“It’s God’s will, Señor, for this boy is the devil,” Anselmo Espiricueta insisted.
By then my papa had recovered from his initial reaction. Drawing on all the strength conferred upon him by knowing himself to be a man of the world, a man well traveled, well learned, and well enlightened, he had shaken off superstition in order to focus on the mystery.
“That’s absurd. We don’t believe in those things here, Espiricueta,” he said, before continuing his gentle questioning of the nana.
From the few words the little old lady uttered, Francisco understood where she had found the baby and in what circumstances. How and why the old woman had walked up the mountain to the bridge, under which she found the baby, nobody would ever comprehend. I heard him was all she would say; I heard him. Whether superstitious or enlightened, everyone knew it was impossible to hear the faint wail of a child abandoned under a bridge several leagues away.
That was the great mystery, and it grew even greater and was granted eternal life when Don Teodosio and young Lupita said they had not seen the boy when they passed the same place shortly before. How was it possible that the old woman had heard him? There was no imaginable answer. No believable answer.
“I can’t even hear my wife talking next to me at lunch,” said Leocadio, a peon on the hacienda, to anyone who’d listen.
But there was a fact nobody could deny: the wooden, immobile old woman had left her little world to go to the rescue of this unfortunate child, and had seen fit to carry him off, beehive, winged friends, and all. When my papa was about to shake off the bees that completely covered the newborn’s body, Reja stopped him.
“Leave them, boy,” she said, wrapping the baby up again.
“But, Nana, they’ll sting him.”
“They would have done that already.”
Annoyed, he ordered his men to put Nana Reja on the cart, but she clung fast to her bundle, fearing they would snatch it from her and follow through on their threat to leave the baby to its fate once again.
“He’s mine.”
“He is yours, Nana,” my papa assured her, “and he’s coming with us.”
“And the beehive too.”
Reluctant but taking great care, my papa covered it with the apron again before lifting it onto the cart. And only then did they begin the journey home, to the empty rocking chair.
7
White Drop, Holy Drop
Francisco Morales felt little of the certainty with which he had answered his nana. He’s coming with us, he had said. Yes, but why? What were they going to do with a child that had entered the world already marked? Abandoning the boy did not cross his mind, but he could hear what the peons were saying under their breath, especially Anselmo Espiricueta, the newest employee, who’d refused to ride on the cart with the newborn. Had the devil kissed it? Made a pact with it? Was it the devil himself or a divine punishment? Ignorant superstitions. And yet, Francisco could not see how a baby with a hole for a mouth could survive a single day, and he did not know what he could say to subdue the ignorant prejudices of the people that would surround him for however long he lived.
Near the town, he had ordered Espiricueta to turn off. On the one hand, because someone had to ask Dr. Cantú to come to the house to examine the old nana and the unfortunate baby, and on the other, to get him away from the child and his already nervous entourage. He did not need the southerner with his apocalyptic prophecies to put more ideas into their heads.
“And don’t start with that gossip about the kiss of the devil, eh? Let’s not go around telling tales of sorcery. The nana found a baby that needs help, and that’s all. Understood, Anselmo?”
“Yes, Boss,” Anselmo Espiricueta replied as he ran off.
When he reached the town and saw Juan, the knife grinder, Anselmo did not resist the temptation to explain to him, in confidence, that he had some shocking news—the nana, the bees, a witch’s baby—before continuing his spiel with all manner of terrible predictions.
“Evil will befall us, you’ll see.”
And so it happened, as things tend to happen, that before Anselmo had even found the physician, all Linares knew about Simonopio’s misfortune and the possible blight on the Morales family and all its descendants.
Dr. Cantú, being the serious and professional man that he was, had responded immediately to the Moraleses’ call without stopping to answer the questions of the foolish and the superstitious. He was surprised to find himself riding to the hacienda behind a cart carrying a casket. It was a shame: he had thought there had not been any deaths in this business with the old woman and the baby.
When he reached the house, he found the nana where she always was: settled into her rocking chair, surrounded by the family and its most trusted domestic staff. The fact that the nana had moved at all was reason enough to be surprised. He struggled to believe that someone of such advanced age had suddenly rushed off on an adventure up a steep road, let alone that she had returned from it having come to no apparent harm. And with a living baby in her arms?
If Francisco Morales was saying so, all he could do was believe it.
“Who died?”
“No one,” Francisco replied.
“Then who is the coffin for?”
When they turned around, Martín and Leocadio were there bearing the heavy box, waiting for instructions. The doctor was intrigued; Francisco, confused; and Beatriz, alarmed: the coffin! She had completely forgotten the preparations she had made when the nana was missing, when she had sent Leocadio to the town to fetch a casket. Now Francisco was looking at her in surprise.
“Er . . . it’s in case of an emergency.”
Beatriz went over to tell Martín to cover the coffin in thick canvas and store it in the shed, out of everyone’s sight. When she returned, Dr. Cantú was asking to examine the child.
They did not allow him to approach the bundle the old woman was holding without putting on a pair of thick leather gloves, the property of some day laborer, because the bees are everywhere, Doctor. As he opened the shawl wrapping, he saw what they were saying: hundreds of bees wandered the baby’s body. He wondered how to shoo the insects without alarming them, but Reja took care of it. Cantú did not know whether, helped by her hardened skin, the woman felt she was immune to bee stings, or whether she just knew they would not dare sting her.
Whatever the reason, with great calm, she proceeded to brush them off without angering them.
The baby remained alert and tranquil. The doctor was surprised to see him watch the last bees that flew around him and then into the hive that someone had hung from one corner of the overhang with some wire. He noticed that the unknotted umbilical cord was beginning to bleed, so he tied it with some suture thread.
“This baby was left to die, Morales. They didn’t even try to leave it to fate: he could have bled to death. As a matter of fact, he should have bled to death.”
And yet he had not bled to death, even with the umbilical cord like a running hose. And against all logic, he had not a single bee sting. He had neither been devoured nor killed by exposure to the elements. This combination of factors added to the mystery that would forever surround Simonopio.
“The boy is surprisingly healthy.”
“But, Doctor, the mouth?” asked Beatriz, concerned.