After I had gobbled down half of a ham sandwich, I hurriedly put on the jacket and boots Clara had given me.
We left the house; each carrying a heavy-duty flashlight.
The boots were too tight and the left one rubbed against my heel. I was certain I was going to get a blister.
But I was glad I had the jacket because the evening was cold. I pulled up the collar and fastened the toggle at the neck.
"We are going to walk around the grounds," Clara said. "I want you to see this house from a distance and in the twilight.
"I'll be pointing out things for you to remember, so pay close attention."
We followed a narrow trail.
In the distance, I could see the dark, jagged silhouette of the eastern mountains against the purple sky.
When I commented on how sinister they looked, Clara replied that the reason those mountains seemed so ominous was because their ethereal essence was ancient.
She told me that everything in the realms of the visible and invisible has an ethereal essence; and that one must be receptive to it in order to know how to proceed.
What she said reminded me of my tactic of looking at the southern horizon to gain insights and direction.
Before I could ask her about it, she continued talking about the mountains and trees and the ethereal essence of rocks.
It seemed to me that Clara had internalized Chinese culture to the point that she spoke in riddles the way enlightened men were depicted in Oriental literature.
I became aware, then, that at an underlying level I had been humoring her all day.
This was an odd feeling, for Clara was the last person I would want to treat in a condescending manner. I was used to humoring weak or overbearing people at my job or in school, but Clara was neither weak nor overbearing.
"That is the place," Clara said, pointing to a level clearing on higher ground. "You'll be able to see the house from there."
We left the trail and walked to the flat area she had pointed out.
From there we had a breath-taking view of the valley below. I could see a large clump of tall green trees surrounded by darker brown areas, but not the house itself, for it was completely camouflaged by the trees and shrubs.
"The house is perfectly oriented according to the four directions," Clara said, pointing to a mass of greenery:
"Your bedroom is on the north side; and the forbidden part of the house is on the south side. The main entrance is to the east. The back door and the patio area are to the west."
Clara pointed with her hand where all those sections were, but for the life of me, I couldn't see them. All I was able to make out was the dark green patch.
"You'd need X-ray vision to see the house," I grumbled. "It's totally hidden by trees."
Ignoring my disagreeable mood, Clara said amiably, "And very important trees, too. Every one of those trees is an individual being with a definite purpose in life."
"Doesn't it go without saying that every living being on this earth has a definite purpose?" I said, peeved.
Something in the enthusiastic way that Clara was showing off her property annoyed me.
The fact that I couldn't see what she was pointing at made me even more irritable.
A strong gust of wind made my jacket balloon at my waist, and then the thought occurred to me that my irritation might be born out of sheer envy.
"I didn't mean it to sound trivial," Clara apologized:
"What I wanted to say was that everything and everyone in my house is there for a specific reason; and that includes the trees, myself, and of course also you."
I wanted to change the subject, so for lack of anything better to say, I asked, "Did you buy this house, Clara?"
"No. We inherited it. It has been in the family for generations, although given the turmoils Mexico has been through, the house has been destroyed and rebuilt many times."
I realized that I felt most at ease when I asked simple, direct questions, and Clara gave me direct answers.
Her discussion about ethereal essences had been so abstract that I needed the respite of talking about something mundane, but to my chagrin Clara cut our commonplace exchange short, and lapsed into her mysterious insinuations again.
"That house is the blueprint of all the actions of the people who live there," she said almost reverently:
"Its best feature is that it's concealed. It is there for anyone to see, but no one sees it. Keep that in mind. It's very important!"
How could I not remember it, I thought: For the past twenty minutes I had been straining my eyes in the semidarkness trying to see the house. I wished I had a pair of binoculars so that I could have satisfied my curiosity.
Before I could comment, Clara began walking down the hill.
I would have liked to stay there a while longer by myself, to breathe in the fresh night air; but I was afraid I would not be able to find my way back in the dark.
I made a mental note to return to that spot during the day, and determine for myself whether it was really possible to see the house the way Clara had said.
On our return trek, we were at the back entrance of her property in no time at all.
It was pitch black. I could see only the small area illuminated by our flashlights.
She beamed hers onto a wooden bench, and told me sit and take off my boots and jacket, then hang them on the rack next to the door.
I was famished. Never in my life could I remember being so hungry; yet I thought it would be rude to ask Clara outright whether or not we were going to eat dinner.
Perhaps she expected that the sumptuous meal we had in Guaymas would last us for the day.
Yet judging from Clara's size, she was not one that would skimp on food.
She volunteered, "Let's go to the kitchen and see what we can find to eat.
"But first, I'm going to show you where the dynamo is kept and how to turn it on."
She guided me with her flashlight along a path leading around a wall to a brick shed, roofed with corrugated steel.
The shed housed a small diesel generator.
I knew how to turn it on because I had lived in a house in the country that had a similar generator in case of electrical failure.
When I pulled the lever, I noticed from the shed window that only one side of the main house and part of the hall seemed to be wired for electric lights: There lights were lit, while everything else remained in darkness.
"Why didn't you wire the whole house?" I asked Clara. "It doesn't make sense to leave most of the house dark."
On an impulse, I added, "If you like, I can wire it for you."
She looked at me, surprised, "Is that right? Are you sure you wouldn't burn the place down?"
"Positive. They used to tell me at home that I'm a wizard with wires.
"I worked as an electrician's apprentice for a while, until the electrician started getting fresh with me."
"Then what did you do?" Clara asked.
"I told him where he could shove his wires, and quit."
Clara let out a guttural laugh.
I didn't know what she found humorous; that I worked as an electrician or that one had made passes at me.
"Thanks for the offer," Clara said after regaining her voice. "But the house is wired exactly the way we want it. We use electricity only where it's needed."
I surmised that it was needed mostly in the kitchen and that this must be the part of the house that had light.
Automatically I started toward the area that was lit. Clara tugged at my sleeve to stop me.
"Where are you going?" she asked,
"To the kitchen."
"You're heading the wrong way," she said. "This is rural Mexico. Neither the kitchen nor the bathroom is inside the main house. What do you think we have? Electric refrigerators and gas stoves?"
She led me along the side of the house past her gymnasium to another small building I hadn't seen before.
It was almost totally hidden by pungent flowering trees.
The kitchen was actually one enormous room, with a terra-cotta tile floor, freshly whitewashed walls and a bright row of track lights overhead.
Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble installing modern fixtures. But the appliances were old- in fact, they looked like antiques.
On one side of the room stood a gigantic iron wood-burning stove that, surprisingly, seemed to be lit.
It had a foot bellow and an exhaust pipe that vented through a hole in the ceiling.
On the other side of the room, there were two long picnic-style tables with benches placed on either side.
Next to them was a work table with a three-inch-thick butcher-block top. The surface of the wood looked used, as if it had seen a lot of chopping.
Hanging from strategically placed hooks along the walls were baskets, iron pots and pans and a variety of cooking utensils.
The whole place had the look of a rustic but comfortable well-stocked kitchen that one sees featured in certain magazines.
On the stove were three earthen pots with lids. Clara told me to sit down at one of the tables. She went to the stove, and with her back toward me busied herself; stirring and ladling.
In a few minutes, she had placed a meal of meat stew, rice and beans in front of me.
"When did you prepare all this food?" I asked, genuinely curious, for she had had no time in which to do it.
"I just whipped all this up, and put it on the stove before we left," she said lightly.
'How gullible does she think I am?' I thought. 'This food must have taken hours to prepare.'
She laughed self-consciously at my stare of disbelief.
"You're right," she said as if she wanted to give up the pretense. "There's a caretaker that prepares food for us sometimes."
"Is the caretaker here now?"
"No, no. The caretaker must have been here in the morning, but is gone now.
"Eat your food and don't worry about such unimportant details as where it came from."
'Clara and her house are full of surprises,' was the thought that crossed my mind, but I was too tired and hungry to ask any more questions, or to ponder about anything that wasn't immediate.
I ate voraciously: The jumbo shrimp I had stuffed myself with at lunch was totally gone and forgotten.
For someone who was a finicky eater, I was wolfing down my food.
As a child, I had always been too nervous to relax and enjoy our meals. I was always anticipating all the dishes I would have to wash afterward.
Every time one of my brothers used an extra plate or a needless spoon, I'd cringe. I was certain that they deliberately used as many dishes as they could just so I would have more to wash up.
On top of that, at every meal, my father would take the opportunity to argue with my mother.
He knew her manners prevented her from leaving the table until everyone had finished eating; so he poured out to her all his complaints and grievances.
Clara said that it wouldn't be necessary for me to wash dishes, although I offered my help.
We went to the living room, one of the rooms she apparently felt needed no electricity, for it was pitch black.
Clara lit a gasoline lantern.
I had never in my life seen the light of such a lamp. It was bright and eerie, yet at the same time soft and mellow.
Shimmering shadows were everywhere. I felt I was in a dream world, far from the reality lit up by electric lights.
Clara, the house, and the room all seemed to belong to another time; to a different world.
"I promised you that I would introduce you to our dog," Clara began; sitting down on the couch:
"The dog is an authentic member of the household. You must be very careful with what you feel or say around him."
I sat down next to her. "Is it a sensitive, neurotic dog?" I asked, dreading the encounter.
"Sensitive, yes. Neurotic, no.
"I seriously think this dog is a highly evolved creature; but being a dog makes it difficult, if not impossible, for that poor soul to transcend the idea of the self."
I laughed out loud at the preposterous notion of a dog having an idea of itself.
I confronted Clara with the absurdity of her statement.
"You're right," she conceded. "I shouldn't use the word 'self.' I should rather say, he is lost in feeling important."
I knew that she was poking fun at me. My laughter became more guarded.
"You may laugh, but I'm actually quite serious," Clara said in a low tone:
"I'll let you be the judge."
She leaned closer, and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Behind his back, we call him sapo, which means 'toad' in Spanish; because he looks like a huge toad.
"But don't you dare call him that to his face. He'll attack you and rip you to shreds.
"Now, if you don't believe me, or if you're daring or stupid enough to try it and the dog gets mad, there's only one thing you can do."
"What's that?" I asked, humoring her again, although this time with a genuine touch of fear.
"You say very quickly that 'I' am the one who looks like a white toad. He loves to hear that."
I wasn't about to fall for her tricks.
I thought I was too sophisticated to believe such nonsense.
"You've probably trained your dog to react negatively to the word sapo," I argued:
"I've had experience with dog training. I'm certain dogs aren't intelligent enough to know what people are saying about them let alone get offended by it."
"Then let's do the following," Clara proposed. "Let me introduce you to him. Then we'll look in a zoology book for pictures of toads and comment on them.
"Then at one point you say to me, very quietly, 'He certainly looks like a toad,' and we'll see what happens."
Before I could accept or reject her proposition, Clara went out through a side door and left me alone.
I assured myself that I had the situation well under control and that I wouldn't let this woman talk me into believing absurdities such as dogs in possession of a highly evolved consciousness.
I was giving myself a mental pep talk to be more assertive, when Clara came back with the hugest dog I had ever seen.
It was a male dog, massive, with fat paws the size of coffee saucers. His hair was lustrous, black. He had yellow eyes with the look of someone bored to death with life. His ears were rounded and his face bulged and wrinkled on the sides.
Clara was right: He had a definite resemblance to a giant toad.
The dog came right up to me and stopped, then looked at Clara as if waiting for her to say something.
"Taisha, may I introduce you to my friend Manfred.
"Manfred, this is Taisha."
I felt like extending my hand and shaking its paw, but Clara gave me a don't-do-it signal with a movement of her head.
"Very pleased to meet you, Manfred," I said trying not to laugh or sound afraid.
The dog moved closer and began to sniff my crotch.
Disgusted, I jumped back; but at that instant, he turned around and hit me with his hindquarters directly behind my knee joint so that I lost my balance.
The next thing I knew, I was on my knees; then on all fours on the floor, and the beast was licking the side of my face.
Then before I could get up or even roll over, the dog farted right in my nose.
I jumped up screaming.
Clara was laughing so hard she couldn't talk.
I could have sworn that Manfred was laughing too.
He was so elated that he had propped himself behind Clara, and was looking at me askance, scratching the floor with his huge front paws.
I was so outraged that I yelled, "Damn you, stinking toad-dog!"
In one instant, the dog jumped and rammed me with his head.
I fell backward onto the floor with the dog on top of me.
His jaw was only inches from my face: I saw a look of fury in his yellow eyes.
The smell of his foul breath was enough to make anyone vomit, and I was definitely close to it.
The louder I screamed for Clara to get that damn dog off me, the more ferocious became his snarls.
I was about to faint from fright, when I heard Clara yell above the dog's growls and my screams, "Tell him what I told you, tell him quickly."
I was too terrified to speak.
Exasperated, Clara tried to move the dog off me by pulling him by his ears, but this only enraged the beast more.
"Tell him! Tell him what I said!" Clara yelled.
In my terror, I couldn't remember what I was supposed to say. Then as I was about to pass out, I heard my voice screeching, "I'm sorry. Clara is the one who looks like a toad."
Instantly the dog stopped his snarling and moved off my chest.
Clara helped me up and guided me to the couch.
The dog followed beside us as if he were giving her a hand.
Clara had me drink some warm water, which made me even more nauseous.
I barely reached the outhouse before I became violently ill.
Later, when I was resting in the living room, Clara suggested that we look at the book about toads with Manfred to give me a chance to reiterate that it was Clara who looked like a white toad.
She said that I had to erase any confusion from Manfred's mind.
"Being a dog makes him very petty," she explained. "Poor soul.
"He doesn't want to be that way, he just can't help it. He flares up whenever he feels someone is making fun of him."
I told her that in my state, I was a poor subject for further experiments in dog psychology.
But Clara insisted that I play it out to the end.
As soon as she opened the book, Manfred came over to look at the pictures.
Clara teased and joked about how strange toads looked, that some of them were even downright ugly.
I held up my end and played along.
I said the word 'toad,' and the Spanish word 'sapo,' as often and as loudly as I could in the context of our absurd conversation.
But there was no reaction from Manfred. He seemed as bored as he was the first time I laid eyes on him.
When, as we had agreed upon, in a loud voice I said that Clara certainly looked like a white toad, Manfred immediately began wagging his tail and showed signs of true animation.
I repeated the key phrase several times, and the more I repeated it, the more excited the dog became.
I had then a flash of insight, and said that I was a skinny toad working her way to being just like Clara.
At that, the dog jumped up as if prodded by an electric shock.
Then when Clara said, "You're carrying this a bit too far, Taisha," I truly thought Manfred was so elated that he couldn't take it any longer. He ran out of the room.
I leaned back against the couch dazed.
Down in the depth of me, and in spite of all the circumstantial evidence supporting it, I still couldn't believe that a dog could react to a derogatory nickname the way Manfred had.
"Tell me, Clara," I said, "what is the trick? How did you train your dog to react that way?"
"What you saw is not a trick," she replied:
"Manfred is mysterious; an unknown being.
"There is only one man in the world who can call him sapo or sapito, little toad, to his face without inciting his wrath.
"You'll meet that man one of these days.
"He's the one who's responsible for Manfred's mystery, so he's the only person who can explain it to you."
Clara stood up abruptly. "You've had a long day," she said, handing me the gasoline lantern. "I think it's time for you to go to bed."
She took me to the room she had assigned to me. "You'll find everything you need inside," she said:
"The chamber pot is under the bed, in case you are afraid to go to the outhouse.
"I hope you'll be comfortable."
With a pat on my arm, she disappeared down the dark corridor.
I had no idea where her bedroom was. I wondered if it could perhaps be in the wing of the house I was not allowed to set foot in.
She had said good night in such a strange fashion that for a moment I just stood there holding on to the doorknob, inferring all sorts of things.
I entered my room.
The gasoline lantern splashed shadows everywhere.
On the floor was a pattern of swirls cast from the vase of flowers that had been in the living room, which Clara must have brought in and set on the table.
The carved wood chest was a mass of shimmering grays.
The posts of the bed were lines that curved up the wall like snakes.
Instantly I grasped the reason for the presence of the mahogany etagere filled with figurines and cloisonne objects.
The light of the lantern had completely transformed them creating a fantasy world. Cloisonne and porcelain are not suited for electric lights, was the thought that came to mind.
I wanted to explore the room, but I was bone tired.
I set the lantern on a small table next to the bed and undressed.
Laid over the back of a chair was a white muslin nightgown which I put on. It seemed to fit; at least it didn't drag on the floor.
I climbed into the soft bed and lay with my back propped against the pillows.
I didn't douse the lantern immediately: I became intrigued watching the surreal shadows.
I remembered that as a child I used to play a game at bedtime: I would count how many shadow objects I could recognize on the walls of my room.
The breeze from the half-open window made the shadows on the walls flutter.
In my exhausted state, I imagined I could see shapes of animals, trees and flying birds.
Then in a mass of gray light I saw the faint outline of a dog's face. It had rounded ears and a flat, wrinkled snout.
It seemed to be winking at me. I knew it was Manfred.
Strange feelings and questions began to flood my mind.
How could I ever arrange the events of the day? I couldn't explain any of them to my satisfaction.
The one thing that was most remarkable was that I knew for certain that my last remark- that I was a skinny toad on my way to being like Clara- had established a bond of empathy between Manfred and myself.
I also knew for certain that I couldn't think of him as an ordinary dog, and that I was no longer afraid of him.
In spite of my disbelief, he seemed to possess a special intelligence that made him aware of what Clara and I were saying.
The wind suddenly made the curtains open; dissolving the shadows in an array of shimmering fluff.
The dog's face began to merge with the other markings on the wall that I fancied to be charms that would give me the power to meet the night.
How remarkable, I thought, that the mind can project its experiences onto a blank wall, as if it were a camera that had stored endless footage of film.
The shadows flickered as I lowered the wick of the lantern and the last bit of light faded from the room leaving me in pitch blackness.
I wasn't afraid of the darkness. The fact that I was in a strange bed; in a strange house didn't distress me.
Earlier, Clara had said this was my room, and after being in it for only a short while, I felt completely at home. I had a strong feeling that I was protected.
As I stared at the blackness in front of me, I noticed the air in the room become effervescent.
I remembered what Clara had said about the house being charged with an imperceptible energy, like an electric current flowing through wires.
I hadn't been aware of it earlier because of all the activity, but now in absolute silence, I distinctly heard a mild humming sound.
Then I saw the minutest bubbles jumping all around the room at a tremendous speed.
They were frantically bumping into one another giving off a buzzing sound like the drone of thousands of bees.
The room; the entire house seemed to be charged with a subtle electric current that filled my very being.