Lulled by the soft breeze and the laughter of children playing in the street, I dozed all afternoon in the hammock that hung between two soursop trees in the yard.
I was even oblivious to the scent of powder detergent mingled with the pungent odor of creosol with which Candelaria washed the floors twice each day; regardless of whether they were dirty.
I waited until it was nearly six o'clock.
Then, as Mercedes Peralta had requested, I went and knocked on her bedroom door. There was no answer. Quietly, I stepped inside.
Usually at that time, she was through with the people who came to her to be treated for one malady or another. She never saw more than two a day.
On her bad days, which were quite frequent, she saw no one. On those occasions, I took her for rides in my jeep and for long walks in the surrounding hills.
"Is that you, Musiua?" dona Mercedes asked, stretching in her low-hanging hammock, fastened to metal rings built into the wall.
I greeted her and sat on the double bed by the window.
She never slept in it. She maintained that from a bed, regardless of its size, one could have a fatal fall.
Waiting for her to get up, I looked around the oddly furnished room that never failed to enchant me.
Things had been arranged there with a look of purposeful incongruity.
The two night tables at the head and foot of the bed, cluttered with candles and figurines of saints, served as altars.
A low wooden wardrobe painted blue and pink blocked the door that opened to the street.
I wondered what was inside, for dona Mercedes' clothes- she never wore anything but black- hung everywhere, from hooks on the walls and behind the door, at the head and foot of the iron bedstead, and even from the ropes holding the hammock.
A crystal chandelier, which did not work, dangled precariously from the cane ceiling. It was gray with dust, and spiders had spun their webs around its prisms.
An almanac, the kind one tears a page from each day, hung behind the door.
Combing her fingers through her white mop of hair, Mercedes Peralta heaved a deep sigh, then swung her legs out of the hammock and hunted about with her feet for her cloth sandals.
She sat still for a moment, then moved to the high narrow window facing the street and opened its wooden panels.
She blinked repeatedly until her eyes adjusted to the late-afternoon light beaming into the room.
Intently, she gazed at the sky, as if she were expecting some message from the sunset.
"Are we going for a walk?" I asked.
Slowly, she turned around. "A walk?" she repeated, arching her brows in surprise. "How can we go for a walk when I have a person waiting for me."
I opened my mouth ready to inform her there was no one outside, but the mocking expression in her tired eyes compelled me to silence. She took my hand, and we walked out of her room.
With his chin buried in his chest, a frail-looking old man dozed on the wooden bench outside the room where Mercedes Peralta treated people who came for help.
Sensing our presence, he straightened up. "I don't feel too well," he said in a toneless voice, reaching for his straw hat and the walking stick lying beside him.
"Octavio Cantu," Mercedes Peralta said, addressing herself to me, but shaking his hand.
She led him up the two steps into the room.
I followed close behind.
He turned around with an inquiring expression in his eyes as he gazed at me.
"She's been helping me," she said. "But if you don't want her with us, she'll go outside."
He stood there for a moment nervously shifting his feet.
His mouth twisted into a lopsided smile. "If she has been helping you," he murmured with a touch of helplessness, "I suppose it's all right."
With a swift movement of her head, Mercedes Peralta motioned me to my stool by the altar, then helped the old man into the chair directly in front of the high rectangular table.
She seated herself to his right, facing him.
"Where could it be?" she mumbled repeatedly, searching among the assortment of jars, candles and cigars, dried roots, and scraps of material scattered on the table.
She sighed with relief upon finding her nautical compass, which she placed in front of Octavio Cantu.
Attentively, she studied the round-shaped metal box.
"Look at this!" she cried out, beckoning me to move closer.
It was the same compass I had seen her examine so intently the first day I walked into that room. The needle, barely visible through the opaque, badly scratched glass, moved vigorously to and fro, as if animated by some invisible force emanating from Octavio Cantu.
Mercedes Peralta used the compass as a diagnostic device only if she believed the person to be suffering from a spiritual ailment rather than a natural disease. So far, I had been unable to determine what criteria she used to differentiate between the two kinds of maladies. For her, a spiritual ailment could manifest itself in the form of a bout of bad luck as well as a common cold, which, depending on the circumstances, might also be diagnosed as a natural ailment.
Expecting to find some mechanical contraption that activated the needle, I examined the compass at every opportunity. Since there was none, I accepted her explanation as a bonafide truth: Whenever a person is centered, that is, when body, spirit, and soul are in harmony, the needle does not move at all.
To prove her point, she placed the compass in front of herself, Candelaria, and me. To my great astonishment, the needle moved only when the compass was in front of me.
Octavio Cantu craned his neck to peer at the instrument. "Am I sick?" he asked softly, gazing up at dona Mercedes.
"It's your spirit," she murmured. "Your spirit is in great turmoil."
She returned the compass to the glass cabinet, then positioned herself behind the old man and rested both hands on his head.
She remained that way for a long time; then with quick, sure movements, she ran her fingers down his shoulders and arms.
Swiftly, she stepped in front of him, her hands brushing lightly down his chest, his legs, all the way to his feet.
Reciting a prayer that was part church litany, part incantation- she maintained that every good healer knew that Catholicism and spiritualism complemented each other- she alternately massaged his back and chest for nearly a half hour.
To give momentary relief to her tired hands, she periodically shook them vigorously behind her back. She called it casting off the accumulation of negative energy.
To mark the end of the first part of her treatment, she stamped her right foot three times on the ground.
Octavio Cantu shuddered uncontrollably.
She held his head from behind, pressing her palms to his temples until he began to draw slow, difficult breaths.
Mumbling a prayer, she moved to the altar, lit a candle and then a hand-rolled cigar, which she began to smoke with even, rapid puffs.
"I should be used to it by now," the old man said, breaking the smoky silence.
Startled by his voice, she began to cough until tears rolled down her cheeks. I wondered whether she had accidentally inhaled the smoke.
Octavio Cantu, oblivious to her coughing, continued to talk. "I've told you many, many times that whether I'm sober or drunk, I only dream one dream.
I'm standing in my shack. It's empty. I feel the wind and see shadows moving everywhere. But there are no more dogs to bark at the emptiness and at the shadows.
I awake with a terrible pressure: It feels like someone were sitting on my chest; and as I open my eyes, I see the yellow pupils of a dog. They open wider and wider, until they swallow me..." His voice trailed off.
Gasping for breath, he looked around the room. He no longer seemed to know where he was.
Mercedes Peralta dropped the cigar stub on the floor. Grabbing his chair from behind, she swiftly turned him around, so that he was now facing the altar.
With slow, mesmerizing movements, she massaged him around his eyes.
I must have dozed off, for I found myself alone in the room.
I quickly looked around. The candle on the altar was almost burned down.
Right above me in the corner close to the ceiling sat a moth the size of a small bird. It had enormous black circles on its wings; they stared at me like curious eyes.
A sudden rustle made me turn around.
Mercedes Peralta was sitting in her chair by the altar. I muffled a scream. I could have sworn she had not been there a moment before.
"I didn't know you were there," I said. "Look at that big moth above my head." I searched for the insect, but it was gone.
There was something about the way she looked at me that made me shudder.
"I got too tired and fell asleep," I explained. "I didn't even find out what was wrong with Octavio Cantu."
"He comes to see me from time to time," she said. "He needs me as a spiritualist and a healer. I lighten the burden that weighs on his soul."
She turned to the altar, and lit three candles.
In the flickering light her eyes were the color of the moth's wings.
"You'd better go to sleep," she suggested. "Remember, we're going to go for a walk at dawn."