Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (12 page)

There was an earthenware vessel which contained turtle blood, glass balls, deer horns, rainwater of the month of May, peppers, Holy Water, river and sea water. It had been buried for six days beneath a palm and six days beneath a ceiba, and had been blessed by Eshu at a crossroad. From this vessel Osain came forth.

Pedro the Hunter was dressed in nothing but blood plastered with chicken feathers, and Osain knocked his legs from under him because Osain has only one leg and walks with a crutch. Misael gave a twisted forked branch to Pedro, and he danced with it upon one leg.
He gave the Deliverer the art of cures
.

Who else appeared at the tambor? Eshu came in five of his paths, Eshu Alabwanna, Eshu Aye, Eshu Barakeno, who turned an old man into a child, Eshu Anagui, who turned a child into an old man, and Eshu Laroye, who hid behind a door. Obatala came dressed in white,
giving incorruptibility and the gift of creativity
, as befits his identity as the Virgin Mary and Jesus of Nazareth. He was cold and trembling because he lives in the sierra, and he danced shuffling while the people called ‘Hekua, baba, hekua,’ which is ‘Blessings, Father, blessings.’

Osun came, promising
to be a guardian angel
, and Yegua, saying that she would control
the transition of death
, and Inle, who is the Archangel Raphael, giving
bealing when the Deliverer would be wounded
. Obba said that
the family of the Deliverer would be faithful to him
, and the Jimaguas who are Saint Cosme and Saint Damian came, but
they gave no gift
, since prosperity is all that they have to offer. Orisha-Oko, decked in pink and blue beads, who is Saint Isidro Labrador, gave
stability that would overcome madness,
and there was also Oya. She was pleased with the hens and goats that she had been offered, and she swore that
the Deliverer should not be destroyed by the fire
that she shared with Chango, her estranged husband. She is Saint Teresa and Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, and she always wears robes as red as wine. She is so fond of flowers that she does not allow her initiates to wear them, keeping them all to herself. Her necklace is brown and red and white, and as soon as she saw Yemaya they began to fight, because Yemaya swindled her out of the sea and gave her a cemetery instead. The assembly was therefore treated to the spectacle of Francesca and Dolores the whore engaged in vicious combat, overturning each other’s tureens, rolling up the straw petate mats and coshing each other over the head. It took Chango to break up the fight, because he was Oya’s first husband, and he knew that to frighten her off, all he had to do was to show her a ram’s skull. Later in the fiesta Oya took revenge by stealing Juanito’s skull, and dangling it before Chango’s eyes, whereupon he fled, screaming, because what he fears the most is a human skull.

There came all at once the three Orishas with whom Oshun had had love affairs before she fell in love with Chango: Oggun, Ochosi, and Orunla. Oggun is Eshu’s best friend, and Eshu arranges car crashes for his friend so that he can consume the blood. He is the Orisha of slaying and bloodshed, and therefore he never rests, walking the earth vigilantly by day and night, and he is the Orisha of metals and the weapons made of them. As soon as he arrived he made a beeline for Oshun, with whom he is still desperately in love even though nowadays she loves only Chango, preferring passion to violence. His colours used to be sanguine, but he lost his reds to Chango, just as he lost his love, so that now he has black and green. Oggun is Saint Peter, who once cut off a man’s ear with a sword; for this reason Oggun wears a machete and his straw sombrero in addition to his skirt made of mariwo. He is a lover of dogs, and when he came the first thing he did, after flirting with Oshun and spitting at Chango, was to pick up a prodigious mastiff in his arms and cuddle it. To the Deliverer he gave
mastery of fatal force
.

Ochosi, lover of deer and master of the crossbow, also took possession of Pedro, so that Osain rode Misael instead. He is the patron of hunters, Saint Norbert, and he has learned medicine from his constant friend, Osain, which is also the reason why the latter allowed him to ride Pedro. He drank his offering of milk, honey and maize meal, and he thanked the people for the sacrifice of pigeons. What he gave to the Deliverer was
justice as the reward for his endeavour
.

Orunla was once the Orisha of dance, but he swapped the gift with Chango, in exchange for divination. He is a misogynist; he manifests in the intellect only and never makes his horse do crazy things. He is Saint Francis of Assisi, and once upon a time he tricked Death into avoiding anyone who wears his green and yellow beads. On this day he gave the Deliverer
prescience, to make him strong against the future, and the ability to trick Iku, Lord of death.
Before he left he had an altercation with Yemaya, who was once his wife, and who had humiliated him by divining with the cowrie shells better than he.

Most terrible, Aganyu made a rare appearance. He kissed his son, Chango, with whom he had once quarrelled but become reconciled. He is Saint Christopher, and despite his ferocious temper he gave the Deliverer his
relentless anger of a volcano, and its power of destruction
.

Saint Lazarus came, leaning decrepitly upon a staff. He is Babalu-Aye, and he is a beggar struck with every contagious disease; because he is so poor he dresses in sackcloth and eats only toasted corn. He also loves dogs, and he shares confidences with Eshu and Orunla. Now that Olofi has cured him with purifying rain, he has become a great lover, and as he knows the cure of diseases he is able to heal syphilis with sarsaparilla and cleanse a house with albahaca and apasote. His colour is the violet of diseased flesh, and he is not without a sense of humour, which is why he took over Hectoro, who counted himself an unbeliever and who, even if he had believed, would not have allowed his dignity to be diminished even by being mounted by a god. The reason for this mischievous choice eventually became clear. He not only promised that
the Deliverer’s enemies should succumb to terrible disease,
but also said that
the Deliverer would be given the sexual prowess of a horse
. Everyone laughed, especially Eshu and the libidinous Chango, because everyone knew that Hectoro kept three wives at a safe distance from each other, and serviced all of them regularly.

And so the candomble raged for three days. The people danced to the bata drums without resting and without tiring, they drank prodigiously, love affairs flowered in the darkness and in the corners of the courtyards, and they ate the offerings with indecent greed once the Orishas had extracted their essence. The black jaguars of the city lounged amongst the dancers, chewed upon abandoned bones, and got in the way of the gods.

The world is well-stocked with legends of the times when deities walked the earth and when saints performed miracles in Jesus’ name. For the most part these legends are a quaint echo of nostalgia for times which now seem naive. But for the population of Cochadebajo de los Gatos and for millions of santeros of all races and colours all over the Hispanic Western hemisphere they walk the earth in broad daylight, still performing miracles, still discoursing with ordinary folk, still arguing, fighting, having love affairs, dispensing favours and punishments, still being greeted by cries of ‘Ache.’

They still indulge their tastes too; just look at Francesca, who today is Yemaya, on her hands and knees looking everywhere for cockroaches to cram into her mouth. She is eating them with a delight that is almost too sensual, and it is making Chango feel aroused. The other Orishas are trying to prevent her, because, as everyone knows, they employ cockroaches as their messengers.

DIONISIO’S
FAN LETTERS
are increasing at a surprising rate as the days go by. They increased from two on the second day to two sackfuls in the second week, so that we cannot really keep up with the work of reading them. We have been classifying them into three piles, one for letters of support, one for declarations of Platonic love, and the other for declarations of carnal intent. These letters are all forwarded through the good offices of
La Prensa,
who have written to D. and told him that they are processing them in their usual way through their X-ray machine. They say they have found fifteen letters packed with plastic explosive, and four gifts of booby-trapped alarm clocks.

We composed a universal letter of tactful rejection for those who desire his child, and a universal letter of sincere appreciation for the others, and had one thousand of each printed at a discount by the printers who normally produce all that propaganda for the four communist parties of differing views who are always attacking each other. It has cost D. so much in postage that in the end I lent him the money to bribe that man at the town hall to process them through the municipal franking machine.

I am beginning to find all this very threatening and uncomfortable, and so is D., I think. Last night in bed he suddenly got frightened and said to me, ‘Anica, I sometimes have the terrible sensation that I am merely a part of your history.’

I was startled, and I said to him, ‘Oh querido, what does that mean?’ even though I sort of knew what he meant already.

He looked at me and I think he did not say what he meant, because he said, ‘All the people that I knew when I was your age are now just a part of my history.’

I think that maybe at last he is taking all these threats seriously, and has some premonitions (too strong a word – ‘intimations’ is a better word, the kind that he likes to use) of death. I wanted to cry for some reason, and I said, ‘Has it ever occurred to you that I might just be a part of your history?’ His eyes were glowing in the dark, and I think they would not have glowed like that if he had not been almost crying himself. I was leaning over him and he touched me and said, ‘Your breast is like a nocturnal animal, I will always remember the way that it is brushing against my chest.’ It was just as if he was about to say goodbye. I have started praying for the first time since Mama died.

Yesterday we had a strange experience. We were just walking along when we saw an Aymara Indian (what is an Aymara doing around here?). He was in full national dress and had trenzas, and he had that proud look about him that makes you feel too unimportant to be worth knowing. He was with a very tall old negro who had more muscles than would seem possible, but he had a nice face and grey hair, and he had one of those campesino machetes with the leather tassels on the sheath. The strange thing was that they both were leading a huge black jaguar on a string.

There were some people there, and they all scattered as if they had seen the devil. But D. is crazy about animals and I swear he is telepathic with them. I have lost count of the times that dogs have just come up to him, and once I met him in the plaza and he was sitting on a wall with a cat on his knee, and two horses and a burro and three dogs all there as well. I keep telling him that he will get fleas and rabies one of these days, but he laughs at me. I think he enjoys getting on with animals because it is one of the things that makes the people around here believe that he is some kind of sorcerer.

As soon as D. saw the jaguars he got terribly excited. I tried to stop him but he just walked up and introduced himself to the Indian and the negro. The negro was someone called Misael, but my heart jumped when I heard that the Indian was Aurelio, who is famous for sorcery around here. They say that he cures even cancers, and they say that the cats of Cochadebajo de los Gatos were a kind of unexpected side-effect of one of his healing sessions. Everyone is terrified of him, including me.

D. asked him if the cats were two of the famous tame black jaguars of Cochadebajo de los Gatos. The negro, Misael, just nodded, but the Indian, Aurelio, sort of narrowed his eyes and took a deep suck on his coca pestle. I am trying to remember exactly what he said. It was something like, ‘You are in three kinds of danger.’ D. laughed and said, ‘Everyone says that, but I believe none of it,’ and Aurelio narrowed his eyes again and said, ‘One is that you think you know everything, which is what causes the second danger, which is that you will not understand anything, and the third danger is that death will come in the wrong place, and unexpectedly.’

I could see from D’s smile that he wanted to ridicule the old man, and I was truly frightened that he would. D. pretends that he only believes in what he can see or touch, but I know that that is a fraud. I know him better than that. Thank God he did not ridicule him, but he started to talk about those cats. He said, ‘Why do you lead the cats on a string too weak to hold them?’ and Misael explained that it was because when people see the cats walking behind, they think that they are stalking the two of them, and the people shoot at the cats, so they keep the cats on a string to show that they are with them and not hunting them. I didn’t put that very well.

D. looked at the cats, and I just knew that he was going to go down on his knees and stroke them. I nearly shit myself. Those cats were so huge, and one of them was licking its lips, and they say that only someone who knows the cats already or is a brujo can safely stroke them. I tried to pull him back, but he did just as I thought he would, and I called him a fool, but he did it anyway.

He put a hand on each of the cats’ heads and he talked to them as though they were children, saying ‘How are you?’ and things like that. One of them licked his hand, and he looked up at me with that triumphant grin of his and he said, ‘This cat likes my salt.’ He scratched the other one under the chin and round the ears, and then it went up on its back legs and put its feet on his shoulders. D. fell over backwards, and I seriously thought for a second that it was going to rip his throat out. I didn’t know what to do, and truly I nearly did shit myself all over again, but the next thing I see D. is rolling around in the road having a wrestling game with that monster, and he is laughing away like he is being tickled. Then he just stands up and nods at the two men, and comes back to me as though nothing had happened, except that all the way home he kept going on about the way the cats smelled fusty and sweet, that it was a beautiful smell, and on and on.