The Web of the Sun (Adventure Magazine, 1922)/Chapter 10

LTHOUGH a marionette would have been of much service to the priests in the teocalla, to lend an aura of reality to the fantastic faith of the sun-worshipers, two reasons convinced Lassiter the figure was a woman. The promoter did not believe that any sculptor on Motobatl could handle the human figure with such mastery; and last, a school that could produce such art would condemn the vast baroque façade in which it was housed. The two were incompatible. The figure was a woman.

No doubt she knelt in some sort of trance. Primitive peoples are often skilled in such occultism: the fakirs of India, the Aissaoui of North Africa, the snake-dancers of New Mexico. He turned to the girl—

“How long has your abuela been like that, Tilita?”

“Ever since my madre was a tiny niña. Her husband, my grandfather, was drowned in the lake, so my abuela joined her lord in the Sun.” She paused, then added, “My grandmother has thirty-nine years now—sixteen in the sun.”

The number registered on Lassiter with odd emphasis. The Venus in the teocalla was, or had she lived, would have been, precisely his own age. By some means it had been possible to preserve a beauty such as Tilita possessed even in Molobatl.

The two lovers were now walking up the jungle in the angle between the river and the cliffs. The sound of rushing water was so pronounced as to make conversation difficult. In the jungle were their bird snares, and Tilita ran before to examine each one before Lassiter reached it. One had caught a bird, a tanager. The girl beckoned gaily for Lassiter to come and hold it while she tied on a message to the outer world.

She did it gaily, as a sort of game, because Motobatl was not a prison, but a universe to her who knew nothing else.

The two worked their way through the jungle to the bank of the river where.it debouched into the cliff. The stream was about forty yards wide at the place of its disappearance. The volume of water rushed down its stony bed, struck the opposing wall, piled up, was deflected in a great whorl back on itself, then spun around a hole in the center of the flood and vanished with a gigantic sucking sound.

The whirlpool stirred a cool breeze on the sultriest days. The green fronds and flowers along its banks waved in a perpetual blast. But what always held and amazed Lassiter was the hole in the maelstrom. From the shore, it seemed a yard or two in width. It swung here and there in the wheeling waters. Its glassy funnel twisted and bent with that strange sucking sound that ranged from a ground bass to a shrill cacophony. Once every hour or so the hole would close with a sort of gulp; would ensue a confused roaring, a spouting, a coughing up of tons of water as if some monster were suffocating. After some minute or two of this confusion, the hole would suck open again and take up its spin.

All water seems alive, but the debouchment of Motobatl river with its sucking, gasping, swallowing and renewed sucking gave the most ferocious impression that Lassiter had ever observed.

While Lassiter watched the green whorl, another bird was entangled on one of the limed cords. Tilita saw it and hurried to get it before it smeared its wings. Presently she came pushing back through the undergrowth with some sort of goldfinch in her hands. She held it aloft jubilantly for Lassiter to admire its bright orange body and black wings. She put the bird in his hands to hold while she bound the message to its leg. Tilita had a child's instinct for divination. Now, to test the fate of the message, she tossed it in the air to see what direction it would take. This infallibly showed what course the bird would fly. Lassiter entered into her little superstition and entertained her by telling what cities the bird would find in that direction. This always led to a description of trains, ships, buildings, theaters, bull fights—thus in a way, every message Tilita sent forth carried her fancy on wonderful journeys.

This time the bit of paper danced in the air and sailed toward the brink of the whirlpool. The girl darted to its rescue. She leaned so far out that Lassiter was frightened. The paper eluded her, went over a little bank of stone down to the very water's edge. Tilita was after it instantly, with a girl's limberness. She was out of sight under the bank for only an instant when Lassiter heard her shriek above the suck of the maelstrom.

The man leaped to the bank and looked over. To his relief, he saw the girl just beneath him. She was apparently in no danger at all, but was stooping and staring into the water.

“Lord, Tilita, what a turn you gave me—What is it?”

At his voice, the girl suddenly began shrieking, flew up the bank with monkeyish agility, and landed in Lassiter's arms. She cuddled there, still screaming and staring back at whatever had frightened her.

The promoter received her with the immense compassion of a lover. He began that rapturous soothing and petting which a man lavishes on his sweetheart, but which changes so unaccountably to sarcasm when the same trait appears in his wife.

“Is it a snake?”

He moved toward the river peering down

The girl stayed close to him, shivering and half crying and staring backward.

“I-It's a man,” she gasped at last.

At the same moment Lassiter saw it for himself. In the edge of the whirlpool floated a man. His head doddled and his legs waved idly in the current, but his arms were bound tightly to his side by many wrappings of cord. A loose loop of this cord had tangled in some roots and moored the body.

A moment longer Lassiter's thoughts continued on the girl.

“It's just a drowned man, sweetheart. Don't be frightened. He can't hurt you”

“I-It's Chaca-Ch-Chacala!” And the girl sobbed irrepressibly.

Lassiter looked again. Sure enough it was the Indian who had thanked God so joyously that morning that he might rear his child in Motobatl. The cord that anchored him to the roots was the same sort of gleaming rope that Jagala, the priest, unwound from the body of the dead vicuna. It was what had drawn Lassiter's dead mules on the top of the rim; it was what Chombo Meone had preserved as a souvenir of his ghastly adventure in the Rio Vampiro.

This slow accumulation of horrors struck at Lassiter's nerves. He loosed the girl and stood looking down at the drowned man with a sort of tickling in his chest, throat and the palms of his hands. He caught hold of a wild lemon bush and lowered himself a little unsteadily to the water's edge. He drew in the cadaver by a loop. He knew quite well what he would see before he pulled it from the water. But as he lifted the body, a pressure on its stomach crushed it in like an empty sack.

Lassiter had forgot that, and now he loosed it with a violent shudder. The corpse dropped half in and half out of the whirlpool.

The Stendill agent stood with a shaken heart. He stooped and washed his hands. The mystery that had formed over his party on the rim of Motobatl seemed weaving itself about them. Its inscrutability appalled him. It seemed to Lassiter that the very brilliancy of the sunshine wove a shining web to veil some murderous power. He looked down at the ill-starred Chacala, at the ashen corpse

At that moment the whirlpool choked, regurgitated with a roar. Tons of water leaped up and flowed bankward. It caught Lassiter to his knees. Tilita cried out and reached down to help him up the bank. Chacala's body went with the ebb. The vortex opened again with its endless sucking. The body spun about the green funnel, spun about, drawing closer, and at last dived downward and disappeared, a dim greenish shadow with flying legs, as if some swimmer were stroking downward into the maelstrom, bent on self destruction.

The goldfinch was gone; whether Lassiter accidentally loosed it, or squeezed it to death in his excitement, he never knew.

HE death—the murder of Chacala—brought Lassiter a presentiment of some wide disturbance in Motobatl, and somehow, the promoter sensed that the colporteur was in the midst of it. Lassiter and Tilita set out homeward in an effort to learn more about the tragedy that had shocked them.

As the two entered the northern edge of the great plaza fronting the teocalla, the promoter was not surprized to see a distant figure running in from the southern boundary of the piazza toward the main entrance. At such a distance he could tell nothing about who it was; perhaps a priest hurrying to the temple for aid in some new assassination.

Both the man and the girl hurried forward past the series of immense pilasters when Lassiter saw that the person hurrying in from the south was a woman, an old woman. The promoter guessed it to be Xauxa, Chacala's wife. She ran with the labor of gravid women; her effort must have inflicted severe punishment. Apparently she meant to run straight into the temple, and now as she came, Lassiter could hear her calling the names of the priests in a desperate voice—

“Gogoma! Jagala! Quiz-Quiz! Caxas! Gogoma!”

With his quick sympathy, Lassiter hurried down, with some hope of relieving the old woman's trouble or despair, when Tilita gave a gasp and cried out:

“It's my madre! Oh, what has happened? Perhaps the niña—” She went flying down the vast tufa pavement screaming—“''Madre! Mi madre!'' What has happened? Madre!”

Lassiter followed running. As he drew near the entrance of the teocalla, he saw Gogoma standing in the archway. The entrance and façade were so huge the priest was diminished to a mere brown blob guarding the passage.

“What is it, Prymoxl?” he called in the short-breathed voice of the exceedingly obese.

“My niñas!” screamed the old crone. “Where are my ninas, Gogoma? What have you done with my niñas?”

As Lassiter hurried toward the entrance to aid his future mother-in-law, Gogoma's brown spot swelled to a vast dripping body.

“Your niñas are in the sun, Prymoxl”

“My niñas are dead! They are dead!” shrieked the crone. “You killed them! You!” she shrieked and rushed at him with curved fingers.

The fat man put out the bulk of his arm with unshaken dignity and allowed her to carom against it. It was shocking, the collision between the ancient crone and the behemoth. Both were fairly helpless.

“Be quiet, Prymoxl— Why do you come screaming to the temple that your children are dead— Why”

“The man Birdsong swore it! He swore they were dead—he swore by his god!”

“He knows everything!” wailed the crone. “He works wonders to prove it! He struck the bark of my baobab and it caught fire!”

Gogoma widened his slit-like eyes and swung his bulk a little forward to stare at the virago.

“He struck fire—with his hand!”

“Oh, si, si, si!” The old woman seemed to grow weak. “Fire spurts from his hand! That proves he told the truth! My niñas are dead—my little niñas are dead—” Suddenly the old woman's wrinkled face broke into a twisting; her flabby breasts heaved to a sort of choking; her old eyes had no tears. It was the hideous sobbing of the aged. Her very repulsiveness touched Lassiter. He took the creature by the arms.

“Hush, Prymoxl. You can't believe Birdsong! There is nothing to what he tells you—” he began, guiding her gently back in the direction she came.

“But—but it must be true,” gabbled the crone, “to strike fire”

“Why, dear Prymoxl, what has fire to do with your niñas?”

“I— It is a miracle, señor—”

“Well, a miracle—Good Lord, what's a miracle? Something you don't understand— How can one thing you don't understand prove something else you don't understand? Don't you see, Prymoxl, it isn't proof at all; it is irrational; it is proving the unknown by the unknown! It is the blind leading the blind and they shall all fall into the ditch!”

Lassiter delivered all this in great heat. For a moment or two the old hag seemed to listen, but within a dozen words she lost the connection of what the promoter was saying, and started swaying first on Lassiter and then on her daughter, wailing again—

“My niñas! All my pretty niñas—dead—all—all—dead”

She flung up her arms and broke into another paroxysm of weeping. She slumped down on the hot tufa pavement, and stared up at the sun with her desolate, contorted face. She would have beat her head against the stones, had not Tilita and Lassiter lifted her bodily and moved on homeward.

“For God's sake, Prymoxl!” panted Lassiter under his burden. “Your old eyes deceived you! Birdsong can't strike fire! He”

“But I tell you, I saw him!” choked the grimalkin. “It snapped, and sputtered and burned”

Suddenly it dawned upon Lassiter what Birdsong had done.

“Why, that was a match!' he cried. “Anybody can do that! Here! Here!” He shook her to gain her attention. “That was a match, Prymoxl, no trick at all—none at all”

The old hag looked at him and straightened her face somewhat.

“Can you do it?” she shivered.

“Sure, sure!” And he searched his pockets. Then he remembered he had given Birdsong the last lucifer he possessed.

“I haven't one right here,” he said easily. “But come with me to the paddlewood, I'll show you.

His confidence was so obvious that the old baggage got weakly to her feet, and the trio crept forward in order that Lassiter might duplicate Birdsong's miracle and restore Prymoxl's babies to the sun.

A certain gall-like humor seeped into the situation for the Stendill agent. Apparently he was being forced into the rôle of defender of the faith, champion of the Sun. The three walked very slowly, for Prymoxl was spent. On the way, they saw Nunes' bolsa lying on the beach with its top completed.

Lassiter left Prymoxl at her baobab and went on alone to his paddlewood for the matches. The old crone was very doubtful.

“You are sure you can do it?”

“Oh, yes, I'll butt miracle against miracle!”

She clung to his hands.

“Be sure and come back, señor, and show me this very night. I shall not sleep, primo, until you come back and show me.”

Tilita followed him outside the door and kissed him with a curious wistfulness.

“Can you really strike fire out of a tree, dear primo?” she asked trembling.

“Can I strike a match?” Lassiter began to laugh.

Tilita peered into his eyes, and kissed him again, slowly, doubtfully.

EEP in the afternoon, Lassiter reached the paddlewood just in time to see Birdsong start north through the jungle. On his back were a pack of Bibles and the promoter knew that his pockets were full of the wonder-working matches. And to what unfortunate and cruel use he would put the matches! A realization of the unhappiness Birdsong would cause moved the promoter to shout at his man. The colporteur turned around and saw who it was.

“What is it, Mr. Lassiter?” he inquired briefly. “I'm in a hurry.”

The significance of the change from “brother” to “mister” was not lost on the promoter.

“I just wanted a moment, Birdsong.”

“Well, that's all I can give you; my brothers are in trouble.”

The promoter walked up and saw a bandage around the Arkansan's head. It shocked the agent.

“You haven't been fighting?”

“The battles of the Lord, Mr. Lassiter—I'll have to ask you to talk fast”

Birdsong fighting amazed Lassiter. It switched him from the main issue.

“I'll walk with you so you won't lose time. Who were you fighting?”

“The priests of Bal.”

“What for?”

“They wanted to take Chacala's baby. I told 'em they couldn't because my Master had said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me.' So we had a little scrimmage. They got Chacala, but I kept his baby and now I'm hurrying back to baptize it before we hitch into 'em regular.”

There was something grotesque in this stocky little man hurrying back to baptize a baby before he massed his forces for an attack on the priests of the Sun.

The promoter strode along at Birdsong's side through the heavy greenhouse smell of the jungle. He was trying to think of some means to stop this coming strife. He had a business man's hatred of violence.

“Why not arbitrate this affair, Birdsong?”

“Arbitrate it!” Birdsong gave the promoter a sharp glance.

“Yes. Is this exactly a Christian act, to be fighting and killing men and setting a whole people by the ears?”

“Mr. Lassiter,” drawled the Arkansan, “do you know what old Saint Matthew says in his blessed tenth chapter?”

With a sinking heart, Lassiter admitted he was not familiar with the saint's remarks in his tenth or any other chapter. He also had the uncomfortable conviction that Matthew would bolster up Birdsong in his fire-eating and the fight would proceed. These reflections were interrupted and justified by the colporteur quoting.

“Here's what he says in his blessed tenth chapter, thirty-fourth and fifth verses, 'Think not that I have come to send peace but a sword. For I come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. He that taketh not his cross and followeth. after me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.'”

The promoter forsook that branch of his argument.

“What I really called to you to stop for,” said Lassiter, “was about upsetting the faith of these old women with matches. You tell them their children are dead and in hell, and then strike a match and they believe it. That's a cruel thing to do, Birdsong. It's a fiendish thing to do. You might just as well have stopped in and murdered Prymoxl's fourteen children. She's wild. She's nearly crazy. She came howling and shrieking— Oh, it was pitiful, Birdsong!”

The colporteur straightened belligerently.

“Well, her children are dead and in hell!” he declared stoutly.

Lassiter knew there was no use arguing that point.

“Yes, but why tell her?”

“So the rest of her children'll be saved, and her own soul won't be lost, Mr. Lassiter.”

He spoke briefly, as though it were a waste of words to argue with such a man.

The promoter was irritated. If he conceded Birdsong these grounds his logic was as unshakable as Gibraltar.

“But look here,” cut in the agent testily, “when these old women don't believe, you prove you are right by striking a match. Now, that's a of a miracle—striking a match! Aren't you ashamed of yourself, running poor old ignorant women crazy by striking matches!”

“Do you say it ain't a miracle?” demanded Birdsong grimly.

“Certainly it isn't! Nobody but a mountebank would stoop to”

“Hold on, Mr. Lassiter, don't you admit God knows ever'thing?”

With a certain uneasiness, Lassiter admitted this thesis.

“He saw I was going to need a sign and a wonder down here in Motobatl didn't He? So years before I was born, He inspired some man to make matches so when I got down here in Motobatl, I might have a sign and a wonder to spread His blessed kingdom. Ain't that just as much a miracle as me finding you in New York, and finding a rope to climb down the cliffs?”

Lassiter was already turning away. What argument could be brought to bear on a man whose profoundest conviction was that the whole universe and all the ramifications of life that had gone before were but the supers that made ready for his triumphal entrance on the stage of Motobatl!

As Lassiter turned away, Birdsong called,

“If you don't believe a match is a miracle, Mr. Lassiter, try making one.”

Whether the colporteur had any innuendo tucked away in this invitation or not, Lassiter did not know. But when he reached his paddlewood he found his bags had been opened. Further search showed not a match remained. The packs of both Nunes and Birdsong revealed the same state of things. The colporteur had cornered miracles in Motobatl.

In the last light of day, the agent for the Stendill lines fumbled through his belongings hoping one match might have been overlooked wherewith to soothe the old crone in the baobab. At last, in the bottom of his pack, his fingers stumbled over his flashlight. He picked it up and flashed it to make sure it would work.

Then he started back for the baobab with an easier heart. He had found a somewhat different sort of miracle, but he felt sure that with it he could convince old Prymoxl that her fourteen niñas were leading blessed and profitable lives in the bright mansions of the Sun.