The Peacock 605

  She is young, perhaps no more than thirty.  Red hair, but I  know from her face that she is a good person.  In the interviewing room I sit with the nurse and the psychiatrist.  He has a white beard, but not down to his navel, but well-trimmed and neat, also he has grey hair.  He has the same light blue eyes, like flames of burning fire that burn me to the soul.  Like me, he is Canadian, and he tells me he has lived in Mexico for twenty years.  We talk for a while in English, as I tell him the details of my childhood in Ottawa, then Vancouver, before when my mom brought me here, searching for my father, already dead, and shortly after how she fell in love with the father of Yolanda and Juan.

"What's with the bag?" he asks.

"It´s magical".

"Really?"

"Look!  I produce a loaf of bread.

"Where did you get that?"

"It's from the bag."

The nurse says, "He means, where did you buy the bread."

"I didn't buy it.  The bag provided it." I lift up the bread in both my hands, break it, and share it among us.

"It's delicious", says the psychiatrist."

When we have finished the bread, I show them the maroon bag, turning it inside out.

"Look.  now it's empty, but..."

I pull out the silver bottle.  I show it to them.

"Have some." I have a drink and offer them the living water.

and after cleaning with a tissue the mouth of the bottle, they also drink some.  They look at me with very frightened eyes.

I pull from the maroon velvet bag the roll.  I open it.  There is a message already written in black ink  I read it to the nurse and the psychiatrist:

"The nurse is a good person.  She has struggles with alcohol but she will win...her husband has been unfaithful and is betraying her, and she is about to befriend her husband's girlfriend because they are both sick and tired of him and just want to get rid of him.  She is already pregnant but doesn't want to save the marriage.

"The psychiatrist is a liar.  Do not trust him at all.  He has already slept with three woman patients here, and he is about to get caught."

I look firmly at both my interrogators.  What do those words mean?  The nurse, Simona, just nods.  The psychiatrist just stares at me, cold, full of silent hate.  The door opens.  I turn around.  Now there is a shining bright light.  It is the Angel.  He extends his hand.  The nurse and the psychiatrist remain, immobile, not a word, like two large dolls.  I let the Angel take me by the hand, and I follow him, through the main room, through the doors, in the elevator to the door that opens to the street.  There is a car.  The Angel says goodbye to me, kissing me on the forehead.  Juan, from the steering wheel, pushes open the passenger door.

We are on our way home, Juan and I.  The rosario hangs from the rearview mirror like a magic talisman.  It is not made of plastic but of expensive mahogany.  I gave it to him last Christmas.  It was being sold by a very poor grandmother in front of the cathedral.  When I bought it from her, she grabbed me by both my hands to read my palms.  There was a look of amazement in her wrinkled face, and she held tight both my hands until they almost hurt, told me that I am a divine emissary, and that the angels would go with me in order to to unleash the secrets to our healing, the very living waters.  She put the rosary in the bag of maroon velvet.   Now, finally I remember.  When I asked about the bag she just said it was something sacred and that it was going to help sustain me during my future pilgrimage.  Now we are almost at our street.  There is a cypress tree towering over the corner.

"Juan, tell me what happened."

"I went into the room and took you away from those charlatans, nothing else."

"But...How?

"You were not a prisoner.  As your family, I have that right."

"I owe you a great debt, big brother."

"It´s nothing."

"And...now, what?

"Relax, Carlito. Take full advantage of these weeks of rest.  Now we are just about home."

"Will Yolanda and Raúl be there?"

"Of course they will be there, little brother.  But of course!"

The rosario is hanging, the mahogany beads almost shining from their own interior light.  I touch it with my thumb and fingers, briefly to caress it and nothing can prevent the tears that are spilling from my eyes.

This is my first time in my own room since three weeks ago.  Nothing has changed, but everything is in good order.  The work of Yolanda.  Perhaps Juan.  They are both neat freaks.  I have slept here the last ten years.  The upper floor.  A cool breeze blows in through the window from the sea.  Raúl and Yolanda came here to live in the family home, when Emilio, my stepfather vanished, three years ago, a little bit after Yolanda and Raúl's wedding.  Although they suspect narcotraffickers, he vanished in the desert without a trace.  Still nobody knows anything.