The ancient accompanied all these explanations by rapid movements of his hands; stretching an arm outside his basket, he drew parallel lines, erased them, drew some within circles hurriedly traced by his gnarled finger in the dust of this chamber illuminated by treasures whose owners feed upon snakes and ants and turtles.
I added one line in the dust: “What shall we do if we again become one, my lord?”
The ancient stared into the distance, beyond the aperture of our cave, toward the jungle, and said: “We shall become one with our opposite — mother, woman, earth — who is also one being and who awaits only our oneness to receive us in her arms. Then there will be peace and happiness, for she will not rule over us nor we over her. We will be lovers.”
I could say nothing, and he said nothing for a long while. Then he looked at me intently and told what I am now going to tell you, Sire:
First was the air and it was inhabited by gods who had no bodies.
And below the air was the sea, and no one knows how or by whom it was created.
And there was no thing in the sea.
And neither was there time in the air or in the sea, so the gods did nothing.
But one of the goddesses of the air called herself goddess of the earth and then since she saw only air and water, she began to ask what her name meant, and when the earth would be created, for that was her dwelling.
She became enamored of her name earth and so great was her impatience that finally she refused to sleep with the other gods until they would give her earth.
And the gods, eager to possess her once again, decided to grant her her whim and they lowered her from the sky to the water and for a long time, until she grew tired, she walked upon the water, and then she lay down upon the sea and fell asleep.
And the gods, desiring her, attempted to waken her, and to do with her what men will, but earth slept and it is not known whether this sleep was like death.
Angry, the gods turned themselves into great serpents and coiled about the arms and legs of the goddess and with their strength they dismembered her and then abandoned her.
And from the body of the goddess were born all things.
From her hair, trees; from her skin, grass and flowers; from her eyes, wells and streams and caverns; from her mouth, rivers; from her nostrils, valleys; and from her shoulders, the mountains.
And from the belly of the goddess was born fire.
And with her eyes the goddess looked at the sky she had abandoned and for the first time she saw the stars and the movement of the planets, for when she dwelt in the sky, she had not seen them or measured their course.
There is no time in the heavens, for in them everything is forever the same.
But the earth needs time in order to be born, to grow, and to die.
And the earth needs time in order to be reborn.
The goddess knew this because day after day she watched the setting and rising and setting of the sun, while the fruits born from the skin of the goddess fell to the ground, and with no hands to pick them they rotted, and no one drank the water of the fountains born from her eyes, and the rivers flowing from her mouth coursed swiftly to the sea, without purpose.
And so the goddess of the earth convoked three gods, one red, one white, and the third black.
And this black god was an ugly, humpbacked dwarf plagued with boils, while the other two were tall, proud young princes.
And the goddess of the earth said to these gods that one of them must sacrifice himself in order that men might be born to pick the fruit, drink the waters, tame the rivers, and make use of the earth.
The two handsome young men hesitated, for each loved himself very much.
The diseased and humpbacked dwarf did not; he neither hesitated nor did he love himself.
He threw himself into the belly of the earth goddess, which was pure fire, and there he perished.
From the flames thus nourished came the first man and the first woman; and the man was called head, or hawk; and the woman was called hair, or grass.
But from the truncated body of the monstrous god who had sacrificed himself came forth only a half man and a half woman, for they had no bodies below their chests, and to walk they hopped like magpies or sparrows, and to beget offspring the man placed his tongue in the mouth of the woman, and so were born two men and two women who were more complete, with bodies as far as their navels, and from them were born four men and four women, whole now as far as their genitals, and these coupled like gods, and their children were born whole as far as their knees, and their grandchildren were completely whole, with feet, and they were the first to be able to walk erect and they populated the world before the watchful gaze of the first lady our mother.
From earth’s belly of fire were also born the companions of men, the beasts that escaped from her pyre, and all of them bear on their skins the mark of their birth from the ashes: the spots of the snake, the dark blackish feathers of the eagle, the singed ocelot. And so, too, the wings of the butterfly and the shell of the turtle and the skin of the deer all show to this day their refulgent and shadowed origin.
Only the fishes escaped from between the legs of the goddess lying upon the sea, and for that reason they smell of woman and they are smooth, and quiver, and are the color of pleasure.
And the belly of the goddess contracted for the last time.
And from her smoking entrails rose a column of fire.
And the specter in the flame was the phantom of the humpbacked, boil-plagued god, who ascended to the sky in the form of fire and there shut out the light of the old sun that existed before time and was converted into the first sun of man: the sun of the days and the sun of the years.
Thus was the dwarf rewarded for his sacrifice.
In contrast, the red god and the white god had to bear the price of their pride.
They remained upon the earth, condemned to measure the time of man.
And they wept for their cowardice, for from the sacrifice of the black boil-plagued god were born half-formed men, men who in no way resembled the gods, men born not whole but mutilated, deformed of soul as the body of the god who sacrificed himself to give them life was deformed of body.
As he was telling all this, the ancient traced line after line in the dust of the elaborately embellished cave, before stopping and asking that I count the lines while he continued his account.
He said then that the mother goddess counted as many days as he had drawn lines in the dust, so that all the stars might complete their dance in the sky and so that the yield of all the fruits of the earth might be completed and again begin their cycle of germination.
I counted three hundred and sixty-five lines and the ancient said that this was the exact number of a complete revolution of the sun and thus it proved that there are lives that begin anew as they are ended, for the humpbacked god gave his life for man but was reborn as the sun.
And the ancient said he would tell what the goddess had then said:
I have given the fire of my belly so that men might be born.
I have given my skin and my mouth and my eyes so that men might live.
The humpbacked and boil-plagued black god gave his life so that men might be born of the fire of my belly.
Then he was turned into the sun so that my body might be fruitful and nourish mankind.
What will men give us in exchange for all this?
And as she spoke she realized that men did possess something the gods do not have, for the gods were and are and will forever be, and they owe nothing to anyone.