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THE PLUMED SERPENT
The doctor shook his head.
‘Bring a mattress,’ he said.
The wind was suddenly roaring, the lamp was leaping with
a long, smoky needle of fl ame, inside its chimney. Leaves and dust
fl ew rattling on the terrace, there was a splash of lightning. Ramón’s
body lay there uncovered and motionless, the bandage was already
soaked with blood, under the darkening, leaping light of the lamp.
And again Kate saw, vividly, how the body is the fl ame of the soul,
leaping and sinking upon the invisible wick of the soul. And now the
soul, like a wick, seemed spent, the body was a sinking, fading fl ame.
‘Kindle his soul again, oh God!’ she cried to herself.
All she could see of the naked body was the terrible absence of
the living soul of it. All she wanted was for the soul to come back,
the eyes to open.
They got him upon the bed and covered him, closing the doors
against the wind and the rain. The doctor chafed his brow and hands
with cognac. And at length the eyes opened; the soul was there, but
standing far back.
For some moments Ramón lay with open eyes, without seeing or
moving. Then he stirred a little.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘Keep still, Don Ramón,’ said the doctor, who with his slim dark
hands was even more delicate than a woman. ‘You have lost much
blood. Keep still.’
‘Where is Martin?’
‘He is outside.’
‘How is he?’
‘He is dead.’
The dark eyes under the black lashes were perfectly steady and
changeless. Then came the voice:
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
‘Pity we did not kill them all. Pity we did not kill them all. We
have got to kill them all. – Where is the Señora Inglesa?’
‘Here she is.’
His black eyes looked up at Kate. Then more of his consciousness came back.
‘Thank you for my life,’ he said, closing his eyes. Then: ‘Put the
lamp aside.’
Soldiers were tapping at the glass pane, for the lieutenant.
A black little fellow entered, wiping the rain from his black face and
pushing his thick black hair back.
‘There are two more dead on the azotea,’ he announced to his
offi cer.
The lieutenant rose, and followed him out. Kate too went on
to the terrace. In the early darkness the rain was threshing down.
A lantern was coming down from the roof: it came along the terrace
to the stairs, and after it two soldiers in the pouring rain, carrying
a dead body, then behind, two more, with the other body. The huaraches of the soldiers clicked and shuffl ed on the wet terrace. The
dismal cortège went downstairs.
Kate stood on the terrace facing the darkness, while the rain
threshed down. She felt uneasy here, in this house of men and of
soldiers. She found her way down to the kitchen, where the boy was
fanning a charcoal fi re, and the woman was crushing tomatoes on
the metate, for a sauce.
‘Ay, Señora!’ cried the woman. ‘Five men dead, and the Patrón
wounded to death! Ay! Ay!’
‘Seven men dead!’ said the boy. ‘Two on the azotea!’
‘Seven men! Seven men!’
Kate sat on her chair, stunned, unable to hear anything but the
threshing rain, unable to feel anything more. Two or three peons
came in, and two more women, the men wrapped to their noses in
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THE PLUMED SERPENT
their blankets. The women brought masa, and began a great clapping of tortillas. The people conversed in low, rapid tones, in the
dialect, and Kate could not listen.
At length the rain began to abate. She knew it would leave
off suddenly. There was a great sound of water running, gushing,
splashing, pouring into the cistern. And she thought to herself: The
rain will wash the blood off the roof and down the spouts into the
cistern. There will be blood in the water.
She looked at her own blood-smeared white frock. She felt chilly.
She rose to go upstairs again, into the dark, empty, masterless house.
‘Ah, Señora! You are going upstairs? Go, Daniel, carry the lantern for the Señora!’
The boy lit a candle in a lantern, and Kate returned to the upper
terrace. The light shone out of the room where Ramón was. She went
into the salon and got her hat and her brown shawl. The lieutenant
heard her, and came to her quickly, very kindly and respectful.
‘Won’t you come in, Señora?’ he said, holding the door to the
room where Ramón lay; the guest-room.
Kate went in. Ramón lay on his side, his black, rather thin moustache pushed against the pillow. He was himself.
‘It is very unpleasant for you here, Señora Caterina,’ he said.
‘Would you like to go to your house? The lieutenant will send you
in the motor-car.’
‘Is there nothing I can do here?’ she said.
‘Ah no! Don’t stay here! It is too unpleasant for you. – I shall
soon get up, and I shall come to thank you for my life.’
He looked at her, into her eyes. And she saw that his soul had
come back to him, and with his soul he saw her and acknowledged
her; though always from the peculiar remoteness that was inevitable in him.
She went downstairs with the young lieutenant.
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
‘Ah, what a horrible affair! They were not bandits, Señora!’ said
the young man, with passion. ‘They didn’t come to rob. They came
to murder Don Ramón, you know, Señora! simply to murder Don
Ramón. And but for your being here, they would have done it! – Ah,
think of it, Señora! Don Ramón is the most precious man in Mexico.
It is possible that in the world there is not a man like him. And personally, he hasn’t got enemies. As a man among men, he hasn’t got
enemies. No, Señora. Not one! But do you know who it will be? the
priests, and the Knights of Cortés.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Kate.
‘Sure, Señora!’ cried the lieutenant indignantly. ‘Look! There are
seven men dead. Two were the mozos with guns, watching in the zaguán. One was Don Ramón’s own mozo Martin! – ah, what a faithful man, what a brave one! Never will Don Ramón pardon his death.
Then moreover, the two men killed on the azotea, and two men in
the courtyard, shot by Don Ramón. Besides these, a man whom Martin wounded, who fell and broke his leg, so we have got him. Come
and see them, Señora.’
They were down in the wet courtyard. Little fi res had been lighted under the sheds, and the little, black, devil-may-care soldiers were
crouching round them, with a bunch of peons in blankets standing
round. Across the courtyard, horses stamped and jingled their harness. A boy came running with tortillas in a cloth. The dark-faced
little soldiers crouched like animals, sprinkled salt on the tortillas,
and devoured them with small, white, strong teeth.
Kate saw the great oxen tied in their sheds, lying down, the
wagons standing inert. And a little crowd of asses was munching
alfalfa in a corner.
The offi cer marched beside Kate, his spurs sparkling in the fi relight. He went to the muddy car, that stood in the middle of the yard,
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THE PLUMED SERPENT
then to his horse. From a saddle-pocket he took an electric torch,
and led Kate across to the end shed.
There he suddenly fl ashed his light upon seven dead bodies, laid
side by side. The two from the roof were wet. Ramón’s dead man lay
with his dark, strong breast bare, and his blackish, thick, devilish
face sideways; a big fellow. Kate’s man lay rigid. Martin had been
stabbed in the collar bone; he looked as if he were staring at the
roof of the shed. The others were two more peons, and two fellows
in black boots and grey trousers and blue overall jackets. They were
all inert and straight and dead, and somehow, a little ridiculous. Perhaps it is clothing that makes dead people gruesome and absurd. But
also, the grotesque fact that the bodies are vacant, is always present.
‘Look!’ said the lieutenant, touching a body with his toe. ‘This is
a chauffeur from Sayula; this is a boatman from Sayula. These two
are peons from San Pablo. This man’ – the lieutenant kicked the
dead body – ‘we don’t know.’ It was Ramón’s dead man. ‘But this
man’ – he kicked her dead man, with the tall domed head – ‘is from
Ahuajijic, and he was married to the woman that now lives with
a peon here. – You see, Señora! A chauffeur and a boatman from
Sayula – they are Knights-of-Cortés men; and those two peons from
San Pablo are priests’ men. – These are not bandits. It was an attempt at assassination. But of course they would have robbed everything, everything, if they had killed Don Ramón.’
Kate was staring at the dead men. Three of them were handsome;
one, the boatman, with a thin line of black beard framing his shapely
face, was beautiful. But dead, with the mockery of death in his face.
All of them men who had been in the fl ush of life. Yet dead, they did
not even matter. They were gruesome, but it did not matter that they
were dead men. They were vacant. Perhaps even in life there had
been a certain vacancy, nothingness, in their handsome physique.
385
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
For a pure moment, she wished for men who were not handsome
as these dark natives were. Even their beauty was suddenly repulsive
to her; the dark beauty of half-created, half-evolved things, left in
the old, reptile-like smoothness. It made her shudder.
The soul! If only the soul in man, in woman, would speak to her,
not always this strange, perverse materialism, or a distorted animalism. If only people were souls, and their bodies were gestures from
the soul! If one could but forget both bodies and facts, and be present with strong, living souls!
She went across the courtyard, that was littered with horsedroppings, to the car. The lieutenant was choosing the soldiers who
should stay behind. The horse-soldiers would stay. A peon on a delicate speckled horse, a fl ea-bitten roan, came trotting past the soldiers in the zaguán. He had been to Sayula for doctor’s stuff, and to
give messages to the Jefe.
At last the car, with little soldiers clinging on to it all round,
moved slowly out of the courtyard. The lieutenant sat beside Kate.
He stopped the car again at the big white barn under the trees, to
talk to two soldiers picketed there.
Then they moved slowly on, under the wet trees, in the mud that
crackled beneath the wheels, up the avenue to the highroad, where
were the little black huts of the peons. Little fi res were fl apping in
front of one or two huts, women were baking tortillas on the fl at
earthenware plates, upon the small wood fi res. A woman was going to her hut with a blazing brand, like a torch, to kindle her fi re.
A few peons in dirty-white clothes squatted silent against the walls
of their houses, utterly silent. As the motor-car turned its great glaring headlights upon the highroad, little sandy pigs with short, curly
hair started up squealing, and faces and fi gures stood out blindly, as
in a searchlight.
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THE PLUMED SERPENT
There was a hut with a wide opening in the black wall, and
a grey old man was standing inside. The car stopped for the lieutenant to call to the peons under the wall. They came to the car with
their black eyes glaring and glittering apprehensively. They seemed
very much abashed, and humble, answering the lieutenant.
Meanwhile Kate watched a boy buy a drink for one centavo and
a piece of rope for three centavos, from the grey old man at the dark
hole, which was a shop.
The car went on, the great lights glaring unnaturally upon the
hedges of cactus and mesquite and palo blanco trees, and upon the
great pools of water in the road. It was a slow progress.
CHAPTER XX
MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL
Kate hid in her own house, numbed. She could not bear to
talk to people. She could not bear even Juana’s bubbling discourse.
The common threads that bound her to humanity seemed to have
snapped. The little human things didn’t interest her any more. Her
eyes seemed to have gone dark, and blind to individuals. They were
all just individuals, like leaves in the dark, making a noise. And she
was alone under the trees.
The egg-woman wanted six centavos for an egg.
‘And I said to her – I said to her – we buy them at fi ve centavos!’
Juana went on.
‘Yes!’ said Kate. She didn’t care whether they were bought at fi ve
or fi fty, or not bought at all.
She didn’t care, she didn’t care, she didn’t care. She didn’t even
care about life any more. There was no escaping her own complete
indifference. She felt indifferent to everything in the whole world,
almost she felt indifferent to death.
‘Niña! Niña! Here is the man with the sandals! Look! Look how
nicely he has made them for you, Niña! Look what Mexican huaraches the Niña is going to wear!’
She tried them on. The man charged her too much. She looked
at him with her remote, indifferent eyes. But she knew, in the world
one must live, so she paid him less than he asked, though more than
he really would have accepted.
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THE PLUMED SERPENT
She sat down again in her rocking-chair in the shade of the
room. Only to be alone! Only that no one should speak to her. Only
that no one should come near her! Because in reality her soul and
spirit were gone, departed into the middle of some desert, and the
effort of reaching across to people to effect an apparent meeting, or
contact, was almost more than she could bear.
Never had she been so alone, and so inert, and so utterly without desire; plunged in a wan indifference, like death. Never had she
passed her days so blindly, so unknowingly, in stretches of nothingness.
Sometimes, to get away from her household, she sat under a tree
by the lake. And there, without knowing it, she let the sun scorch
her foot and burn her face infl amed. Juana made a great outcry over
her. The foot blistered and swelled, her face was red and painful. But
it all seemed to happen merely to her shell. And she was wearily,
wanly indifferent.
Only at the very centre of her sometimes a little fl ame rose, and
she knew that what she wanted was for her soul to live. The life of
days and facts and happenings was dead on her, and she was like
a corpse. But away inside her a little light was burning, the light of
her innermost soul. Sometimes it sank and seemed extinct. Then it
was there again.
Ramón had lighted it. And once it was lighted the world went
hollow and dead, all the world-activities were empty weariness to
her. Her soul! Her frail, innermost soul! She wanted to live ITS life,
not her own life.
The time would come again when she would see Ramón and
Cipriano, and the soul that was guttering would kindle again in her,
and feel strong. Meanwhile she only felt weak, weak, weak, weak as
the dying. She felt that afternoon of bloodshed had blown all their
souls into the twilight of death, for the time. But they would come
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DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
back. They would come back. Nothing to do but to submit, and wait.
Wait, with a soul almost dead, and hands and heart of uttermost
inert heaviness, indifference.
Ramón had lost much blood. And she, too, in other ways, had been
drained of the blood of the body. She felt bloodless and powerless.
But wait, wait, wait, the new blood would come.
One day Cipriano came. She was rocking in her salon, in a cotton housedress, and her face red and rather swollen. She saw him,
in uniform, pass by the window. He stood in the doorway on the
terrace, a dark, grave, small, handsome man.
‘Do come in,’ she said with effort.
Her eyelids felt burnt. He looked at her with his full black eyes,
that always had in them so many things she did not understand. She
felt she could not look back at him.
‘Have you chased all your rebels?’ she said.
‘For the present,’ he replied.
He seemed to be watching, watching for something.
‘And you didn’t get hurt?’
‘No, I didn’t get hurt.’
She looked away out of the door, having nothing to say in the
world.
‘I went to Jamiltepec yesterday evening,’ he said.
‘How is Don Ramón?’
‘Yes, he is better.’
‘Quite better?’
‘No. Not quite better. But he walks a little.’
‘Wonderful how people heal.’
‘Yes. We die very easily. But we also come quickly back to life.’
‘And you? Did you fi ght the rebels, or didn’t they want to fi ght?’
‘Yes, they wanted to. We fought once or twice; not very much.’
‘Men killed?’
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