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FORTIETH BIRTHDAY

57

Mammon is ugly, and the priest holding his hand to get the money from the poor Indians is ugly. No?” He laughed rather unpleasantly.

“But,” said Kate, “these caricatures are too intentional. They are like vulgar abuse, not art at all.”

“Isn’t that true?” said Garcia, pointing to a hideous picture of a fat female in a tight short dress, with hips and breasts as protuberances, walking over the faces of the poor.

“That is how they are, no?”

“Who is like that?” said Kate. “It bores me. One must keep a certain balance.”

“Not in Mexico!” said the young Mexican brightly, his plump cheeks flushing. “In Mexico you can’t keep a balance, because things are so bad. In other countries, yes, perhaps you can remain balanced, because things are not so bad as they are here. But here they are so very bad, you can’t be human. You have to be Mexican. You have to be more Mexican than human, no? You can’t do no other. You have to hate the capitalist, you have to, in Mexico, or nobody can live. We can’t live. Nobody can live. If you are Mexican you can’t be human, it is impossible. You have to be a socialist Mexican, or you have to be a capitalist Mexican, and you hate. What else is there to be done? We hate the capitalist because he ruins the country and the people. We must hate him.”

“But after all,” said Kate, “what about the twelve million poor—mostly Indians—whom Montes talks about? You can’t make them all rich, whatever you do. And they don’t understand the very words, capital and socialism. They are Mexico, really, and nobody ever looks at them, except to make a casus belli of them. Humanly, they never exist for you.”

“Humanly they can’t exist, they are too ignorant!” cried Garcia. “But when we can kill all the capitalists, then—"

“You’ll find somebody killing you,” said Kate. “No, I don’t like it. You aren’t Mexico. You aren’t even Mexican, really. You are just half Spaniards full of European ideas, and you care for asserting your own ideas and nothing else. You have no real bowels of compassion. You are no good.”