“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a girlfriend?”
A girlfriend. The word sent a dart of longing through my ribcage. Maybe I hadn’t made a girlfriend among the refugee children because the comparisons with Anneliese were too obvious; it would feel too much like betrayal. Yet the idea of performing in a play, of being someone else, was attractive. When my father told me the next play was to be Johann Nestroy’s Der Talisman, a comedy featuring a girl mocked for her red hair, I tried out for the part. Who but me could so naturally utter the line “Whoever has something against the red color knows not what is beautiful”?
I got the role.
* * *
• • •
AFTER THAT, I split my nonworking time between theatrical activities at the Austrian Club and street games with Miguel. While I enjoyed rehearsing and running around with the other German-speaking children, I still found no special friend. The girls in our community already had best friends, or were not interested in things that interested me. None of them were as much fun as Miguel.
Gradually, my parents allowed Miguel to take me farther and farther from home to explore the city. Given the number of children his mother had to keep track of, she rarely even knew he was gone. Señora Torres was also starting her own business. While she made enough money from the rents we paid her to survive, she had begun designing knitted clothing that she sold in the markets. She worked when most of her children were in school, and after they were in bed. “She doesn’t have to work so much,” Miguel told me. “But she likes to design. Her father—my grandfather—he’s a trader and he still helps us. A lot of tin was hidden in the Bolivian mountains. My abuelo found places to sell it.”
One Saturday he took me to see the Paris movie theater in Plaza Murillo, walking so swiftly I struggled to keep up even though my legs were longer. Posters outside advertised Union Pacific, but neither of us had money. “This is where I saw Elephant Boy. Also A Day at the Races and Wild West Days.” His face was wistful as we turned away. “I have pelis from all of them.”
Lacking coins for the tram, we wandered down to the San Francisco church, which sat in San Francisco Plaza at the bottom of calle Sagárnaga. Standing outside, we gazed up at the arched windows, at the bells clamoring in and out of its tall stone tower. Though it was majestic, it couldn’t compete with Illimani.
“Are you allowed to go in?” he said.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s not your religion.”
“Jews are allowed to go in anywhere we want.” This was what I wanted to be true.
Miguel suddenly grinned. “Are you allowed to practice witchcraft?”
I was caught off guard. “What?”
“Magia. Like making magical potions with herbs.”
I considered this. “I don’t know.”
“Ven.” He set off at a swift pace up the cobblestone street. We seemed always to be walking uphill, whether we were going or coming.
We left the iglesia de San Francisco and headed up the steep calle Sagárnaga. Several small burros passed us, laden with packages wrapped in striped blankets. I was continually amazed by the vibrancy of color everywhere. A woman in a green, fringed shawl and bowler hat crouched on the street to tie up a bundle more securely. Shopfronts were almost obscured by bright hanging fabrics—children’s dresses, hats, tapestries of animals, and woolly ponchos. Two men in black hats and dark suits stared at me. I tilted my head up, wondering if people lived in the buildings above the shops, with the pretty wrought-iron balconies and red clay roofs. When we reached the narrow calle Linares, we turned right.
“Mira.” Miguel swept an arm before us. “El Mercado de las Brujas.” The Witches’ Market.
Turning to examine the shops that lined the cobblestone street, I saw what I first thought were toy animals, hanging in rows of furry bouquets over the fronts of shops and sitting atop tables on the street. Also on the tables were stacks of colorful boxes and tins, polished stones, handfuls of things that looked like bones.
I wondered if I should be nervous. “Are there really witches here?”
“Aymara witches. They are called yatiri.”
I tasted these words, letting them roll around in my mouth. Yatiri sounded like a bird in flight. “What do they do?”
“They cure people.”
“Of what?”
“Sometimes they cure bodies and sometimes they cure souls.”
“Are they real?”
“Of course they’re real!” He looked offended. “This is a serious place.”
Chastened, I bit my lip. As we continued up the street I looked more closely at the animals dangling over our head. They looked dried out. “Are those—what are those?”
“Those are llama fetuses,” Miguel explained cheerfully. “You have to bury them under every house, or the builders won’t work.”
I nodded as if this made sense. They kill so many babies? They put them under their houses? He went on. “The fetuses are an offering for Pachamama, Mother Earth. They bring luck and health and they keep the builders safe. Builders are often dying.”
I stopped walking. “Is there a llama fetus under our building?”
“Of course! All buildings.”
“Even though you’re just half Aymara.”
“Mother Earth is home for all of us, no? Why should we not all make her offerings?”
I stared at the vacant eyes of the dangling llamas. “Why did your father leave Coroico?”
“He didn’t.”
“But you’re here—”
Miguel kicked at a matted feather stuck to the cobblestones. “Do you want to look at the shops or not?”
I nodded without speaking, sorry I had upset him.
He ducked into the closest shop and greeted the woman behind the counter. I followed, careful not to touch anything on the crowded shelves. What if I accidentally set off some kind of spell? Under the watchful eyes of the yatiris, we looked at twigs, herbs, and powders with names that I didn’t understand, presumably to cure various ailments. Miguel pointed out the array of coca teas and creams for altitude sickness and pains in the body, powdered frogs, stone amulets to bring good health or good business, and dozens of compounds for virility and fertility. But I couldn’t stop looking at the little llamas, in widely varying sizes and stages of development. They fascinated me.
“They must have to kill a lot of baby llamas.”
“No, they don’t kill them,” said Miguel. “They are born dead. Or their mother dies and she is pregnant.”