Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (25 page)

When I turned twenty, a visit from my father was announced to me one day.
I was thrilled, despite the fact that I felt an instinctive repulsion for him;
I was thrilled, because just then I needed to unburden myself to someone,
even him.

He arrived in a much more amiable temper than many times before, and although he did not look directly into my eyes, his deep voice sounded somehow well-disposed to me. I told him that I wished, finally, to return to London, that I had completed my studies, and that if I remained in that house any longer I would die of sadness. . . . His deep voice again sounded somehow well-disposed toward me:

“I have fully planned, James, to take you with me this very day. The headmaster has told me your health is not good, that you are often sleepless, that you hardly eat. Too much studying is bad for a lad, as are all things in excess. But,” he said, “I have another reason for taking you to London. At my age, I have needed a helpmate, and I have found her. You have a stepmother, who ardently desires to know you, and I wish to present you. You shall come away with me today, then.”

A stepmother! And suddenly there came into my memory the image of my sweet, pale-skinned, blond-haired mother, who loved me so much when I was a boy, and petted and spoiled me. She had been abandoned almost always by my father, who spent nights on end, and days alike, in his horrid laboratory, while that poor delicate flower wasted away. . . . A stepmother! I would go, then, to bear the tyranny of Dr. Leen’s new wife, no doubt a dreadful bluestocking, or cruel know-it-all, or shrewish witch. . . . Forgive those words. Sometimes I don’t know exactly what I’m saying—or perhaps I know all too well . . .

I had not a word of reply for my father, but that afternoon, as he wished, we boarded the train that would take us to our townhouse in London.

From the moment we arrived, from the moment I stepped through the grand antique door, which was followed by a dark stair that led upstairs, to the sitting room, I was disagreeably surprised: In the house there was not one of our old servants.

Four or five decrepit old things, wearing loose—or overlarge—black livery, paid their respects as we passed, with slow, mute bows or curtsies. We entered the large sitting room. Everything was changed: the furniture that had once been there had been replaced by other pieces, of a cold, unwelcoming taste. The only thing that remained of all the furnishings was a large portrait of my mother at the far end of the room—the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti—and it was covered with a long crêpe veil.

My father led me to my rooms, which were not far from his laboratory. He bade me good night. Out of some inexplicable courtesy, I asked after my stepmother. He answered me slowly, taking care to pronounce each syllable in a voice combining tenderness and fearfulness
that I did not then understand
:

“You will see her later. . . . You will most surely see her . . . James, my son James, good-night. I assure you, you will see her later . . .”

 

Angels and ministers of grace, why did you not take me with you? And you, mother, my sweet little mother, my sweet Lily, why did you not come down to take me away at that instant? Oh, had I been swallowed up by an abyss or pulverized by a falling rock, or reduced to ashes by a bolt of lightning! . . .

It was that same night. With a strange weariness of body and spirit, I had lain down on the bed, dressed just as I had come in from the journey. As though in a half sleep, or dream, I remember hearing one of the old creatures in the house’s service creep up to my bed, muttering lord knows what words and looking at me vaguely with a pair of tiny wall-eyes that gave the impression of a bad dream. Then I saw him light a candelabra with three wax candles. When I woke up around nine, the candles were burning in my room.

I washed. I changed clothes. Then I heard footsteps, and my father appeared. For the first time—
for the first time!
—I saw his eyes fixed on mine. Indescribable eyes, I assure you: eyes such as you have never seen before, or ever will; eyes whose retina was almost red, like a rabbit’s; eyes that would make you tremble, for the strange way they looked at you.

“Let us go down, son; your stepmother is waiting for you. She is there, in the sitting room. Come.”

There, in a high-backed armchair, like those in choir stalls, a woman was seated.

She . . .

And my father spoke:

“Come closer, my little James, come closer!”

I approached mechanically. The woman put out her hand to me. . . . I then heard, as though it came from the great portrait, the great portrait draped in mourning, that same voice I had heard in Oxford, but very sad, so much sadder: “James!”

I put out my hand. The contact with the woman’s hand turned my blood to ice, and horrified me. The hand was stiff, and cold, cold. . . . And the woman was not looking at me. I stammered out a greeting, some polite words.

And my father spoke again:

“My wife, this is your stepson, our beloved James. Look at him, here he is. Now he is your son, too.”

And my stepmother looked at me. My jaws locked, one against the other. I was seized with horror:
Those eyes had no
light in them at all; there was no gleam of life.
An idea began to take shape within my brain—maddening, horrible, horrible. Then suddenly, there was an odor, an odor . . .
that odor,
my God! That odor . . . I don’t want to tell you. . . . Because you already know, yet I assure you: I smell that odor yet, and it makes my flesh crawl.

And then there emerged from those white lips, from that pale, pale, pale female figure,
a voice like that from a cavern, or a tomb
:

“James, our beloved James, my son, come closer. I want to give you a kiss on the forehead, and one on the eyes, and one on the lips. . . .”

I could bear no more. I cried out.

“Mother, help me! Angels of God, help me! Heavenly powers, ministers of grace, help me! I want to leave this place soon, soon—take me away from here!”

I heard the voice of my father:

“Calm yourself, James, calm yourself, my son. Hush, my son.”

“No!” I shouted louder, now struggling with the old servants of the house. “I’ll leave this place and tell the world that Dr. Leen is a cruel murderer, that his wife is a vampire, and that my father has married a dead woman!”

HUITZILOPOXTLI

Some time ago, I was sent by a newspaper on a commission to Mexico. I was to depart from a certain city on the United States border and travel southward to a certain place where a detachment of Carranza’s army was to be found. There, I was to be given a letter of introduction and a safe-conduct so that I might penetrate into a part of the territory that was controlled by Pancho Villa, the formidable fighter and military leader. . . . I was to see a friend, a lieutenant in the Revolution’s militia, who had promised to give me information for a news story. He had assured me that I had nothing to fear during my stay in his field of operations.

I made the trip by automobile, to a point a little beyond the border, in the company of two gentlemen: Mr. John Perhaps, a physician and also something of a journalist himself, in the service of U.S. newspapers, and Colonel Reguera, or, to be more exact, Father Reguera, one of the strangest and most fearsome men I have ever known in my life.

Father Reguera is an old friar who, young in the times of Maximilian (and an imperialist, of course) changed emperors in the days of Porfirio Díaz, though nothing else about him changed. He is an old Basque friar who believes that all things are disposed by divine will. Especially the divine right of command, which for him is unquestionable.

“Porfirio won,” he would say, “because God willed it so, because it was meant to be.”

“Don’t talk rubbish!” replied Mr. Perhaps, who had been in Argentina.

“But Porfirio had no communication with the deity. . . . Anyone who doesn’t respect the mystery, the devil take him! And Porfirio made us all take off our cassocks when we were out in the street. Madero, on the other hand . . .”

In Mexico, the earth is filled with mystery. Every Indian that lives, breathes the mystery with every breath. And the fate of the Mexican nation is still in the power of the Aztecs’ primitive deities. In other places, people say “Speak of the . . . and he will appear.” Here, one does not have to speak. The Aztec, or Maya, mystery lives in every Mexican, however much racial mixing there is in his blood.

“Colonel, have a whisky!” said Mr. Perhaps, offering him his bottle of
ruolz.

“I prefer this,” replied Father Reguera, and with one hand he held out to me a little piece of folded-up paper containing salt that he’d pulled out of his pocket, while with the other he extended his canteen full of tequila.

 

We drove and drove, and finally came to the edge of a forest, where we heard a shout: “Halt!” We halted. We could not go any farther. A small band of Indian soldiers, barefoot, with their enormous sombreros and their rifles at the ready, prevented us.

Reguera parlayed with the main person, who also knew the Yankee. Everything turned out all right. We had two mules and a fly-bitten nag to take us to our destination. The moon was out when we began our march. We plodded along. Suddenly, turning to the old friar, I said:

“Reguera, how do you want me to address you—colonel or father?”

“However you bloody well feel like!” guffawed the parchment-skinned personage.

“I ask,” I said, “because I must ask you about some things that have me a bit concerned . . .”

The two mules were trotting along nicely, and only Mr. Perhaps would have to stop from time to time—to tighten the cinch on his poor spavined steed, he said, although the principal reason was his need for whisky.

I let the Yankee go on ahead, and then, pulling my mule close to Padre Reguera’s, I said to him:

“You are a brave and practical man, and getting on in years. You are respected and loved by all the Indian peoples here-abouts. Tell me, in confidence: Is it true that people still see extraordinary things, as in the times of the Conquest, or before?”

“The devil take you! Have you got a smoke?”

I gave him a cigarette.

“Well, I’ll tell you. For many years I have known these Indians as well as I know myself, and I have lived among them as though I were one of them. . . . I came here when I was but a lad, in the times of Maximilian. I was already a priest then, and I still am, and I’ll die a priest, too, I expect.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t go poking your nose in there.”

“You’re right, padre. But if you’ll allow me to take an interest in your strange life. . . . How have you managed for so many years to be a priest, a soldier, a man with a legend, living so long among the Indians, and even fighting in the Revolution with Madero? Didn’t you say that Porfirio had won you over?”

Old Padre Reguera gave a great bellylaugh.

“So long as Porfirio had a grot’s worth of respect for God, everything went along just fine—thanks, too, to Doña Carmen . . .”

“How’s that, padre?”

“Well, just that. What happened is that the other gods . . .”

“Which gods, padre?”

“The gods of the earth . . .”

“But—do you believe in them?”

“Hush, boy, and have another swig of this tequila.”

“Let’s offer a drink,” I said, “to Mr. Perhaps, who’s gotten pretty far ahead of us up there.”

“Mr. Perhaps! Perhaps!”

The Yankee didn’t answer our calls.

“I’ll go,” I said to Reguera, “and see if I can catch up to him.”

“Don’t do that,” he replied, looking into the depths of the forest. “Have your tequila.”

The Aztec alcohol had infused a remarkable activity into my blood. After going on awhile in silence, the priest said to me:

“If Madero hadn’t deluded himself . . .”

“About the politicians!”

“No, my son, about the devils . . .”

“Tell me of that. You know about the rumors of
espiritismo.
”

“No, no, nothing of the kind. It’s that he managed to establish communication with the old gods. . . . Yes, boy, yes indeed, and I tell you this because I may say mass, but that doesn’t mean I’d deny what I’ve learned in this territory over so many years. I’ll tell you one thing: we’ve done very little with the cross here. Inside and out, the soul and the forms of the primitive idols defeat us. . . . There were never enough Christian chains here to enslave the deities of the old days, and every time we’ve tried, now above all, those devils show themselves.”

My mule gave a start backward, all agitated and shaking. I tried to make it go on, but the animal stood proverbially firm.

“Ssh, ssh,” Reguera said to me.

He took out a knife and cut a withe off a tree nearby, and then he hit the ground with it several times.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “It’s just a rattlesnake.”

I then saw an enormous serpent lying dead across the road. And when we continued our journey I heard a muted laugh, the muted laughter of the priest. . . .

“We haven’t caught up to the Yankee,” I said.

“Don’t you worry, we’ll find him sooner or later.”

 

We journeyed on. We had to pass through a large, dense stand of trees, on the other side of which we could hear the sound of water in a brook. And then a little ways in—“Halt!”

“Again!” I said to Reguera.

“Yep,” he replied. “We’re in the most delicate place that the Revolutionary forces hold. Have patience!”

An officer and several soldiers stepped forward. Reguera spoke with them and I heard the officer say:

“Not possible to go any farther. You’ll have to stay here till morning.”

For our resting place we chose a clearing under a great ahuehuete tree. It goes without saying that I couldn’t sleep.