The Black Witch of Mexico

by Colin Falconer

  “So after you married her...what was it like?”

  “We didn’t make love every spare minute of the night and day, as we did when we first married. But I was as passionate about her on the day she died as I was the day I met her.”

  “How long ago did she die?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “When did you stop crying?”

  “What makes you think I have?”

  They were silent for a while. Bernard scooped the cold clear water in his palm and scooped it over his shoulders.

  “Sometimes I think life would have been easier if I had not loved her so much. Am I fortunate that I found her, or would it have been better to have found a life companion who didn’t make me feel like half of myself had been cut away when she died? Some men remarry and do quite well. I know that I never could. I am a disciple of de Barca, I suppose. I know exactly what he meant.”

  He got out and went to sit in the shade of a Judas tree. Adam went to join him. It was so hot he could scarcely breathe, and in a few minutes he was sweating again.

  “What happened with my daughter?” Bernard asked, so casually he might have been enquiring about the weather.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “Oh, I saw the way she looked at you. You’re a good-looking man so I shouldn’t be surprised at anything. Just remember she’s going through a very painful time. Handle with care, young man.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Oh, I think we both know that’s not true.”

  “She’s very...prickly.”

  He laughed at that. “Well, she’s never been easy, got fire in her veins like her mother. But it’s been a hard on her this last year, everything that husband of hers put her through. So she’s vulnerable right now. Don’t play with her, if you get my meaning. I don’t want to see her hurt again.”

  Cattle and burros had wandered down to feed by the river’s edge. He shielded his eyes from the sun to watch them, saw someone watching them from high on the bluff. “Who’s that?” hesaid.

  Bernard looked up at the ridge and when he saw who it was he made the sign of the cross. “That’s the Crow. He lives up there somewhere.”

  “Jamie said that name. Who is he?”

  “He’s the witch.”

  Adam laughed.

  “Nothing to laugh about, Adam. The man’s a menace. People go to him when they should be coming to the clinic. The things he tells them turn people away from each other and away from God. I curse the day he ever came here.”

  “Has he set himself up as some sort of healer or something? Like the curanderos?”

  “The curanderos are bound by the laws of nature never to harm anyone. These brujos deal in curses and black magic.”

  “You sound like you’re afraid of him.”

  “I’ve known people spend a day and a night on a bus to come here and see him. He has something of a reputation.”

  “For doing what?”

  “casting spells. Removing them.”

  “Spells?”

  “Some poor farmer goes to see a brujo, and he says, ‘oh you have bad energy around you, you need a cleansing. Someone has put a spell on you.” And they make up some mysterious ceremony with lots of chanting and nonsense to remove it. For a fee, of course.”

  “But don’t these people here belong to your church?”

  “They see nothing wrong with coming to church on Sunday morning and then going to see a witch for a cleansing in the afternoon. They are hedging their bets, I suppose.”

  “Do they make a lot of money from this witchcraft then?”

  “Most of their business comes from broken hearts, something the curanderos - or you, Adam - cannot mend. And love is always lucrative.”

  “Broken hearts?”

  “A doctor can mend a broken leg, but who else but a brujo can mend a broken heart? That’s what they say to people. It’s broken hearts that make them all the money.”

  “How?”

  “Suppose I’m a young guy and I like this girl, but I’m too shy to approach her and a brujo sells me a special amulet, he tells me it will make me irresistible. So when I next see the girl I put on the amulet and suddenly I feel powerful. I have instant confidence. Women like men with confidence. So in a way, it works. It’s a lot cheaper than going to the psychiatrist.”

  “So it’s harmless then?”

  “Sometimes.” He stood up. “come on, let’s go. He’s ruined the afternoon.”

  They made their way back to the village. When Adam turned around to look back at the ridge the Crow was still there, watching them.

  Chapter 32

  He started attending Bernard’s tiny church every Sunday to listen to his sermon. He did it partly because he was bored and partly because he liked Bernard. It was in Spanish and he didn’t understand much of it, but he found Bernard’s voice somehow reassuring. The man had a gift; he could have been an actor.

  He sat in one of the back pews, drowsy in the breathless heat, and wondered what the old man would make of this place. Adam Prescott II was a regular churchgoer, on the board of their local Protestant church, and made regular donations to the church fund. He had a good baritone and always sung loudest among the congregation during the Sunday service. He considered himself a good Christian.

  He must have supposed his path to heaven was assured.

  When he fell ill he did what many doctors do and self-diagnosed. He decided on his own prognosis months before he finally revealed to his family that he had pancreatic cancer.

  The last few days in the hospital had been rough. His mother left it too late to relent and agree to visit him and by then the palliative drugs had turned his head and he didn’t even recognize her.

  He and Lynne took turns holding his hand and watched as their once proud father turned into skin and bone, a bald, wizened old man with an oxygen mask clamped across his face. He still remembered his last words; he had to remove the oxygen mask to hear them.

  “Adam, don’t let me die.”

  All those years of churchgoing and all those promises of heaven and he was afraid that nothing he believed in was actually true. His real faith lay in his other credo, the one he had taught his children and that he recited with calm certainty every other day of the week but Sunday: if you can’t see it, it isn’t there.

  What had bothered Adam most about that last utterance was his father’s implicit conviction that his son’s training in emergency medicine could somehow forestall his end. His father had charged him at the last with saving him from something he couldn’t see.

  As an emergency specialist he knew he might sometimes hold back the night.

  But he could not fathom the dark.

  * * *

  Adam watched the villagers file out after the service. Two women stayed behind to kneel in front of the statue of the Virgin. They passed burning sage over themselves to cleanse their spirits and then hung pendants and photographs on the statue, asking her for favour. They left fruits and candles as offerings. When they had finished, the plinth reminded him of the shrine Jamie had created for her mother for the Day of the Dead.

  Bernard saw him and smiled. “Adam, you’re here again. We’ll make a believer of you yet.”

  Adam pointed out the two women praying before the Madonna.

  “Religion here is not quite the same as it is in Massachusetts.”

  “It doesn’t bother you?” Adam asked him.

  “The people here are Mayans. Did you know that? Among themselves they speak a language called Tzotzil. The conquistadores liked to think that they brought these people religion, but these people had a deep and abiding faith thousands of years before Cortes and his pirates got here.”

  “But it doesn’t leave you feeling...conflicted?”

  “There is a church in San Juan de Chamula, you would have passed through it on the way here. It has a church, much bigger than this one, but it has had no priest, there has been no Christian service held inside for mo
re than fifty years. But if you go there, you will feel God there, Doctor Prescott. I will take you there one day and you will see what I mean. Perhaps it is because I was married to a very unconventional Mexican woman, but I see no contradiction in what I do. I am here to help these people, not tell them how and where they should find God.”

  “I always thought that a Church had certain rules.”

  He smiled. “That’s why you’re an agnostic.”

  “Point taken.”

  “The Mayans live a very spiritual life. Perhaps they have taught me more than I’ve ever taught them.”

  “But the Mayans are pagans.”

  “That’s just a word that people use to denigrate other religions. They have very strong beliefs. For them, everything consists of energy: the trees, the animals, the rocks, energy is at play everywhere, constantly moving. They knew about quantum physics long before we did.”

  The two old women bowed in front of the crucifix on the altar and scuttled away.

  “And Jesus?”

  “Mexican religion is like a salsa. They could not resist the Spanish, so they grafted the Catholic religion onto theirs. And in fact it was not that hard, because they already venerated the cross. To them it was a symbol of the earth, the sun, the God and the people. And Jesus was very much like their sun god. So you see religion is not that much different the world over, we just have different names for things.”

  Adam shook his head. “I’ve never heard anything like that before. You’re remarkable man, Bernard.”

  “Well I’ve always thought so. I’d like to get invited onto Oprah or Doctor Phil. I could show them a thing or two. But you didn’t come here to discuss theology with me.”

  “Perhaps I did, in a way.”

  “Oh?”

  “I have a problem. This witch you were talking about, the Crow. You told me I should not try to interfere with the shamans, but can we not at least do something about him?”

  “What has he done now?”

  “There was another woman at to the clinic today convinced she had a toad inside her and that he had put it there. She’s stopped eating and she’s getting sicker and sicker every day.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “There must be something.”

  “We don’t make the laws here, Doctor Prescott; we’re guests in another country. We just have to do the best we can.”

  “What about the police?”

  He chuckled at that. “You want him arrested? For being a witch? You want to start your own Inquisition now, is that it?”

  “He’s a menace.”

  “I agree, but there’s no law against brujerla in Mexico. Who do you think the police go to when they get sick?”

  “She’s the third this month.”

  “You’ve never removed amphibians from the digestive systems of your patients in Boston?”

  “It isn’t a joke, Bernard.”

  “I’m not laughing. You’ll have to become a little creative. We all have to in these situations, even men of God.”

  Creative? At the time Adam had no idea what he meant; it would soon become clearer. He had already been in Santa Marta almost three months, and finally it was time for the devil to make his much anticipated appearance.

  Chapter 33

  He was woken by an inhuman howl.

  Fuck, what was that?

  There it was again. He felt his flesh crawl. He fumbled for his flashlight and threw on a shirt and shorts. He stumbled to the door, heard footsteps on the veranda and another flashlight swung towards him.

  “Doctor Adam? It’s all right.” It was Luis.

  “What is that?”

  There were lights burning in one of the adobe houses down the street. He headed towards it. Luis tried to stop him.

  “Por favor, it’s okay, Father Bernard is there. No te moleste, he will take care of it.

  “It sounds like someone’s getting murdered,” he said. He shrugged free and ran towards the sound of the screaming.

  Luis ran after him. Please, it’s okay, there is nothing to worry about. He grabbed at his arm a second time.

  He shook him off and went inside the house.

  There was a young girl thrashing on a cot. Bernard stood over her, holding a Bible and what Adam took to be holy water. She growled and tried to knock it out of his hands. The girl’s father struggled to hold her still.

  The girl’s mother and her sisters backed against the wall, sobbing. Their shadows danced crazily on the ceiling.

  Bernard’s glasses were askew. He was chanting in Latin as he held a crucifix towards the girl. She struggled even harder, and there were flecks of foam on her lips.

  “Nomine patris, nomine fils...”

  Adam took a step back. It was like a scene from the Middle Ages. This time he let Luis lead him away.

  “What’s going on?” Adam said once they were outside.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “come away now, it’s all right.”

  They went back to the clinic and Adam sat down on the steps, listened to the chilling sounds still coming from the house. Luis sat there with him in the dark until it finally stopped. Neither of them spoke.

  * * *

  It was quiet. Bernard made his way back up the hill, using a flashlight to find his way along the uneven dirt lane.

  “Was that what I thought it was?”

  He stopped when he heard Adam’s voice. He swung the torch toward him. “I don’t know what you saw, Doctor Prescott. I hoped you wouldn’t see anything.”

  “How could anyone sleep through that?”

  Bernard came over, sat on the step next to Adam. “Luis can you make me a coffee please? Put a little whiskey in it, if you will.”

  Luis went inside.

  “You just performed an exorcism?”

  “The family asked me to do it.”

  “You really think that girl is possessed by the devil?”

  “It’s not important what I think. It’s what they think.”

  “I know that girl. Her mother brought her to see me a couple of days ago.”

  “What did you think was wrong with her?”

  “She has depression. I gave her some Zoloft.”

  “Well they did no damned good, did they? If I didn’t do anything they’d go and see the Crow, and I don’t want him tampering with these poor people anymore than he does already.” Bernard put down the Bible and the stole and hung his head. “I don’t believe in demonic possession any more than you do. I believe the devil is inside us, and it’s a devil called belief. They believe she’s possessed and she believes she’s possessed and the only way to cure her is to make her believe something else. I needed to impress her subconscious, if you will. They all think I just threw out a devil so in the morning I believe she will be better. Satisfied?”

  “It was just a charade, then?”

  “You can call it that but what I did has a sound basis in western medicine.”

  “Well they didn’t teach us that when I was an intern.”

  “Didn’t they? You know what a placebo is?”

  “It’s a sugar pill we give someone as a control in a patient study.”

  “Don’t doctors also sometimes use them to deceive someone into making themselves better?”

  “So what you did tonight, that was a placebo?”

  “These people believe only white prayer can unearth what has been buried by black prayer. If someone casts a spell on you, you cannot be cured any other way.”

  “So that was your white magic?”

  “They call it el poder blanco. If an impressionable teenage girl thinks the brujo has put a devil in her, she will make herself sick because of it. So it’s going to take something truly spectacular to stop her believing it, and then she’ll make herself better again.”

  “Well, that was certainly spectacular.”

  Luis brought Bernard his coffee. He drank it in silence then wandered back to his own house behind the church. Adam watched his flashlight w
eave between the houses and then disappear.

  He sat there for a long time, staring at the shivering moon, but even when he finally took himself to bed, he could not sleep. He didn’t care if anyone else found comfort in it; whatever gets you through the night, as the saying went.

  He turned on the flashlight and pointed it at the plain wooden crucifix on the wall above his bed. He sat up. He opened the drawers in the mildewed bedside stand; they were all empty except for a small Bible. He picked it up and opened it to a random page:

  He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. "

  He tossed it back in the drawer. If you have faith as small as a mustard seed? He supposed that was what Bernard meant--if Adam could make them believe him they would stop believing something else and it would solve the problem. He had to impress them more than the Crow and his little tricks.

  “Well, we’ll see,” he murmured and turned off the flashlight and lay down again.

  Everything he had ever believed was being challenged here.

  He was still awake when the rooster started crowing and scrabbling in the dirt under his window. Perhaps he would go and visit one of the curanderos about his insomnia and have him wring its neck. He knew that at least would be a certain cure.

  * * *

  Two days later the girl was back, sitting on the bench in the waiting room next to her mother. When it was their turn he called them into the examining room and shut the door.

  He remembered how he had last seen her, in her dimly lit bedroom, frothing at the mouth, screaming at the crucifix that Bernard held to her face.

  She looked up and gave him an angelic smile.

  “What can I do for you?” he said. “como ayudate?”

  The mother held out the girl’s hand, took off the filthy rag she had tied around it. “She burned it on the pot,” she said.

  “I’ll dress it,” he said.

  Afterwards he asked her if there was anything else wrong. She said ‘no, everything was fine now.” He asked her about the depression. She said ‘oh no, Padre Bernardo took away the devil that was causing it. I am well now.”