XI
THE MAÑANGETE[1]
Far down the palm-lined road they appeared, nearing with perplexing rapidity. The head of my companion snapped forward and his eyes flamed. They came in a file down the road, between the palm trees, in the glowing tropic light, swinging along with smooth, resistless progress. They seemed to glide; the bamboo poles, balanced on their shoulders, slid as if on invisible tracks laid above the ground, and the tuba buckets at the ends were steady as if floating in the air. Soon they were near. The play of their great thigh muscles became visible. They turned the corner of the plaza with a new burst of speed, and then they passed us in magnificent action. Down their naked heels came in turn, pounding the ground; in one long, smooth sweep from waist to toe the legs flashed back in a quivering of ropy sinew. Their naked bronze busts glistening with sweat, and the supple back muscles, giving at each step beneath the bamboo poles, undulated liquidly beneath the golden skin. Through the palm leaves covering the buckets a slight froth played like silver lace. They passed us in a flash of gleaming bronze; the creak of the bamboo poles shrieked in our ears; the pungent, sulphurous odour of the tuba stung our nostrils, and then they vanished in the kaleidoscopic colour-play of the market.
My eyes fell upon my companion. He was leaning forward, his shrivelled legs collapsed beneath the trunk, his whole weight upon his hands, his head straining ahead like that of a bird in flight, and in his eyes something strange and moving—a soft, regretful gleam, yes—God bless me, how strange it seemed in that sullen, stolid cripple!—a look of longing, longing infinite.
From this day I watched him, watched him as the tuba-carriers flashed into the pueblo, at high noon.
He was about forty years old, and above the waist he was beautiful. From the belt the body shot upward, broadening like a Greek urn into a deep chest, and wide, massive shoulders. Beneath the gleaming terra-cotta skin the muscle played in elastic bundles of power. His face was hatchet-carved, with a relentless jaw and eagle nose, and his straight black hair was ennobled by a sprinkle of gray.
But below the waist was ruin. He had been ham-strung. His legs were folded flaccidly beneath the trunk, the calf against the thigh—powerless things which, as he dragged himself on his hands, trailed limply behind as if some ignoble, useless attachment of the great body above.