For long afterward, everyone in Margarita’s house remembered “the middle day” of that initiation, when the babalaos consulted the Book of Ífa. Without any sign of her prior illness, a finely dressed Elodia, on her queenly throne, received her friends, godchildren, and non-initiated friends who came by the house. These were left dumbfounded by the beauty and majesty she projected even before turning thirteen years of age. They all left deeply moved, awed by the bright vision, as if a real goddess had sat on that make believe throne.
It wasn’t until many years later that Gaytán realized that Margarita had actually given Elodia to a different goddess of the dead, Yewá, instead of the one he had thought was appropriate, Oyá. He considered this a terrible mistake, which doomed Elodia to a life without sex or children; the daughters of Yewá cannot have sexual relations without risking death or dementia. Margarita’s action had been a grave transgression, because he had been precise when he told her about the infallible dictates during the spiritual possession by Orula.
Gaytán immediately sent for the santera, who refused to explain her actions and bid farewell after a bitter argument.
“You babalaos think you know everything, but it’s only us, the santeros, who can perform the ceremony to connect with the right orisha, that’s our responsibility,” she said. “I gave her to Yewá for a very powerful reason that you, you silly old man, couldn’t divine. There is no mistake. I know what I’m doing.”
As time passed, Margarita appeared to have been right. The girl’s previously fierce, rebellious character seemed to get sweeter. Her health improved to the point where she was leading a normal life, and she seemed happy, though she was destined to live alone. Yet Gaytán was never convinced; there was too much fire in her to be Yewá’s daughter. And although she was calm, she had not found spiritual peace or the deeper happiness she should have attained. He believed that behind her apparent humility and the simplicity appropriate to Yewá’s devotees, there lurked the fury, appetites, and passions typical of the daughters of Oyá. Why did Margarita accuse him of not understanding why she’d done what she’d done?
Now Elodia was before him again, explaining why she’d come back. Through her fingers folding and unfolding one by one as she spoke, the pauses in the rhythm of her breath, the intensity of her facial expression, and the excitement betrayed by her nipples at certain moments, he’d come to understand that there were three important problems, all springing from the same cause: His goddaughter was in love, she craved sex, she was burning with need. Her desire stole her sleep and was disrupting her health. She had come to him as a last resort.
Gaytán got up with the aid of his caguairán wood walking stick. He took two steps toward the window in the little room where he received his godchildren and clients. He surveyed the blackened tile rooftops of the neighborhood down below, and focused on a ship unloading coal at the dock. He took notice of the passengers getting off the ferry that had just docked. He watched the bay for a long while and finally gazed up at the horizon, at the immensity of the sea where Yemayá reigned... As always, he thanked his father Orula for conserving his sight, augmented now by the memory of the clear and vibrant siren sound from the ships coming and going from the bay; the noise of the people getting off and on the ferry that came and went from Casablanca to Old Havana; the crashing of the waves against the Malecón...
Two neighboring women, employees of the Observatorio Nacional on their way up the concrete stairway to their jobs at the top of the hill, stopped to catch their breath and waved hello to him. Gaytán came out of his daze and waved back. Now that he could no longer go up and down that stairway, the only way to get to his house, his life had been reduced to the living room where he spent his mornings, the room in which he slept, the good-sized kitchen, and the terrace, which was the real heart of this place he loved so much. It was there that his clients and godchildren patiently waited for their appointments with him, sitting on the rocks with flowers sprouting here and there, in the shade of the great ceiba tree, or in the chairs that lined the hallway, much wider because it led to the back.
Gaytán quickly turned his head and saw that Elodia was waiting for him. Then, as he often did, he began to speak when things came to him. Sometimes even he didn’t understand the relationship between what he was saying and the problem he was treating. But those were the words Orula put in his mouth and his job was to transmit them to his clients and godchildren, because Orula never said anything without a reason.
“I’m old. My memory plays games with me, forgets what happened just an instant ago but remembers details from my childhood. I think I see my father walking down a dusty road in the Escambray hills, to San Juan, where we went every year during the summer to visit family. So you want to know what life’s about, son? he said as he looked at me and smiled. Come, we’re going to follow that little stream of water and you’ll see... He lifted the bag with our provisions onto his shoulders, took my hand, and we began to walk, following the stream which flowed eagerly around the rocks and down the hill. At sunset the little stream was now a creek. In a quiet area, we fished for langostinos and cooked them in an old can of Spanish sausages that my father had brought in his bag. We ate them with salt and lemon from a tree that grew nearby. Dessert was guava paste with homemade white cheese. Life can be so marvelous! I can still taste those things... We slept at the foot of a waterfall, with the sound of the crashing all through the night. We woke at sunrise. That day we walked a great deal, always following the rush of water as it became stronger, until we reached a little town in the middle of the Escambray mountains. The stream had become the powerful Agabama River, which was churning everywhere we looked, dragging rocks from the shore, or from very far away, bringing down tree branches, animals caught by surprise... We camped below a cliff, by the water, beneath a very high bridge that connected the town and the sugar plantation. It was incredible to see the audacity and force of the waters as they hurled themselves off the cliff, and how they roared. I was awed and frightened. I’d never seen a waterfall of such magnitude nor heard such a terrible sound.”
Gaytán sat down again, looked for a moment at Elodia, and then continued with his story.
“From that point, we followed the train tracks that bordered the gorge the Agabama had carved into the mountains over thousands, perhaps millions, of years. We continued walking for a long time, gazing at the way the deep waters shone as they cut through. My father leapt from one tie to the next, while I tried to balance myself on the tracks, until we finally reached the giant valley in Trinidad. There the river widened, started to slow down, flowed about the sugarcane fields as if it had lost its way, only to surrender its currents to the immensity of the sea. That’s life, my son, my father said, now sitting at the start of another dusty trail. It was the first time I’d seen the ocean and I was mortified.”
Gaytán went quiet; he couldn’t get that blue immensity out of his mind; it kept calling to him, as if the river of his life had finally reached the sea. He was drenched with sweat.
He noticed that Elodia was looking at him with a great deal of worry, still struggling with finding something in his story that addressed her problem. He was convinced his goddaughter would destroy herself if she could not satisfy the passion that was obsessing her. That’s how the gods had made her. Love for his goddaughter was a devastating fire, a fouralarm blaze. She was Oyá’s daughter forced to live with great restraint, contrary to her true nature, subject to the strict rules of the daughters of Yewá. No sir, Orula had not been wrong!