“Such little faith, che, what’s happened to you? Let me help you the way I know how.”
Juan sat looking at the ceiling a while. Outside, finally, it had started to rain.
“Most patients who were born with a problem like mine back then, when the surgery was experimental, live very poorly today. The ones who don’t are dead. I survived, but I’ll never recover, and I have constant complications. You might say I’m lucky.”
“So, you’re just going to let yourself die?”
“I tried, and I still try, many ways of curing myself, aside from medicine, and no doubt they’ve helped. We’ve already talked about this many times. I don’t want to die, Tali. I’m afraid. Those like me don’t pass on to death. They go to the Darkness.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Sometimes I choose not to believe. When I do believe it, I would do anything to avoid it.”
Juan stood up.
“Let’s go see the saint. I want you to put him under my skin. Can you? Can it help me live, can it give me time?”
Tali came closer to Juan, gingerly touched the circles under his eyes, the stubble he hadn’t shaved in days. Then she led him from the house by the hand.
The temple was simple. The Lord of Death was not. Tali had chosen a large skeleton effigy for the sanctuary, almost a meter tall and made of silver, wearing a black robe. She approached the figure and filled a small glass with whiskey as an offering. Then she lit three red candles. There were many more in the temple and she had to be the one to light them all, because she was its guardian.
“Don’t move,” she told Juan. “Stay there.”
Tali lit all the candles, some red, others black, and she placed before the saint some red carnations that she kept fresh in a white glass vase. She turned off the electric lights. When the small sanctuary was lit by candles it made the silver saint tremble under his black cape, his scythe just peeking out. Unlike other images that depicted him with a crown, her San La Muerte had a bare, unadorned skull. Nor did he wear a hood. The skull’s eyes were lit from within by shining stones that could sometimes be seen and sometimes not, depending on how intensely the candles burned. And that night they burned like bonfires—Tali had never seen or felt them blaze like that before.
“Kneel, Juan.”
He obeyed, and Tali felt deeply grateful. Juan didn’t like ceremonies. But she did, as had her sister, and she trusted in her saint. She said, in a strong and clear voice:
Powerful San La Muerte,
Effective advocate and protector of those
Who invoke you,
I pray for your intercession so that this sick man
Will recover his health quickly.
Powerful San La Muerte,
Until the final moment comes,
Allow him to live fully,
To fulfill the mission he has been given.
Let it be so.
Amen.
The lights made the saint smile and Tali smiled back, showing her teeth: a mutual recognition. Then she approached the figure, touched its silver feet—warm from the heat of the day—and opened the little box made of palo santo that was on the altar beside the statue. She looked at the talismans. She had one, blessed twice, that was carved from a bullet. She had gone to get it herself from Mercedes’ cemetery. Her mother had told her where to find it. She didn’t want that one for Juan—it had been under the skin of a despicable man. She chose her favorite, the one she had meant to keep forever but was now going to give away. It was carved in a different style. The lord, San La Muerte, was sitting on a rock, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. She loved that inexplicable depiction.
“I’m going to put the Lord of Patience in your body, it’s what you need. It’s made of Christian bone. Stand up now.”
She returned to the altar with whiskey and a razor blade that she disinfected with alcohol. The incision in his shoulder had to be less than three centimeters deep, and Tali was exact, trying not to cut too deep. Juan’s skin was delicate and opened easily. She lifted the skin a little—unlike all the other devotees she had grafted the saint into, Juan didn’t move or breathe sharply or make any sound at all, accustomed as he was to physical suffering—and after dunking the carving in a cup of alcohol, she carefully inserted it into the wound. She filled her mouth with whiskey, spat it over the cut, and said some words in Guaraní. She had some clean gauze, and though it was unnecessary because the cut was very small and with any luck would scar over soon, she made him a bandage.
“That’s it, my love,” said Tali. “It’s the most powerful payé I have, and also the rune I love most. You see the light? It never burns like that, there’s always at least one candle that goes out. This time not a single one did.”
“Will your lord get angry if I give you a kiss?”
“No,” Tali said, and let him kiss her. “Do you want to leave him something? If you don’t offer him anything, then he could get mad.”
Juan approached the altar, deposited a cigarette at the saint’s feet, knelt down, and bowed his head. He took the bandage from his hand and let a few drops of blood fall into a dish of water that was in front of the figure. Tali realized then the enormity of what had happened. The blood of a man like Juan was an honor for her sanctuary.
Before they left, Juan took her by the waist and said into her ear:
“Can your lord watch over something? With the protection on the door, no one will be able to come in and take it. I want to leave it here.”
Juan took a small silver box from his pocket: Tali had seen it before and had thought it was a pillbox for his medication. Juan opened it. Inside was a long lock of brown hair, braided and lovingly arranged in a spiral. Rosario’s hair—she recognized it immediately. Tali closed the box, told Juan of course she would keep it, and placed it behind the saint, under his black tunic.
“You can come for it after the Ceremonial.”
Juan didn’t answer, and Tali sensed that she was now the guardian of that relic, that she was saving it for someone or something else. Outside, it wasn’t raining anymore. It had been a short storm. They left. On the way back, Tali told him:
“I didn’t think the saint would matter to you.”
“Why not? I always respected him.”
“That’s true, but you’ve never asked him for anything.”
“I need all the help I can get now.”
His breathing sounded agitated again. She entered the house first and peeked into the bedroom. Gaspar was sleeping calmly on his side. She hadn’t thought about the kid while they were out, but as she carefully closed the door she pictured him awake and alone in the house with the storm raging outside, and she was grateful he slept so soundly.
“Now I feel like a whiskey,” said Juan. Tali put ice into two glasses.
“I just brought some from Paraguay. It’s pretty lousy, but if you have a craving, it’ll do. Does it hurt?”
“My shoulder? No.”
“Why do you ask if I mean your shoulder? Does something else hurt?”
“My finger hurts. My hand hurts. I have some kind of bugbite on my back that hurts.”
“You should be taking antibiotics, you know.”
“I’m sure you’ve got some around.”