“There is a woman from the Bay Islands here in town,” said Tomas. “Maude Brooks. The people call her Sister Anaya. She tells fortunes at the hotels.”
“I think I’ve seen her,” Margery said. “A big black woman… wears a turban?”
Tomas nodded. “She will come to Mauricio’s hotel and provide your friend with a disguise. She will remain in the room, and he will leave, pretending to be her. But you will require something with which to color his skin.”
“I have boot polish,” said the colonel. “It’s brown, but in the dark no one is likely to notice.”
“Do we pay her, too?” Margery asked.
“She will tell you her price.” Tomas chuckled. “Bring a great deal of money.”
A flow of wind poured in off the water, growing stronger by the second, flapping the colonel’s jacket, twitching the end of Tomas’s braid. For the first time, he looked directly at Margery. His creased, leathery face seemed more an accidental pattern of nature than a human design, the sort of shape your eye might assemble from the strands in a mound of seaweed. “Give me your hand,” he said.
She glanced anxiously at the colonel, but complied.
Tomas did not hold her hand, simply let it rest on his palm. He kept his eyes on her and she on him. It appeared initially that they were engaged in a contest of wills; but then the colonel realized that neither one showed evidence of strain. Still, it made him uneasy, and he asked Tomas what he was doing.
“Looking.”
“Looking for what?”
“Must I look for something specific? Whenever you try too forcefully to order the world, you fail to see anything.”
Soon Tomas withdrew his hand, frowning.
“Is something wrong?” Margery asked.
The old man muttered several words in a language Colonel Galpa did not recognize, then his eyes downcast, said, “Mauricio. You will have to escort the American to meet Benito. Once he has disguised himself, the three of you must leave the hotel together. You,”—he gestured at Margery—“cannot go to Punta Manabique with them. Is there a place where your colleagues might gather at that hour?”
“Club Atomica,” she said.
“Then go there. It will seem that Mauricio is walking Madame Anaya home.” Tomas addressed himself to the colonel. “Do not accompany him all the way to the point. Leave him on the beach nearby. He will pass into the shadows of the trees. If anyone has followed, they will lose interest in him and follow you back to the club.” The plan sounded eminently workable to the colonel, but he was perturbed by Tomas’s subdued manner and asked if he felt ill.
Tomas took such a long time to respond, the colonel grew concerned that he had been stricken and rendered incapable of speech; but at last he said, “It is nothing. An intimation of ills to come. Men of my age often receive morbid signals of the future.” He patted the colonel’s hand, his own hand trembling. “It is you about whom I am concerned.”
“I’m perfectly well,” said the colonel. “Except for being hungry. I had only a few shrimp at dinner.”
“It is not your health that concerns me. I wonder if you are prepared for what may ensue should Carbonell discover what you have done.”
“Carbonell cannot hurt me. I have friends in the capital whom he will not wish to offend.”
“I think you underestimate him… and I am certain that you do not entirely comprehend his character. Men like Carbonell, beasts disguised by a thin dress of human behavior, they sometimes act without regard for consequence. As to your friends, ask yourself this, Who is more valuable to them—the hero of a war fought long ago, or a beast who wears their uniform, whose uncontrollable nature serves to strike fear into the hearts of the people, making them all the more malleable and accepting of their lot?”
Put this way, the question disheartened the colonel. He realized that—matters of principle aside—he was on the verge of risking everything for a man who, albeit a friend, was not a great friend, and for a woman whom he scarcely knew. And to what end? He had little conviction that Carbonell or his masters would be damaged by the revelations Gammage proposed to make. He wondered what his response might be if Margery were not sitting beside him. “I’ll be all right,” he told Tomas.
The old man made a clucking sound with his tongue. He stared at his hands, which rested flat on the table, the fingers lifting idly—like two ancient blind crabs seeking familiar purchase. “Then there’s nothing more to be said.”
Enthroned in the chair by the window in the colonel’s room, rolls of fat squeezed out over the arms, her voluminous white dress emblazoned with tiny red skeletons, hair turbaned in this same material, her scowling black face diamonded with beads of sweat, Madame Anaya was not shy about voicing her displeasure. “Dere’s no television,” she said. “De ol’ mon tol’ me dere were a television.” She pursed her cherub lips; almost hidden behind her pouchy cheeks, her eyes gleamed like polished sea beans. “How you ’spect me to sit t’rough half de night wit’out some television?”
“I have magazines,” the colonel said. “Books.”
“Now what I wan’ to read fah? Ruinin’ my eyes wit’ dat tiny print! You bring me dat television de mon promise!”
“I’m afraid at this hour it’s impossible.”
Madame Anaya made a beastly noise in her throat, but held her tongue. A brief commotion arose in the bathroom, where Margery was helping Gammage put the finishing touches on his disguise.
“I believe the café is still open,” said the colonel. “I could bring you something to eat.”
“I gots my own.” Madame Anaya’s right hand, dangling off the chair arm, stirred, and she pointed with a sausage-like finger at her purse, which—so black and bulging, it seemed her familiar—rested beside the chair. “Nevuh trus’ Sponnish cookin’. Make you weak in de liver.” She glared at the colonel. “Dis de night dey be playin’ de duppy movies.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“On de television. Dey plays de duppy movies at midnight of a Saturday.”
The colonel checked his watch. “You’re not going to miss much. It’s almost over.”
“Dey be playin’ two of dem,” Madame Anaya said reprovingly. “Las’ one always de best.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Been two weeks and dey played dis one, Curse of de Blood Witch.”
“That was a good one?”
“It were domn funny! De people make it, dey don’t know de first t’ing ’bout witches. Mus’ be dey t’inkin’ magic somet’ing you catch from a book.”
The colonel made a non-committal noise, thinking ahead to the beach, the walk to Punta Manabique, the dangers it might present.
“Magic what people gots in dere bodies. Some gots it in de eye, some in de hand, some in de heart. You gots it all three places, den you a witch.”
“I see,” said the colonel distractedly, trying to decide whether or not to carry his sidearm. Crime was not unheard of on the beach, but generally it was perpetrated against tourists. Better to leave it in the room—he did not want to arouse suspicion. He glanced at Madame Anaya. Immense and motionless; eyes fixed. She did not appear to be breathing. Then two fingers of her right hand began to move in slow circles, as if she were stirring something. The colonel was drawn to watch them. His head felt warm, thickish, his thoughts subject to a drifty confusion, similar to the way he had felt on the rare occasions when he smoked marijuana. The air seemed to eddy in response to the stirring of Madame Anaya’s fingers, rippling outward, and as the ripples washed over him he came to feel increasingly stoned, a faint keening in his ears. She looked to have no depth, an exotic image painted on a liquid surface. Then, abruptly, the fingers stopped, and the colonel became aware that the ripples in her considerable flesh were caused by silent laughter.