Two days later, the Old Hermit was seen in the village, wearing tattered clothes and drinking fermented sand dollar juice. No one knew where he came by it. He sang an old, sad, Spanish sailor song about love that was lost to the sea. No one dared come near him. After walking about the town a bit and singing at the top of his voice, he returned to his cave. And that is why the Old Hermit became both feared and revered among the townspeople.
The town aged with swiftness. Cracks in the sand dollar brick became obvious after the rainy season, and pianos and guitars grew dusty. Men took to the sea, for fish and for the longing to find sand dollars again. Women left their cafes and took up knitting on the terrace all day, gathering in the morning to gossip. There was nothing, however, even to gossip about.
Here we find Alvaro and Magda, in a crumbling, old, rambling house that was large, though decidedly humble. They had a piano that hadn’t been played since Alvaro had been forced to take lessons as a young child. It no longer was the shiny black of its playing days, but an off-white from years of exposure to sand dollar dust. We follow them at the birth of their child, Jose Paolo y Alguno de San Orazca. It was a terrible ordeal. The labor lasted twelve hours and Jose Paolo first started out breech, then was turned around due to the considerable skill of the midwife, Maria Serva, through the use of massage and a potion of spices and coconut oil to sniff while singing 112 Ave Marias. In the eleventh hour, The Priest was called and came immediately, delivering last rites to both Magda and the unborn Jose Paolo. Alvaro watched and paced and continually got in the way throughout the whole trial. When Jose Paolo came out he was blue with the cord wrapped around his neck. His hair, though, was black and thick like his mother’s, and it wagged wildly about his head like a hand waving for help.
“He will not live,” said The Priest. “Although his hair, like his mother’s, is immortal.”
The skill of Maria Serva was considerable, though, and she revived the child with a pair of bellows and a cup of smelling salts.
Alvaro took his son and paraded him through the streets as the men went off to the boats, and the women to their terraces to knit. There was joy in the town as there hadn’t been since before the disappearance of the sand dollars. Alvaro’s singing filled the air. A number of people sighted the Hermit down from his cave, rejoicing and drinking his ever present fermented sand dollar juice. The Hermit leapt and sang and even anointed the baby with his drink. All the town’s activities stopped for the day. Even exhausted Magda came out toward evening, looking more beautiful and severe than any had ever seen. The trial had brought understanding and strength to her face. When she held Jose Paolo, her hair wrapped around him to keep him warm, perhaps seeing more of its own in his hair.
Yet Alvaro Montagua de San Alvieda still possessed tremendously bad luck, which struck when Jose Paolo was not yet two days old. In the night after that first glorious day he came down with a fever. He cried and sulked and his hair shook as his head ached. Alvaro and Magda were up the entire night with cold cloths attending to him, and Alvaro ran to the church just before dawn to summon The Priest. The Priest came and prayed and anointed, but nothing could be done for the baby. Throughout the next day the couple prayed, and the entire town learned of the news and awaited updates. If something turned bad Alvaro would shout out from the terrace, “Pray, for Jose Paolo is crying again!” And when the child would fall asleep he would shout, “Quiet, everyone! The child is sleeping!”
By the next day Jose Paolo was coughing up mucus and blood. After Alvaro gave yet another distressing update, someone mentioned the old hermit. “Perhaps he will, in his wisdom and earthly magic, know how to help the child.”
Another voice shouted from the back, “Did he not anoint the child with some demon potion?”
“He anointed him with fermented sand dollar juice,” came the reply from the first voice.
Which, obviously, settled the matter. Fermented sand dollar juice, whether from a demon or not, had well known healing properties. There was an intoxication that filled the air. The very mention of sand dollar juice made the children laugh and women sing and the men set their gaze to the sea, disappearing into a past time.
“Very well,” Alvaro spoke quietly from his terrace. “I will see the Hermit.”
Felipe Miguel, a fisherman and friend of Alvaro’s, stepped forward. “Not you alone, Alvaro. We will go with you. I will go get my machete.”
“Oh my friends, I am sorry. Besides, everyone knows no mortal man can hurt the Hermit.”
“But we can threaten him, Alvaro,” Felipe pleaded.
Magda had been listening to the commotion on the terrace as she tended to Jose Paolo. She left her new baby with Maria Serva for a moment and walked to the terrace herself. The crowd dropped silent when she appeared.
“My husband will go alone,” she said. Then, she went inside.
The men stood staring at the spot where she stood moments before, mouths agape, eyes clouded over. The women silently applauded her thoughts. And Alvaro stepped inside as well, without a word, to prepare for his journey.
He had never journeyed to the cave before. In fact, no one from the village of Lamanca had. No path led the way, and once in the jungle even midday would seem like twilight, creating eerie shadows to match the unfamiliar sounds. The Terciopelo snakes were legendary there, and rumor long held that they grew so large in the jungle with a poison so heinous that it would kill a grown man within 3 steps. Alvaro was armed with his machete, the most useful tool he owned. He had high leather boots and long woolen pants, but a Terciopelo bite would easily pierce either.
He started out, walking down the dusty main street of town while the men and women stood on their terraces watching him. He walked down the center of the street, machete on one hip, canteen on the other, the sun beating down on his dark hair already causing him to sweat in the heat of the late morning. The children followed him from a distance. He walked with haste, and soon was out of town and through the small fields and entering the darkness of the jungle. The children stopped a few yards from the jungle entrance, where the fields ended and the true danger began. In only a few paces he walked in semidarkness.
The urgency of the prayers that Alvaro uttered has been matched in desire by few men since. His child was dying and he walked through certain death in order to find a fool and his possible remedy. At first, the shadows seemed long, and any foreign noise (and there were many) caused him to jump and unsheath his machete. After a time, though, he grew used to the shadows and to the noises and he began to hum to himself. He did not realize it, but he hummed the same old Spanish song the hermit had sung long ago after Ibrahim Ormidas de Terce left town. And he did not know either that the hermit had enchanted the Terciopelos with the same song, so that singing it would cause them not to bite, though it would cause them to gather.
