Part 19

Doña Carlota had made a great effort over herself, and with eyes fixed on the tea-cups, she poured out the tea. She handed him his cup without looking at him. She did not trust herself to look at him. It made her tremble with a strange, hysterical anger: she, who had been married to him for years, and knew him, ah, knew him: and yet, and yet, had not got him at all. None of him.

“Give me a piece of sugar, Carlota,” he said, in his quiet voice.

But at the sound of it, his wife stopped as if some hand had suddenly grasped her.

“Sugar! Sugar!” she repeated abstractedly to herself.

Ramón sat forward in his rocking-chair, holding his cup in his hand, his breasts rising in relief. And on his thighs the thin linen seemed to reveal him almost more than his own dark nakedness revealed him. She understood why the cotton pantaloons were forbidden on the plaza. The living flesh seemed to emanate through them.

He was handsome, almost horribly handsome, with his black head poised as it were without weight, above his darkened, smooth neck. A pure sensuality, with a powerful purity of its own, hostile to her sort of purity. With the blue sash round his waist, pressing a fold in the flesh, and the thin linen seeming to gleam with the life of his hips and his thighs, he emanated a fascination almost like a narcotic, asserting his pure, fine sensuality against her. The strange, soft, still sureness of him, as if he sat secure within his own dark aura. And as if this dark aura of his militated against her presence, and against the presence of his wife. He emitted an effluence so powerful, that it seemed to hamper her consciousness, to bind down her limbs.

And he was utterly still and quiescent, without desire, soft and unroused, within his own _ambiente_. Cipriano going the same, the pair of them so quiet and dark and heavy, like a great weight bearing the women down.

Kate knew now how Salome felt. She knew now how John the Baptist had been, with his terrible, aloof beauty, inaccessible yet so potent.

“Ah!” she said to herself. “Let me close my eyes to him, and open only my soul. Let me close my prying, _seeing_ eyes, and sit in dark stillness along with these two men. They have got more than I, they have a richness that I haven’t got. They have got rid of that itching of the eye, and the desire that works through the eye. The itching, prurient, _knowing_, imagining eye, I am cursed with it, I am hampered up in it. It is my curse of curses, the curse of Eve. The curse of Eve is upon me, my eyes are like hooks, my knowledge is like a fish-hook through my gills, pulling me in spasmodic desire. Oh, who will free me from the grappling of my eyes, from the impurity of sharp sight! Daughter of Eve, of greedy vision, why don’t these men save me from the sharpness of my own eyes!”

She rose and went to the edge of the terrace. Yellow as daffodils underneath, two birds emerged out of their own invisibility. In the little shingle bay, with a small breakwater, where the boat was pulled up and chained, two men were standing in the water, throwing out a big, fine round net, catching the little silvery fish called _charales_, which flicked out of the brownish water sometimes like splinters of glass.

“Ramón!” Kate heard Doña Carlota’s voice. “Won’t you put something on?”

The wife had been able to bear it no more.

“Yes! Thank you for the tea,” said Ramón, rising.

Kate watched him go down the terrace, in his own peculiar silence, his sandals making a faint swish on the tiles.

“Oh, Señora Caterina!” came the voice of Carlota. “Come and drink your tea. Come!”

Kate returned to the table, saying:

“It seems so wonderfully peaceful here.”

“Peaceful!” echoed Carlota. “Ah, I do not find it peaceful. There is a horrible stillness, which makes me afraid.”

“Do you come out very often?” said Kate, to Cipriano.

“Yes. Fairly often. Once a week. Or twice,” he replied, looking at her with a secret consciousness which she could not understand, lurking in his black eyes.

These men wanted to take her _will_ away from her, as if they wanted to deny her the light of day.

“I must be going home now,” she said. “The sun will be setting.”

“_Ya va?_” said Cipriano, in his soft, velvety Indian voice, with a note of distant surprise and reproach. “Will you go already?”

“Oh, no, Señora!” cried Carlota. “Stay until to-morrow. Oh, yes, stay until to-morrow, with me.”

“They will expect us home,” she said, wavering.

“Ah, no! I can send a boy to say you will come to-morrow. Yes? You will stay? Ah, good, good!”

And she laid her hand caressively on Kate’s arm, then rose to hurry away to the servants.

Cipriano had taken out his cigarette case. He offered it to Kate.

“Shall I take one?” she said. “It is my vice.”

“Do take one,” he said. “It isn’t good, to be perfect.”

“It isn’t, is it?” she laughed, puffing her cigarette.

“Now would you call it peace?” he asked with incomprehensible irony.

“Why?” she cried.

“Why do white people always want peace?” he asked.

“Surely peace is natural! Don’t all people want it? Don’t you?”

“Peace is only the rest after war,” he said. “So it is not more natural than fighting: perhaps not so natural.”

“No, but there is another peace: the peace that passes all understanding. Don’t you know that?”

“I don’t think I do,” he said.

“What a pity!” she cried.

“Ah!” he said. “You want to teach me! But to me it is different. Each man has two spirits in him. The one is like the early morning in the time of rain, very quiet, and sweet, moist, no?--with the mocking-bird singing, and birds flying about, very fresh. And the other is like the dry season, the steady, strong hot light of the day, which seems as if it will never change.”

“But you like the first better,” she cried.

“I don’t know!” he replied. “The other lasts longer.”

“I am sure you like the fresh morning better,” she said.

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” He smiled a crumpled sort of smile, and she could tell he really did _not_ know. “In the first time, you can feel the flowers on their stem, the stem very strong and full of sap, no?--and the flower opening on top like a face that has the perfume of desire. And a woman might be like that.--But this passes, and the sun begins to shine very strong, very hot, no? Then everything inside a man changes, goes dark, no! And the flowers crumple up, and the breast of a man becomes like a steel mirror. And he is all darkness inside, coiling and uncoiling like a snake. All the flowers withered up on shrunk stems, no? And then women don’t exist for a man. They disappear like the flowers.”

“And then what does he want?” said Kate.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he wants to be a very big man, and master all the people.”

“Then why doesn’t he?” said Kate.

He lifted his shoulders.

“And you,” he said to her. “You seem to me like that morning I told you about.”

“I am just forty years old,” she laughed shakily.

Again he lifted his shoulders.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It is the same. Your body seems to me like the stem of the flower I told you about, and in your face it will always be morning, of the time of the rains.”

“Why do you say that to me?” she said, as an involuntary strange shudder shook her.

“Why not say it!” he replied. “You are like the cool morning, very fresh. In Mexico, we are the end of the hot dry day.”

He watched her, with a strange lingering desire in his black eyes, and what seemed to her a curious, lurking sort of insolence. She dropped her head to hide from him, and rocked in her chair.

“I would like to marry you,” he said; “if ever you will marry. I would like to marry you.”

“I don’t think I shall _ever_ marry again,” she flashed, her bosom heaving like suffocation, and a dark flush suffusing over her face, against her will.

“Who knows!” said he.

Ramón was coming down the terrace, his fine white serape folded over his naked shoulder, with its blue-and-dark pattern at the borders, and its long scarlet fringe dangling and swaying as he walked. He leaned against one of the pillars of the terrace, and looked down at Kate and Cipriano. Cipriano glanced up with that peculiar glance of primitive intimacy.

“I told the Señora Caterina,” he said, “if ever she wanted to marry a man, she should marry me.”

“It is plain talk,” said Ramón, glancing at Cipriano with the same intimacy, and smiling.

Then he looked at Kate, with a slow smile in his brown eyes, and a shadow of curious knowledge on his face. He folded his arms over his breast, as the natives do when it is cold and they are protecting themselves; and the cream-brown flesh, like opium, lifted the bosses of his breast, full and smooth.

“Don Cipriano says that white people always want peace,” she said, looking up at Ramón with haunted eyes. “Don’t you consider yourselves white people?” she asked, with a slight, deliberate impertinence.

“No whiter than we are,” smiled Ramón. “Not lily-white, at least.”

“And don’t you want peace?” she asked.

“I? I shouldn’t think of it. The meek have inherited the earth, according to prophecy. But who am I, that I should envy them their peace! No, Señora. Do I look like a gospel of peace?--or a gospel of war either? Life doesn’t split down that division, for me.”

“I don’t know what you want,” said she, looking up at him with haunted eyes.

“We only half know ourselves,” he replied, smiling with changeful eyes. “Perhaps not so much as half.”

There was a certain vulnerable kindliness about him, which made her wonder, startled, if she had ever realised what real fatherliness meant. The mystery, the nobility, the inaccessibility, and the vulnerable compassion of man in his separate fatherhood.

“You don’t like brown-skinned people?” he asked her gently.

“I think it is beautiful to look at,” she said. “But”--with a faint shudder--“I am glad I am white.”

“You feel there could be no contact?” he said, simply.

“Yes!” she said. “I mean that.”

“It is as you feel,” he said.

And as he said it, she knew he was more beautiful to her than any blond white man, and that, in a remote, far-off way, the contact with him was more precious than any contact she had known.

But then, though he cast over her a certain shadow, he would never encroach on her, he would never seek any close contact. It was the incompleteness in Cipriano that sought her out, and seemed to trespass on her.

Hearing Ramón’s voice, Carlota appeared uneasily in a doorway. Hearing him speak English, she disappeared again, on a gust of anger. But after a little while, she came once more, with a little vase containing the creamy-coloured, thick flowers that are coloured like freesias, and that smell very sweet.

“Oh, how nice!” said Kate. “They are temple flowers! In Ceylon the natives tiptoe into the little temples and lay one flower on the table at the foot of the big Buddha statues. And the tables of offering are all covered with these flowers, all put so neatly. The natives have that delicate oriental way of putting things down.”

“Ah!” said Carlota, setting the vase on the table. “I did not bring them for any gods, especially strange ones. I brought them for you, Señora. They smell so sweet.”

“Don’t they!” said Kate.

The two men went away, Ramón laughing.

“Ah, Señora!” said Carlota, sitting down tense at the table. “Could you follow Ramón? Could _you_ give up the Blessed Virgin?--I could sooner die!”

“Ha!” said Kate, with a little weariness. “Surely we don’t want any _more_ gods.”

“More gods, Señora!” said Doña Carlota, shocked. “But how is it possible!--Don Ramón is in mortal sin.”

Kate was silent.

“And he wants to lead more and more people into the same,” continued Carlota. “It is the sin of pride. Men wise in their own conceit!--The cardinal sin of men. Ah, I have told him.--And I am so glad, Señora, that you feel as I feel. I am so afraid of American women, women like that. They wish to have men’s minds, so they accept all the follies and wickedness of men.--You are Catholic, Señora?”

“I was educated in a convent,” said Kate.

“Ah, of course! Of course!--Ah, Señora, as if a woman who had ever known the Blessed Virgin could ever part from her again. Ah, Señora, what woman would have the heart to put Christ back on the Cross, to crucify him twice! But men, men! This Quetzalcoatl business! What buffoonery, Señora; if it were not horrible sin! And two clever, well-educated men! Wise in their own conceit!”

“Men usually are,” said Kate.

It was sunset, with a big level cloud like fur overhead, only the sides of the horizon fairly clear. The sun was not visible. It had gone down in a thick, rose-red fume behind the wavy ridge of the mountains. Now the hills stood up bluish, all the air was a salmon-red flush, the fawn water had pinkish ripples. Boys and men, bathing a little way along the shore, were the colour of deep flame.

Kate and Carlota had climbed up to the azotea, the flat roof, from the stone stairway at the end of the terrace. They could see the world: the hacienda with its courtyard like a fortress, the road between deep trees, the black mud huts near the broken highroad, and little naked fires already twinkling outside the doors. All the air was pinkish, melting to a lavender blue, and the willows on the shore, in the pink light, were apple-green and glowing. The hills behind rose abruptly, like mounds, dry and pinky. Away in the distance, down the lake, the two white obelisk towers of Sayula glinted among the trees, and villas peeped out. Boats were creeping into the shadow, from the outer brightness of the lake.

And in one of these boats was Juana, being rowed, disconsolate, home.

CHAP: XIII. THE FIRST RAIN.

Ramón and Cipriano were out by the lake. Cipriano also had changed into the white clothes and sandals, and he looked better than when in uniform.

“I had a talk with Montes when he came to Guadalajara,” Cipriano said to Ramón. Montes was the President of the Republic.

“And what did he say?”

“He is careful. But he doesn’t like his colleagues. I think he feels lonely. I think he would like to know you better.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps that you could give him your moral support. Perhaps that you might be Secretary, and President when Montes’ term is up.”

“I like Montes,” said Ramón. “He is sincere and passionate. Did you like him?”

“Yes!” said Cipriano. “More or less. He is suspicious, and jealous for fear anyone else might want to share in his power. He has the cravings of a dictator. He wanted to find out if I would stick to him.”

“You let him know you would?”

“I told him that all I cared for was for you and for Mexico.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, he is no fool. He said: ‘Don Ramón sees the world with different eyes from mine. Who knows which of us is right. I want to save my country from poverty and unenlightenment, he wants to save its soul. I say, a hungry and ignorant man has no place for a soul. An empty belly grinds upon itself, so does an empty mind, and the soul doesn’t exist. Don Ramón says, if a man has no soul, it doesn’t matter whether he is hungry or ignorant. Well, he can go his way, and I mine. We shall never hinder one another, I believe. I give you my word I won’t have him interfered with. He sweeps the patio and I sweep the street.’”

“Sensible!” said Ramón. “And honest in his convictions.”

“Why should you not be Secretary in a few months’ time? And follow to the Presidency?” said Cipriano.

“You know I don’t want that. I must stand in another world, and act in another world.--Politics must go their own way, and society must do as it will. Leave me alone, Cipriano. I know you want me to be another Porfirio Diaz, or something like that. But for me that would be failure pure and simple.”

Cipriano was watching Ramón with black, guarded eyes, in which was an element of love, and of fear, and of trust, but also incomprehension, and the suspicion that goes with incomprehension.

“I don’t understand, myself, _what_ you want,” he muttered.

“Yes, yes, you do. Politics, and all this _social_ religion that Montes has got is like washing the outside of the egg, to make it look clean. But I, myself, I want to get inside the egg, right to the middle, to start it growing into a new bird. Ay! Cipriano! Mexico is like an old, old egg that the bird of Time laid long ago; and she has been sitting on it for centuries, till it looks foul in the nest of the world. But still, Cipriano, it is a good egg. It is not addled. Only the spark of fire has never gone into the middle of it, to start it.--Montes wants to clean the nest and wash the egg. But meanwhile, the egg will go cold and die. The more you save these people from poverty and ignorance, the quicker they will die: like a dirty egg that you take from under the hen-eagle, to wash it. While you wash the egg, it chills and dies. Poor old Montes, all his ideas are American and European. And the old Dove of Europe will never hatch the egg of dark-skinned America. The United States can’t die, because it isn’t alive. It is a nestful of china eggs, made of pot. So they can be kept clean.--But here, Cipriano, here, let us hatch the chick before we start cleaning up the nest.”

Cipriano hung his head. He was always testing Ramón, to see if he could change him. When he found he couldn’t, then he submitted, and new little fires of joy sprang up in him. But meanwhile, he had to try, and try again.

“It is no good, trying to mix the two things. At this stage of affairs, at least, they won’t mix. We have to shut our eyes and sink down, sink away from the surface, away, like shadows, down to the bottom. Like the pearl divers. But you keep bobbing up like a cork.”

Cipriano smiled subtly. He knew well enough.

“We’ve got to open the oyster of the cosmos, and get our manhood out of it. Till we’ve got the pearl, we are only gnats on the surface of the ocean,” said Ramón.

“My manhood is like a devil inside me,” said Cipriano.

“It’s very true,” said Ramón. “That’s because the old oyster has him shut up, like a black pearl. You must let him walk out.”

“Ramón,” said Cipriano, “Wouldn’t it be good to be a serpent, and be big enough to wrap one’s folds round the globe of the world, and crush it like that egg?”

Ramón looked at him and laughed.

“I believe we could do that,” said Cipriano, a slow smile curling round his mouth. “And wouldn’t it be good?”

Ramón shook his head, laughing.

“There would be _one_ good moment, at least,” he said.

“Who asks for more!” said Cipriano.

A spark flashed out of Ramón’s eyes too. Then he checked himself, and gathered himself together.

“What would be the good!” he said heavily. “If the egg was crushed, and we remained, what could we do but go howling down the empty passages of darkness. What’s the good, Cipriano?”

Ramón got up and walked away. The sun had set, the night was falling. And in his soul the great, writhing anger was alive again. Carlota provoked it into life: the two women seemed to breathe life into the black monster of his inward rage, till it began to lash again. And Cipriano stirred it up till it howled with desire.

“My manhood is like a demon howling inside me,” said Ramón to himself, in Cipriano’s words.

And he admitted the justice of the howling, his manhood being pent up, humiliated, goaded with insult inside him. And rage came over him, against Carlota, against Cipriano, against his own people, against all mankind, till he was filled with rage like the devil.

His people would betray him, he knew that. Cipriano would betray him. Given one little vulnerable chink, they would pierce him. They would leap at the place out of nowhere, like a tarantula, and bite in the poison.

While ever there was one little vulnerable chink. And what man can be invulnerable?

He went upstairs by the outer stairway, through the iron door at the side of the house, under the heavy trees, up to his room, and sat on his bed. The night was hot, heavy, and ominously still.

“The waters are coming,” he heard a servant say. He shut the doors of his room till it was black dark inside. Then he threw aside his clothing, saying: I put off the world with my clothes. And standing nude and invisible in the centre of his room he thrust his clenched fist upwards, with all his might, feeling he would break the walls of his chest. And his left hand hung loose, the fingers softly curving downwards.

And tense like the gush of a soundless fountain, he thrust up and reached down in the invisible dark, convulsed with passion. Till the black waves began to wash over his consciousness, over his mind, waves of darkness broke over his memory, over his being, like an incoming tide, till at last it was full tide, and he trembled, and fell to rest. Invisible in the darkness, he stood soft and relaxed, staring with wide eyes at the dark, and feeling the dark fecundity of the inner tide washing over his heart, over his belly, his mind dissolved away in the greater, dark mind, which is undisturbed by thoughts.

He covered his face with his hands, and stood still, in pure unconsciousness, neither hearing nor feeling nor knowing, like a dark sea-weed deep in the sea. With no Time and no World, in the deeps that are timeless and worldless.

Then when his heart and his belly were restored, his mind began to flicker again softly, like a soft flame flowing without departing.

So he wiped his face with his hands, and put his serape over his head, and, silent inside an aura of pain, he went out and took the drum, carrying it downstairs.

Martin, the man who loved him, was hovering in the zaguan.

“_Ya, Patrón?_” he said.

“_Ya!_” said Ramón.

The man ran indoors, where a lamp was burning in the big, dark kitchen, and ran out again with an armful of the woven straw mats.

“Where, Patrón?” he said.

Ramón hesitated in the centre of the courtyard, and looked at the sky.

“_Viene el agua?_” he said.

“_Creo que si, Patrón._”