Niyati Keni - Esperanza Street

This last encounter with BabyLu was so unsettling that it seemed only fitting when, shortly after it, a sorcerer visited the market hall. When he came, America and I were at the boarding house making leche flan and, though she didn’t mention anything at the time, she later claimed a stab of dread at the precise moment the sugar melted in the pan.

The sorcerer was first seen walking along the coast road from the direction of the passenger jetty. His shirt and trousers were worn thin but, according to Jonah, he walked like a prince. He smelled bad and later, when Jonah retold the story, he said that the smell had preceded the man by quite some distance, so that when he eventually came into view there was little doubt that his presence meant something evil. He was clean-shaven and young, unremarkable except for his eyes, which were penetrating, like a bird of prey’s. Over his shoulder he carried a bamboo vessel strung on a cord, and it was this that first gave him away; this and the fact that he made no attempt to disguise it, though of course everyone was already certain what it must contain. He walked unhurriedly, and those he encountered crossed the road to avoid him. When he arrived at the jetty, he paused as if getting his bearings before turning in towards the market hall. The market was quiet when he arrived; most of the day’s business had already been completed and the sun was beginning to edge towards the horizon. At the end furthest from the jetty the market hall housed a water pump, at the site of an old well that had long been boarded up. This tap and the well before it supplied all of the surrounding households. The sorcerer took a good look about him and sat for some time on the wall of the old well. He knew of course that no one would ask him to move on. So he lingered, washing his feet under the tap, rinsing his mouth, head and face.

When he left, no one saw in which direction he walked, for it was dark by then. Later still, it was conjectured that he’d made himself invisible, transformed himself into a creature or simply disappeared. At any rate, it was a while before anyone approached the tap, and when they did, what they saw sent them straight to the curandero. When Uncle Bee arrived, he found what he’d feared he might. On the wall of the well was a dead insect, seven legged, with a hair tied around its middle, and next to it a skull, perhaps that of a dog, under which was a small pile of soil and another of sand. Uncle Bee, a healer trained to cure people’s ailments with botanics and Latin prayer, was at a loss. Word spread quickly, and soon everyone had shut their children and pregnant women indoors and the elders of the households stood together, some distance from the well, to discuss what these things might mean.

By now the sorcerer was long gone, although, as everyone knew, he had the power to change his shape at will and so, for the next few days, any strange dogs or cats were chased away, a relentless task in a market that sold meat and poultry. It was decided the proper solution was to bring in the help of another sorcerer to negate the spells of the first. And so a woman who lived some distance away, on the very edge of Greenhills, was cautiously approached and came to assess the situation. She was, Jonah reported, quite perturbed by what she saw but was persuaded, at some risk to herself, to attempt to offset whatever forces of ill had been called into play. Her task accomplished, she too was given a wide berth on her way home and, for some time afterwards, received a kind of wary gratitude from the barrio. However, only the following morning a beetle was found in a bed in a household opposite the market hall and, that same afternoon, a child passed a worm in a neighbouring alley and once again, panic set in.

Uncle Bee did his best to allay his neighbours’ fears. Kids, he insisted, passed worms all the time, and who hadn’t found a bug in their bed at some point? But these otherwise simple events acquired a magnitude in the light of the sorcerer’s visit that they would not have possessed on their own, and the neighbourhood’s anxiety grew. Father Mulrooney was approached and eventually, reluctantly, agreed to bless the well and the market hall publicly, an event which, he wryly noted, had a better turn-out than his twice-weekly mass.

The timing of all this was unfortunate, for only the day before the sorcerer’s visit a date had been fixed for a rally to protest the impending redevelopment of the area. The rally was to start with public speeches in the market hall, followed by a march through Greenhills and along Esperanza to the town hall on the other side of Salinas. As I’d have expected, Cora, Father Mulrooney and Pastor Levi had been central in organising the event, but so, I learned, had Jonah and — most surprisingly of all — Dante Santos, my father. The group hadn’t been secretive about it; Cora’s windows were filled with posters, and more decorated the jetty office and the noticeboards of every church in the barrio. The pictures were striking, a vibrant red and black, catching my eye every time I passed by the Coffee Shak. I saw, as well as Cora’s style, Benny’s hand in them. I determined to ask Cora if she’d save one for me after the rally was over.

With the date fast approaching, Aunt Mary sent me to the jetty as often as she could spare me. And so, a couple of days too late to see him, I stood by the sea wall, glancing along the road now and again in the direction the sorcerer might have walked. A line of boats was in and I watched my father in action; he and Subong carried long bundles of sugar cane between them, like they were carrying a bier. He saw me and smiled. Although I supposed that even my father might sometimes be pleased to see me, seeing him smile was still something of a rarity. I guessed I had Lorna and her baby to thank for his rejuvenation. As they came closer, I heard that he was singing: ‘Everybody loves to cha-cha-cha.’ But he’d scarcely come into earshot when he cleared his throat and started singing, ‘God of mercy, God of grace, show the brightness of thy face,’ but only a few lines of it and in the style of Elvis and to the tune of ‘Love Me Tender’. I heard a chuckle behind me and turned to see Father Mulrooney.

‘Dante’s regained his old humour then.’ He stopped next to me, and we watched my father and Subong deposit the cane on a waiting cart and head back for another load. When they were done unloading the cane, they came over and greeted the priest. My father clapped me on the shoulder twice but didn’t say anything to me. ‘You boys ready for the big day?’ Mulrooney said.

‘Sorcerers don’t scare me.’ Subong clicked his tongue disdainfully.

My father smiled at him slyly. ‘Can’t be sure till the day what kind of turn-out we’ll get,’ he said to Mulrooney. ‘People are saying Casama sent him. It’s a clever move if he did.’ The rest of the jetty boys, always keen to discuss the supernatural, drifted over to join us. In front of Mulrooney they were dismissive of the neighbourhood’s reaction. Later, with Pastor Levi, their voices would be softer, less certain, as if they might confess a secret fear to him that he, being a local man, would understand.

‘You sure it’ll be all right?’ Subong said to Mulrooney. ‘I mean, you being a man of God and all.’

‘It’ll be fine, son,’ Mulrooney said, but he sounded cross. ‘He was just sent to frighten people. It’s a trick.’

I listened to their talk. The atmosphere of excitement, of defiance, had been subdued somewhat by the sorcerer’s visit but was now starting to resurface. Preparations had resumed. There was to be music and street food to accompany the speeches and already Esperanza was blossoming as it did during a fiesta. Bunting was being hung on the beams of the market hall and soon enough every railing, pole and handle along Esperanza and throughout Greenhills would bob with yellow balloons. The door of Jonah’s office stood open, the room beyond a jungle of placards and banners. In the market hall, lengths of bamboo scaffolding were being hoisted into place ready to house a set of public-address speakers that had been borrowed from a nearby school. There was a flavour of anticipation in the air. The street kids, only dimly aware of the purpose of the rally, were excitable and, gathering to watch the preparations, dared each other into harmless stunts.