Butterfly Winter by W.P. Kinsella Page A

Joseph, and Mary Celestial Baseball Palace, hoping to earn enough to buy a Bible printed in Latin. The girl who approached him wore a half dozen leis of waxen orchids about her neck. She wore a red gown and was barefoot. She bought every bag of peanuts Esteban had with him. She piled them up in a little mound and led Esteban away. He followed her as if she was a pied piper; she led him to herhome on the beach of Courteguay’s only lake, a hut built of thick living vines and flowers; she fed him, undressed him, kept him for five days. She smelled of nutmeg, and live camellias grew along the headboard of her bed.
    “Now you know,” the woman said to him, though exactly what it was he knew, Esteban was not sure. “From now until forever, wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you love, you will never be able to forget me. I will live within you like that pinpoint of green in the brown iris of your eye.”
    Esteban had never noticed the green dot the size of a pinprick in his right eye.
    This happened during Dr. Noir’s tenure as dictator, and Esteban had to journey outside the San Cristobel city limits—Dr. Noir’s image now appeared in all the mirrors of Courteguay’s two major cities—in order to view himself in a mirror. He took the green dot as a good luck sign, and he hit over .600 in the first twenty games of his next baseball season.
    “Your chronology appears to be wrong,” said the Gringo Journalist, suddenly paying closer attention to the Wizard’s ramblings.
    “Have you forgotten you are in Courteguay?” replied the Wizard.

NINETEEN
THE WIZARD
    “F orgive me Father for I have not sinned,” said Esteban, as he entered the makeshift confessional, which consisted of a guava box wired to the outside of the chain-link fence. The bottom of the box had been removed and the open top was covered with black cloth. Those who wished to confess walked up to the fence, ducked down, and poked their head into the cloth-covered guava box; the priest, eventually noticing that there was a hooded body standing outside the fence, approached and listened.
    “If you have not sinned, why are you here?” asked the flea-ridden priest, who knew full well who was in the confessional. Not only could he recognize the stocky body, but he knew the pious young Esteban’s voice from having talked with him almost every day.
    “I commit no sins, Father. I am an observer of human nature. It is no sin to observe.”
    “Perhaps not,” said the priest, “but why come to confession if you are sinless?”
    “I come to ask forgiveness for the sins of others, the sins I observe in my nightly meanderings and daily conversations and observations.”
    “What makes you think the sinners do not confess their own sins to me?”
    “One of the things I know from observing is who comes to confessional and who does not.”
    “So what is it you wish to confess and for whom?”
    “Li, the Korean greengrocer, cheats his customers by pressing a thumb on the scale. He also cheats you, Father, for you have been behind this fence so long you’ve lost touch with prices. The mangos delivered to you here are twice as expensive as in his store.”
    “What else?” The priest sighed wearily.
    “Reynoldo Javier beats his wife, flogging her with the wide leather belt he wears in the cane fields. He also whips his daughters, and does unspeakable things to them before, sometimes during, and after the whippings.”
    “Ah,” muttered the priest.
    “Mrs. Conchita Fernandez, your faithful housekeeper and treasurer of the bingo funds, has been stealing 20 guilermos every bingo night for years, but she gives the stolen money only to the whores on Calle El Divisionado to keep them from degrading themselves for a few hours. The whores consider her gifts a bonus and continue plying their trade.”
    The priest sighed again.
    “There is much more, Padre. Why my own father, Hector.…”
    “No. No. No,” cried the priest. “I hear quite enough of the misery