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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/toltec/aud/df/02/donner_f-02-21.mp3
"Musiua, are you there?" Mercedes Peralta whispered, opening the door to my room noiselessly. Outlined by the weak beam of my reading light, she was the picture of a witch with her long black dress and her wide-brimmed felt hat that hid half of her face.
"Do not turn on the light," she said as I reached for the switch. "I can not bear the brightness of a bulb."
She sat on my bed. Her brow was set tightly in concentration as she smoothed out the wrinkles in my blanket.
She looked up and fixed her unblinking eyes on my face.
Self-consciously I ran my fingers over my cheeks and chin, wondering whether there was something wrong.
Giggling, she turned toward the night table and began neatly stacking my small, thin notepads.
"I must go to Chuao right now," she finally said, her voice low and grave.
"Chuao?" I repeated. "At this hour?"
Seeing her emphatic nod, I added, "We will get stuck in the mud if it rains."
Chuao was a village near the coast, at least an hour's drive from Curmina.
"It will rain," she casually admitted. "But with your jeep we will not get stuck."
She sat hunched over the night table, biting her lower lip, deliberating whether to say more. "I have to be there tonight by midnight," she murmured in a tone that betrayed urgency rather than desire. "I have to get some plants that will be available only tonight."
"It is past eleven," I pointed out, checking the illuminated dial of my wristwatch. "We will never make it by midnight."
Grinning, dona Mercedes reached for my jeans and shirt hanging at the front of the iron bedstead. "We will make your watch stop counting the hours."
A faint smile lit up her face; her eyes, trusting and expectant, held mine. "You will take me, will you not?"
Heavy raindrops drummed on the jeep the moment we left town. Within seconds the rain came in a solid sheet, dense and dark.
I slowed down, unable to see, irritated by the squeaking of the wipers clearing an arc of glass that was instantly blurred again.
The trees fringing the road waved indistinctly beside and above us, giving the impression that we were driving through a tunnel.
Only the intermittent solitary bark of a dog indicated that we had passed another shack.
The rainstorm ended with the same abruptness with which it had begun, yet the sky remained overcast. The clouds hung oppressively low.
I kept my eyes glued to the windshield, intent on avoiding the frogs, which, momentarily blinded by the headlights, jumped across the road.
All at once, as if they had been erased from the sky, the clouds vanished the moment we turned onto the road that led to the coast.
The moon shone brightly upon a flat landscape where an occasional tree swayed gently in the breeze, its leaves shining silvery in the unreal light.
I stopped in the middle of a crossroad and got out of the jeep. The air, warm and humid, smelled of the mountains and the sea.
"What made you stop here, Musiua?" Mercedes Peralta asked, her voice full of bewilderment as she got out and stood beside me.
I looked into her eyes and explained, "I am a witch."
I knew that if I had told her that I just wanted to stretch my legs, she would not believe me.
"I was born in a place like this," I went on, "somewhere between the mountains and the sea."
Mercedes Peralta frowned at me, then a humorous, delighted twinkle shone in her eyes.
Giggling uncontrollably, she sat on the wet ground, and pulled me down with her. "Perhaps you were not born like a normal human being; maybe a curiosa lost you on her way across the sky," she said.
"What is a curiosa?" I asked.
She regarded me cheerfully and explained that curiosas were witches who were no longer concerned with thee obvious aspects of sorcery like symbolic paraphernalia, rituals, and incantations.
She whispered, "Curiosas are beings preoccupied with things of the eternal. They are like spiders, spinning fine, invisible threads between the known and the unknown."
She took off her hat, then lay on her back, flat on the ground, with her head precisely in the middle of the crossroad, pointing north.
"Lie down, Musiua," she urged me, stretching her arms toward the east and the west. "Make sure the top of your head touches mine and that your arms and legs are in the same position as mine."
It was comfortable lying head to head on the crossroad. Although separated by our hair, I had the feeling our scalps were fused together. I turned my head sideways and to my great amusement noticed how much longer her arms were than mine.
Seemingly aware of my discovery, dona Mercedes moved her arms closer to mine.
"If someone sees us, they will think we are crazy," I said.
"Perhaps," she conceded. "However, if it is people who usually walk by this crossroad at this time of the night, they will run away in fright, thinking they have seen two curiosas ready for flight."
We were silent for a moment, but before I asked her about the curiosas' flight, she spoke again.
"The reason I was so interested to know why you stopped at the crossroad," she said, "was that there are people who swear they have seen a curiosa lying naked on this very spot.
"They say that she had wings growing out of her back and that they saw her body become translucent white as she took off into the sky."
"I saw your body turn transparent at the seance for Efrain Sandoval," I said.
"Of course you did," she retorted with an amused casualness. "I did that just for you because I know that you will never be a healer. You are a medium and, perhaps, even a witch but not a healer. I should know it since I am a witch myself."
"What makes one a witch?" I asked in between fits of giggles. I did not want to take her seriously.
"Witches are creatures not only capable of moving the wheel of chance," she replied, "but also capable of making their own link.
"What would you say if at this moment we took off flying, joined at our heads?"
For a second or two, I had the most terrifying apprehension.
Then, a feeling of utter indifference invaded me.
She commanded me, saying, "Repeat any of the incantations the spirit of my ancestor taught you. I will say it with you."
Our voices merged into a single harmonious sound, filling the space around us, enveloping us into a giant cocoon.
The words rose into a deep continuous line, carrying us up and up. I saw the clouds advancing at me.
We began to turn like a wheel until everything was black.
Someone was shaking me vigorously. I woke up with an unexpected jolt.
I was sitting behind the steering wheel of my jeep. And I was driving!
I had no recollection of walking back to the car.
"Do not fall asleep," dona Mercedes said. "We will crash and die like two fools."
I stepped on the brakes and turned off the ignition.
The thought that I had been driving asleep made me tremble with fear.
"Where are we going?" I asked. My voice sounded an octave lower.
She smiled and made a gesture of exasperation, raising her eyebrows.
"You get tired too easily, Musiua," she said. "You are too little. But, I think that is your best feature. If you were bigger, you would be unbearable."
I insisted on knowing our destination. I meant it in terms of physical locale, so that I could drive with a sense of direction.
"We are going to meet Leon Chirino and another friend," she informed me. "Let us go. I will give you directions as you drive."
I started the jeep and drove in silence. I was still drowsy.
"Is Leon Chirino a medium and a healer?" I asked shortly.
She laughed softly but did not answer.
After a long moment she asked, "What makes you think that?" .
"There is something quite inexplicable about him," I said. "He reminds me of you."
"Does he now?" she asked mockingly. Then in a sudden serious tone she admitted that Leon Chirino was a medium and a clairvoyant.
Lost in thought, I did not hear her directions and was jolted when she yelled. "You passed it! You have got to back up now," she admonished, pointing to a tall bucare tree.
"Pull up there!" She smiled, then added, "We have to walk from here on."
The tree marked the entrance to a narrow path. The ground was covered with small flowers. I knew them to be red, but they appeared black in the moonlight. Bucares hardly ever grow by themselves. Usually, they are found in groves, shading coffee and cacao trees.
Following a narrow, overgrown trail bordered by other bucare trees, we headed toward a cluster of hills looming darkly before us.
There were no other sounds than Mercedes Peralta's uneven breathing and the crackling of twigs being crushed under our feet.
The path ended in front of a low house bordered by a wide clearing of hard-packed earth.
Its mud walls, plastered over a cane frame, were badly weathered. The roof was partially covered with zinc sheets and dried palm fronds. Deep eaves extended to make a wide porch. The front had no windows, only a narrow door through which a faint light escaped.
Dona Mercedes pushed the door open. Flickering candles cast more shadows than light in a sparsely furnished room.
Leon Chirino, sitting on a straight-backed chair, stared at us with an expression of surprise and delight.
Haltingly, he stood up, embraced the healer warmly, and guided her to the chair he had just vacated.
He greeted me and jokingly shook my hand. "Let me introduce you to one of the greatest healers around," he said. "Second only to dona Mercedes herself."
But before he could continue, someone cried out, "I am Agustin."
Only then did I notice the low-hanging hammock in the corner.
A small man lay in it. His body was half-twisted, one foot touching the ground, so that he could rock the hammock back and forth.
He did not seem particularly young, nor was he old. He was perhaps in his thirties, yet his hollowed cheeks and sharp bones made him look like a starved child.
The most remarkable thing about him was his eyes. They were light blue, and in his black face they shone with a dazzling intensity.
Awkwardly, I stood in the middle of the room. There was something eerie about the uncertain light of the candles playing with our shadows on the walls, gauzy with cobwebs.
The Spartan furniture- a table, three chairs, two stools, and a cot, all meticulously arranged against the wall- imparted an unlived-in atmosphere to the room.
"Do you live here?" I asked Agustin.
"No. I do not," he said, approaching me. "This is my summer palace." Pleased with his joke, he threw his head back and laughed.
Embarrassed, I moved toward the nearest stool and screamed as something sharp scratched my ankle. A hideous, dirty-looking cat stared up at me.
"There is no need to yell the place down," Agustin said and gathered the scrawny feline in his arms.
It began to purr the instant he rubbed its head. "She likes you. Do you want to touch her?"
I shook my head emphatically. It was not so much the fleas and the mangy bare spots scattered over its yellowish fur that I minded, but its piercing yellow-green slitted eyes that never left my face.
"We better go if we want to get the plants in time," Leon Chirino said, helping dona Mercedes to her feet.
He unhooked the oil lamp hanging from a nail behind the door, lit it, and then signaled us to follow him.
A low-arched doorway covered by a plastic curtain led into a back room that served as a kitchen and storage area.
One side of the room opened to a large plot filled with short, stubby trees and tall shrubs. In the faint light of the lantern, it looked like an abandoned fruit orchard.
We squeezed through a gap in the seemingly impenetrable wall of bushes and found ourselves in a desolate landscape.
The hillside, with its recently burned underbrush and charred stumps, looked frighteningly grotesque in the moonlight.
Without a sound, Leon Chirino and Agustin vanished.
"Where did they go?" I whispered to dona Mercedes.
"They went ahead," she said vaguely, pointing into the darkness.
Shadows, animated by the oil lamp she carried, zigzagged beside and ahead of us on the narrow path leading into the thicket.
I saw a light in the distance, gleaming through the bushes. Like a glowworm, it appeared and disappeared in quick succession.
As we came closer to it, I felt sure I could hear a monotonous chant mingling with the distinct sound of buzzing insects and of leaves stirring in the breeze.
Mercedes Peralta turned off the oil lamp. But before the last glimmer died out, I saw her billowing skirt settle near a crumbling low wall, about twelve feet from where I stood.
A glowing cigar illuminated her features. A diaphanous, shimmering radiance escaped through the top of her head.
I called out her name, but there was no answer.
Fascinated, I watched a misty cloud of cigar smoke hover directly above me in a circle. It did not disperse the way smoke would, but stayed fixed in midair for a long moment.
Something brushed my cheek. Automatically, I brought my hand to my face and then in utter astonishment gazed at my fingertips; they were phosphorescent.
Frightened, I ran toward the low wall where I had seen dona Mercedes sit down. I had barely moved a few steps, when I was intercepted by Leon Chirino and Agustin.
"Where are you going, Musiua?" Leon Chirino asked mockingly.
"I have to help dona Mercedes collect her plants."
My response seemed to amuse them. They chuckled.
Leon Chirino patted me on the head, and Agustin daringly grabbed my thumb and squeezed it as if it were a rubber pump.
"We have to wait here patiently," Agustin said. "I have just pumped patience inside you through your thumb."
"She brought me here to help her," I insisted.
"Sure," he said reassuringly. "You have to help her but not with her plants."
Taking my arm, he guided me toward a fallen tree trunk. "Let us wait for dona Mercedes here."
Leaves hung from Mercedes Peralta's forehead, silvery green and shining.
Quietly, she fastened the oil lamp on a branch, then squatted on the ground and proceeded to sort the plants she had collected into separate piles.
Verbena roots were prescribed for menstrual pains. Valerian roots soaked in rum were an ideal remedy for nervousness, irritability, anxiety, and nightmares. Torco roots, soaked in rum, cured anemia and yellow fever. Guaritoto roots, basically a male remedy, were prescribed for bladder difficulties. Rosemary and rue were used mainly as disinfectants. Malva leaves were applied on skin rashes, and Artemisia boiled in sugarcane juice eased menstrual pains, killed parasites, and reduced fevers. Zabila cured asthma.
"But you grow all these plants in your yard," I said puzzled. "Why did you come here to collect them?"
Agustin grinned gleefully. "Let me tell you something, Musiua," he whispered, bringing his head close to mine. "These plants have grown out of corpses."
He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "We are in the middle of a cemetery."
Alarmed, I looked around. There were neither tombstones nor mounds to indicate that we were in a graveyard, but I had not seen any tombstones in the other cemetery either.
"Our ancestors are buried here," Agustin said and crossed himself. "On nights like this, when a full moon alters the distance of graves and paints white shadows at the foot of trees, one can hear a pitiful moaning and the rattling of chains.
"Men carrying their cutoff heads wander about. They are the ghosts of slaves who, after having dug a deep hole to bury their masters' treasures, were decapitated and interred with the gold.
"But there is no need to be frightened," Agustin hastened to add. "All they want is a bit of rum. If you give them some, they will tell you where the treasures are buried.
"There are also ghosts of friars who died blaspheming and now want to confess their sins, but there is no one to hear them.
"And there are the ghosts of pirates who came all the way to Chuao in search of the Spaniards' gold."
He chuckled, then added in a confidential tone, "There are also the lonely ghosts, who whistle at passersby. These are the simplest of them all. They do not ask for much. All these lonely ghosts want is for someone to say an Our Father for them."
Mercedes Peralta, a root poised in one hand, slowly lifted her head.
Her dark eyes held mine in their gaze. "Agustin has an inexhaustible supply of stories," she said. "Each tale he garnishes to the limit."
Agustin rose. The way he stretched his body and limbs gave the impression that he was boneless.
He plopped down in front of dona Mercedes and buried his head in her lap.
"We better get going," she said, stroking his head tenderly. "I am sending the musiua to your place in a few days."
"But I treat only children," Agustin stammered, looking up at me with a sad, apologetic face.
"She does not need a healing." Dona Mercedes laughed. "All she wants is to watch you and to hear your stories."
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/toltec/aud/df/02/donner_f-02-22.mp3
I sat up with a jolt. Something had plopped down on my bed by my feet with a forceful thump.
The dog sleeping nearby raised its head, pricked its ears, but hearing nothing other than my mumbled imprecations, put its muzzle back on its forepaws.
For a moment, I was totally disoriented as to where I was, but when I heard dona Mercedes' soft, yet persistent murmur, I realized I was in the house of Leon Chirino's brother, in a small town an hour's drive from Curmina.
I was on the cot they had set up for me in the kitchen. I had driven Leon Chirino and dona Mercedes there in the middle of the night, for they had to conduct a private seance for his brother.
Closing my eyes, I settled back on the lumpy pillow and abandoned myself to the comforting sound of the healer's voice. I felt the sound wrap itself around me. I was definitely falling asleep when another thumping noise woke me up again.
The musty blanket I was covered with was all bunched up around my neck.
I half rose to straighten it out and screamed upon seeing Agustin's cat perched on my knee.
"Why do you always shriek when you see my pet?" His voice coming from the darkness was full of gentle mockery. Agustin, sitting cross-legged at the foot of my cot, reached for his cat.
"I have come to protect you from the dog," he explained, his dazzling blue eyes fixed on my face. "Dogs do not really sleep at night. If you open your eyes in the darkness you can see how a dog watches you all night long. That is why they are called watchdogs." He laughed at his own joke.
I opened my mouth to speak to him, but no sound crossed my lips. I reached out, but Agustin and the cat wavered indistinctly before my eyes until they finally faded away.
Perhaps they are all outside, I thought, and stepped into the yard, still shrouded by the shadows of dawn. There was no one about.
I looked at my wristwatch. Only two hours had passed since dona Mercedes, Leon Chirino, and I had arrived.
Realizing that I had had far too little sleep, I went back to my cot, pulled the blanket over my head, and dozed off.
I awoke to the sound of voices and music and the scent of coffee.
Leon Chirino, bent over the kerosene stove, was listening to the radio as he strained freshly made coffee through a flannel sieve.
"Did you have a good sleep?" he asked, motioning me to sit down by him.
I joined him at a big, square table covered with brand-new oilcloth. He half filled two cups with coffee and added to each a generous amount of cane liquor.
"For strength," he said, pushing the steaming porcelain cup toward me.
Afraid to get drunk, I took a few hesitant sips. The cup had golden edges and painted roses on its surface.
He replenished his own cup with more coffee and cane liquor.
"Dona Mercedes says that you are clairvoyant," I said. "Can you tell me what fate has in store for me?" I hoped that my abrupt question would elicit a candid response.
"My dear," he said in that charming forbearance older people show when addressing someone much younger. "I am an old friend of dona Mercedes.
"I live with her ghosts and her memories. I share her solitude." He spat through his teeth, then taking two cigarettes from the pack on the table, he put one behind each ear.
"You had better go and see Agustin," he advised. "He starts early. Let me show you the way into town."
"You really have not answered my question," I said undaunted by his eagerness to get me out of the house.
A sardonic, bemused expression appeared on his face. "I can not tell you what is in store for you," he affirmed.
"Clairvoyants have glimpses of things they do not understand, and then they make up the rest."
He took my arm and practically pulled me outside. "Let me show you the way to Agustin's house," he repeated.
He pointed to a trail winding down the hill. "If you follow this path, you will reach town. Anyone there will tell you where Agustin lives."
"What about dona Mercedes?" I asked.
"We will come and get you in the evening," he replied, then bent toward me and in a conspiratorial whisper he added, "Dona Mercedes and I will be busy the whole day with my brother's business."
The twittering of bluebirds in the trees and the fragrance of the ripe mangoes, shimmering amid the dark foliage like clumps of gold, filled the air.
A well-trodden path winding down the slope ran into a wide dirt-packed street and branched off again into the hills at the other end of the hot, sunlit town.
Women sweeping the cement sidewalks in front of their brightly painted houses paused for an instant to return my greeting as I walked by.
"Can you tell me where the healer Agustin lives?" I asked one of the women.
"I sure can," she replied, resting her chin on her hands cupped over the end of the broom handle. In a loud voice- no doubt for the benefit of her curious neighbors- she directed me to the green stucco house at the very end of the street. "It is the one with the big antenna on the roof. You can not miss it."
She lowered her voice to a murmur and in a confidential tone assured me that Agustin could cure anything from insomnia to snakebites. Even cancer and leprosy were not too much for him. His young patients always got well.
I knocked repeatedly on Agustin's front door, but there was no answer.
"Just walk right in," a young girl shouted, leaning out a window across the street. "Agustin can not hear you. He is way in the back."
Following her advice, I stepped through the front door that opened into the inside patio. I peeked into each of the three rooms I passed, which also opened onto the patio.
Except for a hammock in each of them, the first two rooms were empty.
The third one was the living room. Calendars and magazine pictures decorated the walls. A row of straight-backed chairs and a plastic-covered couch faced an enormous television set.
Farther back was the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen through an alcove was yet another room. I saw Agustin there, seated at a large table.
As I approached, he rose smiling and stood scratching his head, his other hand thrust deep into the pocket of his worn khaki pants. His white shirt had patches, and the cutoff sleeves were frayed at the unhemmed cuffs.
"This is my working room!" he exclaimed proudly, extending his arm about in a circle. "I have got everything in here. And I am about to open. My patients come through the side door. That door brings both of us luck."
The room, well lit and ventilated by two windows facing the hills, smelled of disinfectant.
There were rows of unvarnished, unpainted shelves on all the walls. On the shelves, neatly arranged and all properly labeled, stood various-sized flasks, bottles, jars, and boxes filled with dried roots, bark, leaves, and flowers. These items were not only identified by their common names but also by their scientific Latin nomenclature.
The table was hand carved and faced the open windows. Bottles, bowls, pestles, books, and two scales were lined up on the highly polished surface.
A cot and the three-foot-tall crucifix hanging in a corner with its votive candle burning on a triangular ledge beneath it indeed confirmed that I had stepped into the working room of a healer, not an old-fashioned apothecary.
Without much ado, Agustin brought in another chair from the kitchen and invited me to observe him at work.
He opened the lucky side door he had pointed out earlier. There were three women and four children in the adjacent room.
The hours passed swiftly. He treated each patient by first examining a jar filled with the child's urine that had been brought in by the mother. Prompted by each woman's account of her child's symptoms, Agustin proceeded to "read the waters."
The odor, the color, and the kind of microbes, or filaments, as he preferred to call them and which he claimed to see with the naked eye, were all carefully considered before he arrived at a diagnosis.
Fevers, colds, indigestion, parasites, asthma, rashes, allergies, anemia, and even measles and smallpox were among the most prevalent illnesses Agustin claimed to recognize after a thorough "reading of the waters."
In respectful silence, each woman waited for Agustin to invoke the help of Christ before he prescribed the appropriate medication.
He mixed his own herbal concoctions. Being familiar with, and a believer in, modern pharmacopoeia, Agustin was inclined to supplement his own remedies with milk of magnesia, antibiotics, aspirins, and vitamins, which he had repacked and rebottled in his own containers.
Like Mercedes Peralta, he charged no set fee but left it to the judgment of his clients: That is, they paid whatever they could afford.
Our late lunch of chicken and pork empanadas, brought to us by a woman in the neighborhood, came to an abrupt end when a man carrying a small boy walked into the kitchen. The child, perhaps six or seven years old, had cut the calf of his leg while playing in the field with his father's machete.
In his calm, sure manner, Agustin carried the child to the cot in his working room and undid the makeshift, blood-soaked bandage. First he bathed the deep gash with rosemary water, and then with peroxide.
It was hard to tell whether the child was being hypnotized by Agustin's soothing touch, as he massaged the anxious little face, or by his soft voice, as he recited an incantation, but in a matter of moments, the boy was asleep.
And then Agustin began the most important part of his treatment. To stop the bleeding, he applied to the wound a poultice of leaves that had been soaked in clear, sugarcane liquor.
Then he prepared a paste that, he claimed, would heal the wound in less than ten days and leave no scar.
Invoking the guidance of Christ, Agustin sprinkled a few drops of a milky substance on an abalone shell. With slow, rhythmic motions he began to grind the shell with a broad wooden pestle. A half hour elapsed before he had little less than a half teaspoon of a greenish, musky-smelling substance.
He examined the cut once more, pressed the wound closed with his fingers, and carefully spread the paste over the gash. Mumbling a prayer, he expertly bandaged the leg with strips of white cloth.
A satisfied smile lit his face as he handed the sleeping boy into the father's arms and told him to bring him every other day to change the dressing.
Late in the afternoon, certain that there would be no more patients that day, Agustin gave me a tour of his yard.
His medicinal plants grew in neat rows and square patches, arranged as carefully as the jars and bottles were on the table and shelves in his working room.
At the far end of the yard, leaning against a tool shed, stood an old kerosene refrigerator.
"Do not open it!" Agustin cried out, holding my arm in a firm grip.
"How could I?" I protested. "It is padlocked. What secrets do you keep in there?"
"My witchcraft," he whispered. "You do know that I practice witchcraft, do you not?"
His tone was mocking, but his face was somber when he added, "I am a specialist in healing children and bewitching adults."
"Do you really practice witchcraft?" I asked incredulously.
"Do not be obtuse, Musiua," Agustin chided.
He paused for a moment, then in an emphatic tone, added, "Dona Mercedes must have told you that the other side of healing is bewitching. They go together because one is useless without the other. I heal children. I bewitch adults," he repeated, knocking on the top of the refrigerator. "I am very good at both.
"Dona Mercedes says that one day I will bewitch the same ones I healed when they were children." He smiled at my startled face. "I do not think I will, but only time will tell."
Taking advantage of his expansive mood, I finally told him what had been on my mind the whole day. That I had seen and talked to him when I was in a dreamlike state.
Agustin listened attentively, but his gaze betrayed nothing.
"I can not quite define what it was," I said, "but it was not a dream!" Exasperated by his unwillingness to comment or to explain, I urged him to say something.
"I like you so much that I wanted to know if you are really a medium," he said, smiling. "Now I know you are."
"I think you are humoring me," I said, even more exasperated.
Agustin's eyebrows raised in arcs of astonishment. "It must be horrible to have big feet."
"Big feet?" I stammered uncomprehendingly, looking down at my sandals. "My feet are in perfect proportion to my size."
"They should be smaller," Agustin insisted, putting his fingers to his lips as though to suppress a smile. "Your feet are too large.
"That is why you live in perpetual reality. That is why you want everything explained." There was mockery in his voice, mixed with a tinge of compassion that did nothing to reassure me.
"Witchcraft follows rules that cannot be empirically demonstrated or repeated, unlike other laws of nature. Witchcraft is precisely the act of persuading reason to rise above itself or, if you wish, to move below itself." He chuckled and gave me a push.
I stumbled over my feet, and he quickly grabbed my arm to keep me from falling.
"Do you see now that your feet are too big?" Agustin asked and then laughed.
I wondered if he was trying to hypnotize me, for he gazed at me without blinking. I was held captive by his eyes. Like two drops of water, they seemed to spread wider and wider, blurring everything around me. All I was aware of was his voice.
"A sorcerer chooses to be different from what he was raised to be," he continued. "He has to understand that witchcraft is a lifelong task.
"A sorcerer, through witchcraft, weaves patterns like webs; patterns that transmit invoked powers to some superior mystery.
Human actions have an endless, spreading network of results; he accepts and reinterprets these results in a magical way."
He brought his face even closer to mine and lowered his voice to a soft whisper. "A sorcerer's hold on reality is absolute. His grip is so powerful, he can bend reality every which way in the service of his art. But he never forgets what reality is or was."
Without another word he turned and walked toward the living room.
Swiftly, I followed after him.
He plopped down on the sofa and crossed his legs the way I had seen him do on my cot.
Smiling up at me, he patted the place beside him. "Let us have some real witchcraft," he said, switching on the remote control of the enormous TV set.
There was no time to ask any more questions. In the next instant, we were surrounded by a group of giggling children from the neighborhood.
"Each evening they come here to watch TV with me for an hour or so," Agustin explained. "Later on, you and I will have time to talk."
After that initial meeting, I became Agustin's unbiased admirer. Attracted not only by his healing skills but by his haunting personality, I practically moved into one of the empty rooms of his house.
He wove countless stories for me, including the one Mercedes Peralta wanted me to hear.
Startled by a faint moan, Agustin opened his eyes.
In a shaft of light, a spider suspended on invisible thread dropped from the crumbling cane ceiling all the way to the ground where Agustin lay curled up like a cat.
He reached toward the spider, crushed it between his fingers, and ate it. Sighing, he drew his knees even closer to his chest as he felt the cold of dawn seep through the cracks of the weather-beaten mud walls.
Agustin could not remember whether days or weeks had passed since his mother brought him to this dilapidated, abandoned hut, where bats hung from the ceiling like unlit bulbs and cockroaches swarmed around in daylight and in darkness.
All he knew was that he had been hungry ever since; that the slugs, spiders, and grasshoppers he caught never stilled the gnawing pain in his swollen belly.
Agustin heard the faint moan again. It came from the shadowy corner at the far end of the room.
He saw an apparition of his mother sitting on the mattress, her mouth slightly open as she rubbed her naked belly. She was riding the mattress as though she were on a donkey, her naked shadow moving up and down on the soot-stained wall.
Only a few hours before, he had seen his mother struggling with a man. He had seen her thin legs, like black snakes, wrapped tightly around the man's torso, squeezing the breath out of him. And when he heard his mother's piercing scream, followed by a silence that had lasted for the rest of the night, he knew that the man had won the struggle. He had killed her.
Agustin's tired eyes closed with pleasure at the thought that he was now an orphan. He was safe. They would take him at the mission.
Half-conscious of his mother's ghostly sighs, giggles, and whispers whirling about the room, he dozed off again.
A loud groan shattered the morning stillness. Agustin opened his eyes and pressed his fist against his lips to stifle a scream as he saw the same man from the night before sit up on the mattress.
Agustin did not know the man, yet he was sure he was from Ipairi. Agustin vaguely remembered seeing him talking to his mother in the plaza.
Had the women from the small hamlet in the hills sent the man to take Agustin back? To perhaps kill him? It could not be. He must be having a vivid horrible dream.
The man cleared his throat and spat on the ground. His voice filled the room. "I will take you away today. But I can not take the boy. Why do you not leave him with the Protestants? You know that they have a place for children. Even if they will not take him, they will feed him."
When Agustin heard his mother's harsh reply he knew that he was wide awake: He knew that she was not a ghost.
"The Protestants will not take any children unless they are orphaned," his mother said. "There was nothing else I could do but bring the boy to this abandoned shack. I am waiting for him to die."
"I know of a woman who will take him," the man said. "She will know what to do with him. She is a witch."
"It is too late now," his mother said. "I wish I had given Agustin to a witch when he was born.
"Ever since he was a baby, a witch in Ipairi wanted him. She used to feed him strange potions and hang amulets around his wrists and neck, allegedly to guard him from calamities and disease.
"I know she cast a spell on the boy. That witch is responsible for all my misfortune."
His mother was silent for a moment; then in a strangled whisper, as though she were under attack by an unseen enemy, she added, "I am terrified of witches. If I went to one now, she would know that I have not been feeding the boy. She would kill me."
Tears rolled down Agustin's cheeks as he remembered the days in Ipairi when his mother used to cradle him in her arms. She would smother him with kisses and tell him that his eyes were like pieces of the sky.
But when the women in the neighboring shacks forbade their children to play with him, his mother became a different person. She no longer touched or kissed him. Finally, she ceased speaking to him altogether.
One afternoon, a woman carrying a dead child in her arms burst into their shack. "Blue eyes in a black face," she screamed at Agustin's mother, "that is the work of the devil. That is the devil himself. He killed my baby with the evil eye. If you do not get rid of that boy, I will."
That same night, his mother fled with him to the hills. Agustin was certain that it was that woman who had cast a spell on his mother so she would hate him.
The man's loud voice cut into Agustin's reveries.
"You do not have to take him to the witch yourself. I can leave word with her to pick the kid up tonight.
"We will be gone by then. I will take you far away from here, where no witch will ever find you," the man promised.
His mother remained silent for a long time; then she flung her head back and laughed hysterically.
She rose from the mattress and wrapped the dirty blanket tightly around her body. Stepping around the broken table and the few crates scattered about, she made her way across the room.
"Look at him," she hissed, jerking her chin toward the comer where Agustfn lay curled up, pretending to be asleep. "He is only six years old, yet he looks like an evil old man.
"His hair has fallen out. His body is covered with scabs. His stomach is swollen with parasites. Yet, he survives.
"He has no clothes. He sleeps without a blanket. Yet, he does not even catch cold."
She turned toward the man on the mattress. "Can you not see that he is indeed the devil? The devil will find me wherever I go."
His mother's eyes shone feverishly bright under her disheveled hair. "The thought of having suckled the devil at my own breast fills me with fear and revulsion."
She reached up to a niche in the wall where she had hidden the corncakes the man had brought her last night. She gave one to the man, and nibbling on the other one, she lowered herself beside him on the mattress.
In a monotonous, trancelike tone she recounted that Agustfn was a changeling.
"One of the nurses at the hospital changed my own baby for the devil," she continued, her tone suddenly vehement.
"Everyone knew that I was going to have a girl. My pregnant belly was broad instead of pointed. My hair began to fall out. Blotches and blemishes appeared on my skin. My legs swelled. Those are the symptoms of carrying a girl.
"At first, even though I knew he was a changeling, I could not help but love him. He was so beautiful and so clever. He never cried. He spoke before he walked, and he sang like an angel.
"I refused to believe any of the women in Ipairi who accused Agustin of having the evil eye. Even after my stillborn pregnancy I did not pay any attention to the neighbors' insinuations.
"I just thought they were ignorant, and worst of all, envious of the boy's beautiful eyes. After all, who ever heard of a child having the evil eye?"
She scraped out the white, soft center of the corncake and flung the dry crust across the room. "But when my man died in an accident at the mill, I had to agree with the women." She covered her face with her hands, and quietly added, "Agustin has never been ill in his life. I should have left him to his fate in Ipairi. Then his death would not be on my conscience."
"Let me get word to the woman I have been telling you about," the man said, his voice soft, yet persuasive. "I know she will take him."
At great length he explained about his job at the pharmaceutical laboratory. He worked in the storeroom and was on very good terms with his boss. He foresaw no difficulties in convincing the man of his need for an advance.
"With the money, the two of us can go to Caracas," he said. He rose and dressed. "Wait for me at the laboratory. I will be out by five. I will have everything arranged by then."
Agustin reached for the dry crust on the ground. On unsteady legs, he walked toward the narrow, back doorway, which no longer had a door, and stepped out into what had once been a yard.
He headed toward his favorite place, the gnarled, no-longer-blooming acacia tree overhanging the ravine. He sat on the ground, his legs extended in front of him, his naked back resting against a portion of the crumbling low wall that had once encircled the grounds.
The scrawny, sickly looking cat that had followed him all the way from Ipairi rubbed its coarse fur against his thigh. Agustin gave it a small piece of the crust, then pushed the cat away toward the lizards scuttling in and out of the crevices in the mud wall.
He would not part with another crumb. He was never capable of satisfying his own relentless hunger; a hunger that filled his days and nights with dreams of food. With a sigh on his lips he dozed off.
Startled by a gust of wind, he woke up. Dead leaves swirled in a circle around him. The leaves rose high up in the air and then descended in brown rustling whirlpools into the ravine.
He could hear the murmuring stream below. When it rained the shallow water grew into a seething river, sweeping along trees and dead animals from the hamlets in the mountains.
Agustin turned his head slightly and gazed at the silent hills around him. Thin columns of smoke drifted up into the sky, melting with the moving clouds. Could the Protestant mission be that close? he asked himself. Or perhaps the smoke was from the house of the woman who was not afraid to take him.
He rested his cheek on his small bony hand. Flies buzzed around his open mouth. He pressed his parched lips together, spread his legs, and urinated. He was hungry. He could feel the pain inside him as he again fell asleep.
The sun was high when Agustin awoke. The cat was nearby, devouring a large lizard. He crawled toward the feline. It snarled viciously, holding the half-eaten reptile tightly under its paw. Agustin kicked the cat in the stomach, then reached for the slippery entrails and swallowed them. He looked up and found his mother watching him from the doorway.
"Holy Virgin!" she exclaimed. "He is not human." She crossed herself. "It will not be long before he poisons himself."
Again she made the sign of the cross and, folding her hands in prayer, murmured, "Holy Father. Get him out of my way. Make him die a natural death, so I will not have him on my conscience."
She went inside, lifted the mattress, and pulled out her only dress. She caressed it and lovingly pressed the wrinkled dress against her body, then shook it repeatedly and laid it out on the mattress with great care.
Curiously, Agustin watched her light a fire in the cooking pit. Humming a little tune, she retrieved the coffee and the pieces of sugar loaf she kept in a crate nailed high up on the wall.
Agustin wanted a piece of that sugar. He tried to stand up, but overcome by nausea he crouched with his elbows against the ground and vomited unchewed pieces of lizard.
Salty tears dribbled down his sunken cheeks. He gagged repeatedly, foam and bile spurting from his trembling lips.
He wiped his mouth and chin on his shoulders. With a painful moan he tried to straighten up but slumped forward on the ground.
The sound of the murmuring ravine engulfed him like a soft veil. When the smell of coffee filtered through his nostrils and he heard his mother say that she had made him sweet coffee, he knew that he was dreaming. His dry lips grimaced.
He wanted to smile when he heard her laugh; that high, abrupt, happy laughter he used to know so well. He wondered if she would put on her red dress and meet the man at the pharmaceutical laboratory.
Agustin opened his eyes. On the ground next to him stood a small tin filled with coffee. Afraid the vision would vanish, he reached out and lifted the can to his mouth. Indifferent to the burning pain on his lips and tongue, he sipped the strong, very sweet brew. It cleared his head and stopped his nausea.
Dreamily, Agustin gazed at the slanted rain lines in the distance. Within moments dark clouds, edged with gold, floated across the sky. The clouds stained the hills with purple shadows and turned the sky a smoky black.
A cold wind, followed by a deafening roar, rose from the bottom of the ravine. The rainwater from the distant hills gushed down the deep gorge with outrageous force. Within moments large heavy drops burst from the sky.
Agustin rose, tilted his face skyward, and, with arms outstretched, welcomed the soothing coolness that washed him clean. Driven by an inexplicable impulse, he went into the house and picked up the dress on the mattress.
Clutching it with trembling hands, he hurried outside to the very edge of the ravine and threw the garment into the wind. It flew like a kite, landing on a leafless branch of the old acacia tree overhanging the steep slope.
"You devil! You monster!" his mother screamed, rushing toward him, her hair tumbling wildly about her face, her arms extended. As if transfixed by the sound of the roaring water, she just stood there between the boy and the fluttering dress, her eyes filled with hatred, unable to say a word.
Then, holding on to weeds and exposed roots, she carefully eased herself toward the overhanging branch of the acacia tree.
Agustin watched her from behind the gnarled trunk with fascinated interest. Her feet moved with unerring agility on the steep slippery ground.
She will get the dress by any means, he thought. He felt anger and fear.
She was only a few inches away from it. She stretched her arm as far as she could. She touched the dress with the tip of her fingers and then lost her footing and tumbled over the brink.
Her horror-stricken scream mingled with the sound of the roaring water was carried away by the wind.
Agustin moved closer to the edge. His eyes shone with a hollow depth as he saw his mother's body spin helplessly in the thick brown water on its journey to the sea.
The storm died away, the rain ceased, and the wind dropped. Everything except the turbulent water in the ravine regained its habitual murmuring calm.
Agustin walked into the house, lay down on the mattress, and covered himself with the thin, dirty blanket. He felt the coarse, wet fur of the cat seeking the warmth of his body. He pulled the blanket over his eyes and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
It was night when he awoke. Through the open doorway he could see the moon entangled in the barren branches of the acacia tree. "We will go now," he murmured, stroking the cat.
He felt strong. It would be easy to walk across the hills, he decided. With each other as companions, he had the vague certainty that he and the cat would find the Protestant mission or the house of the woman who was not afraid to take him.
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Mercedes Peralta came rushing into my room, sat on my bed, and shifted about until she was comfortably settled.
"Unpack your gear," she said. "You can not go to see Agustin anymore. He has left for his yearly trip to remote areas in the country."
She spoke with such certainty that I had the feeling she had just finished talking to him over the telephone; but I knew there was not one in the neighborhood.
Candelaria came at that moment into the room holding a tray with my favorite dessert of guava jelly and a few slices of white cheese.
"I know it is not the same as sitting spiritually with Agustin in front of a TV set," she remarked, "but I am all you have for the moment." She placed the tray on the night table and sat down on the bed opposite from dona Mercedes.
Dona Mercedes laughed and urged me to eat my treat. She said that Agustin was known in distant, godforsaken towns and visited them yearly. At great length she talked about his gift for healing children.
"When will he be back?" I asked. The thought that I might not see him again filled me with indescribable sadness.
"There is no way to know," dona Mercedes said. "Six months, perhaps even longer. He does this because he feels he has a great debt to pay."
"Whom does he owe?"
She looked at Candelaria, then both of them looked at me as though I ought to have known.
"Witches understand debts of this kind in a most peculiar manner," dona Mercedes finally said. "Healers pray to the saints, and to the Virgin, and to our Lord Jesus Christ.
"Witches pray to power. They entice it with their incantations." She rose from the bed and paced about the room.
Softly, as though she were talking to herself, she continued to say that although Agustin prayed to the saints, he owed something to a higher order; an order that was not human.
Dona Mercedes was silent for a few moments, looking at me but allowing no expression to be read on her face.
"Agustin has known about that higher order all his life, even as a child," she continued. "Did he ever tell you that the same man who was going to take his mother away found Agustin on a pitch-black night, in the rain, already half-dead, and brought him to me?"
Dona Mercedes did not wait for my response but quickly added, "To be in harmony with that higher order has always been the secret of Agustin's success. He does it through his healing and bewitching."
Again she paused for a moment, looking up at the ceiling. "That higher order made Agustin and Candelaria a gift," she continued, lowering her gaze toward me. "It helped them from the moment they were born.
"Candelaria pays part of her debt by being my servant. She is the best servant there is."
Dona Mercedes moved toward the door, and before stepping outside, she turned to face Candelaria and me, a dazzling smile on her face. "I think that in some measure you, too, owe a great deal to that higher order," she said. "So try by all means to pay back the debt you have."
Not a word was said for a long time. The two women looked at me with a sense of expectancy. It occurred to me that they were waiting for me to make the obvious connection- obvious to them: Just as Candelaria was a born witch, Agustin was a born sorcerer.
Dona Mercedes and Candelaria listened to me with beaming smiles.
"Agustin is capable of making his own links," dona Mercedes explained. "He has a direct connection to that higher order which is the wheel of chance itself; and the witch's shadow as well, or whatever it is that makes that wheel move."