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askance to see if he was breathing or not.
    After these apparently incandescent inquiries, the two focused directly on scrutinizing this child overcome by the excesses of Morpheus. They understood instantly, and quickly exchanged glances out of the corners of their eyes like two accomplice snakes before a defenseless partridge, that something was not spinning smoothly in this strange case of familial oneiromancy .
    The shining aunts were demanding they be “left in peace,” that they “needed some shut-eye,” believing they were washing clothes on the white stones of a large river during siesta hour, after a succulent codfish stew.
    But let’s go again to El Floridita, where the two maverick sawbones are now describing how they unmasked, thanks to a well-interpreted remark, the cataleptic’s crude pretending. “From that triple swing of the inquisitor pendulum,” the radiesthesist told the openmouthed waiters, including the operatic barmaid, indicating his guest the exemplary herbalist as witness, “had come inescapable truths.” He underlined the words syllable by syllable. By then they had spiked Isidro’s bloody potion three times over with angostura bitters and celery salt.
    The waitress listened wide-eyed and artlessly dribbled across the tablecloth the soy sauce that was to dress a special wheat-germ steak (for the restaurant staff unnatural and evidently emetic) that a skillful cook had prepared for Gator. Before wiping it up, she gave a quick pull on the silk strap that sustained her décolletage.
    â€œThat’s right,” the herbalist continued, picking up the radiesthesist’s long monologue as if they had been rehearsing their entire lives for this dramatic performance: the meeting of minds of two specialists puffed up by what the Diario de la Marina was calling their illustrious contribution to solving “the atrocity of the century.” “That’s right. No longer could we presume that this was simply the morbid reflex that quicksilver, when corrupted by the hurricane’s magnetic disturbances, will project onto vulnerable bodies.”
    â€œNo!” Isidro piled on, waving his right index finger in the air. “In a pause between ignoble snores, one of the Fates had assured them: Early in the morning, the family had carefully masked all the mirrors with black brocade.”
    On stretched a silence filled with suspense. He looked keenly at the slack-jawed waiters. Another sip. Meanwhile, Gator carried on, exalted by the fascination the duo evoked in the marinated listeners.
    â€œThe nocturnal bite of certain bats, as was well known by theCiboneys who at dawn would staunch the wounds with saffron flowers, leaves its victims groggy and exhausted. But in this case the insentient victims bore not the least sign of jugular perforation. What’s more, knowing that those sucking sneaks always lie in wait, the family had not neglected the home’s defenses, making ample prophylactic use of cloves of garlic. * Something, however, and this was our last resort, was affecting the lymphatic flow in each member of the family except the child, whose pendulum map was normal, though we did not have a clue as to what had caused the spell: the bite of a mosquito infected with a lethal virus, mass hypnosis . . . or a cataleptic potion.”
    â€œI was racking my brains,” Isidro, after insisting on Worcestershire sauce for the next drink, “when suddenly one of the three narcissistic nasties opened her eyes and asked Firefly for nothing less than another cup of linden-flower tea as delicious as the one he’d made for her at home . . . That was when, like a bolt of lightning, I felt a spark of truth fly between two oppositely chargedpoles: on the one hand, we had a ruse, yes, a catatonic ruse by the melon-head, who was the one with something to hide and who with that rictus of his rebuffed any possible interrogation; and on the other, we