Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman Page B

fingers several times to feel whether they were still hers and stretched her feet numbed by the bindings. Then she looked at Delaura for the first time, weighed and measured him and attacked with the well-aimed pounce of a hunted animal. The warder helped subdue her and tighten the straps again. Before he left, Delaura took a sandalwood rosary from his pocket and hung it around Sierva María’sneck over her Santería beads.
    The Bishop was alarmed when he saw him return withscratches on his face and a bite on his hand, the mere sight of which caused him distress. But he was even more alarmed by Delaura’s reaction. He displayed his wounds as if they were battle trophies and scoffed at the danger of contracting rabies. The Bishop’s physician, however, treated them with utmost seriousness,for he was one of those who feared that the eclipse on the following Monday would be the prelude to grave disasters.
    On the other hand, the murderer Martina Laborde did not encounter the least resistance in Sierva María. She had tiptoed to her cell, as if by chance, and seen her in the bed, tied by her feet and hands. The girl went on the defensive and kept her eyes fixed and alert until Martinasmiled. Then she smiled too, and her surrender was unconditional. It was as if the soul of Dominga de Adviento had filled the entire cell.
    Martina told her who she was and why she was there for the rest of her days, even though she had grown hoarse proclaiming her innocence. When Martina asked Sierva María the reasons for her confinement, she could tell her only the little she had learned fromher exorcist: ‘I have a devil inside.’
    Martina asked no more questions, assuming that the girl lied or had been lied to, not realizing she was one of the few white women to whom Sierva María had told the truth. She gave her a demonstration of the art of embroidery, and the girl asked to be freed so that she could try it too. Martina showed her the scissors she carried in the pocket of her gownalong with other items used for needlework.
    ‘What you want is for me to free you,’ she said. ‘But Iwarn you: If you try to hurt me, I have the means to kill you.’
    Sierva María did not doubt her determination. She was freed and she repeated the embroidery lesson with the facility and good ear with which she had learned to play the theorbo. Before Martina left, she promised to obtain permissionfor them to watch the total eclipse of the sun together on the following Monday.
    At dawn on Friday the swallows took their leave, making a wide circle in the sky and showering the streets and rooftops with a foul-smelling indigo snowstorm. It was difficult to eat and sleep until the midday sun dried the stubborn droppings and the night breezes purified the air. But terror prevailed. No one hadever seen swallows shit in mid-flight or heard of the stink of their excrement interfering with ordinary life.
    In the convent, of course, no one doubted that Sierva María had the power to change the laws of migration. On Sunday after Mass Delaura could even feel the hardness in the air as he crossed the garden with a little basket of pastries from the arcades. Sierva María, remote from everything,still wore the rosary around her neck but did not respond to his greeting or deign to look at him. He sat beside her, chewed a cruller from the basket with delight, and said, his mouth full, ‘It tastes like heaven.’
    He brought the other half of the cruller to Sierva María’s mouth. She turned her head, not facing the wall as she had on other occasions but indicating to Delaura that the warderwas spying on them. He made an emphatic gesture with his hand in the direction of the door.
    ‘Get away from there,’ he ordered.
    Whenthe warder moved away, the girl tried to satisfy her long-standing hunger with the half of the cruller, but spat out the piece she had bitten off. ‘It tastes like swallow shit,’ she said. Still, her humor changed. She cooperated when Delaura treated