The Witch's Market

by Mingmei Yip

  “Alfredo, thanks for you hospitality. But it can’t be very convenient for you to have a guest.”

  “No inconvenience at all.”

  He started to get up and I knew this was my last chance to ask the question that had really been on my mind.

  “Alfredo, do you know the witches?”

  He cocked his head. “Witches?”

  Obviously he did not want to discuss it, so, lest I offend my host, I let the matter drop.

  6

  Sculptor in the Ruins

  After Alfredo left, Maria came to the kitchen, cleaned up the plates, and showed me to my guest room. She took out a flashlight and a bell and put them on the bedside table.

  “If you need me, just ring the bell as loud as you can,” she said.

  “Gracias, Maria, I will.” I smiled.

  After Maria left, I took a shower before dozing off. When I awakened I felt pretty much back to normal. I decided that my first priority was to explore the castle and its surroundings. With the owner gone, I could wander freely around the strange building. It seemed that I knew even less about the place now than I had when I first spotted it from the road. I didn’t even know why Cecily had given me Alfredo’s address, and why Alfredo claimed to have no idea of the witches’ existence.

  Although the place was called a castle, it was not a huge fortress with a moat, drawbridge, portcullis, and tall watchtowers. I counted about fifteen rooms, many concealed behind thick, padlocked doors. There was a main hall with leaded glass windows, and from the high ceiling was suspended a row of dim chandeliers. Thick wooden chairs with dusty upholstery were scattered around. I guessed that the room was once used for parties and balls, but the current owner didn’t seem the type to host such events. Indeed, the dusty, tattered upholstery and stale air suggested that it had not been used for a long time.

  Next to the main hall was a series of smaller rooms. There was a music room with an elaborately carved harp and a huge grand piano set against the stone wall, with music scores in uneven piles on the floor underneath it. The two instruments were silent, looking like sexless mistresses long deserted by their lovers.

  I wandered into the master bedroom and three other guest rooms. Judging from the austere décor of the master bedroom, I was sure that Alfredo Alfrenso didn’t have a woman in his life, at least not now. He was rich, manly, and seemingly a warm, generous person, but if he had any women, where were they hiding? Or was it him who was hiding? But from whom?

  I went deeper into the castle’s womb, feeling oddly anxious. There was an eerie buzz in my ears, as if the walls were trying to tell stories of what they had seen over the years. Some happy, some sad, some ghostly. Now I was using my flashlight and could see more doors down the long corridor, but I had no courage to look any farther. Alfredo had told me that some parts of the castle were sealed off, but he didn’t say why. Maybe there was nothing in all these rooms, but I wasn’t going to push my luck.

  Lonely like its master, the castle nonetheless radiated an intense yin energy. Feeling a chill, I tightened my thin jacket, then hurried back to my room. I sat by the writing desk, took out a pencil, and from memory drew a simple map, in case I wanted to explore further. I also wrote down the events of the last few days, especially my encounters with the two brothers, the witches, and Alfredo Alfrenso. I wondered what other adventures I would have to write about before I found my way home.

  The next morning I awakened to the mouthwatering scent of bacon and coffee teasing my taste buds and stomach. When I arrived in the kitchen, Maria smiled warmly, revealing a few irregular teeth. Soon I was heartily devouring bacon, scrambled eggs, and fried potatoes, washing it all down with the strong coffee and sweet orange juice. Eating and drinking, I kept raising my thumb in appreciation of Maria’s kindness to the hungry traveler.

  When I was finished, I told the housekeeper I’d be out and might not return until evening. Though I didn’t mention it to Maria, my hope was that I would run into the witches again.

  “The whole day, señorita? Maybe that’s not a good idea.” The housekeeper looked concerned.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be very careful.”

  “You have the bell with you?”

  I nodded. However, if I did run into mishap and ring the bell, I doubted she’d hear me. I planned to walk as far as necessary to find out more about this peculiar place.

  Outside, the sky was covered with dense, dark clouds, the morning sun sneaking through to cast long, surrealistic shadows. My feet propelled me forward as if they had eyes of their own that saw something in the distance. Soon it started to drizzle, the tiny raindrops pricking my face like gnawing ants.

  I ducked under a tree and sat on a rock, looking and listening. Why did Alfredo choose to live in this lonely place? I saw something moving in the distance, veiled by the drizzle. As it approached me, I saw that it was Alfredo’s white horse, Lonely Star. The animal lowered his head and looked at me tenderly as if I were his lover. Did any women ever fall in love with a horse? Or harbor intense romantic feelings? If so, they would never admit to this secret love for a beast.

  I went up to the horse and reached to caress his muzzle and smooth his mane. Full of tender feelings for the animal, I asked, “Dear, do you want to tell me something?”

  To my utter surprise, the horse neighed and tossed his head.

  “You want to take me somewhere?”

  He neighed again as if saying yes.

  Ivan had taken me for riding lessons, so I knew something about horses and could ride short distances. However, even though Lonely Star looked friendly, I wasn’t in the mood to ride, not today. I caressed his muzzle again, telling him, “I’m fine sitting on this rock.”

  He kept looking at me, refusing to budge.

  “All right, then, be gentle. Don’t hurt me or throw me off, all right?”

  I rose up from my rock, stood on it, and climbed onto the horse. I had never ridden bareback, so I leaned over and clung to his neck as he began a leisurely amble. Then his hooves picked up speed, and though I shouted at him to stop he kept going until we arrived at a deserted ruin. He stopped by a low wall and I climbed off only to see him gallop away.

  “Wait!” I yelled. “Don’t go away! How will I get back?”

  I had been so busy holding on during the ride that I really had no sense of where I was. I looked around and was relieved to see someone in the distance.

  It was a white-haired man, busy working with his hands, but I couldn’t tell what he was doing. The bizarre thought crossed my brain that he might be digging up graves to rob them. Then I drew closer to watch, hiding myself behind a boulder. At first I thought he was doing something with a knife, perhaps skinning an animal. My heart skipped a beat.

  However, when I strained my eyes to look more carefully, I saw that he was chipping at a stone with a chisel. Since he was completely immersed in his work and looked too old to be dangerous, I took a deep breath and went straight up to him. To my surprise, the old man didn’t even raise his head to look at the approaching stranger.

  Besides the one in his hand, there were five or six other stone sculptures scattered on the ground. One was an odd-shaped abstraction, its surfaces twisting and winding, as if embodying the mysteries of space itself. Another was a simple figure but somehow a visual poem. Keeping silent, I took in this haunting scene, with the wrinkled hands of an old man giving birth to smoothly modulated surfaces.

  Had I not seen the sure movements of his hands, I might have thought that the old man himself was just another statute. Whether he was oblivious to my presence or deliberately ignoring it, I could imagine that he’d been here almost as long as the stones upon which he worked.

  My eyes fell upon the carving in the old man’s hands, that of a voluptuous woman with a baby’s head making an agonizing exit from her life-granting vagina. The mother’s expression was of joy and pain, nirvana and samsara.

  I gasped before I could stop myself.

  The old man looked up
and stared at me for a few seconds before returning to his role as midwife. Although our eyes met for only a split second, I could tell that he was slightly crazy. Crazy because he lived not in this world but another, one more perfect than the one I lived in. He might be starving, but he wouldn’t notice the urging grumbles of his empty stomach, nor care. A genius in art but a fool in life, like van Gogh.

  The old man’s hands stopped. He put down the statue, took his scarf from his shoulder, and wiped his hands, his neck, and his dripping face. He then tenderly wiped the mother-birthing-baby figurine with the same filthy cloth. With an expression of satisfaction, he caressed the baby’s head while smiling and making funny faces at it.

  I realized that this meant he was finished and would leave mother and baby at the intense moment of life beginning. Setting his creation down, he took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and started to blow smoke in concentric circles. I watched the circles disappear into the air for a few moments, then looked down at the other works that were spread out on the ground.

  There was a boy holding his penis, peeing. A brood of snakes engaged in a choreographed dance on a goddess’s head. A big fish, in the mouth of which perched a smaller fish, in the mouth of which was an even smaller fish. A baby with a mischievous smile, sitting cross-legged on a big flower, his chin supported by his hand, lost in thought.

  But I wasn’t satisfied just by looking; I wanted to keep one, or more than one, of these modest but evocative creations.

  I dropped onto my knees. The old man tilted his head slightly to squint at me, then went back to blowing smoke rings. He paid me no more attention than if I were one of the many solitary ghosts that had wandered all the way from ancient China to this deserted land.

  Without asking permission, I reached to pick up the fish-within-fish and the birthing mother. My tone was pleading like a toddler anxiously asking his mother for a huge pink marshmallow. “Señor, would you let me buy these, please?”

  He lifted his head to stare at me again with his seemingly bottomless eyes. I was certain that this man was truly insane. His mind was not in the real world, only in the realm of art.

  “Can you please sell these to me?” I pleaded again.

  Now he looked at me as if I were the crazy one, trying to purchase his work, which was probably worthless in the commercial market. But still, he didn’t respond.

  Desperate, I fished out a wad of pesetas and laid them on his lap. “Will that be enough?”

  This time he studied me curiously, still without uttering a word.

  We stared at each other like two cats trapped in a narrow alley.

  “This is not enough?” I did not want him to think that I was trying to cheat him.

  He still didn’t respond. On impulse I quickly stuffed the two statutes inside my pocket and hurried away, my heart screaming as loud as an alarm clock.

  Alas, in a few seconds, I heard footsteps chasing me from behind.

  “Please let me have them,” I muttered. “I gave you a lot for these two small statutes!”

  But I knew that just grabbing the statues without his consent was downright wrong. So I stopped and turned to face the mad artist, to see if he was willing to part with his stunning creations. Or if he wanted more money—maybe a lot more. But instead of trying to take back what I had grabbed, he surprised me by stuffing two more statutes into my hands—the snake-headed goddess and the peeing toddler.

  “You’re selling these too? How much more do you want?”

  He shook his hand vehemently, and said, “Ah! You take!”

  I pulled out more bills and showed them to him. “You want me to pay you more for all these? Just tell me how much. But I’ll have to go back to my place to get more money.”

  He gave me a vigorous, dismissive wave of his hand, then laughed heartily, displaying a toothless mouth that reminded me of the capacious vagina he’d just created. Suddenly I realized that, just as I thought he was a crazy old mute, he must think me a deluded woman. Only a crazy person would pay such an astronomical amount for a few pieces of stones shaped by a toothless old man living alone among ruins on a remote island.

  But to be sure, I waved the bills. “How much more should I pay you?”

  He shook his head.

  “So you want to give me these two statutes as gifts?” I asked.

  This time he emphatically nodded. I almost burst out laughing at my good luck.

  Letting out a long, relieved exhalation, I smiled. “Thank you so much, great master.”

  I put my hands together and bowed. After that, I dashed away, fearing he might change his mind and ask for his treasures back.

  It turned out that I was less lost after my horseback ride than I’d feared. To get my bearings, I climbed a small hill and was able to spot the castle off in the distance. Tired after the long walk back, I sunk down on my bed and spread out the four stone sculptures to examine them more closely. First I appreciated them from above, then picked up each in turn and examined it closely. This had been an extremely lucky trip, one that allowed me to acquire these wonderful objects.

  I glided my hands over the statues one by one, outlining their subtle contours, grainy textures, and oddly artistic shapes, sensing their creator’s unfathomable soul within. Did he foresee the final shape of each work even before his chisel made the first incision? Did his hands have an unspoken philosophy as they made their arduous journey?

  Though all the sculptures were exquisite, I liked the mother and half-born infant the best. It reminded me of a relief sculpture I’d once seen in a museum. It told the story of a young mother who had just died of an incurable disease and was sent to hell along with her newborn. Unwilling to renounce her life, she defiantly clung to the Life Gate while trying to reenter. But her efforts would soon be gone like a trace of smoke, for pushing against her on the other side were two giant armored guards.

  The baby, though tiny like a thermos, seemed to have sensed the awaiting catastrophe from his mother’s agonized cries and the dark, tremendous force pulling her onto the other side. The baby clung tightly to her chest, his tiny face distorted from his hysterical crying. I could almost hear his bawling. The baby’s desire to live was so powerfully depicted that I could feel the waves of desperate energy crashing over me, tightening my throat and triggering my tears.

  My attention went back to the old man’s creation as my finger caressed the baby’s tiny head as it seemed to emerge from his mother. Like the one in the museum, would he succeed in pushing through the gate back to life? Or would his head be forever stuck in between? What was the old man trying to express?

  “Shhh . . . little one,” I said, kissing the to-be-born’s bald head, “everything will be all right, just be patient. Your mommy loves you and will protect you from all evils.”

  I sighed, then picked up the next figurine, that of the fish within fish within fish. Life within life, or if you looked at it from the opposite side, death within death. For each fish was being devoured by a larger one.

  I gently put down the fish and picked up the snake-headed goddess. The nine snake heads were all different from each other, some with open mouths and forked tongues sticking out, others with sharp fangs exposed, as if ready to strike. One with eyes closed as if meditating—or more likely just hibernating. I wondered if each was symbolizing a different aspect of life.

  Finally, I picked up the peeing toddler. In comparison to the other statutes, this one seemed relatively banal. However, when I looked more carefully, I noticed that a small bird was perching on the boy’s head, watching the other little birdie pee.

  Appreciating the sculptures made me think of a birthmark that I had. The shape of it was something like a baby in the fetal position, and it was near my own intimate part. My mother had told me that it was the trace of a she-ghost’s jealousy of my birth. During Mother’s pregnancy, the ghost kept kicking her womb, hoping that I’d end up stillborn. Fortunately, I was saved by Laolao, who concocted a special demon-quelling herb sou
p to soothe her daughter’s pregnancy. And so I came into this world.

  I once asked Mother if she knew whose ghost it was and why she was so jealous of me.

  Her answer was, “She was an ancestor who had only boys, but all were as hideous as Zhong Kui, the brilliant scholar who committed suicide because he was so ugly. She desperately wanted a beautiful girl. By killing you she could take possession of your body.”

  Even when I was young, I knew this was total nonsense, especially because everyone knows ghosts envy boys, not girls. So I asked Mother, “Don’t all Chinese want boys?”

  “Yes and no. Remember the famous Concubine Yang? She became the emperor’s favorite woman and brought endless glory to her family.”

  “If this relative was dead, how would I become her daughter?” I challenged Mother again.

  “Because then she could reincarnate!”

  It was because of such silly superstitions that I did not want to continue my family’s shamanistic lineage, despite Laolao’s wishes. Looking at the half-born stone baby reminded me again of my “baby”—the birthmark right next to my vagina. Ivan loved it. He liked to kiss it before we made love, sighing. Once he said, “Ah . . . so sexy. Eileen, you may not be a witch, but you are definitely a born seductress.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because you’re born to draw attention to here. . . .” He kissed my birthmark again, then moved farther down. “It shows you are very fertile.”

  “What does my birthmark have to do with fertility?” I was moaning and asking at the same time.

  “Don’t you see that it’s a baby?”

  Back in the present, I just stared at the stone baby in my hands, at the moment happy with art rather than life. I wondered how I had happened to encounter the old man—had Lonely Star intentionally led me to him?

  Wondering, I fell into a deep sleep.