‘But after all,’ said Kate, ‘what about the twelve million poor — mostly Indians — whom Montes talks about? You can’t make them all rich, whatever you do. And they don’t understand the very words, capital and socialism. They are Mexico, really, and nobody ever looks at them, except to make a casus belli of them. Humanly, they never exist for you.’
‘Humanly they can’t exist, they are too ignorant!’ cried Garcia. ‘But when we can kill all the capitalists, then — ’
‘You’ll find somebody killing you,’ said Kate. ‘No, I don’t like it. You aren’t Mexico. You aren’t even Mexican, really. You are just half Spaniards full of European ideas, and you care for asserting your own ideas and nothing else. You have no real bowels of compassion. You are no good.’
The young man listened with round eyes, going rather yellow in the face. At the end he lifted his shoulders and spread his hands in a pseudo-Mediterranean gesture.
‘Well! It may be!’ he said, with a certain jeering flippancy. ‘Perhaps you know everything. Maybe! Foreigners, they usually know everything about Mexico.’ And he ended on a little cackling laugh.
‘I know what I feel,’ said Kate. ‘And now I want a taxi, and I want to go home. I don’t want to see any more stupid, ugly pictures.’
Off she drove back to the hotel, once more in a towering rage. She was amazed at herself. Usually she was so good-tempered and easy. But something about this country irritated her and put her into such a violent anger, she felt she would die. Burning, furious rage.
And perhaps, she thought to herself, the white and half-white Mexicans suffered some peculiar reaction in their blood which made them that they too were almost always in a state of suppressed irritation and anger, for which they must find a vent. They must spend their lives in a complicated game of frustration, frustration of life in its ebbing and flowing.
Perhaps something came out of the earth, the dragon of the earth, some effluence, some vibration which militated against the very composition of the blood and nerves in human beings. Perhaps it came from the volcanoes. Or perhaps even from the silent, serpent-like dark resistance of those masses of ponderous natives whose blood was principally the old, heavy, resistant Indian blood.
Who knows? But something there was, and something very potent. Kate lay on her bed and brooded on her own organic rage. There was nothing to be done!
But young Garcia was really nice. He called in the afternoon and sent up his card. Kate, feeling sore, received him unwillingly.
‘I came,’ he said, with a little stiff dignity, like an ambassador on a mission, ‘to tell you that I, too, don’t like those caricatures. I, too, don’t like them. I don’t like the young people, boys and girls, no? — to be seeing them all the time. I, too, don’t like. But I think, also, that here in Mexico we can’t help it. People are very bad, very greedy, no? — they only want to get money here, and they don’t care. So we must hate them. Yes, we must. But I, too, I don’t like it.’
He held his hat in his two hands, and twisted his shoulders in a conflict of feelings.
Kate suddenly laughed, and he laughed too, with a certain pain and confusion in his laughter.
‘That’s awfully nice of you to come and say so,’ she said, warming to him.
‘No, not nice,’ he said, frowning. ‘But I don’t know what to do. Perhaps you think I am — different — I am not the thing that I am. And I don’t want it.’
He flushed and was uncomfortable. There was a curious naïve sincerity about him, since he was being sincere. If he had chosen to play a game of sophistication, he could have played it better. But with Kate he wanted to be sincere.
‘I know, really,’ laughed Kate, ‘you feel a good deal like I do about it. I know you only pretend to be fierce and hard.’
‘No!’ he said, suddenly making solemn, flashing eyes. ‘I do also feel fierce. I do hate these men who take, only take everything from Mexico — money, and all — everything!’ He spread his hands with finality. ‘I hate them because I must, no? But also, I am sorry — I am sorry I have to hate so much. Yes, I think I am sorry. I think so.’
He knitted his brows rather tense. And over his plump, young, fresh face was a frown of resentment and hatred, quite sincere too.
Kate could see he wasn’t really sorry. Only the two moods, of natural, soft, sensuous flow, and of heavy resentment and hate, alternated inside him like shadow and shine on a cloudy day, in swift, unavoidable succession. What was nice about him was his simplicity, in spite of the complication of his feelings, and the fact that his resentments were not personal, but beyond persons, even beyond himself.
She went out with him to tea, and while she was out, Don Ramón called and left cards with the corners turned down, and an invitation to dinner for her and Owen. There seemed an almost old-fashioned correctness in those cards.
Looking over the newspaper, she came on an odd little item. She could read Spanish without much difficulty. The trouble lay in talking it, when Italian got in her way and caused a continual stumble. She looked on the English page of the Excelsior or the Universal for the news — if there was any. Then she looked through the Spanish pages for bits of interest.
This little item was among the Spanish information, and was headed: The Gods of Antiquity Return to Mexico.
‘There was a ferment in the village of Sayula, Jalisco, on the Lake of Sayula, owing to an incident of more or less comic nature, yesterday morning towards mid-day. The women who inhabit the shores of the lake are to be seen each day soon after sunrise descending to the water’s edge with large bundles. They kneel on the rocks and stones, and in little groups, like water-fowl, they wash their dirty linen in the soft water of the lake, pausing at times as an old canoa sails by with large single sail. The scene is little changed since the days of Montezuma, when the natives of the lake worshipped the spirit of the waters, and threw in little images and idols of baked clay, which the lake sometimes returns to the descendants of the dead idolaters, to keep them in mind of practices not yet altogether forgotten.
‘As the hot sun rises in the sky, the women spread their washing on the sand and pebbles of the shore, and retire to the shade of the willow trees that grow so gracefully and retain their verdant hue through the dryest season of the year. While thus reposing after their labours, these humble and superstitious women were astonished to see a man of great stature rise naked from the lake and wade towards the shore. His face, they said, was dark and bearded, but his body shone like gold.
‘As if unaware of any watchful eyes, he advanced calmly and majestically towards the shore. There he stood a moment, and selecting with his eye a pair of the loose cotton pants worn by the peasants in the fields, that was spread whitening in the sun, he stooped and proceeded to cover his nakedness with the said garment.
‘The woman who thus saw her husband’s apparel robbed beneath her eye, rose, calling to the man and summoning the other women. Whereupon the stranger turned his dark face upon them, and said in a quiet voice: “Why are you crying? Be quiet! It will be given back to you. Your gods are ready to return to you. Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc, the old gods, are minded to come back to you. Be quiet, don’t let them find you crying and complaining. I have come from out of the lake to tell you the gods are coming back to Mexico, they are ready to return to their own home.”
‘Little comforted by this speech, the woman who had lost her washing was overcome and said no more. The stranger then appropriated a cotton blouse, which he donned, and disappeared.
‘After a while, the simple women gathered courage to return to their humble dwellings. The story thus reached the ears of the police, who at once set out to search for the thief.
‘The story, however, is not yet concluded. The husband of the poor woman of the lake-shore, returning from his labours in the field, approached the gates of the village towards sunset, thinking, no doubt, of nothing but repose and the evening meal. A man in a black serape stepped towards him, from the shadows of a broken wall, and ask
ed: Are you afraid to come with me? The labourer, a man of spirit, promptly replied: No, señor! He therefore followed the unknown man through the broken wall and through the bushes of a deserted garden. In a dark room, or cellar, a small light was burning, revealing a great basin of gold, into which four little men, smaller than children, were pouring sweet-scented water. The astounded peasant was now told to wash and put on clean clothes, to be ready for the return of the gods. He was seated in the golden basin and washed with sweet-smelling soap, while the dwarfs poured water over him. This, they said, is the bath of Quetzalcoatl. The bath of fire is yet to come. They gave him clean clothing of pure white cotton, and a new hat with star embroidery, and sandals with straps of white leather. But beside this, a new blanket, white with bars of blue and black, and flowers like stars at the centre, and two pieces of silver money. Go, he was told. And when they ask you, where did you get your blanket? answer that Quetzalcoatl is young again. The poor fellow went home in sore fear, lest the police should arrest him for possessing stolen goods.
‘The village is full of excitement, and Don Ramón Carrasco, our eminent historian and archaeologist, whose hacienda lies in the vicinity, has announced his intention of proceeding as soon as possible to the spot to examine the origin of this new legend. Meanwhile, the police are watching attentively the development of affairs, without taking any steps for the moment. Indeed, these little fantasies create a pleasant diversion in the regular order of banditry, murder, and outrage, which it is usually our duty to report.’
Kate wondered what was at the back of this: if anything more than a story. Yet, strangely, a different light than the common light seemed to gleam out of the words of even this newspaper paragraph.
She wanted to go to Sayula. She wanted to see the big lake where the gods had once lived, and whence they were due to emerge. Amid all the bitterness that Mexico produced in her spirit, there was still a strange beam of wonder and mystery, almost like hope. A strange darkly-iridescent beam of wonder, of magic.
The name Quetzalcoatl, too, fascinated her. She had read bits about the god. Quetzal is the name of a bird that lives high up in the mists of tropical mountains, and has very beautiful tail-feathers, precious to the Aztecs. Coatl is a serpent. Quetzalcoatl is the Plumed Serpent, so hideous in the fanged, feathered, writhing stone of the National Museum.
But Quetzalcoatl was, she vaguely remembered, a sort of fair-faced bearded god; the wind, the breath of life, the eyes that see and are unseen, like the stars by day. The eyes that watch behind the wind, as the stars beyond the blue of day. And Quetzalcoatl must depart from Mexico to merge again into the deep bath of life. He was old. He had gone eastwards, perhaps into the sea, perhaps he had sailed into heaven, like a meteor returning, from the top of the Volcano of Orizaba: gone back as a peacock streaming into the night, or as a bird of Paradise, its tail gleaming like the wake of a meteor. Quetzalcoatl! Who knows what he meant to the dead Aztecs, and to the older Indians, who knew him before the Aztecs raised their deity to heights of horror and vindictiveness?
All a confusion of contradictory gleams of meaning, Quetzalcoatl. But why not? Her Irish spirit was weary to death of definite meanings, and a God of one fixed purport. Gods should be iridescent, like the rainbow in the storm. Man creates a God in his own image, and the gods grow old along with the men that made them. But storms sway in heaven, and the god-stuff sways high and angry over our heads. Gods die with men who have conceived them. But the god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a sound to be heard. Like the sea in storm, that beats against the rocks of living, stiffened men, slowly to destroy them. Or like the sea of the glimmering, ethereal plasm of the world, that bathes the feet and the knees of men as earth-sap bathes the roots of trees. Ye must be born again. Even the gods must be born again. We must be born again.
In her vague, woman’s way, Kate knew this. She had lived her life. She had had her lovers, her two husbands. She had her children.
Joachim Leslie, her dead husband, she had loved as much as a woman can love a man: that is, to the bounds of human love. Then she had realized that human love has its limits, that there is a beyond. And Joachim dead, willy nilly her spirit had passed the bounds. She was no longer in love with love. She no longer yearned for the love of a man, or the love even of her children. Joachim had gone into eternity in death, and she had crossed with him into a certain eternity in life. There, the yearning for companionship and sympathy and human love had left her. Something infinitely intangible but infinitely blessed took its place: a peace that passes understanding.
At the same time, a wild and angry battle raged between her and the thing that Owen called life: such as the bull-fight, the tea-party, the enjoyments; like the arts in their modern aspect of hate effusion. The powerful, degenerate thing called life, wrapping one or other of its tentacles round her.
And then, when she could escape into her true loneliness, the influx of peace and soft, flower-like potency which was beyond understanding. It disappeared even if you thought about it, so delicate, so fine. And yet, the only reality.
Ye must be born again. Out of the fight with the octopus of life, the dragon of degenerate or of incomplete existence, one must win this soft bloom of being, that is damaged by a touch.
No, she no longer wanted love, excitement, and something to fill her life. She was forty, and in the rare, lingering dawn of maturity, the flower of her soul was opening. Above all things, she must preserve herself from worldly contacts. Only she wanted the silence of other unfolded souls around her, like a perfume. The presence of that which is forever unsaid.
And in the horror and climax of death-rattles, which is Mexico, she thought she could see it in the black eyes of the Indians. She felt that Don Ramón and Don Cipriano both had heard the soundless call, across all the hideous choking.
Perhaps this had brought her to Mexico: away from England and her mother, away from her children, away from everybody. To be alone with the unfolding flower of her own soul, in the delicate, chiming silence that is at the midst of things.
The thing called ‘Life’ is just a mistake we have made in our own minds. Why persist in the mistake any further?
Owen was the mistake itself: so was Villiers: so was that Mexico City.
She wanted to get out, to disentangle herself again.
They had promised to go out to dinner to the house of Don Ramón. His wife was away in the United States with her two boys, one of whom had been ill, not seriously, at his school in California. But Don Ramón’s aunt would be hostess.
The house was out at Tlalpam. It was May, the weather was hot, the rains were not yet started. The shower at the bullfight had been a sort of accident.
‘I wonder,’ said Owen, ‘whether I ought to put on a dinner-coat. Really, I feel humiliated to the earth every time I put on evening dress.’
‘Then don’t do it!’ said Kate, who was impatient of Owen’s kicking at these very little social pricks, and swallowing the whole porcupine.
She herself came down in a simple gown with a black velvet top and a loose skirt of delicate brocaded chiffon, of a glimmering green and yellow and black. She also wore a long string of jade and crystal.
It was a gift she had, of looking like an Ossianic goddess, a certain feminine strength and softness glowing in the very material of her dress. But she was never ‘smart.’
‘Why you’re dressed up to the eyes!’ cried Owen in chagrin, pulling at his soft collar. ‘Bare shoulders notwithstanding!’
They went out to the distant suburb in the tram-car, swift in the night, with big clear stars overhead, dropping and hanging with a certain gleam of menace. In Tlalpam there was a heavy scent of nightflowers, a feeling of ponderous darkness, with a few sparks of intermittent fireflies. And always the heavy calling of nightflower scents. To Kate, there seemed a faint whiff of blood in all tropical-scented flowers: of blood or sweat.
It was a hot night. They banged on the iron doors of the entrance, dogs barked, and a m
ozo opened to them, warily, closing fast again the moment they had entered the dark garden of trees.
Don Ramón was in white, a white dinner-jacket: Don Cipriano the same. But there were other guests, young Garcia, another pale young man called Mirabal, and an elderly man in a black cravat, named Toussaint. The only other woman was Doña Isabel, aunt to Don Ramón. She wore a black dress with a high collar of black lace, and some strings of pearls, and seemed shy, frightened, absent as a nun before all these men. But to Kate she was very kind, caressive, speaking English in a plaintive faded voice. This dinner was a sort of ordeal and ritual combined, to the cloistered, elderly soul.
But it was soon evident that she was trembling with fearful joy. She adored Ramón with an uncritical, nun-like adoration. It was obvious she hardly heard the things that were said. Words skimmed the surface of her consciousness without ever penetrating. Underneath, she was trembling in nun-like awareness of so many men, and in almost sacred excitement at facing Don Ramón as hostess.
The house was a fairly large villa, quietly and simply furnished, with natural taste.
‘Do you always live here?’ said Kate to Don Ramón. ‘Never at your hacienda?’
‘How do you know I have a hacienda?’ he asked.
‘I saw it in a newspaper — near Sayula.’
‘Ah!’ he said, laughing at her with his eyes. ‘You saw about the returning of the Gods of Antiquity.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it is interesting?’
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘I love the word Quetzalcoatl.’
‘The word!’ he repeated.
His eyes laughed at her teasingly all the time.
‘What do you think, Mrs Leslie,’ cried the pale-faced young Mirabal, in curiously resonant English, with a French accent. ‘Don’t you think it would be wonderful if the gods came back to Mexico? our own gods?’ He sat in intense expectation, his blue eyes fixed on Kate’s face, his soup-spoon suspended.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 430
