FIVE

       The Wizard

      It was during the sixth month of his mother’s pregnancy, that, inside her belly, Julio Pimental began to throw the sidearm curve, says the Wizard.

      He glances surreptitiously at the Gringo Journalist to be certain he has his full attention.

      ‘Yi! Yi!’ screamed Fernandella Pimental, as Julio went into the stretch, hiding the ball carefully in his glove so the batter could not glimpse the way he gripped it.

      ‘Yii!’ shrilled Fernandella, as Julio’s arm snaked like a whip in the direction of third base, while the ball, traveling the path of a question mark, jug-hooked its way to the plate, and smacked into the catcher’s mitt held by Julio’s twin brother, Esteban. The Wizard tips back on his cushioned rattan chair. The boy with the starched white hat brings them refills for their iced tea.

      Many years later, on her deathbed, Fernandella Pimental, wizened and grey with age, attended by servants, small as a child in the queen-sized bed in the marble-pillared mansion her sons built for her, recalled the time of her pregnancy. She was residing on the outskirts of San Cristobel, which, though scarcely more than a village, was the second largest city in Courteguay. She and her husband lived in a cardboard hut with a precariously balanced slab of corrugated tin for a roof. The hovel was located on an arid hillside, surrounded by a few prickly vines, always in full view of the frying sun. Her husband, Hector, a sly young man with slicked-down hair, drooping eyelids and a face thin as a ferret’s, spent his life at the baseball grounds, winning or losing a few centavos on the outcome of each day’s games.

      Hector was proud of Fernandella’s belly, which by only the fourth month was big as a washtub, forcing her to walk splay-legged as she trekked out each morning in search of fresh water and fresh fruit.

      Fernandella had been the beauty of the San Cristobel, Queen of the annual festival at St Ann, Mother of Mary Church, (though there was never such a church) fine-boned and light of foot, not at all like the peasant girls Hector Pimental was used to, who were heavy-thighed with faces like frying pans. Fernandella had courage as well as beauty; she could have done much better for herself. But the final evening of the festival she had walked the boisterous streets by herself, a yellow scarf twined in her long straight hair. A summer storm hung on the horizon like a rumor; heat lightning peppered the distant sky.

      As she walked she saw Hector leaning against the front of a booth that sold tortillas, and, as her clear, ironic eyes touched his, she trembled, as much from the night and the excitement of the festival as from the actual vision of the dark young man with hooded eyes who wore a black silk shirt open to the waist. She was enthralled as much by what he stood for as the man himself. For Hector Pimental had an aura of danger about him, a sexuality that widened Fernandella’s nostrils as she breathed the tainted air.

      They exchanged a few words. Hector feigned indifference, something Fernandella could not understand, or tolerate, for as the most beautiful young woman in San Cristobel, Queen of the Festival of St Ann, she had all evening been rebuffing the advances of men more handsome, richer, more worthy of her. Her mother had whispered to her that Santiago the furniture maker, a widower, not yet thirty, with a fine home in the green hills above the village, painted the color of raspberries with a coral-slate roof of eye-dazzling white, had expressed an interest in her.

      ‘I’ve seen you at the baseball grounds,’ Fernandella said, a delicate hand on her hip, one foot placed well in front of the other. When Hector did not reply she went on, ‘My father is a great fan of the San Cristobel Heartbreakers. We often come by in the evening to watch them play.’

      ‘I am a fan only of teams that win when I have money on them,’ said Hector, staring somewhere over Fernandella’s head, not looking down the front of her dress as other young, and not so young men, had been doing all evening.

      Thunder rumbled at a great distance; the colored neon of the ferris wheel cast yellow, green, and blue shadows across the faces of Hector and Fernandella, and Fernandella knew in her heart that she would marry Hector, whose last name she had yet to hear.

      ‘Take me on the ferris wheel,’ she said suddenly; she had not until that second been aware of what she was about to say.

      Hector counted the centavos in his shirt pocket. He grinned at her.

      ‘Girls are often afraid of great heights,’ he said.

      ‘I am afraid of nothing,’ said Fernandella.

      They boarded the ferris wheel amid the odors of grease, exhaust fumes, cedar shavings and the pounding of the motor that powered the rickety vehicle. The wheel worried its way up then lurched over the top, eliciting a scream from Fernandella who clutched Hector’s arm in a gesture partly fear and partly an unendurable urge to touch this mysterious young man. The ferris wheel turned its requisite number of times, but when the attendant pulled the lever that would bring it to a stop, nothing happened. The wheel continued to turn, its green neon rolling across the sky like giant hoops. The speed of the wheel increased until it drew all the breath from the frightened passengers and the screaming died like bird calls on a breeze. The attendants worked frantically to stop the wheel. The motor was shut down, but a lessening of sound was all the shutdown precipitated. Eventually, the green neon, like parallel railroad tracks, disappeared into the distance of night like two illuminated green snakes.

      Hector and Fernandella found themselves on a road outside of San Cristobel, the soft dust under their feet still warm from the day, the moon reflecting in a limpid pool, a stand of scarlet bougainvillea clutching at them as they kissed.

      ‘When Hector Pimental takes his woman for a carnival ride, he takes her for a ride,’ the young man said, pretending not to be puzzled by what had happened.

      Fernandella’s knees were melting.

      ‘You are magical,’ she said, ‘we will enjoy a magical life together.’

      Hector kissed her willing mouth, but all the while he was wondering about the outcome of his bets on that evening’s baseball games.