Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated), page 472
‘Man is a column of blood, with a voice in it,’ he said. ‘And when the voice is still, and he is only a column of blood, he is better.’
She went away to her room sadly, hearing the sound of infinite exhaustion in his voice. As if he had a hole, a wound in the middle of him. She could almost feel it, in her own bowels.
And if, with his efforts, he killed himself? — Then, she said, Cipriano would come apart, and it would be all finished.
Ah, why should a man have to make these efforts on behalf of a beastly, malevolent people who weren’t worth it! Better let the world come to an end, if that was what it wanted.
She thought of Teresa soothing him, soothing him and saying nothing. And him like a great helpless, wounded thing! It was rather horrible, really. Herself, she would have to expostulate, she would have to try to prevent him. Why should men damage themselves with this useless struggling and fighting, and then come home to their women to be restored!
To Kate, the fight simply wasn’t worth one wound. Let the beastly world of man come to an end, if that was its destiny, as soon as possible. Without lifting a finger to prevent it. — Live one’s own precious life, that was given but once, and let the rest go its own hellish way.
She would have had to try to prevent Ramón from giving himself to destruction this way. She was willing for him to be ten Living Quetzalcoatls. But not to expose himself to the devilish malevolence of people.
Yet he would do it. Even as Joachim had done. And Teresa, with her silence and her infinitely soft administering, she would heal him far better than Kate, with her expostulation and her opposition.
‘Ah!’ said Kate to herself. ‘I’m glad Cipriano is a soldier, and doesn’t get wounds in his soul.’
At the same time, she knew that without Ramón, Cipriano was just an instrument, and not ultimately interesting to her.
In the morning, Teresa appeared alone to breakfast. She seemed very calm, hiding her emotions in her odd, brown, proud little way.
‘How is Ramón?’ said Kate.
‘He is sleeping,’ said Teresa.
‘Good! He seemed to me almost done up, last night.’
‘Yes.’ — The black eyes looked at Kate, wide with unshed tears and courage, and a beautiful deep, remote light.
‘I don’t believe in a man’s sacrificing himself in this way,’ said Kate. ‘And I don’t.’
Teresa still looked her full in the eyes.
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘He doesn’t sacrifice himself. He feels he must do as he does. And if he must, I must help him.’
‘But then you are sacrificing yourself to him, and I don’t believe in that either,’ said Kate.
‘Oh, no!’ replied Teresa quickly, and a little flush burned in her cheek, and her dark eyes flashed. ‘I am not sacrificing myself to Ramón. If I can give him — sleep — when he needs it — that is not sacrifice. It is — ’ She did not finish, but her eyes flashed, and the flush burned darker.
‘It is love, I know,’ said Kate. ‘But it exhausts you too.’
‘It is not simply love,’ flashed Teresa proudly. ‘I might have loved more than one man: many men are lovable. But Ramón! — My soul is with Ramón.’ — The tears rose to her eyes. ‘I do not want to talk about it,’ she said, rising. ‘But you must not touch me there, and judge me.’
She hurried out of the room, leaving Kate somewhat dismayed. Kate sighed, thinking of going home.
But in an hour Teresa appeared again, putting her cool, soft, snake-like little hand on Kate’s arm.
‘I am sorry if I was rude,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Kate. ‘Apparently it is I who am wrong.’
‘Yes, I think you are,’ said Teresa. ‘You think there is only love. Love is only such a little bit.’
‘And what is the rest?’
‘How can I tell you if you do not know? — But do you think Ramón is no more to me than a lover?’
‘A husband!’ said Kate.
‘Ah!’ Teresa put her head aside with an odd impatience. ‘Those little words! Those little words! Nor either a husband. — He is my life.’
‘Surely it is better for one to live one’s own life!’
‘No! It is like seed. It is no good till it is given. I know. I kept my own life for a long time. As you keep it longer, it dies. And I tried to give it to God. But I couldn’t, quite. Then they told me, if I married Ramón and had any part in the Quetzalcoatl heresy, my soul would be damned. — But something made me know it was not true. I even knew he needed my soul. — Ah, Señora — ’ a subtle smile came on Teresa’s pale face — ’I have lost my soul to Ramón. — What more can I say!’
‘And what about his soul?’
‘It comes home to me — here!’ She put her hand over her womb.
Kate was silent for a time.
‘And if he betrays you?’ she said.
‘Ah, Señora!’ said Teresa. ‘Ramón is not just a lover. He is a brave man, and he doesn’t betray his own blood. And it is his soul that comes home to me. — And I would struggle to my last breath to give him sleep, when he came home to me with his soul, and needed it,’ she flashed. Then she added, murmuring to herself: ‘No, thank God! I have not got a life of my own! I have been able to give it to a man who is more than a man, as they say in their Quetzalcoatl language. And now it needn’t die inside me, like a bird in a cage. — Oh, yes, Señora! If he goes to Sinaloa and the west coast, my soul goes with him and takes part in it all. It does not let him go alone. And he does not forget that he has my soul with him. I know it. — No, Señora! You must not criticise me or pity me.’
‘Still!’ said Kate. ‘It still seems to me it would be better for each one to keep her own soul, and be responsible for it.’
‘If it were possible!’ said Teresa. ‘But you can no more keep your own soul inside you for yourself, without its dying, than you can keep the seed of your womb. Until a man gives you his seed, the seed of your womb is nothing. And the man’s seed is nothing to him. — And until you give your soul to a man, and he takes it, your soul is nothing to you. — And when a man has taken your whole soul. — Ah, do not talk to me about betraying. A man only betrays because he has been given a part, and not the whole. And a woman only betrays because only the part has been taken from her, and not the whole. That is all about betrayal. I know. — But when the whole is given, and taken, betrayal can’t exist. What I am to Ramón, I am. And what he is to me, he is. I do not care what he does. If he is away from me, he does as he wishes. So long as he will always keep safe what I am to him.’
Kate did not like having to learn lessons from this little waif of a Teresa. Kate was a woman of the world, handsome and experienced. She was accustomed to homage. Other women usually had a slight fear of her, for she was powerful and ruthless in her own way.
Teresa also feared her a little, as a woman of the world. But as an intrinsic woman, not at all. Trenched inside her own fierce and proud little soul, Teresa looked on Kate as on one of those women of the outside world, who make a very splendid show, but who are not so sure of the real secret of womanhood, and the innermost power. All Kate’s handsome, ruthless female power was second-rate to Teresa, compared with her own quiet, deep passion of connection with Ramón.
Yes, Kate was accustomed to looking on other women as inferiors. But the tables were suddenly turned. Even as, in her soul, she knew Ramón to be a greater man than Cipriano, suddenly she had to question herself, whether Teresa was not a greater woman than she.
Teresa! A greater woman than Kate? What a blow! Surely it was impossible!
Yet there it was. Ramón had wanted to marry Teresa, not Kate. And the flame of his marriage with Teresa she saw both in his eyes and in Teresa’s. A flame that was not in Kate’s eyes.
Kate’s marriage with Cipriano was curious and momentary. When Cipriano was away, Kate was her old individual self. Only when Cipriano was present, and then only sometimes, did the connection overwhelm her.
When Teresa turned and looked at her with this certain flame, touched with indignation, Kate quailed. Perhaps for the first time in her life she quailed and felt abashed: repentant.
Kate even knew that Teresa felt a little repugnance for her: for the foreign white woman who talked as cleverly as a man and who never gave her soul: who did not believe in giving her soul. All these well-dressed, beautiful women from America or England, Europe, they all kept their souls for themselves, in a sort of purse, as it were.
Teresa was determined that Kate should leave off treating her, very, very indefinably, as an inferior. It was how all the foreign women treated the Mexican women. Because the foreign women were their own mistresses! They even tried to be condescending to Ramón.
But Ramón! He could look at them and make them feel small, feel really nothing, in spite of all their money and their experience and their air of belonging to the ruling races. The ruling races! Wait! Ramón was a challenge to all that. Let those rule who can.
‘You did not sleep?’ Teresa said to Kate.
‘Not very well,’ said Kate.
‘No, you look as if you had not slept very well. — Under your eyes.’
Kate smoothed the skin under her eyes, querulously.
‘One gets that look in Mexico,’ she said. ‘It’s not an easy country to keep your youth in. — You are looking well.’
‘Yes, I am very well.’
Teresa had a new, soft bloom on her dark skin, something frail and tender, which she did not want to have to defend against another woman.
‘I think I will go home now Ramón has come,’ said Kate.
‘Oh, why? Do you wish to?’
‘I think I’d better.’
‘Then I will go with you to Sayula. In the boat, no?’
Kate put her few things together. She had slept badly. The night had been black, black, with something of horror in it. As when the bandits had attacked Ramón. She could see the scar in his back, in the night. And the drumming crash of falling water, menacing and horrible, seemed to keep up for hours.
In her soul, Kate felt Teresa’s contempt for her way of wifehood.
‘I have been married too,’ Kate had said. ‘To a very exceptional man, whom I loved.’
‘Ah, yes!’ said Teresa. ‘And he died.’
‘He wanted to die.’
‘Ah, yes! He wanted to die.’
‘I did my level best to prevent him from wearing himself out.’
‘Ah, yes, to prevent him.’
‘What else could I have done?’ flashed Kate in anger.
‘If you could have given him your life, he would not even have wanted to die.’
‘I did give him my life. I loved him — oh, you will never know. — But he didn’t want my soul. He believed I should keep a soul of my own.’
‘Ah, yes, men are like that, when they are merely men. When a man is warm and brave — then he wants the woman to give him her soul, and he keeps it in his womb, so he is more than a mere man, a single man. I know it. I know where my soul is. It is in Ramón’s womb, the womb of a man, just as his seed is in my womb, the womb of a woman. He is a man, and a column of blood. I am a woman, and a valley of blood. I shall not contradict him. How can I? My soul is inside him, and I am far from contradicting him when he is trying with all his might to do something that he knows about. He won’t die, and they won’t kill him. No! The stream flows into him from the heart of the world: and from me. — I tell you, because you saved his life, and therefore we belong to the same thing, you and I and he — and Cipriano. But you should not misjudge me. That other way of women, where a woman keeps her own soul — ah, what is it but weariness!’
‘And the men?’
‘Ah! if there are men whose souls are warm and brave, how they comfort one’s womb, Caterina!’
Kate hung her head, stubborn and angry at being put down from her eminence. — The slave morale! she said to herself. The miserable old trick of a woman living just for the sake of a man. Only living to send her soul with him, inside his precious body. And to carry his precious seed in her womb! Herself, apart from this, nothing.
Kate wanted to make her indignation thorough, but she did not quite succeed. Somewhere, secretly and angrily, she envied Teresa her dark eyes with the flame in them and their savage assurance. She envied her her serpent-delicate fingers. And above all, she envied her, with repining, the comfort of a living man permanent in her womb. And the secret, savage indomitable pride in her own womanhood, that rose from this.
In the warm morning after the rain, the frogs were whirring frantically. Across the lake, the mountains were blue black, and little pieces of white, fluffy vapour wandered low across the trees. Clouds were along the mountain-tops, making a level sky-line of whitish softness the whole length of the range. On the lonely, fawn-coloured water, one sail was blowing.
‘It is like Europe — like the Tyrol to-day,’ said Kate wistfully.
‘Do you love Europe very much?’ asked Teresa.
‘Yes, I think I love it.’
‘And must you go back to it?’
‘I think so. Soon! To my mother and my children.’
‘Do they want you very much?’
‘Yes!’ said Kate, rather hesitant. Then she added: ‘Not very much, really. But I want them.’
‘What for? — I mean,’ Teresa added, ‘do you long for them?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Kate, the tears coming to her eyes.
The boat rowed on in silence.
‘And Cipriano?’ Teresa asked timidly.
‘Ah!’ said Kate shortly. ‘He is such a stranger to me.’
Teresa was silent for some moments.
‘I think a man is always a stranger to a woman,’ said Teresa. ‘Why should it not be so?’
‘But you,’ said Kate, ‘haven’t any children.’
‘Ramón has. — And he says: “I cast my bread upon the waters. It is my children too. And if they return to me after many days, I shall be glad.” — Is it not the same for you?’
‘Not quite!’ said Kate. ‘I am a woman, I am not a man.’
‘I, if I have children,’ said Teresa, ‘I shall try to cast my bread upon the waters, so my children come to me that way. I hope I shall. I hope I shall not try to fish them out of life for myself, with a net. I have a very great fear of love. It is so personal. Let each bird fly with its own wings, and each fish swim its own course. — Morning brings more than love. And I want to be true to the morning.’
CHAPTER XXVI
Kate is a Wife
Kate was glad to get back to her own house, and to be more or less alone. She felt a great change was being worked in her, and if it worked too violently, she would die. It was the end of something, and the beginning of something, far, far inside her: in her soul and womb. The men, Ramón and Cipriano, caused the change, and Mexico. Because the time had come. — Nevertheless if what was happening happened too rapidly, or violently, she felt she would die. So, from time to time she had to withdraw from contact, to be alone.
She would sit alone for hours on the shore, under a green willow-tree that hung its curtains of pale-green fronds, on the beach. The lake was much fuller and higher up the shore, softer, more mysterious. There was a smell of the piles of water-hyacinth decaying at the water’s edges. Distance seemed farther away. The near conical hills were dotted with green bushes, like a Japanese drawing. Bullock-wagons with solid wheels came rolling to the village, high with sugar cane, drawn by eight oxen with ponderous heads and slowly swinging horns, while a peon walked in front, with the guiding-stick on the cross-beam of the yoke. So slow, so massive, yet with such slight control!
She had a strange feeling, in Mexico, of the old prehistoric humanity, the dark-eyed humanity of the days, perhaps, before the glacial period. When the world was colder, and the seas emptier, and all the land-formation was different. When the waters of the world were piled in stupendous glaciers on the high places, and high, high upon the poles. When great plains stretched away to the oceans, like Atlantis, and the lost continents of Polynesia, so that seas were only great lakes, and the soft, dark-eyed people of that world could walk around the globe. Then there was a mysterious, hot-blooded, soft-footed humanity with a strange civilization of its own.
Till the glaciers melted, and drove the peoples to the high places, like the lofty plateaux of Mexico, separated them into cut-off nations.
Sometimes, in America, the shadow of that old pre-Flood world was so strong, that the day of historic humanity would melt out of Kate’s consciousness, and she would begin to approximate to the old mode of consciousness, the old, dark will, the unconcern for death, the subtle, dark consciousness, non-cerebral, but vertebrate. When the mind and the power of man was in his blood and his backbone, and there was the strange, dark inter-communication between man and man and man and beast, from the powerful spine.
The Mexicans were still this. That which is aboriginal in America still belongs to the way of the world before the Flood, before the mental-spiritual world came into being. In America, therefore, the mental-spiritual life of white people suddenly flourishes like a great weed let loose in virgin soil. Probably it will as quickly wither. A great death come. And after that, the living results will be a new germ, a new conception of human life, that will arise from the fusion of the old blood-and-vertebrate consciousness with the white man’s present mental-spiritual consciousness. The sinking of both beings, into a new being.
Kate was more Irish than anything, and the almost deathly mysticism of the aboriginal Celtic or Iberian people lay at the bottom of her soul. It was a residue of memory, something that lives on from the pre-Flood world, and cannot be killed. Something older, and more everlastingly potent, than our would-be fair-and-square world.
She knew more or less what Ramón was trying to effect: this fusion! She knew what it was that made Cipriano more significant to her than all her past, her husbands and her children. It was the leap of the old, antediluvian blood-male into unison with her. And for this, without her knowing, her innermost blood had been thudding all the time.
