I sat up as something brushed my cheek. Slowly, I raised my eyes toward the ceiling, searching for a gigantic moth. Ever since I had seen that bird-sized moth in the healing room, I had been obsessed with it.
Nightly, the moth appeared in my dreams transforming itself into Mercedes Peralta. When I told her that I somehow believed my dream, she laughed it off as a figment of my imagination.
I settled back onto my lumpy pillow.
As I was drifting back into sleep, I heard the unmistakable shuffle of Mercedes Peralta passing my door. I got up, put on my clothes, and tiptoed down the dark corridor.
A soft laughter came from her working room. The amber glow of candlelight seeped through the opening of the carelessly drawn curtain. Overcome by curiosity I looked inside.
Sitting at the table were Mercedes Peralta and a man, his face shaded by a hat.
"Won't you join us?" dona Mercedes called. "I was just telling our friend here that it wouldn't be long before you came looking for me."
"Leon Chirino!" I exclaimed as he turned toward me and pushed up the brim of his hat by way of greeting.
During my unsuccessful seance participation he had been introduced to me as the man in charge of organizing the spiritual meetings.
He was in his seventies, perhaps even in his eighties, yet his dark face had few wrinkles. He had big black eyes and sparkling white teeth, which ought to have been yellow from smoking cigars. There were white Stubbles on his chin, yet his white, short-cropped hair was immaculately combed. His dark suit, wrinkled and baggy, looked as if he had slept in it.
"He's been working like a madman," dona Mercedes said as if reading my thoughts.
Although I had not been invited again to a seance, Mercedes Peralta had encouraged me to visit Leon Chirino at least once a week. Sometimes she accompanied me; sometimes I went alone.
He was a carpenter by profession, yet his knowledge about the various shamanistic traditions practiced in Venezuela was astounding. He was interested in my research and spent hours going over my notes, tracing sorcerers' procedures to their Indian and African roots.
He knew about all the Venezuelan spiritualists, witches, and healers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He spoke of them with such unaffected familiarity that he gave me the impression he had known them personally.
Mercedes Peralta's voice intruded on my reveries. "Would you like to come with us to fulfill a promise?" she asked me.
Disconcerted by her question, I gazed from one to the other. Their faces revealed nothing.
"We'll be leaving right away," she said to me. "We have a long night and a long day ahead of us." She rose and took my arm. "I've got to prepare you for the trip."
It took her no time to get me ready. She hid my hair under a tight, knitted sailor's cap and darkened my face with a black vegetable paste. And she made me swear that I would not speak to anyone or ask questions.
Ignoring my suggestion that we take my jeep, Mercedes Peralta scrambled into the backseat of Leon Chirino's old Mercury. With its crumpled fenders and battered chassis, the car looked as if it had been salvaged from a junk yard.
Before I had a chance to ask about our destination, she ordered me to hold and take good care of her basket, which was filled to capacity with medicinal plants, candles, and cigars. Sighing loudly, she made the sign of the cross and promptly fell asleep.
I did not dare disturb Leon Chirino with conversation: He seemed to need all his concentration to keep his car rolling. The dim headlights barely illuminated the area right in front of us.
Bent slightly forward, he tensely gripped the wheel, as if he could thus help the car over the dark hills. When it balked on the steep upgrades, he spoke softly to it, urging it forward.
Downhill, he let the car go, taking the curves in almost complete darkness, and at such a reckless speed, I feared for our lives. Dust billowed through the glassless windows and through the gaps in the cardboard that concealed the rusted holes in the floor.
Smiling triumphantly, he finally brought the car to an abrupt halt. He turned off the headlights. Dona Mercedes stirred in the backseat.
"We've arrived," Leon Chirino said softly.
Quietly, we got out of the car. It was a dark, cloudy night. Not a star shone in the sky.
Whatever was out there stretched in front of us like a black void. I staggered clumsily after dona Mercedes, who seemed to have no problem seeing in the darkness.
Leon Chirino took me by the arm and guided me. I heard muffled laughter all around me. There seemed to be other people, but I couldn't see any of them.
Finally, someone lit a kerosene lantern. In the faint, wavering light I was able to make out the silhouette of four men and dona Mercedes crouching in a circle.
Leon Chirino took me a few feet away from the group. I felt totally incapacitated. He helped me to sit down and then propped me against something that looked like a rock protruding from the ground.
He handed me the lantern and instructed me to hold on to it and shine it on whatever I was told to.
Then he gave me two canteens: The largest one was filled with water, the smaller one with rum. I was supposed to hand them to the men whenever they asked for them.
Silently and quite effortlessly, two men began to dig the loose dirt with long shovels. They deposited the dirt in a neat pile next to the hole.
At least a half hour elapsed before they stopped and asked for the canteen with rum. While they drank and rested, Leon Chirino and another man began to dig.
Taking turns, the men worked, drank either rum or water, and rested. Within an hour they had dug a hole deep enough for a man to disappear in it.
The instant one of the men hit something hard with his shovel they stopped working. Leon Chirino asked me to shine the light inside the hole but not to look at it.
"This is it," said one of the men. "Now we can all dig around it." He and his partner joined the others in the hole.
I was dying with curiosity but did not dare break my promise. I wished I could at least talk to dona Mercedes, sitting not too far from me. Immobile, she seemed to be in a deep trance.
The men worked feverishly in the hole. At least half an hour elapsed before I heard Leon Chirino's voice telling dona Mercedes that they were ready to open it.
"Musiua, light a cigar from my basket and hand it to me," she ordered. "And also bring me my basket."
I lit a cigar, and as I rose to bring it to her, Leon Chirino whispered from the bottom of the hole. "Crouch, Musiua! Crouch."
I stooped and handed dona Mercedes the cigar and the basket.
"Don't look into the hole for anything in the world!" she whispered in my ear.
I moved back to where I had been sitting; fighting the nearly invincible desire to shine the lantern into the hole. I knew with absolute certainty that they were digging out a trunk filled with gold coins. I could hear the dull sound of the shovels hitting what seemed to be a large and heavy object.
Fascinated, I watched dona Mercedes retrieve a black candle and a jar with black powder from her basket. She lit the black candle, propped it on the ground next to the hole, and then ordered me to turn off the lantern.
The black candle gave out an eerie light. Dona Mercedes sat on her calves next to the candle.
Obeying some unvoiced command, the men stuck their heads out of the hole one by one right in front of her.
Each time a head appeared, she poured some of the black powder into her cupped hands and then rubbed each head as if it were a ball. As soon as she was done with the heads, she smeared the black powder on the men's hands.
My curiosity reached its peak when I heard the cracking sound of a lid being opened.
"We've got it," Leon Chirino said, popping his head out of the hole.
Dona Mercedes handed him the jar with the black powder, another one filled with a white powder, and then she blew out the black candle.
Once again we were engulfed by total darkness. The groaning and heaving sounds of the men rising from the hole only accentuated the unnatural silence. I huddled against dona Mercedes, but she pushed me away.
"It's done," Leon Chirino whispered in a strained voice.
Dona Mercedes relit the black candle. I could barely make out the shapes of the three men carrying a large bundle. They deposited it behind the mound of dirt.
I was watching them so intently that I almost fell forward into the pit when I heard dona Mercedes' voice telling Leon Chirino, who was still inside the hole, to fasten the nails quickly and climb out.
Leon Chirino emerged right away, and dona Mercedes massaged his hands and face, while the other three men picked up their shovels and filled the hole.
As soon as they were done, dona Mercedes placed the lit candle in the center of the filled-up hole. Leon Chirino threw the last shovel of dirt over it and put out the flame.
Someone relit the kerosene lamp, and immediately the men went to work: They arranged the ground so perfectly that no one could have guessed that a hole had been dug.
I watched them for a while, but I lost interest, all my curiosity was focused on the now visible bundle wrapped in a tarpaulin.
"No one will ever know," one of the men said and chuckled softly. "Now, let's get out of here. It'll be daylight soon."
We all walked over to the bundle. I led the way with the light.
In my eagerness to find out what it was, I tripped over it. The tarpaulin slid a bit, revealing a woman's foot clad in a black shoe.
Unable to restrain myself, I pulled the tarpaulin and shone the light on the exposed bundle. It was the corpse of a woman.
My fright and revulsion were so intense I did not even scream- as I wanted and meant to. All I could manage was a faint croak, and then everything went black.
I came to, lying on dona Mercedes' lap in the backseat of Leon Chirino's car. Pressed firmly against my nose was a handkerchief soaked with a mixture of ammonia and rose water. It was dona Mercedes' favorite remedy. She used to call it a spiritual injection.
"I always knew you were a coward," she commented and began to massage my temples.
Leon Chirino turned around. "You're very daring, Musiua," he said. "But you still don't have the strength to back it up. You will though. Some day, you will."
I was not in the mood for comments. My fright had been too great for comfort. I accused them of malice for not warning me about their doings.
Dona Mercedes said that everything they did was premeditated and that part of that premeditation was my total ignorance. It gave them a sort of protection against the desecration of a tomb. The flaw was my greedy interest to find out what was under the tarpaulin.
"I told you that we were going to fulfill a promise," dona Mercedes said to me. "We have done the first part. We have unearthed a corpse, now we have to bury it again." She closed her eyes and fell asleep.
I scrambled into the front seat.
Humming softly, Leon Chirino turned the car onto a dirt road that led to the coast.
It was already morning when we reached an abandoned coconut grove.
Cued perhaps by the smell of the sea breeze, Mercedes Peralta awoke. She yawned loudly, then sat up. Leaning out the window, she seemed to breathe in the sound of the distant waves.
"This is a good place to park," Leon Chirino stated, stopping at the foot of the straightest and tallest palm tree I had ever seen. Its heavy silvery fronds appeared to be sweeping the clouds from the sky.
"Lorenzo Paz's house isn't far from here," Leon Chirino went on, helping dona Mercedes out of the car. "The walk will do us good." Smiling, he handed me her basket to carry.
We turned away from the sea and set out along a well-trodden path that cut across a thick grove of tall bamboo bordering a stream. It was cool and dark inside the grove, and the air had taken on the green transparency of leaves. Leon Chirino walked way ahead of us, his straw hat down over his ears, so that the wind would not carry it away.
We caught up with him by a short narrow bridge. Leaning over the rustic balustrade made out of freshly cut poles, we rested for a moment and gazed at a group of women washing their clothes, pounding them on flat river stones. A shirt slipped out of someone's hands, and a young girl jumped into the water to catch it. Her thin dress swelled out like a balloon, then molded itself to her breasts, stomach, and the gentle curve of her hips.
The straight dirt road on the other side of the bridge led to a small village, which we did not approach. Instead, we turned onto a side road along a neglected maize field. Hardened corn husks hung forlornly on withered stalks: They rustled like crumpled newspapers in the faint breeze.
We came to a small house: Its walls had been recently painted, and the tile roof had been partially redone. Banana trees, their fronds almost transparent in the sunlight, stood on either side of the front door like so many guards.
The door was ajar. Without knocking or calling out, we walked straight in.
A group of men squatting on the brick floor with their backs against the wall lifted their rum-filled glasses in greeting, then continued their conversation in low, unhurried voices.
Dust bars of sunlight beamed in through a narrow window, adding to the stale heat and intensifying the pungent odor of kerosene and creosol. In the far corner, propped on two crates, stood an open coffin.
One of the men rose and, holding my elbow gently, led me to the coffin.
The man was slight but strongly built. His white hair and wrinkled face indicated age, yet there was something youthful about the graceful slant of his cheek-bones and the mischievous expression in his tawny brown eyes.
"Have a look at her," he whispered, bending toward the dead woman lying in the rough, unpainted coffin. "See how beautiful she still is."
I stifled a scream. It was the same woman we had unearthed last night.
I moved closer and examined her carefully. Despite the gray-greenish tint to her skin that not even the heavy makeup could disguise, there was something alive about her. She seemed to be smiling at her own death.
On her finely chiseled nose rested a pair of wire-rimmed, glassless spectacles. Her garish, red-painted lips were slightly parted, revealing her strong white teeth. A red robe trimmed with white had been wrapped around her long body.
To her left lay a staff, to her right, a red-and-black wooden devil's mask fitted with two menacing, twisted ram's horns.
"She was very beautiful and very, very dear to me," the man said, straightening a fold in the robe.
"It's incredible how beautiful she still is," I agreed with him. Afraid he might stop talking, I held back my questions.
As he continued fussing with the woman's red robe, he gave me a detailed report on how he and his friends had unearthed her from her grave in the cemetery near Curmina and brought her to his house.
Suddenly, he looked up, and realizing that I was a stranger, he examined me with unrestrained curiosity.
"Oh, dear me! What kind of a host am I?" he exclaimed. "Here I'm talking and talking, when I haven't offered you anything to drink or to eat."
He took my hand in his. "I'm Lorenzo Paz," he introduced himself.
Before I had a chance to say that I could not possibly swallow a thing, he ushered me through a narrow doorway that led to the kitchen.
Mercedes Peralta, standing by a kerosene stove that was perched on top of a waist-high stone hearth, was stirring a concoction made from the medicinal plants she had brought with her.
"You'd better bury her soon, Lorenzo," dona Mercedes said. "It's far too hot to keep her above ground any longer."
"She'll be fine," the man assured her. "I'm certain her husband paid for the best embalmment job available in Curmina.
"And to be on the safe side, I sprinkled the coffin with quicklime and wrapped strips of cloth soaked in kerosene and creosol around her body." He looked at the healer beseechingly. "I've got to be sure her spirit has followed us here."
Nodding, dona Mercedes continued stirring her concoction.
Lorenzo Paz half filled two enamel mugs with rum. He handed one to me, the other to dona Mercedes. "We'll bury her as soon as it cools down," he promised and then went back to the other room.
"Who was the dead woman we unearthed last night?" I asked dona Mercedes and then sat down on a bundle of dried palm fronds stacked against the wall.
"For someone who spends most of her time studying people, you're not very observant," she remarked, laughing softly. "I pointed her out to you some time ago. She was the pharmacist's wife."
"The Swedish woman?" I asked aghast. "But why...?" The rest of my words were drowned out by the roaring laughter of the men in the other room.
"I think they've just found out you were the one holding the light last night," dona Mercedes said and went into the other room to laugh with the men.
Unaccustomed to drinking liquor, I fell into a drowsy state not far from actual sleep. The men's voices, their laughter, and moments later, the rhythmic pounding of a hammer reached me as if they were coming from far away.