El ojo del diablo

El ojo del diablo names the cameo as the apparent center of a baffling death. The old woman’s repeated cry transforms an object found beside Ramondo Cardoso’s remains into a warning that carries from a private room into the surrounding neighborhood. The expression does not explain what happened; its force comes from giving a fearful name to something the people present cannot explain.

The phrase as alarm

The expression is spoken after the cathedral priest follows the old woman into Ramondo’s room. There he finds the remains of a chair, a soot mark on the ceiling, and the cameo Ramondo had bought in Kansas City, which is described as giving off an ominous light. The fire appears to have reduced a person to ashes without setting the house alight. The priest responds with a small crucifix and repeated signs of the cross; the scene presents religious gestures alongside an event that, in the priest’s view, ordinary reason cannot account for.

The old woman’s cry identifies the stone with the devil’s eye. Her Spanish words, El ojo del diablo, recur immediately, and their repetition carries beyond the room. Rather than offering an account of the fire’s origin, the phrase compresses the scene’s fear into an accusation directed at the object. The cameo is no longer merely a possession with a known buyer and purchase place: within the old woman’s alarm, it becomes a possible sign of malign power.

From private room to public alarm

The cry crosses the boundary between the bedroom and the street. Its spread is compared to an alarm, and women in the neighborhood gather around the old woman, lamenting in fear. This movement gives the expression a practical role in the episode: it draws witnesses toward the house and makes the unexplained death a shared crisis. The words travel faster than any explanation of what took place.

The priest, meanwhile, bars entry to the house while waiting for the police. That restriction keeps the crowd outside and leaves the room’s objects—the damaged chair, the mark on the ceiling, and the cameo—at the center of a scene that cannot yet be publicly inspected. The expression circulates outside the threshold, while official access to the evidence remains controlled. Its power is therefore social as well as descriptive: it shapes how the neighborhood receives the event before an investigation can establish what happened.

Rodrigo Lerbier’s recognition

The alarm reaches Rodrigo Lerbier, a babalao associated with Yoruba religious practice. Each December 31, he is responsible for predicting what the coming year will bring, not only for Cuba but for the world. The narration describes him as a tall, lean man in his early forties, with a fine moustache and a narrow beard, and notes his distant French origins. These details place him in a specific religious and social role before he enters the episode’s immediate action.

Lerbier hears the old woman’s cry and senses that the event suggests black magic. His response is not presented as proof of the cause; it is an interpretation shaped by the words, the strange death, and his familiarity with the people involved since childhood. He hurries into the street, where the old woman is already surrounded by frightened women, and tries to reach the house. The cathedral priest’s refusal to admit anyone stops him. The episode thus sets two religious figures in proximity to the same mystery, without giving either access to an explanation.

What the expression establishes—and leaves open

El ojo del diablo links the cameo to the episode’s central uncertainty, but the scene does not confirm that the stone caused the fire. The priest regards the event as beyond human explanation, the old woman names the cameo as the devil’s eye, and Lerbier recognizes an atmosphere of black magic. These are responses to the evidence as the characters encounter it, not a settled account of its mechanism. The expression intensifies the supernatural possibility without closing off the question of what happened.

Its narrative effect depends on that distinction. The reader first encounters physical traces and a baffling outcome, then hears the object named as a source of danger, and finally sees the phrase summon a wider community and draw in Lerbier. The words turn an isolated discovery into a neighborhood alarm, while the police’s anticipated arrival and the priest’s guarded doorway keep the mystery unresolved. In this scene, the expression functions both as a fearful interpretation and as the means by which the episode’s uncertainty spreads.