Caramelo (28 page)

41.

The Shameless Shamaness, the Wise Witch Woman María Sabina

      A
ll women have a bit of the witch in them. Sometimes they use it for ill, and sometimes they use it for good. One who used it shamelessly for good was the woman called María Sabina,
^*
and though she was still young at the time of this story, already she had gained a reputation as a shamaness. So it was that Narciso Reyes working on the roads of Oaxaca came to hear of this woman with her great powers, and finally, because he could not bear his sleepless nights, twisting and turning in the net of his dreams and waking tangled in his hammock like a sad caught fish, was ripe to listen to what he would not have heard otherwise.

—Oh, it’s that you’re
embrujado
, that’s what it is. Bewitched, that’s all.

—Ah, is that it. He wanted to laugh but did not, because the village mayor was telling him this. The mayor was very, very old and said to be knowledgeable in these things.

—And what does one do about such bewitchings in these parts?

—You’ll have to seek out the witch woman María Sabina. Up in the cold lands, in Huautla de Jiménez, where the clouds catch in the crags of the mountains, up there you’ll find her. María Sabina Magdalena García is her name. I can’t help you.

Narciso Reyes set out on a mule in search of this María, a journey that took him higher and higher into the wildest parts of Oaxaca, furiously beautiful but furiously poor country. He pushed his way past violent
thickets and streams with water so clear and cold it hurt his teeth to take a drink. He scrambled up trails that tottered on the lips of precipices and through tropical forests tangled in knots of greedy vines. He rode past the laughing, ruffled leaves of banana groves and over brittle cow pastures, beyond lemon and orange trees and clearings of coffee plantations. The air was hot and moist, then cool, then hot again as it rose and rained, and the light, a lazy green color, alternately dimmed and brightened as he traveled under canopies of vegetation so thick the leaves let loose a soft talc of dust as he brushed past.

Along parts of the way Narciso followed the Río Santo Domingo upstream, swollen and rowdy from the downpours. Now and again at the clearings he saw black butterflies as big as bats fluttering in sleepy figure eights above blue flowers. Hot and steamy air made him cross at times, and then all at once an intense rain would begin so suddenly it gave him no time to seek shelter. Narciso sliced off gigantic heart-shaped leaves from the path without even getting off his mule, and these served as rain
poncho
and umbrella as well as a hat.

When the rain lifted into a fine drizzle and then stopped altogether, and the earth turned this into steam, hummingbirds darted nervously over dripping blossoms and then flickered off. The world smelled of mud, mule shit, flowers, rotten fruit, and far away of wood smoke,
nixtamal
, and refried beans. Wind from across the ravines, from across water, from across hot flatland, across tropical forests, across endless rows of sugarcane, through the ruffled banana trees, across all of Oaxaca, mixed itself with the sweet stink of Narciso’s own skin.

There in the mountains in a lopsided hut of crumbling clay with an uneven floor also made of earth, in a dark that stank of pig manure and smoke, he found his witch woman. The house was empty except for a pitiful table that served as an altar and a bunch of naked children running about chasing the chickens.

She was dressed in rags. A skinny woman not much older than himself, her belly big with child.

—God is an immense cloth that contains the universe, she whispered.

This girl is crazy
, Narciso thought and almost turned around to leave, but the trip up the mountain had taken eight days, by foot and by mule. He was filled with despair and doubt, until she began again.

—I’ll tell you what it is you’ve come for, you, Narciso Reyes. You want a love medicine. Is that right?

—Yes, that’s how it is.

—So that the woman who wears the crown of
iguanas
will come back and love only you, no?

—How did you know?

—You want her to fall under your spell?

—With all my heart I desire it.

—Well, then, it’s obvious what you have to do. Forget her.

—Forget her!

—Yes, forget her. Abandon her. The more you let someone go, the more they fly back to you. The more you cage them, the more they try to escape. The worse you treat them, the crazier in love they are with you. Isn’t that so? That’s all. That’s my love medicine for you today.

Of course, Narciso could not forget Exaltación. He was too much of a man. And because he would not forgive her preference for Pánfila over him, this only caused him to remember Exaltación even more. The pain overwhelmed him, caused him to say, —I hate you, Exaltación Henestrosa, which could only mean he loved her very much, otherwise, why bother. Because failures are much more memorable than successes, she was constantly in his thoughts. Forget Exaltación Henestrosa? No. That he could not do. And because he could not forget, she was lost to him, he was lost to her.

A person of independence, who does not need nor want us, inspires our admiration, and admiration is a love potion. A person who needs us too much, who is weak with neediness, inspires pity. And pity, the other side of admiration, is the antidote to love.

Remembering is the hand of God. I remember you, therefore I make you immortal.
Recuerdo
. I remember.
Un recuerdo
. A memory. A memento.

Years later, driving behind a truck full of brooms on the
periférico
, the memory of Exaltación Henestrosa would arrive, and with it, all the love Narciso had hoarded in a lifetime flooding the heart valves and heart chambers like a
zandunga
, and causing him great pain.
¡Ay, mamá, por Dios!

In hand-painted pink letters, the bumper of the truck in front of him boasted this truth:

PODRÁS DEJARME, PERO OLVIDARME
—¡
NUNCA
!

YOU MIGHT LEAVE ME, BUT FORGET ME
?—
NEVER
!

^*
In the times of love and peace, an invasion of illegal aliens descended into Oaxaca, land of the
siete moles,
and ascended into the clouds of Huautla de Jiménez because of the magic mushrooms
Ndjixito,
“that which makes one become,” which the locals had used in their religious ceremonies and healing rituals for thousands of years and which took one to trippier trips, it was said, than LSD. Hippies and vagabond anthropologists, artists, students, foreigners, the spoiled children of the rich, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the wives of politicians, the devout and the curious, anyone who was somebody and a whole string of nobodies came to see María Sabina and gain a shortcut to nirvana. Some leapt from the windows of hotels lost in the Age of Aquarius, some became a public nuisance, getting evicted from their hotels or falling asleep in the market like lopsided sacks of sugar, some chased each other around the
zócalo
bandstand naked, causing such a scandal
, ay,
what a nuisance, and some camping carelessly in the woods caused a terrible fire that burned thousands of acres of forests and fields and threatened half a dozen Indian villages, and all because that María Sabina gave those fools the mushrooms, the townspeople said. As a consequence, María Sabina became infamously famous, so famous that the sister of a Mexican president would come and visit her, and everyone would have their picture taken beside her as if she were a holy relic, and restaurants named “María Sabina” with even napkins carrying her name would profit from her celebrity, but María would live just as poor after everyone from professors to writers and politicians to television crews, absolutely everyone ran off, and would die penniless and almost naked as the day she was born, thanks to a lot of good-for-nothing offspring, not to mention the evil from the envy of neighbors—because her fame made them terribly aware of their own unhappy lives—who raised a ruckus because the confidentiality of the spiritual mushrooms had been betrayed to strangers who did not understand that the mushrooms were medicine and, like any medicine, only to be taken when ill, and therefore muddied their purpose on this planet, which in turn lessened María’s powers, until finally she was
acabada,
finished, worn, done, so that at the end of her remarkable life, María Sabina was quoted as saying, —Was it all right that I gave away the mushrooms?
   Tú,
what do you say?
Tú,
reader, she is asking you
.

42.

Born Under a Star

      T
he baby was as bald as a knee, with a head like a peanut and limbs like
chorizo
, but to Soledad he was exquisite. —Isn’t he beautiful?
Mi rey
, my king, she cooed, smacking one fat foot with a loud kiss. —Someday you’ll grow up to be a person of category, my fatty. Yes, my life, you were born under a star. You won’t go barefoot like I did when I was little. No, not you. You’re a Reyes, right? Aren’t you? Aren’t you, my heaven. You’re destined to be a king. You’ll see. Right,
mi chulito
, right? Who’s my beauty? Who’s my little treasure? Who loves you the best? I’m going to swallow you up, you fat little sweetness. You little tum-tum of
caramelo
. Yum, yum, yum, yum. What’s the matter, my heaven? Don’t cry. Mamá loves you, and you’re going to be a king.

Baby Inocencio wore a lace bonnet with a huge fluted trim like a sunflower, like a star, and scowled as if he knew just how silly he looked. 
—Precioso
, his mama said to him and to no one in particular. —
Precioso
.

Once, a long time ago it seemed, Soledad had lain awake watching Narciso sleep, marveling at her husband’s profile, his sweet snoring, the thick eyelashes, the delirious constellation of moles sprinkled on his man shoulders, the sensuous down on the nape of his neck.
—Precioso
, she’d whispered to herself, fascinated by the very elements that made Narciso a man. His stiff whiskers, the swirl of sideburns, the strength in his wrists, his jaw, the hard shield of his chest. She made an inventory of his charms. People complained and complained about marriage, it seemed, but no one mentioned the gift of sleeping beside another.
—Precioso
.

Now she watched Inocencio sleep beside her.
How is it God could pour so much beauty into one little being
, she wondered. Maybe God made
babies beautiful because they needed so much care. Maybe God parceled out equal portions of beauty and of trouble, and that’s how it was Narciso arrived with his enormous beauty and his equally enormous load of need.

Moths fluttered against the glass of the balcony doors, but they could not get in. The old man in the room next door coughed and spit up, as he always did before sleeping. A street vendor’s whistle moaned from the plaza. In the distance a dog
yap-yapped
. The yellow eye of the moon peered through one pane of the French doors. It was night. Where was Narciso? Somewhere vague and far away, but it no longer mattered. She had made this little human being. This little human had grown inside her and now here he was, just as perfect as you please.
How do you do? Oh, I’m very well, very fine indeed
.

Very fine. Very. She looked and looked at her son, not remembering once what the
tamal
vendor outside the church had said about falling in love again that day she had been so sad.
Tanta miseria
. So much misery in the world. But so much humanity too. Just enough. Not too much. Just enough, thank God.

43.

El Sufrido

      H
e was never happy unless he was sad. To tell the truth, his name should have been el Sufrido. But, no, it was Inocencio Reyes. In another life, he might’ve been a philosopher. Or a poet. He liked to think and think, a skinny youth who enjoyed examining life at length. He would walk around the block if things he saw were worth looking at more than once. A waitress with a thick forest of underarm hair. A black man with a white woman. A drunkard who had shit in his pants. These items deserved consideration. So taken was Inocencio with his thinking, he forgot he was mortal and not invisible to the eye, and was always startled whenever anyone stared back.

—He’s a daydreamer, complained his schoolteachers.

—He’s a thinker, said his mother in his defense. She liked to remind them how as a baby he had been colicky. —Cried and cried, day and night, crying and crying and crying, as if even then he knew his destiny. Not like my other babies.

True. Unlike his younger siblings—Fat-Face, Light-Skin, and the Baby—Inocencio’s head was filled with too much remembering. Things he thought he remembered, and things invented for him to remember. —Before the revolution, when the family Reyes owned railroads … his mother would begin.

The Mexican revolution had tossed and tumulted everything, including everyone’s memories. It was as if the revolution gave everyone from the most beggarly and poor an excuse to say, —Before the revolution when we were moneyed, and thus, to excuse their humble present. It was better to have a gallant past, because it made one’s present circumstance seem all the more wretched and allowed one the liberty of looking down
condescendingly on one’s neighbors. Or, if there was no recent wealth, one could always resort to the distant past, —Remember our great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Nezahualcóyotl, the poet king? No such thing, but it sounded
bonito
.