And yet it makes one a little weary, to realize all that.
And one must make one’s exit, before the carpenters come to tear the theatre down.
So one gives this last, perhaps a little hurried, performance.
So Guerrero travelled in pomp, with a small guard of warriors, and ten slaves to carry his litter, though unless he were leaving or approaching a town, he preferred to get out and walk, which was faster. But he kept up the proper forms, out of piety, to his wife, his daughter, this world, Chetumal, and Nachancan. Out of piety to what he was.
He could not be sure of his reception in Sotuta. Nobody ever could. The more panoply he travelled with the better. For like most men, the Cocom of Sotuta had a respect for such things. Indeed, now he was capable of them, he respected them himself. Now they had no meaning left, he knew what they meant. Since we are to be destroyed anyway, we may as well keep up the proper forms, until such time as we are to be. There is a protocol to be followed, on that last tramp towards the pyramid. Otherwise we offend both our survivors and ourselves.
He found Sotuta festive, with the intangible pathos of flowers, that are so triumphantly there, and yet they must die. The day before they were not. The day after they will not be either. That makes living in today a little strange. The Maya were a people in love with flowers, and who could blame them for that? But their flowers were not the sedate ornaments of Europe, but a parable which leapt savage from the pod and hung there, on their stalks, as though quivering at the leash, scorched in an hour, and therefore, while they blossomed, doubly terrible.
His bearers swerved on to the sacbe leading to Otzmal. Running straight and well kept into the city, it was as deserted as that to Tulum, twenty-five years ago.
He soon found out why.
The Lords of Xiu were coming.
So, for that matter, was he. He had sent messengers ahead, as the form required, and now had himself announced by conches. That meant nothing, all this pomp was terminal, though sometimes he thought only he, and some of the priests perhaps, realized that. But it was also necessary. One did not, if one wished to survive, approach the Sotuta as an underling.
It was also something he owed to Nachancan, that benign warm ghost who sat smiling in his heart, and to Chetumal, which was now a ruin.
And to his wife, of whom it was better not to think.
He wondered what had brought the Lords of Xiu here. It was unbelievable that they should come here. They were too unscrupulous ever to humble themselves, too proud, except among equals, and they recognized none, ever to humble themselves.
It must mean that at last they too suffered from some doubt. At last doubt had touched them, after a thousand years. They were on their way to ask the gods to do something about their appointed and anointed sons.
He entered the city, and there were those who came out to see him. For in a way he had become their last magic person, their ultimate sacrifice, the thing they would give to save themselves, even though that meant going with him to the sacrifice.
The Cocoms received him well. He was a great man, as they reckoned such things. But in twenty years he had come a long way. He now knew certain things it is not right for a peasant to think of, such as that greatness is only a disease, that pulls us down in time. We have not the stamina to withstand it. It destroys us.
It destroys everyone.
It had destroyed him. But then, so would have squalor. It was better to end this way. It at least had dignity.
The bearers carried him into the square of Sotuta. He could tell at once that his arrival was not welcome, by the degree of politeness it evoked. It was not his place to ask questions. His son was among the first to receive him. Everything was as it should be. And yet it was not. His son, too, who had always been so honest, seemed evasive here. Yet it was good to see him.
He did his best to shrug it off. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with him.
The cacique and his nobles he did not trust. They seemed on edge. He had the feeling he had interrupted something. There was something a little too deliberate about their cordiality, a little too evasive about his son. Hun Imix was grown up now. He had become a handsome stranger. Guerrero would rather have had him for a friend.
He had begun to think of these people as strangers again, no longer as a group he wanted to belong to, but as a group he had outgrown.
If life was a walk through a suite of rooms, he had opened one door too many, by accident, and found himself outside. There was nothing outside. All the same he did not want to go back in, and he certainly did not want to retrace his steps to the beginning of the stroll. Nothing was something not entirely unenjoyable, like physical exhaustion, which means you will sleep well. But unlike fatigue, it makes you sharp-eyed about what is under your nose.
Why were the Xiu coming?
Because they had asked to come.
Why had they been given permission to come?
It wasn’t exactly permission. It was a safe conduct they had wanted, through Sotuta territory, to Chichen Itza. They were on a pilgrimage.
The cacique smiled. No doubt Guerrero was surprised. It was what he had always advised, that they should forget their feuds and unite against the possible return of the Spanish. It was the only way they could keep their country, to unite. Was that not so?
Guerrero said nothing. He was not exactly a pessimist, but he had once been an optimist, he was older now, and experience had made him cautious. He was given now only to deliberate risk. Besides, if you believed the worst of people, rather than the best, you were seldom disappointed and sometimes delightedly surprised. With his son he awaited the arrival of the Xiu, in the plaza before the palace. Otzmal was not a capital, but even so, it was grander than Chetumal, for the Cocoms were a richer and older people. He looked around the company.
Bernal Diaz, the conquistador, had once bribed his way back to Cortés in comfort with a handful of quetzel feathers. There were enough quetzel feathers here to feed a city. Both priests and nobles were top-heavy with wickerwork head-dresses from which sprouted ciliated plumes, and were gorgeous in jade, in gold, in ceremonial armour and embroidered, jewel infested breechclouts. Nachi Cocom himself sat cross-legged in the midst of all that, elevated on a carved wooden platform, under a canopy. He was talking amiably. It could have been any state company, receiving a deputation of an equally powerful state, but Guerrero did not like the way his son avoided his glance. He could not help but try to ask a question.
The Xiu arrived in the afternoon, preceded by musicians playing drums, the armadillo ocarina, owl and frog and bird whistles, bone scrapers, and maraccas. It was not a visit but a progress, and though they travelled only with their high priests and assistants, slaves, and a bodyguard, the Xiu were more gorgeous, more full of pomp, and more stately even than their hosts. It was haughty, not tactful, but it was certainly magnificent.
It was almost ten years since anyone had made a state pilgrimage to Chichen Itza. This progress was a holy and almost divine event, and besides, pilgrims were sacred. They were going to offer human sacrifice at the Sacred Well, to appease the gods who had for so long behaved so badly, and now, it seemed, had had a change of heart. It was not merely a procession for the Xiu, but for the nation, which is perhaps why the Xiu had undertaken it. They were not stupid to the uses of propaganda. It was something the Sotuta had not thought of, to embody the nation in such a way.
Guerrero found it sad, simply because it was so assured, the magnificence so touching. He was moved perhaps to join the thanksgiving himself.
The company swayed down the sacbe and into the town. The sacrificial victims walked in a hollow square of priests, some girls, and two pretty boys brought up for that purpose, and trained toward no other. The high priest was in a closed litter high above them. A Xiu himself, he could not be seen, and would stay at the temple quarters.
Behind the priests came the guard, and among the guard, on the shoulders of the slaves, Ah Dzun Xiu, and Ah Ziyah Xiu, his heir, tog
ether with forty of the chief men of the nation, all cousins and cognates, some of them walking, but some in litters almost as rich as Dzun’s.
The litters were set down in the plaza, which had been purified. Now the high priest of the Xiu, together with those of Sotuta, purified it again, and the Xiu stepped out on to the flags.
If they were nervous, nothing of that showed in their manner. The father was a little wrinkled, but one had only to look at the son, to know that he was also proud and wiry. The nobles had the same look. It was easy to see how closely related they were.
Guerrero tried to press forward. The Xiu had been so self-centred and so foolish, that he wanted to speak with them and see what manner of men they were. He could not contrive the meeting. Somehow something always happened. He did not think it happened by chance. The deference with which his hosts treated him was too firm.
Yet for four days nothing happened. He began to relax. He was introduced to his son’s wife, who pleased him. It pleased him even more that she was gravid. But though he was treated with respect, he knew very well that his son had been given orders not to talk to him, except in front of witnesses.
He wondered why not. He could not get over a certain uneasiness. The Cocom hated the Xiu. A diplomatic agreement was one thing, but all this affability did not ring true.
Unless it were meant as an irony.
Late in the afternoon of the fourth day Nachi Cocom gave a farewell banquet, for the pilgrims were to advance the next day. Guerrero had decided to go with them. It could do no harm, and might do much good. For his coming expedition he could use the best omens and auspices. His son would also go, as would the Cocom leaders. They, too, had had the time to think about the uses of propaganda. They had to go.
Guerrero was seated well down the room, drowsy with wine, tired, and even bored. There had been too much liquor, too much food, too much music, and far too many dancers and acrobats. Even the Xiu seemed relaxed. They were not, of course, drunk. Drunkenness was a serious criminal offence, as well as a lapse from dignity. But they were not sober either. The caciques of Xiu and of Cocom sat on a dais at the end of the room. The music stopped for a moment, and the acrobats filed out two of the four doors. There was a longish pause.
Outside somewhere somebody sounded a conch.
Nachi Cocom had been leaning over, talking to Ah Dzun Xiu. Ah Dzun Xiu abruptly screamed, and Nachi Cocom drew back, holding the sacrificial knife he had had hidden about him somewhere.
Guerrero tried to get up, and found his arms held at his sides by the men to his left and right. There was nothing he could do but watch.
Warriors came in through the doors. The Cocom guests, too, had hidden weapons. So did the Xiu, but they had been taken by surprise. Guerrero saw his son pull out a knife.
He had forgotten. This son, like the other one, was half an Indian, and so more Indian than the others. He enjoyed revenge, even when it was not practical. The Spanish only when it was practical. It made Guerrero feel hopeless. All men want revenge. One cannot blame them for that. Our emotions are as irrelevant to politics as the weather. But battles are sometimes lost because of the weather, and with battles, causes, and that they should want revenge even at the price of their destruction was inopportune.
He had wanted revenge himself. This sight sickened him, and he realized that for some time he had not wanted it any more. He had only wanted to save a world, not for himself, but just because it was one, and because men should not be able to destroy everything, simply out of greed.
But there was a stronger force even than greed. It did no good even to hide behind poverty. There was that hate that springs from a worse than Castilian pride. And hate is a hydra with a hundred different heads. It belongs to the best causes, and fights in the most justified wars. When it purrs we call it love, but even when it is well fed, it is still there, a mechanism that allows us to survive the little crises to go to a worse death.
He knew he must not think that way. He would not think that way. But he felt so futilely tired. For the world is beautiful after all. There should be somebody there to see it, after we have gone.
He was an old man. He realized it suddenly. Not middle-aged, though he had a youthful body, but an old man. It was because he did not want to be young any more.
He watched his son killing, and not altogether because he was paid to kill. Perhaps it was because he had been trained properly to do so, that he enjoyed it so much.
Then it was over. The high priest they had slain at the temple, separately. But hatred is less efficient than love. There were forty Xiu dead in that room. They lay about on the floor, gorgeous as crumpled pheasants. Even Nachi Cocom seemed taken aback at the sudden quiet.
But there was another Xiu, at Mani. The Spanish need only to get to him, to be able to win the war, when they were ready. Guerrero would not see Chichen Itza now. Nor would any vast procession ever again wind through that city.
His guards had let go of him. Nachi Cocom smiled at him. It was supposed to be a lesson in how to fight a war. Nachi was pleased with himself, or would be, once his priests had absolved him, and he had apologized to the gods.
Guerrero could not smile back. It was too much like congratulating an incipient corpse on the skill with which it had arranged for its own death.
He could only curse. Why do men, even more than their involuntary skill to destroy each other, make such an effort, and succeed so well, to destroy themselves?
And what can you do when it is over, except go with it, and never say a word?
For all the beauty, all the love, all the glory, all the splendour, and everything personal and touching in this world, is purchased out of the bigotry, the hysteria, the self interest, and the desperation of those whom we call, since, in transferring their squalid little desires into something outside themselves, they seem to have an interest beyond themselves, disinterested and selfless people.
And why not? Why complain about that? That is the way animals and plants, at enormous cost to their own numbers, still save their own generic being. They mutate, and then persecute the mutation that will survive them, almost unconsciously to try it out, to see if it will hold up. The concentrated hatreds of this world, by which the race perpetuates itself in order to have a moment to spare to devote to love, are only the laboratory conditions which reproduce the conditions of survival. And those who condemn us, do so (though they do not know it, for if they did know it, they would not co-operate in the survival of the species even that much) only in order that through us the race may be conditioned to survive.
But it was very saddening. For those who live to love, must regret the passing of that moment when love is possible, and must with a sigh settle down to assure the return of that moment which will be nice for others, but which they themselves, even while, and because, they fight for it, will never see.
XXX
It was time to get to Honduras, before his warriors learned what had happened and could turn on each other instead of the common enemy.
He had to move at once. He knew now the Cocom did not trust him, and knowing he had been there, neither would the Xiu. And if he was not trusted, neither would his son be. Nor was it wise to leave his son’s wife behind, to be mistreated as a hostage, against who knows what civil war? His son could understand that.
They slipped out of the city before dawn, and got back to Bacalar in a week, travelling mostly at night. His son’s wife was in her eighth month, but sturdy. She scarcely retarded them.
There was no time to worry about the child.
News of the massacre had got to Bacalar before them, and demoralized everyone, for they knew what it meant. It was the one thing too much. The only thing to do was to embark at once.
Guerrero took both his son and his son’s wife in his own canoe. The flotilla headed out into the lake, Bacalar fell behind, they went down the river, reached the Bay of Chetumal, passed the ruins of the city, and fanned out into loose formation as they paddled down towards the open se
a. There were drummers to keep up the stroke. The weather could not have been better. Fishing boats put out from shore, to cheer them on their way.
It could not have gone better, yet Guerrero refused to look back. His son’s wife had been doing so. She swallowed, gave him a wistful smile, settled herself as well as she could, and stared forward towards the currents of the open sea. Behind her the rowers bent their backs.
He knew he would never see Chetumal again. He did not know why.
At the entrance to the bay the water was almost purple, and quite abruptly cold. The current caught them, and the rowers relaxed. In a curving arc the canoes swung one after another into that wing of the returning Gulf Stream which had brought him to Yucatan in the first place. The drums were still, but to pass the time someone was playing a flute.
The coastline shimmered in that sparkling air. It was only a line of white, of ochre, and the 150-foot continuous towers of the rain forest, the blue-green tufted pile of the peninsula. It should not have been so moving. And yet he was moved.
They were not a sea people, but they knew their own shores, and how to manage both the currents and their canoes. At no time was that trip ever an easy one, but they had a better passage than Davila had had. There were no storms. The weather held, but still it took them weeks to navigate the irritable boredom of that sea.
A Signal Victory Page 22