Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 466
‘Mama’s soul,’ said Cyprian, ‘will go straight into Paradise.’
‘Who knows, child! Perhaps the Paradise for the souls of the dead is the hearts of the living.’
‘I don’t understand what you say.’
‘It is possible,’ said Ramón, ‘that even now the only Paradise for the soul of your mother is in my heart.’
The two boys stared at him with open eyes.
‘Never will I believe that,’ said Cyprian.
‘Or it may be in thy heart,’ said Ramón. ‘Hast thou a place in thy heart for the soul of thy mother?’
The young Cyprian stared with bewildered hazel eyes.
‘The soul of my mother goes direct to Paradise, because she is a saint,’ he asserted flatly.
‘Which Paradise, my son?’
‘The only one. Where God is.’
‘And where is that?’
There was a pause.
‘In the sky,’ said Cyprian, stubbornly.
‘It is very far and very empty. But I believe, my son, that the hearts of living men are the very middle of the sky. And there God is; and Paradise; inside the hearts of living men and women. And there the souls of the dead come to rest, there, at the very centre, where the blood turns and returns; that is where the dead sleep best.’
There was a very blank pause.
‘And wilt thou go on saying thou art the Living Quetzalcoatl?’ said Cyprian.
‘Surely! And when you are a little older, perhaps you will come to me and say it too.’
‘Never! Thou hast killed our mother, and we shall hate thee. When we are men we ought to kill thee.’
‘Nay, that is bombast, child! Why wilt thou listen only to servants and priests and people of that sort? Are they not thy inferiors, since thou art my son, and thy mother’s son? Why dost thou take the talk of servants and inferiors into thy mouth? Hast thou no room for the speech of brave men? Thou wilt not kill me, neither will thy brother. For I would not allow you, even if you wished it. And you do not wish it. Talk no more of this empty lackey-talk to me, Cyprian, for I will not hear it. Art thou already a little lackey, or a priest? Come, thou art vulgar. Thou art a little vulgarian. We had better speak English; or thy French. Castilian is too good a language to turn into this currish talk.’
Ramón rose and went to the window to look out at the lake. The drums on the church were sounding for midday, when every man should glance at the sun, and stand silent with a little prayer.
‘The sun has climbed the hill, the day is on the downward slope.
Between the morning and the afternoon, stand I here with my soul, and lift it up.
My soul is heavy with sunshine, and steeped with strength.
The sunbeams have filled me like a honeycomb,
It is the moment of fulness,
And the top of the morning.’
Ramón turned and repeated the Mid-day verse to his boys. They listened in confused silence.
‘Come!’ he said. ‘Why are you confused? If I talked to you about your new boots, or ten pesos, you would not be confused. But if I speak of the sun and your own souls filled from the sun like honeycombs, you sulk. You had better go back to your school in America, to learn to be business men. You had better say to everybody: Oh, no! we have no father! Our mother died, but we never had a father. We are children of an immaculate conception, so we should make excellent business men.’
‘I shall be a priest,’ said Cyprian.
‘And I a doctor,’ said Pedro.
‘Very good! Very good! Shall-be is far from am, and tomorrow is another day. Come to me when your heart tells you to come. You are my little boys, whatever you say, and I shall stroke your hair and laugh at you. Come! Come here!’
He looked at them, and they dared not refuse to obey, his power was so much greater than theirs.
He took his eldest son in his arms and stroked his head.
‘There!’ he said. ‘Thou art my eldest son, and I am thy father, who calls himself The Living Quetzalcoatl. When they say: “Is it thy father who calls himself The Living Quetzalcoatl?” — say to them: “Yes, he is my father.” And when they ask you what you think of such a father, say: “I am young, and I do not understand him yet. But I do not judge my father without understanding him.” Wilt thou say that, my boy, Pedro, my son?’ And Ramón stroked the boy’s hair with the gentleness and tenderness which filled the child with a sort of awe.
‘Yes, papa! I will say that,’ said the boy, relieved.
‘It is well,’ said Ramón, laying his hand on the child’s head for a moment, like a blessing.
Then he turned to the younger son.
‘Come then,’ he said, ‘and let me stroke thy upstanding hair.’
‘If I love thee, I cannot love mama!’ said Cyprian.
‘Nay, is thy heart so narrow? Love not at all, if it makes thee petty.’
‘But I do not want to come to thee, papa.’
‘Then stay away, my son, and come when thou dost want it.’
‘I do not think thou lovest me, papa.’
‘Nay, when thou art an obstinate monkey, I love thee not. But when thy real manhood comes upon thee, and thou art brave and daring, rather than rash and impudent, then thou wilt be lovable. How can I love thee if thou art not lovable?’
‘Mama always loved me.’
‘She called thee her own. I do not call thee mine own. Thou art thyself. When thou art lovable, I can love thee. When thou art rash and impudent, nay, I cannot. The mill will not spin when the wind does not blow.’
The boys went away. Ramón watched them as they stood in their black clothes and bare knees upon the jetty, and his heart yearned over them.
‘Ah, the poor little devils!’ he said to himself. And then:
‘But I can do no more than keep my soul like a castle for them, to be a stronghold to them when they need it — if ever they do.’
These days Kate often sat by the lake shore, in the early light of the morning. Between the rains, the day came very clear, she could see every wrinkle in the great hills opposite, and the fold, or pass, through which a river came, away at Tuliapan, was so vivid to her she felt she had walked it. The red birds looked as if rains had freshened even their poppy-buds, and in the morning frogs were whirring.
But the world was somehow different; all different. No jingle of bells from the church, no striking of the clock. The clock was taken away.
And instead, the drums. At dawn, the heavy drum rolling its sound on the air. Then the sound of the Dawn-Verse chanted from the tower, in a strong man’s voice:
‘The dark is dividing, the sun is coming past the wall.
Day is at hand.
Lift your hand, say Farewell! say Welcome!
Then be silent.
Let the darkness leave you, let the light come into you,
Man in the twilight.’
The voice and the great drum ceased. And in the dawn the men who had risen stood silent, with arm uplifted, in the moment of change, the women covered their faces and bent their heads. All was changeless still for the moment of change.
Then the light drum rattled swiftly, as the first sparkle of the bright sun flashed in sheer light from the crest of the great hills. The day had begun. People of the world moved on their way.
At about nine o’clock the light drum rattled quickly, and the voice in the tower cried:
‘Half-way! Half-way up the slope of the morning!’
There was the heavy drum at noon, the light drum again at about three o’clock, with the cry:
‘Half-way! Half-way down the slope of afternoon.’
And at sunset again, the great drum rolling, and the voice crying:
‘Leave off! Leave off! Leave off!
Lift your hand, say Farewell! say Welcome!
Man in the twilight.
The sun is in the outer porch, cry to him: Thanks! Oh, Thanks!
Then be silent.
You belong to the night.’
And again in the sunset everywhere men stood with lifted faces and hands, and women covered their faces and stood with bowed heads; all was changeless still for the moment of change.
Then the lighter drums suddenly beat, and people moved on into the night.
The world was different, different. The drums seemed to leave the air soft and vulnerable, as if it were alive. Above all, no clang of metal on metal, during the moments of change.
‘Metal for resistance.
Drums for the beating heart.
The heart ceases not.’
This was one of Ramón’s little verses.
Strange, the change that was taking place in the world. Always the air had a softer, more velvety silence, it seemed alive. And there were no hours. Dawn and noon and sunset, mid-morning, or the up-slope middle, and mid-afternoon, or the down-slope middle, this was the day, with the watches of the night. They began to call the four watches of the day the watch of the rabbit, the watch of the hawk, the watch of the turkey-buzzard and the watch of the deer. And the four quarters of the night were the watch of the frog, the watch of the fire-fly, the watch of the fish, the watch of the squirrel.
‘I shall come for you,’ wrote Cipriano to her, ‘when the deer is thrusting his last foot towards the forest.’
That meant, she knew, in the last quarter of the hours of the deer; something after five o’clock.
It was as if, from Ramón and Cipriano, from Jamiltepec and the lake region, a new world was unfolding, unrolling, as softly and subtly as twilight falling and removing the clutter of day. It was a soft, twilit newness slowly spreading and penetrating the world, even into the cities. Now, even in the cities the blue serapes of Quetzalcoatl were seen, and the drums were heard at the Hours, casting a strange mesh of twilight over the clash of bells and the clash of traffic. Even in the capital the big drum rolled again, and men, even men in city clothes, would stand still with uplifted faces and arm upstretched, listening for the noon-verse, which they knew in their hearts, and trying not to hear the clash of metal.
‘Metal for resistance.
Drums for the beating heart.’
But it was a world of metal, and a world of resistance. Cipriano, strangely powerful with the soldiers, in spite of the hatred he aroused in other officials, was for meeting metal with metal. For getting Montes to declare: The Religion of Quetzalcoatl is the religion of Mexico, official and declared. — Then backing up the declaration with the army.
But no! no! said Ramón. Let it spread of itself. And wait awhile, till you can be declared the living Huitzilopochtli, and your men can have the red and black blanket, with the snake-curve. Then perhaps we can have the open wedding with Caterina, and she will be a mother among the gods.
All the time, Ramón tried as far as possible to avoid arousing resistance and hate. He wrote open letters to the clergy, saying:
‘Who am I, that I should be enemy of the One Church? I am catholic of catholics. I would have One Church of all the world, with Rome for the Central City, if Rome wish.
‘But different peoples must have different Saviours, as they have different speech and different colour. The final mystery is one mystery. But the manifestations are many.
‘God must come to Mexico in a blanket and in huaraches, else He is no God of the Mexicans, they cannot know Him. Naked, all men are but men. But the touch, the look, the word that goes from one naked man to another is the mystery of living. We live by manifestations.
‘And men are fragile, and fragments, and strangely grouped in their fragmentariness. The invisible God has done it to us, darkened some faces and whitened others, and grouped us in groups, even as the zopilote is a bird, and the parrot of the hot lands is a bird, and the little oriole is a bird. But the angel of the zopilotes must be a zopilote, and the angel of the parrots a parrot. And to one, the dead carcase will ever smell good; to the other, the fruit.
‘Priests who will come to me do not forsake either faith or God. They change their manner of speech and vestments, as the peon calls with one cry to the oxen, and with another cry to the mules. Each responds to its own call in its own way — ’
To the socialists and agitators he wrote:
‘What do you want? Would you make all men as you are? And when every peon in Mexico wears an American suit of clothes and shiny black shoes, and looks for life in the newspaper and for his manhood to the government, will you be satisfied? Did the government, then, give you your manhood, that you expect it to give it to these others?
‘It is time to forget. It is time to put away the grudge and the pity. No man was ever the better for being pitied, and every man is the worse for a grudge.
‘We can do nothing with life, except live it.
‘Let us seek life where it is to be found. And, having found it, life will solve the problems. But every time we deny the living life, in order to solve a problem, we cause ten problems to spring up where was one before. Solving the problems of the people, we lose the people in a poisonous forest of problems.
‘Life makes, and moulds, and changes the problem. The problem will always be there, and will always be different. So nothing can be solved, even by life and living, for life dissolves and resolves, solving it leaves alone.
‘Therefore we turn to life; and from the clock to the sun and from metal to membrane.
‘This way we hope the problem will dissolve, since it can never be solved. When men seek life first, they will not seek land nor gold. The land will lie on the lap of the gods, where men lie. And if the old communal system comes back, and the village and the land are one, it will be very good. For truly, no man can possess lands.
‘But when we are deep in a bog, it is no use attempting to gallop. We can only wade out with toil. And in our haste to have a child, it is no good tearing the babe from the womb.
‘Seek life, and life will bring the change.
‘Seek life itself, even pause at dawn and at sunset, and life will come back into us and prompt us through the transitions.
‘Lay forcible hands on nothing, only be ready to resist, if forcible hands should be laid on you. For the new shoots of life are tender, and better ten deaths than that they should be torn or trampled down by the bullies of the world. When it comes to fighting for the tender shoots of life, fight as the jaguar fights for her young, as the she-bear for her cubs.
‘That which is life is vulnerable, only metal is invulnerable. Fight for the vulnerable unfolding of life. But for that, fight never to yield.’
Cipriano, too, was always speaking to his soldiers, always with the same cry:
‘We are men! We are fighters!
‘But what can we do?
‘Shall we march to simple death?
‘No! No! We must march to life.
‘The gringos are here. We have let them come. We must let them stay, for we cannot drive them out. With guns and swords and bayonets we can never drive them out, for they have a thousand where we have one. And if they come in peace, let them stay in peace.
‘But we have not lost Mexico yet. We have not lost each other.
‘We are the blood of America. We are the blood of Montezuma.
‘What is my hand for? Is it to turn the handle of a machine alone?
‘My hand is to salute the God of Mexicans, beyond the sky.
‘My hand is to touch the hand of a brave man.
‘My hand is to hold a gun.
‘My hand is to make the corn grow out of the ground.
‘What are my knees for?
‘My knees are to hold me proud and erect.
‘My knees are for marching on my way.
‘My knees are the knees of a man.
‘Our god is Quetzalcoatl of the blue sky, and Huitzilopochtli red at the gates, watching.
‘Our gods hate a kneeling man. They shout Ho! Erect!
‘Then what can we do?
‘Wait!
‘I am a man, naked inside my clothes as you are.
‘Am I a big man? Am I a tall and powerful man, from Tlascala, for example.
‘I am not. I am little. I am from the south. I am small —
‘Yet am I not your general?
‘Why?
‘Why am I a general, and you only soldiers?
‘I will tell you.
‘I found the other strength.
‘There are two strengths; the strength which is the strength of oxen and mules and iron, of machines and guns, and of men who cannot get the second strength.
‘Then there is the second strength. It is the strength you want. And you can get it, whether you are small or big. It is the strength that comes from behind the sun. And you can get it; you can get it here!’ — he struck his breast — ’and here!’ — he struck his belly — ’and here!’ — he struck his loins. ‘The strength that comes from back of the sun.’
When Cipriano was roused, his eyes flashed, and it was as if dark feathers, like pinions, were starting out of him, out of his shoulders and back, as if these dark pinions clashed and flashed like a roused eagle. His men seemed to see him, as by second sight, with the demonish clashing and dashing of wings, like an old god. And they murmured, their eyes flashing:
‘It is Cipriano! It is he! We are Ciprianistos, we are his children.’
‘We are men! We are men!’ cried Cipriano.
‘But listen. There are two kinds of men. There are men with the second strength, and men without it.
‘When the first gringos came, we lost our second strength. And the padres taught us: Submit! Submit!
‘The gringos had got the second strength!
‘How?
‘Like cunning ones, they stole it on the sly. They kept very still, like a tarantula in his hole. Then when neither sun nor moon nor stars knew he was there, Biff! — the tarantula sprang across, and bit, and left the poison and sucked the secret.
‘So they got the secrets of the air and the water, and they got the secrets out of the earth. So the metals were theirs, and they made guns and machines and ships, and they made trains and telegrams and radio.
‘Why? Why did they make all these things? How could they do it?
