Shamanka (28 page)

“But that's
me
!”

Esperanza polishes the frames with a lace handkerchief and peers at it closely. “No! Is really you? I not recognize you all grown up, but, darling, I very confuse – your father tell me you die in a fire but you not look dead to me.”

“I'm not … it's a long story,” mumbles Sam. “What was my father doing here?”

“Oh, he stay here with your mother for a short time after they visit a man call Father Bayu. I do cleaning for Father Bayu and he send them to my home to rest a little while. They give me your photo when they leave.”

“They visited Father Bayu?” Sam stares at the photo in confusion. “Esperanza, you said my twin sisters were in the photo with me.”

“Sí!” She points with a manicured finger. “You see this little
angelito
on the right? She is your sister Conchita. The one on the left? She is your other sister; the naughty one. She is Consuella.”

Sam shivers, but it's not because her hair is damp; it's because the photos of the twins do not exist. There are no pictures of her baby sisters in the frame at all; just two pressed daisies, their pollen trapped like gold dust behind the glass.

“I can't see them.”

Esperanza seems mildly surprised. “No? Not even in your mind? Ah, well. They can see you. That is all that matters.” She hands the photo to Kitty. “You can see them, I bet. Don't you think the twins look a bit like Sam?”

Kitty looks, then looks away. She doesn't say a word but she has seen something. Although it's impossible to see her expression behind the mask, her shoulders are heaving. Sam notices immediately.

“What is it, Kitty? Can you see Consuella and Conchita?”

Kitty ignores her and addresses Esperanza. “Why do you welcome Sam's sisters into your home as if they are family?”

Esperanza puts her finger to her lips thoughtfully.

“They
are
family. Conchita and Consuella were a gift to my dead parents; they were born on the day of their own funerals and of my father's funeral.”

“I don't understand!” protests Sam. “Why were my sisters born dead? Why would my parents give them to your parents? It all so sad.”

Esperanza laughs prettily. “Not sad, darling, magical! My parents couldn't have no more babies after they have me. It make them very, very unhappy. But in the end, their wish come true…”

Esperanza's mother, Maricella, had died a few years back. Her father, Enzo, died shortly after, and it was on the day that he was to be buried next to his wife that the twins turned up.

When Esperanza arrived at the cemetery with the rest of the mourners, she was enchanted to see two home-made caskets – no bigger than shoe boxes – placed in the open grave, one on top of her mother's coffin and one on top of her father's.

In Mexico, if a mother loses her baby and can't afford to give it a funeral, she will offer the grave digger a few pesos to bury it in someone else's plot; it's considered a great joy for the dead to be honoured with an
angelito
.

“To know that my parents had finally been blessed with twins and were holding them in their arms as the dog ferried them down the river to heaven was a magical moment – the happiest of new beginnings,” sighs Esperanza.

“For your parents, maybe,” says Sam, “but surely my parents were broken-hearted?”

Esperanza nods. “They were. My brother – he is the gravedigger – he tell me he have never seen such sorrow and I think this is because your parents are not Mexican; they do not realize that their babies are in a happy place. Your father, he was so confused about death – he ask questions, questions, questions. Your mother, she cry tears of milk.”

Little wonder. Christa had already lost her first child – or so she thought – and although twins, triplets or even quads could never replace Sam, she wanted more children. Sadly, the twins died before they were born. I don't know why – sometimes there isn't a why – but there was nothing John could do to comfort Christa and nothing she could do to comfort him.

The unhappy couple were so consumed with grief, they became ill at the graveside. Christa fainted and John's leg went into a spasm near his old crocodile bite, leaving him paralysed. The gravedigger, who knew more about death than anybody, was mystified by their morbid behaviour; how footling were their concerns compared to his? There would always be work for magicians in the afterlife but for a
gravedigger
? Immortal souls needed no burials. He'd be unemployed for eternity.

The Dark Prince and his wife were cluttering up his cemetery. The mourners would be arriving soon for Enzo's funeral, so he threw his spade in the back of the cart, whistled for his donkey and drove them to see Father Bayu.

The masked magician cuts a piece of string in half, then, with the wave of a wand, it's a whole piece again. How?

THE SECRET

1. Take a piece of thick string, 1 metre long, and cut a 10 cm piece from one end.

2. Loop the small piece of string and nestle it in your left palm with the loop towards your fingers.

3. Show your audience the large piece of string, holding one end in each hand.

4. Using your right hand, take the centre of the string and place it in your left hand, so that the ends hang down.

5. Pretend to pull the centre of the string through your left fist, so it sticks out in a loop, but really, pull the cut piece out. This is what your audience sees. Keep the real centre hidden in your fist.

6. With your right hand, give a pair of scissors to someone in the audience and ask them to cut the string.

7. Take the scissors and cut away all remaining pieces of the shorter string.

8. Hold the string by the ends, letting the centre drop away. The string is restored.

T
he next morning, Esperanza takes them all to the cemetery. I'm not sure if “happy” is the word to describe Sam as she stands at the graves of Maricella, Enzo and her twin sisters. I'm not sure words exist that can accurately describe her emotions. They have been subtly altered by the essence of marigolds, the taste of dough dogs and the click of Esperanza's red shoes. Death has lost its darkness.

She's uplifted by the thought that although she can't play with her sisters now, it might only be a matter of time. She can hardly wait; she has so much to tell them. She'll plait their hair and read them stories and … now she's conscious that Kitty thinks she's getting carried away.

“It's not that I'm in any hurry to die, Kitty. I know the afterlife might just be an illusion. If death is final, if there
is
no encore, I shan't be too disappointed. Not knowing just makes me more determined to make my life the greatest show on Earth.”

On that triumphant note, she blows a kiss to each baby sister and turns on her heel. “Goodbye for now,
angelitos
! Come on, Lola, let's see what Father Bayu has to say.”

Sam has never looked more radiant. You would hardly recognize her as the half-starved, serious little girl you saw through the window in St Peter's Square. Her eyes are bright, her limbs are strong and her hair is long and glossy.

Talking of hair, Sam has been wondering for some time now why Kitty's dead straight Egyptian hairstyle never seems to grow. Maybe she trims it in secret.

Father Bayu lives within walking distance of Esperanza's house. It is a hilly walk – not to be attempted in high heels – so Sam, Kitty and Lola go there alone. They find him tending to his orchid collection in a glass lean-to attached to a stone church. He is dressed in a brown, sleeveless gown tied around his ample waist with string. The gown is so long it covers his feet, so when he walks, he appears to be gliding. For a man who must weigh twenty stone, he's surprisingly graceful; his hands are as elegant as a dancer's.

He acknowledges his guests with a gentle smile and seems both exhausted yet serene. He beckons them over to admire one of his rarer blooms, cupping the bud between his palms.

“Look at that. It has the face of a child, don't you think? Whereas this one…” He moves to the next plant. “This one looks like six baby monkeys clinging to a stick.”

Lola, keen to see six baby monkeys, peers at the elaborate folds of the petals and sniffs.

“Good orang-utan,” says Father Bayu warmly.

Sam likes him immediately. “Are you fond of orang-utans, Father Bayu?”

“I'm fond of everybody.”

He's clearly never met Aunt Candy.

“Everybody? How can you be fond of wicked people?”

He cogitates on the matter then replies, “If people are wicked, it's because they feel unloved. If I add to their sorrow by despising them, they will feel even less loved and become more wicked. I shouldn't want that.”

Father Bayu is a psychic healer. Legend has it that he can perform surgery without anaesthetic, pain or blood. He is well known throughout Janitzio, and because he has so many patients, he is in a constant state of exhaustion; but he never turns anyone away.

“I worry we will wear him out,” Esperanza had said. “Nobody will go hospital no more. Why would we risk pain and suffering when we have Father Bayu on our doorstep?”

He had successfully removed a tumour the size of a grapefruit from Maricella's stomach and, yes, Maricella had been to hospital first, but the surgeon had said it was inoperable.

“Not every psychic healer is to be trusted though,” Esperanza warned. “Plenty say they have the gift, but some are frauds. I tell you, I know a guy who plunged his fist into the stomach of a sick boy and said he had removed a tumour. Sure enough, there was something in his hand but it was no tumour – it was goat's intestines! He had hidden them in his hand earlier. I know because my uncle, the butcher, told me so.”

Sam thought it was a cruel trick, but Esperanza had laughed her pretty laugh. “You know what is funny, darling? Even though this man was a fraud, the child did not know it and his tumour disappeared! People who do not see through these tricks believe themselves to be healed and, you know what, sometimes they are.”

I don't know if Father Bayu is the genuine article or a gifted fraud. Does it matter? A result is a result, no matter how it's achieved. He isn't lying when he tells Sam that he'd cured the paralysis in John Tabuh's leg and brought Christa round and helped her in her grieving.

“Your mother was well on the way to recovery when she left here. Your father will always have a limp, but not enough to bother him. I sent them to stay with Esperanza for a while – to be mothered. Even mothers need mothering sometimes.”

Sam and Father Bayu talk at great length, sitting under an orange tree in the grounds of the church. Lola is asleep in the branches. Kitty is picking fruit.

“I was extraordinarily fond of Mr and Mrs Tabuh,” Father Bayu continues. “They were good souls, if a little lost. They talked about you constantly, Sam.”

“They did?”

“In the most loving way. Know that and you'll never stoop to wickedness.”

Kitty throws Sam an orange. She peels it slowly, thinking about what the healer has just said. “Father Bayu, if I hadn't had Lola to love me, do you think I'd have become wicked?”

“It's possible. A child starved of affection may see wickedness as its only playmate; but because Lola loved you, she stopped your heart from hardening. You are not so deeply scarred, all you have sustained is a little scratch.”

It doesn't feel like a little scratch. It hurts when Sam remembers her dreadful childhood. It hurts when she thinks of all the years she has missed with her parents. It really hurts when she thinks she might never see them again.

“My scratch feels quite sore sometimes, Father Bayu.”

He nods sagely. “Stop picking the scab. Concentrate on doing what you have to do; that is the cure.”

“Father Bayu?”

“Yes, my child?”

“I need to know what is real, what is illusion and what is magic. I might get closer to learning the truth if you would try something for me – if you're not too tired, of course.”