The Black Witch of Mexico (12 page)

Her fingers linked with his. She moved closer and he could feel the heat of her body. Their eyes locked.

“Would you like to stay?” she murmured.

This is it
, he thought,
this is how it starts, the forgetting
. This is moving on. He had waited this long to find out what most of the world already knew. He had never had to move on before, no lover had ever engaged him so much in his thirty-two years that he could not forget her the moment he slipped out of bed.

This would be the start of getting over her, leaving behind this madness that had consumed his life. No more drunken texts in the middle of the night, no more self-pity.

There was nothing tentative to this first kiss, she bit his lip, took his face in her hands and kissed him hard, forced him back against the wall. Her hips pressed against his and the kiss went on and on until he broke away to catch his breath. She pulled up his shirt and her hands were all over him. She took one of his nipples in her mouth. He gasped, overwhelmed.

He started to unbutton her blouse but she took his wrists and forced them over his head against the wall. He let her do it. She smiled and began to slowly move her hips, teasing him.

It was too much but she fought him as he took his hands from the wall. When he finally forced his hands free she gave a little cry and wrapped her arms and her legs around him and they stumbled back onto the floorboards. He tore at her clothes, pulling up her skirt, tearing a button from her blouse. She bit him on the chest. He grabbed her hair, kissed her again and rolled on top of her, his jeans and underwear around his hips. He pressed himself against her. She reached down and started to stroke him, her tongue licking the sweat off his throat.

“Oh, Elena,” he said.

They both stopped. For a long time they lay there, frozen, and then she wriggled out from under him, pulled down her dress and went out.

He stood up slowly and dressed. There was a long scratch down his ribs and two of the buttons on his shirt were missing, tokens spent on lost opportunity. He dared a glance at the easel in the corner. The one painted eye glared at him in silent accusation. He supposed the portrait would always be half finished now.

He closed his eyes and stood in the middle of the room with his hands by his sides, opening and closing into fists. Then he took a deep breath and went out.

She was standing on the other side of the kitchen bench, holding her cell phone. “I’ve called you a taxi,” she said.

“Jamie...”

“I’m going to bed. Be ready at reception at seven.”

And she left the room.

Chapter 27

He thought he would never see her again, that she would send Jose to take him to Santa Marta. But the next morning when he went down to reception to check out she was sitting in the foyer reading the
International Tribune
. Her expression was thunderous. When she saw him, she tossed the newspaper aside and stood up, her arms crossed.

“I’ll have the valet get my car, I’ll be waiting outside.”

A busboy loaded his cases into the back of the SUV next to boxes of medical supplies and Adam climbed in the passenger side. He said good morning and she said good morning back and that was all the conversation they had for the next hour.

Finally, when they hit the highway to Veracruz he started to say: “About last night...”

She held up her hand: “It’s best you don’t say anything.”

He nodded and shrugged. Well, okay, if that’s what she wanted. He thought she might relent after she had time to cool off. She didn’t.

* * *

They stopped for Cokes at a roadside cantina with red checkerboard tablecloths covered with flies. The place reeked of fried chicken and diesel. Jamie had a
“Comida Mexicana”
of frijoles, rice, and enchiladas. Adam had no appetite. He ordered a Coke and only drank half of it and let the rest get warm.

Back on the highway they passed countless slow moving trucks, saw endless signs for
playas
. The roads were good until they got to San Cristobal de las Casas, when they turned off the main road and headed up into the surrounding hills. There were more and more potholes in the asphalt, and soon after they passed a small town called San Juan de Chamula. It was little more than a market square surrounded by a few wood and breezeblock buildings.

Past San Juan there was no asphalt at all. The rocks jutting out of the dirt scraped the underside of the car and Jamie had to change down into second gear.

They threw up clouds of dust behind them.

The road was lined with adobe and stucco huts in little hamlets of three or four houses. Dogs ran out barking at them, chickens pecking in the middle of the road scurried out of the way. A Mexican in cowboy hats and boots trotted past, heading in the other direction. He touched his hand to his hat and waved.

There were no other cars. Once they had to brake hard to avoid hitting a cow. “How do people know which animal belongs to who?” he asked her.

She just shrugged her shoulders.

After almost an hour winding up the dirt road they reached the top of a hill crested with thorn shrub and flat, pale yellow cactus. Just beyond was a pueblo, perhaps two dozen houses, a single smoky street and a few chickens.

“Santa Marta,” she said, the first words she had spoken for almost an hour.

A pig lay on the side of the road wallowing in the dust. He saw a hand-painted sign with an arrow:
La Clínica
and a red cross.

For the next six months this was home.

Children gathered round the car to stare at them. The braver ones touched the dust-caked coachwork. ‘
Gringos!
’ they yelled as they got out.

A tall, wiry man came out wearing a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a large wooden cross on a cord around his neck. He was shirtless and his skin was tanned the colour of tobacco. Bernard Fox had a mane of grey hair and a silver beard and looked nothing like the pastor Adam had imagined. He looked like a pirate.

“Hola, guapa,”
he shouted at Jamie.
“Que pasa?”

Her mood changed instantly. “P
apa, que tal?”

“Better for seeing you. You look more beautiful every time I see you.”

She smiled and hugged him.

“Have you brought my new doctor with you?” hesaid.

He came down the steps and squinted over his spectacles at Adam. “So, you’re my new angel in a white coat. Welcome to Santa Marta.” He held out his a large freckled hand. He had a grip like a wrestler. “You’ve come at a good time,” he said.

“Why’s that?” Adam said.

“There’s no cholera!’

* * *

He gave Adam a quick tour of the clinic; there was a waiting room with two long wooden benches, some posters about breastfeeding, vaccinations and the correct use of condoms taped onto the bare walls. The treatment room had a table, a desk and a chair and was lined with wooden shelves crowded with medications, some of them covered with thick layers of dust. The whole place smelled like a bus station that had recently been doused with disinfectant.

He was astonished to find the clinic was equipped with a centrifuge and an X-ray machine. There was even a petrol generator for back-up. “There are power cuts all the time,” Bernard said.

He would be lodged with one of the families in the village, he said. Luis was Bernard’s acolyte and would also be his translator and informal assistant. He took him next door to meet him. Luis looked as if he was barely out of school even though he already had a braided, dimple-cheeked wife - Rosa - and two
hijos
, four and two.

The house he was to live in was much like the others in the village; it had whitewashed adobe walls and dirt floors. His room was sparse; there was a cot pushed against the wall, made up with a sheet and a light cotton blanket, and a window with wooden shutters.

“Where’s the remote for the air conditioner?” Adam said.

Bernard gave him a tight smile. “It’s on the DVD player next to the Swedish sound system.”

This is where his daughter gets her quick tongue
, Adam thought.

Bernard asked if he would like to have dinner with him and Jamie, but Adam pleaded exhaustion. He couldn’t endure more of Jamie’s icy silence, and anyway he guessed Bernard might like to spend some time alone with his daughter.

Luis said that Rosa had made tamales but he didn’t make it to dinner. After Bernard left he collapsed onto the bed and was almost instantly asleep.

Chapter 28

He woke suddenly in the dark, with no idea where he was. He stared into the blackness, his heart hammering. He lay there for a long time, disoriented and a little frightened.

“What the hell am I doing here?” he said aloud.

He did not remember falling back to sleep, when he woke again it was still dark but he heard horses trotting past his window and someone slapping tortillas onto a griddle for breakfast. He tried to doze but the roosters crowing under his window made that impossible. Then he smelled the tortillas roasting and he remembered how hungry he was.

He stumbled into the dim, lantern-lit kitchen. There was a smoky wood fire and a few rickety wooden chairs. Luis and Rosa were already awake. Rosa put a stone bowl in front of him and he gratefully gulped down some watery beans and steaming tortillas. They were not at all like the ones he had eaten in Boston; they were rich and grainy like whole wheat pancakes. There was not even a spoon, he used the tortillas to scoop up the beans and dripped juice onto his jeans or onto the table. Afterwards there was a cup of warm milk flavoured with powdered coffee.

He ate with Luis. Rosa and the children would eat later, Luis told him, after they had left for the clinic.

After their rudimentary breakfast, Luis led the way to the
clinica.
It was just getting on for dawn and he could make out shadows moving about the village. There was movement around the SUV parked outside the
clinica
, Jamie was already dressed and was getting ready to leave. She had probably hoped to slip away before he appeared.

She said her goodbyes to Bernard and then came over - with some reluctance he thought - and held out her hand.

“Well good luck,” she said. “I have to be getting back. It was good to meet you.”

“Will I see you again?”

“Hopefully not.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Let’s not get into that.” She got into SUV. The window whirred down. “Oh, and watch out for yourself.”

“The witches?”

“Not just any witch. You have real competition now. Don’t let the Crow steal all your patients.”

“What’s the Crow?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

She spun the wheels, turned around and headed back down the dirt road towards San Cristobal. Adam watched her go with genuine regret. “You really screwed that up,” he said to himself and joined Bernard in the clinic for his first day as an angel of mercy.

Chapter 29

Santa Marta wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t Beacon Hill either. There was an unreliable electrical supply and when it was working he discovered that everyone in the entire village had a television and kept it turned on at full volume from the moment they woke up until they went to bed.

Every morning the benches in the waiting room filled up with patients; there might be an old man with pneumonia, or a farmer with a self-inflicted machete wound that had become infected, and always and an endless troupe of exhausted women with crying babies or toddlers with diarrhoea. He was on call day and night, in that first week he treated a young woman who had burned both her arms trying to start a fire with petrol, and a young man who had fallen from his horse and broken his collarbone.

He hoped he would not be asked to treat anything much more serious. There was no CBC, no nurses to help him ventilate or take blood, not even a defibrillator. Any diagnosis was made without the benefit of a CT scan or a specialist paediatric physician; on the upside, if someone died he would not be sued, and there was no paperwork to file.

Bernard did not charge the villagers for his services, either in the church or the clinic, but sometimes people brought them vegetables, or a chicken, or some eggs, or they would help him repair something at the clinic or the church.

The local women all wore black woollen skirts with embroidered satin blouses. If the weather turned cold they put on shaggy woollen shawls, but winter or summer they wore open sandals on their feet. They carried the small children in a baby hammock on their backs. They called it a
rebozo
.