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A faint noise startled me. I tried to move, but my left arm, flung behind my head, was stiff from lack of circulation. I had fallen asleep in Mercedes Peralta's room after becoming thoroughly exhausted from taking an inventory of her dried medicinal plants.
I turned my head upon hearing a voice call my name. "Dona Mercedes?" I whispered. Except for the sound of the knots of the healer's hammock, squeaking as they rubbed over the metal rings, there was no answer. I tiptoed over to the corner. No one was in the hammock. Yet, I had the distinct feeling that she had just been in the room and that somehow her presence still lingered about.
In the grips of inexplicable anxiety, I opened the door, then ran down the dark silent corridor.
I crossed the patio to the kitchen and out into the yard. There in the hammock that hung between two soursop trees lay dona Mercedes enveloped in tobacco smoke, like a shadow.
Slowly, her face emerged from the smoky dimness. It was more like an image in a dream. Her eyes glittered with a peculiar hollow depth.
"I was just thinking about you," she said. "About what you are doing here." She pulled up her legs to get out of the hammock.
I told her that I had fallen asleep in her room, and had been frightened by the sound of her empty hammock.
She listened in silence, a worried expression on her face. "Musiua," she said sternly, "how many times have I told you never to fall asleep in the room of a witch? We are very vulnerable while asleep."
Unexpectedly, she giggled and covered her mouth, as though she had said too much. She signaled me to come closer and to sit on the ground near the edge of her hammock.
She began to massage my head. Her fingers traveled with an undulating movement down to my face.
A soothing numbness spread across my features. My skin, muscles, and bones seemed to dissolve under her deft fingers.
Totally relaxed and at peace, I fell into a drowsiness that was not quite sleep. I was half-conscious of her gentle touch, as she continued to massage me. Finally, I lay face-up on the nearby cement slab.
Silently, dona Mercedes stood over me. "Watch, Musiua," she suddenly cried out, looking up at the full moon racing through the clouds. Hiding, rising, emerging, the moon seemed to tear the clouds in its rush. "Watch," she cried out again, throwing a clump of gold medals fastened to a long gold chain into the air high over her head. "When you see the chain again, you will have to return to Caracas."
For an instant the dark clump seemed to be suspended against the full moon emerging from behind a cloud. I did not see it fall. I was too preoccupied wondering what had prompted her to mention that I had to go back to Caracas.
I asked her about it. She remarked that it was foolish of me to assume I was going to stay in Curmina forever.
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The persistent sharp call of a cicada on the branch above my head was more like a vibration punctuating the stillness of the hot and humid night.
I turned on my stomach on the mat in the patio and waited for the woman who had been appearing to me at the same spot every night.
Dona Mercedes, dozing in a nearby hammock, had decided to keep me company that night, breaking with her presence the singularity of those appearances.
She had established from the beginning that as long as no one else was with me or watched me, my contacts with the spirit would remain super-personal events. If, however, someone else was present, the entire matter would become public property, so to speak.
I had acquired by then a certain expertise in smoking cigars. At first, I had expressed to dona Mercedes my concern about the irritating effect of the heat on the delicate tissue inside the mouth. She had laughed my fear away, assuring me that the smoke of ritual cigars was actually cool and soothing.
After practicing for a short while, I had to agree with her: The smoke was indeed cool: The tobacco seemed mentholated.
Dona Mercedes' decision to accompany me that night was triggered by Candelaria's doubts that I was strong enough to hold a full seance by myself. To them, a full seance meant that at one point the medium has absolutely relinquished all voluntary control of her person and the spirit can express itself through the medium's body.
Earlier that day, dona Mercedes had explained to me that my presence in her house was no longer tenable: Not because she or Candelaria were in any way at odds with me or cross with me, but because she had nothing of value to give me.
She assured me that both Candelaria and herself felt nothing but the deepest affection for me. Had she liked me less, she would have been satisfied with letting me watch her treat the sick and pretend that I was her helper. It was her affection for me that forced her to be truthful.
What I needed was a link, and she had none for me. She could only make one for Candelaria. However, since the spirit had chosen me to be an intermediary or, perhaps, even a true medium, she had to honor that choice.
So far, she had helped me do so by indirectly helping me make nightly contacts with the apparition.
"The fact that the spirit of my ancestor has chosen you," she had said, "makes you, Candelaria, and me sort of relatives."
Candelaria had told me then that she had had contact with the same spirit since childhood. But, following a medium's tradition of total secrecy, she could not possibly elaborate on that.
Dona Mercedes stirred in her hammock and crossed her arms behind her head. "Musiua, you better squat and start smoking," she said in a soft, relaxed tone.
I lit a cigar, puffing at it in short even spurts and murmured the incantation she had taught me. The smoke and the sound were definitely the agents that brought the apparition every time.
I heard a soft rustle. Dona Mercedes also heard it, for she turned at the same instant I did. A few feet away, squatting between Candelaria's giant terracotta flower pots, was the woman.
Dona Mercedes crouched beside me and took the cigar from my mouth. She puffed at it, mumbling an incantation; a different one from mine. I felt a tremor in my body; an invisible hand gripped me by the throat.
I heard myself making whizzing, gurgling noises. To my amazement, they sounded like words said by someone else with my own vocal cords. I knew instantly- although I did not understand them- that they were words of yet another incantation. The apparition hovered over my head, and then it disappeared.
Next, I found myself with dona Mercedes and Candelaria inside the house. I was soaked in perspiration and felt physically exhausted. And so were the two women.
However, my exhaustion was not a debilitating one. I felt extraordinarily light and exhilarated.
"How did I get here?" I asked.
Candelaria consulted dona Mercedes with a questioning look and then said, "You had a full seance."
"This changes everything," dona Mercedes said in a faint voice. "The spirit of my ancestor has made a link for you. So, you must stay here until the spirit lets you go."
"But why did the spirit choose me?" I asked. "I'm a foreigner."
"There are no foreigners for the spirits," Candelaria answered. "The spirits only search for mediums."
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Mercedes Peralta sat hunched over the altar, mumbling an incantation.
Faint with hunger and fatigue, I kept glancing at my watch. It was nearly six o'clock in the evening.
I fervently wished that the large woman sitting by the table would be dona Mercedes' last patient for the day.
There had been no explanation for her seeing more than two sick persons a day, but for the last four Saturdays dona Mercedes had seen as many as twelve in one day.
They were mostly women from the nearby hamlets who took advantage of their weekly trip to the market and stopped by to see the healer.
There were always those who sought help for such specific ailments as headaches, colds, and female disorders.
The great majority, however, came to be relieved of their emotional problems. Unrequited love, marital difficulties, strife with in-laws, growing children, and problems at work and in the community were the most frequently discussed topics. Graying hair, loss of hair, the appearance of wrinkles, and bouts of bad luck were among the more frivolous complaints.
Dona Mercedes treated each person, whatever his or her problem, with the same genuine interest and efficiency.
She would first diagnose the ailment with the aid of her nautical compass or by interpreting the pattern of the cigar's ashes on the plate.
If the person's imbalance was caused by psychological turmoil- she called it spiritual- she would recite a prayer-incantation and give a massage.
If the person was suffering from a physical ailment, she would prescribe medicinal plants and a follow-up.
Her artful use of language and her great sensitivity to each person's minute change in mood prompted the most reluctant man or woman to open up and talk candidly about his or her intimate concerns.
Mercedes Peralta's voice startled me. "You really messed up this time," she addressed the large woman sitting in front of the table.
Dona Peralta shook her head in disbelief, and once again examined the cigar's ashes, which she had collected on a metal plate on the altar.
"You are a fool," she declared, holding the plate under the woman's face, expecting the woman to recognize in the soft, gray-greenish powder the nature of her ailment. "You really are in trouble this time."
Rushing with apprehension, the woman looked from side to side, as if she were trying to find a way to escape. She puckered up her lips like a child.
Dona Mercedes rose, moved to where I sat on a stool in my usual corner, and in a formal tone pronounced, "I would like you to write down the treatment my client is to follow."
As usual, I listed first the prescribed herbs, flower essences, and dietary restrictions. Then, I wrote out a detailed account of when and under what circumstances the patient was to take the herbal infusion and the purifying baths.
With dona Mercedes' permission, I never failed to make a carbon copy for myself. And finally at her urging, I read out loud several times what I had written.
I was certain that it was not only to reassure dona Mercedes herself that I had listed everything correctly but mainly to benefit the patient in case she was illiterate.
With the instructions clutched in her hand, the woman rose and faced the altar. She put some bills under the statue of the Virgin, then solemnly promised that she would follow dona Mercedes' instructions.
Dona Mercedes stepped over to the altar, lit a candle, and knelt to pray to the saints that her judgments would be correct.
I mentioned that I knew doctors who prayed a great deal.
"What good doctors and healers have in common is abiding respect for their patients," she declared. "They trust the great force that is out there to guide them. They can summon that power through prayer, meditation, incantations, tobacco smoke, medicines, and equipment."
She reached for the carbon copies of all the instructions I had written out that day, then counted the pages. "Did I really see that many persons today?" she asked, seemingly uninterested in hearing my answer.
A faint smile parted her lips as she closed her eyes and leaned back in her uncomfortable-looking chair. "Go and bring me all your notebooks on all my clients, but not the ones on the persons who are telling you their stories. I want to see how many people I have treated since you got here."
She got up and walked with me to the door. "Bring everything to the patio. I want Candelaria to help me," she added.
It took me almost an hour to gather all my materials. With the exception of my diary, I carried everything to the patio, where dona Mercedes and Candelaria were already waiting for me.
"Is that it?" dona Mercedes asked, eyeing the bundles of paper I had placed on the ground right in front of her.
She did not wait for my answer but ordered Candelaria to stack the papers and index cards by the steel drum at the far end of the patio. As soon as she had done so, Candelaria came to sit beside me on the mat. We both faced dona Mercedes, who was once again lying in her hammock.
"I have already told you that you are here under the auspices of the spirit of my ancestor," dona Mercedes said to me. "Since last night you are a medium chosen by that spirit. And mediums do not keep papers about healing. The very idea is hideous."
She rose from her hammock and walked to where my bundles of notes were. Only then did it dawn on me what she intended to do. She broke the string bindings with a knife and dropped handfuls of paper into the steel drum. Mesmerized, I watched the smoke rise from the drum. I had not noticed before that there was a fire inside it.
Eager to save some of my work, I jumped up. Candelaria's words stopped me from running to the drum.
"If you do that, you must leave right away." She smiled and patted the mat beside her.
In that instant I understood everything. There was nothing I could have done.
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After an entire day's work, dona Mercedes fell soundly asleep in her chair.
I watched her for a while, wishing I could relax that easily, then I quietly put back the various bottles, jars, and boxes in the glass cabinet.
As I tiptoed past her on my way out, she suddenly opened her eyes. She turned her head slowly and listened, her nostrils flaring as she sniffed the air.
"I almost forgot," she said. "Bring him in, right away."
"There is nobody," I replied with absolute certainty.
She raised her hands in a helpless gesture, and softly said, "Just do what I tell you."
Certain that she was going to be wrong this time, I stepped outside.
It was nearly dark. No one was there. With a triumphant smile on my face I was about to walk back into the room when I heard a faint cough.
As if he had been conjured up by dona Mercedes' assertion, a neatly dressed man emerged from the shadows in the corridor. His legs were disproportionately long. His shoulders, in contrast, seemed small and looked frail under his dark coat.
He vacillated for an instant, then lifted a cluster of green coconuts in a slight salute. In his other hand, he held a custom-made machete.
In a deep, raspy voice, interspersed by a harsh cough, he asked, "Is Mercedes Peralta in?"
I held the curtain aside for him, and said, "She is waiting for you,"
He had short, stiff, curly hair, and the space between his brows was creased in a deep frown. His dark, angular face exuded an unyielding hardness, matched by the fierce, relentless expression in his eyes. Only at the corners of his well-shaped mouth lingered a certain softness.
He stood irresolute for a moment, then a faint smile spread slowly over his face as he approached dona Mercedes.
He dropped the coconuts on the ground, and adjusting his pants at the knees, squatted by her chair. He selected the biggest coconut on the cluster, and with three expert cuts of his short machete, removed the top.
He said, "They are just the way you like them. Still soft and very sweet."
Dona Mercedes brought the fruit to her lips, and in between her noisy slurps, remarked how good the milk was. She handed the fruit back to him, and demanded, "Give me some of the inside."
With one sure blow, he halved the coconut and then loosened the soft, gelatinous pulp with the tip of his machete.
Dona Mercedes said, "Prepare the other half for the musiua."
He stared at me long and hard, and then without a word he scraped the remaining half of the coconut with the same meticulous care. He handed it to me, and I thanked him.
Breaking the awkward silence, dona Mercedes asked, "And what brings you here today? Do you need my help?"
He replied, "Yes."
He pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, and lit a cigarette with a lighter. After taking one long drag, he returned the case to his pocket.
He continued, saying, "The spirit is all right. It is this damned cough that is getting worse. It does not let me sleep. I also have this headache. It does not let me work."
She invited him to sit down, not opposite her where her patients usually sat, but on the chair by the altar.
She lit three candles in front of the Virgin, then casually inquired about the coconut plantation he owned somewhere along the coast.
He turned around slowly and gazed into her eyes. She coaxed him with a movement of her head. She said to him, "This musiua helps me with my patients. You can talk as if she were not present."
His eyes caught mine for a moment, and he said, "My name is Benito Santos."
Then he looked swiftly back at dona Mercedes, and asked, "Does she have a name?"
Before I had time to say anything, dona Mercedes answered, "She says her name is Florinda. But I call her Musiua."
She watched him intently, then positioned herself behind him. With slow easy movements, she rubbed an unguent on his chest and shoulders for nearly a half hour.
Dona Peralta turned toward me, and said, "Benito Santosis a powerful man. He comes to see me from time to time; always for a headache or a cold or a cough.
"I cure him in five sessions. I use a specially made unguent and an eloquent prayer offered to the spirit of the sea."
She continued massaging Benito Santosis for a long time. Then she rested her hands on his shoulders, and asked him, "Is the headache gone?"
He did not seem to have heard her question as he stared with unseeing eyes at the flickering candles. He began to talk about the sea, and how ominous it was at dawn when the sun rises from the dim lusterless water.
In a monotonous, almost trance-like murmur, he spoke about his daily noon excursions into the sea. He had never learned to swim, only to float.
He said, "Pelicans circle around me. Sometimes they fly very low and look directly into my eyes. I am certain they want to know if my strength is waning."
With his head bowed, he remained silent for a long time, then his voice faded to an even lower, hard-to-understand murmur. "At dusk, when the sun is behind the far away hills, and the light no longer touches the water, I hear the voice of the sea.
"It tells me that someday it will die, but while it lives, it is relentless. 1 know then that I love the sea."
Mercedes Peralta pressed her palms over his temples, her fingers spanning his head.
She said, "Benito Santos is a man who has overcome guilt. He is old and he is tired. But even now he is relentless like the sea."
Benito Santos came to see dona Mercedes for five consecutive days. After finishing each of his daily treatments, she always asked him to tell me his story. He never answered her, and totally ignored me.
Finally, at the end of his last appointment, he abruptly turned, faced me, and asked, "Is that your jeep out there in the street?"
Without giving me time to answer, he added, "Drive me back to the coconut plantation, please."
We drove in silence. Just prior to reaching the coast, I assured him that he did not have to honor dona Mercedes' request.
He shook his head emphatically. He said dryly, "Whatever she asks is sacred to me. I just do not know what to say, or how to say it."
I paid countless visits to Benito Santos under the pretext of getting coconuts for dona Mercedes. We talked a great deal. But he never warmed up to me.
He always stared at me defiantly until I turned my eyes away. He made it perfectly clear that he was talking to me only because Mercedes Peralta had requested it. He certainly was, as she had described him, hard and relentless.
Clutching his machete firmly in his hand, Benito Santos stood motionless in the hot noon sun. It scorched his back, stiff from cutting cane for a week.
He pushed back the brim of his hat to cool his forehead. His eyes followed the group of weary men walking across the empty, harvested sugarcane fields on their way into town.
For the last day and night everyone had worked without rest. Like him, the men would have no jobs to go to on Monday. It had been the last sugarcane crop before the tractors were to flatten and parcel off the land.
The owner of those fields had held out the longest. But finally, like all the other planters in the area, he had been forced to sell his property to a land-developing company in Caracas.
The valley was to be converted into an industrial center. Germans and Americans were going to build pharmaceutical laboratories. Italians were not only going to construct a shoe factory, but bring their own workers from Italy as well.
"Damn foreigners," Benito Santos swore, spitting on the ground. He did not know how to read or write, and he had no skills. He was a sugarcane cropper. All he knew was how to wield a machete.
Dragging the long blade on the ground, he approached the hacienda's courtyard, then turned to the small bungalow, where the foreman had his office. A group of men, some standing, some squatting under the shade of the building's wide overlapping roof, eyed him suspiciously as he stepped into the office.
"What do you want?" the short, potbellied foreman sitting behind a gray metal desk asked. "You got paid, did you not?" he added impatiently, wiping the sweat off his neck with a neatly folded white handkerchief.
Benito Santos nodded. He was a taciturn man, almost gruff. It was hard for him to speak, to ask a favor.
"I heard that the sugarcane has been transported to a mill in the next town," he stammered, his eyes fixed on the foreman's massive neck bulging over the collar of his starched shirt. "I have been around mills before. I am wondering if you could hire me to work there."
Leaning back in his chair, the foreman regarded Benito Santos through drooping lids. "You live around here, do you not? How would you be getting to the next town? It is more than fifteen miles from here."
"By bus," Benito Santos mumbled, looking furtively into the man's eyes.
"Bus!" The foreman laughed scornfully, stroking his thin, neatly trimmed mustache. "You know well that the bus only leaves when it is full. You would never get there before noon."
"I will make it," Benito Santos said desperately. "If you give me the job, I will make it somehow. Please."
"Listen," the foreman snapped. "I hired anyone capable of cutting down sugarcane regardless of age or experience because we had a deadline to meet. It was made perfectly clear to every man hired that this was a six-day job.
"At the mill we already have more people than we need." The foreman began to shuffle through the papers on his desk. "Do not waste any more of my time. I am a busy man."
Benito Santos stepped into the courtyard, making sure not to trample on the tufts of grass growing between the stones. The mill, at the far end of the yard, already looked abandoned even though it had been in use only a few days ago. He knew he would never see its like in the valley again.
The loud honking of a truck jolted him. Quickly, he stepped aside, lifting his hand for a ride into town. He was enveloped in a cloud of dust.
"You got to walk, Benito Santos," someone shouted from the moving vehicle.
Long after the dust had settled he could still hear the shouts and laughter of the workers on the truck.
His fingers curled tightly around the handle of his machete. Slowly, they relaxed again.
He pulled his hat well over his forehead to shade his eyes from the bright sun glazing the blue of the sky.
Benito Santos did not follow the main road into town but cut across the empty fields until he reached a narrow trail. It led toward the southern end of town, where the Saturday open-air market was situated.
He walked slower than usual, aware of the hole in one of his shoes and the flapping sole of the other, which stirred the dust on the ground before him.
From time to time, he rested under the dark cool shade of the mango trees growing on either side of the path. Dispiritedly, he watched the fleeting green outline of lizards darting in and out of the bushes.
It was way past noon when he reached the market. The place was still bustling with people. Vendors, their voices already hoarse, advertised their merchandise with the same enthusiasm they had displayed earlier that morning. And the customers, mostly women, haggled shamelessly over the prices.
Benito Santos walked past the Portuguese farmers' stands, where the now limp vegetables lay in disarray; past the meat and dry-fish stalls, where flies swarmed around and mangy dogs waited with endless patience for a piece of meat to fall on the ground.
He grinned at the hired children who were standing behind the fresh-fruit stalls, packing rotten fruit in paper bags instead of letting the customers choose from the merchandise on display.
He fingered the money in his pocket: six days' wages. He deliberated whether he should buy food for his wife, Altagracia, and their small son now or later.
"Later," he said out loud. There was always the chance that he would get a better deal if he haggled with the merchants just before they were ready to pack up.
"Get your food while you have the money, Benito Santos," an old woman who knew him well shouted. "The beans and the rice will not get any cheaper."
"Only women wait for the afternoon bargains," a merchant taunted him, making obscene gestures with a plantain.
Benito Santos stared at the grinning faces of the Lebanese peddlers, standing behind their gaudy stalls, advertising cheap dresses, costume jewelry, and perfumes.
Rage made the veins in his temples swell and stiffened the muscles on his neck. The humiliating incident in the foreman's office was vivid in his mind. The scornful laughter of the workers on the truck still rang in his ears.
The machete was as light as a knife in his hand. With tremendous effort he turned around and walked away.
A cold sweat bathed his body. His mouth was dry. He felt a tingling in his stomach that was not hunger.
He would have his rum now, he decided. He could not wait until he got home. He needed the rum to dispel his anger, to dispel his gloom, his despondency.
Purposefully, he headed toward the main entrance of the market, where trucks and pack-trains of donkeys waited to be reloaded with the produce that was not sold.
He crossed the street, then stepped inside the small dark store at the corner and bought three pint bottles of the cheapest rum.
He sat down under the shade of a tree, facing the trucks and the donkeys. He did not want to miss the moment the merchants began to pack up.
Sighing contentedly, he leaned against the tree trunk. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat and the dust from his haggard face with his sleeve.
Carefully, he opened one of the bottles and downed the first pint in one long gulp. Gradually, the rum dulled the tension in his stomach; it eased the pain in his stiff back and sore legs. He smiled. A vague feeling of well-being drifted through his head.
Yes, he mused, it was better to sit there, enjoying his rum, than to go home and listen to Altagracia's incessant nagging. He was slow to anger, but today he had had as much as he could take.
Through drooping lids, Benito Santos watched the people gathered in a circle near the market's entrance. It was the same crowd that came every Saturday afternoon from the nearby hamlets to bet on the cockfights.
Drowsily, he let his gaze wander to the two men squatting beneath a tree directly across from him. He was not much interested in cockfights, yet his attention was caught by the two roosters the men held in their hands.
They bounced them up and down to strengthen their legs. With an oddly gentle gesture, the men ruffled the birds' feathers and then shoved them against each other to rouse their spirits.
"That is a fine-looking bird," Benito Santos said to the man holding the dark rooster with the golden-tipped feathers.
"He certainly is," the man agreed readily. "He will be in the last fight this afternoon. The best birds are saved for the last fight," the man added proudly, brushing the rooster's feathers. "You ought to bet on him. He will be the winner today."
"Are you sure?" Benito Santos asked casually, taking out another bottle of rum from his paper bag.
He took a long gulp, then meandered through the crowd of excited men squatting around a sand pit. They made room without looking at him, their eyes fixed on the center of the arena where two birds were locked in deadly combat.
"Your bets! Gentlemen, your bets!" a man shouted, his voice silencing the noisy crowd for a moment. "Your bets for the last fight! For the real fight!"
Eagerly the men exchanged their dirty bills for the colored markers indicating the amount of their bets.
"Are you sure your rooster is going to win today?" Benito Santos asked the owner of the bird with the golden-tipped feathers.
"He sure is!" the man exclaimed, planting rapturous kisses on the bird's scarred crest.
"Afraid to bet, Benito Santos?" asked one of the workers who had been cutting cane with him during the week. "You had better buy some food for your old woman if you do not want trouble tonight," he added mockingly.
Benito Santos chose a marker and without hesitation bet the rest of his wages on the cock with the golden-tipped feathers.
He was certain he would double his money. He would be able to buy not only rice and beans but meat and more rum. There might even be enough money to buy his son his first pair of shoes.
Benito Santos, as excited as the rest of the spectators, shouted his approval as the owners raised their birds high over their heads. They sucked the sharp, deadly spurs on the roosters' legs as evidence that there was no poison on them. The men mumbled sweet nothings to their birds, and then, at the command of the referee, they placed them in the center of the sand pit.
The combatants viewed each other angrily but refused to fight. The crowd shouted, and a wicker cage was lowered over the roosters. Excitedly the men goaded the birds to attack. The roosters trembled with rage, and their plumage spread out beneath their shaved, bloodshot necks.
The cage was lifted. The cocks jumped at each other, skillfully avoiding pecks and blows of wings. But soon they were engaged in a deadly wing-beating, head-thrusting, leg-kicking explosion of fury.
The white cock's feathers were red with blood, either from its own wounds or from the deep gash on its opponent's neck.
Silently, Benito Santos prayed for the bird he had bet on to win.
At a signal from the referee, the open-beaked, hard-breathing roosters were lifted from the pit. With mounting anxiety Benito Santos watched the owner of the golden-feathered bird blow on its wounds. Soothingly, he talked to the rooster, caressing and fussing over it.
At the referee's command, the birds were once again placed in the center of the circle.
The white-feathered bird instantly took a well-aimed jump and sunk its spurs into its opponent's neck. Its triumphant crow shattered the silence of the audience as the golden-tipped rooster toppled over dead.
Benito Santos smiled bitterly, then laughed behind a grimace that struggled to hold back his tears. "At least I have got my rum," he mumbled, then gulped down the rest of his second bottle.
With trembling fingers he wiped his chin dry. He walked away from the crowd, heading toward the hills. The empty cane fields stretched endlessly before him; shimmering in the bright afternoon sunlight. The yellow dust of the road raised by his shoes settled like fine, golden powder on his arms and hands.
Slowly, he went up a steep hill. Wherever there was a tree, he crossed the road and rested in its shade.
He opened his last bottle of rum and took one long gulp. He did not want to see his wife. He could not bear to look into her accusing eyes.
He scanned the hills around him and let his gaze rest on the green slopes on the other side of the road where a high ranking general in the government had his farm.
Benito Santos took another swallow. The rum filled him with a vague hope.
Perhaps they might give him a job at the general's place. He could cut the green, irrigated alfalfa grown specifically for the horses. Hell! He had a skill! he thought. He was a sugarcane cropper. Cutting cane or alfalfa was all the same.
He might even be able to ask for an advance. Not much. Just enough to buy some rice and beans.
He almost ran down the hill, then up the newly paved road leading to the general's farm. He was so excited by the possibility of getting a job that he did not even see the two soldiers by the wide open gate.
"Where do you think you are going?" one of them stopped him, pointing his rifle to a sign on the road. "Can you not read? No trespassing beyond this point. This is a private road."
Benito Santos was so winded his throat hurt with each breath. He looked from one soldier to the other, then addressed the second soldier, who was leaning against a large boulder next to the sign. He looked older and friendlier. "I am in desperate need of a job," he murmured.
Silently, the soldier shook his head; his eyes fixed on Benito Santos' stiff black hair sticking through his torn straw hat. Benito Santos' worn, rolled-up khaki pants and shirt clung damply to his tall, gaunt frame.
"There are no jobs in this place," he said in a sympathetic tone. "There is not anyone around here to hire you, anyway."
"There must be someone there with the horses," Benito Santos insisted. "Maybe I could help. Just for a couple of hours every day."
The guards looked at each other, then shrugged and grinned mischievously. "Ask for the German in charge of the horses," the younger-looking man said. "He might help you."
For a moment Benito Santos wondered what the soldiers could be laughing about. But he felt too grateful to let it worry him.
Afraid they might change their minds and call him back, he hurried along the straight paved road cut into the hill.
He stopped short in front of the general's house. Undecided, he stood looking at the two-story building. It was all white with a long balcony supported by massive columns.
Instead of calling out, he tiptoed toward one of the downstairs windows. It was open, and the air gently fluttered the gauzy curtain.
He wanted to have a quick look and see what it was like inside. He had heard that the luxurious furnishings had been brought over from Europe.
"What are you doing here?" a loud, heavily accented voice asked from behind him.
Startled, Benito Santos almost dropped his bottle of rum as he turned around. Wide-eyed, he regarded a wiry, middle-aged man with blond, closely cropped hair.
He must be the German the soldiers had told him to see, he thought, looking into the man's restless eyes. They were the color of the sky and shone hard under fiercely jutting brows.
"Do you have a job for me?" Benito Santos asked. "Any kind of job."
The man moved closer to Benito Santos and stared at him menacingly. "How dare you come here, you drunkard?" he spat out, his voice cold with contempt. "Get out of here before I set the dogs on you."
Benito Santos' gaze became unsteady, his eyelids twitched. He felt like a beggar. He hated to ask for a favor. He had always worked the best he could. His tongue felt heavy.
"Just for a couple of hours." He held out his hand so the man could see the cracks and calluses. "I am a hard worker. I am a cane cutter. I could cut some grass for the horses."
"Get out!" the German yelled. "You are drunk."
Benito Santos walked slowly, dragging the tip of his machete on the ground. The road before him seemed longer than ever, as though it stretched itself deliberately to delay his arrival home.
He wished he had someone to talk to. The monotonous drone of the insects made him feel even more desolate.
He crossed the dry gully to his shack. He remained outside for a moment, deeply breathing in the late-afternoon air, letting the gentle breeze cool his flushed face.
He had to stoop to enter his shack. It had no windows, only an opening in the front and one in the back, which he closed at night with a piece of cardboard propped up with a stick.
The heat was stifling inside. The sound of the hammock's ropes rubbing against the wood and Altagracia's uneven breathing irritated him. He knew she was seething with wrath.
He turned to look at his son sleeping on the ground. He wore a discolored rag, which barely covered his small chest. He could not remember whether the boy was two or three years old.
Altagracia rose from her hammock, her eyes fixed on the bag in his hand. She planted herself in front of him and demanded in a harsh, shrill voice, "Where is the food, Benito?"
"The market was already packed up by the time I got there," Benito Santos mumbled, moving over to the cot in one corner of the shack, the paper bag held tightly in his hand. "I am sure there are still some beans and rice left here."
"There is nothing here as you well know," Altagracia said, trying to grab the paper bag. "You sure had time to get drunk." Her face with its yellowish, sagging skin was flushed. Her sunken, usually lifeless eyes shone with anger and despair.
He clearly felt the accelerated pounding of his heart. He did not have to give her an explanation. He did not owe anyone an explanation.
"Shut up, woman," he yelled. He lifted the bottle and drank the rest of the rum without drawing a breath.
"I worked the whole night cutting cane. I am tired." He threw the empty bottle through the opening of the shack. "I want some peace and quiet now. I want no woman shouting at me. Take the boy and get the hell out of here."
Altagracia grabbed Benito Santos by the arm before he had a chance to lower himself on the cot.
"Give me the money; I will buy the food myself. The boy needs to eat." She ripped open his pocket. "No money?" she repeated, in a daze, looking uncomprehendingly at him.
"Did you not get paid today? You could not have spent six days' wages on rum." Shouting obscenities, she pulled his hair and pounded her clenched fists against his aching back and chest.
He felt drunk, not with rum, but with rage and hopelessness. He saw the gleam of fear in her eyes as he raised his machete.
Her scream filled the air, then there was silence. He looked at her still form on the ground, at her tangled mass of hair soaked in blood.
He felt something tugging at his pants. His small son held onto his leg with such strength he was certain the child would never let him free.
Possessed by an irrational fear, Benito Santos tried to shake him loose, but the boy would not let go. The boy's eyes were those of his mother; dark and deep, filled with that same accusing light.
Benito Santos' temples began to throb under the boy's unblinking stare. With blind fury, he raised the machete once more.
Never in his life had he felt such an agonizing desolation. Never before had he been so clear-headed either.
For a moment it was as if he had had another life, a more meaningful life- a life with a greater purpose- and was now looking into the nightmare that his existence had become.
Then, more aware than he had ever been, he soaked some rags in the nearly empty can of kerosene and set his shack on fire.
He ran as far as he could and then stopped. Motionless, he stood gazing at the empty fields at the foot of the hills, at the faraway mountains in the distance.
In the morning those mountains were the color of hope. Beyond them was the sea. He had never seen the sea. He had only heard that it was immense.
Benito Santos waited until the mountains, the hills, and the trees were no more than shadows; shadows like the memories of his childhood.
He felt he was again walking with his mother through the narrow streets of his village amid the crowd of the faithful behind some procession at nightfall with candles winking through the darkness.
"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen." His voice drifted away with the wind and the thousands of small sounds shrouding the hills.
He shivered with fear, and took off again in a wild run. He ran until he could no longer breathe.
He felt himself sinking into the soft ground. The earth was swallowing him. It was soothing him with blackness, and Benito Santos knew that this was the last day of his useless life. He had at last died.
He opened his eyes, seemingly to the sound of a woman's wailing, but it was the night breeze, rustling through the leaves around him.
How he had wished to remain forever in darkness; but he knew that nothing would ever be that easy for him.
He rose, picked up his machete, and headed toward the road that led to the mountains.
A clear light came down from the sky. It spread around him, and it even gave him a shadow. The clear light made the air thinner, and easier to breathe.
He had no place to go. Nothing to look forward to. He felt no profound emotion. There was only a vague sensation- a vague hope that he might get to see the sea.
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"It is time for you to go," Candelaria said. "You should not be working on Sundays." She pulled the plug of my tape recorder.
At that very instant, dona Mercedes stepped into the kitchen. She frowned, noticing that I was still in my robe. "Why are you not ready?" she asked me.
"I know why," Candelaria said. Her voice held a curious softness, and a glimmer of amusement shone in her eyes. "She does not want to collect Benito Santos' coconuts. She is afraid of him."
Before I had a chance to deny her accusation, she was gone from the room.
"Is that true, Musiua?" dona Mercedes asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee. "I have not noticed that you held any ill-feelings toward him."
I assured her that I did not. However, I could not help feeling that what Benito Santos had done to his wife and his child was abominable.
"His story has nothing to do with morality or justice," she interrupted me. "It is the story of a violent, desperate man.
I protested because I deeply resented that he had looked after only himself. I talked almost hysterically about the despair and the hopelessness of women and children.
"Stop it, Musiua." With her finger she poked me on my chest next to my collarbone. It felt as if she were pushing me with an iron tip.
"Do not give in to your false sense of order. Do not be a musiua that comes from a foreign country to find flaws. That kind of person would feel offended by Benito Santos and miss what I am trying to show you.
"I want to place you under the shadow of the people I have selected to tell you their stories.
"The story of Benito Santos' last day of his useless life sums up all his existence. I asked him to tell it to you with all the details he could remember; and I have also sent you to see for yourself his coconut grove by the sea so you would verify that the wheel of chance did turn."
It was hard for me to explain my feelings to dona Mercedes without moralizing. I did not want to, but I could not help myself.
She gave me an all-knowing smile.
"The value of his story," she said all of a sudden, "is that without any preparation, he made a link himself. He made the wheel of chance move.
"Witches say that sometimes one single act makes that link."
Dona Mercedes pushed herself up from the chair she had been sitting on, and holding firmly to my arm walked me out of the kitchen toward her room.
At her door, she stopped and looked at me. "Benito Santos killed his wife and child. That act moved the wheel of chance; but what made him end up where he is now- by the sea- was his desire to see the sea.
"As he must have told you, it was a vague desire, yet it was the only thing he had after committing an act of such violence and finality. So, the desire took hold of him and drove him.
"That is why he has to remain faithful to that desire that saved him. He has to love the sea. He comes to me so that I can help him maintain his unwavering course.
"It can be done, you know. We can make our own link with one single act. It does not have to be as violent and desperate as Benito Santos' act, but it has to be as final. If that act is followed by a desire of tremendous strength, sometimes, like Benito Santos, we can be placed outside of morality."