Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

107 страница из 172

There was a silence.

‘But how sad you are!’ said Kate, afraid.

Doña Isabel was giving hurried orders to the manservant.

‘Whoever knows Mexico below the surface, is sad!’ said Julio Toussaint, rather sententiously, over his black cravat.

‘Well,’ said Owen, ‘it seems to me, on the contrary, a gay country. A country of gay, irresponsible children. Or rather, they WOULD be gay, if they were properly treated. If they had comfortable homes, and a sense of real freedom. If they felt that they could control their lives and their own country. But being in the grip of outsiders, as they have been for hundreds of years, life of course seems hardly worth while to them. Naturally, they don’t care if they live or die. They don’t feel FREE.’

‘Free for what?’ asked Toussaint.

‘To make Mexico their own. Not to be so poor and at the mercy of outsiders.’

‘They are at the mercy of something worse than outsiders,’ said Toussaint. ‘Let me tell you. They are at the mercy of their own natures. It is this way. Fifty per cent of the people in Mexico are pure Indian: more or less. Of the rest, a small proportion are foreigners or Spaniard. You have then the mass which is on top, of mixed blood, Indian and Spaniard mixed, chiefly. These are the Mexicans, those with the mixed blood. Now, you take us at this table. Don Cipriano is pure Indian. Don Ramón is almost pure Spaniard, but most probably he has the blood of Tlaxcalan Indians in his veins as well. Señor Mirabal is mixed French and Spanish. Señor Garcia most probably has a mixture of Indian blood with Spanish. I myself have French, Spanish, Austrian, and Indian blood. Very well! Now you mix blood of the same race, and it may be all right. Europeans are all Aryan stock, the race is the same. But when you mix European and American Indian, you mix different blood races, and you produce the half-breed. Now, the half-breed is a calamity. For why? He is neither one thing nor another, he is divided against himself. His blood of one race tells him one thing, his blood of another race tells him another. He is an unfortunate, a calamity to himself. And it is hopeless.