12
Chapter Twelve
On the morning after my return home I was making coffee for breakfast, thinking of the victorious testimonies of the many missionary-conquerors at the conference. I, too, must fling out my banner with joy—it is God who will lead me in triumph. When I opened the canister in which I kept the coffee I noticed a slightly moldy smell instead of the rich aroma I had anticipated. I put the can closer to my nose. It was definitely moldy. I had no other coffee in the house. Should I throw this away? Certainly not. No missionary had a right to be fussy about such a trifle. I had left home and kindred to come here in obedience to Christ and would I balk at drinking a cup of ill-tasting coffee? I put the grounds in the pot and proceeded with the meal. It was a victory. A very small victory, to be sure, but nevertheless an indication of single mindedness. People back in the States with their vacuum-packed Maxwell House—what did they know of doing without? “God, I thank Thee. . . .” The words of the Pharisee, “that I am not as other men” flashed through my mind, not as the words of the Pharisee but as my own, as the prayer of my heart I was thankful that I was not like others who had ignored the call. Immediately upon the recognition that I had in sincerity said the very words Jesus had condemned the Pharisee for saying, I prayed the prayer of the other in the story, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
I put the coffeepot on the table and sat down. A little book of daily readings from the Bible lay on the table, and I opened it to the portion for that day. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I thanked God for those words. I was a sinful missionary, but then God had entrusted the missionary task to sinners, and if we didn’t do it, who would? Too many had left their responsibility unfulfilled. Some had suffered, sacrificed, sailed through bloody seas in order to carry the Light to those in darkness, but not many. “O God, to us may grace be given to follow in their train.” As I buttered a roll I thought of the “noble army, men and boys, the matron and the maid,” and managed to put myself into the lineup somewhere. I hummed over the other stanzas—the one about meeting the tyrant’s brandished steel, the lion’s gory mane. How gladly would I do that for the sake of Christ!
I finished the roll, drank the last of the coffee (a deed of courage unlikely ever to be sung about), and began to wash the dishes, thinking over in my mind how to attack the job today. It had all seemed so obvious at the conference. Each missionary had his program—he knew what needed to be done where, and he had a method for doing it. I knew what needed to be done here in the mountains: these poor pagan Quichuas needed to be told about Jesus Christ, and there was one thing above all others that was needed in order to do this—the Bible, translated into their own language.
I decided I would go out again today, try to find Pedro, speak to him about the possibility of working for me as an informant in the language. He was a normally intelligent Indian, I judged—perhaps a little above average, since he had a tile roof on part of his house and enough initiative to work in the marketplace. I would offer him more than he could earn as a cargador, we would have regular sessions on the language, I would teach him the Bible bit by bit as we went along, and I would trust God to open his eyes to his own need of a Savior and then to the need of his own people. He would then be eager to help with the translation of the Scripture. When the Quichuas had the Bible and had been given the opportunity to learn to read it, the responsibility would rest with them to accept or reject the message I had brought.
As I finished the housework, this outline of my plan appeared to me as wholly feasible. Why had I made it all so complicated? I chose a few tracts to carry in my pocket put on my coat and left the house, walking in the direction of the main plaza. The day was cold, with only thin sunlight filtering through a white sky. There was the feel of rain in the air. This would be a blessing, for the dust lay thick on the road and on the geraniums in my front yard. The rain would make it colder and even more bleak and desolate than it was ordinarily, but it would wash my flowers and clean my lungs. Days of cold, driving wind forced the gritty dust deep into my sinuses and lungs so that each breath seemed to scrape and scratch. How good a rain would be!
When I reached the plaza I was startled to find hordes of Indians converging toward it, far more than the usual market-day crowd, and yet there were fewer stalls set up. There was an atmosphere of jubilance and gaiety I had not seen before. Hats danced in the sunlight and I could hear music coming from somewhere—the birdlike notes of panpipes and the plinking of a guitar. A great throng was pouring from the cathedral on the other side of the marketplace. It must be a feast day. I went into the little grocery store where I did most of my food buying.
“Buenos días, señora,” I said. “What is happening today?”
“Buenos días, señorita. Do you not know? This is the day of the fiesta.”
“A fiesta? Of what?”
“Of the saint”
“Which saint?” I realized I should have known who the patron saint of the town was.
“Of our San Rafael, señorita. It is the biggest fiesta of the year.”
How could I have been so ignorant? I could see the woman’s incredulity. Ah, these foreigners. I made a few small purchases and went out to watch. Groups of Indians stood here and there, some of them sharing a bottle, some talking, others watching and waiting. The stalls were doing a brisk business selling food and drinks, but there were no clothing stalls open today and I noticed that many of the shops which bordered the plaza were locked and barred. Gradually I became aware of distant shouting and music. There was a movement among those in the plaza, and attention turned to the southwest corner. A crowd of Indians was moving toward the corner, as though preparing for some encounter. I could not make out what was happening. Suddenly a mob of shouting, flailing Indians rushed into the plaza and the crowd swirled and heaved, women and children backed out of the way, policemen swore and swung clubs, and I saw that six or eight free-for-all fights had broken out among the men. In no time it seemed that everyone in the plaza was fighting or cheering for the fighters. The woman from the store had come out of her shop and was standing beside me.
“Why are they fighting, señora?” I asked.
“Oh, it is not permitted any longer, but they used to fight for possession of the plaza.”
“For possession of the plaza?”
“Yes, in order to be the leaders of the dance. It is the custom. Perhaps an ancient custom, but that is the way they are, the Indians. They have their customs.” She shrugged.
“And now it is against the law?”
“So they say. But who can stop them? And then, the fiestas bring good business.”
From another street which gave onto the plaza came a procession of Indians bearing huge candles garlanded with wax flowers and paper streamers. Umbrellas bobbed up and down in the midst of the throng and I heard a weird, melancholy chant. As they spread out into the square I could see that images were being carried under the umbrellas. People jostled for positions nearer to the images, and I caught a glimpse of the face of one old Indian woman, withered as a dried apricot, but with brilliant, intense eyes, joyously following the figure of the Virgin. There was in that look a great hope, the first hope I had seen in an Indian face. Those in the front ranks moved with a springiness in the step, turning their feces back toward the Blessed Mother and surging forward as though drawing the worshipers along with an invisible harness. The music, too, seemed to rise and fell in waves with the surging of the crowd.
In the center of the plaza a band began to play, drowning out the panpipes and guitars with a blast of tubas, trombones and trumpets. They were white men and mestizos who made up the band, and I gathered that they had been hired for the occasion, which was clearly an Indian celebration. White people stood in doorways around the square and watched from balconies and windows, but it was the Indians who today had possession of the town. They began to dance, chanting and stamping in circles, their ponchos swinging, bare feet pounding the earth. There were also men dressed in odd pieces of white men’s clothing—sweaters, high-top boots, a policeman’s hat or a pair of sunglasses adding a bizarre flourish to the shapeless calf-length trousers and homespun shirts of every day. I found something pitiable and touching about this attempt to assume the white man’s status for a day. Inhibitions were forgotten as they gave themselves to the celebration, whirling and throwing back their heads, lifting their elbows and knees with a gay energy, bowing and strutting imperiously. The whole plaza was by now thronged with Indians, some of them fighting, some drinking at the booths, some dancing or playing instruments, some still standing in groups along the edges, some eager and adoring as they followed the processions to the cathedral. The images were being carried into the church to be blessed at the Mass which was soon to be said. Women squatted on the steps selling candles and garlands.
“This must be a very important Mass for them, isn’t it?” I asked my friend.
“Yes, señorita. The fiesta Mass is the greatest of the year for this town.”
“And they bring the images from their own villages to the Mass?”
“Yes, señorita, to be blessed. They bring them from far away, some of them, and then they take them back again to bless the village.”
I wondered why the white people did not participate more in the festival. They were Catholics, the fiesta seemed to be a Catholic one, so why should the participants be only Indians? The custom must have its roots far back in Indian tradition.
The crowd pressed me back toward the walls of the shops and I saw that a new attraction was moving down the street Several figures dressed in huge, elaborately decorated headdresses with grotesque masks were weaving crazily toward me, flanked by laughing, singing men, men playing tambourines and flutes and panpipes. The shape of the headdresses and the features on the masks reminded me startlingly of the Tibetan devil dancers I had once seen in a missionary film. The decorations were Oriental in character and coupled with the Mongolian features of the feces which surrounded them, reminded me of the mystery of the origin of these people. Where were they when the Apostle Paul wrote, “How shall they hear without a preacher?. . . But I say, Have they not heard? verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.” If Paul meant by “all the earth” all of the known world, where did the American Indian fit into God’s design? How was it possible that they had heard the Gospel, and if they had not what provision had God made for the generations which had died before the era of Christian foreign missions? I had heard such questions discussed by people who were considered authorities on missionary work. The answers they gave were facile, and, to me, meaningless.
Here before me was a pageant of paganism, labeled, however, with Christian saints’ names, which had its roots probably thousands of years ago, in a past civilization of which almost nothing was known. These Indians had been subjugated by the Incas before the Spanish Conquest, but no one knew to which tribes they had belonged before that. The Incas had perhaps introduced a new significance to the ancient rites of the conquered tribes and in their sun worship had obscured the original meaning. Another religion had more recently supplanted that of the sun, but vestiges of an unknown variety of religions probably remained.
I stood for a long time, watching the dancing, listening to the strange, sad music—when the hired bands stopped their thumping and shrieking, the music the Indians themselves were making came through in thin, plaintive tones. The sour odors of gin and chicha became stronger, Indians kept pouring into the plaza until it seemed that there was not room for one more. They danced and sang and drank and went into the church and came out. Finally, some receded into the shops. Others who had bundles of blankets and food with them, and mothers who were carrying their babies, began to set up camp in doorways, under portals, on the sidewalk, wherever they could find a space.
“Will they stay the night?” I asked the señora.
“Oh, yes, señorita! They will stay several nights. You do not understand, señorita. This is a big occasion. Some will go home and come back, but they like to be together. This is their great pleasure, the fiesta. What else have they, the poor things?”
“Their lives are hard, aren’t they?” I said.
“Well, yes. It is hard, the life of an Indian. But it does not matter to them. They are used to it.”
Like animals. I remembered what the señora had said to me once about the Indians. She called them “poor things,” condescendingly, as one might perhaps call a fool or a dumb beast poor. There was no compassion in her tone. She said they did not mind a hard life. What did they know of any other kind? I yearned to help them. There was, obviously, nothing I could do for them here at the fiesta. I had come to find Pedro but he was nowhere to be seen, and if I did find him how could I intrude my request into his celebration? I was wholly outside the pale for the time being, and must content myself with talking to the shopkeeper.
Perhaps, on second thought, this was why I had come to the plaza today. Perhaps this would be my opportunity to win her. I could not help feeling that a contact with a white woman was second best, but it was clear to me now that this was a day set apart for Indians, and I as a white woman and a foreigner could have no part in it. Ancient loyalties, an irrepressible consciousness of their mystic heritage of a long-forgotten god or system, brought the Indians thronging to the fiesta, eager to give themselves up to the power of the mob, the images, the liquor. Their habitual sullenness and deference to the white man were flung to the winds. I watched them take over the white man’s town, crowd out his shops, even elbow him roughly off the sidewalk. Police clumped around through the crowd, half-heartedly seeking to maintain some semblance of order.
The sky overhead had been rapidly darkening although the hour was close to noon, and rain clouds rolled in ominous heaps from the eastern cordillera. Wind blew the dust in tangled veils as the merrymakers scuffed it up with their bare feet. I did not want to be caught in a downpour but was held fascinated by the sights before me. All at once there was a crash from almost directly behind me, several shouts, and the door of a little eating place was flung outward with a bang. A group of Indians erupted, tearing and beating at one another, and I saw in the center of the group a man, half carried and half dragged, whose nose was bleeding profusely.
“Ay, what barbarity!” said the señora, who had been attending a customer in her shop and had come out again when she heard the fracas. “Leave him! Leave him!” The Indians paid no attention, one or two of them still flailing at the others, and the man with the bleeding nose stumbled to his feet and faded into the crowd. The señora went back into her shop.
“Those savages. There is nothing one can do with them when they are drunk. They are savages, animals. They ought to be shut up in prison, but then there is no way to do that. All of them would be in prison. What is there to do? Caramba!”
Rain began to fell in huge drops, hitting the dust with little soft explosions, sending up a wet earthy smell, but the dancing went on. Some of the men who had folded the edges of their ponchos up onto their shoulders unfolded them, a few went to push their blankets and bundles closer together against the walls, but most of them seemed oblivious of the weather, of the time of day or the presence of any but their own people. Their stiff felt hats acted as umbrellas and they laughed and chanted and marched and drank and fought and allowed themselves to be what they could never be on an ordinary day. They knew, today, who they were; they accepted themselves and had the courage to reject the rest of us. Today they were able to believe, for a few shining moments, that the white man was not master of all that was good.
The rain was falling now in great gray rods, beating down on the plaza, splashing the water up against us as we stood under the narrow overhang in front of the shops, and I decided it was time to go home.
“When will the fiesta stop, señora?” I asked.
“Caramba, señorita, it hasn’t started yet!”
“If I come back later this afternoon will they still be dancing?”
“Of course! And tomorrow, and the next day.” She spread her palms open in front of her shoulders in the Latin gesture of futility. “Drinking and dancing, dancing and drinking—nothing but death will stop them, señorita!”
“Well, then, I think I will go home for a little while. But I do want to see the fiesta. I would like to know all about the life of the Indians.”
“When you have seen the fiesta, you will know all. What else is there? What more do they do?” Again she shrugged and lifted her palms.
“Who knows?” I said. “Well, señora, until later. I am going now.”
“Until later, señorita.”
The rain was pelting down, but I hurried through it toward my house, ruining my shoes but eager for the peace and silence I would find at home.
The dust was washed from the geraniums and from the tiles of my roof, making the reds and oranges clean and bright once more. Water raced between the stones of my front walk, pouring deltas of mud into the street, streaming in sheets from the eaves. A cold stream ran down my neck as I unlocked the door, but once inside I could not hear the tumult. The rain made a soft murmur which mingled with the ticking of my little Swiss clock. I liked the little clock. It had a pale green enamel case with delicately painted birds, and the hands were lacy. Inside was a charming music box which played the Kaiser waltz. It was really the only thing I had which was personal and permanent in the house, and its gentle sound spoke to me like a familiar voice. It was better to be alone, with this small voice and this innocuous face, than to be in a crowd where, because I did not belong, I was even more alone. The faces and the voices in the plaza were directed to something from which I was excluded. Would I ever succeed in being included by the Indians? But the thought of being included in so strange a celebration frightened me, for it was not a thing of which I could or wished to be a part. No, it was not mere inclusion I sought. I wanted them only to open the door a crack so that I could get a foot in. I did not want to be taken into the house. I wanted to take them out of it. And I would have to lure or trick them into coming out.
The impossibilities mounted before me. To try to know the Indians—who had done this before? To be accepted by them—what white man, let alone white woman, had achieved this? To live beside them, as though one of them, but with designs. This idea began to disturb me. The private designs, the double-heartedness which were inescapable made me feel like a conspirator, and although I imagined that some might find excitement in being a part of a plot, I myself could not be set at ease.
As I put the things I had bought into the cupboards in the kitchen, I remembered that I had not seen Pedro, who had been the object of my visit to the plaza. Poor Pedro. He had not the faintest idea that he was a part, too, in a plot—he thought that for once he had met a guileless white person.
The fiesta lasted for three days, and for part of each day I went and stood by the shop and watched. Mercedes, the señora’s little daughter, took me around the corner to watch a special dance in a private courtyard. The cacophony of conflicting bands in the plaza would have prevented my hearing the music in the courtyard, and I wondered how many other patios held such groups. About a dozen Indians were reeling and prancing to the boom of a bass drum and the creak of three or four cornets. I stood at the arched entrance with Mercedes, unnoticed by most of the crowd, and listened carefully to the music to see if I could follow any tune. It was very jerky, with sudden plunges and shrieks in addition, it seemed, to the unplanned ones due to the musicians’ lack of skill. What was it that made it sound so different from music to which I was accustomed? I did not know very much about music, but had heard that the octave was not the only scale in the world’s music, and perhaps this music used a different scale. Was it the pentatonic? I listened some more, and could single out no more than five notes. Yes, that must be what gave it the jerky quality, the wide gaps between notes.
“What is this dance, Mercedes?” I asked the child.
“It is a dance, señorita. They are dancing.”
“Yes, I see. But does the dance mean something special?”
“It is a dance of the fiesta.”
“But—why would it be that they dance back here in this patio, away from the others in the plaza?”
“Who knows why it will be? They dance for the fiesta of San Rafael, señorita.”
I could learn nothing further, though it seemed a very earnest, exclusive group, bent on performing to their utmost whatever it was they were dedicated to doing.
We visited a few of the cafes. Mercedes did not really understand my interest in all of this. Who wanted to watch Indians drink and fight? But she took me. She also guided me through the cathedral, where tawdry jewelry decked hideous plaster images, five-sucre bills covered another, candles flickered and dripped in front of various figures of the Virgin, a priest was intoning something in a little chapel to one side, and black veiled women knelt to pray. Indians were genuflecting here and there, clasping their hands and moving their lips.
On the last day the plaza was littered with drunken Indians, and little groups dragged one and then another, trying to get them out of the way of the traffic, pleading and cajoling with them to get up and come home. Wives heaved and dragged their besotted husbands, two drunken men wove violently back and forth trying to support each other, heads lolling and eyes rolling. Little children sat and cried in the gutters beside stupefied mothers and fathers. I watched them gradually vacate the plaza, winding up the streets toward their mountainsides. Perhaps if I followed up the street a little way I could help someone. I started in the direction of my own house, seeing several families passing that way. A woman with a baby on her back was stumbling along, clearly on the verge of slumping into the gutter. Her husband, shouting something unintelligible to the skies, grabbed her arm, shoved her, and she fell in a heap, miraculously keeping the baby upright in his sling on her back. He began to wail and she flung her shoulder back as though trying to dislodge him; he screamed louder and she fell forward and lay stiff. Her husband bent over her in bewilderment as though searching for something and then fell heavily on top of her. I quickened my pace, seeing that this had started a fight. The woman was yelling, thrusting wildly at the man with her fist. He had hold of her hair and was twisting the braid, slapping her face with the other hand. I feared not only for the woman but for the baby on her back.
“Leave her, alone!” I cried. “What is going on?”
Both stopped immediately and looked around, their eyes shifting uncertainly into focus. I saw that it was Pedro and Rosa, but they did not recognize me. They gave me a look that said, “Mind your own business,” and set at one another again. I tried then to interfere by pulling Pedro’s arm. He turned on me with a curse. His lip was swollen with a cut or bruise of some kind, his hair was matted over his forehead and his eyes were bloodshot. At that moment he recognized me, and it was as though blinds were drawn over his face. The intensity of his anger and the freedom of his drunkenness, the real person beneath the humble exterior I had known up until now, receded at once and he looked at me darkly, resentfully.
“Can I help you, Pedro? Rosa?” I hesitated, not knowing what to say.
“Buenas tanks, señorita,” said Pedro. Even his state of stupor, his anger, and his resentment at my intrusion did not prevent the automatic courtesy.
“Buenas tanks, Pedro.” Again I had forgotten to greet him. “Can I help you? Are you going home?”
“Home, señorita. Buenas tanks, señorita. We are going home.”
“May I come with you?” I thought surely they would never reach their destination alone, and I pitied the baby, wriggling and crying on Rosa’s back.
“To the house, señorita. Yes. Buenos tardes. We are going, home, señorita. Until another day, señorita,” said Pedro. Probably he was too drunk to have understood my offer, so I tried again. “Can I help you? Can I go home with you?”
“Until another day, señorita. We are going.” He was struggling desperately to get to his feet, and I gathered that this was no time to impose help where it was not wanted.
He yanked Rosa to her feet and the pair zigzagged up the road and around the corner of a mud wall, the baby bobbing crazily and watching me from under the brim of his felt hat. It was that look again—the same look I’d seen in Guayaquil. The baby was contented and secure. His parents had him, they had their rare pleasures, they had each other. They were not going to call on me for help of any kind, drunk or sober, and it was I who would have to pursue their help. I stood in the middle of the road and stared at the mud wall behind which they had disappeared.