by Achy Obejas
Translation by Achy Obejas
OLÚO1
BY ARNALDO CORREA
Casablanca
Eulogio Gaytán realized that after he lost his hearing, he could penetrate more deeply into the folds of his clients’ and godchildren’s2 thoughts and sexual desires. He realized that because words can be deceiving, they can take you down the wrong paths, they can hide the truth in a warp of sound. That’s when he grasped that he’d reached the highest level in his ministry as a babalao. From that moment on, his deafness was no longer a punishment come late in life, a life dedicated to pursuing happiness, health, and the wellbeing of society’s most humble and least appreciated folks. All of a sudden, he understood it was a gift from Orula at the end of an existence that had been plagued with the same misery and deprivations as those of his flock. The absolute silence now allowed him a greater balance, a greater closeness with the Eternal Father, who had given him the gift of divination, and the cosmic energy that put such astonishing words in his mouth.
He was well aware of his goddaughter Elodia’s movements as he tried to determine if this was another of her long pauses filled with thoughts, tranquility, and suggestions from eyes of singular beauty, or if she was finished telling her story. At the beginning of his deafness he’d tried to lip read, but the effort of following each word actually distanced him from the conversation’s real meaning, so he’d stopped trying and began to concentrate on the language used by other parts of the body: the infinite facial expressions; the revealing light, intensity, and expression of the eyes; the hands’ flights and the movements of the feet and legs, which said so much about a person’s mood; the tension in the muscles and the breath’s rhythm, which betrayed the most intimate feelings…All of those things came together in his mind, along with conscious and unconscious memories of the river of people who’d consulted him during a life dedicated to solving other people’s problems; all those things said so much more than words.
Now, one of his most devoted goddaughters was in anguish over something no doubt terrible, since she was a strong person who only came to see him about important things. She had grown up in the home of a refined and prosperous family where her mother had been a domestic worker. The owners of the house had raised her as the daughter they’d never had. She’d learned good manners from childhood; she’d studied at select schools until she’d fallen into this grave crisis.
She had been brought to Gaytán years before by a godson who was already famous as an oriaté, a diviner, and who was considered deeply knowledgeable about the science of seeing the future. Gaytán’s disciple had been trying to untangle the girl’s problems without success. He told Gaytán that all of the girl’s difficulties had begun after the owner of the house where she lived, Dr. Casals, a well-known lawyer, had died abruptly during a party in his home. The forensic pathologist had diagnosed a myocardial infarction, but back then all sudden deaths had been diagnosed that way. The oriaté confessed that he’d gone to investigate and the widow had told him she was certain her husband had been poisoned. According to her, there had been too many important people at the party for the police to open an investigation into each and every one of them. “Yes, of course Casals had enemies—what famous lawyer doesn’t have lots of enemies?”
Since that time, the girl had suffered from terrible nightmares. She opted to stay awake all the time by taking pills, ruining her health in the process. The oriaté was convinced the dead man was one of the clues to the case, since his Diloggún shell-throwing ritual had turned up four and five, Eyiolosun-oché by way of Osobbo: The dead man was looking for someone to take with him. Moreover, whenever the oriaté consulted the oracle through the coconut shells, the letter Oyékun kept coming up in the girl’s readings, four shell pieces facing down, definitively signaling that one of the dead wanted to talk, but all efforts to establish communication had been unsuccessful. It seemed he was a very backwards spirit, unaware of his own situation, something that happened often with the souls of those who died unexpectedly.
In the first reading that Gaytán did for Elodia, he was left astonished and perplexed by the ípkuele’s3 revelations. For the first time in many days, the girl slept, falling gently facedown on Gaytán’s chest immediately after the reading. He cancelled the rest of his appointments for the day and remained there, without moving, watching over the girl’s dreams until the following morning. When she awoke, he saw the smile on her face, those bright eyes that he’d later see furious, in love, and hateful.
Elodia’s physical and psychic states were horrible. It was imperative to act immediately; Gaytán recommended she be given to Olokun4 immediately so she could get her strength back and ease her ailments. But her troubles dictated only one possible solution: The young woman would have to undergo the Kari Osha and live by the strict mandates set for her by the orisha who ruled her destiny.
Making good use of the fact that he’d already scheduled a spiritual possession by Orula, Gaytán and three other babalaos decided the girl was a daughter of Oyá Yansa, the orisha queen who reigned over cemeteries, lightning, winds, and storms; she was also Changó’s lover. Gaytán gave Elodia to Margarita, a very experienced and smart santera of the highest order, so that she could be her godmother for the Kari Osha, the ceremony in which the saint is given to her, or “made,” as it’s commonly called.
Elodia then began to prepare for this great event, in which the initiate is born again and the orisha receives her in the appropriate ceremonial way, promising to protect her in this new life. But whoever is reborn must commit to the rules of their celestial father or mother, and those determinations are made in the Book of Itá, on the “middle day” of the Kari Osha.
After receiving the Olokun, the young woman had faltered at first, dazed, as if absent from the natural world, tormented by visions she didn’t dare describe. During that time, Gaytán was at his family home in the Escambray mountains, where his centenarian grandmother had just passed away, and so he was unable to help with the new crisis. After two weeks of intense work with the sick young woman, however, Mar garita managed to reanimate her spirit and make the proper connection with her sponsoring orisha.
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 makebelieve 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 ha
ppiness 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 mortifled.”
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!
But neither could the santera Margarita be underestimated; he could still feel her screams in his deaf ears: “I gave her to Yewá for a very powerful reason! There is no mistake!”
But to what powerful reason could Margarita be referring? Was she simply trying to avoid explaining? Then Gaytán remembered how disconcerted the oriaté who’d brought Elodia had been over the readings he’d done for her and the dead soul who’d kept coming up. And suddenly everything became clear to Gaytán. How could he have missed it before? What had he been thinking? Why, he really did deserve to have Margarita call him a fool!
“Elodia, my dear, give me your hand, I want to feel the beating of your heart when you answer this next question for me.”
She extended her hand and the old babalao took it between his.
“Now, tell me, why did you poison Dr. Casals?”
Elodia’s face froze for an instant, then hardened. She was quiet for a bit, as if she was asking herself the question for the first time and was searching out her brain for an answer. Then she began to speak, very slowly, so that Gaytán could follow what she said by watching her lips move.
“I had to do it, Godfather! He was going to leave me. He told me to stop going to his room. Do you understand what I mean? Ever since I was a little girl, I’d been getting in his bed with him as soon as his wife left for work. He showed me everything I had to do…Now he wanted the cook’s daughter, who was younger than me…I consulted a santera who threw the coconut shells for me and it came out Eyife, and she said that the orishas told her that we shouldn’t ask about what we already know—that I knew very well what I had to do!”
In other circumstances, Gaytán might have consulted his ípkuele. But he was too old, he’d lost the faith to blindly follow the oracle’s dictates. He felt that his Eternal Father had been filling his heart with doubt even as his mind got wiser—though in the end, mankind can never be God.
He stayed like that a long while, just staring at the four coconut pieces he’d been shaping to use in divination as Elodia told him her troubles. It was from that prodigious fruit that the most effective way to talk to the gods had developed, the best way to ask concrete questions and receive blunt answers. Now he had to ask what to do with Elodia, and he was well aware that this time he could not fail.
; He took the four pieces in his hands. He said a brief and silent prayer, and threw the pieces of coconut on the yarey mat in front of him. Two faced down and two faced up. Eyife! The clearest of all the coconut oracle’s letters. An unquestionable yes: You do not ask about what you already know.
“Listen to this, my dear. Oyá, your real mother, says she left you years ago in care of Yewá because it had to be that way,” Gaytán explained. “You have been very good and as a result she will take care of you from now on. But she asks that you not consult her about what to do with this new life she offers you. You need to decide for yourself, and to answer before mankind for whatever it is you do.”
Translation by Achy Obejas
1An olúo is the highest level that can be achieved by a babalao, or babalawo (both forms are acceptable). The only hierarchy that exists in the Rule of Osha (also spelled Ocha) is the Order of Babalaos, who are children of Orula (also known as Ifá), god of divination.
2In Santería, godchildren are those sponsored in the rituals by particular santeros or babalaos—godfathers or godmothers.
3A tablet and necklace used for divination.
4Olokun is a very mysterious deity who reigns over the bottom of the sea. “Giving to Olokun” is usually recommended by babalaos, not santeros or diviners, and only when a person is on the brink of death.
SETTLING OF SCORES
BY OSCAR F. ORTÍZ
Cojímar
The rodents are relentless; they’ve been feasting on me for days. Everything hurts inside; I feel close to death, which is good news now. I’m sick of living. I could have had a happy childhood, like anyone else, but it’s not easy to carry the burden of dishonor. My soul weighs on me because I’ve been left alone. Papá and Mamá are not here anymore; they’ve gone on to a better place. I’m in agony but…I laugh.
