What that friend told me was that when I left him stuck up the tree to go and get help, he looked down and could no longer see anything. It was as if he were in the clouds; that’s to say, up in the sky. I didn’t believe him, but I’ll carry on with his story. He said he was up there, looking out to see if help was coming, but no help came and he became increasingly nervous. He was nervous and he was holding on to the tree trunk, and he was looking out for help, for someone to come and tell him what to do. But like I said, according to him, he could no longer see the ground, only clouds … So what was stopping him from coming back down the tree? That’s why I never believed his story. But anyway, he said he stayed up there and he started to hear the voices of the ministrants, many of their voices, although what he heard wasn’t specifically their voices but rather their prayers, prayers only the ministrants knew how to say. So up in the tree, he heard their prayers, or songs, and they were getting closer and closer to where he was. He was afraid. I would have been too. You’re alone in the bush, in some remote part of it full of mist, stuck up a tree, and suddenly you hear the songs of the ministrants: anyone would have been afraid. If it was me, and the songs got closer and closer, I’d throw myself over the precipice, if that was my only means of escape. I’ve already said how much the ministrants frightened me. If I’d been him, if the same thing had happened to me, what I would have thought when I heard the ministrants approaching with their mysterious songs was that there was an evil lurking nearby, the Devil even, and that was why they’d come, to drive the evil away. But then I’d have thought, and I don’t know why, that the evil actually came from the ministrants and their songs, that they brought the evil with them. And I’d have jumped out over the precipice, if that was my only way out. Anyway, the boy was afraid and he said he tried to escape. For just because the ministrants were coming didn’t mean they’d stop and help him down. We’d never heard of the ministrants stopping their singing and talking to anyone in a similar situation. Because as far as we understood it, from what the adults told us, whenever they were moving about in the bush they were guided by the Maté Jachín, and because the Maté Jachín wasn’t a person, no ministrant was allowed to act like a person in its presence. So, you’re in the tree and you sense the ministrants approaching, dressed in their white tunics. According to the number of voices in the singing, there are many of them, and you know they have the power to drive evil away, even if it’s the Devil himself. But what if they found the Devil in the same tree as you and decided to put a curse on it? Obviously the curse would affect you too. So naturally my friend was afraid and he wanted to get down and escape, and that’s just what he did. But after running for a while, he fell to the ground and couldn’t go on. The ministrants reached him and sang their mysterious prayers over him. That’s what he told me.
On the island I speak of, our island, when the ministrants went out in search of a lost person, they went to all corners of the island, and because the Maté Jachín was so powerful, they used it to find whoever was lost. Furthermore, it was the Maté Jachín that moved the ministrants’ feet, and it made them follow the boy carrying the Maté Jachín, for anyone holding the Maté Jachín became filled with its power. No one moved of their own free will. That’s what the adults said. The Maté Jachín was also taken out whenever it was felt something terrible was going to happen on the island, and so if you saw the ministrants out with the Maté Jachín, taking it, or being led by it, to all corners of the island, you knew a catastrophe was imminent. But because we’d been living in the south village at the time, a long way from the big village, we didn’t know if anyone had been lost, be it in the bush or out at sea, although if it had been out at sea the songs of the ministrants wouldn’t have been heard up in the mountains. Nor did we know if a catastrophe was imminent, and that’s why the ministrants were covering all corners of the island. In truth, given all that happened with the fire and the woman and the cholera, there were plenty of reasons why the ministrants might have been out with the Maté Jachín. But anyway, no such news had reached us in the south village. My friend told me he heard them singing, fear swept through his body, he was already shaking, and in his fear he jumped out of the tree to escape them, and he ran until he could no longer run. That’s what he told me. That’s what he told me and told others, once he was well enough to speak.