Uncertainty took hold of me shortly after we crossed the border into Mexico at Mexicali. My justification for going to Mexico with Isidore Baltazar, which had seemed so brilliant to me before, now seemed only a shady excuse for forcing him to take me along.
I doubted now that I would be able to read sociological theory at the witches' house as I said I would.
I knew that I would do there exactly what I did on all previous occcasions: sleep a great deal, dream weird dreams, and try desperately to figure out what the people in the sorcerers' world wanted me to do.
"Any regrets?" Isidore Baltazar's voice made me jump. He was loooking at me sideways and had probably been watching me for a while.
"Of course not," I hastened to assure him, wondering whether he was referring to my general feeling or to my quietness.
I stammered some inanities about the heat, then turned to look out the window.
I didn't speak anymore, mainly because I was scared and morose. I could feel anxiety crawling on my skin like a swarm of ants.
Isidore Baltazar, on the other hand, warmed up to his ebullient best. He was elated. He sang and told me inane jokes. He recited poetry in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Even tidbits of spicy gossip about people we both knew at UCLA failed to dispel my gloom. That I wasn't a responsive audience didn't mean a thing to him.
Even my yelling at him to leave me alone didn't dampen his high spirits.
"If people were watching us, they would believe that we've been married for years," he commented in between fits of laughter.
If sorcerers were watching us, I thought dejectedly, they would know that something is wrong. They would know that Isidore Baltazar and I are not equals.
I am factual and final about my actions and decisions.
For him actions and decisions are fluid, whatever their outcome, and their finality is measured in that he assumes full responsibility for them, regardless of how trivial or how significant they are.
We drove, straight south. We didn't meander, as we usually did in order to get to the witches' house. When we left Guaymas- never before had we been that far south on our way to the witches' house- I asked him, "Where are you taking me?"
He casually responded, "We are taking the long way. Don't worry."
That was the same answer he gave me when I asked again, during our dinner in Navojoa.
We left Navojoa behind and drove south, heading toward Mazatlan. I was beside myself with worry.
Around midnight, Isidore Baltazar veered off the main highway and turned into a narrow dirt road. The van swayed and rattled as he drove over potholes and stones. Behind us the main highway was visible only for an instant in the scant flicker of the taillights, then it disappeared altogether, swallowed by the bushes that fringed the road.
After an excruciatingly long ride, we came to an abrupt halt, and he switched off the headlights.
"Where are we?" I asked, looking all around me.
For a moment I saw nothing. Then, as my eyes got accustomed to the darkness, I saw tiny white specks not too far ahead of us. Tiny stars that appeared to have fallen from the sky.
The exuberant fragrance of the jasmine bushes climbing up the roof and tumbling down over the ramada had been so entirely blocked out of my mind that, when I suddenly recognized it, I felt as though I had inhaled that perfumed air before only in a dream.
I began to giggle. It all gave me an almost childlike sense of wonder and delight. We were at Esperanza's house.
"It was here I first came with Delia Flores," I mumbled to myself.
Then in one instant I was nearly choking with anxiety, and reached for Isidore Baltazar's hand and asked, "But how can this be possible?"
"What?" he asked in a bewildered tone.
He was agitated and ruffled. His hand which usually was always warm was icy cold.
"This house was in the outskirts of Ciudad Obregon, more than a hundred miles north," I yelled. "I drove here myself. And I never left the paved road."
I looked all around me in the darkness, and I recalled that I had also driven from that house to Tucson, and I had never been in or near Navojoa in my life.
Isidore Baltazar was silent for a few minutes. He seemed preoccupied; searching in his mind for an answer.
I knew there was none that would have pleased me.
Shrugging, he turned to face me.
There was a force, an edge to him- much like there was to the nagual Mariano Aureliano- as he said that to him there was no doubt that I had been dreaming-awake when, together with Delia, I left Hermosillo for the healer's house. "I suggest that you let it go at that," he admonished:
"I know from personal experience how the mind can go in circles trying to arrange the unarrangeable."
I was about to protest when he cut me off, and pointed to the light moving toward us. He smiled in anticipation, as though he knew exactly to whom that enormous, swaying shadow on the ground belonged.
"It's the caretaker," I murmured in astonishment, as he came to stand in front of us.
Impulsively, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him on both cheeks. "I never expected to see you here," I muttered.
He smiled sheepishly but didn't talk to me.
He embraced Isidore Baltazar, patting him repeatedly on the back the way Latin men are wont to do when greeting each other, then mumbled something to him.
Hard as I tried to listen, I couldn't understand a single word.
The caretaker led us to the house.
There was something forbidding about the massive front door. It was closed.
So were the barred windows. No light, no sound escaped the thick walls.
We circled the house to the backyard enclosed by a high fence; to the door that led directly to a square room.
I felt reassured upon recognizing the four doors. It was the same room I had been taken to by Delia Flores.
It was as sparsely furnished as I remembered it: a narrow bed, a table, and several chairs.
The caretaker placed the oil lamp on the table and then urged me to sit down.
Turning to Isidore Baltazar, he draped an arm around his shoulders and walked with him out into the dark corridor.
The suddenness of their departure left me stunned.
Before I fully recovered from my surprise and my indecision as to whether I should follow them, the caretaker reappeared.
He handed me a blanket, a pillow, a flashlight, and a chamber pot.
"I would rather use the outhouse," I said primly.
The caretaker shrugged his shoulders, then pushed the chamber pot under the bed.
"Just in case you have to go in the middle of the night."
His eyes glinted with emphatic glee as he told me that Esperanza kept a big, black watchdog outside. "He doesn't take kindly to strangers wandering across the yard at night."
As if on cue, I heard a loud barking.
"I'm not a stranger," I said casually, trying to ignore the ominous note in the beast's barking. "I've been here before. I know the dog."
The caretaker lifted his brows in surprise, then asked, "Does the dog know you?"
I glared at him.
He sighed, and reaching for the oil lamp on the table, he turned toward the door.
"Don't take away the light," I said, stepping quickly in front of him to block his way.
I tried to smile, but my lips stuck to my teeth.
"Where is everybody?" I finally managed to ask. "Where are Esperanza and Florinda?"
"At the moment, I'm the only person who's here," he said.
"Where is Isidore Baltazar?" I asked, panic-stricken. "He promised to take me to the witches' house. I've to work on my paper."
My thoughts; my words were all jumbled and confused as I talked about my reasons for accompanying Isidore Baltazar to Mexico.
I was close to tears as I told the caretaker how important it was for me to finish my work.
He patted my back most reassuringly and made soothing noises, as if he were talking to a child.
"Isidore Baltazar is asleep. You know how he is. The instant his head hits the pillow, he's gone out of the world."
He smiled faintly and added, "I'll leave my door open in case you need me. Just call me if you have a nightmare or something, and I'll come right away."
Before I had a chance to tell him that I hadn't had one since the last time I was in Sonora, the caretaker disappeared down the dark corridor.
The oil lamp on the table began to sputter, and moments later it went out.
It was pitch dark.
I lay down fully clothed and closed my eyes.
All was silent except for a soft, raspy breathing coming from far away. Conscious of that breathing sound and the hardness and narrowness of my bed, I soon gave up the effort to sleep.
Flashlight in hand, I crept down the corridor on noiseless feet, hoping to find Isidore Baltazar or the caretaker.
Softly, I rapped on door after door.
No one answered. No sound came from any of the rooms. An odd, almost oppressive silence had settled over the house. Even the rustlings and chirpings outside had ceased. As I suspected, I had been left alone in the house.
Rather than worry about it, I decided to look into the rooms.
They were bedrooms; eight of them of the same size and disposition; rather small, perfectly square, and furnished only with a bed and a night table.
The walls and the two windows in all of them were painted white, and the tile floors were of an intricate design.
I opened the sliding doors of the closets by gently pushing their bottom left corners with my foot. I knew, without knowing how I knew, that a tap or gentle kick on that spot released a mechanism that opened the doors.
I moved the folded blankets stacked up on the floor in one of the closets and got to a small secret door. I released the concealed dead bolt, disguised as a wall light socket.
Since I was beyond being surprised, I accepted my knowledge of the trap doors; a knowledge that was, of course, inadmissible to my conscious mind.
I opened the small, secret door, crawled through the tiny opening, and found myself in the closet of the next room. With no great astonishment- since I already knew it- I discovered that by squatting through these secret openings I could go from one to another of the seven rooms.
I swore under my breath as my flashlight went out.
Hoping to revive the batteries, I took them out and screwed them back in again.
It was no use: They were dead.
The darkness was so intense in these rooms that I couldn't see my own hands. Afraid of hitting myself against a door or a wall, I slowly felt my way into the corridor.
The effort was so great that I was gasping and shaking as I pulled myself upright and leaned against the wall.
I stood in the corridor for a long time, wondering in which direction to go to find my own room.
From the distance came fragments of voices.
I couldn't tell whether the sound came from inside the house or from the outside.
I followed the sound. It led me to the patio.
I vividly recalled that green, almost tropical patio past the stone archway, with its ferns and thick foliage, its fragrance of orange blossoms, and honeysuckle vines.
I hadn't taken but a few steps when I saw the enormous silhouette of a dog shadowed against the wall.
The beast growled. Its blazing eyes sent a chill running up my spine.
Instead of giving in to my fear, or perhaps because of it, I felt the strangest thing happen.
It was as if I had always been folded like a Japanese fan or like a folded cutout figurine.
Suddenly, I unfolded. The physical sensation was almost painful.
The dog watched me, confused. It began to whine like a puppy. It flapped its ears and coiled on the ground.
I stood there glued to the spot.
I wasn't afraid: I simply couldn't move.
Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, I folded back, turned around, and left. This time I had no trouble finding my room.
I awoke with a headache and that illusion of not having slept at all, which, as an insomniac, I knew so well.
The muscles of my body were disconnected.
I groaned out loud as I heard a door open and light fell over my face.
Feebly, I tried to turn on my other side without falling off the narrow bed.
"Good morning!" Esperanza exclaimed, stepping into the room in a sweep of skirts and petticoats. "Actually, good afternoon," she corrected herself, pointing at the sun through the open door.
There as a wonderful gaiety in her, a delightful power in her voice when she told me that it was she who had thought of retrieving my books and papers from the van before Isidoro Baltazar left with the old nagual.
Abruptly, I sat up. I was fully awake.
"Why didn't the nagual Mariano Aureliano come to say hello to me? Why didn't Isidore Baltazar tell me he was leaving?" I blurted out.
I mentioned to her that now I would never be able to finish my paper and enter graduate school.
Esperanza regarded me with a curious expression, and said that if writing my paper was such a mercenary act I would never be able to bring it through.
Before I had a chance to tell her that personally I didn't care if never entered graduate school, she added, "You don't do your paper to get into graduate school.
"You do it because you love doing it; because there's nothing else at the moment you would rather do."
"There is plenty I would rather do."
"Like what?" she challenged me.
I thought for a moment but couldn't come up with anything specific.
I had to admit, if only to myself, that I had never enjoyed working on a paper as much as I did on this one.
For once, I had started with the reading and research at the beginning of the term instead of waiting, as I usually did, until a few days before the paper was due.
It was the knowledge that it was my ticket into graduate school that had spoiled my enjoyment.
Esperanza, as if again privy to my thoughts, said that I should forget about graduate school and only think of writing a good paper.
"Once you're part of the sorcerers' world and begin to grasp the nature of dreams, you are on your way to understanding what sorcery is all about; and that understanding frees you."
I looked at her, puzzled. I couldn't figure out what she was trying to tell me.
"It frees you from wanting anything." Esperanza enunciated the sentence very carefully, as if I were deaf.
She regarded me thoughtfully then added, "Greed is your middle name, and yet you don't need or want anything..."
Her voice trailed off as she began to arrange my books, papers, and stacks of index cards on the table.
Her face was radiant as she turned to look at me.
In her hands, she held several pencils. "I sharpened them for you with a razor blade," she said. "I'll sharpen them for you whenever they get dull."
She placed the pencils beside my legal-sized writing pad and then flung her arms wide, as if to encompass the whole room. "This is a wonderful place for you to work. No one will bother you here."
"I'm sure of that," I said. Seeing that she was about to leave, I asked her where Isidore Baltazar had slept last night.
"On his straw mat. Where else?" Giggling softly, she gathered up her skirts and petticoats and stepped out into the yard. I watched her until she disappeared behind the stone arch. My eyes hurt, dazzled from staring into the light.
Moments later, there was a loud knock on one of the doors that opened into the corridor.
"Are you decent?" the caretaker asked, pushing the door open before I had a chance to say that I was. "Nourishment for your brain," he said, placing a bamboo tray on the table.
He poured me a bowl of clear broth, then urged me to eat the machaca Sonorense. "I made it myself," he informed me.
The mixture of scrambled eggs, shredded meat, onions, and hot chilies was delicious.
"When you finish, I'll take you to the movies," he said.
"When I finish eating?" I asked excitedly, stuffing a whole tortilla in my mouth.
"When you finish with your paper," he clarified.
As soon as I was done with the meal, he said that I had to get acquainted with the dog. "Otherwise, you won't be able to go outside. Not even to the outhouse."
I was about to tell him that I had actually met the dog and had gone to the outhouse last night, when with a swift gesture of his chin he motioned me to follow him into the yard.
The big black dog lay curled up in the shade of the high fence of plaited cane. The caretaker squatted beside the animal and scratched it behind the ears. Bending even lower, he whispered something in the animal's ear.
Abruptly, the caretaker rose: Startled, I stepped backward, falling on my seat. The dog whined, and the caretaker, with one incredible leap, cleared the high fence. I scrambled to my feet and was about to run out of there fast when the dog stretched its forepaws and placed them on my feet. I could feel the pressure of the paws through my shoes. The dog looked up at me and opened its muzzle in a wide, drawn-out yawn. Its tongue and gums were blue-black.
"That's a sign of the finest pedigree."
I was so startled to hear the caretaker behind me that I wheeled around. I lost my balance again and fell over the dog. I didn't dare move at first, then slowly I eased my head to the side. The dog's amber-colored eyes were fixed on me. The dog bared its teeth, not in a growl but in a most friendly, doggish smile.
"Now you're friends," the caretaker pronounced, helping me up. "And it's time for you to start on your paper."
The next three days were dominated entirely by my desire to finish my task. I worked for long stretches but somehow didn't feel the passing of time.
It wasn't that I was so engrossed in my work that I lost track of the hours. Rather, time seemed to have transformed itself into a matter of space. That is, I began to count time as interludes; interludes between my sightings of Esperanza.
Every day around midmorning, when I was eating my breakfast- whatever she had left for me in the kitchen- she would suddenly appear. Soundlessly, she seemed to materialize out of the perpetual bluish smoke that hung about the kitchen like a cloud.
Invariably, she combed my hair with a coarse wooden comb but never said a word. Neither did I.
I would see her again in the afternoons. As soundlessly as she appeared in the kitchen, she would abruptly materialize in the yard, and sit in her custom-made rocking chair under the stone archway.
For hours, she would stare into space, as if she could see beyond the limits of human vision.
Other than a brief nod or a quick smile, there was no interaction between us at that hour, yet I knew that I was protected in her silence.
The dog, as if it had been directed by the caretaker, never left my side. It followed me around day and night, even to the outhouse.
I particularly looked forward to our late afternoon outings, when the dog and I would race across the fields toward the row of trees that divided the plots of land.
There we would sit in the shade, staring into space like Esperanza.
It sometimes seemed to me that I could reach out and touch the distant mountains.
I would listen to the breeze rustling through the branches and wait until the yellow light of the setting sun turned the leaves into golden chimes. I waited until the leaves turned blue and finally black.
Then the dog and I would race back to the house, to escape the faint voice of the wind telling about the loneliness of that arid land.
On the fourth day I awoke, startled.
From beyond the door that opened to the yard, a voice called out, "Time to get up, lazy bones." The caretaker's voice was drowsily indifferent.
"Why don't you come in?" I asked. "Where were you all these days?"
There was no answer.
I sat wrapped in my blanket, waiting for him to appear, too tense and sleepy to go out and see for myself why he was hiding.
After a while I roused myself and went outside.
The yard was deserted.
In an effort to chase my sleepiness away, I drew bucket after bucket of cold water over my head.
My breakfast was different that morning: Esperanza didn't show up.
It was only after I settled down to work that I realized that the dog had also vanished.
Listlessly, I thumbed through my books. I had very little energy and even less desire to work. I just sat at my table for hours, gazing at the distant mountains through my opened door.
The transparent silence of the afternoon was broken now and then by the faint clucking of hens scratching the ground for seeds and by the penetrating cry of the cicadas vibrating in the blue, cloudless light as if it were still noon.
I was about to doze off when I heard some noise in the yard.
I looked up quickly.
The caretaker and the dog lay side by side on a straw mat in the shade of the fence.
There was something odd about the way they lay, sprawled out on the straw mat. They were so still, they appeared dead.
With a mixture of concern and curiosity, I tiptoed toward them.
The caretaker noticed my presence before the dog did. He opened his eyes wide in an exaggerated fashion, then in one swift motion sat up crosslegged and asked, "Did you miss me?"
"I did!" I exclaimed, then laughed nervously.
It seemed an odd question for him to ask. "Why didn't you come into my room this morning?"
Seeing his blank expression I added, "Where have you been for the past three days?"
Instead of answering, he asked in a harsh tone, "How is your work coming along?"
I was so taken aback by his brusqueness, I didn't know what to say.
I didn't know whether I should tell him that my paper was none of his business or whether I should confess that I was stuck.
"Don't upset yourself trying to think up an explanation," he said. "Just tell me the truth.
"Tell me that you need my expert opinion on your term paper."
Afraid I would burst out laughing, I squatted beside the dog and scratched its head.
"Well?" the caretaker demanded. "Can't you admit that without me you're lost?"
Uncertain about the state of his mind, I decided it was better to humor him than to contradict him.
I said that, indeed, I hadn't written a single line the whole day; and that I had been waiting for him; knowing that only he could rescue me.
I assured him that it wasn't really up to my professors at school but up to him to decide my fate as a graduate student.
The caretaker beamed at me, then asked that I bring him my paper. He wanted to have a look at it.
"It's in English," I said pointedly. "You won't be able to read it."
My impulse, to add that even if it were in Spanish he wouldn't be able to understand it, was checked by the certainty that I wasn't that ill mannered after all.
He insisted I bring him the paper.
I did.
He spread out the pages all around him, some on the mat, others on the dusty ground, then retrieved from his shirt pocket a pair of metal-rimmed glasses and put them on.
"It's important to look like an educated man," he whispered, leaning toward the dog.
The animal pricked up one ear, then made a soft growling sound, as if to agree with him.
The dog shifted positions, and the caretaker motioned me to sit between him and the animal.
He looked like an owl; erudite and austere as he pored over the loose sheets on the ground.
He made disapproving, clucking sounds with his tongue. He scratched his head. He shuffled and reshuffled the sheets, as if trying to find some order that eluded him.
The muscles in my neck and shoulders ached from sitting in that position.
Sighing with impatience, I reclined against the fence and closed my eyes.
In spite of my growing irritation, I must have dozed off, for I was suddenly startled by a faint yet insistent buzz.
I opened my eyes. Sitting nearby, facing me, sat a gorgeously dressed, beautiful-looking woman. She said something to me, but I couldn't hear what it was. The buzzing in my ears rose.
The woman leaned forward, toward me, and in a loud, clear voice asked, "Aren't you going to say hello to me?" "Nelida! When did you get here? I was trying to shake off the buzzing in my ears," I explained.
She nodded, then drew up her long, shapely legs under the skirt she was wearing and wrapped her arms around them.
"It's good to see you," she said dreamily.
With frowning brows, the caretaker mumbled to himself as he studied the pages before him.
"Your scribbles are not only hard to read," he pronounced after a while, "but they don't make much sense.
Nelida stared at me with narrow, critical eyes, as if daring me to contradict him.
I fidgeted, eager to get away, to escape the scrutiny of her unnerving gaze.
She leaned forward and grabbed my arm in a firm grip.
The caretaker began to read from the pages with an exasperating slowness.
What he read sounded familiar, but whether he actually followed the text I couldn't tell because I couldn't concentrate. I was too irritated by the capricious manner in which he cut the sentences, the phrases, and sometimes even the words.
"All in all," he stated upon finishing with the last page, "it's a badly written paper."
He stacked the loose sheets in a pile, then leaned against the fence.
Very deliberately he bent his knees up in the same position Isidore Baltazar had taught me- the right leg crossed over with the ankle resting on the left thigh- and closed his eyes.
He was silent for so long I thought he had fallen asleep and was thus startled when in a slow, measured voice he began to talk about anthropology, history, and philosophy.
His thoughts seemed to come into being while he was talking, and words flowed out of him clearly and precisely, with a simplicity that was easy to follow, easy to understand.
I listened to him attentively. Yet at the same time I couldn't help thinking, "How could he possibly know so much about Western intellectual trends? How educated was he? Who was he really?"
"Could you repeat everything again?" I asked the instant he finished speaking. "I'd like to take notes."
"Whatever I said is all in your paper," the caretaker assured me. "It is buried under too many footnotes, quotes, and undeveloped ideas."
He leaned closer until his head almost touched mine.
"It's not enough to cite works in an effort to supply your paper with the veracity it lacks."
Dumbfounded, I could only stare at him.
"Will you help me write my paper?" I asked.
"No, I can't do that," he said with a grave look in his eyes. "That's something you must do on your own."
"But I can't," I protested. "You just pointed out how badly written my paper is. Believe me, that's my best shot."
"It's not!" He contradicted me forcefully, then gazed at me with an air of astonishment that was mingled with a friendly warmth:
"I'm sure your professors will accept the paper once it's neatly typed.
"But I wouldn't. There is nothing original about it."
I was too stunned to be upset.
"You're only paraphrasing what you have read," the caretaker continued. "I demand that you rely more on your own opinions, even if they contradict what is expected of you."
"It's only a term paper," I said defensively. "I know it needs more work, but I also need to please my professors.
"Whether I agree with the expressed views is beside the point. I need to get accepted into graduate school, and that entails, in part, pleasing my professors."
"If you want to draw strength from the sorcerers' world," he said, "you can no longer work under such premises.
"Ulterior motives are not acceptable in this magical world of ours.
"If you want be a graduate student, then you have to behave like a warrior, not like a woman who has been trained to please. "You know, even when you are beastially nasty, you strive to please.
"But from now, whenever you write, since you were not trained to do writing, you can certainly adopt a new mood: the warriors' mood."
"What do you mean by the warriors' mood?" I asked. "Do I have to fight my professors?"
"Not your professors," he said. "You have to fight yourself; every inch of the way.
"And you have to do it so artfully and so cleverly that no one will notice your struggle."
I wasn't quite sure what he meant, and I didn't want to know, either.
Before he could say anything else, I asked him how he knew so much about anthropology, history, and philosophy.
Smiling, he shook his head. "Didn't you notice how I did it?" he asked, then proceeded to answer his own question. "I picked the thoughts out of thin air. I simply stretched my energy fibers and hooked those thoughts, as one hooks fish with a fishing line, from the immeasurable ocean of thoughts and ideas that is out there."
He made a wide gesture with his arms, as though to encompass the very air around him.
I argued, "To pick up thoughts, Isidore Baltazar told me, one must know which are the ones that might be useful. So you must have studied history, philosophy, and anthropology."
"Perhaps I did at one time," he said undecidedly, scratching his head in perplexity. "I must have."
"You had to!" I stated sententiously, as if I had made a great discovery.
Sighing loudly, he leaned against the fence and closed his eyes.
Nelida asked, "Why do you insist on always being right?"
Startled to hear her speak, I stared at her open-mouthed.
The corners of her lips curled up into a mischievous, secret smile. Then she motioned me to close my mouth.
I had been so engrossed in listening to what the caretaker had to say about my paper I had forgotten all about her even though she had been sitting right in front of me.
Or had she? The thought that she might have gone and returned without me noticing it filled me with anxiety.
"Don't let that bother you," Nelida said softly, as if I had voiced my fears out loud. "We are in the habit of coming and going without anyone ever noticing us."
Her tone canceled the chilling effect of her statement.
Gazing from one to the other, I wondered whether they would actually vanish, unperceived, before my very eyes.
I tried to make sure they wouldn't.
Stretching like a cat, I lay flat on the straw mat and inched my foot toward the hem of Nelida's dress, which trailed on the ground; my hand went to the caretaker's jacket.
He must have noticed the tug on his sleeve, for he sat up abruptly and stared at me.
I closed my eyes but kept watching them through my lashes.
They didn't move. Their straight postures betrayed no trace of fatigue, whereas I had to fight to keep my eyes open.
A cool breeze, fragrant with the scent of eucalyptus, sprang up. Streaks of colored clouds trailed across the sky, and the deep, transparent blue grew slowly more diffused. It melted away so languidly, it was impossible to distinguish what was cloud and what was sky, what was day and what was night.
With my foot on the hem of Nelida's dress and clutching onto the caretaker's jacket as if my life depended on it, I fell asleep.
It seemed that only moments had passed when I was awakened by a hand touching my face.
"Florinda?" I whispered, knowing instinctively that the woman sitting beside me was someone else. She was murmuring something.
I had the feeling she had been murmuring for a long time and I had just awakened to hear what she was saying.
I wanted to sit up, but the woman prevented me from doing so with a gentle but firm touch on my shoulder.
A small flame flickered somewhere unsteadily in the darkness.
It shed a gentle, wavering pallor upon her face. It made her look ghostlike.
She seemed to grow as she moved closer. Her eyes, too, grew larger as they stared down into mine. The arch of her brows, like a curve drawn with a black marker, was concentrated in a frown.
"Nelida!" I sighed with relief.
Smiling faintly, she nodded.
I wanted to ask her about the caretaker and about my term paper, but she pressed her fingers against my lips and continued with her murmurings.
The sound grew fainter and fainter. It seemed to come from a great distance, and then it finally faded away all together.
Nelida rose and motioned me to do the same.
I did so and noticed that we were not outside in the yard but in one of the empty bedrooms along the corridor.
"Where is my term paper?" I asked, alarmed at the possibility that the wind might have scattered the pages. The idea that I might have to begin my work from scratch made me feverish.
Nelida made an imperious gesture with her chin, motioning me to follow her.
She was much taller than I, and looked exactly like Florinda.
Had it not been that she was so delicate, I wouldn't have been able to tell them apart.
At that moment, she appeared as an infinished version of Florinda- as Florinda must have been when she was younger.
There was something so ethereal about Nelida, so frail, and yet so appealing. I used to joke with Isidore Baltazar that if I were a man I would go for her.
He had retorted- I had hoped in jest- that that was perhaps the reason why Nelida hardly ever talked to me.
We headed toward my room.
I heard steps all around me.
It couldn't be Nelida, I decided, for she walked so quietly she seemed not to touch the ground. The absurd notion that I was hearing my own steps made me tiptoe as silently as a cat, yet I still kept hearing the steps.
Someone's feet moved like mine did; the same rhythm echoing slightly on the tile floor.
I glanced backward several times, but there was, of course, no one behind me. Hoping to dispel my fear, I giggled out loud.
Nelida turned around abruptly. I thought she was going to reprimand me, but she, too, began to laugh.
She put her arm around my shoulders. Her touch wasn't particularly warm or tender.
I didn't care. I liked her, and her touch was very reassuring to me.
Still giggling, and with the sound of footsteps all around us, we entered my room.
A strange brilliance hung about the walls, as if a fog had seeped through the four doors in the room, which at that moment I could not see.
The fog had changed the shape of the room, giving it strange contours, almost making it round.
Regardless of how much I blinked and squinted, all I could see was the table I had been working on for the past three days. I stepped closer.
To my relief, I saw my paper arranged in a neat pile. Next to it were all my pencils: They had been sharpened.
"Nelida!" I cried out excitedly, wheeling around. I could no longer see her.
The fog was denser now. It closed around me with every breath I drew. It seeped inside me, filling me with a deep, excited feeling of lightness and lucidity.
Guided by some invisible source, I sat at the table and spread out the pages all around me.
Right under my watchful eyes the entire structure of my paper emerged, superimposing itself on my original draft like a double exposure on a frame of film.
I lost myself in admiration of the skilled development of the themes. As if they were being maneuvered by some invisible hand that thought and wrote, the paragraphs rearranged themselves, imposinging a new order. It was all so gorgeously clear and simple that I laughed out of joy.
"Write it down."
The words echoed softly in the room. Curious, I glanced all und me, but I saw no one.
Knowing that whatever I was experiencing was definitely more than a dream, I reached for my notepad and a pencil, and began to write with a furious speed.
Ideas came to me with an incredible clarity and ease. They pulsated in my head and in my body like sound waves. I simultaneously heard and saw the words.
Yet it wasn't my eyes or my ears that perceived what was there before me. Rather, it was some filaments within me that were ching out and, like some noiseless vacuum cleaner, sucking up the words shining before me like dust particles.
After a while, the order superimposed on my paper began to blur. One by one the lines faded away.
Desperately, I tried to hold on to this splendid structure, knowing that it would all vanish without a trace. Only the memory of my awareness of that magnificent lucidity remained. And then that, too, was extinguished, as if a candle had been blown out.
A curl of fog, as fine as a thread, lingered in the room. Then it withdrew in little ripples, and an oppressive darkness closed in around me. I was so drained, I knew I was going to faint.
"Lie down!"
I didn't even bother to look up, knowing that I wouldn't be able to see anyone. With great effort, I rose from my chair and staggered to my bed.