Chapter XII: Part 12

Yet, he said to himself, the woman that was with me in the Morning Star, how glad I should be of her! And the man that was with me there, what a delight his presence would be! Surely the Morning Star is a meeting-ground for us, for the joy!

Sitting side by side on the bench, Ramón and Kate forgot one another, she thinking back on the past, with the long disgust of it all, he thinking on into his future, and trying to revive his heavy spirits.

In the silence, Cipriano came out on to the balcony above, looking around. He almost started as he saw the two figures seated on the bench below, under the white oleander tree, miles apart, worlds apart, in their silence.

Ramón heard the step, and glanced up.

“We are coming up!” he called, rising and looking round at Kate. “Shall we go upstairs? Will you drink something cool, tepache, or squeezed oranges? There is no ice.”

“I would like orange juice and water,” she said.

He called to his servant and gave the order.

Cipriano was in the white pantaloons and blouse, like Ramón. But his sash was scarlet, with black curves, something like the markings on a snake.

“I heard you come. I thought perhaps you had gone away again,” he said, looking at her with a certain black reproachfulness: an odd, hesitating wistfulness of the barbarian, who feels himself at a loss. Then also a certain resentment.

“Not yet,” she said.

Ramón laughed, and flung himself into a chair.

“The Señora Caterina thinks we are all monkeys, but perhaps this particular monkey-show is the most amusing after all,” he said. “So she will see a little more of it.”

Cipriano, a real Indian, was offended in his pride, and the little black _imperial_ on his chin seemed to become portentous.

“That’s _rather_ an unfair way of putting it!” laughed Kate.

The black eyes of Cipriano glanced at her in hostility. He thought she was laughing at him. And so, at the depths of her female soul, she was. She was jeering at him inwardly. Which no man can stand, least of all a dark-skinned man.

“No!” she said. “There’s something else besides that.”

“Ah!” said Ramón. “Take care! A little mercy is a dangerous thing.”

“No! Not mercy!” she said, flushing. “Why are you being horrid to me?”

“Monkeys always end by being horrid to the spectators,” said Ramón.

She looked up at him, and caught the flash of anger in his eyes.

“I came,” she said, “to hear about the Mexican pantheon. I was even given to understand I might be admitted.”

“Ah, that is good!” laughed Ramón. “A rare specimen of the female monkey has been added to the Ramón menagerie! I am sure you would be a good draw. There have been some pretty goddesses, I assure you, in the Aztec pantheon.”

“How horrid!” she said.

“Come! Come!” he cried. “Let us keep to the bedrock of things, Señora mia. We are all monkeys. Monos somos.--Ihr seid alle Affen! Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings was it spoken, as Carlota said. You see that little male monkey, Cipriano. He had the monkey’s idea of marrying you. Say the word. Marriage is a monkey’s game. Say the word. He will let you go when you’ve had enough; and he’s had enough. He is a _general_ and a very great _jefe_. He can make you monkey-queen of monkey-Mexico, if it please you. And what should monkeys do, but amuse themselves! _Vamos! Embobemonos!_ Shall I be priest? _Vamos! Vamos!_”

He rose with sudden volcanic violence, and rushed away.

Cipriano looked at Kate in wonder. She had gone pale.

“What have you been saying to him?” he asked.

“Nothing!” she said, rising. “I’d better go now.”

Juana was collected; and Alonso and Kate set off back down the lake. She sat with a certain obstinate offendedness under the awning of the boat. The sun was terrifically hot, and the water blinded her. She put on black spectacles, in which she looked a monster.

“Mucho calor, Niña! Mucho calor!” Juana was repeating behind her. The criada had evidently imbibed tepache.

On the pale-brown water little tufts of water-hyacinth were vaguely sailing, holding up the hand of a leaf for a sail. Everywhere the lake was dotted with these sailing tufts. The heavy rains had washed in flood down the Lerma river into the lake, washing the acres of _Lirio_ loose from the marshy end of the waters, thirty miles away, and slowly setting them travelling over all the expanse of the inland sea, till the shores began to be piled, and the far-off Santiago river, which flowed out of the lake, was choked.

That day Ramón wrote his Fourth Hymn.

What Quetzalcoatl Saw in Mexico.

_Who are these strange faces in Mexico?
Palefaces, yellowfaces, blackfaces? These are no Mexicans!
Where do they come from, and why?_

Lord of the Two Ways, these are the foreigners.
They come out of nowhere.
Sometimes they come to tell us things,
Mostly they are the greedy ones.

_What then do they want?_

They want gold, they want silver from the mountains.
And oil, much oil from the coast.
They take sugar from the tall tubes of the cane,
Wheat from the high lands, and maize;
Coffee from the bushes in the hot lands, even the juicy rubber.
They put up tall chimneys that smoke,
And in the biggest houses they keep their machines, that talk
And work iron elbows up and down,
And hold myriad threads from their claws!
Wonderful are the machines of the greedy ones!

_And you, Mexicans and peons, what do you do?_

We work with their machines, we work in their fields,
They give us pesos made of Mexican silver.
They are the clever ones.

_Do you love them then?_

We love them not, and never.
Their faces are ugly, yet they make wonderful things.
And their wills are like their machines of iron.
What can we do?

_I see dark things rushing across the country._

Yea, Lord! Even trains and camions and automobiles.

Trains and camions, automobiles and aeroplanes.
How nice! says the peon, to go rushing in a train!
How nice, to get in the camion, and for twenty centavos, to be gone!
How nice, in the great cities, where all things rush, and huge
lights flare bright, to wander and do nothing!
How nice to sit in the cine, where the picture of all the world
dances before the eyes!
How nice if we could take all these things away from the foreigners,
and possess them!
Take back our lands and silver and oil, take the trains and the
factories and the automobiles
And play with them all the time!
How nice!

Oh, fools! Mexicans and peons!
Who are you, to be masters of machines which you cannot make?
Which you can only break!
Those that can make are masters of these machines.
Not you, poor boobs.

How have these palefaces, yellowfaces crossed the waters of the
world?
Oh, fools! Mexicans and peons, with muddy hearts!
Did they do it by squatting on their hams?
You do nothing but squat on your hams, and stare with vacant eyes,
and drink fire-waters, and quarrel and stab.
And then run like surly dogs at the bidding of paleface masters.

Oh, dogs and fools, Mexicans and peons!
Watery-hearted, with wishy-washy knees.
Sulky in spirit, and inert.
What are you good for, but to be slaves, and rot away?

You are not worth a god!
Lo! the universe tangles its great dragons,
The dragons in the cosmos are stirring with anger again.

The dragon of the disappointed dead, that sleeps in the snow-white
north
Is lashing his tail in his sleep; the winds howl, the cold rocks
round.
The spirits of the cold dead whistle in the ears of the world.
Prepare for doom.

For I tell you, there are no dead dead, not even your dead.
There are dead that sleep in the waves of the Morning Star, with
freshening limbs.
There are dead that weep in bitter rains.
There are dead that cluster in the frozen north, shuddering and
chattering among the ice
And howling with hate.
There are dead that creep through the burning bowels of the earth,
Stirring the fires to acid of bitterness.
There are dead that sit under the trees, watching with ash-grey eyes
for their victims.
There are dead that attack the sun like swarms of black flies, to
suck his life.
There are dead that stand upon you, when you go in to your women,
And they dart to her womb, they fight for the chance to be born,
they struggle at the gate you have opened,
They gnash when it closes, and hate the one that got in, to be born
again,
Child of the living dead, the dead that live and are not refreshed.
I tell you, sorrow upon you; you shall all die.
And being dead, you shall not be refreshed.
There are no dead dead.
Being dead, you shall rove like dogs with broken haunches
Seeking the offal and garbage of life, in the invisible lanes of the
air.

The dead that have mastered fire live on, salamanders, in fire.
The dead of the water-lords rock and glimmer in the seas.
The dead of the steel machines go up in motion, _away_!
The dead of electric masters are electricity itself.

But the dead of those who have mastered nothing, nothing at all,
Crawl like masterless dogs in the back streets of the air,
Creeping for the garbage of life, and biting with venomous mouths.

Those that have mastered the forces of the world, die into the
forces, they have homes in death.
But you! what have you mastered, among the dragon hosts of the
cosmos?
There are dragons of sun and ice, dragons of the moon and the earth,
dragons of salty waters, dragons of thunder;
There is the spangled dragon of the stars at large.
And far at the centre, with one unblinking eye, the dragon of the
Morning Star.

Conquer! says the Morning Star. Pass the dragons, and pass on to me.
For I am sweet, I am the last and the best, the pool of new life.
But lo! you inert ones, I will set the dragons upon you.
They shall crunch your bones.
And even then they shall spit you out, as broken-haunched dogs,
You shall have nowhere to die into.

Lo! in the back streets of the air, dead ones are crawling like
curs!
Lo! I release the dragons! The great white one of the north,
Him of the disappointed dead, he is lashing and turning round.
He is breathing cold corruption upon you, you shall bleed in your
chests.

I am going to speak to the dragon of the inner fires,
He who housels the dead of the guns,
To withdraw his warmth from your feet, so your feet turn cold with
death.

I am about to tell the dragon of the waters to turn round on you
And spue out corrosion into your streams, on your rains.

And I wait for the final day, when the dragon of thunder, waking
under the spider-web nets
Which you’ve thrown upon him, shall suddenly shake with rage,
And dart his electric needles into your bones, and curdle your blood
like milk with electric venom.

Wait! Only wait! Little by little it all shall come upon you.

Ramón put on his black city clothes, and a black hat, and went himself with this hymn to the printer in the city. The sign of Quetzalcoatl he had printed in black and red, and the sign of the dragon, at the end, in green and black and red. And the sheet was folded.

Six soldiers of Cipriano’s command took the bundles of hymns by train; one to the capital, one to Puebla and Jalapa, one to Tampico and Monterrey, one to Torreon and Chihuahua, one to Sinaloa and Sonora, and one to the mines in Pachucha, Guanajuato, and the central region. Each soldier took only a hundred sheets. But in every town there was a recognised Reader of the Hymns; or two, or three, or four, or even ten Readers in one city. And readers who went round to the villages.

Because there was a strange, submerged desire in the people for things beyond the world. They were weary of events, and weary of news and the newspapers, weary even of the things that are taught in education. Weary is the spirit of man with man’s importunity. Of all things human, and humanly invented, we have had enough, they seemed to say. And though they took not much active notice of the Hymns, they craved for them, as men crave for alcohol, as a relief from the weariness and ennui of mankind’s man-made world.

Everywhere, in all the towns and villages, at night-time the little flames would be seen flickering, a cluster of people was seen, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting upon the ground, listening to the slow voice of some Reader.

More rarely, in some small, out-of-the-way plaza, would sound the sinister thud of the tom-tom, beating out of the hollow of the ages. And there would be two men with white sarapes with the blue edges. Then the singing of the Songs of Quetzalcoatl, and perhaps the slow round dance, with the ancient rhythm of the feet on the earth, belonging to aboriginal America.

For the old dances of the Aztecs and the Zapotecs, of all the submerged Indian races, are based upon the old, sinking bird-step of the Red Indians of the north. It is in the blood of the people; they cannot quite forget it. It comes back to them, with a sense of fear, and joy, and relief.

Of themselves, they dared not revive the old motion, nor stir the blood in the old way. The spell of the past is too terrible. But in the Songs and the Hymns of Quetzalcoatl, there spoke a new voice, the voice of a master and authority. And though they were slow to trust, the slowest and the most untrusting, they seized upon the new-old thrill, with a certain fear, and joy, and relief.

The Men of Quetzalcoatl avoided the great market-places and centres of activity. They took their stand in the little, side places. On the rim of a fountain a man in a dark blanket with blue borders, or with the sign of Quetzalcoatl in his hat, would sit down and begin to read aloud. It was enough. The people lingered to listen. He would read to the end, then say: “I have finished this reading of the Fourth Hymn of Quetzalcoatl. Now I will begin again.”

In this way, by a sort of far-away note in the voice, and by the slow monotony of repetition, the thing would drift darkly into the consciousness of the listeners.

Already in the beginning there had been the scandal of the Judases. Holy Week, in Mexico City, is, to all appearance, the great week of Judas. Everywhere you see men carrying home in triumph the great, gaudily-varnished dolls of papier-mâché. They are all men-dolls, more or less lifelike grotesque. Most frequently it is a fat Mexican-Spanish hacendado, landowner and big farmer, who is represented with his tight trousers, sticking-out belly, and huge upturned moustaches. The old-fashioned _patrón_. Some of the figures are like Punch, some are like harlequin. But they all have rosy faces and the white man’s get-up. You never see the dark-faced image of a native-blooded Mexican; always a stiff, haughty grotesque of a white man.

And all these are Judases. Judas is the fun of the fair, the victim, the big man of Holy Week, just as the Skeleton, and the skeleton on horseback, is the idol of the first week in November, the days of the dead and of all the saints.

On Easter Saturday the Judases are hung from the balconies, the string is lighted, and at length, _bang_! Shrieks of joy, Judas has exploded into nothingness, from a big cracker in the middle of him!--All the town is popping with Judases.

There was the scandal of the Holy Images thrown out of one of the churches in Mexico City, and these Judases put in their place. The Church began to move.

But then the Church in Mexico has to move gingerly; it is not popular, and its claws are cut. The priest may not ring the church bells for more than three minutes. Neither priests nor monks may wear any habit in the street, beyond the hideous black vest and white collar of the Protestant clergy. So that the priest shows himself as little as possible in the street, and practically never in the chief streets and the chief plazas.

Nevertheless, he still has influence. Processions in the streets are forbidden, but not sermons from the pulpit, nor advice from the confessional. Montes, the President, had no love for the church, and was meditating the expulsion of all foreign priests. The Archbishop himself was an Italian. But he was also a fighter.

He gave orders to all the priests, to forbid the people from listening to anything concerned with Quetzalcoatl, to destroy any hymn-sheet that might fall into their hands, and to prevent as far as possible the Hymns from being read, and the Songs from being sung, in the parishes.

But Montes had given orders to the police and the military to afford such protection to the Men of Quetzalcoatl as was accorded to any other law-abiding citizen.

Mexico is not Mexico for nothing, however, and already blood had been shed on both sides. This Ramón particularly wanted to avoid, as he felt that violent death was not so easily wiped out of the air and out of the souls of men, as spilt blood was washed off the pavements.

Therefore, when he was in the City, he asked the Bishop of the West if he would consent to an interview with himself and Don Cipriano, and would he name the place. The Bishop--who was an old friend and adviser of Carlota, and who knew Ramón well enough, replied that he should be pleased to see Don Ramón and the _Señor General_ the next day, if they would be so good as to come to his house.

The Bishop no longer occupied the great episcopal palace. This was turned into the post-office building. But he had a large house not far from the Cathedral, which had been presented by the faithful.

Ramón and Cipriano found the thin old man in a dusty, uninteresting library, waiting. He wore a simple black cassock, not too clean, with purple buttons. He received Ramón, who was in a black town suit, and Cipriano, who was in uniform, with an affable manner and suspicious looks. But he played at being the lively, genial old bird.

“Ah, Don Ramón, it is long since I saw you! How goes it, eh? Well, well? That is good! That is very good!” And he patted Ramón on the sleeve like a fussy old uncle. “Ah, my General, much honour, much honour! Welcome to this poor house of yours. It is the house of your Honour! To serve you! Gentlemen! Won’t you take a seat?”

They all sat down, in the dusty, dreary room, in the old leather chairs. The Bishop nervously looked at his thin old hands, at the fine, but rather dull amethyst ring he wore.

“Good! Señores!” he said, glancing up with his little black eyes. “At your service! Entirely at the service of your Honours.”

“Doña Carlota is in the city, Father. You have seen her?” said Ramón.

“Yes, son of mine,” said the Bishop.

“Then you know the latest news about me. She told you everything.”

“Somewhat! Somewhat! She spoke somewhat of you, the poor little thing. Thanks to God she has her sons with her. They are safely back in their native country, in good health.”

“Did you see them?”

“Yes! Yes! Two of my dearest children! Very sympathetic, very intelligent, like their father; and, like him, promising to be of very handsome presence. Yes! Yes! Smoke if you will, my General. Don’t hesitate.”

Cipriano lit a cigarette. From old associations, he was nervous, albeit amused.

“You know all about what I want to do, Father?” said Ramón.

“I don’t know all, son of mine, but I know enough. I wouldn’t want to hear more. Eh!” he sighed. “It is very sad.”

“Not so very sad, Father, if we don’t make it sad. Why make a sad thing out of it, Father? We are in Mexico for the most part Indians. They cannot understand the high Christianity, Father, and the Church knows it. Christianity is a religion of the spirit, and must needs be understood if it is to have any effect. The Indians cannot understand it, any more than the rabbits of the hills.”

“Very good! Very good! Son of mine! But we can convey it to them. The rabbits of the hills are in the hands of God.”

“No, Father, it is impossible. And without a religion that will connect them with the universe, they will all perish. Only religion will serve; not socialism, nor education, nor anything.”

“Thou speakest well,” said the Bishop.

“The rabbits of the hills may be in the hands of God, Father. But they are at the mercy of men. The same with Mexico. The people sink heavier and heavier into inertia, and the Church cannot help them, because the Church does not possess the key-word to the Mexican soul.”

“Doesn’t the Mexican Soul know the Voice of God?” said the Bishop.

“Your own children may know your voice, Father. But if you go out to speak to the birds on the lake, or the deer among the mountains, will they know your voice? Will they wait and listen?”

“Who knows? It is said they waited to listen to the Holy Francisco of Assisi.”

“Now, Father, we must speak to the Mexicans in their own language, and give them the clue-word to their own souls. I shall say _Quetzalcoatl_. If I am wrong, let me perish. But I am not wrong.”

The Bishop fidgetted rather restlessly. He didn’t want to hear all this. And he did not want to answer. He was impotent anyhow.

“Your Church is the Catholic Church, Father?”

“Surely!” said the Bishop.

“And Catholic Church means the Church of All, the Universal Church?”

“Surely, son of mine.”

“Then why not let it be really catholic? Why call it catholic, when it is not only just one among many churches, but is even hostile to all the rest of the churches? Father, why not let the Catholic Church become really the universal Church?”

“It is the Universal Church of Christ, my son.”

“Why not let it be the Universal Church of Mohammet as well; since ultimately, God is One God, but the peoples speak varying languages, and each needs its own prophet to speak with its own tongue. The Universal Church of Christ, and Mohammet, and Buddha, and Quetzalcoatl, and all the others--_that_ would be a Catholic Church, Father.”

“You speak of things beyond me,” said the Bishop, turning his ring.

“Not beyond any man,” said Don Ramón. “A Catholic Church is a church of all the religions, a home on earth for all the prophets and the Christs. A big tree under which every man who acknowledges the greater life of the soul can sit and be refreshed. Isn’t _that_ the Catholic Church, Father?”

“Alas, my son, I know the Apostolic Church of Christ in Rome, of which I am a humble servant. I do not understand these clever things you are saying to me.”

“I am asking you for peace, Father. I am not one who hates the Church of Christ, the _Roman_ Catholic Church. But in Mexico I think it has no place. When my heart is not bitter, I am grateful forever to Christ, the Son of God. The affair of the Judases grieves me more than it does you, and the affairs of bloodshed are far bitterer to me.”

“I am no innovator, my son, to provoke bloodshed.”

“Listen! I am going to remove the holy images from the church at Sayula, with reverence, and with reverence burn them upon the lake. Then I shall put the image of Quetzalcoatl in the church at Sayula.”

The Bishop looked up furtively. For some moments he said nothing. But his silence was furtive, cornered.

“Would you dare do that, Don Ramón?” he said.

“Yes! And I shall not be prevented. General Viedma is with me.”

The Bishop glanced sideways at Cipriano.

“Certainly,” said Cipriano.

“Nevertheless it is illegal,” said the Bishop, with acid bitterness.

“What is illegal in Mexico?” said Ramón. “What is weak is illegal. I will not be weak, My Lord.”

“Lucky you!” said the Bishop, lifting his shoulders.

There was a break of silence.

“No!” said Ramón. “I come to ask you for peace. Tell the Archbishop what I say. Let him tell the Cardinals and the Pope, that the time has come for a Catholic Church of the Earth, the Catholic Church of All the Sons of Men. The Saviours are more than one, and let us pray they will still be increased. But God is one God, and the Saviours are the Sons of the One God. Let the Tree of the Church spread its branches over all the earth, and shelter the prophets in its shade, as they sit and speak their knowledge of the beyond.”

“Are you one of these prophets, Don Ramón?”

“I surely am, Father. And I would speak about Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, and build his Church here.”

“Nay! You would invade the Churches of Christ and the Blessed Virgin, I heard you say.”

“You know my intentions. But I do not want to quarrel with the Church of Rome, nor have bloodshed and enmity, Father. Can you not understand me? Should there not be peace between the men who strive down their different ways to the God-Mystery?”

“Once more desecrate the altars! Bring in strange idols. Burn the images of Our Lord and Our Lady, and ask for peace?” said the poor Bishop, who helplessly longed to be left alone.

“All that, Father,” said Ramón.

“Son, what can I answer? You are a good man smitten with the madness of pride. Don Cipriano is one more Mexican general. I am the poor old Bishop of this diocese, faithful servant of the Holy Church, humble child of the Holy Father in Rome. What can I do? What can I answer? Take me out to the cemetery and shoot me at once, General!”

“I don’t want to,” said Cipriano.

“It will end like that,” said the Bishop.

“But why?” cried Don Ramón. “Is there no sense in what I say? Cannot you understand?”

“My son, my understanding goes no further than my faith, my duty, will allow. I am not a clever man. I live by faith, and my duty to my sacred office. Understand that I do not understand.”

“Good-day, Father!” said Ramón, suddenly rising.

“Go with God, my son,” said the Bishop, rising and lifting his fingers.

“Adios, Señor!” said Cipriano, clicking his spurs, and putting his hand on his sword as he turned to the door.

“Adios, Señor General,” said the Bishop, darting after them his eyes of old malice, which they could feel in their backs.

“He will say nothing,” said Cipriano, as he and Ramón went down the steps. “The old jesuit, he only wants to keep his job and his power, and prevent the heart’s beating. I know them. All they treasure, even more than their money, is their centipede power over the frightened people; especially over the women.”

“I didn’t know you hated them,” laughed Ramón.

“Waste no more breath on them, my dear one,” said Cipriano. “Go forward, you can walk over broken snakes such as those.”

As they went on foot past the post-office square, where the modern scribes at little tables under the arches sat tapping out letters on their typewriters for the poor and illiterate, who waited with their few centavos to have their messages turned into florid Castilian, Ramón and Cipriano met with an almost startled respect.

“Why talk to the Bishop?--he doesn’t exist any more. I hear his Knights of Cortes had a big dinner the other evening, and it is said--I don’t believe it--that they drank oaths in blood to have my life and yours. But I think the oaths of the Catholic Dames would frighten me more. Why, if a man stops to unfasten his trousers to make water, the Knights of Cortes run for their lives, thinking the pistol is pointed at them. Don’t think about them, man! Don’t try to conciliate them. They will only puff up and become insolent, thinking you are afraid of them. Six soldiers will trample down all that dirt,” said the General.

It was the city, and the spirit of the city.

Cipriano had a suite in the big Palace on the Plaza de Armas.

“If I marry,” he said, as they passed into the stone patio, where soldiers stood at attention, “I shall take a house in the colony, to be more private.”

Cipriano in town was amusing. He seemed to exude pride and arrogant authority as he walked about. But his black eyes, glancing above his fine nose and that little goat beard, were not to be laughed at. They seemed to get everything, in the stab of a glance. A demoniacal little fellow.

CHAP: XVIII. AUTO DA FE.

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_:

“Don Ramón don’t drink, don’t smoke.
Doña Carlota wished he would.
He’s going to wear the sky-blue cloak
That he’s stole from the Mother of God.”

“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.