Wind, like hot, sour breath on my neck, blowing down the godforsaken scablands. My palomas are sore after riding almost to dawn, that's what Luis calls my tetas when he plays with them behind the stables after he walks my dun mare Minerva to cool her from my morning ride, because he says his rough, brown hands and tongue make me coo like a mourning dove on the pampas. Luis is a gaucho who will have to do until my stupid cow of an older sister, my half-sister Juana, I call her Juana La Vaca to her face, finds a man who needs the dowry, some hard-luck aristocrat down to his last 100 head of cattle. If Papa caught us, he'd slit Luis’s throat so the blood spurted like fat raindrops splotching the dust of the paddock, and then send me to the nunnery in Rosario faster than a bronco kicks through his stall door to reach a mare in heat. But it's a full moon tonight, I can feel in my gut the curse coming on, my palomas are aching, and here I am, a good 20 leagues from home, my hands bound, this big stallion between my legs, abducted by a tall stranger with a northern accent, maybe Paraguayan, a knife scar on his left cheek, I'm thirsty, I have to pee again, and last time I caught him looking at my culo shining in the moonlight.
It started just after sunset when the carnival came to town. My little brother Tavio, named for Papa and Abuelo, Old Octavio who owns half the land from here to Rio Plata, escorted La Vaca and me to the gypsy camp by the river. There was a chill in the damp air of the cottonwood grove, so we bought three strong mates. As the warm green infusion poured down my throat, I felt a pleasant tingle up my legs and my head buzzed while we walked past a campfire and some wagons to a clearing where a few people I recognized from town were waiting in line.
When we got to the front of the queue, a short, stout woman of indeterminate age, dressed in black rags head to toe, led us to a peculiar glass-fronted wooden cabinet resting on a weathered orange crate. Inside it was the bust of a man, just the head and shoulders, a Turk or perhaps a Chinaman, it was hard to say in the flickering lantern light, wearing a purple robe and a turban festooned with gold stars, and in gold paint on the back wall above his head, in an elegant cursive script, it said Borges, the Blind Seer. Go ahead, she growled at me, feed him a coin and he'll tell your fortune.
I reached beneath my red wool shawl, fingered the hidden pocket sewn into its silk lining, and pulled out the peso I was saving for La Virgen at Sunday mass. God forgive me, I fed that smooth silver wafer into the slot, and stared transfixed as the automaton’s eyes slowly opened and emanated a ghastly green glow. A man's voice from inside the carved wooden head, speaking Castilian with a heavy accent that might have been Romanian or even Egyptian, called me by my full baptismal name - Maria Carmenza Aguilar y Delacruz - I felt that I might swoon - in your hour of need, turn not to God nor men but rely on your own wits to save you – Blasphemer! and then it shuddered to a stop as I gasped, then choked, then shook like a dry leaf in the wind as my heart galloped in my throat. What's the matter, Hermana? my brother whispered, but I just stood there, paralyzed with fear and awe as the old gitana tore off the slip of paper that hung from a slot in the cabinet, pressed it to my palm, pushed me aside and yelled, Next!
Did you see that, did you hear that, that…thing? I said. All I heard, said Tavio, was the whir of gears and the rustle of paper.
Away from the lanterns, it was too dark to read because the moon had yet to rise, so I slipped the fortune against my heart for safekeeping. Where is Juana? Tavio asked, you stay here while I find her. In the next instant, before I could so much as cry for help, I was plucked off my feet as if by a winged demon, and we thundered up the sandy bank and into the black night.
Juana, that traitor! But no, La Vaca is too stupid. Tavio and Papa. They’re probably sending me off to a foreign ranch because they know I’m too damned smart and much too beautiful to be trusted.
And now, as the sky blooms rosy in the east, we arrive at a small shelter, a way station. The man helps me down, hobbles the horses, and goes to the well. I lick my parched lips. It’s three long Ave Marias till the pail splashes, a deep drop to the water on this dry stretch of high plains. As he pulls the rope, hand over hand, I see what I must do. I seize my chance and kick him hard in the orto, and that buzzard flies head first down the well. I sink to my knees and whisper, thank you Jesucristo for my salvation. And then, thank you Maria for the strength to kick hard and the courage to choose my destiny. And then I rise to my feet, born into the new day.
The sun is up now, staring at me with its angry red eye, but I notice that my headache’s gone and I’m hungry. I twist my bound hands down my blouse and pull out the crinkled yellow paper. It reads, Your fate is a labyrinth, a spiral, a black well of infinite depth. I toss that fortune down the well, and turn to the horses.
Ray Sharp is a public health planner who lives and works on the Keweenaw Peninsula along Michigan’s rugged Lake Superior shore. Sharp studied Spanish and Latin American literature at the University of Colorado, and regards Lorca and Neruda among his literary heroes. His poems have appeared at Caper Literary Journal, Eclectic Flash, qarrtsiluni, Referential Magazine, SPARK and vox poetica, and can be seen “Borges, the Blind Seer” is Sharp’s first published story.