LITMIR.BIZ

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for my children, and I will make the leaves increase for them.’ That’s why the coca leaves grew—this is a well-known fact,” don Teodoro assured us. “But I have been looking at the libro de los hermanos [the Bible] just in case.”

      Efraín and I nodded, understanding he would have to give up his coca if he joined the Evangélicos. As our Evangelical friends explained, just as coca turns the teeth green, so does it stain the soul. Chewing coca was forbidden because you cannot walk through heaven’s gates with a green soul.

      “Has no one been able to help?” I asked. “It must be so difficult to work.”

      Don Teodoro nodded. “Arí mamacita linda. I’ve tried so many things for my eye. But nothing has helped.”

      He left a bit later, and Efraín and I continued to wonder about his eye and why it only opened for two hours each afternoon. Daño worked in many ways, and evidently he had an unusual case.

      A few days later, the same high voice called out, and it was Teodoro Huanaco again. He explained that he wanted to talk with us but could not do so in front of anyone else. “May I come back tonight?” he asked.

      “Absolutely, we’ll be here,” replied Efraín. “Just come by, papi.”

      It was around eight o’clock when Teodoro appeared again in our doorway, his poncho wrapped tightly around him and the candles casting his shadow against the wall. This time, it became clearer why he wanted to speak to us alone. Teodoro wanted to know if I could cure his eye. I was a bit surprised at first—daño was not an illness I knew how to treat.

      “I’m not certain, don Teodoro. What would help your eye?”

      “We could try flowers, candles, fruit, trago, a pagapu—it would need to be after midnight. Could you try?” he asked, looking straight at me.

      Efraín glanced my way and we spoke softly to each other. He had heard about how people cure daño, although he had never tried before. I asked him if he thought we could figure it out and he nodded, reluctantly.

      I then asked Teodoro exactly what we would need and that I would try to make the purchases the following Friday at the feria. He thanked me repeatedly and left.

      Efraín and I were curious—why me? As a gringa, I hardly seemed like a sure thing. However, I had been giving people Ibuprofen for pain, antibiotics for infections, and massages to the women when talking about the violence made them ache. In one instance, amoxicillin probably had saved a man’s life.

      A few weeks prior to don Teodoro’s first visit, a knock at the door had sent me scrambling for my flashlight. I slept with a rock propped against my door, figuring that if the soldiers planned a nocturnal visit, at least I would have a few minutes’ warning. But the voice that replied to my “Who is it?” clearly belonged to a child.

      I slid the rock back, creaked open the rusty aluminum sheet, and found a little boy and his mother standing in a slender stream of moonlight, both in tears. The boy told me his father, Jesús, was very ill and asked me to come look at him. I gathered up my first aid kit and flashlight, and we made our way down past the preschool, silvery light reflecting off the roofs and barely illuminating the rocky path beneath my stumbling feet.

      We entered their house and they directed me toward the heap of blankets piled on the bed. A man was lying there, breathing laboriously. I could feel the heat that emanated from his body before even touching him, and the gurgling congestion in his chest was audible with each strained breath. I thought he had bronchitis, perhaps even pneumonia. We began a seven-day treatment with antibiotics and aspirin, massages with mentholatum—and sugar, requested by his wife to give him strength.

      He did recover, and the seriousness of his illness was impressed upon me during the rainy seasons I spent in Carhuahurán. The interminable rains of December–March left everything and everyone damp: we could go for days without a moment of dryness, torrents alternating with drizzles. Each rainy season the cemetery was filled with more children and adults who first had bronchitis and then, in combination with malnutrition and a reluctance to go to the health post, pneumonia. Jesús and his family insisted I had saved his life: the strips of dried beef hanging from the rafters in my room were the proof, along with the hugs and exclamations each time we crossed paths.

      Thus it was not as strange as it might seem that Teodoro came to my door. Unfortunately, the Friday feria was poorly attended and we could not obtain all of the necessary supplies. We spoke with Teodoro and told him I would be heading for Huamanga and could make the purchases there. We agreed on this alternative plan.

      When I arrived in Huamanga, I spoke with some of my Peruvian colleagues, mentioning Teodoro’s eye and his request for help. They immediately asked me what in the world I was thinking. Now, this “what in the world” was not referring to what one might assume—a “what in the world” bafflement that I could actually believe all that. On the contrary, my colleagues were concerned that I was involving myself in forms of power and politics I clearly did not understand. They shook their heads and asked why I would want to get involved with forces I did not know how to command. As they insisted, healing such afflictions is highly specialized, and the curanderos zealously guard their secrets and their clientele. If I did succeed in healing don Teodoro, this would confirm my status as competition for their services and as someone to be reckoned with. They convinced me I was walking into an explosive situation, and I was both frightened by my ignorance and ashamed of what must have struck them as arrogance.

      When I returned to Carhuahurán, I relayed these conversations to Efraín. He looked profoundly relieved; he also had some new information. Several villagers had come by to let him know that Teodoro Huanaco was a powerful brujo—one of the most powerful witches in the region. Teodoro said he used el libro de los hermanos, but others implied the book he used was not the Bible.³⁵ We were warned to be very careful—he was a dangerous man. I felt responsible for having gotten us into this mess; Efraín had a wife and a small daughter, and I apologized for placing all of them at risk. I assured him I would take care of this. I think I was also trying to reassure myself.

      Sure enough, Teodoro came by later in the day. After we exchanged greetings and invited him in, I brought out the bottle of rum I had carefully carried with me from the city. I poured the first shot for Teodoro, thus sending the tin cup on its way around our small circle. Two rounds into the rum, I knew I needed to give the clumsy speech I had been practicing over and over in my head. I explained that I had felt so much sympathy for him when he first asked for help—that I could only imagine how difficult it must be to maintain his family given how much he was suffering.

      “Don Teodoro, I give people some pills when they have headaches—sometimes I clean wounds with rubbing alcohol. That’s really all I know how to do. I have no idea how to cure daño but hoped I could somehow figure it out because I wanted to help you. But I’m far too ignorant and the apus would never pay attention to me. I don’t know the palabras íntimas [intimate words] to use—the apus would never listen to me. I’m so sorry. I’m just a gringa with some pills. I don’t have any power to cure something like daño.”

      Teodoro sat back in his chair looking at me with his one unblinking eye. Slowly an expansive smile worked its way across his face. He nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

      Why had he sought me out? Why didn’t he go to El Piki, to Manuco—why me? As an outsider, why did he think I would know how to cure daño? Whereas El Piki did not want to talk to me—and when he did, he used the opportunity to assure me he could do away with me simply by uttering the right words—Teodoro had another way of sizing me up.

      I was being challenged to a witchcraft duel: he wanted to test me. I thought I had cured Jesús of pneumonia; as I subsequently found out, his symptoms resembled those of daño, and there were a number of people who were convinced I was more than just a gringa with a first aid kit. I had been climbing the hills, scrounging for kindling, in complete disregard for where I stepped or sat. And yet the angry gods had not grabbed me for my lack of respect—I was not ill, and that made me suspect. I had

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