Read Online Song of the Shaman by Annette Vendryes Leach - Free Book Online Page B

possession. But with the canal in financial transition, budgets had been cut and positions eliminated. He was fortunate to have kept his employment. The past few years had been leaner and the house suffered—the foyer needed a coat of paint, stones were loose in the entrance walkway, the roof needed repair. He worked long hours at the canal on the administration changes and kept himself preoccupied from sunrise to sunset. Tonight their street was empty except for one coachman waiting for his fare. The air was warm and salty when the gleaming glass-paned door opened. Rosa, their housekeeper, greeted them with slippers and hand towels. Short, stout, and stiff-lipped, her smile faded as Benjamin stepped into the foyer.
    “Rosa, this is Benjamin, Don Pedro’s grandson,” Charles announced. “He will be staying with us for a few nights, attending to Maud and her asthma. Please see to his needs.” He wiped his face and hands on the cloth with a sense of conciliation. “After dinner prepare the guest bedroom upstairs. We are all famished and tired as well.”
    “Sí, Señor Lindo.” Rosa paused, looking perplexed. “Buenas noches,” she said dryly, handing Benjamin a towel.
    “Buenas noches, Señora. Gracias,” Benjamin replied politely, touching the towel to his forehead. Rosa looked him up and down with suspicion. Louise could plainly read her thoughts: a working-class mestizo from the rain forest—a so-called shaman. Native Panamanians who embraced Christianity shunned shamanism and its culture, at least until their health failed and they could not afford the costly doctors’ fees. Rosa had worried about Charles taking Maud to see an awa. She too pandered to her delicate little mistress.
    Before dinner was served Maud said she was not feeling well and went directly to her room. The night air disturbed her breathing again. Louise instructed Rosa to boil sweet plantains for Maud to eat in bed. At the dinner table Benjamin ate nothing. He appeared to be listening closely to Maud’s sporadic cough. When Rosa came out of the kitchen with Maud’s supper he excused himself and followed her upstairs, leaving Louise to dine in silence with her father.
    A second night of drumming and chanting began. The rhythmic sounds spilled out the open windows to the streets below. Passersby would stop and look up at the terrace in wonder, straining to see who was beating out the magnetic tempo. Eucalyptus and other strong herbs boiled in pots on the stove, the scent adding an atmosphere of mystery to every corner of the house. Charles, catching up on paperwork in the library, had shut his door to the ritual happenings. Louise sat in a corner of Maud’s room. Her sketchbook on her lap, she dutifully took notes, as Charles had instructed, keeping track of Maud’s treatments. But after a few pages she tired of words. No longer focused on the ritual, her eyes took in the smoothness of Benjamin’s skin, his lean and graceful movements around the room, the intensity of his concentration. Her pencil began to drift, outlining the subtle curves and shades of his face in the mellow lamplight.
    Though he seldom spoke, his face was quite expressive. There was an honesty and confidence behind his closed lips. He passed the carved mahogany settee in the parlor, the eight-foot gilded mirror by the front entrance, even the imported French dresser and headboard in Maud’s bedroom, without noticing their luxury. The young shaman attended to Maud with a single-minded coolness. Louise sketched an outline of his profile in quick strokes. Every so often he caught her watching him, and she automatically scribbled a few words on the page. His eyes would linger a moment on her. How must she look with her unruly hair and bushy eyebrows? Charles’s appearance in the doorway put an end to her musing.
    “How is Maud feeling?” He strained to see in the faintly lit room.
    “She’s stable now, her cough has quieted.” Louise closed her