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THE PLUMED SERPENT
Kate looked at him in amazement. And all she wanted was to
fl ee, to fl ee away beyond the bounds of this gruesome continent.
‘Get used to it,’ he said. ‘Get used to it that there must be a bit
of fear, and a bit of horror in your life. And marry me, and you will
fi nd many things that are not horror. The bit of horror is like the
sesame seed in the nougat, it gives the sharp wild fl avour. It is good
to have it there.’
He sat watching her with black, glittering eyes, and talking with
strange, uncanny reason. His desire seemed curiously impersonal,
physical, and yet not personal at all. She felt as if, for him, she had
some other name, she moved within another species. As if her name
were, for example, Itzpapalotl, and she had been born in unknown
places, and was a woman unknown to herself.
Yet surely, surely he was only putting his will over her?
She was breathless with amazement, because he had made her
see the physical possibility of marrying him: a thing she had never
even glimpsed before. But surely, surely it would not be HERSELF
who could marry him. It would be some curious female within her,
whom she did not know and did not own.
He was emanating a dark, exultant sort of passion.
‘I can’t believe,’ she said, ‘that I could do it.’
‘Do it,’ he said. ‘And then you will know.’
She shuddered slightly, and went indoors for a wrap. She came
out again in a silk Spanish shawl, brown, but deeply embroidered in
silver-coloured silk. She tangled her fi ngers nervously in the long
brown fringe.
Really, he seemed sinister to her, almost repellent. Yet she hated
to think that she merely was afraid: that she had not the courage.
She sat with her head bent, the light falling on her soft hair and
on the heavy, silvery-coloured embroidery of her shawl, which she
wrapped round her tight, as the Indian women do their rebozos.
301
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
And his black eyes watched her, and watched the rich shawl, with
a peculiar intense glitter. The shawl, too, fascinated him.
‘Well!’ he said suddenly. ‘When shall it be?’
‘What?’ she said, glancing up into his black eyes with real fear.
‘The marriage.’
She looked at him, almost hypnotized with amazement that he
should have gone so far. And even now, she had not the power to
make him retreat.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Will you say in August? On the fi rst of August?’
‘I won’t say any time,’ she said.
Suddenly the black gloom and anger of the Indians came over
him. Then again he shook it off, with a certain callous indifference.
‘Will you come to Jamiltepec to-morrow to see Ramón?’ he
asked. ‘He wants to speak with you.’
Kate also wanted to see Ramón: she always did.
‘Shall I?’ she said.
‘Yes! Come with me in the morning in the automobile. Yes?’
‘I would like to see Don Ramón again,’ she said.
‘You are not afraid of him, eh? Not the bit of horror, eh?’ he said,
smiling peculiarly.
‘No. But Don Ramón isn’t really Mexican,’ she said.
‘Not really Mexican?’
‘No! – He feels European.’
‘Really! To me he is – Mexico.’
She paused and gathered herself together.
‘I will row in a boat to Jamiltepec to-morrow, or I will take Alonso’s motor-boat. I will come about ten o’clock.’
‘Very good!’ said Cipriano, rising to leave.
302
THE PLUMED SERPENT
When he had gone, she heard the sound of the drum from the
plaza. It would be another meeting of the men of Quetzalcoatl. But
she had not the desire nor the courage to set out afresh that day.
Instead, she went to bed, and lay breathing the inner darkness.
Through the window-cracks she saw the whiteness of the moon, and
through the walls she heard the small pulse of the drum. And it all
oppressed her and made her afraid. She lay forming plans to escape.
She must escape. She would hurriedly pack her trunks and disappear: perhaps take the train to Manzanillo, on the coast, and thence
sail up to California, to Los Angeles or to San Francisco. Suddenly escape, and fl ee away to a white man’s country, where she could once
more breathe freely. How good it would be! – Yes, this was what she
would do.
The night grew late, the drum ceased, she heard Ezequiel come
home and lie down on the mattress outside her door. The only
sound was the hoarse crowing of cocks in the moonlit night. And in
her room, like someone striking a match, came the greenish light of
a fi refl y, intermittent, now here, now there.
Thoroughly uneasy and cowed, she went to sleep. But then she
slept deeply.
And curiously enough, she awoke in the morning with a new
feeling of strength. It was six o’clock, the sun was making yellow
pencils through her shutter-cracks. She threw open her window
to the street, and looked through the iron grating at the little lane
with deep shadow under the garden wall, and above the wall, banana leaves fraying translucent green, and shaggy mops of palmtrees perching high, towards the twin white tower-tips of the church,
crowned by the Greek cross with four equal arms.
In the lane it was already motion: big cows marching slowly to
the lake, under the bluish shadow of the wall, and a small calf, bigeyed and adventurous, trotting aside to gaze through her gate at
303
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
the green watered grass and the fl owers. The silent peon, following,
lifted his two arms with a sudden swoop upwards, noiselessly, and
the calf careered on. Only the sound of the feet of calves.
Then two boys vainly trying to urge a young bull-calf to the lake.
It kept on jerking up its sharp rump, and giving dry little kicks, from
which the boys ran away. They pushed its shoulder, and it butted
them with its blunt young head. They were in the state of semifrenzied bewilderment which the Indians fall into when they are
opposed and frustrated. And they took the usual recourse of running to a little distance, picking up heavy stones, and hurling them
viciously at the animal.
‘No!’ cried Kate from her window. ‘Don’t throw stones. Drive it
sensibly!’
They started as if the skies had opened, dropped their stones,
and crept very much diminished after the see-sawing bull-calf.
An ancient crone appeared at the window with a plate of
chopped-up young cactus leaves, for three centavos. Kate didn’t
like cactus vegetable, but she bought it. An old man was thrusting
a young cockerel through the window-bars.
‘Go,’ said Kate, ‘into the patio.’
And she shut her window on the street, for the invasion had
begun.
But it had only changed doors.
‘Niña! Niña!’ came Juana’s voice. ‘Says the old man that you buy
this chicken?’
‘At how much?’ shouted Kate, slipping on a dressing gown.
‘At ten reales.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Kate, fl inging open her patio doors, and appearing
in her fresh wrap of pale pink cotton crepe, embroidered with heavy
white fl owers. ‘Not more than a peso!’
304
THE PLUMED SERPENT
‘A peso and ten centavos!’ pleaded the old man, balancing the
staring-eyed red cock between his hands. ‘He is nice and fat, Señorita. See!’
And he held out the cock for Kate to take it and balance it between her hands, to try its weight. She motioned to him to hand it to
Juana. The red cock fl uttered, and suddenly crowed in the transfer.
Juana balanced him, and made a grimace.
‘No, only a peso!’ said Kate.
The man gave a sudden gesture of assent, received the peso, and
disappeared like a shadow. Concha lurched up and took the cock,
and instantly she bawled in derision:
‘Está muy fl aco! He is very thin.’
‘Put him in the pen,’ said Kate. ‘We’ll let him grow.’
The patio was liquid with sunshine and shadows. Ezequiel had
rolled up his mattress and gone. Great rose-coloured hibiscus dangled from the tips of their boughs, there was a faint scent from the
half-wild, creamy roses. The great mango-trees were most sumptuous in the morning, like cliffs, with their hard green fruits dropping
like the organs of some animal from the new bronze leaves, so curiously heavy with life.
‘Está muy fl aco!’ the young Concha was bawling still in derision
as she bore off the young cock to the pen under the banana-trees.
‘He’s very scraggy.’
Everybody watched intent while the red cock was put in among
the few scraggy fowls. The grey cock, elder, retreated to the far end
of the pen, and eyed the newcomer with an eye of thunder. The red
cock, muy fl aco, stood diminished in a dry corner. Then suddenly
he stretched himself and crowed shrilly, his red gills lifted like an
aggressive beard. And the grey cock stirred around, preparing the
thunders of his vengeance. The hens took not the slightest notice.
305
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
Kate laughed, and went back to her room to dress, in the powerful newness of the morning. Outside her window the women were
passing quietly, the red water-jar on one shoulder, going to the lake
for water. They always put one arm over their head, and held the jar
on the other shoulder. It had a contorted look, different from the
proud way the women carried water in Sicily.
‘Niña! Niña!’ Juana was crying outside.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Kate.
It was another of the hymn-sheets, with a Hymn of Quetzalcoatl.
‘See, Niña, the new hymn from last evening.’
Kate took the leafl et and sat upon her bed to read it.
QUETZALCOATL LOOKS DOWN ON MEXICO
Jesus had gone far up the dark slope, when he looked back.
Quetzalcoatl, my brother! he called. Send me my images, And the
images of my mother, and the images of my saints. Send me them
by the swift way, the way of the sparks, That I may hold them like
memories in my arms when I go to sleep.
And Quetzalcoatl called back: I will do it.
Then he laughed, seeing the sun dart fi ercely at him. He put up
his hand, and held back the sun with his shadow. So he passed the
yellow one, who lashed like a dragon in vain. And having passed the
yellow one, he saw the earth beneath. And he saw Mexico lying like
a dark woman with white breast-tips.
Wondering he stepped nearer, and looked at her, At her trains,
at her railways and her automobiles, At her cities of stone and her
huts of straw, And he said: Surely this looks very curious!
He sat within the hollow of a cloud, and saw the men that
worked in the fi elds, with foreign overseers.
He saw the men that were blind, reeling with aguardiente.
He saw the women that were not clean.
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THE PLUMED SERPENT
He saw the hearts of them all, that were black, and heavy, with a
stone of anger at the bottom.
Surely, he said, this is a curious people I have found!
So leaning forward on his cloud, he said to himself: I will call to
them. Hold! Hold! Mexicanos! Glance away a moment towards me.
Just turn your eyes this way, Mexicanos!
They turned not at all, they glanced not one his way.
Holalá! Mexicanos! Holalá!
They have gone stone deaf! he said.
So he blew down on them, to blow his breath in their faces. But
in the weight of their stupefaction, none of them knew.
Holalá! What a pretty people! All gone stupefi ed!
A falling star was running like a white dog over a plain. He whistled to it loudly, twice, till it fell to his hand. In his hand it lay and
went dark. It was the Stone of Change.
This is the stone of change! he said.
So he tossed it awhile in his hand, and played with it. Then suddenly he spied the old lake, and he threw it in. It fell in. And two
men looked up.
Holalá! he said. Mexicanos! Are there two of you awake? So he
laughed, and one heard him laughing.
Why are you laughing? asked the fi rst man of Quetzalcoatl.
I hear the voice of my First Man ask me why I am laughing?
Holalá,
Mexicanos! It is funny!
To see them so glum and so lumpish!
Hey! First Man of my name! Hark here! Here is my sign. Get
a place ready for me.
Send Jesus his images back, Mary and the saints and all. Wash
yourself, and rub oil in your skin. On the seventh day, let every man
wash himself, and put oil on his skin; let every woman.
307
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
Let him have no animal walk on his body, nor through the shadow of his hair. Say the same to the women.
Tell them they all are fools, that I’m laughing at them.
The fi rst thing I did when I saw them, was to laugh at the sight
of such fools.
Such lumps, such frogs with stones in their bellies.
Tell them they are like frogs with stones in their bellies, can’t
hop!
Tell them they must get the stones out of their bellies,
Get rid of their heaviness,
Their lumpishness,
Or I’ll smother them all.
I’ll shake the earth, and swallow them up, with their cities.
I’ll send fi re and ashes upon them, and smother them all. I’ll turn
their blood like sour milk rotten with thunder, They will bleed rotten blood, in pestilence. Even their bones shall crumble.
Tell them so, First Man of my Name.
For the sun and the moon are alive, and watching with gleaming
eyes.
And the earth is alive, and ready to shake off his fl eas.
And the stars are ready with stones to throw in the faces of men.
And the air that blows good breath in the nostrils of people and
beasts
Is ready to blow bad breath upon them, to perish them all.
The stars and the earth and the sun and the moon and the
winds Are about to dance the war dance round you, men! When
I say the word, they will start. For sun and stars and earth and the
very rains are weary Of tossing and rolling the substance of life to
your lips. They are saying to one another: Let us make an end Of
those ill-smelling tribes of men, these frogs that can’t jump, These
cocks that can’t crow These pigs that can’t grunt This fl esh that
308
THE PLUMED SERPENT
smells These words that are all fl at These money vermin. These
white men, and red men, and yellow men, and brown men, and
black men
That are neither white, nor red, nor yellow, nor brown, nor black
But everyone of them dirtyish.
Let us have a spring cleaning in the world.
For men upon the body of the earth are like lice,
Devouring the earth into sores.
This is what stars and sun and earth and moon and winds and
rain
Are discussing with one another; they are making ready to start.
So tell the men I am coming to,
To make themselves clean, inside and out.
To roll the grave-stone off their souls, from the cave of their bellies,
To prepare to be men.
Or else prepare for the other things.
Kate read this long leafl et again and again, and a swift darkness like a whirlwind seemed to envelop the morning. She drank
her coffee on the veranda, and the heavy papayas in their grouping
seemed to be oozing like great drops from the invisible spouting of
the fountain of non-human life. She seemed to see the great sprouting and urging of the cosmos, moving into weird life. And men only
like green-fl y clustering on the tender tips, an aberration there.
So monstrous the rolling and unfolding of the life of the cosmos,
as if even iron could grow like lichen deep in the earth, and cease
growing, and prepare to perish. Iron and stone render up their life,
when the hour comes. And men are less than the green-fl y sucking
the stems of the bush, so long as they live by business and bread
alone. Parasites on the face of the earth.
309
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
She strayed to the shore. The lake was blue in the morning light,
the opposite mountains pale and dry and ribbed like mountains in
the desert. Only at their feet, next the lake, the dark strip of trees
and white specks of villages.
Near her against the light fi ve cows stood with their noses to
the water, drinking. Women were kneeling on the stones, fi lling red
jars. On forked sticks stuck up on the foreshore, frail fi shing-nets
were hung out, drying, and on the nets a small bird sat facing the
sun; he was red as a drop of new blood, from the arteries of the air.
From the straw huts under the trees, her urchin of the mudchick was scuttling towards her, clutching something in his fi st. He
opened his hand to her, and on the palm lay three of the tiny cooking-pots, the ollitas which the natives had thrown into the water
long ago, to the gods.
‘Muy chiquitas!’ he said, in his brisk way, a little, fi ghting tradesman; ‘do you buy them?’
‘I have no money. To-morrow!’ said Kate.
‘To-morrow!’ he said, like a pistol shot.
‘To-morrow.’
He had forgiven her, but she had not forgiven him.
Somebody in the fresh Sunday morning was singing rather
beautifully, letting the sound, as it were, produce itself.
A boy was prowling with a sling, prowling like a cat, to get the
little birds. The red bird like a drop of new blood twittered upon the
almost invisible fi sh-nets, then in a fl ash was gone. The boy prowled
under the delicate green of the willow-trees, stumbling over the
great roots in the sand.
Along the edge of the water fl ew four dark birds, their necks
pushed out, skimming silent near the silent surface of the lake, in
a jagged level rush.
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