During the voyage of the flag officer of Soviet scientific fleet “champion” on the Indian Ocean the vessel went to the small islet Bear- b, located not far from Madagascar coasts. Oceanic institute is located on this islet. The stand of vessel continued there several days, and the director of institute the professor of poly-AN organized for one of the participants in this voyage and specially arrived there well-known French psychiatrist of the professor of Saint -[Ursa] excursion into the cabin of the widely well-known on the island sorcerer Of [retrama], who specializes in the treatment of severe mental illnesses.
The large, spacious, but decrepit cabin of sorcerer, covered with palm-tree leaves, stood on the small clearing among the bushes approximately in 300 meters from the village.
Inside cabin was curtained by grasses, armors of tortoises, dried by fruits of some unknown plants, by the dried small carcasses of bats with the straightened as for the flight wings, the mummies of lizards with the whimsical bent tails and some others, unknown to Europeans essences.
On the earthen sex in the center of cabin was complex the small center, from which upward to the ceiling was pulled the narrow, but thick jet of bluish smoke and, being scattered somewhere in the rafters, it descended by fog. In the cabin strange aroma was extended. As eyewitnesses then recalled this aroma, from one side, resembled the smell of clove oil, from another something that not determined, similar to that, as at the beginning of past century the dresses of our grandmothers, which are stored in the trunks, which years 30, but and entire 50, no one opened nor aired, smelled. In reality pleasant, but a somewhat stupefying smell extended the yellow flowers of [ilang]-[ilanga], which the girls early in the morning gather, climbing on the high trees.
When guests entered into the cabin, there along the walls already sat seven patients, and sorcerer sang some mournful song, which, apparently, did not have either end, or beginning; slowly it walked around the center and, after making sequential three circles, it stopped before someone of the patients, it dipped into [vederochko] with the liquid small whisk it sprinkled patient. As the answer some patients raised from the sex the confronting them large cups and made the swallow of thick dark liquid of them. The stupefying aroma, shade of cabin and monotonic of [pesnopeniya], not at first seemed by unpleasant, very rapidly began to render to the Europeans the suppressing action. Them it was desirable to shut eyes, to clench head by hands in order anything not to see and not to hear, to forget about all matters and to be immersed into the nonexistence.
The action of sorcerer was such strong that when this principal part of the procedure was finished, outside aid was required guests, in order to arrive into itself and to find the ability to move.
[Pesnopeniya] they continued more than hour, then sorcerer unexpectedly stopped, shouted by guttural voice some incantation and the remainders of the liquid located there poured out into the center from the pail. Immediately, as if on the signal, into the cabin ran into fourteen youths. They took under the hands of patients and their [poveli] to the river. There in sorcerer stood the small pigsty, which enclosed view of river, and which occurred on the shore, it remained concealed before the eyes of strangers.
