PART TWO
El Topo and the Woman gallop
through the mountains under a
beautiful blue sky covered
with white clouds like celestial spheres.
The Four Monks form a circle
around Brontis and enclose him like a
tower of four points of
a threatening cross. They lower their heads,
not even allowing the
light of the sun to shine on the child.
El Topo rides with the
Woman straddling in front of him, facing him.
They merge together
on the back of the black horse.
A water hole surrounded
by tall rocky cliffs. El Topo is resting
high on a rocky ledge.
He plays a flute. The Woman frolics
through the foliage.
She discovers the pleasure of a leaf.
She opens her cupped hands,
and birds fly out of them.
[We don't know whether
she captured them or
whether she's liberating
her thoughts or pain.]
El Topo now rests at the
edge of the pool, still playing the flute.
The Woman throws
stones into the water.
The pool trembles
and produces beautiful sounds.
["The millenial pool, a frog jumps, water sounds." Basho.]
The Woman goes to the water and drinks. She grimaces.
WOMAN
It's bitter.
El Topo picks up a long
branch.
He lowers it into the
pool and stirs the water.
EL TOPO
Moses found water in the
desert.
The people could not drink
it
because it was bitter.
They named the water Mara.
El Topo stops stirring
the water and throws away the branch.
He motions the Woman to
drink. The Woman drinks the water
hesitantly, then with
pleasure.
WOMAN
(surprised)
It's sweet!
She offers El Topo some
water. He drinks from the
Woman's hands as though
he were kissing her.
EL TOPO
I'll call you Mara
because
you are like bitter water.
El Topo plays the flute while Mara throws stones into the pool.
A white desert. Vast.
Almost infinite. With no destination,
El Topo and Mara lead
the black horse across the sand.
MARA
How are we going to live
here?
We'll starve to death.
El Topo digs in the sand
between Mara's feet. He pulls out
turtle eggs and breaks
them open, letting the yellow of the
yolks glisten on the white
sand like new suns.
El Topo and Mara continue
across the desert.
Mara, dressed in browns,
beiges, earth colors,
falls to her knees before
a rock of the same colors.
MARA
We'll die of thirst.
El Topo closes his eyes and prays.
EL TOPO
As the hart panteth after
the water brooks,
so panteth my soul after
Thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for
God, for the living God.
He draws his pistol and fires at the rock.
[El Topo has taken water
from the rock
with his pistol as Moses
took water
from rocks by tapping
them with his staff.]
A jet of water bursts forth.
El Topo and Mara drink
and shower themselves.
Mara is amazed at the sight
of these miracles. She wants to create them too.
She digs in the sand between
El Topo's feet, looking for food, but finds nothing.
She takes El Topo's pistol
and fires at the rock, but no water comes forth.
She is disheartened. She
feels what she has felt all her life: failure,
lack of achievement, lack
of an orgasm. She begins to chant.
MARA
Nothing, nothing, nothing
...
El Topo sits on the sand
like a Zen Buddhist monk.
Mara walks around him
in a circle and continues
to circle him, constantly
chanting.
MARA
Nothing, nothing, nothing
...
El Topo ceremoniously takes
off his hat, his jacket, his gun belt,
his two knives, his pistol.
He rises to his knees and begins to unfasten
his fly, which is exaggeratedly
laced with two long leather thongs.
[El Topo should communicate
the impression
that his fly has not been
opened for many years.]
El Topo stands in the path
of Mara's circle and waits for her to reach him.
He puts his hand
on her shoulder, prays to himself, reaches a state of
concentration and hits
her hard on the face. He pushes her down and
springs on her like a
beast. He tears off her clothes, ripping them violently.
He opens her legs and
forces his penis into her like a bullet -- with the
same power the Dove forced
himself into Mary's ear at the Annunciation.
Mara screams in the middle of an ocean, floating in the water.
She cries.
In her torn clothes, she gallops across the desert on El Topo's horse.
She drags herself along
the sand dunes. She falls face down on the sand,
digs in the sand and finds
thousands and thousands of turtle eggs.
In front of her is a rock
shaped like a phallus.
[This stone is an exact
replica of my own phallus:
thick, not very long,
but with a voluminous head.
That's how I am.
That's how the rock is.
That's El Topo's sex.]
Mara taps the rock with
a stone, and a stream of water
spouts forth -- like urine,
like a stream of semen.
She immerses her face
in the miraculous water.
El Topo is dressed and
seated in a Zen position.
Mara kneels before him,
looking at him.
MARA
Do you love me?
EL TOPO
Yes.
MARA
Well, I don't!
For me to love you, you
have to be the best.
Four Master Sharpshooters
live in this desert.
You have to find them
and kill them.
In response, El Topo draws
a circle in the sand with his finger.
The finger continues toward
the center of the circle, forming a spiral.
EL TOPO
The desert is circular.
To find the Four Masters,
we'll have to travel in
a spiral.
He hits the sand with his fist in the center of the spiral.
El Topo and Mara ride across
the desert.
Day. Night.
Day. Night. A sand storm.
El Topo and Mara walk
through the sand clouds.
[With their faces protected
with a piece of cloth,
they are reminiscent of
covered faces we have
seen in Persian engravings
of Mohammad.]
MARA
I can't go on.
Let's go back.
EL TOPO
When I start something,
I finish it.
The storm has stopped.
El Topo and Mara are buried in the sand.
Only their heads can be
seen above the surface.
["From dust we come and to dust we shall return."]
They slowly lift themselves
up from the sand
as though the dunes were
giving them birth.
MARA
We'll never find them.
El Topo continues on.
Mara follows.
They ride across the infinite
dunes.
EL TOPO
If they are Masters, they'll
give us a sign.
The dunes stretch out to
the horizon.
The sky grows larger.
MARA
Days have gone by.
Weeks, months.
How can you have such
faith?
EL TOPO
They're waiting for us.
At that moment a small light streaks across the sky.
[Perhaps it's a falling
star like the one
that guided the Three
Kings to Bethlehem.]
MARA
(screaming)
The sign!
Time has passed.
El Topo and Mara come
to a place in the desert
where they see
a white octagonal tower.
[Templars, baptismal fonts.]
Beside the tower, a white
horse is tied
to a post inside a low
square fence.
The tower is surrounded
by a low square wall.
Thirty-three centimeters
high.
[An octagon within a square!]
El Topo silently draws
his pistol and approaches.
A man composed of two
men appears:
a Legless Man sitting
on the shoulders of an Armless Man.
The Legless Man, the upper
part of the body,
is the one who fires,
the one who carries a lantern.
The Armless Man, the lower
part of the body,
is the one who walks,
who wears the holster and pistol.
The Double Man approaches
El Topo with the lighted lantern.
It is daytime.
[El Topo should ask himself
why they are carrying
a lighted lantern in the
middle of the day.]
The Double Man bruskly blows out the lantern.
DOUBLE MAN
You look for light in
broad daylight!
I know why you've come.
You'll have to wait to
see him ... like that woman.
On a dune some yards away,
we see a woman
dressed almost exactly
like El Topo: in black leather,
with black boots, black
hat, on a black horse.
She is putting on black
eye makeup.
She looks at herself in
a mirror, on the back
of which is carved a six
petaled lotus blossom.
DOUBLE MAN
The Master has not wanted
to fight her.
From the interior of the octagonal tower the sound of a gong is heard.
[We don't know if it's
the tower itself
making this sound or a
musical instrument.
Perhaps the octagon is
the musical instrument.]
DOUBLE MAN
The Master wishes to receive
you immediately.
How strange!
He's never received anyone
without making him wait.
(motioning to Mara)
Behind the dune is an
oasis.
Your woman should wait
there.
Mara hears this and disappears
behind the dune leading
to the oasis.
El Topo follows the Double
Man to a ladder
that leans against the
walls of the octagon.
El Topo starts up the
ladder.
At the third rung, the
Double Man interrupts him.
DOUBLE MAN
Give me your pistol and
your hat.
El Topo gives them to the Double Man and continues up the ladder.
[Perhaps he is performing
the same ritual as Moses
when he took off his sandals
to climb the mountain
where he would see the
Divine Fire.]
He reaches the top of the
tower and climbs down another ladder
to a sunken roof.
He finds there only a white sheep at rest.
He pets the sheep, and
it stands, revealing a trap door.
The sound of a giant heartbeat
is heard, then a voice.
[It can be the octagon itself beating or the Master.]
FIRST MASTER
(with a woman's voice)
I dont need light.
I am blind.
El Topo descends into the
interior of the octagon.
The First Master is seated
on a wooden bench.
El Topo sits down on another
bench.
The Master is a beautiful
young man, very thin.
His body is marked with
scars of bullet wounds.
A necklace from the Sixth
Nichiren hangs around his neck.
At his side is a bell
that rings when struck with a clapper.
In front of the Master
on the bench is a small figurine
of a man in the position
of meditation. The First Master
picks up the figurine
and sets it down again.
[An authentic pre-Columbian sculpture found in Lake Texcoco.]
FIRST MASTER
Count to three and try
to grab it.
EL TOPO
One, two, three.
El Topo grabs at the figurine,
but the Master
picks it up long before
he can reach it.
EL TOPO
How?
FIRST MASTER
I don't try to win, but
to gain perfect control.
El Topo touches the Master's scars with his index finger.
FIRST MASTER
It's to lose the
fear of bullets.
The Double Man is seen
laboriously climbing
the ladder to the top
of the octagon.
FIRST MASTER
Fire.
The upper part of the Double
Man, the Legless Man,
takes the revolver from
the holster around the waist of
the Armless Man and fires
a shot into the Master's shoulder.
The bullet passes through
the shoulder.
A very small wound is
seen. It hardly bleeds.
The Master takes a little
of his blood with his
right hand and extends
his hand to El Topo.
annoints his fingers
in the Master's blood.
[This should give the idea
of El Topo
sinking his hand into
a baptismal font.]
FIRST MASTER
I bleed very little now.
I offer no resistance
to the bullets.
I let them pass through
the empty spaces of my flesh.
El Topo abruptly throws
the figurine to the Master.
The Master doesn't allow
himself to be surprised
and catches it, like a
cat, in mid-air.
FIRST MASTER
Do you still want
to fight me?
EL TOPO
Yes.
FIRST MASTER
Killing you doesn't bother
me because
I know that death does
not exist.
I'll let you fire first.
The Master closes his eyes
for the first time,
indicating that the interview
has ended.
El Topo stands in a circular
lagoon in the middle of the oasis.
He's playing with the
stone figurine. He floats it on a
splinter of wood and places
a small live lizard on its back.
[Here I express the relationship
that exists between the stone sculpture
buried so many years in
the depths of the desert and the small lizard
living so many years on
the surface of the desert. Joining the lizard
with the stone sculpture
symbolizes the union of depth and surface.]
Mara sits on the side of the lagoon with a willow branch in her hand.
EL TOPO
He is my superior.
MARA
You will win.
EL TOPO
Even if I won, I would
lose.
In anger, Mara strikes
out at the lizard and the figurine with her branch.
They sink.
MARA
(furious)
I want a winner.
You have to win.
Don't be so honest.
Don't fight on the same level.
Think of something.
Trick him.
You can always win.
Find a way!
El Topo begins to sink
little by little into the pool as if
pushed down by the responsibility
Mara has placed on him.
The ceremonial preparations
for the duel begin. Between the white tower
and the white horse, the
First Master is being prepared by his two helpers.
With a comb in his foot,
the Armless Man braids the Master's long hair,
while the Legless Man
massages the Master's feet.
On a nearby dune, El Topo
stands in concentration. There are some
pieces of wood in front
of him. We don't know why. El Topo dresses himself.
He ties back the tails
of his jacket so they won't inferfere with his draw.
The Master's helpers paint
red circles on the vital centers of the Master's body.
The Legless Man holds
a dish of paint in his hand while the Armless Man paints
the circles with a brush
he holds between his teeth. While El Topo is
thinking about the possibility
of his own physical destruction,
the Master contemplates
the spiritual centers of his body.
The duel begins.
El Topo approaches, mounted on his horse, which is led by Mara.
She ties the reins
to a pole buried in the sand. The Double Man leads the
Master's white horse by
the reins and ties it to another pole. The Woman in Black
approaches and stands
on a dune to observe the duel. The Double Man positions
himself to form a line
with Mara. The Master and El Topo form another line.
Together, the two
lines form a cross.
