It was not the same word for everyone, naturally, because that would have been collective deceit. To anyone who paid her fifty centavos in trade, she gave the gift of a secret word to drive away melancholy. Wherever she went a small crowd gathered around to listen as she began to speak, and that was how they learned about each others’ doings, about distant relatives, about what was going on in the civil war. People paid her to add a line or two: our son was born so-and-so died our children got married the crops burned in the field. This is how she carried news from one town to another. She also sold stories, not fantasies but long, true stories she recited at one telling, never skipping a word. For five centavos she delivered verses from memory for seven she improved the quality of dreams for nine she wrote love letters for twelve she invented insults for irreconcilable enemies. Some people waited for her from one year to the next, and when she appeared in the village with her bundle beneath her arm, they would form a line in front of her stall. She did not have to peddle her merchandise because from having wandered far and near, everyone knew who she was. She journeyed through the country from the high cold mountains to the burning coasts, stopping at fairs and in markets where she set up four poles covered by a canvas awning under which she took refuge from the sun and rain to minister to her customers. She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she had been baptized with that name or given it by her mother, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of “beauty” and “twilight” and cloaked herself in it.

The short stories of eva luna