Chapter III Los Pastores
The romance of gold hangs over the mountains of Northern Durango like an old perfume. There, it is rumored, was that mythical Ophir whence the Aztecs and their mysterious predecessors drew the red gold that Cortez found in the treasury of Moctezuma. Before the dawn of Mexican history the Indians scratched these barren hillsides with dull copper knives. You can still see the traces of their workings. And after them the Spaniards, with flashing, bright helmets and steel breast-plates, filled from these mountains the lofty treasure-ships of the Indies. Almost a thousand miles from the Capital, over trackless deserts and fierce stony mountains, a tiny colorful fringe of the most brilliant civilization in Europe flung itself among the canyons and high peaks of this desolate land; and so far was it from the seat of change that long after Spanish rule had disappeared from Mexico forever, it persisted here. The Spaniards enslaved the Indians of the region, of course, and the torrent-worn, narrow valleys are still sinister with legend. Almost anybody around Santa Maria del Oro can tell you stories of the old days when men were flogged to death in the mines, and the Spanish overseers lived like princes.
But they were a hardy race, these mountaineers. They were always rebelling. There is a legend of how the Spaniards, finally discovering themselves alone, two hundred leagues from the seacoast, in the midst of an overwhelmingly hostile native race, attempted one night to leave the mountains. Fires sprang up on the high peaks, and the mountain villages throbbed to the sound of drums. Somewhere in the narrow defiles the Spaniards disappeared forever. And from that time, until certain foreigners secured mining concessions there, the place had an evil name. The authority of the Mexican government barely reached it.
There are two villages which were the capitals of the gold-seeking Spaniards in this region, and where the Spanish tradition is still strong: Inde, and Santa Maria del Oro,—usually called El Oro. Inde, the Spaniards romantically named from their persistent dream that this new world was India; Santa Maria del Oro was called so on the same principle that one sung a Te Deum in honor of bloody victory—a gratefulness to heaven for the finding of red gold, Our Lady of the Gold.
In El Oro one can still see the ruins of a monastery—they call it now, vaguely, the Collegio—the pathetic little arched roofs of a row of monkish cells built of adobe, and now fast crumbling under hot suns and torrential rains. It partly surrounds what was once the patio of the cloister, and a great mesquite tree towers there over the forgotten headstone of an ancient grave, inscribed with the lordly name of Doña Isabella Guzman. Of course, everybody has entirely forgotten who Doña Isabella was, or when she died. There still stands in the public square a fine old Spanish church with a beamed ceiling. And over the door of the tiny Palacio Municipal is the almost erased carving of the arms of some ancient Spanish house.
Here is romance for you. But the inhabitants have no respect for tradition, and hardly any memory of the ancients who left these monuments. The exuberant Indian civilization has entirely obliterated all traces of the conquistadores.
El Oro is noted as the gayest town of all the mountain region. There are bailes almost every night, and far and near it is a matter of common knowledge that El Oro is the home of the prettiest girls in Durango. In El Oro, too, they celebrate feast days with more ebullience than in other localities. All the charcoal-burners and goat-herds and pack-train drivers and ranchers for miles around come there on holidays,—so that one feast-day generally means two or three without work, since there must be one day for celebrating, and at least another for coming and returning home.
And what Pastorellas they have in El Oro! Once a year, on the Feast of the Santos Reyes, they perform Los Pastores all over this part of the country. It is an ancient miracle play of the kind that used to take place all over Europe in the Renaissance,—the kind that gave birth to Elizabethan drama, and is now extinct everywhere in the world. It is handed down by word of mouth from mother to daughter, from the remotest antiquity. It is called “Luzbel,” the Spanish for Lucifer, and depicts Perverse Man in the Midst of His Deadly Sin, Lucifer, the Great Antagonist of Souls, and the Everlasting Mercy of God Made Flesh in the Child Jesus.
In most places there is only one performance of Los Pastores. But in El Oro there are three or four on the night of the Santos Reyes, and others at different times of the year, as the spirit moves. The cura, or village priest, still trains the actors. The play takes place no longer in the church, however. It is added to from generation to generation, sometimes being twisted to satirize persons in the village. It has become too profane, too realistic, for the Church; but still it points the great moral of medieval religion.
Fidencio and I dined early on the night of the Santos Reyes. Afterward, he took me along the street to a narrow alley-way between adobe walls, which led through a broken place into a tiny corral behind a house hung with red peppers. Under the legs of two meditative burros scurried dogs and chickens, a pig or so, and a swarm of little naked brown children. A wrinkled old Indian hag, smoking a cigarette made of an entire corn-husk, squatted upon a wooden box. Upon our appearance she arose, muttering toothless words of greeting, lifted the lid of the box, and produced an olla full of new-made aguardiente. The distillery was in the kitchen. We paid her a silver peso, and circulated the jug among the three of us, with many polite wishes for health and prosperity. Over our heads the sunset sky yellowed and turned green, and a few large mountain stars blazed out. We heard laughter and guitars from the lower end of the town, and the uproarious shouts of the charcoal-burners finishing their holiday strong. The old lady consumed much more than her share....
“Oh, mother!” said Fidencio. “Where are they going to give the Pastores to-night?”
“There are many Pastores,” she answered with a leer. “Carramba! what a year it is for Pastores! There is one in the schoolhouse, and another back of Don Pedro’s, and another in the casa of Don Mario, and still another in the house of Perdita, who was married to Thomas Redondo, who was killed last year in the mines; may God have mercy on his soul!”
“Which will be the best?” demanded Fidencio, kicking a goat which was trying to enter the kitchen.
“Quien sabe?” she shrugged vaguely. “Were my old bones not so twisted I would go to Don Pedro’s. But I would be disappointed. There are no Pastores nowadays such as the ones we used to give when I was a girl.”
We went, then, to Don Pedro’s, down a steep, uneven street, stopped every few feet by boisterous bankrupts who wanted to know where a man could establish credit for liquor. Don Pedro’s was a considerable house, for he was the village rich man. The open square which his buildings enclosed would have been a corral ordinarily; but Don Pedro could afford a patio, and it was full of fragrant shrubs and barrel cacti,—a rude fountain pouring from an old iron pipe in the center. The entrance to this was a narrow, black archway, in which sat the town orchestra playing. A pine torch was stuck by its pitch against the outside wall, and under this a man took up fifty-cent pieces for the entrance fee. We watched for some time, but nobody seemed to be paying anything. A clamorous mob stood around him, pleading special privilege—that they ought to get in free. One was Don Pedro’s cousin; another his gardener; a third had married the daughter of his mother-in-law by his first marriage; one woman insisted that she was the mother of a performer. There were other entrances at which no guardian stood; and through these, when they found themselves unable to cajole the gentleman at the main door, the crowd placidly sifted. We paid our money amid an awed silence and entered.
White, burning moonlight flooded the place. The patio sloped upward along the side of the mountain, where there was no wall to stop the view of great planes of shining upland, tilted to meet the shallow jade sky. To the low roof of the house a canopy of canvas drooped out over a flat place, supported by slanting poles, like the pavilion of a Bedouin king. Its shadow cut the moonlight blacker than night. Six torches stuck in the ground around the outside of the place sent up thin lines of pitchy smoke. There was no other light under the canopy, except the restless gleams of innumerable cigarettes. Along the wall of the house stood black-robed women with black mantillas over their heads, the men-folks squatting at their feet. Wherever there was space between their knees were children. Men and women alike smoked their cigarros, handing them placidly down so that the little ones might take a puff. It was a quiet audience, speaking little and softly, perfectly content to wait, watching the moonlight in the patio, and listening to the music, which sounded far away in the arch. A nightingale burst into song somewhere among the shrubs, and all of us fell ecstatically silent, listening to it. Small boys were dispatched to tell the band to stop while the song went on. That was very exciting.
During all this time there was no sign whatever of the performers. I don’t know how long we sat there, but nobody made any comment on the fact. The audience was not there primarily to see the Pastores; it was there to see and hear whatever took place, and everything interested it. But being a restless, practical Westerner, alas! I broke the charmed silence to ask a woman next to me when the play would begin.
“Who knows?” she answered tranquilly.
A newcomer, after turning my question and the answer over in his mind, leaned across.
“Perhaps to-morrow,” he said. I noticed that the band was playing no longer. “It appears,” he continued, “that there are other Pastores at Doña Perdita’s house. They tell me that those who were to have performed here have gone up there to see them. And the musicians have also gone up there. For the past half-hour I have been considering seriously going up there myself.”
We left him, still considering seriously; the rest of the audience had settled down for an evening of pleasant gossip, having apparently forgotten the Pastores altogether. Outside, the ticket-taker with our peso had long since gathered his companions to him and sought the pleasing hilarity of a cantina.
And so we strolled slowly up the street toward the edge of town where the whitewashed plaster walls of rich men’s houses give way to the undecorated adobes of the poor. There all pretense of streets ended, and we went along burro paths between huts scattered according to their owners’ whims, through dilapidated corrals to the house of the widow of Don Tomas. It was built of sun-dried mud bricks, jutting part way into the mountain itself, and looked as the stable of Bethlehem must have looked. As if to carry out the analogy, a great cow lay in the moonlight just beneath the window, breathing and chewing her cud. Through the window and the door, over a throng of heads, we could see candle light playing on the ceiling and hear a whining chant sung by girlish voices, and the beat of crooks keeping time on the floor with jingling bells.
It was a low, dirt-floored, whitewashed room, raftered and wattled with mud above, like any peasant dwelling in Italy or Palestine. At the end farthest from the door was a little table heaped with paper flowers where two tall church candles burned. Above it, on the wall, hung a chromo of the Virgin and Child. And in the middle of the flowers was set a tiny wooden model of a cradle in which lay a leaden doll to represent the Infant Jesus. All the rest of the room, except for a small space in the middle of the floor, was packed with humanity: a fringe of children sitting cross-legged around the stage, half-grown-ups and girls kneeling, and behind them, until they choked the doorway, blanketed peons with their hats off, eager and curious. By some exquisite chance, a woman sat next to the altar, her breast exposed as she nursed her baby. Other women with their babies stood along the wall on both sides of her, except for a narrow, curtained entrance into another room where we could hear the giggling of the performers.
“Has it begun?” I asked a boy next to me.
“No,” he answered; “they just came out to sing a song to see if the stage was big enough.”
It was a merry, noisy crowd, bandying jokes and gossip across each others’ heads. Many of the men were exhilarated with aguardiente, singing snatches of ribald songs with their arms around each other’s shoulders, and breaking out every now and then into fierce little quarrels that might have led to anything—for they were all armed. And right in the middle of everything a voice said:
“S-s-sh! They are going to begin now!”
The curtain was lifted, and Lucifer, hurled from Heaven because of his invincible pride, stood before us. It was a young girl—all the performers are girls, in distinction to the pre-Elizabethan miracle plays, where the actors were boys. She wore a costume whose every part had been handed down from immeasurable antiquity. It was red, of course—red leather—the conventional medieval color for devils. But the exciting thing about it was that it was evidently the traditional rendering of the uniform of a Roman legionary (and the Roman soldiers who crucified Christ were considered a little less than devils in the Middle Ages). She wore a wide, skirted doublet of red leather, under which were scalloped trousers, falling almost to the shoe tops. There doesn’t seem to be much connection here until you remember that the Roman legionaries in Britain and in Spain wore leather trousers. Her helmet was greatly distorted, because feathers and flowers had been fastened to it; but underneath you could trace the resemblance to the Roman helmet. A cuirass covered her breast and back; instead of steel it was made of small mirrors. And a sword hung at her side. Drawing the sword, she strutted about, pitching her voice to imitate a man’s:
“Yo soy luz; ay en mi nombre se vet
Pues con la luz
Que baje
Todo el abismo encendi——”
A splendid soliloquy of Lucifer hurled from heaven:
“Light am I, as my name proclaims—and the light of my fall kindled all the great abyss. Because I would not humble myself, I, who was the Captain General, be it known to all men, am to-day the accursed of God.... To thee, O mountains, and to thee, O sea, I will make my complaint, and thus—alas!—relieve my overburdened breast.... Cruel fortune, why art thou so inflexibly severe?... I who yesterday dwelt serene in yonder starry vault am to-day disinherited, abandoned. Because of my mad envy and ambition, because of my rash presumption, gone is my palace of yesterday, and to-day finds me sad among these mountains, mute witnesses of my grievous and pitiful state.... O mountains! happy art thou!—happy art thou in all, whether bleak and bare, or gay with leafy verdure! O ye swift brooks flowing free, behold me!...”
“Good! good!” said the audience.
“That’s the way Huerta is going to feel when the Maderistas enter Mexico City!” shouted one irrepressible revolutionist, amid laughter.
“Behold me in my affliction and guilt——” continued Luzbel.
Just then a large dog came through the curtain, cheerfully wagging his tail. Immensely pleased with himself, he nosed among the children, licking a face here and there. One baby slapped him violently, and the dog, hurt and astonished, made a rush between Lucifer’s legs in the midst of that sublime peroration. A second time Lucifer fell, and, rising amid the wild hilarity of the house, laid about her with her sword. At least fifty of the audience descended upon the dog and ejected him howling, and the play went on.
Laura, married to Arcadio, a shepherd, appeared singing at the door of her cottage—that is to say, through the curtain....
“How peacefully falls the light of the moon and the stars this supremely beautiful night! Nature appears to be on the point of revealing some wonderful secret. The whole world is at peace, and all hearts, methinks, are overflowing with joy and contentment.... But—who is this—of such pleasing presence and fascinating figure?”
Lucifer prinked and strutted, avowing with Latin boldness his love for her. She replied that her heart was Arcadio’s; but the Arch-devil dwelt upon her husband’s poverty, and himself promised her riches, towering palaces, jewels and slaves.
“I feel that I am beginning to love thee,” said Laura. “Against my will—I cannot deceive myself——”
At this point there was smothered laughter in the audience: “Antonia! Antonia!” said everybody, grinning and nudging. “That’s just the way Antonia left Enrique! I always thought the Devil was in it!” remarked one of the women.
But Laura had pangs of conscience about poor Arcadio. Lucifer insinuated that Arcadio was secretly in love with another, and that settled it.
“So that thou mayst not be troubled,” Laura said calmly, “and, so that I may be free from him, I shall even watch for an opportunity to kill him.”
This was a shock, even to Lucifer. He suggested that it would be better to make Arcadio feel the pangs of jealousy, and in an exultant aside remarked with satisfaction that “her feet are already in the direct pathway to Hell.”
The women, apparently, felt a good deal of satisfaction at this. They nodded virtuously to one another. But one young girl leaned over to another, and, sighing, said:
“Ah! But it must be wonderful to love like that!”
Arcadio returned, to be reproached by Laura with his poverty. He was accompanied by Bato, a combination of Iago and Autolycus, who attended the dialogue between the shepherd and his wife with ironical asides. By means of the jeweled ring that Lucifer had given Laura, Arcadio’s suspicions were aroused, and, when Laura had left him in haughty insolence, he gave vent to his feelings:
“Just when I was happy in her fidelity, she with cruel reproaches embitters my heart! What shall I do with myself?”
“Look for a new mate,” said Bato.
That being rejected, Bato gave the following modest prescription for settling the difficulty:
“Kill her without delay. This done, take her skin and carefully fold it away. Shouldst thou marry again, let the bride’s sheet be that skin, and thus prevent another jilting. To still further strengthen her virtue, tell her gently but firmly: ‘Sweetheart, this thy sheet was once my wife; see that thou dost carry thyself circumspectly lest thou, too, come to the same end. Remember that I am a hard and peevish man who does not stick at trifles.’”
At the beginning of this speech the men began to snicker, and when it ended they were guffawing loudly. An old peon, however, turned furiously on them:
“There is a proper prescription!” he said. “If that were done more often there would not be so many domestic troubles.”
But Arcadio didn’t seem to see it, and Bato recommended the philosophic attitude.
“Stop thy complaining and leave Laura to her lover. Free thus from obligations, thou wilt become rich, and be able to eat well, dress well, and truly enjoy life. The rest matters but little.... Seize, therefore, this opportunity toward thine own good fortune. And do not forget, I beg thee, once thy fortune is made, to regale this meager paunch of mine with good cheer.”
“Shame!” cried the women, clucking. “How false!” “The desgraciado!” A man’s voice piped up: “There is some truth in that, señoras! If it weren’t for the women and children we all might be able to dress in fine clothes and ride upon a horse.”
A fierce argument grew up around this point.
Arcadio lost patience with Bato, and the latter plaintively said:
“If thou hast any regard for poor Bato, let us go to supper.”
Arcadio answered firmly, not until he had unburdened his heart.
“Unburden and welcome,” said Bato, “until thou art tired. As for me, I shall put such a knot in my tongue that even shouldst thou chatter like a parrot I shall be mute.” He seated himself on a large rock and pretended to sleep; and then for fifteen minutes Arcadio unburdened himself to the mountains and the stars.
“Oh, Laura, inconstant, ungrateful and inhuman, why hast thou caused me such woe? Thou hast wounded my faith and my honor and hast put my soul in torment. Why dost thou mock my ardent love? Oh, thou steep stills and towering mountains, help me to express my woe! And thou, stern, immovable cliffs, and thou, silent woods, help me to ease my heart of its pain....”
Amid heartfelt and sympathetic silence the audience mourned with Arcadio. A few women sobbed openly.
Finally Bato could stand it no longer.
“Let us go to supper,” he said. “Better it is to suffer a little at a time!”
A perfect gale of laughter cut off the end of the sentence.
Arcadio: “To thee only, Bato, have I confided my secret.”
Bato (aside): “I do not believe I can keep it! Already my mouth itches to tell it. This fool will learn that ‘a secret and a pledge to none should be entrusted.’”
Enter a group of shepherds with their shepherdesses, singing. They were dressed in their feminine Sunday best with flowery summer hats, and carried enormous wooden apostolic crooks, hung with paper flowers and strings of bells.
“Beautiful is this night beyond compare,—
Beautiful and peaceful as never before,
And happy the mortal who beholds it.
Everything proclaims that the Son of God,
The Word Divine made human flesh,
Will soon be born in Bethlehem
And mankind’s ransom be complete.”
Then followed a dialogue between ninety-year-old, miserly Fabio and his sprightly young wife, to which all present contributed, upon the subject of the great virtues of women and the great failings of men.
The audience joined violently in the discussion, hurling the words of the play back and forward—men and women drawing together in two solid hostile bodies. The women were supported by the words of the play, but the men had the conspicuous example of Laura to draw from. It passed soon into an argument about the virtues and failings of certain married couples in El Oro. The play suspended for some time.
—— Bras, one of the shepherds, stole Fabio’s wallet from between his knees as he slept. Then came gossip and backbiting. Bato forced Bras to share with him the contents of the stolen wallet, which they opened, to find none of the food they expected. In their disappointment, both declared their willingness to sell their souls to the Devil for a good meal. Lucifer overheard the declaration and attempted to bind them to it. But after a battle of wits between the rustics and the Devil—the audience solid to a man against the underhanded tactics of Lucifer—it was decided by a throw of the dice, at which the Devil lost. But he had told them where food could be obtained, and they went for it. Lucifer cursed God for interfering in behalf of two worthless shepherds. He marveled that “a hand mightier than Lucifer’s has been stretched out to save.” He wondered at the Everlasting Mercy toward worthless Man, who has been a persistent sinner down the ages, while he, Lucifer, had felt God’s wrath so heavily. Sweet music was suddenly heard—the shepherds singing behind the curtain—and Lucifer mused upon Daniel’s prophecy that “the Divine Word shall be made Flesh.” The music continued, announcing the birth of Christ among the shepherds. Lucifer, enraged, swore that he would use all his power to the end that all mortals shall at some time “taste Hell,” and commanded Hell to open and receive him “in its center.”
At the birth of Christ the spectators crossed themselves, the women muttering prayers. Lucifer’s impotent raging against God was greeted with shouts of “Blasphemy! Sacrilege! Death to the Devil for insulting God!”
Bras and Bato returned, ill from overeating, and, believing they were about to die, called wildly for help. Then the shepherds and shepherdesses came in, singing and pounding the floor with their crooks, as they promised they would cure them.
At the beginning of Act II, Bato and Bras, fully restored to health, were discovered again plotting to steal and eat the provisions laid by for a village festival, and as they went out to do so Laura appeared, singing of her love for Lucifer. Heavenly music was heard, rebuking her for her “adulterous thoughts,” whereupon she renounced all desire for guilty love and declared that she would be content with Arcadio.
The women of the audience rustled and nodded and smiled at these exemplary sentiments. Sighs of relief were heard all over the house that the play was coming out right.
But just afterward the sound of a falling roof was heard, and Comic Relief, in the persons of Bras and Bato, entered, carrying a basket of food and a bottle of wine. Everybody brightened up at the appearance of these beloved crooks; anticipatory mirth went around the room. Bato suggested that he eat his half while Bras stood guard, whereupon Bato ate Bras’s share, too. In the midst of the quarrel that followed, before they could hide the traces of their guilt, the shepherds and shepherdesses came back in search of the thief. Many and absurd were the reasons invented by Bato and Bras to explain the presence of the food and drink, which they finally managed to convince the company was of diabolical origin. In order to further cover their traces they invited the others to eat what is left.
This scene, the most comic of the whole play, could hardly be heard for the roars of laughter that interrupted every speech. A young fellow reached over and punched a compadre.
“Do you remember how we got out of it when they caught us milking Don Pedro’s cows?”
Lucifer returned, and was invited to join the feast. He incited them maliciously to continue discussion of the robbery, and little by little to place the blame upon a stranger whom they all agreed having seen. Of course they meant Lucifer, but, upon being invited to describe him, they depicted a monster a thousand times more repulsive than the reality. None suspected that the apparently amiable stranger seated in their midst was Lucifer.
How Bato and Bras were at last discovered and punished, how Laura and Arcadio were reconciled, how Fabio was rebuked for his avariciousness and saw the error of his ways, how the Infant Jesus was shown lying in his manger, with the three strongly individualized Kings out of the East, how Lucifer was finally discovered and cast back into hell—I have not space here to describe.
The play lasted for three hours, absorbing all the attention of the audience. Bato and Bras—especially Bato—received their enthusiastic approbation. They sympathized with Laura, suffered with Arcadio, and hated Lucifer with the hatred of gallery gods for the villain in the melodrama. Only once was the play interrupted, when a hatless youth rushed in and shouted:
“A man has come from the army, who says that Urbina has taken Mapimi!”
Even the performers stopped singing—they were pounding the floor with jingling crooks at the time—and a whirlwind of questions beat upon the newcomer. But in a minute the interest passed, and the shepherds took up their song where they had dropped it.
When we left Doña Perdita’s house, about midnight, the moon had already gone behind the western mountains, and a barking dog was all the noise in the dark sharp night. It flashed upon me, as Fidencio and I went home with our arms about each others’ shoulders, that this was the kind of thing which had preceded the Golden Age of the Theater in Europe—the flowering of the Renaissance. It was amusing to speculate what the Mexican Renaissance would have been if it had not come so late.
But already around the narrow shores of the Mexican Middle Ages beat the great seas of modern life—machinery, scientific thought, and political theory. Mexico will have to skip for a time her Golden Age of Drama.