Version 2007.02.26

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

### Chapter 8

I was anticipating the loud sounds that usually reverberated through the house every Thursday morning as Candelaria rearranged the heavy furniture in the living room.

Wondering whether I had actually slept through the commotion, I walked down the silent corridor to the living room.

Shafts of sunlight filtered through the cracks in the wooden panels that covered the two windows facing the street. The dining table with its six chairs, the dark sofa, the stuffed armchairs, the glass coffee table, and the framed prints of pastoral landscapes and bullfighting scenes on the walls were exactly as Candelaria had arranged them the previous Thursday.

I walked out into the yard, where I found Candelaria, half-hidden behind a hibiscus bush. Her frizzy, red-dyed hair had been brushed out of her face and was held in place by bejeweled combs. Twinkling gold loops dangled from her earlobes. Her lips and nails were a glossy red and matched the colors of her brightly printed cotton dress. Her large eyes under lids that never opened all the way betrayed a dreaminess that was at odds with her sharp angular features and her crisp, almost brusque manner.

"What made you get up so early, Musiua?" Candelaria asked. Rising, she tidied her wide skirt and the low-cut bodice of her dress that revealed a generous amount of her ample bosom.

"I didn't hear you move the furniture this morning," I said. "Are you going out?"

Without answering she hurried into the kitchen, her loose sandals slapping on her heels as she ran. "I'm behind with everything today," she declared, stopping momentarily to get her foot back into the sandal that had slipped off.

"I'm sure you'll catch up," I said. "I'll help you." I lit the wood in the cooking pit, and set the table with the mismatched pieces of china.

"It's just seven-thirty," I remarked. "You're only half an hour late."

As opposed to dona Mercedes, who was totally indifferent to schedules, Candelaria divided her day into precisely timed tasks.

Although no one ever sat down for a meal at the same time, Candelaria fixed breakfast at exactly seven. By eight o'clock she was mopping the floors and dusting the furniture. She was tall enough that she had to stretch only her arms to reach the spider webs in the corners and the dust on the lintels.

And by eleven o'clock the daily pot of soup was simmering on the stove.

As soon as that was accomplished, she tended to her flowers. Watering can in hand, she first walked up and down the patio, then the yard, sprinkling her plants with loving care.

At two o'clock sharp she did the laundry, even if she only had one towel to wash. After the ironing was done, she read illustrated romances.

In the evenings, she cut out magazine pictures and pasted them in photo albums.

"Elio's godfather was here last night," she whispered. "Dona Mercedes and I talked with him till dawn."

She reached for the mortared corn cooked the evening before, and began to knead the white dough for the comcakes we ate for breakfast.

"He must be over eighty years old. And he still hasn't gotten over Elio's death. Lucas Nunez blames himself for the boy's death."

"Who is Elio?" I asked.

"Dona Mercedes' son," Candelaria murmured, shaping the dough into round patties. "He was only eighteen when he died tragically. It was a long time ago."

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, then added, "You'd better not mention to her that I told you she had a son."

She placed the corncakes on the grill spanning the cooking pit, then faced me, a devilish grin on her lips. "You don't believe me, do you?" she asked, but stopped me from responding by holding up one hand.

"I have to concentrate now on the coffee. You know how fussy dona Mercedes gets if it isn't strong or sweet enough."

I regarded Candelaria suspiciously. She was in the habit of telling me the most outlandish stories about the healer, such as the time when dona Mercedes was apprehended by a group of Nazis during the Second World War and held captive in a submarine.

"She's a liar," dona Mercedes had once confided. "And even if she's telling the truth she exaggerates it so much that it might as well be a lie."

Candelaria, thoroughly unconcerned about my suspicions, wiped her face on the apron she had tied around her neck, then with a swift, abrupt movement, she turned around and hurried out of the kitchen. "Watch over the corncakes," she cried out from the corridor. "I'm behind with everything today."

Around midday, Mercedes Peralta finally woke up after sleeping through Candelaria's Thursday commotion, which was noisier than usual because of the hurry.

Undecidedly, dona Mercedes stood at the door of her room, squinting her eyes to adjust to the brightness. She rested against the door frame for a moment before venturing out into the corridor.

I rushed to her side, and taking her arm, I led her to the kitchen. Her eyes were red. She had a frown and a sad look around her mouth.

I wondered if she, too, had spent the night awake. There was always the possibility that Candelaria had indeed been telling the truth.

Seemingly preoccupied, she studied the plateful of corncakes, but instead of taking one, she broke off two bananas from the bunch hanging on one of the rafters. She peeled them, cut them into slivers, then daintily ate the bananas, one sliver at a time.

"Candelaria wants you to meet her parents," she said, delicately wiping the corners of her mouth. "They live in the hills, close to the dam."

Before I had a chance to say that I would be delighted, Candelaria came sauntering into the kitchen. "You'll love my mother," she affirmed. "She's small and skinny like you, and she also eats the whole day long."

I voiced the idea that, somehow, I had never thought of Candelaria as having a mother.

With a rapt smile the two women listened attentively as I tried to make them understand what I meant by that. I assured them that categorizing certain people as the motherless type had nothing to do with age or looks but with some elusive, remote quality that I couldn't quite explain.

What seemed to delight Mercedes Peralta the most about my elucidation was that it failed to make any sense. She sipped her coffee pensively, then looked at me askance.

"Do you think I had a mother myself?" she asked. She closed her eyes, and puckering up her mouth, she moved her lips as if she were sucking from a breast. "Or do you believe I was hatched from an egg?"

She glanced up at Candelaria and in a serious tone pronounced, "The musiua is quite right. What she wants to say is that witches have very little attachment to parents or children. Yet, they love them with all their might but only when they are facing them, never when they turn their backs."

I wondered if Candelaria was afraid I would mention Elio, for she stepped behind dona Mercedes, gesticulating wildly for me to remain silent.

Dona Mercedes seemed to be determined to read our thoughts: She first looked at me, then at Candelaria, with fixed unblinking eyes.

Sighing, Dona Mercedes wrapped her hands around her mug and sipped the rest of her coffee. "Elio was only a few days old when his mother, my sister, died," she said, looking at me.

"He was my delight. I loved him as though he were my own child." She smiled faintly, and after a short pause, she continued talking about Elio.

She said that no one would have called him handsome. He had a wide sensuous mouth, a flat nose with sprawling nostrils, and wild kinky hair. But what made Elio irresistible to young and old alike were his big, black, and lustrous eyes, which shone with happiness and sheer well-being.

At great length dona Mercedes talked about Elio's eccentricities. Although he was to become a healer like herself, he rarely spent any time thinking about healing. He was too busy falling in and out of love.

During the day, he chatted the hours away with the young women and girls who came to see her.

In the evenings, guitar in hand, he went to serenade his conquests. He hardly ever returned before dawn except when he was unsuccessful in his amatory ventures. Then, he was back early and entertained her with his witty, but never vulgar, renditions of his failures and successes.

With morbid curiosity I awaited for her to talk about his tragic death.

I felt disappointed when she glanced up at Candelaria. "Go and get me my jacket," she murmured. "It gets windy in those hills where your parents live."

She rose and, leaning against my arm, shuffled out into the yard.

"Today, Candelaria will surprise you," she confided. "There are all kinds of delightful quirks about her. If you were to know only half of them, you would probably faint with shock."

Dona Mercedes chuckled softly like a child trying hard not to give away a secret.