We took more things to her, Azucena and Lolilla said, we had to go everywhere, even to the monk Toribio’s apothecary in his stargazing tower, scurrying like mice through tunnels and stairways, passageways and dungeons, and she prepared a new ointment from fifty grams of the extract of opium, thirty of betel, six of cinquefoil, fifteen of henbane, a few grams of belladonna, the same amount of hemlock, two hundred and fifty grams of Indian hemp, five of cantharides, and then some gum tragacanth and ground sugar; look, Don Juan, Your Mercy, it’s all written down here on this paper she gave us so we wouldn’t forget the names; we had a hard time, but we spelled them out on the monk Toribio’s porcelain jars; and besides all that, she said in a loud voice that this time she would perform the ritual called … the clavier? no, the clavichord, Azucena, no, the ritual of the Clavicle, Lolilla, the Clavicle, I know what she said; she took two candles that had been blessed and stuck them in the sand, and with a cypress branch — that’s something else we’d got her, and it had to be cut by the light of the crescent moon — she drew a circle in the sand, stood inside it, and said:
“Emperor Lucifer, master of rebellious spirits, be favorable unto me,” said Don Juan, “give to this inert form the mobility of the great Prince of Darkness, let that power surge forth from the great funnel-shaped Hell divided into seven zones each with seven thousand cells where seven thousand scorpions hide and a thousand barrels of peat bubble; send the Prince of Darkness to me with the dominions that are particularly his: knowledge, flesh, and riches, now that I invoke the words of the Clavicle, so powerful they may torment the Devil himself,” said Don Juan, trembling and hiding in the folds of his brocade a temporarily aged, contorted, and intolerably pinched face: Aglon Tetragrammaton Vaycheon Stimulamathon Erohares Retrasammathon Clyoram Icion Esition Existien Eryona Onera Erasyn Moyn Meffias Soter Emmanuel Sabaoth Adonai, I convoke you, Amen.”
And nothing happened, Señor Don Juan, nothing. The mummy still lay there stiff and stretched out on the bed; and the Señora fell exhausted to the sand.
During the scrubbing maids’ next absence Don Juan dressed in the white tunic, stained it with his own blood, and placed the crown of thorns upon his head. And thus robed, by night he went to the cell of the Superior, Madre Milagros, and finding the door open, he entered with great stealth and found the sainted woman kneeling upon a priedieu, her hands folded in prayer before the sweet image of Jesus the Redeemer. On tiptoe, Don Juan silently approached until he stood between the divine image and the dazzled eyes of Madre Milagros; in the midst of the shadows he was the living incarnation of the Christ to whom she was directing her prayers. The devout woman choked back a cry that was almost a sob; Don Juan raised one finger to his lips, and with the other hand he stroked the Mother Superior’s head and murmured softly: “Wife…”
Madre Milagros’s eyes filled with tears, and her weeping betrayed a battle between incredulity and faith.
“Hail, you are filled with grace, the Lord is with you,” Don Juan said sweetly. “Do not be afraid, Milagros, for you have found favor with God, and you shall conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son. He shall be great, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob unto the ages, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”
The confounded woman automatically repeated the words she had learned as a young girclass="underline" “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”
“Are you not wedded to me?” Don Juan smiled. “Did you not take a vow to love me?”
“Yes, yes, I am the bride of Christ, but you…”
“Look carefully … behold my tunic … behold my wounds … behold the crown of my torment…”
“Oh, Lord, you have heard my prayers, you have honored the most undeserving of your servants, oh, Lord…”
“Rise, Milagros, take my hand, come with me, the virtue of the Most High shall cover you with His shadow, come with me to your bed, Madre…”
“I am the handmaiden of the Lord; do with me according to your word.”
And, Madre, Don Juan said in the bed of the Superior, the Lord honors those who are most deserving, and no one more than you, holy and beautiful, most fair and pure; pure, yes, Mother Milagros said, sighing, but not beautiful. I am an old woman, Lord, a woman thirty-eight years old; governess and shepherdess to this flock of young Sisters; no, Milagros, old, too, was Elizabeth, Mary’s kinswoman, who believed she was barren but who gave birth to the Baptist who was called John; and shall I, too, give birth, Lord? are you the Holy Spirit come down to visit me?; oh, Milagros, Madre Milagros, the duty and the honor of the elect has always been to be made fruitful by the Divine Spirit before belonging to any mortal man; I shall belong to no one but you, Lord, I swear it; then you will have a long wait, Madre, a long wait then; but I am the handmaiden of the Lord, do unto me according to your word.
Our mistress, Señor Don Juan, sent us out to the difficulty and danger of collecting animals, some within the confines of the palace, others in the nearest foothills; for some it was necessary to set traps, and at times we fled with terror before some stalking beast; at times it was necessary to spend the night waiting to hear the trapped cry of some animal, the two of us grumbling and complaining, Señor Don Juan, clutching each other in the shadow of huge rocks or holding each other tight from fear of the black forest, abandoning you those nights, longing for your so amiable company; we captured a kid and an owl, a dog and a mole, one black cat, and two serpents: when we were finally able to take these creatures to the bedchamber of La Señora, she had placed an inverted crucifix upon the mummy’s bed which she had surrounded with red candles, ciboria she had made us steal from her husband’s chapel, and Hosts made from black kale, and with her cypress wand she wrote in the sand the letter