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Nora was shocked afresh. “So…” She paused to organize her thoughts. “You haven’t heard from him at all? He didn’t present you with a copy of the book?”
“He gave me nothing. I know nothing of any book.”
At this, Nora took a long, deep breath and drained her mug. This surprising revelation overturned all her assumptions. How could Oskarbi have written a book about Benicio and never told him? And if Oskarbi wasn’t here—where was he?
“Years ago, Oskarbi was a disciple of yours, a student. Isn’t that correct?”
Benicio didn’t seem to hear. His eyes were on the distant horizon.
Nora realized she was getting ahead of herself. Peppering Benicio with questions, so soon after he’d allowed her into his home, was no way to get answers. She stopped herself for a moment and let the silence gather, let the peace of the morning return.
“Thank you,” she said. “For thedesayuno.”
Benicio nodded. “Another cup?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
He rose, went over to the stove, and brought back the pot, refilling both cups.
“Don Benicio,” she began again when her second cup was half-empty, “may I ask you some questions about Oskarbi’s apprenticeship with you?”
He shook his head in a silent no.
Nora took some time to rearrange her thoughts. Finally, she said, “May I tell you why I have an interest? Why I have come all this way?”
No reaction.
“When Oskarbi returned to the States after the time spent under your tutelage, he wrote a book. It was about you and your teachings. Even though it was somewhat scholarly in nature, it was a bestseller and millions of people read it—read about the teachings of Don Benicio and how they transformed his life. He became a professor and gathered around him a group of students. And then, twelve years ago, he abruptly disappeared. Everyone said—believed—he’d grown disenchanted with the academic life and returned here, to continue his discipleship. But, obviously, everybody was wrong.” She paused. “But here’s the reason I’ve come: in the last five years, there have been at least two ritual suicides among his former students. I’m looking into what might lie behind those suicides.”
At this, a subtle change took place in Benicio’s face. Its lines deepened, the eyes growing cold and even more distant.
“I need your help,” Nora said. “Weneed your help. We’re trying to find out why these former students killed themselves in amost horrible way. It seems possible that it connects, somehow, to what Oskarbi learned down here.”
Finally, Don Benicio replied. “I cannot share with you this knowledge,” he said.
“Why?”
“It is dangerous. Even to mention it is dangerous.”
Nora let a beat pass. “If that’s true, then Oskarbi is dangerous. It can’t be just coincidence—one way or another, he must have had a role in those suicides.” She paused and waited.
After a moment, Benicio asked the question she had hoped. “How did they die?”
“They took off all their clothes in the desert, in the full sun, and died of dehydration and heatstroke.”
Benicio went very still, deliberately turning his head toward the window and the distant canyons and mesas beyond. He remained this way for a long time—long, no doubt, even by his own standards. Minutes passed. Then a quarter of an hour.
Nora picked up her empty coffee cup, toyed with it, put it down. “Don Benicio—”
He held up his hand in a gesture of restraint.
Yet again the silence gathered. It seemed to Nora that Benicio was pondering something, his brow creased, eyes inward-looking despite the vista, expression quiet. And then—at last—he began to speak, hesitantly, in a low voice.
“Carlos came to me,” he said. “It was, perhaps, twenty-five years ago. I don’t know how he found me. He said he was an anthropologist seeking traditional knowledge. Before, all my teachings were with my own people—to bring them back to the ancient truths. But students were scarce and growing scarcer. My people were losing interest in the old knowledge. Yet here was this person who not only learned about my existence but sought meout. And so I agreed to teach him—provisionalmente. For a long time, perhaps a year, he was a very good student. Maybe the most attentive and eager of all. He was greedy for information, always…”
His voice trailed off. Nora waited patiently.
“The traditional way to knowledge is to open a door to the powers that live invisibly in the world around us. The key to that door ishikuri—peyote. There are many spirits that come through doors opened byhikuri. Some of these are spirits of light. Some are of the dark. And then, there are the spirits we callduende, which can go either way. These last are spirits of trickery and gratification.”