“All right, you’re saying that what, Montserrat and I are monkeys?” Tristán asked, gripping his hands tighter together.
“No, that’s what Ewers would have said. I thought…well, look it doesn’t matter, the point is he created a magic system, and he designated a level of high magic that could be wielded by the hierophants, the leaders of the congregation. This high level of magic included the ability to know the past by speaking to the dead, to know the secrets of the present, and to glimpse the future. He associated this with certain elements. Water was for necromancers. But you couldn’t be one. When Ewers picked us to be his hierophants he looked at our birth dates, our family histories, our—”
“Maybe he was bullshitting you,” Montserrat said. She had an expression like she had caught sight of a loose thread and was about to pull it.
“I’m not—”
“He said you were special, didn’t he,” she continued. “He couldn’t have said you were a Maya prince by looking at you. He must have said you were the descendant of a great Aryan lord. Yeah, you couldn’t be a monkey, not with those light eyes.”
Tristán had grown up knowing that there were skin color scales. The whiter you were, the better. Even his “exotic” looks were only allowed on television because he had the correct mix of facial features, height, and skin tone. Yet he still stared at Montserrat in surprise and then at Urueta.
The director rubbed his cheek, glancing down. He appeared clearly uncomfortable. “It was something of the sort, though not so coarse as that.”
“His upper tier of followers must have been pale as fuck,” Montserrat mused.
“It was complicated! I didn’t understand everything, and I didn’t necessarily believe everything he said, either. Atlantis, Hyperborea, ancient magic…he mixed and matched, okay? All I know is that hierophants were hard to find, and neither you nor he should be seeing any dead people. That is a higher ability. One spell would not give you this power.”
“What should one spell give us?” Tristán asked.
“Nothing except good luck! We were simply completing an old circuit. And it worked. I have my retrospective; you have that new role. I’m sure there’s a positive development in Montserrat’s future.”
“My sister is doing better. The treatment worked,” Montserrat said, frowning.
“You see? This is a cure for all of us. For all our souls,” Urueta said. He looked so excited Tristán thought he would clap.
But Tristán was not going to join his little celebration, no whiskey and soda and listening to the old man’s stories tonight. He reached for his pocket and took out his lighter and a cigarette to keep himself cool, although he still tapped his foot nervously.
“I’m no sorcerer, and maybe I’m even an ape with good manners, but having spent a long time in the hospital after a crash, I do know that there is such a thing as side effects. And that you shouldn’t mix certain chemicals. So let me be blunt here: could there be side effects after this spell we performed?”
Urueta looked at Tristán, then looked away, then stared back at him again. “I don’t know,” Urueta finally said.
“What do you mean you don’t know? You’ve been talking magic this and magic that to us,” Tristán said. His hand was shaking a little, and he was dangerously close to yelling. He had been afraid to talk at the beginning, yes, but Urueta’s vacillation both pissed him off and emboldened him.
“I don’t know! I was not the best magic practitioner. Clarimonde was superior to me. José knows more.”
“Well, at least we now know that your superhuman Aryan powers can’t accomplish everything,” Tristán muttered.
Urueta looked surprised, as if he’d been slapped. Then he merely seemed contrite.
“You’re right, I did want to be special,” he said. “Who doesn’t? When people believe they lived previous lives, they never imagine themselves as peasants covered in shit. Yes, Ewers told me I was special. He told all of us that. We descended from lost Atlanteans, we could have power, we could guide the congregation. He promised us high magic. I’m sure you wanted to be special, Tristán. No one becomes an actor because they want to be commonplace.”
“Oh, what do you know,” Tristán said, taking a drag from his cigarette and shaking his head. “I started doing modeling work because my parents could use the cash, and I took acting classes because I couldn’t take boxing lessons. That’s what you were supposed to do if you were a boy, learn to throw punches and play pool, and I sucked at those and wasn’t any better with school.”
“But that wasn’t all, was it?”
It wasn’t. There had also been the allure of the silver screen, the comfort of those flickering images Montserrat and Tristán watched on the weekends. Outside the movie theater the world was littered with sharp edges, but inside there was the softness of the weathered movie theater seats. There was the possibility that he might one day be up there, his face in full color for all the world to see, for all to admire. Those boys who had bullied and mocked him would die of envy when they saw his name on the marquee.
“No, it couldn’t have been all,” Urueta said, his voice gentle. “Dear boy, you were not there. When Ewers talked, everything he said sounded reasonable and it made perfect sense. He tapped into something in me. Call it a lack of confidence, or a weakness, but I followed him.”
Tristán’s impression of Urueta was that he was a polished man. But that was now. He thought of him as he’d looked in the film, a young man in his twenties. A privileged man, perhaps, because you couldn’t start directing at that age unless you had sufficient contacts. But one who was still a little awkward, a little green, and maybe even a little scared. Someone who would have been lulled by Ewers’s chatter, who wouldn’t have asked questions. Ewers would have known how to pick them, he thought.
Tristán shook his head, almost snorting, and grabbing the amber glass ashtray by the couch.
“You said your friend still practices magic. Could he help us understand what Tristán saw?” Montserrat asked.
“José turned his attention in other directions. He disagreed with Ewers’s philosophy, so his studies have taken a different shape.”
“He sent you that talisman with the feathers,” Montserrat said, pointing at the manila envelope.
“It’s a generic talisman, so to speak. Besides, he wouldn’t want to get involved. José is a recluse, and he doesn’t like talking about Ewers. It wouldn’t do any good.”
Tristán pictured himself now seriously going through the Yellow Pages and looking for an exorcist. Maybe he would get a ticket to Catemaco and see if that town really was teeming with warlocks, even if that kind of junk was ridiculous and no better than when his mother told him never to open an umbrella inside a house. Or how the phases of the moon were propitious for certain tasks. He remembered her cutting his hair only on certain nights so it would grow slower or faster as she hummed a song and they sat in the middle of the kitchen. There had also been the statue of San Charbel, tied with ribbons inscribed with prayers. All these relics of his childhood now seemed to acquire more weight.