House Made of Dawn

by N. Scott Momaday

  Evening. Am I not yet constrained into Thee? When I cannot speak Thy Name I want Thee most to restore me. Restore me! Thy Spirit comes upon me & I am too frail for Thee!

  5 hrs since I have writ here & now I witness here that I am awakened coughing by something of the cold & dark terrible & strange & I fell out on my knees & rattled with cold on the floor. It seemed as tho’ I had done some evil & I

  12th December

  Did the little boys not serve Thee & Thy Mother well? I gave Viviano 1 sweet & Francisco 2.

  25th December

  Lord Thy Nativity. For this Day in the town of David a Saviour has been born unto Thee Who is Christ the Lord.

  Thou sayest Nicolás take up thy strength in Me for the day shall come that I must take thy heft upon My back & go out into the streets. Yes Lord yes yes yes. I fed upon Thee in the Night & still I am full of Thee & have taken no thing other nor shall I this Day & Night.

  A 3d or half attendance Thy 1st Mass & some good Spanish & Sias too tho’ many more afterward. I must think Don De Lay O has not finished Thee or Thou art too late on the way. But his little cedar of Thy Mother is truly a wonderful & holy likeness & favors even His Excellency’s Conquistadora tho’ it is not so big & has not real hair. So Thou wert again this year our Blessed Infant of Prague & Thy Crown suitable I think tho’ it lay in the straw & Thy visitors were Thine own brute creatures. Ynocencía Thine Herald Angel again. San Juanito Thy Father Joseph. Avelino again & Pasqual & Viviano Thy Wise Men. Lupita Thine ass & wiser. Augustín & Francisco Thy lambs who have still the bigness of lambs & the sense. But they sang & I think Thou must have heard no matter Thou hadst been deaf even & I pray fervently Thou were not sleeping!

  I have given Thee over in procession to Domingo Gachupin his house until Epiphany. Mind well Thy Patrons Little One for I am excluded from Thee. Now the chanting & the drums & I have no part of it & I am by myself & tired. I hope Francisco will come in for a little while in the morning.

  Under the year 1875:

  5th January

  Thy Circumcision. When 8 days were fulfilled for the Circumcision of the Child His Name was called Jesus the Name given Him by the Angel before He was Conceived in the Womb.

  Yesterday late I returned from Cuba & near was thrown down on the way where a rabbit jumped up & I was gone almost to sleep in the cold. So with Tío & he reared & ran & today is worse lame tho’ I did walk with him the remainder. Avenicío Lucero & Jesús Baca did die at Cuba since I was the last time there. María Delgado confesses 9 mortal & 32 venial sins! & wonders exceedingly at the 9 as if they had been miracles.

  I heard today of a strange thing here on the 3d & so went to see a child born to Manuelita & Diego Fragua. It is what is called an albino whiter than any child I have seen before tho’ it had been of the white race. It is dead & raw about its eyes & mouth tho’ otherways hale I think & there is a meager white hair on its head like an old man & its crying is very little to hear. I advise to baptize this same day & do so at 3 o’clock. It is given a name Juan Reyes.

  Night. As now every night a chill comes on me & I burn against it as I can sleep. I am better in the day but 4 or 5 fits at least & of some duration. I begin now to think much upon my going out in the weather yet Thou hast given me a considerable work. I have no taste but for Thee & take only a little bread & meal in water tho’ Francisco gave me a fine piece of venison which before I liked above mutton or beef.

  There followed numerous pages in which the entries were composed almost entirely of texts and homilies. Father Olguin passed these by and opened the book to a later place. There was a letter inserted which Fray Nicolás had written to an unnamed person, perhaps a relative. Although he had read the letter and most of the journal once or twice before, Father Olguin saw for the first time that the hand was now changed in certain minute details. Something of its former control was lost, some quality of patience or intent. He took up the letter carefully in his hands and unfolded it. He felt curiously busy with it, as if it were his own creation and he were setting it down as a testament to his faith, to be written and read again at a later time.

  17th. October. 1888

  My dearest brother J. M.,

  You have my best thanks for the books & paper & God in His infinite Goodness will reward you according to your generosity. Be assured my brother that I am as well as can be expected. The wonder of it. I see in my diary it is 10 years & more since you came to me on my deathbed & gave me your richest blessing. Truly I am Lazarus & you the witness of it. You may say with me as it is writ Cor. I. O death where is thy victory? O death where is thy sting? But all this time I have not regained my whole strength & that most sinister Angel is not once out of my sight. I watch for him to come near me but he mocks & tarries. He tarries brother. I am put aside for him I know it. I must suppose you think me fanciful. Listen brother I heard him speak your name. You are pleased to tell me how you prosper but your time will come. Be wise to say goodbye every day to your wife Catherine for her time will come & your children their time will come.

  Listen I told you of Francisco & was right to say it. He is evil & desires to do me some injury & this after I befriended him all his life. Preserve this I write to you that you may make him responsible if I die. He is one of them & goes often in the kiva & puts on their horns & hides & does worship that Serpent which even is the One our most ancient enemy. Yet he is unashamed to make one of my sacristans & brother I am most fearful to forbid it. You will be reviled I believe to hear that he lays hold of the paten & the Host & so defiles me in the sight of my enemies. Where is the Most Holy Spirit that he is not struck down at that moment? I have some expectation of it always & am disappointed. Why am I betrayed who cannot desire to betray? I am not deceived that he has been with Porcingula Pecos a vile one I assure you & she is already swoln up with it & likely diseased too God grant it. He was so fair a child & I did like to play cross with him & touch him after to make him laugh. Did I tell you once he fell in the river & was no more than 6 or 7 & I made him take off his clothes & stand naked by the fire & he was shaking & ashamed & the next day brought me piñones from the hills?

  Why have you not sent me the razor & strop & a little money? I looked forward to it. The blade I have as I told you is of little use & I have only a piece of cow leather & it full of thicknesses & sores. I can make no edge upon it & so much abuse my face & am obliged to make a poor soap out of roots. Surely it is a mean thing to ask & I suppose you set yourself up there as my benefactor do you? You covet me my place with Him & do seek therefore to purchase a good word from me. Be uncertain of my good intercession brother until you have piled on your account. I have friends & patrons before you be assured & they have some better claim & to be true I scarce can get you in. You had better think hard on it your need & mine. Confide in me if it be so that Catherine does speak ill of me. It returns on you & your children. I think she does slander me round about but you can tell me the nature of it & I will bless you outside of it & know you my best brother & my friend. You know I have the way of saving you. I have studied on it for a long time tho’ it is truly a most difficult thing but after all nothing to me.

  Some days He comes to me in a sourceless light that rises on His image at my bed & then I am caught of it & shine also as with lightning on me. I think He does console me but I am not consoled tho’ I much want it—more than all things other. He does bid me speak all my love but I cannot for I am always just then under it the whole heft of it & am mute against it as against a little mountain heaved upon me & can utter no help of the thing that is done to me. Yet I can hear it in me the cry that is lain upon & stopped in me & I wonder after that He is gone that He was not even there. Thus does He chide me & I take some humor in it for surely I would not be lost & scolded too. You can see that it is so. You can see it that there is no doubt of it at all. Would you favor me with this witness that you can see it? It is no matter to me of course why should it be but I would have you say it to be certain you think aright & are not in the
least deceived. This much I owe to you to see that you reckon rightly upon this & other matters which affect your soul.

  O I am pleased to hear from you whatever news you can impart & do not neglect to tell me 1 little part of it the things you & your good family entertain. I like to ponder it & lay my blessings upon it with all good will. Welcome & share with yours the fond & sincere offices of

  Your humble brother,

  N.V.

  Father Olguin was consoled now that he had seen to the saint’s heart. This was what he had been waiting for, a particular glimpse of his own ghost, a small, innocuous ecstasy. He was troubled, too, of course; he had that obligation. But he had been made the gift, as it were, of another man’s sanctity, and it would accommodate him very well. He replaced the letter and closed the book. He could sleep now, and tomorrow he would become a figure, an example in the town. In among them, he would provide the townspeople with an order of industry and repose. He closed his good eye; the other was cracked open and dull in the yellow light; the ball was hard and opaque, like a lump of frozen marrow in the bone.

  When Angela returned that night to the Benevides house, she was alive to the black silent world of the canyon. The roadsides rushed through her vision in a torrent of gray-white shapes like hailstones coming forever and too fast from the highest reach of the headlights, down and away to nothingness in the black wake. She drove on, and she was sensible of creating the wind at her window out of the cold black stillness that lay against the walls of the canyon. Something she bore down upon and passed, a bobcat or a fox, before it sprang away, fixed her in its queer, momentary gaze, its round eyes full of the bright reflection of the lights and burning on in her vision for a time afterward, brighter than an animal’s eyes, brighter at last than the windows of the Benevides house, which mirrored her slow approach and stop. And there was the dying of the wind she had made, and of the motor and the light itself. And in her getting out and straining to see, there was no longer a high white house of stucco and stone, looming out against the leaves of the orchard, but a black organic mass the night had heaved up, even as long ago the canyon itself had been wrenched out of time, delineated in red and white and purple rock, lost each day out of its color and shape, and only the awful, massive presence of it remained, and the silence. It was no longer the chance place of her visitation, or the tenth day, but now the dominion of her next day and the day after, as far ahead as she cared to see. In the morning she would look at the Benevides house from the road, from her walk along the river, while eating an orange or imagining that she could feel, ever so little, the motion of life within her. She would see into the windows and the doors, and she would know the arrangement of her days and hours in the upstairs and down, and they would be for her the proof of her being and having been. She would see whether the hollyhocks were bent with bees and the eaves loud with birds. She would regard the house in the light of day. In fact it was secret like herself, the Benevides house. That was its peculiar character, that like a tomb it held the world at bay. She could clear her throat within, or scream and be silent. And the Benevides house, which she had seen from the river and the road, to which she had made claim by virtue of her regard, this house would be the wings and the stage of a reckoning. There were crickets away in the blackness.

  July 28

  The canyon is a ladder to the plain. The valley is pale in the end of July, when the corn and melons come of age and slowly the fields are made ready for the yield, and a faint, false air of autumn—an illusion still in the land—rises somewhere away in the high north country, a vague suspicion of red and yellow on the farthest summits. And the town lies out like a scattering of bones in the heart of the land, low in the valley, where the earth is a kiln and the soil is carried here and there in the wind and all harvests are a poor survival of the seed. It is a remote place, and divided from the rest of the world by a great forked range of mountains on the north and west; by wasteland on the south and east, a region of dunes and thorns and burning columns of air; and more than these by time and silence.

  There is a kind of life that is peculiar to the land in summer—a wariness, a seasonal equation of well-being and alertness. Road runners take on the shape of motion itself, urgent and angular, or else they are like the gnarled, uncovered roots of ancient, stunted trees, some ordinary ruse of the land itself, immovable and forever there. And quail, at evening, just failing to suggest the waddle of too much weight, take cover with scarcely any talent for alarm, and spread their wings to the ground; and if then they are made to take flight, the imminence of no danger on earth can be more apparent; they explode away like a shot, and there is nothing but the dying whistle and streak of their going. Frequently in the sun there are pairs of white and russet hawks soaring to the hunt. And when one falls off and alights, there will be a death in the land, for it has come down to place itself like a destiny between its prey and the burrow from which its prey has come; and then the other, the killer hawk, turns around in the sky and breaks its glide and dives. It is said that hawks, when they have nothing to fear in the open land, dance upon the warm carnage of their kills. In the highest heat of the day, rattlesnakes lie outstretched upon the dunes, as if the sun had wound them out and lain upon them like a line of fire, or, knowing of some vibrant presence on the air, they writhe away in the agony of time. And of their own accord they go at sundown into the earth, hopelessly, as if to some unimaginable reckoning in the underworld. Coyotes have the gift of being seldom seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to.

  Higher, among the hills and mesas and sandstone cliffs, there are foxes and bobcats and mountain lions. Now and then, when the weather turns and food is scarce in the mountains, bear and deer wander down into the canyons. Once there were wolves in the mountains, and the old hunters of the town remember them. It is said that they were many, and they came to the hunters’ fires at night and sat around in the dark timber like old men wanting to smoke. But they were killed out for bounty, and no one will remember them in a little while. Great golden eagles nest among the highest outcrops of rock on the mountain peaks. They are sacred, and one of them, a huge female, old and burnished, is kept alive in a cage in the town. Even so, deprived of the sky, the eagle soars in man’s imagination; there is divine malice in the wild eyes, an unmerciful intent. The eagle ranges far and wide over the land, farther than any other creature, and all things there are related simply by having existence in the perfect vision of a bird.

  These—and the innumerable meaner creatures, the lizard and the frog, the insect and the worm—have tenure in the land. The other, latecoming things—the beasts of burden and of trade, the horse and the sheep, the dog and the cat—these have an alien and inferior aspect, a poverty of vision and instinct, by which they are estranged from the wild land, and made tentative. They are born and die upon the land, but then they are gone away from it as if they had never been. Their dust is borne away in the wind, and their cries have no echo in the rain and the river, the commotion of wings, the return of boughs bent by the passing of dark shapes in the dawn and dusk.

  Man came down the ladder to the plain a long time ago. It was a slow migration, though he came only from the caves in the canyons and the tops of the mesas nearby. There are low, broken walls on the tabletops and smoke-blackened caves in the cliffs, where still there are metates and broken bowls and ancient ears of corn, as if the prehistoric civilization had gone out among the hills for a little while and would return; and then everything would be restored to an older age, and time would have returned upon itself and a bad dream of invasion and change would have been dissolved in an hour before the dawn. For man, too, has tenure in the land; he dwelt upon the land twenty-five thousand years ago, and his gods before him.

  The p
eople of the town have little need. They do not hanker after progress and have never changed their essential way of life. Their invaders were a long time in conquering them; and now, after four centuries of Christianity, they still pray in Tanoan to the old deities of the earth and sky and make their living from the things that are and have always been within their reach; while in the discrimination of pride they acquire from their conquerors only the luxury of example. They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.

  Abel walked into the canyon. His return to the town had been a failure, for all his looking forward. He had tried in the days that followed to speak to his grandfather, but he could not say the things he wanted; he had tried to pray, to sing, to enter into the old rhythm of the tongue, but he was no longer attuned to it. And yet it was there still, like memory, in the reach of his hearing, as if Francisco or his mother or Vidal had spoken out of the past and the words had taken hold of the moment and made it eternal. Had he been able to say it, anything of his own language—even the commonplace formula of greeting “Where are you going”—which had no being beyond sound, no visible substance, would once again have shown him whole to himself; but he was dumb. Not dumb—silence was the older and better part of custom still—but inarticulate. He quit the pavement where it rose and wound upon a hill, suddenly very much relieved to be alone in the sunlit canyon, going on in his long easy stride by the slow, shining river, the water cool and shallow and clear on the sand. He followed with his eyes the converging parallel rims of the canyon walls, deepening in the color of distance until they gave way to the wooded mountains looming on the sky. There were huge clouds flaring out and sailing low with water above the Valle Grande. And, stopping once to drink from the river, he turned around and saw the valley below, a great pool of the sunlit sky, and red and purple hills; and here and upward from this height to the top of the continent the air was distilled to the essence of summer and noon, and nothing lay between the object and the eye.