Rosendo looked embarrassed. “I––Bien, Padre, I promised her I would not.”
“When?”
“To-day, Padre.”
Josè reflected on the child’s unusual request. Then:
“But if you fell sick up in Guamocó, Rosendo, what could you do?”
“Quien sabe, Padre! Perhaps I could gather herbs and make a tea––I don’t know. She didn’t say anything about that.” He looked at Josè and laughed. Then, in an anxious tone:
“Padre, what can I do? The little Carmen asks me not to take the quinine, and I can not refuse her. But I may get sick. I––I have always taken medicine when I needed it and could get it. But the only medicine we have in Simití is the stuff 97 that some of the women make––teas and drinks brewed from roots and bark. I have never seen a doctor here, nor any real medicines but quinine. And even that is hard to get, as you know. I used to make a salve out of the livers of mápina snakes––it was for the rheumatism––I suffered terribly when I worked in the cold waters in Guamocó. I think the salve helped me. But if I should get the disease now, would Carmen let me make the salve again?”
He bent over his outfit for some moments. “She says if I trust God I will not get sick,” he at length resumed. “She says I must not think about it. Caramba! What has that to do with it? People get sick whether they think about it or not. Do you believe, Padre, this new escapulario will protect me?”
The man’s words reflected the strange mixture of mature and childish thought typical of these untutored jungle folk, in which longing for the good is so heavily overshadowed by an educated belief in the power of evil.
“Rosendo,” said Josè, finding at last his opportunity, “tell me, do you think you were seriously ill day before yesterday?”