Version 2007.03.03

## “The Witch's Dream: A Healer's Way of Knowledge” - ©1985 by Florinda Donner-Grau

### Chapter 19

It was late in the afternoon when dona Mercedes and I left the house and walked up the street to Leon Chirino's house.

Leisurely, we went past the old colonial houses near the plaza and peeked inside the open windows.

The rooms were dark, yet we could make out the shadows of old women counting rosary beads as they said their silent afternoon prayers.

We rested on a bench in the plaza, surrounded by old men sitting on crude wooden chairs propped against tree trunks.

We waited with them for the sun to disappear behind the hills, and for the evening breeze to cool the air.

Leon Chirino lived on the other side of town at the foot of a shack-covered hill.

His house, made of unplastered cement blocks, had an extensive yard and was encircled by a high wall.

The small wooden gate in the wall was unlocked, as was the front door.

Without bothering to knock or to call out we went through a large living room and headed straight for the back patio, which had been converted into a workshop.

Under the bright glare of a single bulb, Leon Chirino was sanding a piece of wood.

He spread his hands in a gesture of invitation and pleasure, and invited us to sit on the bench across from his working table.

"I guess it's time to get ready," he said, brushing the sawdust off his kinky white hair, and the wood shavings from his clothes.

Expectantly, I looked at dona Mercedes, but she merely nodded.

A secret light shone in her eyes as she turned to Leon Chirino.

Without a word she rose and shuffled down the corridor bordering the patio toward the back of the house.

I was about to follow, when Leon Chirino stopped me short. "You'd better come with me," he said, switching off the light.

He spat through his teeth, accurately aiming at one of the dried-up flower pots in the corner.

"Where is dona Mercedes going?" I asked.

He shrugged impatiently, and guided me in the opposite direction to a narrow alcove that separated the living room from the kitchen.

Against one wall of the small enclosure stood an earthenware water filter; against the other, a refrigerator.

"Would you like one of these?" He held up a bottle of Pepsi he had removed from the icebox.

Not waiting for my reply, he opened the bottle and casually added, "Dona Mercedes is making sure there are enough cigars."

"Is there going to be a seance?" I asked, taking the bottle from his hand.

Leon Chirino turned on the light in the living room, then moved to the high window facing the street. He reached for a wooden panel, and before placing it in the window sill, he looked back over his shoulder; his eyes shining, one hand stroking his chin. His smile, slightly crooked, was devilish.

"There certainly is going to be one," he said.

Sipping the Pepsi, I went to sit on the couch by the window.

The lack of furniture made the room appear larger than it actually was.

Other than the couch, there was only a tall cabinet crammed with books, snapshots, bottles, jars, cups, and glasses; and several wooden chairs lined up against the walls.

Mumbling something unintelligible, Leon Chirino turned off the light, then lit the candles that stood on the carved ledges beneath the various pictures of saints, Indian chieftains, and black slave leaders adorning the ochre-painted walls.

"I want you to sit here," he ordered, placing two chairs in the middle of the room.

"On which one?"

"Whichever you prefer."

Grinning broadly, he unfastened my wristwatch, put it in his pocket, then went to the cabinet and took out a small jar.

The jar was half-filled with mercury: In his dark hands it looked like the giant pupil of a live monster.

"I understand that you're a full-fledged medium," he said, placing the jar in my lap. "The mercury will keep the spirit from gravitating toward you.

"We don't want the spirit near you. It's too dangerous for you."

He winked and hung a silver chain necklace with a medal of the Virgin around my neck. "This medal is guaranteed to be a protection," he assured me.

Closing his eyes, he joined his hands in prayer.

As soon as he had finished, he warned me that there was no way of knowing whose spirit would visit us during the seance.

"Don't let go of the jar and don't remove the necklace," he admonished, pulling up the rest of the chairs to form a circle in the middle of the room.

He blew out all the candles except the one burning beneath the picture of El Negro Miguel- a famous slave leader who had headed the first slave uprising in Venezuela.

Then he said another short prayer, and silently left the room.

The candle had almost burned down when he returned.

Urging me to keep my eyes fixed on the jar in my lap, he sat beside me.

Overcome by curiosity, I looked up several times when I heard people come into the room, and sit on the chairs.

In the uncertain light I failed to recognize a single face.

Mercedes Peralta was the last one to come in.

She removed the candle from the ledge and distributed the hand-rolled cigars.

"Don't talk to anyone before or after the seance," she whispered in my ear as she held the flickering flame to my cigar. "No one else besides Leon Chirino knows you are a medium. Mediums are vulnerable."

She sat down opposite me.

I closed my eyes, and puffed skillfully as I had done countless times in dona Mercedes' patio.

I became so engrossed in that act that I lost track of time.

A soft moan arose from the smoky darkness.

I opened my eyes and saw a woman materialize in the middle of the circle of chairs, a hazy figure.

Slowly, a reddish light spread all over her until she seemed to be aglow.

The manner in which she carried herself, the way she was dressed- black skirt and blouse- the familiar way she tilted her head to one side, made me think it was Mercedes Peralta.

However, the longer I observed her, the less sure I was.

Wondering whether I was going through one of the inexplicable visions I had had in the patio, I clutched the mercury jar in my hands and rose from my chair.

I stood transfixed as the woman became transparent.

I found nothing frightening about her transparency: I simply accepted that it was possible to see through her.

Without any warning the woman collapsed in a dark heap on the ground: The light inside her seemed to have been turned off.

I was totally reassured that she was not an apparition when she took out a handkerchief, and blew her nose.

Exhausted, I sank into my chair.

Leon Chirino, sitting on my left, nudged me with his elbow, gesturing me to keep my attention on the center of the room.

There, inside the circle of chairs where the transparent woman had been, stood an old, foreign-looking woman.

She stared at me, her blue eyes wide open, frightened, bewildered.

Her head jerked back, then forward, and before I could make any sense of the vision, it faded- not suddenly; but slowly, it floated about.

It was so quiet in the room that for an instant I thought everyone had gone.

On the sly, I glanced around me.

All I saw was the glow of cigars.

They couldn't possibly be smoking the same cigars dona Mercedes had distributed, I thought: I had finished mine a long time ago.

As I leaned forward to attract Leon Chirino's attention, someone placed a hand on my shoulder.

"Dona Mercedes!" I exclaimed, recognizing her touch.

With my head bent I waited for her to say something.

When she didn't, I looked up, but she was not there.

I was alone in the room: Everyone else had left.

Frightened, I stood up, and ran toward the door, only to be stopped by Leon Chirino.

"Frida Herzog's spirit roams around here," he said. "She died on the steps of this hill."

He moved toward the window and opened the wooden panels.

Like a ghostly apparition the smoke swirled out of the room, dissolving into the night air.

Leon Chirino faced me and once again repeated that Frida Herzog had died on the steps of that hill.

He walked around the room carefully inspecting the shadowy corners, perhaps to make sure that no one was there.

"Was Frida Herzog the old woman I saw?" I asked, "Did you see her, too?"

He nodded, then mumbled once again that her spirit was still roaming around.

He brushed his forehead repeatedly, as if he were trying to rid himself of a thought or, perhaps, the image of the frightened old woman.

The stillness in the room became unsettling.

"I'd better catch up with dona Mercedes," I said softly and opened the door.

"Wait!" Leon Chirino stepped forward and grabbed my arm.

He lifted the silver necklace over my head and took the jar containing the mercury from my hand.

"During a seance, chronological time is suspended," he murmured in a slow, tired voice. "Spiritual time is a time of equilibrium that is neither reality nor a dream. Yet, it is a time that exists in space."

He emphasized that I had been plummeted into an event that had happened a long time ago.

"The past has no time sequence," he continued. "Today can be joined up with yesterday; with events of many years ago."

He fastened my watch around my wrist, and said, "The best thing is not to talk about these matters.

"What happens is vague and elusive, and not meant to be put into words."

Anxious to catch up with dona Mercedes, I agreed with him halfheartedly.

Leon Chirino, however, determined to keep me in his house, repeated again and again that Frida Herzog had died on the hills right behind his house.

"I saw dona Mercedes turn transparent," I interrupted him. "Did you see that, too?"

He stared at me, as though he had not expected me to ask about her, but the next moment he was laughing.

"She wanted to dazzle you," he said brimming with pride. "She's a perfect medium."

Half-smiling, he closed his tired eyes. He seemed to be savoring some treasured vision.

Then gently he pushed me outside, and without a sound, closed the door behind me.

For a moment I stood bewildered outside Leon Chirino's door.

I knew I had lost track of time during the seance, but somehow I couldn't believe that the whole night had gone by, and that I had failed to hear the rain: Yet, it was dawn and there were puddles on the sidewalk.

A parrot screeched somewhere in the distance. I looked up.

Across the street, standing like a shadow by the eucalyptus tree that marked the cement steps leading up the shack-covered hill, was Mercedes Peralta. I ran toward her.

Anticipating my questions, she touched my lips with her finger, then bent low and picked up a small, freshly broken branch lying on the ground.

It was still wet with the night's rain. She shook it: The scent of eucalyptus, imprisoned in hundreds of drops, showered on my head.

"We better get going," she said, but instead of heading home, she led me up the hill.

The air smelled of mildewed cardboard. There was no one around. The shacks appeared to be abandoned.

Halfway up, we turned onto one of the paths that spread like branches from the wide steps; and stopped in front of a yellow-painted house roofed with sheets of corrugated tin.

The unlocked front door opened directly into what seemed to be a bedroom.

A narrow, neatly made-up bed stood in the middle of the room.

Hairy ferns growing in animal-shaped flower pots rested on stools.

Bamboo cages with canaries in them hung from the ceiling.

Pants, jackets, and crisply ironed shirts dangled from wrought-iron hooks fastened on the yellow walls.

A man emerged from behind a brightly patterned curtain that I first mistook for a wall decoration.

"Efrain Sandoval!" I exclaimed, wondering what the man from whose store I purchased my notepads and pencils was doing in that place.

I was well acquainted with him and his German-born wife, who by speech and manner was more Venezuelan than a born native. Together with their two daughters they lived near the plaza above the stationery-radio-TV shop he owned.

He was in his forties, but his slight build and his delicately featured face made him look much younger. His slanted dark eyes fringed by long, curly lashes shone brightly.

He appeared to be amused by some secret thought.

As always, he was immaculately dressed; but that morning, his whole being reeked of cigar smoke.

"Were you at the seance?" I asked him in an involuntary tone of incredulity.

Gesturing me to be quiet, he invited us to sit on the bed.

"I'll be right back," he promised, vanishing behind the curtain.

Shortly, he reappeared, carrying a bamboo tray heavy with food, plates, and cutlery.

He cleared off one of the stools and placed the tray on it; and with the flamboyant movements of a maitre d', he served us black beans, rice, fried plantains, spicy shredded meat, and coffee.

In nervous anticipation I looked from one to the other, expecting a discussion of the spiritualists' meeting.

"The musiua is about to burst with curiosity," dona Mercedes announced, a devilish glint in her eyes.

"She wants to know why you live up here, when you have such a nice home above your store in town.

"I would like you to tell her why."

"You would?" Efrain Sandoval asked indifferently as he ate the last of the beans on his plate.

He chewed slowly, stalling for time.

He rose, walked over to the window, and opened it.

For a second or two he gazed at the pale dawn sky then turned and stared at me.

"I guess you must have a good reason for wanting to know about me?" he added in a questioning tone.

"She does," dona Mercedes answered. "So don't be put off when she comes to your store to pester you for your story."

Efrain Sandoval smiled sheepishly, tilted his stool, and leaned against the wall.

He let his gaze wander about the room: There was a remote expression in his eyes: He seemed no longer aware of our presence.

"But what's the point of telling her?" he finally asked without looking at dona Mercedes. "It's not an earth-shaking story. It's rather banal."

"That's the very point of it," she said. "The musiua has heard all kinds of stories by now. Yours is of particular interest because you never did anything to make it happen. You were just there, placed by a higher order."

"I still don't see how the story of Frida Herzog is going to help the musiua," Efrain Sandoval insisted.

"Let her worry about that," Mercedes Peralta said dryly.

She rose from the bed and motioned me to do likewise.

Efrain Sandoval looked as though he was going to argue the point.

Instead he nodded. "As you already know, I have a large house in town," he said, turning toward me.

He opened his arms wide. "Yet, I also live here where I can feel the presence of Frida Herzog, who unwittingly gave me everything I have."

He moved toward the window, but before closing it he glanced uncertainly at dona Mercedes, and asked, "Are you going to give me a cleansing today?"

"Of course." She laughed. "Don't mind the musiua. She has seen me doing this before."

Efrain Sandoval seemed to vacillate for a moment, then, apparently afraid that there might not be enough time, he promptly took off his coat and lay face up on the bed.

Mercedes Peralta retrieved a small bottle, a white handkerchief, two candles, and two cigars from her dress pocket. Meticulously, she lined them up on the floor at the foot of the bed.

She lit one of the candles, then a cigar, and inhaled deeply.

Wrapped in smoke, the murmured words of her incantation tumbled out of her mouth with each exhalation.

A wicked smile flittered across her face as she reached for the white handkerchief and the little bottle, half-filled with a mixture of perfumed water and ammonia.

She poured a generous amount on the handkerchief, and folded it into a perfect square.

"Breathe!" she commanded, and in one swift, well-aimed motion she held the handkerchief under Efrain Sandoval's nose.

Mumbling incoherently, he twisted and turned in an effort to sit up. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his moving lips tried in vain to form a plea. Dona Mercedes held him in place quite effortlessly by simply increasing the pressure of her hand over his nose. Soon, he gave up struggling. He crossed his arms over his chest and lay still, utterly exhausted.

Dona Mercedes lit a second cigar. Mumbling a soft prayer, she asked the spirit of Hans Herzog to protect Efrain Sandoval.

The last few puffs of smoke she blew into her cupped hands, and then ran her fingers over his face, his folded arms, and all the way down his legs.

Startled upon hearing a strange sound, I looked around me.

The room was filled with smoke, and out of that haze a form appeared, no more than a shadow or a billow of smoke that seemed to be hovering beside the bed.

Efrain Sandoval's deep sleep, punctuated by loud snoring, broke the spell.

Mercedes Peralta rose, put all her paraphernalia, including the cigar stubs, into her pocket, then turned to the window and opened it.

Pointing her chin to the door, she motioned me to follow.

"Will he be all right?" I asked once we were outside: I had never attended such a short session.

"He'll be fine for another year," she assured me. "Every year, Efrain Sandoval attends a spiritualists' meeting to renew himself."

She made a wide sweeping gesture with her arms. "Frida Herzog's spirit roams around here, Efrain believes it has brought him luck, and that's why he has chosen to keep this shack while his family lives in town.

"It isn't true, but his belief doesn't harm anyone. In fact, it brings him relief."

"But who is Frida Herzog?" I asked. "And who is Hans Herzog? You definitely asked his spirit to protect Efrain."

Dona Mercedes put her hand over my lips. "Musiua, have patience," she said, bemused.

"Efrain will tell you in time. All I can say is that the one who moved the wheel of chance for Efrain wasn't Frida Herzog. She had no reason to. It was actually a ghost who did it. The ghost of Hans Herzog."

Dona Mercedes leaned heavily against me as we walked down the hill. "I can hardly wait to get into my hammock," she mumbled. "I'm dead tired."

Afraid that someone might tamper with or perhaps even steal his moped, Efrain pulled it up onto the sidewalk and into the hallway of the new two-story building owned by his employer, Frida Herzog.

The Finnish woman and her children who lived in the bottom apartment watched him resentfully. They considered the hallway their front porch.

He shrugged his shoulders apologetically, and climbed the stairs to Frida Herzog's apartment.

He had worked for the Herzogs since he was an adolescent: It was Hans Herzog who had bought him the moped.

The years he worked for him had flown by so fast, Efrain had not even felt them.

He had liked his job as an all-around helper and delivery boy in Hans Herzog's poultry business, but what he had enjoyed the most was his employer's gentility and his grand sense of humor.

Efrain never had the feeling that he was working, but rather that he went to the office every day to get a lesson in the art of good living.

Over the years he had become more like an adopted son or a disciple of Hans Herzog than an employee.

"I thank you, Efrain," he used to tell him, "a man of my nature needs, at a certain age, an unbiased audience; a captive ear."

Hans Herzog had immigrated from Germany before the war, not to make a fortune, but in search of fulfillment.

He married late in life because he considered marriage and parenthood a moral necessity: He called them the controlled strains of paradise.

When Hans Herzog had a stroke, it was Efrain who tended him day and night.

Hans Herzog could not speak anymore, but he communicated with Efrain just the same through the intensity of his eyes.

In his last moments, he made a frantic effort to say something to Efrain; he failed. So he shrugged his shoulders and laughed. And died.

Now, Efrain worked for the man's widow, but not in the same capacity, and certainly not with the same pleasure.

She had sold the poultry business: It reminded her of her husband, she said; but she kept Efrain as an employee because he was the only one who knew how to drive the moped.

Noticing that the door to Frida Herzog's apartment was ajar, he pushed it open without knocking and stepped into the tiny hall that led to the living room.

The room, cluttered with beige upholstered furniture, was divided from the dining area by a grand piano.

Glassed-in bookcases stood on either side of an enormous fireplace, which Frida Herzog lit once a year on Christmas Eve.

Efrain moved back a few steps so he could see himself completely in the gilded mirror hanging above the mantel piece.

He was in his midtwenties, yet his small wiry frame and his boyish, somehow immature, beardless face, made him look sixteen.

With painstaking absorption he combed his curly hair, and adjusted his tie and the cologne-scented handkerchief in his breast pocket.

Being poor was no reason to look untidy, he thought, and he glanced over his shoulder to make sure the back of his coat was smooth and unwrinkled.

Whistling, he crossed the room and stepped out onto the wide balcony.

Potted rubber trees, orchids, ceiling-high ferns, and bird cages partially hid Frida Herzog.

Stout and solidly built, she sat at her desk, a white wrought-iron table with a heavy, opaque glass top.

"I've been waiting for you since nine o'clock," she said by way of greeting.

The angry expression in her blue eyes was magnified by the thick, horn-rimmed glasses posted menacingly on her prominent nose.

"What peace! What coolness one breathes in this veritable heaven!" Efrain exclaimed in a tone of exaltation.

He knew that flattering Frida Herzog about her jungle always put her in a good mood. "Even at noon your canaries sing like angels."

Imitating the call of the birds, he took off his coat and hung it carefully over the back of a chair.

"Never mind the birds," she said crossly, motioning him to sit across from her. "I pay you a salary, and I expect you to be here on time."

"I was held up by prospective clients," he said importantly.

She regarded him doubtfully, dabbing at the tiny drops of perspiration on her upper lip and forehead with a delicately embroidered handkerchief. "Did you take any orders?"

She gave him no opportunity to answer, but pushed several of the slender white boxes on the table toward him. "Check these," she grumbled.

Undaunted by her bad mood, he cheerfully informed her that the orders were as good as written up and signed.

Then, almost reverently, he opened the white boxes before him and gazed in awe at the bulky, silver-plated ballpoint pens lying luxuriously in the dark blue velvet-lined cases.

He uncapped one pen, unscrewed its top, and carefully inspected a small rectangular piece of metal and rubber resting on a minute ink pad. It was a seal.

To lift it out, he pressed the hollow end of the pen's cap on the perfectly fitting mount projecting from the metal plate.

He stamped the box, screwed the seal back, and capped the pen.

He did the same with the other pens: He made sure this way that the customers' names and addresses were spelled correctly.

"How many times do I have to tell you that I want no fingerprints on the pens?" Frida Herzog snapped, grabbing the pen from his hands. She polished it with her handkerchief and slipped it back inside the box. "Now wrap them!"

He gave her a hostile glance, and did as she ordered.

"Do you also want me to glue the address labels on them?" he asked as soon as he finished wrapping the last one.

"Yes. Do that." She handed him six neatly typed labels from a small, metal filing box. "Make sure to apply the glue evenly."

"What?" Efrain retorted irritably: He had not understood a word she said. Her accent, barely noticeable under ordinary circumstances, flared up whenever she was angry or afraid, making it difficult to understand what she was saying.

Frida Herzog spoke slowly, enunciating each word carefully as she repeated, "Apply the glue evenly all the way to the corners of the labels."

She looked at him sternly and added, "I want the labels to stay glued."

"If looks could kill, I would be dead," he mumbled, bringing both hands to his head in a mock gesture of agony.

Then he smiled at her entrancingly as he cursed her under his breath.

"What did you say?" Frida Herzog asked, her accent so thick that the words came out slurred.

"I said that it won't take me any time at all to do what you want."

He loosened his blue-striped tie and the collar of his stiffly starched shirt, then reached for the gourd-shaped glue container on the table and squeezed a small amount of glue on each label.

Meticulously, he spread it evenly with the rubber-tipped nozzle all the way to the corners and then pasted the labels to the small, perfectly wrapped, marked boxes containing the ballpoint pens.

"That's nicely done, Efrain." A hint of approval momentarily played upon Frida Herzog's plump, rosy face.

She never got over being surprised at the neat way he adhered the labels exactly in the middle of the boxes. She couldn't have done it better herself.

Encouraged by her compliment, he decided to ask about the pen she had promised him

Although he had already given up hope of ever receiving one from her, he nevertheless reminded her at every opportunity.

Each time she had a different excuse for not honoring her promise.

"When are you going to give me a pen?" he repeated, his voice high and urgent.

Frida Herzog stared at him in silence, then shifted forward in her chair and planted her elbows firmly on the table.

"Haven't I told you before of the difficulties I have had in convincing the manufacturer of the pens to give me the dealership for this area? Don't you realize that to be my age," she never said how old she was, "and to be a woman is a great handicap?"

She paused for a moment, then with a touch of pride in her tone, added, "Just because I am doing so well selling pens doesn't mean I'm in a position to give them away."

"One pen won't break you," Efrain insisted.

"Your pen! Your pen! Is that all you ever think of?" Indignation made her voice quiver.

She thrust her face forward, only inches away from his. Her eyes didn't even blink as they held his fixed.

Mesmerized, he just kept staring at her blue eyes in which a glimmer of madness was just discernible.

Perhaps sensing she had gone too far, she shifted her gaze away.

Slowly, her expression softened.

In a coaxing tone she went on to say that she was certain that together they could sell thousands of pens.

They would sell them not only in town and in the surrounding hamlets but all over the country.

"Be patient, Efrain," she entreated, leaning even closer toward him. "When business expands, we'll both get rich!"

She slumped back in her chair, and ran her hand affectionately over the small, gray filing box.

"But all I want is a pen, you crazy old idiot," Efrain mumbled despairingly.

Frida Herzog didn't hear him: Dreamily, she gazed at her bird cages, a sad, faraway look in her eyes.

"I work very hard," Efrain said in a loud clear voice. "Not only have I been delivering pens for you, but I've gotten nearly all your customers myself."

He ignored her attempt to interrupt him. "And you won't even give me a pen."

"I'm not saying that you haven't done well," she said peevishly. "All I'm trying to do is make you understand that at the beginning of any business venture, sacrifices have to be made."

She paced about the balcony, her voice rising sharply as she continued. "Very soon I'll not only give you a pen and a commission, but make you a partner."

She came to stand in front of him. "I'm a businesswoman. I can envision these pens in every household all over the country. Efrain, we'll sell a pen to every literate person in this country."

She moved away from him, and leaned over the railing. "Just look at those hills!" she cried out. "Look at those shacks!"

With a sweep of her arm that made the wide sleeves of her housecoat flutter, she took in the whole panorama before her.

A radiant smile parted her lips as she turned to face him. "Just think of all those shacks in the hills. What opportunities!

"We'll sell pens to the illiterates as well. Instead of having to make an X every time they need to sign a document, they can instead stamp their name on any paper that needs their signature."

She clapped her hands in childish delight, then sat beside him and reached into her pocket.

"This," she declared holding up her own gold-plated pen, "is the ideal answer for everyone's problem!"

Gingerly, she unscrewed the pen, hooked the tiny seal onto the cap's hollow end, and stamped the back of each of the boxes on the table. Proudly, she read her name and address printed in minute, purple letters.

"There are hundreds of people living in those shacks. I just know they'll all want one of these pens."

She touched his arm. "Efrain, as of today I'll pay you a commission on every pen you sell in those hills."

"They can't afford one," he reminded her sarcastically.

"I'll do something I've never done before," she declared bombastically. "I'll let them have the pens on credit." With a sweeping motion, she distractedly scooped the small pen boxes- including her gold pen- into Efrain's worn leather satchel. "You'd better go now."

A look of sheer incredulity spread across his face.

He looked up at her, wondering if she had noticed her mistake, then he nonchalantly reached for his satchel. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said.

"You only have six pens to deliver this afternoon," she reminded him. "I'll be expecting you back by five o'clock. These pens have already been paid for. You won't have to wait around for the money."

"It's the middle of the day," Efrain protested. "You can't expect me to go in this heat.

"Besides, I've got to eat first. I also need money to cover my traveling expenses."

Noticing her blank expression, he clarified, "I need to get gas for the moped."

She handed him some small change. "Don't forget to ask for a receipt," she said, glaring at him over her glasses.

He shrugged with displeasure. "Stingy idiot. This won't even fill the tank," he said and hissed under his breath.

"What did you call me?" Frida Herzog snapped.

He bit back the insult that rose to his lips. "This isn't enough to fill the gas tank," he said, slipping the coins in his pocket.

He took out his comb and, ignoring her disapproving expression, ran it through his unruly black hair.

"Four of the deliveries are within walking distance," she admonished. "There is no need to run the moped around town. I've walked those distances myself and even farther. If I can do it at my age, I would certainly expect a young man like you could do it."

Whistling softly, he adjusted his tie and put on his coat.

With a casual wave of his hand he turned and walked out into the living room.

A loud sigh escaped his lips. His eyes widened, expressing both surprise and admiration.

Sitting in one of the bulky armchairs, her bare legs hanging over the armrest, was Antonia, Frida Herzog's only daughter.

She didn't cover her legs, but looked at him with tender concern- the way women look at babies- and then she smiled provocatively.

She was a small, pretty woman in her midtwenties; but her worn-out, haggard expression and the air of despair about her made her look much older.

She was gone most of the time. Much to her mother's embarrassment, Antonia took off with men every chance she got, only returning periodically to visit. No wonder the old woman was in such a foul mood, Efrain thought. He felt a surge of passion for Antonia and wished he could stay and talk to her; but knowing that Frida Herzog could hear them from the balcony, he merely puckered his lips and blew Antonia a soundless kiss before he walked out the front door.

Frida Herzog stood motionless by the balcony railing.

She blinked repeatedly: The burning sun and the vibrant air made her eyes tear.

Heat waves billowed in the nearby foothills, transforming the multicolored shacks into a hazy flickering collage.

Not too long ago those hills had been green.

Almost overnight, squatters had transformed them into shanty towns. Like mushrooms after a heavy rain, the shacks had just popped up one morning, and no one had dared to pull them down.

Her glance strayed to Efrain's noisy moped sputtering along in the street below.

She hoped that he would first call on the two secretaries at the pharmaceutical laboratory who had been so enthusiastic about the pens. Frida Herzog was certain that once the two girls showed off their dazzling new pens to their co-workers, orders would be coming in promptly.

Chuckling to herself, she turned and gazed across the balcony into the living room where her daughter sat.

Frida Herzog heaved a deep sigh, and disappointedly shook her head from side to side. There was no way to make Antonia understand that she didn't want bare legs on the beige, raw silk-covered armchairs.

She had had such high hopes for her beautiful daughter. Antonia could have married any number of rich men.

It was beyond Frida Herzog's comprehension why the girl had married a penniless, unambitious salesman, who one day just walked out on her. Frida Herzog couldn't remember whether it had been during lunch or dinner when he got up from the table and never returned.

With an air of resignation, Frida Herzog stepped into the living room, forcing her lips into a pleasant smile.

"Really! Efrain is getting more impudent every day," she said, sitting in the armchair opposite Antonia. "I'm afraid that if I give him a pen, he'll quit work. That's all he's interested in."

"You know what he's like," Antonia said. She didn't look up but continued to buffer her long, well-cared-for nails. "So, all Efrain wants is a pen. What's wrong with that?"

"He should buy one!" Frida Herzog snapped spitefully.

"Really, Mother," Antonia chided. "Those silly trinkets are way too expensive. Obviously, he can't afford one."

"Don't make me laugh," Frida Herzog snorted. "I pay him well. If he wouldn't waste his money on clothes, he could--"

Antonia's words stopped her in midsentence. "Those pens are only a fad," she stated, "and Efrain knows it, too. In a few months, or perhaps only weeks, people will no longer want them."

Frida Herzog straightened in her chair as if her spine had been pulled up. Her face was red with anger. "Don't you dare tell me that," she yelled. "This pen will go on forever!"

"Calm down. Mother. You can't believe that," Antonia said in a conciliatory tone. "Why do you think you're selling pens in this godforsaken place? Don't you realize it's because no one in Caracas wants them any longer?"

"That's not true," Frida Herzog shouted. "Some day I'll have the dealership for the entire region, maybe even for the whole country. If I were the manufacturer of the pens, I would be trying to expand internationally. That's what I would do. Create an empire."

Antonia laughed, then turned toward the mirror above the mantel piece.

Streaks of premature gray laced her dark blond hair. There were wrinkles on either side of her mouth. Her large blue eyes would have been beautiful had it not been for their hard, embittered expression.

Not age, but exhaustion and despair were beginning to rob her face and body of its youth.

"Efrain has skills you haven't yet discovered," Antonia said. "No one can equal him in finding ways to make money.

"But to think you can get rich on pens! That's a joke. Why can't you simply use him in what he's best at?"

A contemptuous grin spread over Frida Herzog's face. "Use him at what he's best at! You think that I don't know what you have been up to in the last few months. I might be a little deaf, but I'm not stupid."

Seeing Antonia was about to rise, she hastily added, "You never had any class: Making out with Efrain! You should be ashamed of yourself. He's a mulatto, or whatever! He's colored."

Her anger spent, Frida Herzog leaned back in her armchair and closed her eyes. She wished she could retract her words, yet when she spoke again, her voice was still querulous. "Isn't there anything you want out of life?"

"I want to marry Efrain," Antonia said softly.

"Over my dead body!" Frida Herzog yelled. "I'll disinherit you. I'll throw you out of this house."

She gasped for air. "Let me tell you, I'm going to take his moped away and fire him."

But Antonia no longer heard her. She had left the living room, slamming the door behind her.

For a few seconds Frida Herzog gazed at that door through which her daughter had disappeared, expecting her to return at any moment.

Her eyes felt heavy with tears that would not fall.

Silently, she headed toward her bedroom down the hall.

She sat in front of the kidney-shaped dressing table.

With trembling fingers, she took off her glasses and examined herself in the mirror. She ought to get a new permanent, she thought, combing her fingers through her wispy gray hair. Her eyes, encircled by dark shadows, were sunken. Her skin, once as smooth and white as fine porcelain, had aged inexorably, eroded by the relentless tropical sun.

Tears flooded her eyes. "Oh God," she said softly. "Don't let me get ill and die in this foreign place."

She heard soft steps outside; no doubt Antonia had been listening by the door. She was too tired to worry about it.

She lay on the bed and dozed in a half-pleasant sleep, lulled by the gentle sound of a Mozart sonata. The thought that Antonia was actually playing the grand piano filled her with intense joy. The girl had always played so well.

It was almost four when Frida Herzog awoke. As usual after a nap, she felt refreshed and in good spirits.

She decided to wear the polka-dot silk dress and the matching shoes Antonia had given her for Christmas.

The sun, already halfway down the sky, filled the living room with shadows. She looked out across the balcony at the brightly colored shacks on the distant hills. They appeared to be so much closer in the afternoon light.

She went to the kitchen and prepared her afternoon tray: coffee, sugar, cream, and a plateful of poppy-seed pastries.

"Antonia," she called affectionately, as she sat down in one of the armchairs. She listened for the familiar clicking of heels on the hard tile floor before pouring the coffee.

She called again, but there was no answer. She must have gone out, Frida Herzog decided, unfolding a white linen napkin on her lap.

It was close to five when she checked the time on her gold wristwatch.

Efrain should be back any minute now, she thought.

Perhaps he had been telling the truth and had indeed found her a new client. Although she never voiced it, she had long ago recognized that despite his lack of ambition, he was good at dealing with people.

Too bad she would have to let him go. She would have a hard time finding a replacement for him, but she couldn't possibly consent to having him around when she knew Antonia's plans for him.

The thought that her daughter might have wanted only to upset her crossed her mind. She couldn't really believe that Antonia would marry that boy.

By six o'clock Frida Herzog was so restless that she called the two secretaries at the laboratory and the owner of the clothing store near the plaza. The pens had not been delivered.

Dumbstruck, she stared at the telephone, then stepped out on the balcony, and with nervous hands, she turned over every item on her desk.

"He took my pen!" she shrieked.

She headed for the front door and hurried down the stairs out into the street. She neither saw the startled faces of the neighbors gossiping on the sidewalk nor heard their greetings as she dashed around the corner.

Only upon reaching the foot of the hill did she stop to rest. Wishing she had put on more comfortable shoes instead of high heels, she slowly climbed the wide dirt path leading to the shacks.

She had never been to Efrain's house, but she knew more or less where it was. She had heard about the dangers of those shanty towns where no stranger dared to go. Even the police were reluctant to pursue criminals that chose to hide in those hills.

She was not afraid. Who would want to harm an old woman? She felt quite reassured upon noticing that not all the dwellings were shacks. Some were made of cement blocks, and a few were even two stories high.

She paused frequently to catch her breath, to quiet her rapidly pounding heart.

People stared at her curiously. Barefoot, half-naked children stopped their games and giggled as she walked by.

Just before reaching the top of the hill, she turned around and gazed at the town below. A gentle breeze cooled her flushed face.

Bathed in the mellow, diffused glow of the twilight, still vibrant with the afternoon heat, the town had never looked more beautiful.

Overcome by an odd, undefinable premonition of doom, her eyes searched for the silhouette of her building.

A girl's friendly voice dispelled her feelings. "Do you need any help?" she asked, regarding her curiously. "Are you lost?"

"I'm looking for Efrain Sandoval's house," Frida Herzog responded. So absorbed had she been in locating her building, she hadn't noticed that it was almost night. "Can you tell me where Efrain lives?" She repeated her question several times, while the girl kept staring at her, a blank expression on her face. It was obvious that she had not understood a word she was saying.

"You have gone too far," an old man squatting nearby informed her politely. He was barely outlined by the faint light escaping from the unevenly hammered boards of a shack.

"Go down a bit and turn left onto the walkway. It's the yellow house. You can't miss it. It looks like a canary."

There was a worried look in his eyes as he watched her unsteady steps down the hill. "You'd better go home though," he called after her. "There are a lot of drunks around at this time, and they get into fights."

But Frida Herzog didn't hear his warning words: They were drowned by the angry shouts of men and the sound of hurried, thudding steps.

Before she had a chance to turn and see what was happening, she felt a sharp blow.

The ground seemed to move underneath her, and she crashed through a makeshift railing put up to mark, rather than safeguard, a vertical drop.

For an instant, she saw in horror how the rock-covered ground below advanced to meet her. There were voices, some loud, some soft, and then there was only silence and darkness.

Efrain awoke with a start: He had had an uncanny dream.

As he had done so many times before in his sleep, he had again talked with Hans Herzog.

His friend was urging him to take matters in his own hands and marry Antonia. Together they should take a tour around the world.

Efrain had laughed. He told his friend that he would rather hear one of his stories about those foreign places.

Hans Herzog had refused, saying that it was time for Efrain to see those places himself.

Although Efrain was accustomed to the vividness of his dreams of Hans Herzog, this particular one had been so suggestive: It had left a lingering sense of reality which Efrain could not dispel.

To this day he had doggedly refused to admit that his friend and employer was dead. After all, he saw him and talked to him every night in his dreams.

Efrain lit the kerosene lamp on the table by his bed and opened the bottle of beer he had put on a stool. He poured it into a tall glass and blew the foam from the rim before taking a long gulp. He didn't mind that the beer was warm.

"To taking matters in my own hands!" he toasted, removing the gold-plated pen from his satchel.

Chuckling contentedly, he unscrewed the seal, hooked it onto the cap's hollow end, and stamped his arm repeatedly.

A week ago he had decided to take matters in his own hands and arranged with an engraver at a jewelry store to make him an exact replica of the seal but with his name on it.

Efrain had no doubt that luck had intervened in his favor.

How else could he explain this startling coincidence: The day he was to pick up the stamp bearing his name and address, Frida Herzog, by mistake, had put her own gold-plated pen in his satchel along with the six he was to deliver.

He poured the rest of the beer in his glass and sipped contentedly. Perhaps some unconscious part of Frida Herzog had wanted him to have the pen. He liked to believe that.

An insistent knocking on his door intruded on his thoughts.

"Efrain!" someone called, the voice urgent. "An old foreign lady who was looking for you has been knocked down by a drunk."

"Frida Herzog!" Grabbing the satchel from the table he rushed outside toward the crowd gathered at the bottom of the hill.

"It can't be," he repeated, pushing the people aside.

She was sprawled on the ground.

He kneeled down by her. The dim light of a kerosene lamp cast a yellowish gleam on her face.

He tried to say something, but not a word passed his lips. All he could do was stare into her pale blue eyes.

Without her glasses, which lay smashed beside her, her eyes looked wide, watchful, almost childlike.

The suggestion of a frown hovered around her lips, slightly parted to reveal her white teeth. He felt that there was something she wanted to say.

"I've got the pens," he said reassuringly, taking the six boxes from the satchel. He held them close to her face.

"I couldn't deliver them today," he lied, "because I got involved with filling out some order forms for you. We have four new clients."

Her frown deepened. Her lips moved, mumbling something about his being fired from the job and about Antonia. Her eyes grew wider, her pupils dilated, and then life ran out.

"I work for her," Efrain said to no one in particular.

"Life is so strange. Only this morning she gave me this most beautiful pen," he explained, removing the gold-plated pen from his pocket.

With precise, careful movements he hooked the seal to the pen's cap and pressed it against his forearm.

He read his name and address in a loud clear voice,"Efrain Sandoval. The Canary Shack. Curmina; and I can arrange for any of you to buy one of these precious pens on credit."