Grinning, Bible Billy told the story of David’s adultery and the audience grinned back with full understanding as they listened to him. Then things began to speed up in a faster tempo—
“Jeremiah Chapter 36 verse 9!”
“And it came to pass in the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, in the ninth month, that they proclaimed a fast before the LORD to all the-”
“1 Corinthians Chapter 12 verse 15!”
“If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of —”
They didn’t let him complete a single verse. Everyone called out Bible passages from all sides and they whirled like brilliant jewels around his head. Immediately, almost automatically and without thinking the strange brain of this man snapped to the new passage.
Suddenly he stood up.
“Brothers and Sisters in Christ!” he said. “With your permission I would now like to knock upon your hearts as a man that has a wife and twelve children to provide for, twelve, like the tribes of Israel! For this demonstration I would like to do something very special. Would someone please choose a favorite chapter from the Gospel of Mathew?”
Someone called out, “The sixth chapter!”
“Good,” said Bible Billy. “I will say it backwards and don’t forget to give generously!”
He cleared his throat and began:
“thereof evil the is day the unto Sufficient. Itself of things the for thought take shall morrow the for—”
Meanwhile the usher went around with the offering plate and everyone gave. The entrance fee was only ten cents but I saw people now throwing entire dollars and half-dollars into the plate. While the usher took up the collection and Bible Billy said his chapter backwards I calculated what he would probably earn.
The usher would pull in well over $20 and there were at least twelve performances a day. Some of that considerable income would go to the owner and manager of the theater. Then there would be some petty costs as well.
Billy certainly made a clear profit of twelve hundred Marks every day! I know many theater managers that would be very envious of him, but they don’t know the Bible by heart!
The Blue Indians
.
The Blood of our fathers:
“The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge”
-Ezekial Chapter 8 Verse 2
I got to know Don Pablo when I had to shoot an old donkey in Orizaba. Orizaba is a little town that is the point of departure for those wanting to climb Pico de Orizaba, the tallest mountain in Mexico. In school they call it Citlaltépetl.
At the time I was still a true greenhorn and always mixed a handful of Aztec and Toltec words in with my Spanish. My Mexican was terrible and unfortunately the Mexicans couldn’t understand it at all. They preferred scraps of English mixed in.
Orizaba was a charming little—
But I have no intention of talking about Orizaba. It has nothing to do with this story except that it was where I needed to shoot an old donkey, which also has nothing to do with this story. I need to speak about the old donkey only because I have it to thank for my making the acquaintance of Don Pablo and it is through him that I met the blue Indians.
The old donkey stood in the back of the park. The park was not very large and laid out in a square at the end of the city. There were many high trees and the grass was growing over the path because no one ever went there. The people of Orizaba went to a place in the middle of the city instead where they played music.
Late one afternoon I went into the city park while it was raining very hard. I found the old donkey in the back where the mountain rises. He was thoroughly soaked and grazing in the wet grass but I was certain that he looked at me as I went past.
The next evening I again went to the park in the rain. I met the old donkey there in the same place. He was not tied up, was not near any house or cottage that he could belong to. I went up to him and.then I saw that he was standing on three legs. His left rear leg dangled in the air. He was very old and had many sores from where the cinch had been too tight and rubbed the hide off, from lashes of the whip and from being stabbed with nail sticks. His leg was broken in two places; a dirty rag hung loosely around it. I took my own handkerchief and made a makeshift bandage.
The next day we rode up the mountain but returned two days later because of the unending rain. We were frozen and our nags shivered in the wet cold. I kept thinking about the old donkey and rode over to the park before taking my mare to the stable.
He was still standing there in the same old place and raised his head when he saw me coming. I sprang down, petted him and spoke to him. That was not an easy thing to do because he stank dreadfully. I bit my lip not to get sick, bent over and raised his leg. It had become gangrenous; the flesh was rotting and stank bad, very bad. Much worse than—
I will not say. It is enough that I endured it. I knew what it meant. The old donkey looked at me and I felt what he was asking of me. I took my Browning, tore up a handful of grass.
“Eat,” I said.
But the animal wouldn’t eat. It only looked at me. I held the revolver behind his ear and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. A second and a third time, no shot. The revolver wouldn’t fire. It had rusted in the wet holster.
I laid my arm on the head of the animal and promised that I would come back. The fear in its tortured eyes fled.
“Will you really come back? Are you certain?”
I sprang onto the back of my mare and whipped her around. There perching on the branches of a dead tree were vultures. They were prepared to fly down as soon as their victim fell. They had been waiting days for the sick animal to collapse and then it did. The donkey stood up, fell, then sprang up again on its legs trembling in silent miserable fear. Oh, it knew its fate. If only it could die somewhere hidden, alone, away from these miserable birds. Then it collapsed again, couldn’t get up any more and the birds flew down.
They still needed to wait for days until the gasses from the decomposing body burst the hide open. Their weak beaks couldn’t rip through it. But now, right now, they could take the best from the meal, the delicious Hors d’ Oeuvre, the eyes of the living animal-
I turned around in the saddle. “Stop, you stop right now. I will be right back.”
The mud sprayed in the softened street. I went into the hotel like a tramp. There in the guestroom at the corner table were the gentlemen, German, English and French.
“Who will lend me a revolver?” I cried.
They all reached into their pockets, but then one asked, “Why?”
I told them about my old donkey. Their hands came back empty. No one gave me his Browning.
“No,” they said. “No, don’t do that. It would be very bad for you.”
“But the animal doesn’t belong to anyone,” I cried. “Its owner has chased it away to let it rot alive and be devoured by vultures.”
The bartender laughed, “You are entirely correct. Right now the donkey belongs to no one. But if you shoot it dead an owner will show up after an hour and require a sum for it that you could buy twenty horses with.”
“I would throw him out through the door!”
“Naturally, and that is the thing. The man will get the sheriff and the judge. Then you will refuse to pay. This is not Prussia and they would handle you brutally. You would most certainly find yourself sitting in jail and we would need to exert all our influence and a heavy amount of money just to get you out of there. What is the purpose in doing that! Believe me, there is law in Mexico!”
“Really,” I cried. “Law?”
I waved with my hand to a pair of bullet holes in the wall.
“Nice law! And those—”
The English engineer interrupted me. “Those? We just told you about them yesterday. The man shot three men and two women dead just for the fun of it. But they were Indians and prostitutes, not worth as much as a donkey. He received a half-year in
jail but got off by staying at a hospital for two days. That might be true but don’t forget he was a Mexican and the Governor’s nephew. Strangers in this land must obey the law without fail.
I bet you would sit in a cell for a year because of your old donkey if we didn’t get you out, and that would cost us thousands. We would need to bribe the sheriff and the judge. Everyone knows how this business works. We are only saving our own money by not giving you a revolver.”
No one gave me his weapon. I pleaded but they laughed at me. I left the room fuming. A quarter hour later there was a knock on the door of my room. It was Don Pablo.
“Here is my revolver,” he said giving me a nod. “Pack your suitcase. Go back to the city park as late as possible and then take the early 3 o’clock train. I will be leaving as well and wouldn’t mind a traveling companion.
* *
*
He certainly had a traveling companion and not just for one day. Don Pablo dragged me around through Mexico for a month like one of his twenty-seven suitcases. He was a drummer for Remscheider. Over there the people know what that is but the people reading this book don’t know at all therefore I need to explain.
He was a traveling salesman for the Remscheider export firm, speaks all languages and all dialects. He has been in every city in America from Halifax to Punta Arenas, is a good friend and a godfather. He knows exactly how much credit he can give each merchant. His employer is over there as well and pays him 50,000 Marks a year and is well satisfied because he gets back ten times as much in return. His employer will certainly make him a partner sooner or later.
He is a traveling hardware store. His suitcases are so full of samples they fill two wagons and include garters, portraits of Saints, cooking pots, toothbrushes, machinery parts and all kinds of things. He knows the way things are, knows his wares as well as the land he travels in.
When you travel with him you don’t need a travel book; he knows everything, what is going on in each location and a great deal more. My drummer was named Paul Becker but I will call him Don Pablo because all the Mexicans call him that and so does he.
It was late when I got to the train station. I jumped onto the train at the last minute and tore my suspenders. Don Pablo gave me a new pair courtesy of his company. Then he scolded me because I had bought a ticket. He had given the conductor an old table knife instead.
He first took me with to Puebla, then to Tlascalai. We traveled around in all the states, Yucatan, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Campeche and Coahila-
As long as we could travel by train it went well but when you had to load twenty-seven heavy suitcases on mules and ride up and down mountains it soon became an ordeal.
I wanted to go on strike many times but then Don Pablo would say in exasperation:
“What! You don’t want to see the ruins of Mitla?”
That went on for a couple of weeks. There was always something else that I needed to see.
Once Don Pablo said, “Now we are going to Guerrero.”
I told him that he would be riding alone. I had seen more than enough of Mexico. But he insisted that I must absolutely by all means become acquainted with the Indians in the state of Guerrero. Otherwise my picture of Mexico would not be complete. I stubbornly refused saying that I already knew over one hundred Indian tribes and was entirely indifferent about visiting one more.
“Dear Sir,” cried Don Pablo. “That doesn’t matter.You must see. There are things you will most certainly want to speak with them about. Namely the Guerrero Indians are—”
“Very dumb,” I interrupted him. “Like all the Indians.”
“Naturally,” said Don Pablo.
“And horribly lazy.”
“Of course.”
“Are good Catholics and don’t in the slightest follow the old ways any more.”
“Entirely correct.”
“Then why in heaven should I go there to see them?”
“You have to see this for yourself,” said Don Pablo importantly. “There is a tribe there that is blue.”
“Blue?”
“Yes, blue.”
“Blue?”
“Yes, blue. Blue! As blue as the gown of the virgin in my Madonna portraits, bright blue, Easter egg blue.”
* *
*
Good enough. We bought new horses, donkeys and mules. Then we rode from Toluca up over the Sierra Madre. We made a couple of stops to show our samples. While Don Pablo visited Tixtla I had the honor of calling on customers in Chilapa.
On the whole the trip went very fast. After three weeks we were already on the Pacific in Acapulco, the capital of the state, in a real hotel. I searched hard for the blue Indians but didn’t find any even though Don Pablo had said we would find them here. He called out to the Italian innkeeper as Crown witness and the innkeeper confirmed that the blue Momoskapan tribe did indeed occasionally come into the city.
It had been a few months now but two French Doctors from Ystotosinta, the dwelling place of the tribe, had just left. They had stayed there for half a year to study the blue disease. The blue color was considered a strange skin disease. The two doctors had told him that in addition to their blue color the Momoskapans displayed a downright amazing memory that reached straight back to early childhood. It was the result of a severely restricted diet of only eating fish and crustaceans that extended through the tribe back to time immemorial.
Now I wanted to go there myself. The tribe lived where the Momohuichic flowed into the ocean. It was scarcely a ten days ride. Don Pablo rewarded me with some trading goods. It seemed to him that I might be able to make some good bargains there. He was not going.
So I rode alone. I had only three Indians with me. One of them was an Usama and the other a Toltec out of the Sierra Madre that understood a little Islapekish. They were from the neighboring area and I was under the assumption that one or the other of them would to a certain extent find a way to understand the speech of the blue Indians.
What I really wanted to see of the Momoskapans I saw in a quarter of an hour. I confirmed that they really were blue just like what hundreds of others before me have said. The foundation color was really the white-yellow of all Mexican Indians. Yet on this was always a handful of spots, frequently on their faces and other parts of the body where the blue color had become dominant.
It was different from the tiger Indians of Santa Marta in Columbia. With them the original yellow color remained strong with the large rust brown places prevailing only in certain areas. Nevertheless it appeared to me that there must be some type of natural connection between them both. The Santa Marta Indians also lived right on the ocean.
Unfortunately I understood little more of skin diseases than a German Kaiser’s ambassador understands of diplomacy. Still while I have not discovered anything new about the blue skin of the Momoskapans, I have put together a couple of observations that are certainly well made.
I can only open my eyes wide and say, “Hmm, that’s strange!”
While on the way to elementary school in sixth grade I always encountered the banker Löwenstein. He was coming back from his morning ride wearing a cap, spats and swinging a whip. He was small and fat, and wore a monocle in his left eye. The entire right side of his face was covered with a large blue-violet strawberry mark.
I said to myself, “That’s why he wears a monocle. If he wore a Pince-nez and there was some jolt the entire blue side of his nose would rub off. I was tormented with the thought that if I got too near him my jacket button would get stuck on his face and if I tried to pull it off his whole face would pop off! I dreamed of it during school hours and at night in bed. Finally I made a big detour and went to school down another street just to avoid him.
The blue Indians were that blue, deep violet blue like the strawberry mark of the banker Löwenstein and from the first moment I saw them I was seized again with that twenty-five year old forgotten idea, that my jacket button might get stuck and rip everything off.
This ch
ildish influence was so very strong that not once in all the weeks I stayed with the Momoskapans was I able to touch one of these spots. Nevertheless I saw very well that this was no strawberry mark. The skin was tight, smooth and beautifully healthy with no interruption where the bright mark began and ended. I only had to overcome my own mania that restrained me and get used to it.
I resolved that since I was now in Ystotasinta and not able to add anything at all new to the blue phenomenon I could at least work a little with the other puzzle, the one the French doctors had told the innkeeper about in Acapulco.
In reading over my notes my first observation is that science needs to determine whether and to what extent the role of a restricted diet of fish plays in the gradual development of blue coloring in the Momoskapans as well as the still apparently uninvestigated coloring of the Santa Marta Indians as well.
These Mexican blue skinned Indians eat a lot of tortoise, the Columbian tiger skinned eat absolutely none at all. Perhaps this is a good starting point for further research?
Then it needs to be determined if the increased memory of the tribe is related to this restricted diet from the sea as well. One can only wish that limping science would finally once get to the bottom of this.
As for the facts themselves, I don’t need them anymore. I have spent a long half-year in the attempt and received a series of long vanished childhood memories that are thoroughly uninteresting to me. I have become completely indifferent on the matter and conclude that I was only able to last that long due to my strong stomach and to satisfy my equally strong curiosity.
Unfortunately I find that with the Momoskapan Indians no single individual remembers all the events of his life back into the first year of life. But many do have a few memories that reach back that far.
Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I (Collected Short Stories by Hanns Heinz Ewers) Page 13