Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

I saw that he was crying and bent over him. He seemed so frail and
small that the hammock nearly swallowed him up.
“I slept with many women,” he whispered softly. “Chinda never knew.
But I never sinned with a patient. And I never used my sastun to enchant a
woman for myself. I swear on the souls of my great-grandchildren.”
I was a little surprised but not really disappointed. He was a Latin male
who had been taught to live the machismo code, and women of Chinda’s
generation had accepted their husbands’ indiscretions so long as they were
loved. Chinda had been loved and cared for as few others, of that I was
sure.
I believed him when he said that he had never used his sacred powers to
enchant a woman for himself, knowing that a H’men is forbidden to use his
own powers for personal gain. He hadn’t enchanted any widows or even La
Cobanera, preferring instead to suffer in loneliness. And he had never
enchanted me. He was an incurable flirt, but he had always respected the
boundary between friendship and romance.
“Papá, loving women is not the worst sin,” I told him. He was sobbing
openly and clutching my hands. I held him and tried to soothe him.
“Always it is only me in the hammock with no one to warm my old
bones or whisper secrets in my ear. It is painful but I deserve it.”
I couldn’t bear to watch him mourn his life as if it were a charred slate
of sin and deprivation.
“But, papá, you forget the thousands of people you’ve lifted up,” I
cried. “Surely God knows you’re a human man. He knows what you’ve
done on this Earth.”
Now I was crying, desperate to ease his pain. He had often told me: get
patients to laugh and half their troubles disappear. It was still some of his
best advice.
I searched my mind for a joke to tell him. The only one I could think of
was a little dirty but seemed appropriate.
“I have a chiste for you,” I told him. Despite his misery, I noticed a
flicker of interest.
“There were once two twin brothers who were very close,” I told him.
“One was very good and pious, and the other was a drinker and a
womanizer. They died together in a car accident. One went to heaven and
one went to hell. The good brother spent his days sitting on a cloud
listening to heavenly music. One day he got permission to go visit his