Christ Crucified
stretched aloft, facing the lake. By the little wall was a
large black canoa, sailing boat, with a broad plank gangway
up to her stern. Two bare-legged, white-clad men walked
by the slim priest, whose white sleeves blew like flags as he
slowly climbed the gangway to the ship. Men helped him
on board, and he walked away to the prow, where at length
he stood the big crucifix, with the Christ still facing outwards.
The ship was open, without deck or hatches, but with
fixed tables for the images. Slowly Ramón ascended and
descended into the boat, the great glass case was laid down
on its rest, the two men could wipe their wet brows and their
hot, black hair. Ramón put on his blanket and his hat,
against the sun. The boat heaved very slightly. The wind
was from the west. The lake was pale and unreal, sun-blinded.
One after another the images rose over the stern of the
boat, against the sky, then descended into the vessel, to
be set down on their rests, where they rose above the black
sides of the canoa, in view of the throng on the shore.
It was a strange and tawdry collection of images. And
yet, each image had a certain pathos of its own, and a
certain touch of horror, as they were grouped together for
their last ride, upon the trestle-supports within the vessel.
By each image stood the bearers, in hats and sarapes, keeping
a steady hand on the poles.
There was a little line of soldiers on the shore, and three
motor-boats with soldiers waited by the big canoa. The
shore was covered with a mass of people. Many row-boats
came rowing inquisitively round, like fishes. But none
came too near.
Bare-legged sailors began to pole the ship from the shore.
They leaned heavily on the poles, and walked along the rims
of the vessel. Slowly she began to move upon the waters,
in the shallows. Slowly, she was leaving the shore, and the
throng.
Two other sailors swiftly began to hoist the huge, square
white sail. Quickly, yet heavily it rose in the air, and took
the wind. It had the great sign of Quetzalcoatl, the circling
blue snake and the blue eagle upon a yellow field, at the
centre, like a great eye.
The wind came from the west, but the boat was steering
south-east, for the little Island of the Scorpions, which rose
like a small dim hummock from the haze of the lake. So
the sail reached out, and the great eye seemed to be glancing
back, at the village with the green willows and the
empty white church, the throng on the shore.
Motor-boats circled the huge, slow canoe, small boats
like insects followed and ranged round at a distance, never
coming too close. The running water clucked and spoke,
the men by the images steadied the poles with one hand,
their hats with the other, the great eye on the sail ever
looked back at the land, the sweep of the white canvas
sweeping low above the glass case of death, the Christ caked
with gore, the images in their fluttering mantles.
On the shore, the people wandered away, or sat on the
sands waiting and watching in a sort of dumb patience that
was half indifference. The canoe grew smaller, more inconspicuous,
lapsing into the light, the little boats circled
around it like mere dots. The lake tired the eyes with its
light.
Away under the trees, in a half silence, a half vacancy,
a woman bought a dark water-melon, smashed it open on
a stone, and gave the big pinky fragments to her children.
In silence, men sprinkled salt on the thick slice of cucumber
sold by the woman under the tree. In silence they wandered
into the church, past the soldiers on guard at the door.
The church was absolutely dark, save for the light that
entered the doorway, and absolutely bare; walls, floor,
altar, transepts, all stark bare and empty. The people
wandered away again, in silence.
It was noon, and a hot day. The canoa slowly ranged
to the small hummock of the island amid the waters, where
lived one family of Indians—fishers, with a few goats and
one dry little place where they grew a few beans and heads
of maize. For the rest, the island was all dry rock and
thorny bushes, and scorpions.
The vessel was poled round to the one rocky bay. Slowly
she drew near the island. The motor-boats and the little
boats hurried ahead. Already brown, naked men were
bathing among the rocks.
The great sail sank, the canoa edged up to the rocky
shore, men sprang from her into the water, the images were
lowered and slowly carried on to the rocks. There they
waited for the bearers.
Slowly the procession went again up the bank of the
dishevelled island, past the couple of huts, where a red cock
was crowing among the litter, and over to rocks, beyond
the bushes, on the far side.
The side facing Sayula was all rock, naked and painful to
tread on. In a rocky hollow at the waters’ edge, tall stones
had been put up on end, with iron bars across the top, like
a grill. Underneath, a pile of faggots ready; and at the
side, a pile of faggots.
The images, the glass box of the great Dead Christ, were
laid on the iron bars of the grill, in a pathetic cluster all
together. The crucifix was leaned against them. It was
noon, the heat and the light were fierce and erect. But
already down the lake clouds were pushing up fantastically.
Beyond the water, beyond the glare, the village looked
like a mirage, with its trees and villages and white church
towers.
Men who had come in boats crowded on the rocks of the
little amphitheatre. In silence, Ramón kindled shreds of
cane and ocote, with a burning glass. Little hasty flames
like young snakes arose in the solid sunlight, with vapor
of smoke. He set fire to the carefully-arranged pyramid of
faggots beneath the grill-table of the images.
There was a crackling, and a puffing of whitish smoke, the
sweet scent of ocote, and orange-red tongues of half-substantial
flame were leaping up in the hot white air. Hot
breaths blew suddenly, sudden flames gushed up, and the
ocote, full of sweet resin, began to roar. The glass of the
great box emitted strange, painful yelps as it splintered and
fell tinkling. Between the iron bars, brownish flames pushed
up among the images, which at once went black. The little
vestments of silk and satin withered in a moment to blackness,
the caked wounds of paint bubbled black.
The young priest took off his linen vestment, his stole and
his chasuble, and with flushed face flung them in the flame.
Then he stripped off his black cassock, and emerged in the
white cotton of the men of Quetzalcoatl, his white drawers
rolled up to the knee. He threw his cassock in the fire.
Someone handed him a big hat, and a white sarape with
blue ends.
There was a smell of burning paint, and wool, and ocote.
The fire rushed in a dusky mass upon the blackened, flickering
images, till nothing was to be seen but a confused bush
of smoke and brown-red flames, puthering, reeking, roaring.
The flaming crucifix slipped aside, and fell. A man seized
it and pushed it into the fire, under the images. Men in a
sort of ecstasy threw on more of the heavy, resinous wood,
that almost exploded into flame. Rocks cracked and exploded
like guns. Everybody drew back from that roaring
tree of flame, which rose ever higher and higher, its dark
smoke and its sparks unfolding into heaven.
One of the supporting stones burst with a bang, bars of
iron and blazing stumps of images tumbled in a confused
roar. The glass case had disappeared, but ribbons of iron
waved, then curled over red, into the torrent of the sudden
fire. Strange rods of iron appeared out of nowhere, protruding
from solid red coals.
And soon, all that was left was a fierce glow of red coals
of wood, with a medley of half-fused iron.
Ramón stood aside and watched in silence, his dark brow
quite expressionless.
Then, when only the last bluish flames flickered out of a
tumble of red fire, from the eminence above, rockets began
to shoot into the air with a swish, exploding high in the
sightless hot blue, with a glimmer of bluish showers, and
of gold.
The people from the shore had seen the tree of smoke with
its trunk of flame. Now they heard the heavy firing of the
rockets, they looked again, exclaiming, half in dismay, half
in the joyful lust of destruction:
“Señor! Señor! La Purisima! La Santísima!”
The flame and the smoke and the rockets melted as if by
miracle, into nothingness, leaving the hot air unblemished.
The coals of fire were shovelled and dropped down a steep
hole.
As the canoa sailed back, the side of the lake, through
filmy air, looked brownish and changeless. A cloud was
rising in the south-west, from behind the dry, silent mountains,
like a vast white tail, like the vast white fleecy tail
of some squirrel, that had just dived out of sight behind
the mountains. This wild white tail fleeced up and up, to
the zenith, straight at the sun. And as the canoa spread her
sail to tack back, already a delicate film of shadow was over
the chalk-white lake.
Only on the low end of the isle of Scorpions, hot air still
quivered.
Ramón returned in one of the motor-boats. Slowly the
sky was clouding for the thunder and the rain. The canoa,
unable to make her way across, was sailing for Tuliapan.
The little boats hurried in silence.
They landed before the wind rose. Ramón went and
locked the doors of the church.
The crowd scattered in the wind, rebozos waving wildly,
leaves torn, dust racing. Sayula was empty of God, and, at
heart, they were glad.
