The Man with the Flower

“Vámonos vámonos!” My host father cried, clapping his hands at me and the two Danish girls he was also boarding at his house in Cuzco, Peru. “She will not wait!” And he rushed us out the door into the waiting taxi. 

My host father, let’s call him Papi, was hardly around. He worked very often, very long hours (although not as long as his wife, I noticed, who then came home and did housework). It was an eventthat he was taking us out—even on my first day, he had delegated his son to pick me up and give me a tour. 

He had taken an afternoon off from his job translating the local language, Quechua, into Spanish, just so he could take me, Helene and Else, to a local psychic of some renown.

My host father was never particularly fond of me—I never knew the exact reason why, of course. I guessed it was partly because during my stay with him, I’d lost my key, broken the lock on my dresser, had my debit card stolen and therefore couldn’t pay him on time, came in late but had to knock because no key, needed a doctor alarmingly often, and accidentally wracked up their phone bill with a few long-distance calls. Either way, I had a feeling he would not have taken just me to the psychic, if Helene and Else had not expressed interest, as well.

The psychic lived in a small village on the outskirts of Cuzco. Our taxi left our neighborhood, with its yellow houses and flowers and concrete parks full of futbalgames, and drove down the large Avenida de la Cultura in the opposite direction from the historic center. Her place was little more than a hut, although it seemed clean. The wooden door was plastered with stickers, proclaiming things like “As Seen on the Travel Channel” and “Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel Awards.” Her house hardly seemed to have electricity, much less a television or Internet. 

Still, it was clear that people knew of her.

I never did learn—or more accurately, manage to comprehend—her name. Every time Papi said it, it sounded slightly different to me—but all that really does is tell you how pathetic my Spanish still was, even after months of study.

“I hope she tells me about my love life,” Helene said as we waited for her to finish with another customer. Helene, I might add, had a long-term boyfriend back home in Denmark and was currently being wooed by at least three different guys in Cuzco—a local, a Canadian, and an Argentinean. Else and I, on the other hand, were a different story. I was still in love with my ex-boyfriend back home, despite my best efforts to find a Latin American lover, and Else had never had a boyfriend or lover of any kind.

“Me too,” Else said, without the bright confidence of Helene. She was hesitant, scared to be hopeful of what some psychic would tell her.

Finally, it was our turn—and Helene happily volunteered to go first. We quickly learned that the psychic did not speak English, much less Danish, and that the translation would be up to Papi and us.

Papi’s English was negligent, but he had his trusty translation book with him, which he always thought was sufficient enough, and generally just increased my confusion (I still remember my first day, when I attempted to ask what kind of soup I was eating, and he pointed me to the entry that said “cool drink.”). Else and Helene, who in the way of many Europeans were already fluent in several languages, had decent Spanish skills as well. Mine were fairly useless, which wasn’t a big deal until it was my turn, of course.

The psychic used cards, which I assumed were tarot cards, although I had never seen any like them before, nor have I since. For Helene, she didn’t talk much about her love life except to say—we agreed, after some debate—that she would have more than one husband. Helene frowned at this, but was distracted by the psychic’s report of illness—both in the brain and in some other part of the body, which none of us could successfully translate.

During Else’s turn, she mostly talked about the stomach issues Else would have, and told her that she would never quit smoking. Else flinched at this—her father had threatened to disown her if she didn’t quit.

I was slightly suspicious at this point, wondering if our host father had coached this psychic ahead of time. How had she known Else was trying to quit smoking? That Helene had, perhaps, a few too many lovers?

Then it was my turn.

“Siéntate,” my host father said, the warmth in his voice gone, as usual, when he was talking to me. I hurried over. 

The psychic first examined my hands, silently. She didn’t look like a psychic, or even a caricature of one. Her face was seamed, she had the short but sturdy stature I’d become to associate with the local Quechua people, she had a handmade shawl knitted in the Peruvian style, and her eyes were very, very dark.

Dark eyes met mine, a pale blue, briefly, before she put down my hands and took out her cards.

“Tu nombre es Amy?” She asked, pronouncing my name with a distinctive accent. 

“Sí,” I said, smiling at her. She didn’t smile back, but went back to shuffling her cards.

She flipped over a few, with figures that meant nothing to me. Immediately, she began to talk, and my Spanish was quickly exhausted.

I looked at the others for help—Papi was flipping through his translation book, rapidly; Helene was attempting to translate, but kept talking about knights; Else was clutching her stomach, distracted by her potential future illness.

“A man,” Papi said after a few seconds. “A man with…a flower. The flower.”

“The flower?” I asked, stupidly. 

“I think it’s a knight with a flower,” Helene said.

The psychic kept talking. The man in the picture was, upon closer inspection, indeed holding a flower—but what did that mean?

“You’ll fall in love with a man and his flower,” Else input, getting distracted from her stomach out of curiosity.

“Or he works with flowers?” Helene contributed, as Papi and the psychic began discussing something. Apparently he wasn’t sure what she was saying, either.

“Or maybe I will work with flowers?” I asked, looking between them.

A few more minutes of this, and a few more minutes of us foreigners trying to translate, and finally Papi shrugged, cajoled us for money, threw said money down on the table, and left the room.

The psychic smiled, the money disappeared quickly, and she bid us farewell.

“Great,” I grumbled on the way out. “So now my future is what? A mystery?”

“As if it wasn’t already?” Else asked as we climbed into another taxi.

I laughed. “You’re right.”

A few weeks later, just before I left Peru to travel up to Ecuador, Else was diagnosed with a parasite.

After I left, Helene was admitted to the hospital, with typhus. I was horrified.

Thanks to Facebook, I kept in vague touch with both Helene and Else for years after our time together in Peru. Helene got married, had a baby, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, got divorced, got married again.

Else became gluten-free and moved away from Denmark after her father found out she was a smoker. I never heard from her again.

And me?

Well, when I got home from my trip, there waiting in the airport, was my ex-boyfriend.

In his hand was a flower.