Clash of Star-Kings

by Avram Davidson

  “But … you know … I’m not sure that they’re totally convinced that he doesn’t!

  “And of course there’s a lot more. I could talk all night. For instance — I’ve never been able to find out, to make sure: is that actually the Hermit in the catafalque? Or a wax effigy? Or a waxen covering over a mummy or bones? It’s all covered with embroidery, except the head and hands, and you can’t get close enough to make sure. I’d sure like to know. Oh, well — maybe someday I will!”

  He smiled. Sarah said, “Gee …” Her sense of wonder was very pleasantly excited. And just then a dish slipped out of her slackened hands and crashed into pieces. “More cachi-bachis!” Macauley said, pleasantly undisturbed. “Be sure you stick them up in the fork of a tree.”

  Sarah said, “Damn! Oh — damn it!” And burst into tears.

  • • •

  He was not merely overwhelmed by this new catastrophe, he was …

  He was not merely overwhelmed by this new catastrophe, he was …

  “So there you are, Jacobo,” Luis wound up. “Now, please, tell me, honestly, your opinion. Please.” He looked at the face of his confidant. And the face lit up with sudden insight. Luis’s heart bounded. He leaned forward.

  “ ‘Inundated’!” Jacob shouted. “ ‘He was not merely overwhelmed by this new catastrophe, he was inundated by it!’ Ha! Ha-ha! Good! Great!” He leaped to his typewriter and began to attack the keys. A minute passed, and another and another, with Jacob uttering little squeaks and grunts. Then he ripped the papers and carbons from the typewriter. “There!” he cried. “And stap my vitals if we don’t put it aboard the packet boat to sail at first tide tomorrow morning!” Then he blinked, smiled slightly, frowned slightly. “Hello, Luis,” he said, cordially. “Didn’t see you come in…. What’s new? Anything on your mind? Eh? ¿Que pasa, joven?”

  • • •

  Amidst much, much excitement and after many false alarms, the inhabitants of, and visitors to, Calle de la Independencia were finally outside and awaiting the approach of the procession. Archways of wire and flowers and greenery and electric lights spanned the street at several points and were boasted by a number of individual houses, as well as banners reading Bienvenida Heremito. Down the street, in front of the house of the Rosario family who kept the pulque saloon, an altar had been built, like a small stage, a glorious gallimaufry of gauze, lights, candles, colored cloth and paper, gilt, silvering, angels, crucifixes, images, and Mexican flags. Even Coco, the idiot cow-tender, usually in a state of agricultural grime, was cleanly washed and dressed and wore a brand-new sombrero in his hands. Fireworks sounded, grew nearer. So did a curious medley of musics. Sky rockets hissed and wooshed and shot sizzling upwards and exploded with bangs and bursts of stars, and the procession rounded a corner and came into sight.

  All the religious confraternities in town, it seemed, were there, members and banners and huge burning tapers, as well as many from out of town. The women for the most part dressed in white, those who were not in white were all in black, mantillas or rebozas covering their heads … except, curiously enough, the women members of the lay religious orders. Their dress was something in between uniform and habit: all bareheaded, as though to emphasize that they were lay people and in no way contravening the secular law against the wearing of clerical costume in public. Men, though outnumbered, were numerous, clutching their sombreros; children were present in profusion, and all walked slowly and gravely with their eyes cast down, voices raised in something half-chant and half-hymn. Group after group, band after band, banner after banner…. Jacob thought, as he did again and again, how, for an ostentatiously secular republic, Mexico managed to be so very and so constantly and so demonstrably religious.

  The marchers proceeded on with measured pace, the voices paused, the music was suddenly heard again … and a very odd music it was, too: the repetition of a single bar over and over again, of a kind of music which had certainly never come out of Spain — odd, archaic, impressive, stirring, baffling. The musicians came into sight: three Indian men, one with a flute, one with an odd sort of drum, and one with something vaguely resembling an ocarina —

  But before he could fully take this in, from down the street, a rather sad and shabby and tiny “orchestra” in run-down uniforms with run-down instruments of the conventional sort, burst into an off-key version of a tune he recognized (after a moment) from having heard it in the United States, to wit, “Good Night, Sweet Jesus” — and the native players fell silent. And on this note of bathos and anachronism, the spectators fell to their knees and the catafalque, borne on the shoulders of a dozen young men, approached and passed by.

  It distantly resembled a sort of truncated four-poster bed, with frame and canopy of dark and carven wood, with sides of glass. Jacob strained, Sarah strained, Macauley strained, to see what was inside. Again the resemblance to a bed … someone was lying down, covered with a profusion of (so it seemed) embroidered, richly embroidered, bedclothes, drawn up to his chin. The face was dark, very dark, scantily bearded, in total repose, on its head what seemed to be a skullcap or headdress of equally rich fabrication. They thought they could see the hands, too, but the procession did not halt. The catafalque seemed to float by in a sea of sighs and candleflame; the rockets hissed and wooshed; the near-19th-century orchestra reached the end of its piece; once again the tootling and the beating of the weird and totally non-European, yet tantalizingly evocative melody motif, over and over again….

  There was a silence. Those who had knelt now rose to their feet. The beautiful and elaborate designs and patterns of flowers had been churned into chaos by the passing feet. Señora Mariana smiled as she noted this. Sarah asked, somewhat disappointed, “Is it all over?”

  “¿Es terminado?” — Macauley.

  “Sí, ya es terminado, Señores.” — Señora Mariana.

  “Well, it’s all over, folks. I’ll be getting home. I suppose my chula landlady has all kinds of goodies waiting in honor of the fiera. Come around tomorrow for breakfast, okay?”

  Already the streets were emptying. The Clays proceeded past the kitchen where they saw the two older women and the girl bustling about laying a table, opened the door into the back patio and proceeded through the gloom to their own apartment. “Well, that was interesting,” said Jacob, brightly.

  “Hey, honey, what’s for supper?” Sarah, with a pang of sheer horror, remembered the still-largely-unwashed pile of pots and dishes and cutlery — and the evil barrel of water, icier and freezinger than ever! Fortunately, before she could reply, in bustled young Marinita, prettily aproned, and carrying a neat stack of well-filled dishes. She smiled, she spoke, she lifted a napkin, she withdrew.

  Sarah’s spirits soared. “Well, isn’t this nice,” she cried. “Our landlady has made holiday goodies, too! Look, look, all kinds of luscious things — two, no three kinds of tamales! and tacos and tostados and enchiladas, and — look! look! Quesadillas, too! Oh, yummy! See how they’re made with colored corn-meal, red ones and blue ones and even green ones. Oh — ”

  Jacob said, “Eat, eat. Later, we’ll talk…. Don’t bother setting the table, let’s eat them with our fingers as the Mexicans do.”

  Sarah said, serenely, entirely forgiving the landlady for denuding the patio, “Very well, if that’s the way you want to do it, that’s the way we’ll do it. Who needs knives and forks? … Yum yum yum yum….”So much for washing in ice water. And tomorrow breakfast at Macauley’s. Now — if wicked Lupita would only turn up before lunchtime tomorrow — !

  • • •

  And while most of the people in that part of town through which the procession had already passed were snug and happy in their houses, eating traditional foods and dipping them in special mole sauces and washing it all down with lots of pulque, there was still a good stretch of town through which the procession had yet to pass…. And this included a rather bad stretch of town, the ward called the Barrio Occidental, or Western District. Here were the most tumble-down hou
ses, the filthiest pulquerias, the raggedyest children, the raunchiest whorehouses, the highest proportion of glowering faces and of drunken brawls and slashings. And here a curious sort of ceremony sometimes customarily attended the procession’s passage — a dozen or so of the younger men would halt the procession and ask, with truculent politeness, to be allowed the honor of bearing the catafalque through the barrio. The offer was always refused (when it was made, which wasn’t always); sometimes there was a bit of shoving and pushing, usually the occidentales were bought off with presents of dulces, cigarettes, feria-foods. But, if so or not so, the procession after a short while continued on its way past the sullen, scowling faces of the neighborhood Indios.

  But not tonight. Not quite.

  “With permission, carriers — ” Permission was not granted.

  Almost immediately the women who carried the gifts or bribes in case they be needed sensed that something was not as usual. They hastened forward with their baskets of sweets, tobaccos, snacks … only to be knocked down, to see their baskets and contents trampled underfoot in the sudden rush forward upon the catafalque. They screamed, there were shouts and curses, clubs thudded, knives were drawn and flashed, the orderly procession-dissolved into a riot. One of the carriers clutched his bloody arm. The catafalque sagged. It was swept to and fro. It dipped and it swayed in the dim light here, where no festive lamps burned and tapers fell or were burned out. Luis, who had followed, rushed first this way and that, not knowing what to do.

  “The Hermit! Save the Holy Hermit! Asesinos! Thieves!”

  It was very dark now, like a scene from Hell, and then, in a sudden hellish burst of light caused by the untimely explosion of all the rockets at once, Luis saw the catafalque come stumbling, heavily, to the ground. He cried out. He saw the Hermit fall, he saw his splendid coverings in the dust, he saw the Hermit rise and look from side to side —

  Total pandemonium now. Glimpses of people fighting, fainting, screaming, struggling. Glimpses, totally inexplicable, of figures half-human and halfcoyote —

  — darkness again —

  — the Hermit, with tottering steps, uncertain at first, then very quickly, vanished into the blackness.

  And Luis, seeing the footsteps which glowed briefly and phosphorescently as they appeared and then disappeared, Luis followed after them, after the swiftly retreating figure of the Holy Hermit.

  IV

  Long and long he followed these evanescent tracks, like the glistening of snail trails or the fitfully cold flames of the fireflies, up through the hills into the cold black night where the cold white stars seemed peering low upon the land of Earth. Sometimes it seemed to him that he knew the path he followed and sometimes he was sure that he did not. Now and then he heard the howling of coyotes and he shivered less from the cold than from the recollection of every tale he’d ever heard about the Naguales, the men-who-were-coyotes, the-coyotes-who-were-men, and who, as part of wicked sorcery, were infinitely more dangerous to men than any real coyotes would or could ever be.

  He pushed these fears aside, not only because fear was not macho, but because these legends stemmed from the malevolent Meshika, the Tenocha-Aztec people, whose decadent descendants lived in the Barrio Occidental; not from the benevolent Moxtomi, the real heritors of the land. If indeed the Hermit of the Holy Mountain had Power or Powers — and, after seeing him rise from the dead, Luis scarcely felt capable of doubting it — then his power ought certainly to protect Luis, who was literally now following in his footsteps. Following in something akin to numbness, something not far from a kind of terror he had never known before, following with feet which stumbled now and then not only from the darkness but from fatigue … for had he not made the long, long walk up these same hills earlier in the day and then down again? … But, still:

  Following.

  Now and then he saw below him the huddled handful of lights which was Los Remedios; sometimes, very infrequently, a moving spark which he knew must be an automobile, or, likelier, a truck on one of the roads down on the lower slopes; and once he saw the tiny spurt of flame in the fire-box of the mas o menos, toiling to Amecameca with a line of freight cars. And overhead, the deliquescent stars dripped dew and delicate mist upon him.

  But for the most part he saw only the shining, fleeting footprints of the Hermit, and he hesitated to plant his own feet upon them to guide his steps before the pallid light faded away forever.

  How far ahead the Hermit now was, Luis did not know. A faint notion that the old stories were true and that the Holy man was on his way to Rome took hold of him — but he cast it off. The mood of it stayed with him, though, with all its intimations. Whatever the Hermit was, he was not a mere corpse or effigy. Was not. Such did not rise and walk off into the darkness and the mountains. But in the name of … anything! … what did rise and walk off — anywhere! — after having supposedly been dead for four hundred years?

  He had not, surprisingly, formed any answer to this by the time he reached the pueblo of San Juan Bautista Moxtomí. He was very tired, stumbling with stiff and twitching legs, eyes burning; he needed rest and warmth … and answers … answers … answers. He saw the men posted along the path, answered their hail in The Language, passed by them into the small open area which was the plaza, and there he saw the people of the pueblo sitting in a wide circle with faces of awe and joy and inside the circle burned a fire and the night air was odorous with copal-incense. The Hermit stood beside the fire and spoke in a clear and vigorous voice, but antique language and although he was standing and those whom he addressed were sitting, he and they were on a level of eye to eye. When Luis saw these others, saw their massive bodies and massy limbs, their strong broad noses and strong full lips and their heavy-lidded eyes with pupils of burning gold, he recognized who and what they were. And he fell upon his knees and bowed his brow down into the cool dust of the ground before the Great Old Ones, the demigods of the Toltecs and Moxtomí, who had calmly and benevolently ruled over the land before the coming of the cruelty and incessant bloodletting of the Aztecs.

  And who had now returned….

  The Hermit (or he-who-had-been-known-till-now-as-The-Hermit) paused in his speaking. And another voice broke the sudden silence, a voice like a great and deep-toned bell of gold and bronze, saying, in the Moxtomi language, “One moment, you who have so long and so faithfully been the Guardian of the Entrusted Thing; one moment only….” The ground shook slightly with the great and measured tread and huge, beautifully proportioned hands took hold of Luis and lifted him to his feet. Dazed, delighted, stricken still with awe, he gazed into the great golden glowing eyes and heard the great golden voice say, “Younger Brother, what is in your heart?”

  Luis heard his heart beating, his ears rang, he drew a shuddering breath. “Great Old Ones. Is it you whose lights have been seen on Popo?”

  “It is so. And then?”

  “I … Ah! There are so many things in my heart to tell you, to ask you … I …”

  The lips of the giant figure parted in a faint smile. “Not now, Younger Brother. Not yet. Take this — ” Something was pressed into his hand. He felt a cord of maguey fiber and something metallic, with an embossed surface. “ — take health, take rest, and at another time, Younger Brother, it may be that we may listen … and answer.”

  The disappointment was like the falling away of ground beneath Luis. All day long he had sped and toiled from place to place, asking only to be listened to. But Santiago Tuc and Domingo Deuh had been too busy to listen to him, Jacobo Clay had been too busy to listen to him, and now the astonishingly returned Great Old Ones were too busy to listen to him! Anguish ate at him like acid — but for a moment only. And then sleep, of the most delectable sort as is usually felt only when one knows that awakening is imminent, sleep now wrapped its arms around him. The circle of serenely joyful Moxtomí about the (he now recognized) sacred fire, the still all-but-totally-mysterious figure of the Hermit/Guardian, the titanic figures of the sapient and potent and b
enign Great Old Ones, all began with a swift slowness to dissolve into the golden mists; and Luis smiled and Luis slept.

  • • •

  The Clays slept, too, in their Krazy Kat style house in the back patio, with barely a straight line let alone two parallel ones in the whole structure, and each room painted in different bursts-of-color tones: restaurant-pea-green, imitation-soda-pop orange, do-not-leave-within-the-reach-of-children-shoe-pol-ish-purple, whorehouse-madam-red, and so on … all, presumably, the work of a previous tenant defined by Señora Mariana only as El Español. Why does the roof leak so much, Señora? El Español punctured it vigorously, Señor. Why are the holes in the gas stove burners mostly plugged up, Señora? Because of the unwholesome foods cooked upon it by El Español, Señor. Why does the wall in the third room not meet the ceiling in the corner, thus letting in the wind, Señora? Thus did El Español occupy himself, Señor, — Ai, the malevolent one! But take no concern, Señor, we will make all these reparations, excellently. Ah, good, Señora — and when? Mañana, Señor! Mañana!

  It was Sarah who awakened first … from a dream in which she sat bound hand and foot in a barrel of ice-cold water while Lupita, laughing fiendishly, broke greasy plates over her head. She considered telling Jacob of this latest evidence of ill will on the part of that mean girl, but decided against it because he might kick her for waking him up. But by the time she was fully awake she realized that he was, too, and listening.

  “Jacob, are you awake?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what’s that kind of, well, singing, then?”