The Witch's Market (17 page)

But that was where the entry ended. Isabelle might have gotten something from Alfredo, but I suspected she didn't. She seemed to have lacked her mother's guile.

Staring at Isabelle's handwriting that ended halfway down the page, I had a feeling that something had happened to make her stop writing. Reading these lines, I realized with a start that the date of the entry was around the time she had drowned. I felt a pounding headache coming on. Suddenly it occurred to me that these may have been her last words.

She must have written this just before her death!

My fear that I had gotten myself into matters I would not be able to handle was intensified.

Sabrina had hinted to me that Alfredo had killed her daughter. Somehow I doubted this. That Alfredo was a womanizer was obvious, but that didn't mean he was violent. Certainly, he'd had ample opportunity to take advantage of me, but he had always behaved quite properly.

All these uncertainties were starting to drive me crazy. I decided to pay a visit to meet Uncle Wang, to distract myself. I hoped he really was as wise as his niece had claimed.

21

Wielding the Wand

T
he next morning I took the ferry back to Las Palmas. I still had the address that Uncle Wang's niece had given me and it didn't take long for the taxi driver to find it. There was a tumble-down wall with ancient-looking houses behind it. They were old, but probably not quaint enough to attract tourists.

I paid, got out, and walked down a bustling pedestrian street surrounded by green-roofed, white-walled houses. Cooking odors wafted from food stalls ornamented with faded red banners, announcing dumplings, pancakes, noodles, and other dishes. Small plastic tables and chairs were arrayed outside. From spice shops came exotic scents, promising the availability of tasty Mediterranean dishes. Barrels of abalone and sea slug contributed the aroma of the deep ocean. There was also a mahjong parlor. Tiles clanged in the background as winners cheered and losers cursed. This was a miniature Chinatown, but for homesick Chinese, not tourists.

Uncle Wang's address turned out not to be a private residence or even a nursing home but a small Daoist temple. Above the building hung a signboard with the characters
L
UMINOUS
S
PIRIT
T
EMPLE
in gold against a red background.

I climbed up the three steps to the threshold and peeked in. Like all such temples it was dark inside with an overwhelming odor of incense. On the far wall a variety of gods stood on a large altar. In the central place of honor was Daoism's founder, Laozi, a white-bearded old man riding a water buffalo.

In contrast to this gentle philosopher, beside him stood the ferocious, red-faced General Guan, protector of police and gangsters alike—or anyone who makes him a generous offering. The relentless warrior-deity held a halberd, ready to chop in half anyone imprudent enough to annoy him. His loyalty and integrity are legendary, but his real appeal is his ferocity and invincibility. The Chinese believe if they put up General Guan's image and make him generous offerings, their stores and households will be protected against all evil and misfortune.

Chinese like their temples to have many gods, just to be sure to cover all their bases. On either side of Laozi and General Guan, I recognized two more gods: Lu Dongbin, the immortal famous for enjoying life, and Li Bai, one of China's greatest poets. Placed on the altar for these beings were abundant offerings: fruit, tea, mai tai, red-dyed buns, fresh flowers. Hung at the front of the altar were cloths embroidered with good-luck symbols such as bats, lotuses, piles of coins, and the black and white
yin-yang
symbol.

On a long table in front of the altar was placed a shallow box with a smooth layer of sand inside. Next to it was placed a Y-shaped stick. I knew about this from Laolao. It was for calling up spirits of deceased ancestors. I'd never seen it in use, because Laolao had warned me that it could be very dangerous to bring ghosts up right in front of you. I hadn't taken this very seriously when she'd first told me about it, but my experience at Past Life Lake had shaken my doubt.

As I continued to examine my surroundings in the temple, a middle-aged Chinese woman, wearing a Chinese top embroidered with lotus flowers, approached and spoke to me in Cantonese.

“I haven't seen you before, you are . . . ?”

“I'm looking for Uncle Wang.”

“He busy now, so you must wait.”

“How long?”

“About an hour.” She gestured toward the many people either sitting or milling around, looking anxious.

“Uncle Wang will do a very important ritual soon. You can stay and watch but first must buy incense and light it on the altar.”

Now a stream of people were entering the temple, all Chinese, and mostly older.

“Many here make big donations,” said the woman.

Her message was clear, but I limited myself to purchasing a bundle of incense. I lit several sticks, then went up to insert them into the sand of the bronze burner, inhaling the strong smoke as it billowed from the vessel like question marks.

Just then a very old, small, skeletal Chinese man materialized in front of me, somewhat comically holding a large clock in his hand that was making crisp
tick tock, tick tock
sounds.

The old man stared at me curiously, lids drooping over sharp eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm looking for Uncle Wang.”

“You're looking him in the eyes.”

“So you're Uncle Wang? I met your niece at the restaurant in Tenerife. She told me you know things.”

For a moment I studied this old man, an animated mummy with a head of white hair, a white goatee, narrow face, and radiant eyes. It was as if he were a 300-year-old Daoist immortal stepping out from an ancient Chinese painting, or perhaps descending from a cloud-veiled mountain. I bowed respectfully to this frail but powerful presence.

“I'll be busy for an hour, so talk to me again after the ceremony,” he said.

He gave me another nerve-racking once-over. The clock's ticking and tocking didn't do much to calm my nerves. Because of his advanced age, the ticking clock gave me a sense of foreboding.

“I'm Eileen Chen. I came here from America to learn about shamans and witches,” I said.

He stroked his white beard with his long-nailed fingers. “Hmm . . . think you're a shamaness yourself?”

“Maybe, but I'd rather think of myself as a professor of anthropology.”

“A professor . . . but still a shamaness.”

“How can you tell?” I had, after all, opened my third eye, so maybe as a man of knowledge he could tell.

“I feel
qi
emanating from your body. You possess more power than you know.”

When I was about to ask him more about this, he waved his hand dismissively. “Because you're a woman of
Dao,
I will let you stay. But you must sit and watch quietly. Any noise might frighten the spirits away. I will now perform
fuji,
wielding the wand. The people here are waiting to learn about their past, future, and all the other mysteries of life.”

This must be the ancient Daoist divination method that Laolao had warned me about—but it was too late to pull out now. And I was curious.

He pointed to the clock. “The ceremony must start at two thirty-eight. That's the auspicious time I calculated.” He signaled for me to go sit with him on a bench. “Listen carefully. Once the
fuji
starts this temple will be filled with spirits. Are you brave enough for this?”

After all I'd been through—the witches' dance, Past Life Lake—I thought I could manage a ritual in an old temple.

“This is an ancient practice I learned from my master, a hermit who showed himself only to his few students. Wielding the wand is how we invite spirits, ancestors, immortals, even the ancient sages, to reveal what is hidden.

“If they want to contact you, they'll just come. Otherwise, you have to lure them here through offerings like their favorite food, wine, cigarettes, even poems. We call this Inviting the Spirits.”

“Dead people,” I said.

He cast me a chiding look. “ ‘Dead people' is not a very respectful term, Señorita Chen. They are still alive, but in another dimension. Anyway, this ritual involves a magistrate, which is me. No woman can do it because women's bodies are impure . . . the spirits will be offended.”

“Why are women's bodies impure?” I interrupted.

“Ahhh . . . you don't know. Because their great aunt visits every month!”

I must have looked completely puzzled, for he sighed. “Because they have their monthly sutra!”

Just then a woman about my age passed by, and whispered to me, “Uncle Wang means your period,” before she walked away.

I laughed out loud, and told the old man. “Ah, you mean falling off the roof!”

Now it was Uncle Wang who looked puzzled. “No one is falling off the roof of my temple. So stop your bad-luck talk!”

I was still laughing while he went on. “With
fuji
absolutely every detail has to be correct. The inquirer must be present, as well as a channeler who transcribes the words of the spirit in the sand using the Y-shaped wand representing the
yin,
or ghost, world. Then a reader of spirit writing dictates to a scribe. All is supervised by the magistrate in charge—that's me. This is how the spirits tell us what they wish us to know.

“The best channeler is an innocent child no older than six. Then there can be no fakery. The writing on the sand is often a poem, but sometimes prose.”

“How are you sure it's the words of the spirit, not the channeler?” I asked.

He cast me an annoyed look. “If it's a child, he can't make up a long, complicated poem. When an adult channels, he or she writes in someone else's handwriting and reveals secrets no one knows. Besides, the writing is quick. There isn't enough time to make things up.”

Before I had a chance to respond, he continued. “You should know that crossing the boundary between human and spirit realms taxes the energy of the living.”

“What about the dead? How can they speak to us?”

“Because the dead possess dark, powerful forces we living cannot understand. Anyway, we should always keep our distance from the dead, so we do not want them to come through for very long. Even your mother or father or lover who is in spirit, no matter how much you love and miss them.”

Though this was a lot to take in, I got the basic idea. But I didn't understand why he carried the big clock—was it to set a time limit for spirit visits? So I asked him.

“To remind people that our time in the
yang
world is running out,” he explained. “Only the
yin
world is timeless.” He laughed, stroking his goatee. “But anyway no one is in a hurry to go there.”

Just then a gong began to ring loudly. After suggesting that if I became frightened I should recite a sutra silently to myself, he hurried to his place behind the altar facing the congregation.

I squeezed my way to the front, tried to compose myself, and took out my notebook. Suddenly the chatter stopped as everyone awaited the imminent arrival of the spirits.

Wang made a gesture to signal the beginning of the ritual. A five- or six-year-old boy stepped out from behind his mother and took his place next to Uncle Wang. Then the child picked up the Y-shaped wooden wand and passed it back and forth through the incense smoke. As the celebrants began to chant, the boy's expression changed, as if he was entering an altered state. Moments later, his small hand moved the wand back and forth on the tray of sand, as surely as if he were a virtuoso calligrapher. Excited, the audience pressed forward, trying to see what he wrote.

In a resonant voice, the recitation master read what he saw on the sand as the scribe brushed the characters onto a long scroll. When this was done, the scribe held up the scroll, on which was written:

The inquirer studied this. Seeing his nervous manner I thought it was pretty likely that he was here to ask about his love life. Maybe he fancied a girl who seemed not to notice him. How the poem related to his love life I had no idea and he seemed not to know either.

Fortunately Uncle Wang read the spirit writing aloud and announced the interpretation.

“My dear friend, this is an extremely auspicious reading. Congratulations! Now you can go home and wait for good news to arrive.”

Everyone clapped.

The little boy, no longer the center of attention, slipped away from the altar and went back to his mother. When the clapping died down, Wang signaled me to come forward from the audience.

Smiling, he said in his authoritative voice, “Today we have Señorita Eileen Chen from America. She is a famous shamaness and will invite down her own familiar spirit.”

I was quite unprepared for this, but the audience was shouting encouragement so I had no choice but to go up to the altar.

“Don't worry.” With his bony fingers, Uncle Wang pointed to the deities on the altar. “We're protected by all the gods here.”

“But . . . I don't have anything to talk about.”

“We all have doubts in life, so ask whatever is on your mind.”

A young man raised his voice among the crowd. “Just go ahead!” The audience followed him in chanting.

Suddenly I was terrified, thinking,
What if the spirit gets inside me and doesn't want to leave?

Uncle Wang's voice rose again in the packed hall. “Señorita Chen, someone is here in spirit to tell a secret about herself.”

Suddenly, I had the same uncanny sensation of being sucked out of my own body that I'd had at Past Life Lake. I found myself walking around to the back of the altar, then standing under the deities, waiting for instructions.

“You have a question in your mind,” Wang said. “A spirit has the answer and will come to you.” He picked up a cloth and gently covered my eyes. “So you can better focus. Now meditate to still your mind.”

I felt my mind relax and could no longer feel my body. There was a sense of peace and beyond that, nothingness. The world surrounding me gradually fell away, leaving me alone in the void. Minutes later I felt a presence, feminine with a troubled
qi
. Although I could not hear or see anything, I felt my hand guided as it moved the Y-shaped wand on the sand. There was nothing but my hand, the wand, and the sand.

I had no sense of how much time had elapsed when my hand jerked to a stop. I looked down at what I had written and saw it was in Spanish, not Chinese. Before I could react, I heard the master of recitation read out the passage I'd written.