Lidia slid off the bench and in a most unobtrusive manner left the kitchen area.
Rosa held Josefina by the arm. Josefina seemed to be the epitome of fury. She moved her mouth and contorted her face. In a matter of minutes she had lost all the beauty and innocence that had enchanted me. I did not know what to do. I tried to apologize but Josefina’s inhuman sounds drowned out my words. Finally Rosa took her into the house.
Lidia returned and sat across the table from me.
“Something went wrong up here,” she said, touching her head.
“When did it happen?” I asked.
“A long time ago. The Nagual must have done something to her, because all of a sudden she lost her speech.”
Lidia seemed sad. I had the impression that her sadness showed against her desire. I even felt tempted to tell her not to struggle so hard to hide her emotions.
“How does Josefina communicate with you people?” I asked. “Does she write?”
“Come on, don’t be silly. She doesn’t write. She’s not you. She uses her hands and feet to tell us what she wants.”
Josefina and Rosa came back to the kitchen. They stood by my side. I thought that Josefina was again the picture of innocence and candor. Her beatific expression did not give the slightest inkling of the fact that she could become so ugly, so fast. Looking at her I had the sudden realization that her fab-ulous ability for gestures undoubtedly was intimately linked to her aphasia. I reasoned that only a person who had lost her capacity to verbalize could be so versed in mimicry.
Rosa said to me that Josefina had confided that she wished she could talk, because she liked me very much.
“Until you came she was happy the way she was,” Lidia said in a harsh voice.
Josefina shook her head affirmatively, corroborating Lidia’s statement, and went into a mild outburst of sounds.
“I wish la Gorda was here,” Rosa said. “Lidia always gets Josefina angry.”
“I don’t mean to!” Lidia protested.
Josefina smiled at her and extended her arm to touch her. It seemed as if she were attempting to apologize. Lidia brushed her hand away.
“Why, you mute imbecile,” she muttered.
Josefina did not get angry. She looked away. There was so much sadness in her eyes that I did not want to look at her. I felt compelled to intercede.
“She thinks she’s the only woman in the world who has problems,” Lidia snapped at me. “The Nagual told us to drive her hard and without mercy until she no longer feels sorry for herself.”
Rosa looked at me and reaffirmed Lidia’s claim with a nod of her head.
Lidia turned to Rosa and ordered her to leave Josefina’s side. Rosa moved away complyingly and sat on the bench next to me.
“The Nagual said that one of these days she will talk again,” Lidia said to me.
“Hey!” Rosa said, pulling my sleeve. “Maybe you’re the one who’ll make her talk.”
“Yes! ” Lidia exclaimed as if she had had the same thought. “Maybe that’s why we had to wait for you.”
“It’s so clear!” Rosa added with the expression of having had a true revelation.
Both of them jumped to their feet and embraced Josefina.
“You’re going to talk again!” Rosa exclaimed as she shook Josefina by the shoulders.
Josefina opened her eyes and rolled them. She started mak-ing faint, muffled sighs, as if she were sobbing, and ended up running back and forth, crying like an animal. Her excitation was so great that she seemed to have locked her jaws open. I honestly thought that she was on the brink of a nervous break-down. Lidia and Rosa ran to her side and helped her close her mouth. But they did not try to calm her down.
“You’re going to talk again! You’re going to talk again!” they shouted.
Josefina sobbed and howled in a manner that sent chills down my spine.
I was absolutely confounded. I tried to talk sense to them. I appealed to their reason, but then I realized that they had very little of it, by my standards. I paced back and forth in front of them, trying to figure out what to do.
“You are going to help her, aren’t you?” Lidia demanded.
“Please, sir, please,” Rosa pleaded with me.
I told them that they were crazy, that I could not possibly know what to do. And yet, as I talked I noticed that there was a funny feeling of optimism and certainty in the back of my mind. I wanted to discard it at first, but it took hold of me. Once before I had had a similar feeling in relation to a dear friend of mine who was mortally ill. I thought I could make her well and actually leave the hospital where she lay dying. I even consulted don Juan about it.
“Sure. You can cure her and make her walk out of that death trap,” he said.
“How?” I asked him.
“It’s a very simple procedure,” he said. “All you have to do is remind her that she’s an incurable patient. Since she’s a terminal case she has power. She has nothing to lose anymore. She’s lost everything already. When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.”
“But is it enough just to remind her of that?”
“No. That will give her the boost she needs. Then she has to push the disease away with her left hand. She must push her arm out in front of her with her hand clenched as if she were holding a knob. She must push on and on as she says out, out, out. Tell her that, since she has nothing else to do, she must dedicate every second of her remaining life to performing that movement. I assure you that she can get up and walk away, if she wants to.”
“It sounds so simple,” I said.
Don Juan chuckled.
“It seems simple,” he said, “but it isn’t. In order to do this your friend needs an impeccable spirit.”
He looked at me for a long time. He seemed to be measuring the concern and sadness I felt for my friend.
“Of course,” he added, “if your friend had an impeccable spirit she wouldn’t be there in the first place.”
I told my friend what don Juan had said. But she was already too weak even to attempt to move her arm.
In Josefina’s case my rationale for my secret confidence was the fact that she was a warrior with an impeccable spirit. Would it be possible, I silently asked myself, to apply the same hand movement to her?
I told Josefina that her incapacity to speak was due to some sort of blockage.
“Yes, yes, it’s a blockage,” Lidia and Rosa repeated after me.
I explained to Josefina the arm movement and told her that she had to push that blockage by moving her arm in that fashion.
Josefina’s eyes were transfixed. She seemed to be in a trance. She moved her mouth, making barely audible sounds. She tried moving her arm, but her excitation was so intense that she flung her arm without any coordination. I tried to redirect her movements, but she appeared to be so thoroughly befuddled that she could not even hear what I was saying. Her eyes went out of focus and I knew she was going to faint. Rosa apparently realized what was happening; she jumped away and grabbed a cup of water and sprinkled it over Josefina’s face. Josefina’s eyes rolled back, showing the whites of her eyes. She blinked repeatedly until she could focus her eyes again. She moved her mouth, but she made no sound.
“Touch her throat!” Rosa yelled at me.
“No! No!” Lidia shouted back. “Touch her head. It’s in her head, you dummy! “
She grabbed my hand and I reluctantly let her place it on Josefina’s head.
Josefina shivered, and little by little she let out a series of faint sounds. Somehow they seemed to me more melodious than the inhuman sounds she made before.
Rosa also must have noticed the difference.
“Did you hear that? Did you hear that?” she asked me in a whisper.
But whatever the difference might have been, Josefina let out another series of sounds more grotesque than ever. When she quieted down, she sobbed for a moment and then entered into another state of euphoria. Lidia and Rosa finally quieted her. She plunked down on the bench, apparently exhausted. She could barely lift her eyelids to look at me. She smiled meekly.
“I am so very, very sorry,” I said and held her hand.
Her whole body vibrated. She lowered her head and began to weep again. I felt a surge of ultimate empathy for her. At that moment I would have given my life to help her.