By Hanns Heinz Ewers 1907 (Die blauen Indianer)Copyright 2009 by Joe E. Bandel
Translated by Joe E Bandel
Protected under United States Copyright Law as a derivative work of a foreign Author originally published prior to 1923
In my notes it says:
16 July, Teresita, daughter of Elia Mictecacihuatil, fourteen years old. Her father brought her into my hut and declared proudly that his daughter spoke Spanish. The girl was well built, had just been married and was pregnant. She was almost entirely blue with only a handful of spots on her back of the original yellow color.
While she appeared proud enough of them, she also appeared embarassed and fearful, more fearful than any other Momoskapan that I had up to that time observed. At my requests to speak she only sat grinning, embarassed and ill at ease without speaking a word.
Her husband who had just come back from fishing threatened her with a rope and her father admonished her, pressed her to cooperate with no luck. It only turned her silly giggle into a pathetic howling.
Then I showed her a large hideous print of an oil painting of St. Francis and promised to give it to her when she finally did talk. Her features brightened up again yet she still didn’t say a word until I threw in one of St. Garibaldi-
The Remscheider company had boughten cheap somewhere a parcel of Garbaldi prints and Don Pablo sold these in place of the hard to get prints of St. Aloysius.
Teresita wanted to possess so many saints and this won her over. I began to carefully ask after the usual things and she falteringly told the same stupid childhood memories that I had already heard a dozen times before. Gradually she lost her fear and began to speak more freely. She gave accounts that were drawn from her mother and her grandmother. Then very suddenly the little Indian girl called out in a loud and clear, yet deep voice that she had not used before:
“Hail.“
The word was scarcely out when she again faltered, rubbed her hands over her knees, moved her head back and forth and wouldn’t speak another word. Her father, proud that the Spanish had “finally come“ told her to continue, begged and pleaded with her. I saw that there would be no more coming out of her that day, gave her the pictures and dismissed her. I had no better luck on the next day or the next or even the next. Teresita always told the same harmless little things and faltered completely at the first foreign word. It was as if she was frightened to death everytime this clear ”Alaaf“ pushed out.
With hard singular effort I got out of her father that it was not common for her to speak in a foreign tongue. She had only done it a few times in her life, on special occasions like at the dance right before her wedding when she had spoken ”Spanish“. He himself had never had a Spanish word cross his lips even though his father and an old sister occasionally did as well.
Every day I gave Teresita and her relatives little things and always promised them more beautiful things, mirrors, portraits of saints, pearl beads and finally a silver linked girdle for when she finally talked in Spanish.
The greed of the entire family had grown immensely and the poor child not only tormented herself but was made to set apart from the others. Old Kaziken knew with true instinct that Teresita would only speak out of such a very heavy memory while in a state of ecstasy.
I told him that I would wait until the dance festival took place the next week and contended that the pregnant woman should be permitted to take part in it. He resisted, stared at me and said that women were not allowed. I met with only stubborn rigid resistance no matter how much I pleaded. There could be no exceptions and then he gave the counter proposal that Teresita be given a beating until the needed state of ecstasy was achieved.
That would most certainly lead straight to the goal and not do too much harm. Yes, an Indian girl could take more blows than a mule but even if Teresita gladly allowed herself to be whipped ten times for the silver girdle I was certain it would still not give me the needed memories. The memory of my jacket button, Sir Löwenstein’s strawberry mark and the thought of her back being ripped off wouldn’t leave me. I was ready to call the whole thing off. That’s when Kaziken relented and made a new proposal.
He would allow Teresita to take peyote but it would cost, naturally. It would need to be done secretly in my hut where the other tribe members could not see. This was the favorite drug that the men experienced in their high ceremonies and was strongly forbidden to all women. I saw at once why Kaziken had been so against her participating in the dance where the entire tribe would have witnessed Teresita‘s intoxication.
His preparations were very special. He came in the middle of the night and had two of my Indians lie down across the door. He placed Teresita’s father, her husband and a brother, who was in on the secret as well, in a wide circle around the hut as guards. To appease his own conscience he had the girl dress in men’s clothing. She looked quaint enough in her father’s long trousers and her husband’s blue shirt. It amused me to add my own contribution and while the bitter cactus button was brewing I put my sombrero on top of her head and gave her one of Dan Pablos highly popular bright red belts.
The girl sat on the floor and drank a huge bowl of the brew. We sat around and smoked one cigarette after another waiting for the drug to begin working. This went on for a good hour. Slowly her upper body sank and she fell back down, her eyes wide open in the waking sleep of peyote.
I had taken mescaline myself often enough and knew every stage of the working of this intoxicant. I saw how her glance eagerly devoured the wild halucinated colors but I was extremely doubtful that this passive intoxication would provide a usable condition of ecstacy. Indeed, the lips of the Indian girl remained tightly closed.
Old Kaziken could forsee the disapointing failure of this attempt as well as I could and realized the peyote was working differently on the girl than it did on himself and other men of the tribe. Perhaps it was his obstinant stubborness that drove him to it, but once he had set foot on this path he would not leave it and sought instead to go further.
He cooked a new brew and threw ten large mescal buttons into it, enough to intoxicate half a dozen strong men. Then he propped the girl up, held the hot bowl to her lips and compliant, she drank it. But the nausiating brew didn’t set well on her pallatte. She shuddered and spit it back out. The Elder grabbed her by the throat, hissed, spit on her and told her that he would strangle her if she didn’t empty the bowl. In miserable fear she reached out and with immense effort guzzled the toxic drink down and sank back onto the floor.
The result was extraordinary. Her body raised up writhing like a misshapen snake, her legs tightly pressed together, until she stood wavering in the air. Then she pressed both hands over her mouth. You could see she was trying very hard to keep the abominable stuff down but she couldn’t. A sudden spasm ripped through her as the toxin erupted and sprayed widely into the air.
The Elder trembled in rage and rushed at the girl screaming. I saw the Navaho seize him, the one that had cut the peyote buttons with him, and I grabbed his feet. He lay for a long time beating against the dirt floor trying to get at her.
The girl could see his threatening gestures completely and she stood there upright and unmoving, stuck against the straw wall, whimpering lightly like a starved dog. Then her pupils rolled back into her head and only the whites of her eyes showed in the dark hollows. The sweat on her face glowed a deep violet and the brown brew still oozed out past her strong teeth.
A slight jerk started at her knees, crawled up her legs, shaking her body in violent spasms and growing stronger as it moved upward across her breast making her arms wave wildly and her neck and head began pounding faster and faster against the wall.
This did not promise a very good or desired outcome and I involuntarily murmered, ”Damned mess.“
Then it rang out harsh and deep from the girl’s lips in her foreign voice, “Wine!”
It was as if this one word with a single blow destroyed all resistance and the convulsions were gone instantly. Teresita was wiping off her mouth and nose with her sleeve like a peasant. Her body moved away from the wall, a broad confident smile lay on her face. Her feet moved firmly forward stepping with powerful strides up to the fire. She good-naturedly, confidently and disdainfully pushed the Elder, who was trembling in deathly fear, to the side.
But I saw that it was not Teresita that did it. It was someone else. This other grabbed the full mug that stood near her on the floor, emptied the wine in a single draught.
“Thank you brother! The Virgin protects our General in this shit with the fat Lutheran pigs! Peace be with you!”
She took my riding whip, struck the Elder on the body, “Answer me you dog! Peace be with you!”
Kaziken spouted, “Do you see! Do you see! Now she speaks Spanish!”
But there was not a syllable of Spanish. It was a broad ancient Low German that laughed out of the blue lips of the Indian girl.
“Bah, he doesn’t speak the Christian language, the Indian hell hound.”
Then he struck himself solidly on the belly.
“By San Juan de Compostela! I am starved, starved and yet I’ve got a belly like a villain Wittenberg priest. Come brother, share your food!”
I waved at the Elder and he brought rolls and a piece of broiled fish from out of the corner. In the meantime I refilled her mug again.
Teresita looked him over, “Ah, the blue skins! These blue dogs! What will my ArchBishop in Cologne say when I tell him sometime that I preach Christianity to blue monkeys over here. I must bring one with or he will not believe me. It’s true brother. It’s true. Their skin really is blue, not just painted on. We have scrubbed them with brushes, scraped with files, cut entire patches away. The skin is blue inside and outside!”
Teresita ate, drank and filled the mug up again. Then I asked a question, carefully trying to start a conversation by imitating her speech back to her as well as I could. She spoke Rhinish with a little Dutch and Flemish mixed in here and there as well as some Spanish curses and Latin religious phrases thrown in as well. In the beginning it was very hard going and there were entire sentences that I could make no sense of at all. But gradually things got better as I got used to this old dialect. Once I almost ruined everything when I asked her name. Without thinking I used the two single words that I had learned in the Momoskapan language and asked so often in the last few weeks.
“Huatuchton Tuapli?” (What is your name?)
There was a light trembling on the girl’s face and she answered in her language timidly with a frightened voice, “My name is Teresita.”
I was startled and believed in that moment that the dream was lost. But the harsh ancestor that lived in her brain would not be driven out so easily. She laughed out loud again, smiling broadly and confidently.
“Will you come with brother? Tomorrow I will cook some more of them. They are too dumb to learn anything, like how to make a cross.”
It occurred to me to find out more of the life story of Teresita’s ancestor in this chopped up speech. He originated somewhere on the Lower Rhine, had taken vows and been ordained as a Franciscan friar in Cologne. Then he had moved around mostly with Spanish rabble as an Army friar. He had been on the Rhine, in Bavaria and in Flanders. In Milano, Italy, he made the acquaintance of General Jon Kheern van Santanillas, who was going back to Mexico as the 5th governor after Cortez and was in his retinue on the well-known trip back to Honduras as well. Somehow he had come upon the blue Indians of Ystotasinta and brought the blessed Christian civilization to them.
Teresita drank and drank. Her voice became more ungainly and the harsh voice became slurred. The chatter of the war priest became more boastful and wild. She told of the conquering of Quantutaccis that she herself led, saber in her right hand and cross in her left, of the three hundred Mayans that she burned in honor of Merida on Corpus Domini Day. She reveled in the murder and burning, in the lust of victory and having fun with the captured women and the rich booty in the temples. No one else had killed as many men or violated as many women in the entire land.
“Hail, Viva El General Santanilla and Hail, hail Cologne!”
The voice went wild in full-unbridled laughter as it screamed out, “If you want to brother, we can roast these blue rabble tomorrow, roast them all together! Would you like that? Each one could get their own wood and light it themselves! It would be great sport!”
She emptied the mug again, “Answer brother. What? You don’t believe me! St. Anna! They will do anything that I want, these filthy pigs! You don’t believe me? Pay attention brother. I have taught them a fine trick!”
She hit Kaziken with the whip. “Come here you old heathen dog! Your damned tongue has prayed often enough to your shabby devil gods before I brought you the Holy Virgin and salvation! Out with your blue monkey tongue that cries out to Tlahuiccalpantecuhtli, your lousy Pulque gods, Coatlicue, Iztaccihuatl and Tzontemoc, the filthy sun god that runs through the underworld. Out with it, out with it! Bite it off, bite your damned tongue off!”
Teresita screamed and a hail of Momoskapanish words that I didn’t understand fell like lashes on the Elders ear. Then suddenly this mighty discharge in her language extinguished the centuries old memory in her brain. She sank together, her hands searching for support and finding none slowly her body fell to the earth. She cowered on the floor, pulled her legs together and a light sobbing shook her shoulders. I turned around to get the water jug for her and my gaze fell on old Kaziken.
He stood behind me upright, head bowed back, eyes staring straight up and his tongue, his long violet tongue, stretched wide into the air as if he wanted to catch a fly on the ceiling. A deep gurgling rushed out his throat and his hands pressed against his naked breast, the nails clawing deep into the blue flesh. I didn’t understand it at all, only had a vague feeling that there was a horrible war playing out inside him, a desperate resistance against a sudden, immense and invincible compulsion.
He struggled weak-minded against this horrible compulsion the white priest had laid down on him, this hellish compulsion of a murderous priest long since dead that had awakened and sprang across the centuries to once more utter that handful of fearful words that held the Elder in nameless torment.
His time was running out. He stood there, a distressed animal that had to mutilate himself at the priest’s command. He had to obey, had to. Gripped in a wild convulsion the mighty teeth seized the tongue and bit it off. Then the lips took the bloody flesh and spit it out. I shuddered, wanted to call out, felt in my pocket to find something to help.
Teresita crouched at my feet stroking my leg, kissing my mud-covered boots.
“Sir, may I have the silver girdle?”
