audible in there, but the brass pots hanging from the wooden rafters tinkled.
He counted the members of the family.
He prepared cups of linden-flower tea. For all, except himself.
He sprinkled them generously with rat poison.
With the utmost care, he laid them on a tray.
âSo no one will know Iâm afraid.â
* âThe sandpiper dies blind,â says Gustavo Guerrero. A fisherman from Laguna de la Restinga, on Margarita Island in Venezuela, once told him their eyelids get scorched from all that pecking in salt water.
T O BECOME SOMEBODY ELSE
Around a fountain, as if drawn by its cool waters, the feverish patients lie under archways on wobbly cots with no more accoutrements than a few mosquito nets of coarse tulle rolled up on spindles during the day and unfurled at night to reach the brick floor.
Beside the beds stand large copper pitchers for their ablutions, as well as bowls, enema hoses, white ceramic jars with green unguents, a sieve of vein-hungry leeches swimming over one another, and an archipelago of cotton swabs stained with pus, saliva, and blood. Farther off, an amphora of wine. A crystal vase with an iris.
Muscular nuns with ruddy cheeks and severe mannerisms make their rounds under the archways in a perpetual scurry and always in the same direction, collecting refuse and tenderingsalves and consolation, or little wool sacks with camphor stones, which they slide brusquely under the pillows.
Carefully, they close the eyes of the moribund and tie their jaws up with white cloths so that rigor mortis will not catch them by surprise; they give the thirsty salt to suck; they oblige those suffering boils or anemia to gulp a gelatinous and searing fish soup, which they shove at them with an enormous wooden spoon.
So heavily starched are the edges of their polyhedral cornets that the patients fear getting sliced open when the nuns go rushing by, busy as leaf-cutter ants throughout the night.
In the courtyard, next to the central fountain and spattered by its spray, stood a whipping post. Sick children frolicked around it and leaned contentedly against it, like someone playing on a swing unaware it was once a gallows.
The seven recent arrivals occupied an entire side of the square formed by the archways framing the courtyard. Firefly was in front. Wearing loose trousers, he lay on an unmade cot with a very heavy pillow across his feet.
The rest of the family floated in limbo, laughed in dreams, snored in chorus, praised or battled invisible interlocutors, caught a glimpse perhaps of the paradise to which all believers aspire and which often takes the form of a garden in full bloom.The chief and only physician of the provincial hospital called on two retired luminaries of the islandâs medical community and begged them to join forces to decipher the enigma of this family, delivered from the recent disaster only to be plunged into a bottomless and immutable âpost-cyclonic hypersomnia.â
Letâs watch the two healers from behind, strolling along a promenade bordered by royal palms up to the doorway, where the doctor greets them with only a simple embrace then points the way with a gesture of therapeutic impotence.
But, before we go on, who are these providential practitioners? To us, they appear as if in yellowed photographs or old faded postcards, surrounded by their appurtenances, their favorite gadgets, like peasants at a fair with the wooden cigarettes, desiccated cockatoos, sailorsâ caps, or tin rings, all provided by the photographer and yet true to the subjectâs identity.
First Gator, the herbalist, who collects the most paraphernalia.
Gator is wearing what looks like a dark blue suit with white pinstripes, round wire-rim glasses, and a silk tie decorated with tiny four-leaf clovers. His shoes are made of his own skin.
More worthy of mention is the place where he makes his appearance: in an orthopedic chair. Not that he is crippled, not at all; though he is lean
He counted the members of the family.
He prepared cups of linden-flower tea. For all, except himself.
He sprinkled them generously with rat poison.
With the utmost care, he laid them on a tray.
âSo no one will know Iâm afraid.â
* âThe sandpiper dies blind,â says Gustavo Guerrero. A fisherman from Laguna de la Restinga, on Margarita Island in Venezuela, once told him their eyelids get scorched from all that pecking in salt water.
T O BECOME SOMEBODY ELSE
Around a fountain, as if drawn by its cool waters, the feverish patients lie under archways on wobbly cots with no more accoutrements than a few mosquito nets of coarse tulle rolled up on spindles during the day and unfurled at night to reach the brick floor.
Beside the beds stand large copper pitchers for their ablutions, as well as bowls, enema hoses, white ceramic jars with green unguents, a sieve of vein-hungry leeches swimming over one another, and an archipelago of cotton swabs stained with pus, saliva, and blood. Farther off, an amphora of wine. A crystal vase with an iris.
Muscular nuns with ruddy cheeks and severe mannerisms make their rounds under the archways in a perpetual scurry and always in the same direction, collecting refuse and tenderingsalves and consolation, or little wool sacks with camphor stones, which they slide brusquely under the pillows.
Carefully, they close the eyes of the moribund and tie their jaws up with white cloths so that rigor mortis will not catch them by surprise; they give the thirsty salt to suck; they oblige those suffering boils or anemia to gulp a gelatinous and searing fish soup, which they shove at them with an enormous wooden spoon.
So heavily starched are the edges of their polyhedral cornets that the patients fear getting sliced open when the nuns go rushing by, busy as leaf-cutter ants throughout the night.
In the courtyard, next to the central fountain and spattered by its spray, stood a whipping post. Sick children frolicked around it and leaned contentedly against it, like someone playing on a swing unaware it was once a gallows.
The seven recent arrivals occupied an entire side of the square formed by the archways framing the courtyard. Firefly was in front. Wearing loose trousers, he lay on an unmade cot with a very heavy pillow across his feet.
The rest of the family floated in limbo, laughed in dreams, snored in chorus, praised or battled invisible interlocutors, caught a glimpse perhaps of the paradise to which all believers aspire and which often takes the form of a garden in full bloom.The chief and only physician of the provincial hospital called on two retired luminaries of the islandâs medical community and begged them to join forces to decipher the enigma of this family, delivered from the recent disaster only to be plunged into a bottomless and immutable âpost-cyclonic hypersomnia.â
Letâs watch the two healers from behind, strolling along a promenade bordered by royal palms up to the doorway, where the doctor greets them with only a simple embrace then points the way with a gesture of therapeutic impotence.
But, before we go on, who are these providential practitioners? To us, they appear as if in yellowed photographs or old faded postcards, surrounded by their appurtenances, their favorite gadgets, like peasants at a fair with the wooden cigarettes, desiccated cockatoos, sailorsâ caps, or tin rings, all provided by the photographer and yet true to the subjectâs identity.
First Gator, the herbalist, who collects the most paraphernalia.
Gator is wearing what looks like a dark blue suit with white pinstripes, round wire-rim glasses, and a silk tie decorated with tiny four-leaf clovers. His shoes are made of his own skin.
More worthy of mention is the place where he makes his appearance: in an orthopedic chair. Not that he is crippled, not at all; though he is lean