Tales From Jokai Part 24

CHAPTER VII

THE TETZKATLEPOKA

In the broad streets a ma.s.s of men and women are surging to and fro.

What festival is being held to-day in Triton's city?

The windows of the palaces are adorned with living flowers, wonderful zoophytes, which belong partly to the rapacious, locomotive world, and partly to the world that is rooted to the soil; huge green snakes, winding up the slender columns and terminating in marvellously beautiful tulip-like calices; but in the midst of each calix lurks a poisonous sting, and the leaves, as they shrink together, greedily devour the bird of paradise that has ventured into the calix while the tail of the floral beast is rooted in the living earth. The balconies are adorned with deep-sea vegetation, which the perverse ingenuity of man has acclimatized to the tropical air. Between the bright ridges of the coral the interlacing suckers of the tumid polypus grope their way, presenting an eternally shifting maze of shapes and colours, whilst through the thick, branching arms of the transparent mollusc the pulsation of its vital juices is distinctly visible. The flowers of the field no longer charm the senses of men; the blunted, unreceptive soul can only be excited by the wondrous, the extraordinary, in Nature.

The main street, from the gate to the Temple of Triton, is covered by a carpet--a carpet woven entirely out of the locks of young damsels.

Ebony-coloured hair forms the groundwork of the pattern, and the figures of wreaths, palaces, sacrifices, and all manner of groups are worked into it with tresses of every shade of colour from the blondest blonde to the deepest chestnut. No reigning prince of this world has ever possessed a more costly carpet. Every year the girls cut off their locks; every year the carpet grows longer and longer, and, although the city itself increases every year, the carpet keeps pace with it, and reaches from gate to gate.

Over this gossamer net-work, more precious than gold, the festal host sweeps like a flowing stream.

More than 20,000 children--boys and girls--lead the way to the gorgeous temple, singing merry songs, and as they sing they dance with quivering limbs--a dance which flushes their cheeks with a feverish glow, and fires their eyes with an ardour which has nothing childish in it. On the morn of the feast of Triton an intoxicating potion was given to these children, which has robbed them of all modesty, and, writhing hideously, they dance and sing in honour of the G.o.d.

After them come 20,000 women, their bodies covered with dazzling stuffs and gorgeous plumage; women with painted cheeks, gilded eyelids and eyebrows, and with dishevelled tresses rolling down their shoulders in hundreds of ringlets entwined with gold wire. There is not a spot on their bodies which reveals G.o.d's creating hand. Human madness has covered, painted, and gilded everything. Only their sparkling eyes show that they are human; only their languishing glances tell that they are women.

The women are followed by three hundred and sixty-five old men, the priests of the G.o.d, with lofty, gold-embroidered, peaked caps, and long trailing mantles, each holding in his hand a staff covered with silver bells. These grave old men with the high caps and the long robes dance with insane gestures round a golden car resting on six wheels. Each wheel bears the image of the sun, and six pillars, surmounted by a golden drapery, form a sort of baldachin over the car.

In the midst of this lofty State chariot lies a human form, a pale ghost, a living corpse, whose eyes are as dull and turbid as slimy sea-water; the skin of whose face is earth-coloured and cleaves to the bones, whilst his whole bearing speaks of utter weariness, semi-idiocy, and disgust of life. His limbs are quite motionless; but, if you look closely, you will see that now and then his lips slightly quiver.

This shape is the Tetzkatlepoka.

The chronicles of the Incas, whom the wise Spaniards, in league with the redskins, destroyed root and branch, had also something to say about the festivities of Tetzkatlepoka. Tetzkatlepoka was the name they gave to a subordinate, annually elected deity, who presided over their ghastly mysteries. The proudest and comeliest man that could be found was annually selected and brought into Triton's city. In the midst of the great market-place, the loveliest maidens of the city surrounded him with unpainted cheeks, freely flowing tresses, and elfin garments spun out of gla.s.s-thread, and thus they spoke to the elect of the people--

"This year thou art the G.o.d Tetzkatlepoka, the lord of all beauty, the demi-G.o.d of bliss, the prince of women. Every flower blooms for thee, every lip kisses thee. Wilt thou be the G.o.d Tetzkatlepoka? Wilt thou consume away, expire, and vanish in the midst of joy?"

And if the eyes of the elect G.o.d kindled at the sight of these sense-bewitching beauties; if the blood flew seething up into his temples; if he answered "Yes!" then he was anointed with balsamic spices, swathed in robes of pearly silk, and carried to the Temple of Tetzkatlepoka, and there he lived night and day in the sweet delirium of bliss and intoxication. The maidens of the city with their long flowing hair visit him one after the other, and when they quit him their locks are cut off, and from these locks the carpet, which reaches from one end of the town to the other, is made. This intoxication, this delirium of joy, lasts a whole year. And on the last day of the year he, together with the last maiden, whom he himself selects, is offered to the giant Triton. The living idol consumes them both, and then a new Tetzkatlepoka is chosen.

Once in ten times, perhaps, the selected man resists the enchanting spectacle, the most irresistible of all enchantments (or is there anything more bewitching than a woman's charms?), and answers the invitation with a "No!"

Then they tear the golden garments from his body, and say to him: "Naked thou camest into this blissful world, naked shalt thou depart into a world of woe. Behold yonder those snow-covered mountains. There dwell those twin voiceless beings: Wilderness and Nothingness. Go thither, thither where neither man nor beast can thrive for horror and distress.

Live there in cold, wretchedness, and solitude, and if any love thee let them follow thee." And with that, amidst the scorn and derision of the daughters of Triton's city, they cast the perverse wretch out of that gate which leads to the snowy mountains, and curse him that he may never return again. Generally, however, some one human being is found to accompany the exile; some one girl, more gentle and modest than the rest, who would fain hide with her luxuriant tresses the charms which her gossamer garments so ill-conceal, who, laying her hands on the shoulders of the vagabond, follows him out of the city of bliss into the cold and mysterious world beyond. But love alone, love pure and true, is capable of such acts of renunciation, and such examples of true love happen here only once in ten years. The derided, mud-bespattered lovers immediately vanish into the misty, cloud-wrapped regions of the icy mountains, and no human eye ever gloats over their misery, for no human eye ever sees them more.

Thus the festival of Triton is celebrated every year, when the roar of the hungering monster is heard miles away, and the idiot victim of his own l.u.s.ts is placed on the golden triumphal car, and led to his doom amidst music and dancing.

Such is the history of the man who sits there on the golden car.

The procession moves on. After the priests come the maidens of the city, with chapleted brows and fluttering garments, and in their midst, on a silver car, the girl devoted to the idol.

After this half-elfin, half-infernal pageant, come the men of the city.

And what men! Bent and crippled shapes with tottering knees, crooked necks, nerveless arms, quenched eyes, and soulless faces, tottering along like drunkards; a host of miserable, withered skeletons. If a manlier, statelier shape appear here and there among the decrepit mob, it is quite the exception; and the features of all, without exception, handsome or hideous, bear the brand of a curse upon them, a spasmodic twitching of the lips, that unmistakable, unconcealable trait which marks the beast, the demon, and the maniac.

The most incontrovertible token of the degeneracy of a race is when its women are very fair and its men very hideous. There ruin already lurks in the background.

And the rear is brought up by an infernal, sense-bewildering throng of monsters, for which human language has no names. Beasts with human heads, and human shapes with repulsive b.e.s.t.i.a.l heads; a fearful blasphemy of the sacred order of divine nature; terrifying, mongrel monsters, half man, half beast; accursed witnesses of the insane degeneracy of human nature; creatures of whom all antiquity records but one example--the Minotaur.

In the Fortunate Islands these abortions form a whole tribe, and those who behold them are no longer shocked or terrified at the sight.

CHAPTER VIII

TRITON

A single large round window in the cupola above admits the light into Triton's temple.

Amidst the statues of grim, phantasmal figures which serve as the pillars of the roof sits the wonder of the primaeval world, the creature most resembling man, who existed before man was yet created, the _h.o.m.o diluvii_.

Even as he sits he measures four-and-twenty feet in height. His feet are disproportionately small, while his enormously long elbows rest upon his knees. His whole body is covered with a bluish-green scaly skin, like that of a sea-serpent wrinkled with age. The face resembles a man's. Its skin is of a lighter colour than the rest of the body, and is drawn quite tight and smooth round the flat, scarcely projecting nose. His forehead is round and flat. Two eyeb.a.l.l.s, seemingly perched upon fleshy stalks, stare out of the vast eye-sockets. They are of a painfully vivid scarlet, but cold as stone and surrounded by glittering gold rims such as we meet with round the eyes of fishes. The mouth is lipless, and only visible when it is open, but then it stretches on both sides as far as the little round ears, which are covered with a thin film. A splendid gold crown, with an upright pointed horn at each corner, adorns his head. Round his loins winds a gold-embroidered cloth, fastened by a girdle set with diamonds, and beneath the cloth extends a long, comb-like backbone, terminating in a squirrel's tail.

Thus, year after year, the monster sits motionless on his golden chair.

The only sign of life he gives is a sluggish twitching of his eyelids, and the hunger fit which comes upon him once a year, when he opens his mouth and roars till he is satisfied; immediately afterwards becoming dumb again, and remaining so for another year, with his hands resting on his knees, and his immovable, goggle eyes blankly staring at the stony marvels of his own temple, impervious to every outward influence.

The speech of men, the lowing of beasts, the loud-sounding music are just as inaudible to him as the amatory whispers of snails, or the philosophic discourses of the tiny ants are, perhaps, to us. He only understands the voices of the primaeval beasts which stand on the same level of creation as himself.

The torpid monster owes all his power to his voice and his terrific shape. He would be incapable of killing even a child that dared to tell him it had no fear of him, and, nevertheless, the whole city trembles before him; feeds his va.s.sals, the plant-eating mammoths, megatheriums, and iguanodons, with the first-fruits of its fields and the monster himself with the blood of its best men and its loveliest damsels; lays at his feet the gold of its mines, the pearls of its seas and the spices of its heaths, and invokes as lord and G.o.d what is nothing but a belated, primaeval monster, which has survived the centuries allotted to it by Nature and abdicated its impotent, vegetating existence in favour of another and a later world, whose generations are renewed every half century, the world of short-lived, swiftly changing, greedily enjoying man.

The ghastly feast is at an end. Tetzkatlepoka and his elect are led into Triton's temple. The heavy copper doors close behind the three hundred and sixty-five priests.

What happened within the temple no one ever knew. The roar of the monster lasted for a few minutes, and then all was still again; the doors were re-opened, and the high priest, stepping forth, informed the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude that, at the potent command of Triton, a gold-edged cloud had descended from heaven, taken up the G.o.d Tetzkatlepoka and his chosen bride, and transported them to an eternity as full of deliciousness as the last year of their earthly life had been. Let him who doubted count those who quitted the temple, and he would find there were only three hundred and sixty-five persons, or two less than the number which had entered in.

In the temple itself there was no one but the tranquil stony-eyed monster which had now closed its huge mouth and goblin eyes, like one who has eaten his fill and would fain repose.

CHAPTER IX

THE CHOICE OF A G.o.d

And now for the election of a new G.o.d.

A vast amphitheatre-like s.p.a.ce accommodates all the inhabitants of the city. There are four tiers of seats, supported by silvered copper columns, the capital of each column ending in a bird's head, from which an intoxicating liquid flows through a silver pipe into a circ.u.mambient basin below. The myriad of glistening jets, which descend in spray from a height of one hundred and twenty feet, give the whole interior s.p.a.ce an enchanting appearance. The people, as they make their way into the galleries, hold up their heads and imbibe this intoxicating rain with abandoned good humour, while the hideous half-human, half-b.e.s.t.i.a.l monsters wallow in the basin below and take in the heady draught that way. Whoever cannot drink any more holds his head under the downward trickling juice till it soaks him through and through. Not unfrequently, the injurious liquid sets some of these creatures on fire by spontaneous combustion, and, roaring and bellowing, they plunge madly through the mob vomiting forth flames of fire.

A das in the centre is occupied by children, who have been brought hither to be taught to follow a good example and to partic.i.p.ate in a festival which cannot even be described without a shudder.

On the top of a still higher platform, reached by twelve golden steps, stand the three hundred and sixty-five priests, whilst on the lowest steps sit the musicians with long silver trumpets and gla.s.s flutes, whose sweetly tender notes go to one's very heart and intoxicate the soul. At each of the four corners of the platform burns a fragrant censer--huge basins of chased gold--which envelop the whole concourse in a stupefying cloud of fragrant vapour.

At a signal from the high priest the trellis doors of the amphitheatre fly open, and just as formerly at ancient Rome the condemned gladiators were led forth to die in the circus, so now two men are introduced, one of whom the people must choose as a G.o.d, in order that they may sacrifice to him for a whole year the most precious of their treasures, the honour of their daughters.