"It's time for you to go," Candelaria said. "You shouldn't 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 aren't you 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 doesn't want to collect Benito Santos' coconuts. She's 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 haven't noticed that you held any ill-feelings toward him."
I assured her that I did not. However, I couldn't 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's 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.
"Don't give in to your false sense of order. Don't 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've 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 doesn't 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."