We are not wasted. We are not left out.Quetzalcoatl has come!There is nothing more to ask for.Quetzalcoatl has come!He threw the Fish in the boat.The cock rose, and crew over the waters.The naked one climbed in.Quetzalcoatl has come!Quetzalcoatl loves the shade of trees.Give him trees! Call back the trees!We are like trees, tall and rustling.Quetzalcoatl is among the trees.Do not tell me my face is shining.Quetzalcoatl has come!Over my head his noiseless eagleFans a flame.Tie my spotted shoes for dancing,The snake has kissed my heel.Like a volcano my hips are movingWith fire, and my throat is full.Blue daylight sinks in my hair.The star comes out between the twoWonders, shines out of everywhere,Saying without speech: Look you!Ah, Quetzalcoatl!Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.Call me a man.
We are not wasted. We are not left out.Quetzalcoatl has come!There is nothing more to ask for.Quetzalcoatl has come!He threw the Fish in the boat.The cock rose, and crew over the waters.The naked one climbed in.Quetzalcoatl has come!Quetzalcoatl loves the shade of trees.Give him trees! Call back the trees!We are like trees, tall and rustling.Quetzalcoatl is among the trees.Do not tell me my face is shining.Quetzalcoatl has come!Over my head his noiseless eagleFans a flame.Tie my spotted shoes for dancing,The snake has kissed my heel.Like a volcano my hips are movingWith fire, and my throat is full.Blue daylight sinks in my hair.The star comes out between the twoWonders, shines out of everywhere,Saying without speech: Look you!Ah, Quetzalcoatl!Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.Call me a man.
We are not wasted. We are not left out.Quetzalcoatl has come!There is nothing more to ask for.Quetzalcoatl has come!
We are not wasted. We are not left out.
Quetzalcoatl has come!
There is nothing more to ask for.
Quetzalcoatl has come!
He threw the Fish in the boat.The cock rose, and crew over the waters.The naked one climbed in.Quetzalcoatl has come!
He threw the Fish in the boat.
The cock rose, and crew over the waters.
The naked one climbed in.
Quetzalcoatl has come!
Quetzalcoatl loves the shade of trees.Give him trees! Call back the trees!We are like trees, tall and rustling.Quetzalcoatl is among the trees.
Quetzalcoatl loves the shade of trees.
Give him trees! Call back the trees!
We are like trees, tall and rustling.
Quetzalcoatl is among the trees.
Do not tell me my face is shining.Quetzalcoatl has come!Over my head his noiseless eagleFans a flame.
Do not tell me my face is shining.
Quetzalcoatl has come!
Over my head his noiseless eagle
Fans a flame.
Tie my spotted shoes for dancing,The snake has kissed my heel.Like a volcano my hips are movingWith fire, and my throat is full.
Tie my spotted shoes for dancing,
The snake has kissed my heel.
Like a volcano my hips are moving
With fire, and my throat is full.
Blue daylight sinks in my hair.The star comes out between the twoWonders, shines out of everywhere,Saying without speech: Look you!
Blue daylight sinks in my hair.
The star comes out between the two
Wonders, shines out of everywhere,
Saying without speech: Look you!
Ah, Quetzalcoatl!Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.Call me a man.
Ah, Quetzalcoatl!
Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.
Put star-oil over me.
Call me a man.
Even as she read, she could hear the people outside singing it, as the reed-flutes unthreaded the melody time after time. This strange dumb people of Mexico was opening its voice at last. It was as if a stone had been rolled off them all, and she heard their voice for the first time, deep, wild, with a certain exultance and menace.
“The naked one climbed in.Quetzalcoatl has come!”
“The naked one climbed in.Quetzalcoatl has come!”
“The naked one climbed in.Quetzalcoatl has come!”
“The naked one climbed in.
Quetzalcoatl has come!”
She could hear the curious defiance and exultance in the men’s voices. Then a woman’s voice, clear almost as a star itself, went up the road at the verse:
“Blue daylight sinks in my hair.The star comes out between the twoWonders....”
“Blue daylight sinks in my hair.The star comes out between the twoWonders....”
“Blue daylight sinks in my hair.The star comes out between the twoWonders....”
“Blue daylight sinks in my hair.
The star comes out between the two
Wonders....”
Strange! The people had opened hearts at last. They had rolled the stone of their heaviness away, a new world had begun. Kate was frightened. It was dusk. She laid her hand on Cipriano’s knee, lost. And he leaned and put his dark hand against her cheek, breathing silently.
“To-day,” he said softly, “we have done well.”
She felt for his hand. All was so dark. But oh, so deep, so deep and beyond her, the vast, soft, living heat! So beyond her!
“Put sleep so black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.”
“Put sleep so black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.”
“Put sleep so black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.”
“Put sleep so black as beauty in the secret of my belly.
Put star-oil over me.”
She could almost feel her soul appealing to Cipriano for this sacrament.
They sat side by side in darkness, as the night fell, and he held his hand loosely on hers. Outside, the people were still singing. Some were dancing round the drum. On the church-towers, where the bells had been, there were fires flickering, and white forms of men, the noise of a heavy drum, then again, the chant. In the yard before the church doors a fire was blazing, and men of Huitzilopochtli stood watching two of their men, naked save for a breech-cloth and the scarlet feathers on their head, dancing the old spear-dance, whooping challenge in the firelight.
Ramón came in, in his white clothes. He pulled off his big hat, and stood looking down at Carlota. She no longer made noises, and her eyes were turned up horribly, showing the whites. Ramón closed his eyes a moment, and turned away, saying nothing. He came to the window, where Cipriano still sat in his impenetrable but living silence,that satisfied where all speech had failed, holding Kate’s hand loosely. Nor did he let go her hand.
Ramón looked out, at the fires in the church towers, the fire before the church doors, the little fires on the beach by the lake; and the figures of men in white, the figures of women in dark rebozos, with full white skirts, the two naked dancers, the standing crowd, the occasional scarlet serapes of Huitzilopochtli, the white and blue of Quetzalcoatl, the creeping away of a motor-car, the running of boys, the men clustering round the drum, to sing.
“It is life,” he said, “which is the mystery. Death is hardly mysterious in comparison.”
There was a knocking. The doctor had come again, and a sister to nurse the dying woman. Softly the sister paced round the room and bent over her charge.
Cipriano and Kate went away in a boat over the dark lake, away from all the fires and the noise, into the deep darkness of the lake beyond, to Jamiltepec. Kate felt she wanted to be covered with deep and living darkness, the deeps where Cipriano could lay her.
Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.
Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.
Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.Put star-oil over me.
Put sleep as black as beauty in the secret of my belly.
Put star-oil over me.
And Cipriano, as he sat in the boat with her, felt the inward sun rise darkly in him, diffusing through him; and felt the mysterious flower of her woman’s femaleness slowly opening to him, as a sea-anemone opens deep under the sea, with infinite soft fleshliness. The hardness of self-will was gone, and the soft anemone of her deeps blossomed for him of itself, far down under the tides.
Ramón remained behind in the hotel, in the impenetrable sanctuary of his own stillness. Carlota remained unconscious. There was a consultation of doctors; to no effect. She died at dawn, before her boys could arrive from Mexico; as acanoawas putting off from the shore with a little breeze, and the passengers were singing the Song of Welcome to Quetzalcoatl, unexpectedly, upon the pale water.