Sharing the faint light of the bulb above us, Candelaria and I sat across from each other at the kitchen table. She was studying the glossy pictures in the magazine I had bought for her; I was transcribing my tapes.
"Did you hear a knock at the front door?" I asked, pulling the earphone from my ear.
Totally oblivious to my words, she pointed to the picture of a blond model. "I can't decide which girl I like better," she mused. "If I cut out this one, I'll lose the one on the other side of the page, the brunette walking down the street with a tiger on a leash."
"I would save the one with the tiger," I suggested. "There will be more blond models in the magazine." I touched her arm. "Listen, someone's at the door."
It took Candelaria a moment to draw herself away from the magazine and another moment to realize that indeed there was someone knocking.
"Who could it possibly be at this late hour?" she mumbled indifferently, as she shifted her attention back to the glossy pages.
"Perhaps it's a patient." I glanced at my watch. It was almost midnight.
"Oh no, my dear," Candelaria said calmly and looked up. "No one ever comes at this hour. People know that dona Mercedes doesn't treat anyone this late unless it's an emergency."
Before I had a chance to say that it probably was an emergency there was another, this time more insistent, knock.
I hurried to the front of the house.
For a moment I hesitated outside the healing room, deliberating whether I should let Mercedes Peralta know that there was someone at the door.
For three days Mercedes Peralta had been in that room. Day and night she had lit candles on the altar, smoked cigar after cigar, and, with a rapturous expression on her face, had recited unintelligible incantations until the walls vibrated with the sound.
Mercedes Peralta had never answered any of my questions, yet, she seemed to welcome my interruptions when I brought her food or insisted she rest for a few hours.
Another knock sent me hurrying to the front door, which Candelaria always bolted as soon as it got dark; an unnecessary precaution, for anyone wanting to come inside could have done so through the open kitchen.
"Who is it?" I asked before unlatching the iron bolt.
"Gente de paz, peaceful folk," a man's voice answered.
Amazed to hear someone with a faint foreign accent reply in the archaic convention dating from the days of the Spanish Conquest, I automatically responded in the required manner, "Hail the Virgin Mary," and opened the door.
The tall, white-haired man leaning against the wall regarded me with such a baffled expression on his face, I burst into laughter.
"Is this Mercedes Peralta's house?" he asked in a halting voice.
I nodded, studying his face. It was not so much that it was wrinkled but rather eroded, ravaged as though by grief or pain. His watery blue eyes were sunken in wide circles of age and weariness.
"Is Mercedes Peralta in?" he asked, looking past me into the dimly lit hallway.
"She is," I replied. "But she doesn't see people this late."
"I've been walking around town for hours, pondering whether I should come," he said. "I need to see her. I'm an old friend or an old enemy."
Shaken by the anguish and despair in the man's voice, I invited him inside.
"She's in her working room," I said. "I'd better let her know that you've come to see her." I stepped ahead of him and smiled encouragingly. "What is your name?"
"Don't announce me," the man begged, gripping my arm. "Let me go in by myself. I know the way."
Stiffly, he limped across the patio and down the corridor. He paused for a second in front of dona Mercedes' room, then climbed the two steps leading inside.
I followed close behind him ready to take the blame should Mercedes Peralta be annoyed by the intrusion.
For an instant, I thought she had already gone to bed: But as soon as my eyes became accustomed to the shadowy darkness, I saw her sitting in her high-backed chair at the far end of the room, barely outlined by the faint light of a single candle burning on the altar.
"Federico Mueller!" she gasped, staring at him in total panic.
She seemed not to trust her vision and repeatedly rubbed her eyes with her hands. "How can it be? All these years I thought you were dead."
Awkwardly, he went down on his knees, buried his face in the healer's lap, and cried with the abandonment of a despairing child. "Help me, help me," he repeated in between sobs.
Hastily, I moved toward the entrance, only to halt abruptly when I heard Federico Mueller fall on the floor with a dull thump.
I wanted to summon Candelaria, but dona Mercedes stopped me. "How extraordinary!" she exclaimed in a trembling tone. "Everything is fitting into place like a magical jigsaw puzzle.
"This is the person you remind me of. You brought him back to me."
I wanted to tell her that I saw no similarity between the old man and myself, but she sent me to her bedroom to fetch her basket with medicinal plants. When I returned, Federico Mueller was still lying curled up on the floor. Dona Mercedes was trying to revive him.
"Get Candelaria," she said. "I can't handle Federico Mueller by myself."
Candelaria had heard the commotion and was already standing by the entrance. She walked in.
There was an expression of disbelief, of sheer horror in Candelaria's eyes. "He's come back," she murmured, approaching Federico Mueller.
Candelaria crossed herself, then turned to dona Mercedes and asked, "What do you want me to do?"
"His soul is detaching itself from his body," she answered. "I'm too weak to try to push it back."
Candelaria sat on her haunches and swiftly moved Federico Mueller's inert body to a sitting position. She gave him a sort of bear hug from behind. The bones of his back cracked as if they were breaking into a hundred pieces.
Candelaria propped him in a sitting position against the wall. "He's very ill," she said to me. "I think he's come back here to die." She left the room crossing herself.
Federico Mueller opened his eyes. He took in everything in one glance, then he looked at me as if he were silently begging me to leave him alone with dona Mercedes.
"Musiua," she said in a weak voice as I was walking out of the room, "since you have brought him back to my life, you ought to stay."
I sat down awkwardly on my stool.
He began to talk to no one in particular. He rambled on incoherently for hours.
Mercedes Peralta listened attentively: Whatever he was saying seemed to make all the sense in the world to her.
A long silence ensued after Federico Mueller stopped talking.
Slowly, dona Mercedes rose and lit a candle in front of the statue of the Virgin. Poised before the altar, she looked like an ancient wood statue, her face an expressionless mask.
Only her eyes seemed alive as they filled with tears. She lit a cigar and drew each breath deep inside her, as if she were feeding a force within her chest.
The flame grew brighter as the candle shrank. It cast an eerie light on her features as she turned to face Federico Mueller.
Mumbling a soft incantation, she massaged first his head and then his shoulders.
"You can do anything you want with me," he said, pressing both her palms against his temples.
"Go into the living room," dona Mercedes said, her voice a shaky whisper. "I'll be along shortly with a valerian potion. It will put you to sleep." Smiling, she patted his hair into place.
Hesitantly, he limped across the patio and down the corridor. The sound of his steps echoed faintly through the house.
Mercedes Peralta turned once again to the altar but could not reach it. She was beginning to fall, when I jumped up and caught her.
Feeling the uncontrollable tremor of her body, I realized how immense had been her stress and her poise. She had comforted Federico Mueller for hours.
I had seen only his turmoil: She had revealed nothing about her own.
"Musiua, tell Candelaria to get ready," dona Mercedes said, stepping into the kitchen where I was writing. "You're taking us in your jeep."
Certain that she was already asleep, I went immediately to look for Candelaria in her room. She was not there.
The door of her wardrobe stood wide open, exposing the beveledged mirror on its door and all her clothes. They were arranged not only by color but also by the length of the hems.
Her narrow bed- a frame of laths, and a horsehair mattress- stood between two bookcases filled with romance novels and photo albums containing cutout magazine pictures.
Everything was in immaculate order, nothing was rumpled.
"I'm ready," Candelaria said behind me.
Startled, I turned around. "Dona Mercedes wants you to--" She did not let me finish, but propelled me toward my room down the corridor.
"I've taken care of everything," she assured me. "Hurry up and change. We don't have much time."
On my way out I peeked into the living room. Federico Mueller was sleeping peacefully on the couch.
Dona Mercedes and Candelaria were already waiting for me in my jeep. There was no moon or a single star in the sky, yet it was a lovely night; soft and black with a cool wind blowing from the hills.
Following Candelaria's directions, I drove the two women to the homes of the people who regularly attended the spiritualists' meeting.
As was customary, I waited outside. Except for Leon Chirino, I had never met any of them, yet I knew where each one of them lived.
I wondered if the two women were setting a date for a seance, for they did not stay long at any of the houses.
"And now to Leon Chirino's house," Candelaria said, helping dona Mercedes settle in the backseat.
Candelaria seemed angry. Nonstop she rambled on about Federico Mueller.
Although I was bursting with curiosity, I could not pay attention to her seemingly incoherent statements. I was too preoccupied watching the distraught look on dona Mercedes' face in the rearview mirror.
She opened her mouth several times to speak, but instead she shook her head and looked out the window, seeking aid and comfort from the night.
Leon Chirino took a long time coming to the door. He must have been sound asleep and unable to hear Candelaria's impatient, loud banging.
He opened the door with his arms crossed, protecting his chest from the cold, humid breeze spreading the dawn across the hills. There was a look of foreboding in his eyes.
"Federico Mueller is at my house," dona Mercedes said before he had time to even greet her.
Leon Chirino did not say a word. Yet, it was evident that he had been thrown into a state of profound agitation, of great indecision. His lips trembled, and his eyes alternately shone with rage or filled with tears under his white, bushy brows.
He motioned us to follow him to the kitchen. He made sure dona Mercedes was comfortably settled in a hammock hanging near the stove, then he made a fresh pot of coffee, while we sat in complete silence.
As soon as he had served Candelaria and me a cup, he helped dona Mercedes into a sitting position, and standing behind her proceeded to massage the back of her head.
He moved down to her neck, then to her shoulders and arms, all the way to her feet. The sound of his melodious incantation floated over the room, clear like the dawn, peaceful and infinitely lonely.
"Only you know what to do," Leon Chirino said to her, helping her up. "Do you want me to come with you?"
Nodding, she embraced him and thanked him for lending her his strength. A mysterious smile curved her lips as she turned to the table, and leisurely sipped her cup of coffee.
"Now we have to see my compadre," she said, taking my arm. "Please take us to El Mocha's house."
"Lucas Nunez?" I asked, looking from one to the other.
All three nodded, but no one said a word.
I had remembered Candelaria's comment about the godfather of dona Mercedes' adopted son Elio: Candelaria had told me that Lucas Nunez blamed himself for Elio's death.
The sun had already risen above the mountains when we reached the small town along the coast where Lucas Nunez lived.
The place was hot and salty from the sea and musky with flowering mimosa trees.
The town's main street lined with brightly painted colonial houses, a small church, and a plaza ended at the edge of a coconut plantation.
Beyond was the sea. It could not be seen, but the wind carried the sound of waves breaking on the shore.
Lucas Nunez's house stood on one of the town's side streets, which were not really streets but wide paths covered with stones.
Dona Mercedes rapped lightly on the door and, without waiting for an answer, pushed it open and stepped inside a dark, damp room.
Still blinded by the brightness outside, I could at first barely make out the silhouette of a man reading at a wooden table in a small back patio.
He gazed at us with such a desolate expression on his face I wanted to flee.
Haltingly, he stood up and silently embraced dona Mercedes, Leon Chirino, and Candelaria.
The man was tall and bony. His white hair was cropped so close to his head that the darkness of his scalp shone through.
I felt a strange anguish upon noticing his hands and realized why he was nicknamed El Mocho, the maimed one. The first joint of each finger was missing.
"Federico Mueller is at my house," dona Mercedes said softly. "The musiua here brought him to my door."
Slowly, Lucas Nunez turned toward me. There was something so intense about the man's narrow face, about his shiny eyes, that I shrank back.
"Is she related to him?" he asked in a harsh voice, no longer seeming to see me.
"The musiua has never seen Federico Mueller in her life," dona Mercedes remarked. "But she brought him to my door."
Lucas Nunez leaned against the wall. "If he is in your house, then I will kill him," he declared in a strangled whisper.
Dona Mercedes and Leon Chirino each took him by an arm and led him into one of the rooms.
"Who is this Federico Mueller?" I asked Candelaria. "What did he do?"
"But, Musiua," she said impatiently. "I've been telling you during the whole trip about the horrible things Federico Mueller did."
She looked at me baffled, shaking her head in disbelief.
Despite my insistence that she repeat them, she would not say another word about Federico Mueller.
Instead of going to rest in her hammock upon returning to her house, Mercedes Peralta asked Candelaria and me to join her in her working room.
Mercedes Peralta lit seven candles on the altar, and reaching behind the folds of the Virgin's blue mantle, pulled out a revolver.
Horrified and fascinated, I watched her caress the gun. She smiled at me, and pressed the revolver into my hands.
"It's unloaded," she said. "I unloaded it the day you arrived.
I knew then that I wasn't going to need it, but I didn't know that you were going to bring him back to me."
She went over to her chair and, heaving a deep sigh, sat down. "I've had that gun for almost thirty years," she went on. "I was going to kill Federico Mueller with it."
"And you should do it now!" Candelaria hissed through clenched teeth.
"I know what I'm going to do," dona Mercedes went on, ignoring the interruption. "I'm going to take care of Federico Mueller for as long as he lives."
"Dear God!" Candelaria exclaimed. "Have you lost your mind?"
A childlike look of innocent hope, a wave of affection, shone in dona Mercedes' eyes as she regarded us intently.
She held up her hand, pleading us to silence. "You brought Federico Mueller to my door," she said to me.
"And now I know that there is nothing to forgive. Nothing to understand; and he came back to make me realize just that.
"This is why I'll never mention what he did. He was dead, but he's not now."