Of Love and Shadows (8 page)

Three days later, mother and daughter found themselves back for intensified treatment, because Evangelina was suffering an attack every day, always around noon. This time the healer took energetic measures. He led his patient behind the oilcloth, removed her clothing with his own hands, and washed her from head to foot with a mixture composed of camphor, methylene blue, and holy water, in equal parts, pausing with special attention on the areas most afflicted by the sickness: heels, breasts, back, and navel. Friction, fright, and the healer's strong palms stained the girl's skin a sky blue and made her shiver and shake so hard she nearly swooned. Fortunately, he then administered a calming syrup of agrimony, but that left the girl weakened and trembling. After the
ensalmo
, he gave Digna a long list of recommendations and various medicinal herbs: aspen to combat restlessness and anxiety, chicory for self-pity, gentian to ward off depression, gorse against suicide and weeping fits, holly to prevent hatred and envy, and pine to cure remorse and panic. He told them to fill a pan with springwater, throw in the leaves and flowers, and let them brew in the sunlight for four hours before bringing them to a boil over a slow fire. He reminded Digna that for love impatience in innocents you must dose their food with alum and avoid letting them share a bed with other family members, because the fever is contagious, like measles. Finally he gave her a flask of small calcium pills and a disinfectant soap for her daily bath.

At the end of a week the girl had grown thin, her gaze was troubled and her hands tremulous, her stomach was constantly churning, but the attacks continued. Conquering her natural resistance, Digna Ranquileo then took Evangelina to Los Riscos Hospital, where a young doctor newly arrived from the capital, who expressed himself in scientific terms and had never heard of the megrims, the cholera morbus, to say nothing of the evil eye, assured Digna that Evangelina was suffering from hysteria. It was his opinion that they should ignore her and hope that when she grew out of adolescence she would also grow out of the attacks. He prescribed a tranquilizer that would fell an ox and warned her that if she kept having her fits she would have to be referred to the Psychiatric Hospital in the capital, where they would restore her good sense with a few electric shocks. Digna wanted to know whether hysteria caused the cups to dance on the shelves, the dogs to howl like lost souls, a noisy rain of invisible stones on the roof, and the furniture to rock back and forth, but the doctor preferred not to venture into such deep waters and limited himself to recommending that they set the dishes in a safe place and tie up the animals on the patio.

When she began taking his medication, Evangelina sank into a deep stupor that resembled death. It was all they could do to get her to open her eyes to be fed. They would put a spoonful between her lips and then splash her face with cold water to remind her to chew and swallow. They had to go with her to the privy, afraid that she would be overcome by sleep and fall in. She stayed fast in bed, and when her parents got her to her feet, she would take a couple of drunken steps and fall to the floor snoring. This dreamlike state was interrupted at midday for her usual trance, the only moment she roused to give any signs of vitality. Before a week had gone by, the pills prescribed at the hospital ceased to have any effect, and she entered a stage of sadness that kept her silent and sleepless both day and night. At that point the mother took the initiative and buried the pills in a deep hole in the garden where they would never be found by any living creature.

*  *  *

Desperate, Digna Ranquileo went to Mamita Encarnación who, after firmly establishing that her specialty was births and pregnancies and never fits provoked by other causes, agreed to examine the girl. She came to the house one morning, witnessed the lunatic trance, and proved with her own eyes that the trembling of the furniture and altered behavior of the animals were not idle talk but the God's truth.

“The girl needs a man,” she pronounced.

The Ranquileos were insulted by such a statement. They could not accept that a decent girl they had raised like their own daughter and given special attention to and protected from even the slightest touch by her brothers would act like a bitch in heat. The midwife nodded emphatically, ignoring their arguments, repeating her diagnosis. She recommended giving her enough work to keep her busy at all times, to prevent worse maladies.

“Idleness and chastity make for a sad girl. I tell you, you're going to have to marry that girl off because she won't get free of this whirlwind until she has a man.”

Scandalized, the mother did not follow this counsel, but she did keep the girl busy with chores, which restored her happiness and sleep but did not diminish the intensity of the attacks.

Soon the neighbors learned of these odd goings-on and began to snoop around the house. The boldest marauders came early in order to be close enough to observe the phenomenon and try to find some practical application for it. Some suggested that during her trance Evangelina should communicate with souls in Purgatory, predict the future, or slacken the rains. Digna knew that once the matter became public knowledge, people would flock from miles around to tramp down her garden, litter her patio, and make fun of her daughter. Under such conditions Evangelina would never find a man with enough courage to marry her and give her the children she so badly needed. As she could expect no help from science, she visited her evangelical pastor in the blue-painted shed that served as temple to Jehovah's faithful. She was an active member of that small Protestant congregation and the minister received her cordially. Without omitting any details, she told him of the misfortune that was oppressing their home, making it clear that she had seen to it that her daughter was not tainted by any sin, not so much as a look from her brothers or adoptive father.

The Reverend listened to her tale with great attention. He got down on both knees and for long minutes sank into meditation, seeking light from the Lord. Then he opened the Bible at random and read the first verse that met his eyes: “Holophernes took great delight in her, and drank much more wine than he had drunk at any time in one day since he was born” (Judith 12:20). Satisfied, he interpreted God's answer to the problem of His servant Ranquileo.

“Has your husband given up alcohol, Sister?”

“You know that isn't possible.”

“How many years have I been preaching abstinence to him?”

“He can't leave it alone, he has wine in his blood.”

“Tell him to come to the True Evangelical Church; we can help him. Have you ever seen a drunkard among us?”

Digna listed the reasons she had often repeated to justify her husband's weakness. The problem went back to her stillborn third son. Lacking money to buy an urn, Hipólito had put the little angel in a shoe box, tucked the box beneath his arm, and started out for the cemetery. Along the way he felt the need to drown his sorrow with a few swigs, and lost track of things. Some time later he recovered his senses, laid out in a bog. The box had disappeared, and though he searched for it everywhere, it was never found.

“Imagine his nightmares, Reverend. My poor Hipólito still dreams about it. He wakes up screaming because his little son is calling him from Limbo. Every time he remembers, he takes to the bottle. That's why he gets drunk, not wickedness or meanness.”

“The alcoholic always has an excuse on the tip of his tongue. Evangelina is a trumpet of God. Through her infirmity, He is calling your husband to reform before it's too late.”

“With all due respect, Reverend, if God left it up to me, I'd rather see Hipólito drunk as a lord than my daughter howling like a dog and speaking in a man's voice.”

“The sin of pride, Sister! Who are you to tell Jehovah how to direct our miserable destinies?”

From that day, led by zeal, the pastor, in the company of a few devout members of his congregation, came often to the house of the Ranquileos to help the young girl with the power of communal prayer. But another week went by and Evangelina showed no signs of improvement. One of the interlopers wandering around nervously at the hour of the attack discovered a way to benefit from it. He tripped over a chair and accidentally leaned on the bed where the girl lay in her contortions. The following day, the warts spotting his hand had disappeared. Word of this marvel spread immediately and the number of visitors increased at an alarming rate, certain they would be cured during the trance. Someone dusted off the story of how the Evangelinas had been switched in the hospital, and that added to the prestige of the miracle. At this point the Reverend considered the matter outside the sphere of his knowledge and suggested taking the sick girl to the Catholic priest, whose Church, because it was older, had far more experience with saints and their works.

In the parish church Father Cirilo listened to the story from the lips of the Ranquileos and remembered Evangelina as the only one in her class who had not made her First Communion at school, because her mother belonged to the heretic ranks of Protestantism. She was a lamb from his flock who had been snatched away by the bombast and taradiddle of the evangelicals; he would not, nonetheless, withhold his counsel.

“I shall pray for the child. God's mercy is infinite and He may come to our aid in spite of the fact that you have fallen so far from the Holy Church.”

“Thank you, Father, but besides your prayers, can't you exorcise her for me?” Digna asked.

The priest crossed himself in alarm. That idea must have originated with his Protestant rival, for this poor countrywoman could not be versed in such matters. In recent times the Vatican had frowned on these rituals, avoiding even the mention of the Devil, as if it were better to ignore him. He himself had irrefutable proof of the existence of Satan, the devourer of souls, and for that very reason did not feel inclined to confront him in some slapdash ceremony. Beyond that, if such practices should reach the ears of his superior, the mantle of scandal would definitively darken his old age. Nevertheless, common sense told him that the power of suggestion often has inexplicable effects and that maybe a few “Our Fathers” and a sprinkle or two of holy water would calm the sick girl. He told her mother that this would be sufficient, discounting as highly unlikely that she was possessed by the Devil. Exorcism could not be performed in her case. Exorcism meant conquering the Devil himself, and an ailing and lonely parish priest buried in a country village did not constitute a suitable rival for the powers of the Evil One, even supposing that was the cause of Evangelina's suffering. He ordered the Ranquileos to seek reconciliation with the Holy Catholic Church, because such misfortunes tended to happen to those who defied Our Lord with heretical sects. Digna, however, had seen the priest's collusion with the
patrones
in the confessional, all their
mea culpas
and whisperings, spying on the country people and denouncing their petty pilfering, and that was why she mistrusted Catholicism, believing that the Church was the friend of the rich and the foe of the poor, in open rebellion to the mandates of Jesus Christ, who had preached exactly the opposite.

From that day on, Father Cirilo, too, came to the Ranquileo home whenever his many obligations and weary legs permitted. On the first occasion, his firm convictions were shaken before the spectacle of the young girl scourged by that strange malady. The holy water and the sacraments did not alleviate her symptoms, but since they did not aggravate them he naturally deduced that the Devil was somewhere behind the scenes. He joined forces with the Protestant Reverend in a common spiritual undertaking. They were in agreement in treating it as a mental sickness and in no way an expression of the divine, because the crude miracles attributed to the girl were not worthy of the term. Together they combated superstition and, after studying the case, concluded that the disappearance of a few warts, which almost always cure themselves, the improvement in the weather, normal at this time of the year, and the dubious good fortune in games of chance were not enough to justify a halo of saintliness. But the lively arguments of the priest and the pastor did not halt the pilgrimages. Among the visitors who came asking for favors, opinions were divided. While some upheld the mystic origin of the crisis, others attributed it to a simple satanic curse. Hysteria! chorused the Protestant, the priest, the midwife, and the doctor from Los Riscos Hospital, but no one wanted to hear them, enraptured as they were by the carnival of insignificant wonders.

*  *  *

With her arms around Francisco's waist, her face pressed against the rough texture of his jacket, and her hair whipped by the wind, Irene imagined she was flying on a winged dragon. Behind them lay the last houses of the city. The highway advanced between fields bordered by translucent poplars, and on the horizon she could glimpse hills enveloped in the blue mist of distance. Astride the croup of their steed, she was lost in fantasies recovered from her childhood, racing at a full gallop across the dunes of an Arabian fairy tale. She loved the speed, the seismic shuddering between her legs, the tremendous roar penetrating her skin. She thought of the saint they were going to visit, of the title of her article, of the four-page spread with color photographs. Ever since the apparition of El Iluminado, several years before, who had traveled from north to south healing sores and reviving the dead, there had been no talk of miracle workers. The possessed, yes, the spooked, the damned, the loonies, those there were in abundance, like the girl who spit tadpoles, the superannuated earthquake prognosticator, and the deaf-mute who paralyzed machines with his gaze, a fact she herself had corroborated when she interviewed him through sign language and afterward could never get her watch to work. But aside from that luminous personage, no one had bothered much with miracles that benefited mankind. Every day it was more difficult to find appealing stories for the magazine. It seemed that nothing interesting was happening in the country, and when it did occur, it was censored. Irene put her hands beneath Francisco's jacket to warm her stiff fingers. She felt his lean chest, sinew and bones—so different from Gustavo, a compact mass of muscles exercised by fencing, judo, gymnastics, and the fifty push-ups he did every morning with his troops because he would never demand anything from his men that he himself was not capable of doing. “I am like a father for them, a severe father, but just,” he always said. When they made love in the semi-darkness of hotel rooms, he always stripped, proud of his physique, and walked naked around the room. She loved that body tanned by salt and wind, toughened by physical exercise, flexible, hard, harmonious. She observed him, contented, and caressed him somewhat absentmindedly, but with admiration. She wondered where he was at that moment. Maybe in the arms of another woman? Although he swore fidelity in his letters, Irene knew his physical needs and could visualize dark mulattoes disporting themselves with him. At the Pole, the situation was different; in the middle of that glacial cold and with no company but the penguins and seven men trained to forget love, celibacy was obligatory. Irene felt sure, however, that in the tropics the Captain lived his life differently. She smiled, knowing how little all that mattered to her, and tried, without success, to remember the last time she had felt jealous of her fiancé.