Readings from Modern Mexican Authors

by Unknown

Two hours later the tempest had passed, drifting to the west, over the wooded heights. It was five in the evening and the declining sun was nearing the last low-lying patches of cloud. The light, penetrating through the exuberant vegetation, colored everything with a marvelous variety of hues, which melted into a glow of gold and emerald. To the east an infinite sheet of verdure extended itself, following all the folds and irregularities of the mountain mass, flecked here and there with the delicate and brilliant green of banana patches, and undulating over that stairway of giants, became blue with distance and broke like a sea against the broad strip of sand of the Vera Cruz coast. The road which we had followed in our ascent, wound like a serpent among trees, which scarcely distinguished their foliage masses amid the dense curtain of vines and creepers, passed over a lofty bridge, descended in broad curves to a little settlement of wooden buildings, and went, between dense and tangled patches of briers, to confound itself with the bit of railroad which led from the foot of the mountain to the port. At the bottom of the picture, there, where the sea was imagined, were rising superb cloud masses against whose blue-gray ground were defined the black and immovable streaks of stratus, seeming a flock of seabirds opening their enormous wings to the wind, which delayed its blowing.

The German slept as one much fatigued and from his panting bosom issued heavy sobs; he seemed afflicted with intense suffering; a suspicion crossed my mind; if he should——!

The branches of a neighboring tree projected, through an open window, into the diligencia, which was standing still, until the torrents should have spent something of their force. Upon a yellowed leaf trembled a raindrop, the last tear of the tempest. Preoccupied by the dismal fear which the condition of my companion caused me, I looked attentively at that bead of crystal liquid. This is what I saw:

The drop of water was the Gulf of Mexico, bordered by the immense curve of hot coast and cut off, on the east, by two low breakwaters, crusted with flowers and palms,—Florida and Yucatan, between which, in flight, extended a long string of seabirds, the Antilles, headed by the royal heron, Cuba, slave served by slaves.

In the midst of the Gulf, surmounted by a yellow crown, which gilded the sea around like an enormous sunflower which reflects itself in a flower of water, arose a barren island of the color of impure gold, where currents deposited the seaweeds like the wrappings which swathe Egyptian mummies. Above that rocky mass the sun gleamed like copper, the rapid moon passed veiled by livid vapors, and on days of tempest the storm-birds described wide circles around it, uttering direful croakings. A voice, infinitely sad, like the voice of the sea, sounded in that lost island; listen, it said to me.

The very year in which the sons of the sun arrived at the islands, there lived in Cuba a woman of thirteen years, named Starei (star). She was very beautiful; black were her eyes and intoxicatingly sweet like those of the Aztecs; her skin firm and golden as that of those who bathe in the Meschacebé; celestial her voice as that of the shkok, which sings its serenades in the zapote groves of Mayapán; and her little feet were as graceful and fine as those of Antillean princesses, who pass their lives swinging in hammocks, which seem to be woven by fairies. When Starei appeared one morning on the strand, seated on the red shell of a sea-turtle, she seemed a living pearl and all adored her as a daughter of god, of Dimivan-caracol. The priestess of the tribe prayed all night near the sacred fire, in which smouldered leaves of the intoxicating tobacco, and at last heard the divine voice, which resounded within the heart of the great stone fetish, saying: “Kill her not; guard and protect her; she is the daughter of the Gulf and the Gulf was her cradle; God grant that she return there.”

Starei completed her thirteen years and the old and the young, prophets and warriors, caciques and slaves, abandoned their villages, temples, and hearths, to run after her on the seashore. All were crazy with love, but, if one of them approached her, the Gulf thundered hoarsely and the storm-bird flew screaming across the sky.

Starei sang like the Mexican zenzontl, and her song soothed like the seabreeze which kisses the palms in hot evenings, and in laughing she opened her red lips like the wings of the ipiri and her bosom rose and let fall in enticing folds, the fine web of cotton that covered it. Men on seeing her wept, kneeling, and women wept also, seeing their palm huts deserted and their beds of rushes chilled and untouched.

One stormy night, the divine Starei returned to the village, after one of her rambles on the shore, in which she passed hours watching the waves, as if waiting for something; those who followed her determined to heap high their dead and bury them; the aged who had died from weariness in the pursuit of the Gulf’s daughter, the youths who had thrown their hearts at her feet, the mothers who had died of grief and the wives who had died of despair.

It was a night of tempest; Hurakan, the god of the Antilles, reigned with unwitnessed fury. The priests spoke of a new deluge and of the legendary gourd in which were the ocean and the sea-monsters, which, one day, broke and inundated the earth, and, terrified, they ascended to the summit of their temple-pyramid and took refuge in the shadow of their gods of stone, which trembled on their pedestals. The people of the island, overwhelmed with terror, forgot Starei. All the night was passed in prayer and sacrifice; but at daybreak, they ran, infatuated, to where the song of the maiden called them.