The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  He threw his head back on the pillow sham, covering his eyes with his arm and groaning. “Well, I can’t stay here in Madrid.”

  “I never asked you to stay.”

  “No, but I asked you to come with me. You have a choice. Everyone has a choice. There’s nothing to hold you here. You’re all alone. I can take care of you.”

  “You don’t have to feel guilty, Samuel.”

  “I don’t feel guilty. I feel responsible,” he muttered.

  “Why? I gave myself to you freely.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, sighing. “I can’t explain it myself, but I just do.”

  “Do you feel responsible for every virgin you seduce?” she asked in a frigid voice.

  “I don’t go around seducing every virgin I meet,” he snapped.

  “Just me?”

  “I have many women, Salia. I’m a man.”

  “Many women you feel responsible for?”

  “I only feel responsible for you.”

  “So, all your other women have experience?”

  “More than you do.”

  Her eyes gleamed with anger, and she shoved his leg from above her knee. “What are you saying? That I’m not as good as these other women?”

  “Salia, I don’t want to talk about this.”

  She cursed and punched him with her fist.

  “Ow! What did you do that for?”

  “If I’m not so good, then why do you want me to go with you, Patrón?”

  “Salia, I never said…”

  “You said yesterday that you were leaving. I knew, when I stayed with you, it would not be for long. So, just go. Go to your other women, and leave me alone. Don’t feel responsible. I can take care of myself.” She turned her back to him and crossed her arms. “I can hardly wait for you to leave, so my life can get back to normal.”

  He rubbed his leg where she hit him. “Normal? Living with coyotes in a falling-down house and reading chili seeds to buy food?”

  “I hunt sometimes. I am good with a rifle. I am independent,” she said, lifting her chin proudly.

  He shoved his hat on his head, jerked his arms into his coat, and picked up his travel case. “Fine! Be Independent! You’re the most stubborn, unreasonable female…”

  He stopped at the door, playing with the door knob. He looked up at the ceiling and gave a heartfelt sigh. “I’ll speak to Pierre. He won’t keep you from the theatre, Salia. Not ever again. In fact.” He turned and smiled. “I’ll tell him you’re to have a minor role in the new opera.”

  “Minor role?” she said, scoffing.

  “Come now. You’ve never been a singer. You’re an ingénue. You can learn a lot from Amelita Galli-Curci. She’s one of the great opera singers.”

  “I know how to sing opera. I am better than this Amelita Galli-Curci. I can transform myself into any character. I would amaze you.”

  He grinned at her cockiness. Her shabby arrogance is partly what attracted him. “If you think you’re so good, come to Albuquerque with me and perform there. I have connections at several theatres.”

  “I cannot,” she said, no longer sounding conceited but deflated and ashamed.

  “So be it then! Stay here and learn from Galli-Curci,” he barked. “Amaze Madrid with your singing. Come on. I’ll instruct my driver to take you home after he drops me at the station.”

  She gave him a dirty look. “I don’t want to go to the station with you.”

  “Fine. That’s just fine. Can I drop you at your house?” he said with cold, polite formality.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere with you. Ever!”

  He cursed, running down the stairs.

  He swung his travel case at the Christmas tree and it went crashing to the floor.

  He grabbed the top of the tree and dragged it out the door, throwing it in the snow.

  He slammed the front door, yelling at his driver.

  He watched her running from his house, her skirt flying.

  He flung his travel case through the window of his car, breaking the glass. He kicked the tire with his boot. He cussed, hopping on one foot. He climbed in the car without waiting for the door to be opened for him.

  “What’s taking so long?” he hollered.

  The chauffeur said something about a cold engine.

  “Drive slowly,” he ordered. With a heavy heart, he swung his head from side to side, searching for Salia, but she had disappeared. There was only a coyote running down the hill.

  “Give me your rifle,” he yelled.

  He aimed the rifle at the coyote. He took a shot and missed. He was too far.

  He rode to the train station with the air from the broken window hitting his face, but the winter air didn’t help cool his temper. He massaged his foot where he’d kicked the tire. His foot felt like it was broken, but it was probably just bruised, like his pride.

  At the train station, Salia hid behind the building and watched Samuel enter a private car. He walked with a limp.

  Her heart limped. She hugged her waist, watching the train roll down the tracks, away from Madrid.

  She slid down the wall, and hung her head between her knees, listening to the whistle of the train.

  She stayed at the train station, long after the whistle faded from the mountains.

  34

  On her daily walks to and from the theatre, Salia went out of her way to pass the Big House, but the house remained abandoned, except for the caretaker. She could not look at the car in the drive, without seeing Samuel looking out at her. At the bedroom window, she saw him standing there with one arm against the window sill. She could hear his voice, yelling at his driver.

  She always blinked her eyes to shake the image of Samuel with some beautiful, sophisticated blonde-haired lady. She wrapped her coat tighter around her homespun dress and walked with her chin close to her heart. She still could not comprehend why Samuel had wanted her. Slumming, she supposed. It must have amused him to be with someone so different.

  She would sometimes imagine the Big House inside, the rich rugs, the luxurious furnishings, the smell of money, to convince herself the time she spent with Samuel had been real, and she did not dream him. She was capable of summoning, the way Mother called forth La Llorona. Felicita taught her well, but Salia could not conjure up a golden prince like Samuel. The fact that he came to Madrid to try her for murder did not count as magic. She was still amazed that he sought her out after her courtroom drama, even pursued her with the passion of a man never refused anything, a man to whom the chase was everything, a man who usually became bored once he caught or trapped a woman he desired. Oh, their one-night stand had been real alright. It was because of Samuel that she was at the theatre, watching with grudging admiration the older singer, Amelita Galli-Curci, rehearse for opening night this evening.

  Pierre had expected trouble from Salia, but she was professional, showing up every day on time, standing on the sidelines with a hungry look, watching the actors, measuring their timing, memorizing their entrances, exits, intonations, inflections, reflections, and annunciations. When it came to Amelita, she especially paid attention, rubbing her piedra imán so her shape-shifting rock would remember her every performance.

  Salia rehearsed her own single line robotically, to the moaning and groaning of Pierre.

  She made herself useful, fetching coffee for the other actors and crew. She ran the occasional errand, all without complaint, demanding nothing for herself. She rarely spoke, simply nodding her head when asked to do something, scurrying about the business of pleasing everyone, and smiling shyly when she poured the coffee.

  Pierre told her, “I’m beginning to wonder if the rumors about you have any ring of truth.”

  She smiled slyly at him.

  “Perhaps, you have been unjustly punished for your mother’s and grandmother’s mischief, two women unknown to me since I’ve only been in Madrid since the theatre opened, but I have heard stories.”

  Again, she smiled craftily.r />
  The haughty Amelita Galli-Curci treated Salia as if she was her servant, beneath her contempt. The fact that Salia was beautiful and young did not endear her to the aging opera singer, who was approaching 44, with a long thin nose, manly face and buggy eyes. She needed a great deal of makeup and correct lighting to pass for the young Gilda in the opera Rigoletto.

  Salia did all that Signorina Amelita asked and always kept her eyes down, like any good servant, so Amelita never saw the fire in her eyes whenever she ordered her about.

  During the final dress rehearsal, Amelita was especially nasty to Salia, yelling at her and ordering her to do this and that.

  When a spider crossed the stage floor, Amelita screamed at her to kill it. Salia stomped on the spider, noting that Amelita ran from the stage and cowered in one of the seats, her legs up on the chair.

  Amelita was in a foul mood, snapping at Pierre because the singer he hired to play her hunchback father, Rigoletto, was younger than she. “It seems these days everyone is younger than me,” she screamed in her Italian accent, throwing her hairbrush and hitting Salia in the back of her head.

  “I do hope, Signorina Amelita that you are not suffering from nerves,” Pierre said.

  “I am not nervous. I am merely surrounded by, how you say it—imbeciles. And you,” she yelled at Salia. “You are always underfoot. Get out, stupida. I don’t need you about. I’m not going to break a leg, unless Pierre trips me with his clumsiness.”

  Salia looked over at Pierre, and he dismissed her. “Don’t forget that we go on in three hours,” he said.

  “You get out, too,” Amelita yelled at Pierre. She dismissed her Italian maid, Sophia, with a wave of her hand. She rested on the silk divan, her makeup perfectly in place, her hair flattened by a hair net. She had not yet put on her wig. She was clothed in her dressing gown, her fat free of its girdle, both chubby legs suspended by a fluffy pillow. Her eyes were closed. She was sleeping lightly.

  There was no window. Sophia had lowered the lamp to a dim flicker, the dressing room in shadows.

  She was awoken by laughter, like tinkling crystal.

  “Who is it?”

  There it was again, laughter, like ice cubes clinking against crystal.

  “Sophia? Is that you? I told you I am not to be disturbed.”

  Once more laughter filled the room, only it sounded more like musical notes being played through a wind tunnel. The laughter had an otherworldly flavor to it.

  “You’re not being funny, Sophia,” she said, angrily. She sat up on the divan with a sluggish motion. She blinked her eyes, trying to see through a grey mist enveloping the room. The mist crawled over the walls, the floor and the divan.

  She gagged, slapping a hand over her nose and mouth. The grey mist covered everything with an overwhelming stench of rotting corpses.

  From out of the mist a man appeared, as if from the very air.

  He floated in front of her, with a long white beard infested with spiders, small, darting spiders, and long-legged spiders, chasing the smaller spiders. Bloated, black spiders consumed baby spiders as soon as they broke free of cocoons matted in his beard. His head was a den of giant, hairy tarantula spiders.

  She scampered to the furthest end of the divan, her heart feeling as if it might burst.

  The man cackled at her fear.

  She slapped him hard.

  He cursed at her in Italian with a big smile on his face and no teeth.

  She opened her mouth to scream, and the man breathed into her throat an air so foul, it bloated her stomach and plastered the lining, as if she had eaten her own feces after a piggish meal.

  The man vanished in a puff of smoke.

  High-pitched laughter followed the grey mist seeping beneath the door.

  She fainted, vomit spewing from her lips.

  Her maid found her a few minutes later and screamed, “Help. Help.”

  Amelita’s teeth had blackened. Her tongue was pocked with ashes, and there was a putrid smell on her breath.

  Sophia gagged, holding a jar of smelling salts under her nose.

  Amelita came to, moaning, “Oh, the inside of my head is pounding, as if thunder raped my ears.”

  Pierre came running into the dressing room.

  “Spiders, everywhere,” she cried out, slapping her body at invisible spiders. “They’re crawling on my head!” She yanked at her hair and cursed such foul language, Pierre blushed. Every word which came out of her mouth was either a curse word or a threat.

  “She is possessed by a demon,” he told Sophia.

  Two men arrived and tied handkerchiefs across their noses. They wrestled her onto a stretcher, forced to strap the singer down.

  Amelita thrashed about, cursing and screaming, foaming at the mouth. The ugliness of the depravities coming from her mouth was greater than the stink coming from her lungs.

  The men put Amelita in an ambulance and took her to the hospital.

  Coincidentally, her understudy was also hospitalized, claiming that every time she looked in the mirror, she saw an ugly, old lady with worms crawling on her face.

  It seemed like fate that Salia was waiting in the wings, dressed in an identical costume which Amelita wore for the opening Act. She was ready, when a very upset Pierre came for her. His eyes were damp with tears.

  “Don’t try to overact,” he advised in a nervous stutter. “Don’t try to underact. Just survive. Try not to stumble too badly. When you do stumble, try to recover. Make up the lines, if you have to, but don’t be too imaginative, else the others won’t be able to follow you. Keep an eye on the other actors, and they’ll help you as best they can. I never expected Amelita and the understudy to go crazy. It must be the mountains. Oh dear, I forgot about the Italian. Just sing in plain English and I’ll make up some statement about you being educated in England. No. America. Just speak like yourself. Oh, hell. You have that damned Spanish accent. Just hum.”

  “Mio padre,” she said in perfect Italian with a flawless accent. “Caro nome.”

  He opened his eyes in astonishment. “Where did you learn Italian so fluently and how do you manage to look so…Italian?”

  “I know her role,” she assured him. “I have been studying it.” And she opened her mouth and sang like a bird the opening notes of Gilda.

  He was stunned at her performance and shoved her onto the stage when Gilda made her entrance.

  When it came time for a costume change, Salia went into Amelita’s dressing room and locked the door, telling Sophia to stay out. She clutched her piedra imán, whispering to the lodestone and lovingly rubbing the ugly rock against her cheek. She held up her arms, twirling faster and faster, laughing wickedly. When she stopped twirling, she had transformed herself, and not just her costume. There was nothing left of Salia Esperanza in the expression on her face, the look in her eyes, the way she held her body. It was as if she was possessed by another being, the sweet, pure, naive Gilda.

  When the opera was over, she brought the audience to their feet. She had made them laugh and cry with her singing. Her performance caused the audience to project themselves into the heart, the mind, the very soul of Gilda, and she had the voice of an angel.

  Salia earned the respect of the other actors in the opera, who now looked at her as a superior singer, better than the famous Amelita Galli-Curci, who barely held her own in a quarantined room at the hospital.

  It was written the next morning in the Santa Fe New Mexican that Salia’s performance was so deliberate, so painstaking, that it was eerie.

  She was the talk of New Mexico, and crowds rushed to Madrid to see the opera, Rigoletto. The seats were sold out for every performance.

  There was only one box of seats in the theatre that remained empty.

  Night after night, Salia looked up from the stage to Samuel’s box.

  His box was always empty.

  35

  It was the final night of the opera, Rigoletto. Salia delivered her lines perfectly until she looked up, as s
he always did, to Samuel’s box. Her face grew flushed, and she fumbled her lines. Silently, she just stood there staring at Samuel, dumbstruck.

  Pierre stood by the curtain and coughed into his hand.

  Even from here, she could see Samuel’s white teeth flashing. His amusement at her discomfiture infuriated her. What angered her even more was that he looked away first, turning his attention to the elaborately coiffed blonde sitting beside him with a feather in her hair.

  She turned her head away from him and his woman.

  The actor playing the Duke repeated his lines, bringing Salia back to the moment. The ploy worked, and the audience seemed none the wiser. She still felt a landslide of emotions but continued with the opera. Not once did her eyes stray back to the box above her, on her right.

  Never did she grip her stomach, though she felt an excruciating ache. Her heart was a tight ball threatening to explode. Not once did she rub her chest where her heart squeezed, making her wonder if her heart might shrink so small, she would shrivel up and die on the stage, in front of Samuel and his woman.

  She was especially dramatic in the final scene, declaring she was glad to die for her beloved.

  The ending was prophetic when his daughter, Gilda, dies in his arms and Rigoletto cries out, “The curse!”

  Her death would have served Samuel right, if she had gone with him like he begged, and died on the train when the tracks left Madrid. He would have replaced me quick enough, she thought bitterly.

  She could hear Samuel breathing, and felt his breath stirring her hair, from here, on the stage.

  She could hear every movement of his chair, when he turned to his woman to give her his loving attention. She felt like holding her hands above her ears and screaming, but had to wait for the curtain to close.

  With the scent of a coyote, she could smell his familiar after shave, the odor assaulting her senses, making her dizzy with yearning. She sniffled, trying to wash his scent with her mucus.

  She licked her lips and could taste the saltiness of his skin, the hair on his chest tickling her nose. The curtain closed and she delicately wiped her lips, running her hand down her cheek, feeling his fingers, his velvet touch, his hands caressing her. Her neck. Her breasts. From here. On the stage.