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AN INTIMATE WAR
This page intentionally left blank
 MIKE MARTIN

An Intimate War
An Oral History of the
Helmand Conflict, 1978–2012

A
 A
Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further
Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education.
Oxford New York
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With offices in
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South Koreaâ•…Switzerlandâ•…Thailandâ•…Turkeyâ•…Ukraineâ•…Vietnam
Copyright © 2014 Mike Martin
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK
and certain other countries.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title
Martin, Mike, 1951–
An intimate war : an oral history of the Helmand conflict, 1978/2012 / Mike Martin.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-938798-4 (alk. paper)
1. Helmand (Afghanistan)—History, Military.╇ 2. Helmand (Afghanistan)—Politics and
government.╇ 3. Internal security—Afghanistan—Helmand.╇ 4. Helmand
(Afghanistan)—History, Local.╇ 5. Taliban—History.╇ 6. Afghanistan—History—Soviet
occupation, 1979–1989.╇ 7. Afghan War, 2001—Campaigns—Afghanistan—Helmand.
8. Afghan War, 2001—Participation, British.╇ 9. International Security Assistance Force
(Afghanistan)╇ 10. Public opinion—Afghanistan—Helmand.╇ I. Title.
II. Title: Oral history of the Helmand conflict, 1978/2012.
DS371.412.M37 2014
958.104’7—dc23
2014004951

Printed in India
on Acid-Free Paper
For Chloe
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

List of Figures and Maps xi

Preface: An Introduction to Helmand Province, Afghanistan xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Note on Referencing and Endnotes xix
Maps xxi–xxx
Introduction 1
Nad-e Ali, Helmand, 2008 1
Insurgency 3
Pushtun Society at War 5
Research Methods: Interviews 9
Caveats and Limitations 13
Structure 15
1. Pre-1978 Helmandi History 17
        The Barakzai, the Alizai and the British: Maiwand 20
        Independence and Ensuing Reform 26
        The Canals 27
        Conclusions 36
2. From the Saur Revolution to the Soviet Withdrawal,
1978–89 39
        Background 39
        Government Collapse and the Soviet Intervention 43
        Inter-‘Mujahidin’ Conflict in Northern Helmand 51
        Central and Southern Helmand 57
        Government Infighting and Response 64
        Conclusions 75

vii
 CONTENTS

3. From the Soviet Withdrawal to the US Intervention,

1989–2001 77
        Background 77
        The End of the Najibullah Era 79
        Post-Najibullah: the ‘Civil War’ 88
        The Rise of the Taliban 96
        Conclusions 108
4. From the US Intervention to the Return of the Angrez,
2001–6 111
        Background 111
        The Return of Mujahidin Unity 112
        The Role of Westerners 125
        Inter-Commander Conflict and Predation 132
        Manipulation and Demobilisation 138
        The Rise of the Taliban Franchise and the Mahaz System 144
        Sher Mohammad Akhundzada 153
        Conclusions 155
5. From the Return of the Angrez to US Re-Engagement,
2006–9 157
        Background 157
        Why Helmand and Why Northern Helmand? 159
        The ‘Taliban’ Response and a British Retreat 164
        Calm in Central Helmand 167
        British Attempts to do ‘Political’ Work 169
        Taliban Structures 172
        The British Reassessment: A Focus on Central Helmand 175
        Conclusions 192
6. From US Re-Engagement: ‘Counterinsurgency’, 2009–12 195
        Background 195
        Security 197
        The Response: Taliban Consolidation 202
        Development and Corruption 209
        Politics 217
        The Helmandi Conclusion: The British are Working With
          the Taliban 225
Conclusion 233
Why was there a Failure to Understand the Conflict? 234

viii
 CONTENTS

The Consequences of Failing to Understand the Conflict 240

Implications for Western Counterinsurgency Doctrine 247
The Future 249
Appendices 253
Appendix 1: Interviewee Descriptions 255
Appendix 2: Glossary of Terms and People 265
Appendix 3: Timeline of Key Events Affecting Helmand 283
Appendix 4: Tribal Diagrams and Family Trees 287
Appendix 5: L
 ists of Helmandi Provincial, District and
Military Officials 295
Appendix 6: Selected Helmandi Guantanamo Prisoners 301
Notes 317
Select Bibliography 367
Index 375

ix
This page intentionally left blank
 LIST OF FIGURES AND MAPS

Figures
Fig. 1: Rabbani-era land document 90
Fig. 2: Sher Mohammad in 2012 121
Fig. 3: The Taliban mahaz system 146
Fig. 4: Children’s graffiti in Lashkar Gah, 2008, depicting UK
involvement in Helmand 164
Fig. 5: Shin Kalay school in December 2008 181
Fig. 6: Soviet and Estonian Vehicles side-by-side in Chah-e
Anjir 184
Fig. 7: The hybrid mahaz–nezami system 206
Fig. 8: The Gereshk model 215
Fig. 9: Diagram of the major tribes in Helmand 288
Fig. 10: Diagram of the Kharoti sub-tribes in Nad-e Ali 289
Fig. 11: Noor Mohammad Khan’s family tree (Kharoti/Mugho­
khel) 290
Fig. 12: Diagram of the Noorzai sub-tribes in Helmand 290
Fig. 13: Shah Nazar Helmandwal’s family tree (Noorzai/Gurg) 290
Fig. 14: Khano’s family tree (Noorzai/Aghezai) 291
Fig. 15: Israel’s family tree (Noorzai/Darzai/Hassanzai) 292
Fig. 16: Abdul Rahman and Haji Lal Jan (Noorzai/Darzai/
Parozai) 293

Maps
Map 1: Helmand in Afghanistan xxi
Map 2: Helmand indicating district centres xxii

xi
 LIST OF FIGURES AND MAPS

Map 3: Helmand districts xxiii

Map 4: Helmand—Canal projects xxiv
Map 5: Soviet-era defences xxv
Map 6: Tribes and clans in Sangin (simplified) xxvi
Map 7: Central Nahr-e Saraj xxvii
Map 8: Central Nad-e Ali xxviii
Map 9: Loy Bagh xxix
Map 10: Haji Kadus’s militia checkpoints xxx

xii
 PREFACE

AN INTRODUCTION TO HELMAND PROVINCE,

AFGHANISTAN

Helmand is the largest of the Afghan provinces, comprising 9% of the

national area. It is situated in the southwest of the country and shares
its southern border with the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. The
northern tip of Helmand stretches up into the central mountain range
of the country, the Hindu Kush. It is a long way from Kabul, both
physically and mentally. Ringed by deserts, and with a small strip of
cultivated land running north–south along a river of the same name, it
suffers extremes of climate with, as the locals say, sixty days of heat
and sixty nights of cold (minus twenty degrees to plus fifty degrees
centigrade).
Historically, the main town in Helmand has been Gereshk, perched
on the main crossing point of the river; it was seen as the last line of
defence for the much more important Kandahar, to the east. For this
reason the Imperial British campaigned in Helmand during the 1800s.
The road from Gereshk to Kandahar is part of a much longer axis
between Iran and India, and is the route along which armies have trav-
elled for centuries in attempts to control the region. The importance of
Gereshk on that key military and trade route has given the Durrani
Pushtun who populate Helmand power beyond that which the remote-
ness of their region would suggest.
The Helmand River contains 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s surface
water, but the province has an annual rainfall of less than four inches
and only some 3 per cent of the land area is irrigated. Still an agricul-

xiii
 PREFACE

tural society, water is vital. The modern-day crop of choice is opium

poppy: Helmand produces approximately 90 per cent of Afghanistan’s
opium, and poppy is one of the stated reasons for the British Helmand
campaign of 2006–14.
Only fifty years old as a distinct political unit, the province was the
scene of the largest engineering project that Afghanistan has ever seen:
the Helmand Valley Project. The project brought large amounts of land
into agriculture and settled over ten thousand non-indigenous families.
Central Helmand, the project’s focus and the focus of this book, was
transformed beyond all recognition.

xiv
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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.”
They went to the shed where the bananas had been packed and
carried away on donkeys. There the man threw down the petates.
Ramón arranged them. Guisleno ran with canes. He was going to
make lights, the simplest possible. Three pieces of thick cane, tied at
the neck with a cord, stood up three-legged, waist high. In the
three-pronged fork at the top he laid a piece of flat, slightly hollow
lava stone. Then he came running from the house with a bit of
burning ocote wood. Three or four bits of ocote, each bit no bigger
than a long finger, flickered and rose in quick flames from the stone,
and the courtyard danced with shadow.
Ramón took off his serape, folded it, and sat upon it. Guisleno lit
another tripod-torch. Ramón sat with his back to the wall, the
firelight dancing on his dark brows, that were sunk in a sort of
frown. His breast shone like gold in the flame. He took the drum and
sounded the summons, slow, monotonous, rather sad. In a moment
two or three men came running. The drummer came, Ramón stood
up and handed him the drum. He ran with it to the great outer
doorway, and out into the dark lane, and there sounded the
summons, quick, sharp.
Ramón put on his serape, whose scarlet fringe touched his knees,
and stood motionless, with ruffled hair. Round his shoulders went
the woven snake, and his head was through the middle of the blue,
woven bird.
Cipriano came from the house. He was wearing a serape all scarlet
and dark brown, a great scarlet sun at the centre, deep scarlet
zigzags at the borders, and dark brown fringe at his knees. He came
and stood at Ramón’s side, glancing up into Ramón’s face. But the
other man’s brows were low, his eyes were fixed in the darkness of
the sheds away across the courtyard. He was looking into the heart
of the world; because the faces of men, and the hearts of men are
helpless quicksands. Only in the heart of the cosmos man can look
for strength. And if he can keep his soul in touch with the heart of
the world, then from the heart of the world new blood will beat in
strength and stillness into him, fulfilling his manhood.
Cipriano turned his black eyes to the courtyard. His soldiers had
drawn near, in a little group. Three or four men were standing in
dark serapes, round the fire. Cipriano stood brilliant like a cardinal
bird, next to Ramón. Even his sandals were bright, sealing-wax red,
and his loose linen trousers were bound at the ankles with red and
black bands. His face looked very dark and ruddy in the firelight, his
little black tuft of a beard hung odd and devilish, his eyes were
glittering sardonically. But he caught Ramón’s hand in his small
hand, and stood holding it.
The peons were coming through the entrance-way, balancing their
big hats. Women were hurrying barefoot, swishing their full skirts,
carrying babies inside the dark wrap of their rebozos, children
running after. They all clustered towards the flame-light, like wild
animals gazing in at the circle of men in dark sarapes, Ramón,
magnificent in his white and blue and shadow, poising his beautiful
head, Cipriano at his side like a glittering cardinal bird.
Carlota and Kate emerged from the inner doorway of the house. But
there Carlota remained, wrapped in a black silk shawl, seated on a
wooden bench where the soldiers usually sat, looking across at the
ruddy flare of light, the circle of dark men, the tall beauty of her
husband, the poppy-petal glitter of red, of Cipriano, the group of
little, dust-coloured soldiers, and the solid throng of peons and
women and children, standing gazing like animals. While through the
gate men still came hurrying, and from outside, the drum sounded,
and a high voice sang again and again:

“Someone will enter between the gates,

Now, at this moment, Ay!
See the light on the man that waits.
Shall you? Shall I?

Someone will come to the place of fire,

Now, at this moment, Ay!
And hark to the words of their heart’s desire.
Shall you? Shall I?

Someone will knock when the door is shut,

Ay! in a moment, Ay!
Hear a voice saying: I know you not!
Shall you? Shall I?
There was a queer, wild yell each time on the Ay! and like a bugle
refrain: Shall you? Shall I? It made Carlota shiver.
Kate, wrapping her yellow shawl round her, walked slowly towards
the group.
The drum outside gave a rapid shudder, and was finished. The
drummer came in, the great doors were shut and barred, the
drummer took his place in the ring of standing men. A dead silence
supervened.
Ramón continued to gaze from under lowered brows, into space.
Then in a quiet, inward voice, he said:
“As I take off this cover, I put away the day that is gone from upon
me.”
He took off his serape, and stood with it over his arm. All the men in
the circle did the same, till they stood with naked breasts and
shoulders, Cipriano very dark and strong-looking, in his smallness,
beside Ramón.
“I put away the day that is gone,” Ramón continued, in the same
still, inward voice, “and stand with my heart uncovered in the night
of the gods.”
Then he looked down at the ground.
“Serpent of the earth,” he said; “snake that lies in the fire at the
heart of the world, come! Come! Snake of the fire of the heart of the
world, coil like gold round my ankles, and rise like life around my
knee, and lay your head against my thigh. Come, put your head in
my hand, cradle your head in my fingers, snake of the deeps. Kiss
my feet and my ankles with your mouth of gold, kiss my knees and
my inner thigh, snake branded with flame and shadow, come! and
rest your head in my finger-basket! So!”
The voice was soft and hypnotic. It died upon a stillness. And it
seemed as if really a mysterious presence had entered unseen from
the underworld. It seemed to the peons as if really they saw a snake
of brilliant gold and living blackness softly coiled around Ramón’s
ankle and knee, and resting its head in his fingers, licking his palm
with forked tongue.
He looked out at the big, dilated, glittering eyes of his people, and
his own eyes were wide and uncanny.
“I tell you,” he said, “and I tell you truly. At the heart of this earth
sleeps a great serpent, in the midst of fire. Those that go down in
mines feel the heat and the sweat of him, they feel him move. It is
the living fire of the earth, for the earth is alive. The snake of the
world is huge, and the rocks are his scales, trees grow between
them. I tell you the earth you dig is alive as a snake that sleeps. So
vast a serpent you walk on, this lake lies between his folds as a drop
of rain in the folds of a sleeping rattlesnake. Yet he none the less
lives. The earth is alive.
“And if he died, we should all perish. Only his living keeps the soil
sweet, that grows you maize. From the roots of his scales we dig
silver and gold, and the trees have root in him, as the hair of my
face has root in my lips.
“The earth is alive. But he is very big, and we are very small, smaller
than dust. But he is very big in his life, and sometimes he is angry.
These people, smaller than dust, he says, they stamp on me and say
I am dead. Even to their asses they speak, and shout Harreh! Burro!
But to me they speak no word. Therefore I will turn against them,
like a woman who lies angry with her man in bed, and eats away his
spirit with her anger, turning her back to him.
“That is what the earth says to us. He sends sorrow into our feet,
and depression into our loins.
“Because as an angry woman in the house can make a man heavy,
taking his life from him, so the earth can make us heavy, make our
souls cold, and our life dreary in our feet.
“Speak then to the snake of the heart of the world, put oil on your
fingers and lower your fingers for him to taste the oil of the earth,
and let him send life into your feet and ankles and knees, like sap in
the young maize pressing against the joints and making the milk of
the maize bud among its hair.
“From the heart of the earth man feels his manhood rise up in him,
like the maize that is proud, turning its green leaves outwards. Be
proud like the maize, and let your roots go deep, deep, for the rains
are here, and it is time for us to be growing in Mexico.”
Ramón ceased speaking, the drum softly pulsed. All the men of the
ring were looking down at the earth and softly letting their left
hands hang.
Carlota, who had not been able to hear, drifted up to Kate’s side,
spell-bound by her husband. Kate unconsciously glanced down at
the earth, and secretly let her fingers hang softly against her dress.
But then she was afraid of what might happen to her, and she
caught her hand up into her shawl.
Suddenly the drum began to give a very strong note, followed by a
weak: a strange, exciting thud.
Everybody looked up. Ramón had flung his right arm tense into the
air, and was looking up at the black dark sky. The men of the ring
did the same, and the naked arms were thrust aloft like so many
rockets.
“Up Up! Up!” said a wild voice.
“Up! Up!” cried the men of the ring, in a wild chorus.
And involuntarily the men in the crowd twitched, then shot their
arms upwards, turning their faces to the dark heavens. Even some
of the women boldly thrust up their naked arms, and relief entered
their hearts as they did so.
But Kate would not lift her arm.
There was dead silence, even the drum was silent. Then the voice of
Ramón was heard, speaking upwards to the black sky:
“Your big wings are dark, Bird, you are flying low to-night. You are
flying low over Mexico, we shall soon feel the fan of your wings on
our face.
“Ay, Bird! You fly about where you will. You fly past the stars, and
you perch on the sun. You fly out of sight, and are gone beyond the
white river of the sky. But you come back like the ducks of the north,
looking for water and winter.
“You sit in the middle of the sun, and preen your feathers. You
crouch in the river of stars, and make the star-dust rise around you.
You fly away into the deepest hollow place of the sky, whence there
seems no return.
“You come back to us, and hover overhead, and we feel your wings
fanning our faces—”
Even as he spoke the wind rose, in sudden gusts, and a door could
be heard slamming in the house, with a shivering of glass, and the
trees gave off a tearing sound.
“Come then, Bird of the great sky!” Ramón called wildly. “Come! Oh
Bird, settle a moment on my wrist, over my head, and give me
power of the sky, and wisdom. Oh Bird! Bird of all the wide heavens,
even if you drum your feathers in thunder, and drop the white snake
of fire from your beak back to the earth again, where he can run in,
deep down the rocks again, home: even if you come as the
Thunderer, come! Settle on my wrist a moment, with the clutch of
the power of thunder, and arch your wings over my head, like a
shadow of clouds; and bend your breast to my brow, and bless me
with the sun. Bird, roaming Bird of the Beyond, with thunder in your
pinions and the snake of lightning in your beak, with the blue
heaven in the socket of your wings and cloud in the arch of your
neck, with sun in the burnt feathers of your breast and power in
your feet, with terrible wisdom in your flight, swoop to me a
moment, swoop!”
Sudden gusts of wind tore at the little fires of flame, till they could
be heard to rustle, and the lake began to speak in a vast hollow
noise, beyond the tearing of trees. Distant lightning was beating far
off, over the black hills.
Ramón dropped his arm, which had been bent over his head. The
drum began to beat. Then he said:
“Sit down a moment, before the Bird shakes water out of his wings.
It will come soon. Sit down.”
There was a stir. Men put their serapes over their faces, women
clutched their rebozos tighter, and all sat down on the ground. Only
Kate and Carlota remained standing, on the outer edge. Gusts of
wind tore at the flames, the men put their hats on the ground in
front of them.
“The earth is alive, and the sky is alive,” said Ramón in his natural
voice, “and between them, we live. Earth has kissed my knees, and
put strength in my belly. Sky has perched on my wrist, and sent
power into my breast.
“But as in the morning the Morning-star stands between earth and
sky, a star can rise in us, and stand between the heart and the loins.
“That is the manhood of man, and for woman, her womanhood.
“You are not yet men. And women, you are not yet women.
“You run about and toss about and die, and still you have not found
the star of your manhood rise within you, the stars of your
womanhood shine out serene between your breasts, women.
“I tell you, for him that wishes it, the star of his manhood shall rise
within him, and he shall be proud, and perfect even as the Morning-
star is perfect.
“And the star of a woman’s womanhood can rise at last, from
between the heavy rim of the earth and the lost grey void of the sky.
“But how? How shall we do it? How shall it be?
“How shall we men become Men of the Morning Star? And the
women the Dawn-Star Women?
“Lower your fingers to the caress of the Snake of the earth.
“Lift your wrist for a perch to the far-lying Bird.
“Have the courage of both, the courage of lightning and the
earthquake.
“And wisdom of both, the wisdom of the snake and the eagle.
“And the peace of both, the peace of the serpent and the sun.
“And the power of both, the power of the innermost earth and the
outermost heaven.
“But on your brow, Men! the undimmed Morning Star, that neither
day nor night, nor earth nor sky can swallow and put out.
“And between your breasts, Women! the Dawn-Star, that cannot be
dimmed.
“And your home at last is the Morning Star. Neither heaven nor earth
shall swallow you up at the last, but you shall pass into the place
beyond both, into the bright star that is lonely yet feels itself never
alone.
“The Morning Star is sending you a messenger, a god who died in
Mexico. But he slept his sleep, and the invisible Ones washed his
body with water of resurrection. So he has risen, and pushed the
stone from the mouth of the tomb, and has stretched himself. And
now he is striding across the horizons even quicker than the great
stone from the tomb is tumbling back to the earth, to crush those
that rolled it up.
“The Son of the Star is coming back to the Sons of Men, with big,
bright strides.
“Prepare to receive him. And wash yourselves, and put oil on your
hands and your feet, on your mouth and eyes and ears and nostrils,
on your breast and navel and on the secret places of your body, that
nothing of the dead days, no dust of skeletons and evil things may
pass into you and make you unclean.
“Do not look with the eyes of yesterday, nor like yesterday listen, nor
breathe, nor smell, nor taste, nor swallow food and drink. Do not
kiss with the mouths of yesterday, nor touch with the hands, nor
walk with yesterday’s feet. And let your navel know nothing of
yesterday, and go into your women with a new body, enter the new
body in her.
“For yesterday’s body is dead, and carrion, the Xopilote is hovering
above it.
“Put yesterday’s body from off you, and have a new body. Even as
your God who is coming. Quetzalcoatl is coming with a new body,
like a star, from the shadows of death.
“Yes, even as you sit upon the earth this moment, with the round of
your body touching the round of the earth, say: Earth! Earth! you
are alive as the globes of my body are alive. Breathe the kiss of the
inner earth upon me, even as I sit upon you.
“And so, it is said. The earth is stirring beneath you, the sky is
rushing its wings above. Go home to your homes, in front of the
waters that will fall and cut you off forever from your yesterdays.
“Go home, and hope to be Men of the Morning Star, Women of the
Star of Dawn.
“You are not yet men and women——”
He rose up and waved to the people to be gone. And in a moment
they were on their feet, scurrying and hastening with the quiet
Mexican hurry, that seems to run low down upon the surface of the
earth.
The black wind was all loose in the sky, tearing with the thin shriek
of torn fabrics, in the mango trees. Men held their big hats on their
heads and ran with bent knees, their serapes blowing. Women
clutched their rebozos tighter and ran barefoot to the zaguan.
The big doors were open, a soldier stood with a gun across his back,
holding a hurricane lamp. And the people fled like ghosts through
the doors, and away up the black lane like bits of paper veering
away into nothingness, blown out of their line of flight. In a
moment, they had all silently gone.
Martin barred the great doors. The soldier put down his lamp on the
wooden bench, and he and his comrades sat huddled in their dark
shawls, in a little bunch like toadstools in the dark cavern of the
zaguan. Already one had curled himself up on the wooden bench,
wrapped like a snail in his blanket, head disappeared.
“The water is coming!” cried the servants excitedly, as Kate went
upstairs with Doña Carlota.
The lake was quite black, like a great pit. The wind suddenly blew
with violence, with a strange ripping sound in the mango trees, as if
some membrane in the air were being ripped. The white-flowered
oleanders in the garden below leaned over quite flat, their white
flowers ghostly, going right down to the earth, in the pale beam of
the lamp—like a street lamp—that shone on the wall at the front
entrance. A young palm-tree bent and spread its leaves on the
ground. Some invisible juggernaut car rolling in the dark over the
outside world.
Away across the lake, south-west, lightning blazed and ran down the
sky like some portentous writing. And soft, velvety thunder broke
inwardly, strangely.
“It frightens me!” cried Doña Carlota, putting her hand over her eyes
and hastening into a far corner of the bare salon.
Cipriano and Kate stood on the terrace, watching the coloured
flowers in the pots shake and fly to bits, disappearing up into the
void of darkness. Kate clutched her shawl. But the wind suddenly
got under Cipriano’s blanket, and lifted it straight up in the air, then
dropped it in a scarlet flare over his head. Kate watched his deep,
strong Indian chest lift as his arms quickly fought to free his head.
How dark he was, and how primitively physical, beautiful and deep-
breasted, with soft, full flesh! But all, as it were, for himself. Nothing
that came forth from him to meet with one outside. All oblivious of
the outside, all for himself.
“Ah! the water!” he cried, holding down his serape.
The first great drops were flying darkly at the flowers, like arrows.
Kate stood back into the doorway of the salon. A pure blaze of
lightning slipped three-fold above the black hills, seemed to stand a
moment, then slip back into the dark.
Down came the rain with a smash, as if some great vessel had
broken. With it, came a waft of icy air. And all the time, first in one
part of the sky, then in another, in quick succession the blue
lightning, very blue, broke out of heaven and lit up the air for a blue,
breathless moment, looming trees and ghost of a garden, then was
gone, while thunder dropped and exploded continually.
Kate watched the dropping masses of water in wonder. Already, in
the blue moments of lightning, she saw the garden below a pond,
the walks were rushing rivers. It was cold. She turned indoors.
A servant was going round the rooms with a lantern, to look if
scorpions were coming out. He found one scuttling across the floor
of Kate’s room, and one fallen from the ceiling beams on to Carlota’s
bed.
They sat in the salon in rocking chairs, Carlota and Kate, and rocked,
smelling the good wetness, breathing the good, chilled air. Kate had
already forgotten what really chill air was like. She wrapped her
shawl tighter round her.
“Ah, yes, you feel cold! You must take care in the nights, now.
Sometimes in the rainy season the nights are very cold. You must be
ready with an extra blanket. And the servants, poor things, they just
lie and shudder, and they get up in the morning like corpses.—But
the sun soon warms them again, and they seem to think they must
bear what comes. So they complain sometimes, but still they don’t
provide.”
The wind had gone, suddenly. Kate was uneasy, uneasy, with the
smell of water, almost of ice, in her nostrils, and her blood still hot
and dark. She got up and went again to the terrace. Cipriano was
still standing there, motionless and inscrutable, like a monument, in
his red and dark serape.
The rain was abating. Down below in the garden, two barefooted
women-servants were running through the water, in the faint light of
the zaguan lamp, running across the garden and putting ollas, and
square gasoline cans under the arching spouts of water that seethed
down from the roof, then darting away while they filled, then
struggling in with the frothy vessel. It would save making trips to the
lake, for water.
“What do you think of us?” Cipriano said to her.
“It is strange to me,” she replied, wondering and a little awed by the
night.
“Good, no?” he said, in an exultant tone.
“A little scaring,” she replied, with a slight laugh.
“When you are used to it,” he said, “it seems natural, no? It seems
natural so—as it is. And when you go to a country like England,
where all is so safe and ready-made, then you miss it. You keep
saying to yourself: ‘What am I missing? What is it that is not here?’”
He seemed to be gloating in his native darkness. It was curious, that
though he spoke such good English, it seemed always foreign to her,
more foreign than Doña Carlota’s Spanish.
“I can’t understand that people want to have everything, all life, no?
—so safe and ready-made as in England and America. It is good to
be awake. On the qui vive, no?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“So I like it,” he said, “when Ramón tells the people the earth is
alive, and the sky has a big bird in it, that you don’t see. I think it is
true. Certainly! And it is good to know it, because then one is on the
qui vive, no?
“But it’s tiring to be always on the qui vive,” she said.
“Why? Why tiring? No, I think, on the contrary, it is refreshing.—Ah,
you should marry, and live in Mexico. At last, I am sure, you would
like it. You would keep waking up more and more to it.”
“Or else going more and more deadened,” she said. “That is how
most foreigners go, it seems to me.”
“Why deadened?” he said to her. “I don’t understand. Why
deadened? Here you have a country where night is night, and rain
comes down and you know it. And you have a people with whom
you must be on the qui vive all the time, all the time. And that is
very good, no? You don’t go sleepy. Like a pear! Don’t you say a
pear goes sleepy, no?—cuando sé echa a perder?”
“Yes!” she said.
“And here you have also Ramón. How does Ramón seem to you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to say anything. But I do think he is
almost too much: too far.—And I don’t think he is Mexican.”
“Why not? Why not Mexican? He is Mexican.”
“Not as you are.”
“How not as I am? He is Mexican.”
“He seems to me to belong to the old, old Europe,” she said.
“And he seems to me to belong to the old, old Mexico—and also to
the new,” he added quickly.
“But you don’t believe in him.”
“How?”
“You—yourself. You don’t believe in him. You think it is like
everything else, a sort of game. Everything is a sort of game, a put-
up job, to you Mexicans. You don’t really believe, in anything.”
“How not believe? I not believe in Ramón?—Well, perhaps not, in
that way of kneeling before him and spreading out my arms and
shedding tears on his feet. But I—I believe in him, too. Not in your
way, but in mine. I tell you why. Because he has the power to
compel me. If he hadn’t the power to compel me, how should I
believe?”
“It is a queer sort of belief that is compelled,” she said.
“How else should one believe, except by being compelled? I like
Ramón for that, that he can compel me. When I grew up, and my
god-father could not compel me to believe, I was very unhappy. It
made me very unhappy.—But Ramón compels me, and that is very
good. It makes me very happy, when I know I can’t escape. It would
make you happy too.”
“To know I could not escape from Don Ramón?” she said ironically.
“Yes, that also. And to know you could not escape from Mexico. And
even from such a man, as me.”
She paused in the dark before she answered, sardonically:
“I don’t think it would make me happy to feel I couldn’t escape from
Mexico. No, I feel, unless I was sure I could get out any day, I
couldn’t bear to be here.”
In her mind she thought: And perhaps Ramón is the only one I
couldn’t quite escape from, because he really touches me
somewhere inside. But from you, you little Cipriano, I should have
no need even to escape, because I could not be caught by you.
“Ah!” he said quickly. “You think so. But then you don’t know. You
can only think with American thoughts. It is natural. From your
education, you have only American thoughts, U.S.A. thoughts, to
think with. Nearly all women are like that: even Mexican women of
the Spanish-Mexican class. They are all thinking nothing but U.S.A.
thoughts, because those are the ones that go with the way they
dress their hair. And so it is with you. You think like a modern
woman, because you belong to the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic world,
and dress your hair in a certain way, and have money, and are
altogether free.—But you only think like this because you have had
these thoughts put in your head, just as in Mexico you spend
centavos and pesos, because that is the Mexican money you have
put in your pocket. It’s what they give you at the bank.—So when
you say you are free, you are not free. You are compelled all the
time to be thinking U.S.A. thoughts—compelled, I must say. You
have not as much choice as a slave. As the peons must eat tortillas,
tortillas, tortillas, because there is nothing else, you must think these
U.S.A. thoughts, about being a woman and being free. Every day
you must eat those tortillas, tortillas.—Till you don’t know how you
would like something else.”
“What else should I like?” she said, with a grimace at the darkness.
“Other thoughts, other feelings.—You are afraid of such a man as
me, because you think I should not treat you à l’américaine. You are
quite right. I should not treat you as an American woman must be
treated. Why should I? I don’t wish to. It doesn’t seem good to me.”
“You would treat a woman like a real old Mexican, would you? Keep
her ignorant, and shut her up?” said Kate sarcastically.
“I could not keep her ignorant if she did not start ignorant. But what
more I had to teach her wouldn’t be in the American style of
teaching.”
“What then?”
“Quien sabe! Ça reste à voir.”
“Et continuera a y rester,” said Kate, laughing.
 CHAP: XIV. HOME TO SAYULA.
The morning came perfectly blue, with a freshness in the air and a
blue luminousness over the trees and the distant mountains, and
birds so bright, absolutely like new-opened buds sparking in the air.
Cipriano was returning to Guadalajara in the automobile, and Carlota
was going with him. Kate would be rowed home on the lake.
To Ramón, Carlota was still, at times, a torture. She seemed to have
the power still to lacerate him, inside his bowels. Not in his mind or
spirit, but in his old emotional, passional self: right in the middle of
his belly, to tear him and make him feel he bled inwardly.
Because he had loved her, he had cared for her: for the affectionate,
passionate, whimsical, sometimes elfish creature she had been. He
had made much of her, and spoiled her, for many years.
But all the while, gradually, his nature was changing inside him. Not
that he ceased to care for her, or wanted other women. That she
could have understood. But inside him was a slow, blind imperative,
urging him to cast his emotional and spiritual and mental self into
the slow furnace, and smelt them into a new, whole being.
But he had Carlota to reckon with. She loved him, and that, to her,
was the outstanding factor. She loved him, emotionally. And
spiritually, she loved mankind. And mentally, she was sure she was
quite right.
Yet as time went on, he had to change. He had to cast that
emotional self, which she loved, into the furnace, to be smelted
down to another self.
And she felt she was robbed, cheated. Why couldn’t he go on being
gentle, good, and loving, and trying to make the whole world more
gentle, good, and loving?
He couldn’t, because it was borne in upon him that the world had
gone as far as it could go in the good, gentle, and loving direction,
and anything further in that line meant perversity. So the time had
come for the slow, great change to something else—what, he didn’t
know.
The emotion of love, and the greater emotion of liberty for mankind
seemed to go hard and congeal upon him, like the shell on a
chrysalis. It was the old caterpillar stage of Christianity evolving into
something else.
But Carlota felt this was all she had, this emotion of love, for her
husband, her children, for her people, for the animals and birds and
trees of the world. It was her all, her Christ, and her Blessed Virgin.
How could she let it go?
So she continued to love him, and to love the world, steadily,
pathetically, obstinately and devilishly. She prayed for him, and she
engaged in works of charity.
But her love had turned from being the spontaneous flow, subject to
the unforseen comings and goings of the Holy Ghost, and had
turned into will. She loved now with her will: as the white world now
tends to do. She became filled with charity: that cruel kindness.
Her winsomeness and her elvishness departed from her, she began
to wither, she grew tense. And she blamed him, and prayed for him.
Even as the spontaneous mystery died in her, the will hardened, till
she was nothing but a will: a lost will.
She soon succeeded in drawing the life of her young boys all to
herself, with her pathos and her subtle will. Ramón was too proud
and angry to fight for them. They were her children. Let her have
them.
They were the children of his old body. His new body had no
children: would probably never have any.
“But remember,” he said to her, with southern logic, “you do not
love, save with your will. I don’t like the love you have for your god:
it is an assertion of your own will. I don’t like the love you have for
me: it is the same. I don’t like the love you have for your children. If
ever I see in them a spark of desire to be saved from it, I shall do
my best to save them. Meanwhile have your love, have your will. But
you know I dislike it. I dislike your insistence. I dislike your
monopoly of one feeling, I dislike your charity works. I disapprove of
the whole trend of your life. You are weakening and vitiating the
boys. You do not love them, you are only putting your love-will over
them. One day they will turn and hate you for it. Remember I have
said this to you.”
Doña Carlota had trembled in every fibre of her body, under the
shock of this. But she went away to the chapel of the Annunciation
Convent, and prayed. And, praying for his soul, she seemed to gain
a victory over him, in the odour of sanctity. She came home in frail,
pure triumph, like a flower that blooms on a grave: his grave.
And Ramón henceforth watched her in her beautiful, rather
fluttering, rather irritating gentleness, as he watched his closest
enemy.
Life had done its work on one more human being, quenched the
spontaneous life and left only the will. Killed the god in the woman,
or the goddess, and left only charity, with a will.
“Carlota,” he had said to her, “how happy you would be if you could
wear deep, deep mourning for me.—I shall not give you this
happiness.”
She gave him a strange look from her hazel-brown eyes.
“Even that is in the hands of God,” she had replied, as she hurried
away from him.
And now, on this morning after the first rains, she came to the door
of his room as he was sitting writing. As yesterday, he was naked to
the waist, the blue-marked sash tied round his middle confined the
white linen, loose trousers—like big, wide pyjama trousers crossed in
front and tied round his waist.
“May I come in?” she said nervously.
“Do!” he replied, putting down his pen and rising.
There was only one chair—he was offering it her, but she sat down
on the unmade bed, as if asserting her natural right. And in the
same way she glanced at his naked breast—as if asserting her
natural right.
“I am going with Cipriano after breakfast,” she said.
“Yes, so you said.”
“The boys will be home in three weeks.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you want to see them?”
“If they want to see me.”
“I am sure they do.”
“Then bring them here.”
“Do you think it is pleasant for me?” she said, clasping her hands.
“You do not make it pleasant for me, Carlota.”
“How can I? You know I think you are wrong. When I listened to you
last night—there is something so beautiful in it all—and yet so
monstrous. So monstrous!—Oh! I think to myself: What is this man
doing? This man of all men, who might be such a blessing to his
country and mankind—”
“Well,” said Ramón. “And what is he instead?”
“You know! You know! I can’t bear it.—It isn’t for you to save
Mexico, Ramón. Christ has already saved it.”
“It seems to me not so.”
“He has! He has! And He made you the wonderful being that you
are, so that you should work out the salvation, in the name of Christ
and of love. Instead of which—”
“Instead of which, Carlota, I try something else.—But believe me, if
the real Christ has not been able to save Mexico,—and He hasn’t—
then I am sure, the white Anti-Christ of Charity, and socialism, and
politics, and reform, will only succeed in finally destroying her. That,
and that alone makes me take my stand.—You, Carlota, with your
charity works and your pity: and men like Benito Juarez, with their
Reform and their Liberty: and the rest of the benevolent people,
politicians and socialists and so forth, surcharged with pity for living
men, in their mouths, but really with hate—the hate of the
materialist have-nots for the materialist haves: they are the Anti-
Christ. The old world, that’s just the world. But the new world, that
wants to save the People, this is the Anti-Christ. This is Christ with
real poison in the communion cup.—And for this reason I step out of
my ordinary privacy and individuality. I don’t want everybody
poisoned. About the great mass I don’t care. But I don’t want
everybody poisoned.”
“How can you be so sure that you yourself are not a poisoner of the
people?—I think you are.”
“Think it then. I think of you, Carlota, merely that you have not been
able to come to your complete, final womanhood: which is a
different thing from the old womanhoods.”
“Womanhood is always the same.”
“Ah, no it isn’t! Neither is manhood.”
“But what do you think you can do? What do you think this
Quetzalcoatl nonsense amounts to?”
“Quetzalcoatl is just a living word, for these people, no more. All I
want them to do is to find the beginnings of the way to their own
manhood, their own womanhood. Men are not yet men in full, and
women are not yet women. They are all half and half, incoherent,
part horrible, part pathetic, part good creatures. Half arrived.—I
mean you as well, Carlota. I mean all the world.—But these people
don’t assert any righteousness of their own, these Mexican people of
ours. That makes me think that grace is still with them. And so,
having got hold of some kind of clue to my own whole manhood, it
is part of me now to try with them.”
“You will fail.”
“I shan’t. Whatever happens to me, there will be a new vibration, a
new call in the air, and a new answer inside some men.”
“They will betray you.—Do you know what even your friend
Toussaint said of you?—Ramón Carrasco’s future is just the past of
mankind.”
“A great deal of it is the past. Naturally Toussaint sees that part.”
“But the boys don’t believe in you. Instinctively, they disbelieve.
Cyprian said to me, when I went to see him: ‘Is father doing any
more of that silly talk about old gods coming back, mother? I wish
he wouldn’t. It would be pretty nasty for us if he got himself into the
newspapers with it.’”
Ramón laughed.
“Little boys,” he said, “are like little gramaphones. They only talk
according to the record that’s put into them.”
“You don’t believe out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said
Carlota bitterly.
“Why Carlota, the babes and sucklings don’t get much chance. Their
mothers and their teachers turn them into little gramaphones from
the first, so what can they do, but say and feel according to the
record the mother and teacher puts into them. Perhaps in the time
of Christ, babes and sucklings were not so perfectly exploited by
their elders.”
Suddenly, however, the smile went off his face. He rose up, and
pointed to the door.
“Go away,” he said in a low tone. “Go away! I have smelt the smell
of your spirit long enough.”
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