Carlos Castaneda. The Second Ring of Power
SIMON AND SCHUSTER New York
COPYRIGHT M-) 1977 BY CARLOS CASTANEDA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING
THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM PUBLISHED BY SIMON
AND SCHUSTER A DIVISION OF GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION SIMON & SCHUSTER
BUILDING ROCKEFELLER CENTER 1230 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS NEW YORK, NEW YORK
10020
DESIGNED BY EVE METZ MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA CASTANEDA, CARLOS.
THE SECOND RING OF POWER. 1. YAQUI INDIANSM-^WRELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 2.
CASTANEDA, CARLOS 3. HALLUCINOGENIC DRUGS AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 4.
INDIANS OF MEXICOM-^WRELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 1. TITLE.
Carlos Castaneda's extraordinary journey into the world of sorcery has
captivated millions of Americans. In his eagerly awaited new book, he takes
the reader into a sorceric experience so intense, so terrifying, and so
profoundly disturbing that it can only be described as a brilliant assault
on the reason, the dramatic and frightening attack on every preconceived
notion of life that is don Juan's remarkable legacy to his apprentice.
At the center of the book is a new and formidable figure, dona Soledad,
a woman whose powers are turned against Castaneda in a struggle that almost
consumes him. Dona Soledad has been taught by don Juan, transformed by his
teachings from a bent and gray-haired old woman into a sensual, lithe,
deeply sexual figure of awesome and mysterious power, a sorceress whose
mission is to test Castaneda by a series of terrifying tricks. In dona
Soledad, Carlos Castaneda has recorded for the reader a personality as
instantly recognizable as don Juan himself and has illuminated the strengths
and the feelings of a remarkable woman who, despite her sorceric gifts,
expresses some of the deepest and most basic feminine concerns and
ambitions. For dona Soledad, drawn out of the shadows of a defeated and
meaningless life by don Juan, has herself become a warrior, a hunter and "a
stalker of power." Castaneda's combat with her, his gradual realization that
she not only derives her power from don Juan but is fulfilling his plans, is
all a prelude to an astonishing discovery. For Castaneda unfolds for the
reader a sorcerer's family, in which dona Soledad, her "girls," Lidia, Elena
("la Gorda"), Josefina and Rosa, themselves changed and transformed by don
Juan, are part of a small closed society in which the teachings of don Juan
have become a way of life, touching and explaining every aspect of the
world, altering the relationships between them so that they are no longer
mother and children, man and wife, sisters and brothers, friends and
enemies, but disciples, witnesses, accomplices in don Juan's grand design.
Extraordinary as all Castaneda's books have been. The Second Ring of
Power goes far beyond anything he has written before: it is a vision of a
more somber, frightening and compelling world than that of Castaneda's years
of apprenticeshipM-^Wthe world of a full-fledged sorcerer, in which dangers
lie in wait on the journey to impeccability and freedom, and in which the
message of don Juan must be transformed into real life.
Jacket Painting and Design by Robert Giusti (C) 1977 Simon and Schuster
Contents
PREFACE
1 The Transformation of Dona Soledad
Preface
A flat, barren mountaintop on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre in
central Mexico was the setting for my final meeting with don Juan and don
Genaro and their other two apprentices, Pablito and Nestor. The solemnity
and the scope of what took place there left no doubt in my mind that our
apprenticeships had come to their concluding moment, and that I was indeed
seeing don Juan and don Genaro for the last time. Toward the end we all said
good-bye to one another, and then Pablito and I jumped together from the top
of the mountain into an abyss.
Prior to that jump don Juan had presented a fundamental principle for
all that was going to happen to me. According to him, upon jumping into the
abyss I was going to become pure perception and move back and forth between
the two inherent realms of all creation, the tonal and the nagual.
In my jump my perception went through seventeen elastic bounces between
the tonal and the nagual. In my moves into the nagual I perceived my body
disintegrating. I could not think or feel in the coherent, unifying sense
that I ordinarily do, but I somehow thought and felt. In my moves into the
tonal I burst into unity. I was whole. My perception had coherence. I had
visions of order. Their compelling force was so intense, their vividness so
real and their complexity so vast that I have not been capable of explaining
them to my satisfaction. To say that they were visions, vivid dreams or even
hallucinations does not say anything to clarify their nature.
After having examined and analyzed in a most thorough and careful
manner my feelings, perceptions and interpretations of that jump into the
abyss, I had come to the point where I could not rationally believe that it
had actually happened. And yet another part of me held on steadfast to the
feeling that it did happen, that I did jump.
Don Juan and don Genaro are no longer available and their absence has
created in me a most pressing need, the need to make headway in the midst of
apparently insoluble contradictions.
I went back to Mexico to see Pablito and Nestor to seek their help in
resolving my conflicts. But what I encountered on my trip cannot be
described in any other way except as a final assault on my reason, a
concentrated attack designed by don Juan himself. His apprentices, under his
absentee direction, in a most methodical and precise fashion demolished in a
few days the last bastion of my reason. In those few days they revealed to
me one of the two practical aspects of their sorcery, the art of dreaming,
which is the core of the present work.
The art of stalking, the other practical aspect of their sorcery and
also the crowning stone of don Juan's and don Genaro's teachings, was
presented to me during subsequent visits and was by far the most complex
facet of their being in the world as sorcerers.
The Transformation of Dona Soledad
I had a sudden premonition that Pablito and Nestor were not home. My
certainty was so profound that I stopped my car. I was at the place where
the asphalt came to an abrupt end, and I wanted to reconsider whether or not
to continue that day the long and difficult drive on the steep, coarse
gravel road to their hometown in the mountains of central Mexico.
I rolled down the window of my car. It was rather windy and cold. I got
out to stretch my legs. The tension of driving for hours had stiffened my
back and neck. I walked to the edge of the paved road. The ground was wet
from an early shower. Rain was still falling heavily on the slopes of the
mountains to the south, a short distance from where I was. But right in
front of me, toward the east and also toward the north, the sky was clear.
At certain points on the winding road I had been able to see the bluish
peaks of the sierras shining in the sunlight a great distance away.
After a moment's deliberation I decided to turn back and go to the city
because I had had a most peculiar feeling that I was going to find don Juan
in the market. After all, I had always done just that, found him in the
marketplace, since the beginning of my association with him. As a rule, if I
did not find him in Sonora I would drive to central Mexico and go to the
market of that particular city, and sooner or later don Juan would show up.
The longest I had ever waited for him was two days. I was so habituated to
meeting him in that manner that I had the most absolute certainty that I
would find him again, as always.
I waited in the market all afternoon. I walked up and down the aisles
pretending to be looking for something to buy. Then I waited around the
park. At dusk I knew that he was not coming. I had then the clear sensation
that he had been there but had left. I sat down on a park bench where I used
to sit with him and tried to analyze my feelings. Upon arriving in the city
I was elated with the sure knowledge that don Juan was there in the streets.
What I felt was more than the memory of having found him there countless
times before; my body knew that he was looking for me. But then, as I sat on
the bench I had another kind of strange certainty. I knew that he was not
there anymore. He had left and I had missed him.
After a while I discarded my speculations. I thought that I was
beginning to be affected by the place. I was starting to get irrational;
that had always happened to me in the past after a few days in that area.
I went to my hotel room to rest for a few hours and then I went out
again to roam the streets. I did not have the same expectation of finding
don Juan that I had had in the afternoon. I gave up. I went back to my hotel
in order to get a good night's sleep.
Before I headed for the mountains in the morning, I drove up and down
the main streets in my car, but somehow I knew that I was wasting my time.
Don Juan was not there.
It took me all morning to drive to the little town where Pablito and
Nestor lived. I arrived around noon. Don Juan had taught me never to drive
directly into the town so as not to arouse the curiosity of onlookers. Every
time I had been there I had always driven off the road, just before reaching
the town, onto a flat field where youngsters usually played soccer. The dirt
was well packed all the way to a walking trail which was wide enough for a
car and which passed by Pablito's and Nestor's houses in the foothills south
of town. As soon as I got to the edge of the field I found that the walking
trail had been turned into a gravel road.
I deliberated whether to go to Nestor's house or Pablito's. The feeling
that they were not there still persisted. I opted to go to Pablito's; I
reasoned that Nestor lived alone, while Pablito lived with his mother and
his four sisters. If he was not there the women could help me find him. As I
got closer to his house I noticed that the path leading from the road up to
the house had been widened. It looked as if the ground was hard, and since
there was enough space for my car, I drove almost to the front door. A new
porch with a tile roof had been added to the adobe house. There were no dogs
barking but I saw an enormous one sitting calmly behind a fenced area,
alertly observing me. A flock of chickens that had been feeding in front of
the house scattered around, cackling. I turned the motor off and stretched
my arms over my head. My body was stiff.
The house seemed deserted. The thought crossed my mind that perhaps
Pablito and his family had moved away and someone else was living there.
Suddenly the front door opened with a bang and Pablito's mother stepped out
as if someone had pushed her. She stared at me absentmindedly for an
instant. As I got out of my car she seemed to recognize me. A graceful
shiver ran through her body and she ran toward me. I thought that she must
have been napping and that the noise of the car had woken her, and when she
came out to see what was going on she did not know at first who I was. The
incongruous sight of the old woman running toward me made me smile. When she
got closer I had a moment of doubt. Somehow she moved so nimbly that she did
not seem like Pablito's mother at all.
"My goodness what a surprise!" she exclaimed.
"Dona Soledad?" I asked, incredulously.
"Don't you recognize me?" she replied, laughing.
I made some stupid comments about her surprising agility.
"Why do you always see me as a helpless old woman?" she asked, looking
at me with an air of mock challenge.
She bluntly accused me of having nicknamed her "Mrs. Pyramid." I
remembered that I had once said to Nestor that her shape reminded me of a
pyramid. She had a very broad and massive behind and a small pointed head.
The long dresses that she usually wore added to the effect.
"Look at me," she said. "Do I still look like a pyramid?"
She was smiling but her eyes made me feel uncomfortable. I attempted to
defend myself by making a joke but she cut me off and coaxed me to admit
that I was responsible for the nickname. I assured her that I had never
intended it as such and that anyway, at that moment she was so lean that her
shape was the furthest thing from a pyramid.
"What's happened to you, dona Soledad?" I asked. "You're transformed."
"You said it," she replied briskly. "I've been transformed! "
I meant it figuratively. However, upon closer examination I had to
admit that there was no room for a metaphor. She was truly a changed person.
I suddenly had a dry, metallic taste in my mouth. I was afraid.
She placed her fists on her hips and stood with her legs slightly
apart, facing me. She was wearing a light green, gathered skirt and a
whitish blouse. Her skirt was shorter than those she used to wear. I could
not see her hair; she had it tied with a thick band, a turban-like piece of
cloth. She was barefoot and she rhythmically tapped her big feet on the
ground as she smiled with the candor of a young girl. I had never seen
anyone exude as much strength as she did. I noticed a strange gleam in her
eyes, a disturbing gleam but not a frightening one. I thought that perhaps I
had never really examined her appearance carefully. Among other things I
felt guilty for having glossed over many people during my years with don
Juan. The force of his personality had rendered everyone else pale and
unimportant.
I told her that I had never imagined that she could have such a
stupendous vitality, that my carelessness was to blame for not really
knowing her, and that no doubt I would have to meet everyone else all over
again.
She came closer to me. She smiled and put her right hand on the back of
my left arm, grabbing it gently.
"That's for sure," she whispered in my ear.
Her smile froze and her eyes became glazed. She was so close to me that
I felt her breasts rubbing my left shoulder. My discomfort increased as I
tried to convince myself that there was no reason for alarm. I repeated to
myself over and over that I really had never known Pablito's mother, and
that in spite of her odd behavior she was probably being her normal self.
But some frightened part of me knew that those were only bracing thoughts
with no substance at all, because no matter how much I may have glossed over
her person, not only did I remember her very well but I had known her very
well. She represented to me the archetype of a mother; I thought her to be
in her late fifties or even older. Her weak muscles moved her bulky weight
with extreme difficulty. Her hair had a lot of gray in it. She was, as I
remembered her, a sad, somber woman with kind, handsome features, a
dedicated, suffering mother, always in the kitchen, always tired. I also
remembered her to be a very gentle and unselfish woman, and a very timid
one, timid to the point of being thoroughly subservient to anyone who
happened to be around. That was the picture I had of her, reinforced
throughout years of casual contact. That day something was terribly
different. The woman I was confronting did not at all fit the image I had of
Pablito's mother, and yet she was the same person, leaner and stronger,
looking twenty years younger, than the last time I had seen her. I felt a
shiver in my body.
She moved a couple of steps in front of me and faced me.
"Let me look at you," she said. "The Nagual told us that you're a
devil."
I remembered then that all of them, Pablito, his mother, his sisters
and Nestor, had always seemed unwilling to voice don Juan's name and called
him "the Nagual," a usage which I myself adopted when talking with them.
She daringly put her hands on my shoulders, something she had never
done before. My body tensed. I really did not know what to say. There was a
long pause that allowed me to take stock of myself. Her appearance and
behavior had frightened me to the point that I had forgotten to ask about
Pablito and Nestor.
"Tell me, where is Pablito?" I asked her with a sudden wave of
apprehension.
"Oh, he's gone to the mountains," she responded in a noncommittal tone
and moved away from me.
"And where is Nestor?"
She rolled her eyes as if to show her indifference.
"They are together in the mountains," she said in the same tone.
I felt genuinely relieved and told her that I had known without the
shadow of a doubt that they were all right.
She glanced at me and smiled. A wave of happiness and ebullience came
upon me and I embraced her. She boldly returned the embrace and held me;
that act was so outlandish that it took my breath away. Her body was rigid.
I sensed an extraordinary strength in her. My heart began to pound. I gently
tried to push her away as I asked her if Nestor was still seeing don Genaro
and don Juan. During our farewell meeting don Juan had expressed doubts that
Nestor was ready to finish his apprenticeship.
"Genaro has left forever," she said letting go of me.
She fretted nervously with the edge of her blouse.
"How about don Juan?"
"The Nagual is gone too," she said, puckering her lips.
"Where did they go?"
"You mean you don't know?"
I told her that both of them had said good-bye to me two years before,
and that all I knew was that they were leaving at that time. I had not
really dared to speculate where they had gone. They had never told me their
whereabouts in the past, and I had come to accept the fact that if they
wanted to disappear from my life all they had to do was to refuse to see me.
"They're not around, that's for sure," she said, frowning, "And they
won't be coming back, that's also for sure."
Her voice was extremely unemotional. I began to feel annoyed with her.
I wanted to leave.
"But you're here," she said, changing her frown into a smile. "You must
wait for Pablito and Nestor. They've been dying to see you."
She held my arm firmly and pulled me away from my car. Compared to the
way she had been in the past, her boldness was astounding.
"But first, let me show you my friend," she said and forcibly led me to
the side of the house.
There was a fenced area, like a small corral. A huge male dog was
there. The first thing that attracted my attention was his healthy,
lustrous, yellowish-brown fur. He did not seem to be a mean dog. He was not
chained and the fence was not high enough to hold him. The dog remained
impassive as we got closer to him, not even wagging his tail. Dona Soledad
pointed to a good-sized cage in the back. A coyote was curled up inside.
"That's my friend," she said. "The dog is not. He belongs to my girls."
The dog looked at me and yawned. I liked him. I had a nonsensical
feeling of kinship with him.
"Come, let's go into the house," she said, pulling me by the arm.
I hesitated. Some part of me was utterly alarmed and wanted to get out
of there quickly, and yet another part of me would not have left for the
world.
"You're not afraid of me, are you?" she asked in an accusing tone.
"I most certainly am!" I exclaimed.
She giggled, and in a most comforting tone she declared that she was a
clumsy, primitive woman who was very awkward with words, and that she hardly
knew how to treat people. She looked straight into my eyes and said that don
Juan had commissioned her to help me, because he worried about me.
"He told us that you're not serious and go around causing a lot of
trouble to innocent people," she said.
Up to that point her assertions had been coherent to me, but I could
not conceive don Juan saying those things about me.
We went inside the house. I wanted to sit down on the bench, where
Pablito and I usually sat. She stopped me.
"This is not the place for you and me," she said. "Let's go to my
room."
"I'd rather sit here," I said firmly. "I know this spot and I feel
comfortable on it."
She clicked her lips in disapproval. She acted like a disappointed
child. She contracted her upper lip until it looked like the flat beak of a
duck.
"There is something terribly wrong here," I said. "I think I am going
to leave if you don't tell me what's going on."
She became very flustered and argued that her trouble was not knowing
how to talk to me. I confronted her with her unmistakable transformation and
demanded that she tell me what had happened. I had to know how such a change
had come about.
"If I tell you, will you stay?" she asked in a child's voice.
"I'll have to."
"In that case I'll tell you everything. But it has to be in my room."
I had a moment of panic. I made a supreme effort to calm myself and we
walked into her room. She lived in the back, where Pablito had built a
bedroom for her. I had once been in the room while it was being built and
also after it was finished, just before she moved in. The room looked as
empty as I had seen it before, except that there was a bed in the very
center of it and two unobtrusive chests of drawers by the door. The
whitewash of the walls had faded into a very soothing yellowish white. The
wood of the ceiling had also weathered. Looking at the smooth, clean walls I
had the impression they were scrubbed daily with a sponge. The room looked
more like a monastic cell, very frugal and ascetic. There were no ornaments
of any sort. The windows had thick, removable wood panels reinforced with an
iron bar. There were no chairs or anything to sit on.
Dona Soledad took my writing pad away from me, held it to her bosom and
then sat down on her bed, which was made up of two thick mattresses with no
box springs. She indicated that I should sit down next to her.
"You and I are the same," she said as she handed me my notebook.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You and I are the same," she repeated without looking at me.
I could not figure out what she meant. She stared at me, as if waiting
for a response.
"Just what is that supposed to mean, dona Soledad?" I asked.
My question seemed to baffle her. Obviously she expected me to know
what she meant. She laughed at first, but then, when I insisted that I did
not understand, she got angry. She sat up straight and accused me of being
dishonest with her. Her eyes flared with rage; her mouth contracted in a
very ugly gesture of wrath that made her look extremely old.
I honestly was at a loss and felt that no matter what I said it would
be wrong. She also seemed to be in the same predicament. Her mouth moved to
say something but her lips only quivered. At last she muttered that it was
not impeccable to act the way I did at such a serious moment. She turned her
back to me.
"Look at me, dona Soledad!" I said forcefully. "I'm not mystifying you
in any sense. You must know something that I know nothing about."
"You talk too much," she snapped angrily. "The Nagual told me never to
let you talk. You twist everything."
She jumped to her feet and stomped on the floor, like a spoiled child.
I became aware at that moment that the room had a different floor. I
remembered it to be a dirt floor, made from the dark soil of the area. The
new floor was reddish pink. I momentarily put off a confrontation with her
and walked around the room. I could not imagine how I could have missed
noticing the floor when I first entered. It was magnificent. At first I
thought that it was red clay that had been laid like cement, when it was
soft and moist, but then I saw that there were no cracks in it. Clay would
have dried, curled up, cracked, and clumps would have formed. I bent down
and gently ran my fingers over it. It was as hard as bricks. The clay had
been fired. I became aware then that the floor was made of very large flat
slabs of clay put together over a bed of soft clay that served as a matrix.
The slabs made a most intricate and fascinating design, but a thoroughly
unobtrusive one, unless one paid deliberate attention to it. The skill with
which the slabs had been placed in position indicated to me a very
well-conceived plan. I wanted to know how such big slabs had been fired
without being warped. I turned around to ask dona Soledad. I quickly
desisted. She would not have known what I was talking about. I paced over
the floor again. The clay was a bit rough, almost like sandstone. It made a
perfect slide-proof surface.
"Did Pablito put down this floor?" I asked.
She did not answer.
"It's a superb piece of work," I said. "You should be very proud of
him."
I had no doubt that Pablito had done it. No one else could have had the
imagination and the capacity to conceive of it. I figured that he must have
made it during the time I had been away. But on second thought I realized
that I had never entered dona Soledad's room since it had been built, six or
seven years before.
"Pablito! Pablito! Bah!" she exclaimed in an angry, raspy voice. "What
makes you think he's the only one who can make things?"
We exchanged a long, sustained look, and all of a sudden I knew that it
was she who had made the floor, and that don Juan had put her up to it.
We stood quietly, looking at each other for some time. I felt it would
have been thoroughly superfluous to ask if I was correct.
"I made it myself," she finally said in a dry tone. "The Nagual told me
how."
Her statements made me feel euphoric. I practically lifted her up in an
embrace. I twirled her around. All I could think to do was to bombard her
with questions. I wanted to know how she had made the slabs, what the
designs represented, where she got the clay. But she did not share my
exhilaration. She remained quiet and impassive, looking at me askance from
time to time.
I paced on the floor again. The bed had been placed at the very
epicenter of some converging lines. The clay slabs had been cut in sharp
angles to create converging motifs that seemed to radiate out from under the
bed.
"I have no words to tell you how impressed I am," I said.
"Words! Who needs words?" she said cuttingly.
I had a flash of insight. My reason had been betraying me. There was
only one possible way of explaining her magnificent metamorphosis; don Juan
must have made her his apprentice. How else could an old woman like dona
Soledad turn into such a weird, powerful being? That should have been
obvious to me from the moment I laid eyes on her, but my set of expectations
about her had not included that possibility.
I deduced that whatever don Juan had done to her must have taken place
during the two years I had not seen her, although two years seemed hardly
any time at all for such a superb alteration.
"I think I know now what happened to you," I said in a casual and
cheerful tone. "Something has cleared up in my mind right now."
"Oh, is that so?" she said, thoroughly uninterested.
"The Nagual is teaching you to be a sorceress, isn't that true?"
She glared at me defiantly. I felt that I had said the worst possible
thing. There was an expression of true contempt on her face. She was not
going to tell me anything.
"What a bastard you are!" she exclaimed suddenly, shaking with rage.
I thought that her anger was unjustified. I sat down on one end of the
bed while she nervously tapped on the floor with her heel. Then she sat down
on the other end, without looking at me.
"What exactly do you want me to do?" I asked in a firm and intimidating
tone.
"I told you already! " she said in a yell. "You and I are the same."
I asked her to explain her meaning and not to assume for one instant
that I knew anything. Those statements angered her even more. She stood up
abruptly and dropped her skirt to the ground.
"This is what I mean!" she yelled, caressing her pubic area.
My mouth opened involuntarily. I became aware that I was staring at her
like an idiot.
"You and I are one here!" she said.
I was dumbfounded. Dona Soledad, the old Indian woman, mother of my
friend Pablito, was actually half-naked a few feet away from me, showing me
her genitals. I stared at her, incapable of formulating any thoughts. The
only thing I knew was that her body was not the body of an old woman. She
had beautifully muscular thighs, dark and hairless. The bone structure of
her hips was broad, but there was no fat on them.
She must have noticed my scrutiny and flung herself on the bed.
"You know what to do," she said, pointing to her pubis. "We are one
here."
She uncovered her robust breasts.
"Dona Soledad, I implore you!" I exclaimed. "What's come over you?
You're Pablito's mother."
"No, I'm not! " she snapped. "I'm no one's mother."
She sat up and looked at me with fierce eyes.
"I am just like you, a piece of the Nagual," she said. "We're made to
mix."
She opened her legs and I jumped away.
"Wait a minute, dona Soledad," I said. "Let's talk for i while."
I had a moment of wild fear, and a sudden crazy thought occurred to me.
Would it be possible, I asked myself, that don Juan was hiding somewhere
around there laughing his head off?
"Don Juan!" I bellowed.
My yell was so loud and profound that dona Soledad jumped off her bed
and covered herself hurriedly with her skirt. I saw her putting it on as I
bellowed again.
"Don Juan!"
I ran through the house bellowing don Juan's name until my throat was
sore. Dona Soledad, in the meantime, had run outside the house and was
standing by my car, looking puzzled at me.
I walked over to her and asked her if don Juan had told her to do all
that. She nodded affirmatively. I asked if he was around. She said no.
"Tell me everything," I said.
She told me that she was merely following don Juan's orders. He had
commanded her to change her being into a warrior's in order to help me. She
declared that she had been waiting for years to fulfill that promise.
"I'm very strong now," she said softly. "Just for you. But you disliked
me in my room, didn't you?"
I found myself explaining that I did not dislike her, that what counted
were my feelings for Pablito; then I realized that I did not have the
vaguest idea of what I was saying.
Dona Soledad seemed to understand my embarrassing position and said
that our mishap had to be forgotten.
"You must be famished," she said vivaciously. "I'll make you some
food."
"There's a lot that you haven't explained to me," I said. "I'll be
frank with you, I wouldn't stay here for anything in the world. You frighten
me."
"You are obligated to accept my hospitality, if it is only for a cup of
coffee," she said unruffled. "Come, let's forget what happened."
She made a gesture of going into the house. At that moment I heard a
deep growl. The dog was standing, looking at us, as if he understood what
was being said.
Dona Soledad fixed a most frightening gaze on me. Then she softened it
and smiled.
"Don't let my eyes bother you," she said. "The truth is that I am old.
Lately I've been getting dizzy. I think I need glasses."
She broke into a laugh and clowned, looking through cupped fingers as
if they were glasses.
"An old Indian woman with glasses! That'll be a laugh," she said
giggling.
I made up my mind then to be rude and get out of there, without any
explanation. But before I drove away I wanted to leave some things for
Pablito and his sisters. I opened the trunk of the car to get the gifts I
had brought for them. I leaned way into it to reach first for the two
packages that were lodged against the wall of the back seat, behind the
spare tire. I got hold of one and was about to grab the other when I felt a
soft, furry hand on the nape of my neck. I shrieked involuntarily and hit my
head on the open lid. I turned to look. The pressure of the furry hand did
not let me turn completely, but I was able to catch a fleeting glimpse of a
silvery arm or paw hovering over my neck. I wriggled in panic and pushed
myself away from the trunk and fell down on my seat with the package still
in my hand. My whole body shook, the muscles of my legs contracted and I
found myself leaping up and running away.
"I didn't mean to frighten you," dona Soledad said apologetically, as I
watched her from ten feet away.
She showed me the palms of her hands in a gesture of surrender, as if
assuring me that what I had felt was not her hand.
"What did you do to me?" I asked, trying to sound calm and detached.
She seemed to be either thoroughly embarrassed or baffled. She muttered
something and shook her head as though she could not say it, or did not know
what I was talking about.
"Come on, dona Soledad," I said, coming closer to her, "don't play
tricks on me."
She seemed about to weep. I wanted to comfort her, but some part of me
resisted. After a moment's pause I told her what I had felt and seen.
"That's just terrible!" She said in a shrieking voice.
In a very childlike gesture she covered her face with her right
forearm. I thought she was crying. I came over to her and tried to put my
arm around her shoulders. I could not bring myself to do it.
"Come now, dona Soledad," I said, "let's forget all this and let me
give you these packages before I leave."
I stepped in front of her to face her. I could see her black, shining
eyes and part of her face behind her arm. She was not crying. She was
smiling.
I jumped back. Her smile terrified me. Both of us stood motionless for
a long time. She kept her face covered but I could see her eyes watching me.
As I stood there almost paralyzed with fear I felt utterly despondent.
I had fallen into a bottomless pit. Dona Soledad was a witch. My body knew
it, and yet I could not really believe it. What I wanted to believe was that
dona Soledad had gone mad and was being kept in the house instead of an
asylum.
I did not dare move or take my eyes away from her. We must have stayed
in that position for five or six minutes. She had kept her arm raised and
yet motionless. She was standing at the rear of the car, almost leaning
against the left fender. The lid of the trunk was still open. I thought of
making a dash for the right door. The keys were in the ignition.
I relaxed a bit in order to gain the momentum to run. She seemed to
notice my change of position immediately. Her arm moved down, revealing her
whole face. Her teeth were clenched. Her eyes were fixed on mine. They
looked hard and mean. Suddenly she lurched toward me. She stomped with her
right foot, like a fencer, and reached out with clawed hands to grab me by
my waist as she let out the most chilling shriek.
My body jumped back out of her reach. I ran for the car, but with
inconceivable agility she rolled to my feet and made me trip over her. I
fell facedown and she grabbed me by the left foot. I contracted my right
leg, and I would have kicked her in the face with the sole of my shoe had
she not let go of me and rolled back. I jumped to my feet and tried to open
the door of the car. It was locked. I threw myself over the hood to reach
the other side but somehow dona Soledad got there before I did. I tried to
roll back over the hood, but midway I felt a sharp pain in my right calf.
She had grabbed me by the leg. I could not kick her with my left foot; she
had pinned down both of my legs against the hood. She pulled me toward her
and I fell on top of her. We wrestled on the ground. Her strength was
magnificent and her shrieks were terrifying. I could hardly move under the
gigantic pressure of her body. It was not a matter of weight but rather
tension, and she had it. Suddenly I heard a growl and the enormous dog
jumped on her back and shoved her away from me. I stood up. I wanted to get
into the car, but the woman and the dog were fighting by the door. The only
retreat was to go inside the house. I made it in one or two seconds. I did
not turn to look at them but rushed inside and closed the door behind me,
securing it with the iron bar that was behind it. I ran to the back and did
the same with the other door.
From inside I could hear the furious growling of the dog and the
woman's inhuman shrieks. Then suddenly the dog's barking and growling turned
into whining and howling as if he were in pain, or as if something were
frightening him. I felt a jolt in the pit of my stomach. My ears began to
buzz. I realized that I was trapped inside the house. I had a fit of sheer
terror. I was revolted at my stupidity in running into the house. The
woman's attack had confused me so intensely that I had lost all sense of
strategy and had behaved as if I were running away from an ordinary opponent
who could be shut out by simply closing a door. I heard someone come to the
door and lean against it, trying to force it open. Then there were loud
knocks and banging on it.
"Open the door," dona Soledad said in a hard voice. "That goddamned dog
has mauled me."
I deliberated whether or not to let her in. What came to my mind was
the memory of a confrontation I had had years before with a sorceress, who
had, according to don Juan, adopted his shape in order to fool me and
deliver a deadly blow. Obviously dona Soledad was not as I had known her,
but I had reasons to doubt that she was a sorceress. The time element played
a decisive role in my conviction. Pablito, Nestor and I had been involved
with don Juan and don Genaro for years and we were not sorcerers at all; how
could dona Soledad be one? No matter how much she had changed she could not
improvise something that would take a lifetime to accomplish.
"Why did you attack me?" I asked, speaking loudly so as to be heard
through the thick door.
She answered that the Nagual had told her not to let me go. I asked her
why.
She did not answer; instead she banged on the door furiously and I
banged back even harder. We went on hitting the door for a few minutes. She
stopped and started begging me to open it. I had a surge of nervous energy.
I knew that if I opened the door I might have a chance to flee. I moved the
iron bar from the door. She staggered in. Her blouse was torn. The band that
held her hair had fallen off and her long hair was all over her face.
"Look what that son of a bitch dog did to me!" she yelled. "Look!
Look!"
I took a deep breath. She seemed to be somewhat dazed. She sat down on
a bench and began to take off her tattered blouse. I seized that moment to
run out of the house and make a dash for the car. With a speed that was born
only out of fear, I got inside, shut the door, automatically turned on the
motor and put the car in reverse. I stepped on the gas and turned my head to
look back through the rear window. As I turned I felt a hot breath on my
face; I heard a horrendous growl and saw in a flash the demoniacal eyes of
the dog. He was standing on the back seat. I saw his horrible teeth almost
in my eyes. I ducked my head. His teeth grabbed my hair. I must have curled
my whole body on the seat, and in doing so I let my foot off the clutch. The
jerk of the car made the beast lose his balance. I opened the door and
scrambled out. The head of the dog jutted out through the door. I heard his
enormous teeth click as his jaws closed tight, missing my heels by a few
inches. The car began to roll back and I made another dash for the house. I
stopped before I had reached the door.
Dona Soledad was standing there. She had tied her hair up again. She
had thrown a shawl over her shoulders. She stared at me for a moment and
then began to laugh, very softly at first as if her wounds hurt her, and
then loudly. She pointed a finger at me and held her stomach as she
convulsed with laughter. She bent over and stretched, seemingly to catch her
breath. She was naked above the waist. I could see her breasts, shaking with
the convulsions of her laughter.
I felt that all was lost. I looked back toward the car. It had come to
a stop after rolling four or five feet; the door had closed again, sealing
the dog inside. I could see and hear the enormous beast biting the back of
the front seat and pawing the windows.
A most peculiar decision faced me at that moment. I did not know who
scared me the most, dona Soledad or the dog. After a moment's thought I
decided that the dog was just a stupid beast.
I ran back to the car and climbed up on the roof. The noise enraged the
dog. I heard him ripping the upholstery. Lying on the roof I managed to open
the driver's door. My idea was to open both doors and then slide from the
roof into the car, through one of them, after the dog had gone out the other
one. I leaned over to open the right door. I had forgotten that it was
locked. At that moment the dog's head came out through the opened door. I
had an attack of blind panic at the idea that the dog was going to jump out
of the car and onto the roof.
In less than a second I had leaped to the ground and found myself
standing at the door of the house.
Dona Soledad was bracing herself in the doorway. Laughter came out of
her in spurts that seemed almost painful.
The dog had remained inside the car, still frothing with rage.
Apparently he was too large and could not squeeze his bulky frame over the
front seat. I went to the car and gently closed the door again. I began to
look for a stick long enough to release the safety lock on the right-hand
door.
I searched in the area in front of the house. There was not a single
piece of wood lying around. Dona Soledad, in the meantime, had gone inside.
I assessed my situation. I had no other alternative but to ask her help.
With great trepidation, I crossed the threshold, looking in every direction
in case she might have been hiding behind the door, waiting for me.
"Dona Soledad!" I yelled out.
"What the hell do you want?" she yelled back from her room.
"Would you please go out and get your dog out of my car?" I said.
"Are you kidding?" she replied. "That's not my dog. I've told you
already, he belongs to my girls."
"Where are your girls?" I asked.
"They are in the mountains," she replied.
She came out of her room and faced me.
"Do you want to see what that goddamned dog did to me?" she asked in a
dry tone. "Look!"
She unwrapped her shawl and showed me her naked back.
I found no visible tooth marks on her back; there were only a few long,
superficial scratches she might have gotten by rubbing against the hard
ground. For all that matter, she could have scratched herself when she
attacked me.
"You have nothing there," I said.
"Come and look in the light," she said and went over by the door.
She insisted that I look carefully for the gashes of the dog's teeth. I
felt stupid. I had a heavy sensation around my eyes, especially on my brow.
I went outside instead. The dog had not moved and began to bark as soon as I
came out the door.
I cursed myself. There was no one to blame but me. I had walked into
that trap like a fool. I resolved right then to walk to town. But my wallet,
my papers, everything I had was in my briefcase on the floor of the car,
right under the dog's feet. I had an attack of despair. It was useless to
walk to town. I did not have enough money in my pockets even to buy a cup of
coffee. Besides, I did not know a soul in town. I had no other alternative
but to get the dog out of the car.
"What kind of food does that dog eat?" I yelled from the door.
"Why don't you try your leg?" dona Soledad yelled back from her room,
and cackled.
I looked for some cooked food in the house. The pots were empty. There
was nothing else for me to do but to confront her again. My despair had
turned into rage. I stormed into her room ready for a fight to the death.
She was lying on her bed, covered with her shawl.
"Please forgive me for having done all those things to you," she said
bluntly, looking at the ceiling.
Her boldness stopped my rage.
"You must understand my position," she went on. "I couldn't let you
go."
She laughed softly, and in a clear, calm and very pleasing voice said
that she was guilty of being greedy and clumsy, that she had nearly
succeeded in scaring me away with her antics, but that the situation had
suddenly changed. She paused and sat up in her bed, covering her breasts
with her shawl, then added that a strange confidence had descended into her
body. She looked up at the ceiling and moved her arms in a weird, rhythmical
flow, like a windmill.
"There is no way for you to leave now," she said.
She scrutinized me without laughing. My internal rage had subsided but
my despair was more acute than ever. I honestly knew that in matters of
sheer strength I was no match for her or the dog.
She said that our appointment had been set up years in advance, and
that neither of us had enough power to hurry it, or break it.
"Don't knock yourself out trying to leave," she said. "That's as
useless as my trying to keep you here. Something besides your will will
release you from here, and something besides my will will keep you here."
Somehow her confidence had not only mellowed her, but had given her a
great command over words. Her statements were compelling and crystal clear.
Don Juan had always said that I was a trusting soul when it came to words.
As she talked I found myself thinking that she was not really as threatening
as I thought. She no longer projected the feeling of having a chip on her
shoulder. My reason was almost at ease but another part of me was not. All
the muscles of my body were like tense wires, and yet I had to admit to
myself that although she scared me out of my wits I found her most
appealing. She watched me.
"I'll show you how useless it is to try to leave," she said, jumping
out of bed. "I'm going to help you. What do you need?"
She observed me with a gleam in her eyes. Her small white teeth gave
her smile a devilish touch. Her chubby face was strangely smooth and fairly
free of wrinkles. Two deep lines running from the sides of her nose to the
corners of her mouth gave her face the appearance of maturity, but not age.
In standing up from the bed she casually let her shawl fall straight down,
uncovering her full breasts. She did not bother to cover herself. Instead
she swelled up her chest and lifted her breasts.
"Oh, you've noticed, eh?" she said, and rocked her body from side to
side as if pleased with herself. "I always keep my hair tied behind my head.
The Nagual told me to do so. The pull makes my face younger."
I had been sure that she was going to talk about her breasts. Her shift
was a surprise to me.
"I don't mean that the pull on my hair is going to make me look
younger," she went on with a charming smile. "The pull on my hair makes me
younger."
"How is that possible?" I asked.
She answered me with a question. She wanted to know if I had correctly
understood don Juan when he said that anything was possible if one wants it
with unbending intent. I was after a more precise explanation. I wanted to
know what else she did besides tying her hair, in order to look so young.
She said that she lay in her bed and emptied herself of any thoughts and
feelings and then let the lines of her floor pull her wrinkles away. I
pressed her for more details: any feelings, sensations, perceptions that she
had experienced while lying on her bed. She insisted that she felt nothing,
that she did not know how the lines in her floor worked, and that she only
knew not to let her thoughts interfere.
She placed her hands on my chest and shoved me very gently. It seemed
to be a gesture to show that she had had enough of my questions. We walked
outside, through the back door. I told her that I needed a long stick. She
went directly to a pile of firewood, but there were no long sticks. I asked
her if she could get me a couple of nails in order to join together two
pieces of firewood. We looked unsuccessfully all over the house for nails.
As a final resort I had to dislodge the longest stick I could find in the
chicken coop that Pablito had built in the back. The stick, although it was
a bit flimsy, seemed suited for my purpose.
Dona Soledad had not smiled or joked during our search. She seemed to
be utterly absorbed in her task of helping me. Her concentration was so
intense that I had the feeling she was wishing me to succeed.
I walked to my car, armed with the long stick and a shorter one from
the pile of firewood. Dona Soledad stood by the front door.
I began to tease the dog with the short stick in my right hand and at
the same time I tried to release the safety lock with the long one in my
other hand. The dog nearly bit my right hand and made me drop the short
stick. The rage and power of the enormous beast were so immense that I
nearly lost the long one too. The dog was about to bite it in two when dona
Soledad came to my aid; pounding on the back window she drew the dog's
attention and he let go of it.
Encouraged by her distracting maneuver I dove, headfirst, and slid
across the length of the front seat and managed to release the safety lock.
I tried to pull back immediately, but the dog charged toward me with all his
might and actually thrust his massive shoulders and front paws over the
front seat, before I had time to back out. I felt his paws on my shoulder. I
cringed. I knew that he was going to maul me. The dog lowered his head to go
in for the kill, but instead of biting me he hit the steering wheel. I
scurried out and in one move climbed over the hood and onto the roof. I had
goose bumps all over my body.
I opened the right-hand door. I asked dona Soledad to hand me the long
stick and with it I pushed the lever to release the backrest from its
straight position. I conceived that if I teased the dog he would ram it
forward, allowing himself room to get out of the car. But he did not move.
He bit furiously on the stick instead.
At that moment dona Soledad jumped onto the roof and lay next to me.
She wanted to help me tease the dog. I told her that she could not stay on
the roof because when the dog came out I was going to get in the car and
drive away. I thanked her for her help and said that she should go back in
the house. She shrugged her shoulders, jumped down and went back to the
door. I pushed down the release again and with my cap I teased the dog. I
snapped it around his eyes, in front of his muzzle. The dog's fury was
beyond anything I had seen but he would not leave the seat. Finally his
massive jaws jerked the stick out of my grip. I climbed down to retrieve it
from underneath the car. Suddenly I heard dona Soledad screaming.
"Watch out! He's getting out! "
I glanced up at the car. The dog was squeezing himself over the seat.
He had gotten his hind paws caught in the steering wheel; except for that,
he was almost out.
I dashed to the house and got inside just in time to avoid being run
down by that animal. His momentum was so powerful that he rammed against the
door.
As she secured the door with its iron bar dona Soledad said in a
cackling voice, "I told you it was useless."
She cleared her throat and turned to look at me.
"Can you tie the dog with a rope?" I asked.
I was sure that she would give me a meaningless answer, but to my
amazement she said that we should try everything, even luring the dog into
the house and trapping him there.
Her idea appealed to me. I carefully opened the front door. The dog was
no longer there. I ventured out a bit more. There was no sight of him. My
hope was that the dog had gone back to his corral. I was going to wait
another instant before I made a dash for my car, when I heard a deep growl
and saw the massive head of the beast inside my car. He had crawled back
onto the front seat.
Dona Soledad was right; it was useless to try. A wave of sadness
enveloped me. Somehow I knew my end was near. In a fit of sheer desperation
I told dona Soledad that I was going to get a knife from the kitchen and
kill the dog, or be killed by him, and I would have done that had it not
been that there was not a single metal object in the entire house.
"Didn't the Nagual teach you to accept your fate?" dona Soledad asked
as she trailed behind me. "That one out there is no ordinary dog. That dog
has power. He is a warrior. He will do what he has to do. Even kill you."
I had a moment of uncontrollable frustration and grabbed her by the
shoulders and growled. She did not seem surprised or affected by my sudden
outburst. She turned her back to me and dropped her shawl to the floor. Her
back was very strong and beautiful. I had an irrepressible urge to hit her,
but I ran my hand across her shoulders instead. Her skin was soft and
smooth. Her arms and shoulders were muscular without being big. She seemed
to have a minimal layer of fat that rounded off her muscles and gave her
upper body the appearance of smoothness, and yet when I pushed on any part
of it with the tips of my fingers I could feel the hardness of unseen
muscles below the smooth surface. I did not want to look at her breasts.
She walked to a roofed, open area in back of the house that served as a
kitchen. I followed her. She sat down on a bench and calmly washed her feet
in a pail. While she was putting on her sandals, I went with great
trepidation into a new outhouse that had been built in the back. She was
standing by the door when I came out.
"You like to talk," she said casually, leading me into her room. "There
is no hurry. Now we can talk forever."
She picked up my writing pad from the top of her chest of drawers,
where she must have placed it herself, and handed it to me with exaggerated
care. Then she pulled up her bedspread and folded it neatly and put it on
top of the same chest of drawers. I noticed then that the two chests were
the color of the walls, yellowish white, and the bed without the spread was
pinkish red, more or less the color of the floor. The bedspread, on the
other hand, was dark brown, like the wood of the ceiling and the wood panels
of the windows.
"Let's talk," she said, sitting comfortably on the bed after taking off
her sandals.
She placed her knees against her naked breasts. She looked like a young
girl. Her aggressive and commandeering manner had subdued and changed into
charm. At that moment she was the antithesis of what she had been earlier. I
had to laugh at the way she was urging me to write. She reminded me of don
Juan.
"Now we have time," she said. "The wind has changed. Didn't you notice
it?"
I had. She said that the new direction of the wind was her own
beneficial direction and thus the wind had turned into her helper.
"What do you know about the wind, dona Soledad?" I asked as I calmly
sat down on the foot of her bed.
"Only what the Nagual taught me," she said. "Each one of us, women that
is, has a peculiar direction, a particular wind. Men don't. I am the north
wind; when it blows I am different. The Nagual said that a warrior can use
her particular wind for whatever she wants. I used it to trim my body and
remake it. Look at me! I am the north wind. Feel me when I come through the
window."
There was a strong wind blowing through the window, which was
strategically placed to face the north.
"Why do you think men don't have a wind?" I asked.
She thought for a moment and then replied that the Nagual had never
mentioned why.
"You wanted to know who made this floor," she said, wrapping her
blanket around her shoulders. "I made it myself. It took me four years to
put it down. Now this floor is like myself."
As she spoke I noticed that the converging lines in the floor were
oriented to originate from the north. The room, however, was not perfectly
aligned with the cardinal points; thus her bed was at odd angles with the
walls and so were the lines in the clay slabs.
"Why did you make the floor red, dona Soledad?"
"That's my color. I am red, like red dirt. I got the red clay in the
mountains around here. The Nagual told me where to look and he also helped
me carry it, and so did everyone else. They all helped me."
"How did you fire the clay?"
"The Nagual made me dig a pit. We filled it with firewood and then
stacked up the clay slabs with flat pieces of rock in between them. I closed
the pit with a lid of dirt and wire and set the wood on fire. It burned for
days."
"How did you keep the slabs from warping?"
"I didn't. The wind did that, the north wind that blew while the fire
was on. The Nagual showed me how to dig the pit so it would face the north
and the north wind. He also made me leave four holes for the north wind to
blow into the pit. Then he made me leave one hole in the center of the lid
to let the smoke out. The wind made the wood burn for days; after the pit
was cold again I opened it and began to polish and even out the slabs. It
took me over a year to make enough slabs to finish my floor."
"How did you figure out the design?"
"The wind taught me that. When I made my floor the Nagual had already
taught me not to resist the wind. He had showed me how to give in to my wind
and let it guide me. It took him a long time to do that, years and years. I
was a very difficult, silly old woman at first; he told me that himself and
he was right. But I learned very fast. Perhaps because I'm old and no longer
have anything to lose. In the beginning, what made it even more difficult
for me was the fear I had. The mere presence of the Nagual made me stutter
and faint. The Nagual had the same effect on everyone else. It was his fate
to be so fearsome."
She stopped talking and stared at me.
"The Nagual is not human," she said.
"What makes you say that?"
"The Nagual is a devil from who knows what time."
Her statements chilled me. I felt my heart pounding. She certainly
could not have found a better audience. I was intrigued to no end. I begged
her to explain what she meant by that.
"His touch changed people," she said. "You know that. He changed your
body. In your case, you didn't even know that he was doing that. But he got
into your old body. He put something in it. He did the same with me. He left
something in me and that something took over. Only a devil can do that. Now
I am the north wind and I fear nothing, and no one. But before he changed me
I was a weak, ugly old woman who would faint at the mere mention of his
name. Pablito, of course, was no help to me because he feared the Nagual
more than death itself.
"One day the Nagual and Genaro came to the house when I was alone. I
heard them by the door, like prowling jaguars. I crossed myself; to me they
were two demons, but I came out to see what I could do for them. They were
hungry and I gladly fixed food for them. I had some thick bowls made out of
gourd and I gave each man a bowl of soup. The Nagual didn't seem to
appreciate the food; he didn't want to eat food prepared by such a weak
woman and pretended to be clumsy and knocked the bowl off the table with a
sweep of his arm. But the bowl, instead of turning over and spilling all
over the floor, slid with the force of the Nagual's blow and fell on my
foot, without spilling a drop. The bowl actually landed on my foot and
stayed there until I bent over and picked it up. I set it up on the table in
front of him and told him that even though I was a weak woman and had always
feared him, my food had good feelings.
"From that very moment the Nagual changed toward me. The fact that the
bowl of soup fell on my foot and didn't spill proved to him that power had
pointed me out to him. I didn't know that at the time and I thought that he
changed toward me because he felt ashamed of having refused my food. I
thought nothing of his change. I still was petrified and couldn't even look
him in the eye. But he began to take more and more notice of me. He even
brought me gifts: a shawl, a dress, a comb and other things. That made me
feel terrible. I was ashamed because I thought that he was a man looking for
a woman. The Nagual had young girls, what would he want with an old woman
like me? At first I didn't want to wear or even consider looking at his
gifts, but Pablito prevailed on me and I began to wear them. I also began to
be even more afraid of him and didn't want to be alone with him. I knew that
he was a devilish man. I knew what he had done to his woman."
I felt compelled to interrupt her. I told her that I had never known of
a woman in don Juan's life.
"You know who I mean," she said.
"Believe me, dona Soledad, I don't."
"Don't give me that. You know that I'm talking about la Gorda."
The only "la Gorda" I knew of was Pablito's sister, an enormously fat
girl nicknamed Gorda, Fatso. I had had the feeling, although no one ever
talked about it, that she was not really dona Soledad's daughter. I did not
want to press her for any more information. I suddenly remembered that the
fat girl had disappeared from the house and nobody could or dared to tell me
what had happened to her.
"One day I was alone in the front of the house," dona Soledad went on.
"I was combing my hair in the sun with the comb that the Nagual had given
me; I didn't realize that he had arrived and was standing behind me. All of
a sudden I felt his hands grabbing me by the chin. I heard him say very
softly that I shouldn't move because my neck might break. He twisted my head
to the left. Not all the way but a bit. I became very frightened and
screamed and tried to wriggle out of his grip, but he held my head firmly
for a long, long time.
"When he let go of my chin, I fainted. I don't remember what happened
then. When I woke up I was lying on the ground, right here where I'm sitting
now. The Nagual was gone. I was so ashamed that I didn't want to see anyone,
especially la Gorda. For a long time I even thought that the Nagual had
never twisted my neck and I had had a nightmare."
She stopped. I waited for an explanation of what had happened. She
seemed distracted, pensive perhaps.
"What exactly happened, dona Soledad?" I asked, incapable of containing
myself. "Did he do something to you?"
"Yes. He twisted my neck in order to change the direction of my eyes,"
she said and laughed loudly at my look of surprise.
"I mean, did he. . . ?"
"Yes. He changed my direction," she went on, oblivious to my probes.
"He did that to you and to all the others."
"That's true. He did that to me. But why do you think he did that?"
"He had to. That is the most important thing to do."
She was referring to a peculiar act that don Juan had deemed absolutely
necessary. I had never talked about it with anyone. In fact, I had almost
forgotten about it. At the beginning of my apprenticeship, he once built two
small fires in the mountains of northern Mexico. They were perhaps twenty
feet apart. He made me stand another twenty feet away from them, holding my
body, especially my head, in a most relaxed and natural position. He then
made me face one fire, and coming from behind me, he twisted my neck to the
left, and aligned my eyes, but not my shoulders, with the other fire. He
held my head in that position for hours, until the fire was extinguished.
The new direction was the southeast, or rather he had aligned the second
fire in a southeasterly direction. I had understood the whole affair as one
of don Juan's inscrutable peculiarities, one of his nonsensical rites.
"The Nagual said that all of us throughout our lives develop one
direction to look," she went on. "That becomes the direction of the eyes of
the spirit. Through the years that direction becomes overused, and weak and
unpleasant, and since we are bound to that particular direction we become
weak and unpleasant ourselves. The day the Nagual twisted my neck and held
it until I fainted out of fear, he gave me a new direction."
"What direction did he give you?"
"Why do you ask that?" she said with unnecessary force. "Do you think
that perhaps the Nagual gave me a different direction?"
"I can tell you the direction that he gave me," I said.
"Never mind," she snapped. "He told me that himself."
She seemed agitated. She changed position and lay on her stomach. My
back hurt from writing. I asked her if I could sit on her floor and use the
bed as a table. She stood up and handed me the folded bedspread to use as a
cushion.
"What else did the Nagual do to you?" I asked.
"After changing my direction the Nagual really began to talk to me
about power," she said, lying down again. "He mentioned things in a casual
way at first, because he didn't know exactly what to do with me. One day he
took me for a short walking trip in the sierras. Then another day he took me
on a bus to his homeland in the desert. Little by little I became accustomed
to going away with him."
"Did he ever give you power plants?"
"He gave me Mescalito, once when we were in the desert. But since I was
an empty woman Mescalito refused me. I had a horrid encounter with him. It
was then that the Nagual knew that he ought to acquaint me with the wind
instead. That was, of course, after he got an omen. He had said, over and
over that day, that although he was a sorcerer that had learned to see, if
he didn't get an omen he had no way of knowing which way to go. He had
already waited for days for a certain indication about me. But power didn't
want to give it. In desperation, I suppose, he introduced me to his guaje,
and I saw Mescalito."
I interrupted her. Her use of the word "guaje," gourd, was confusing to
me. Examined in the context of what she was telling me, the word had no
meaning. I thought that perhaps she was speaking metaphorically, or that
gourd was a euphemism.
"What is a guaje, dona Soledad?"
There was a look of surprise in her eyes. She paused before answering.
"Mescalito is the Nagual's guaje," she finally said.
Her answer was even more confusing. I felt mortified by the fact that
she really seemed concerned with making sense to me. When I asked her to
explain further, she insisted that I knew everything myself. That was don
Juan's favorite stratagem to foil my probes. I said to her that don Juan had
told me that Mescalito was a deity, or force contained in the peyote
buttons. To say that Mescalito was his gourd made absolutely no sense.
"The Nagual can acquaint you with anything through his gourd," she said
after a pause. "That is the key to his power. Anyone can give you peyote,
but only a sorcerer, through his gourd, can acquaint you with Mescalito."
She stopped talking and fixed her eyes on me. Her look was ferocious.
"Why do you have to make me repeat what you already know?" she asked in
an angry tone.
I was completely taken aback by her sudden shift. A moment before she
had been almost sweet.
"Never mind my changes of mood," she said, smiling again. "I'm the
north wind. I'm very impatient. All my life I never dared to speak my mind.
Now I fear no one. I say what I feel. To meet with me you have to be
strong."
She slid closer to me on her stomach.
"Well, the Nagual acquainted me with the Mescalito that came out of his
gourd," she went on. "But he couldn't guess what would happen to me. He
expected something like your own meeting or Eligio's meeting with Mescalito.
In both cases he was at a loss and let his gourd decide what to do next. In
both cases his gourd helped him. With me it was different; Mescalito told
him never to bring me around. The Nagual and I left that place in a great
hurry. We went north instead of coming home. We took a bus to go to
Mexicali, but we got out in the middle of the desert. It was very late. The
sun was setting behind the mountains. The Nagual wanted to cross the road
and go south on foot. We were waiting for some speeding cars to go by, when
suddenly he tapped my shoulder and pointed toward the road ahead of us. I
saw a spiral of dust. A gust of wind was raising dust on the side of the
road. We watched it move toward us. The Nagual ran across the road and the
wind enveloped me. It actually made me spin very gently and then it
vanished. That was the omen the Nagual was waiting for. From then on we went
to the mountains or the desert for the purpose of seeking the wind. The wind
didn't like me at first, because I was my old self. So the Nagual endeavored
to change me. He first made me build this room and this floor. Then he made
me wear new clothes and sleep on a mattress instead of a straw mat. He made
me wear shoes, and have drawers full of clothes. He forced me to walk
hundreds of miles and taught me to be quiet. I learned very fast. He also
made me do strange things for no reason at all.
"One day, while we were in the mountains of his homeland, I listened to
the wind for the first time. It came directly to my womb. I was lying on top
of a flat rock and the wind twirled around me. I had already seen it that
day whirling around the bushes, but this time it came over me and stopped.
It felt like a bird that had landed on my stomach. The Nagual had made me
take off all my clothes; I was stark naked but I was not cold because the
wind was warming me up."
"Were you afraid, dona Soledad?"
"Afraid? I was petrified. The wind was alive; it licked me from my head
to my toes. And then it got inside my whole body. I was like a balloon, and
the wind came out of my ears and my mouth and other parts I don't want to
mention. I thought I was going to die, and I would've run away had it not
been that the Nagual held me to the rock. He spoke to me in my ear and
calmed me down. I lay quietly and let the wind do whatever it wanted with
me. It was then that it told me what to do."
"What to do with what?"
"With my life, my things, my room, my feelings. It was not clear at
first. I thought it was me thinking. The Nagual said that all of us do that.
When we are quiet, though, we realize that it is something else telling us
things."
"Did you hear a voice?"
"No. The wind moves inside the body of a woman. The Nagual says that
that is so because women have wombs. Once it's inside the womb the wind
simply picks you up and tells you to do things. The more quiet and relaxed
the woman is the better the results. You may say that all of a sudden the
woman finds herself doing things that she had no idea how to do.
"From that day on the wind came to me all the time. It spoke to me in
my womb and told me everything I wanted to know. The Nagual saw from the
beginning that I was the north wind. Other winds never spoke to me like
that, although I had learned to distinguish them."
"How many kinds of winds are there?"
"There are four winds, like there are four directions. That's, of
course, for sorcerers and for whatever sorcerers do. Four is a power number
for them. The first wind is the breeze, the morning. It brings hope and
brightness; it is the herald of the day. It comes and goes and gets into
everything. Sometimes it is mild and unnoticeable; other times it is nagging
and bothersome.
"Another wind is the hard wind, either hot or cold or both. A midday
wind. Blasting full of energy but also full of blindness. It breaks through
doors and brings down walls. A sorcerer must be terribly strong to tackle
the hard wind.
"Then there is the cold wind of the afternoon. Sad and trying. A wind
that would never leave you in peace. It will chill you and make you cry. The
Nagual said that there is such depth to it, though, that it is more than
worthwhile to seek it.
"And at last there is the hot wind. It warms and protects and envelops
everything. It is a night wind for sorcerers. Its power goes together with
the darkness.
"Those are the four winds. They are also associated with the four
directions. The breeze is the east. The cold wind is the west. The hot one
is the south. The hard wind is the north.
"The four winds also have personalities. The breeze is gay and sleek
and shifty. The cold wind is moody and melancholy and always pensive. The
hot wind is happy and abandoned and bouncy. The hard wind is energetic and
commandeering and impatient.
"The Nagual told me that the four winds are women. That is why female
warriors seek them. Winds and women are alike. That is also the reason why
women are better than men. I would say that women learn faster if they cling
to their specific wind."
"How can a woman know what her specific wind is?"
"If the woman quiets down and is not talking to herself, her wind will
pick her up, just like that."
She made a gesture of grabbing.
"Does she have to lie naked?"
"That helps. Especially if she is shy. I was a fat old woman. I had
never taken off my clothes in my life. I slept in them and when I took a
bath I always had my slip on. For me to show my fat body to the wind was
like dying. The Nagual knew that and played it for all it was worth. He knew
of the friendship of women and the wind, but he introduced me to Mescalito
because he was baffled by me.
"After turning my head that first terrible day, the Nagual found
himself with me on his hands. He told me that he had no idea what to do with
me. But one thing was for sure, he didn't want a fat old woman snooping
around his world. The Nagual said that he felt about me the way he felt
about you. Baffled. Both of us shouldn't be here. You're not an Indian and
I'm an old cow. We are both useless if you come right down to it. And look
at us. Something must have happened.
"A woman, of course, is much more supple than a man. A woman changes
very easily with the power of a sorcerer. Especially with the power of a
sorcerer like the Nagual. A male apprentice, according to the Nagual, is
extremely difficult. For example, you yourself haven't changed as much as la
Gorda, and she started her apprenticeship way after you did. A woman is
softer and more gentle, and above all a woman is like a gourd; she receives.
But somehow a man commands more power. The Nagual never agreed with that,
though. He believed that women are unequaled, tops. He also believed that I
felt men were better only because I am an empty woman. He must be right. I
have been empty for so long that I can't remember what it feels like to be
complete. The Nagual said that if I ever become complete I will change my
feelings about it. But if he was right his Gorda would have done as well as
Eligio, and as you know, she hasn't."
I could not follow the flow of her narrative because of her unstated
assumption that I knew what she was referring to. In this case I had no idea
what Eligio or la Gorda had done.
"In what way was la Gorda different from Eligio?" I asked.
She looked at me for a moment as if measuring something in me. Then she
sat up with her knees against her chest.
"The Nagual told me everything," she said briskly. "The Nagual had no
secrets from me. Eligio was the best; that's why he is not in the world now.
He didn't return. In fact he was so good that he didn't have to jump from a
precipice when his apprenticeship was over. He was like Genaro; one day
while he was working in the field something came to him and took him away.
He knew how to let go."
I felt like asking her if I had really jumped into the abyss. I
deliberated for a moment before going ahead with my question. After all I
had come to see Pablito and Nestor to clarify that point. Any information I
could get on the topic from anyone involved in don Juan's world was indeed a
bonus tome.
She laughed at my question, as I had anticipated.
"You mean you don't know what you yourself did?" she asked.
"It's too farfetched to be real," I said.
"That is the Nagual's world for sure. Not a thing in it is real. He
himself told me not to believe anything. But still the male apprentices have
to jump. Unless they are truly magnificent, like Eligio.
"The Nagual took us, me and la Gorda, to that mountain and made us look
down to the bottom of it. There he showed us the kind of flying Nagual he
was. But only la Gorda could follow him. She also wanted to jump into the
abyss. The Nagual told her that that was useless. He said female warriors
have to do things more painful and more difficult than that. He also told us
that the jump was only for the four of you. And that is what happened, the
four of you jumped."
She had said that the four of us had jumped, but I only knew of Pablito
and myself having done that. In light of her statements I figured that don
Juan and don Genaro must have followed us. That did not seem odd to me; it
was rather pleasing and touching.
"What are you talking about?" she asked after I had voiced my thoughts.
"I meant you and the three apprentices of Genaro. You, Pablito and Nestor
jumped on the same day."
"Who is the other apprentice of don Genaro? I know only Pablito and
Nestor?"
"You mean that you didn't know that Benigno was Genaro's apprentice?"
"No, I didn't."
"He was Genaro's oldest apprentice. He jumped before you did and he
jumped by himself."
Benigno was one of five Indian youths I had once found while roaming in
the Sonoran Desert with don Juan. They were in search of power objects. Don
Juan told me that all of them were apprentices of sorcery. I struck up a
peculiar friendship with Benigno in the few times I had seen him after that
day. He was from southern Mexico. I liked him very much. For some unknown
reason he seemed to delight himself by creating a tantalizing mystery about
his personal life. I could never find out who he was or what he did. Every
time I talked to him he baffled me with the disarming candor with which he
evaded my probes. Once don Juan volunteered some information about Benigno
and said that he was very fortunate in having found a teacher and a
benefactor. I took don Juan's statements as a casual remark that meant
nothing. Dona Soledad had clarified a ten-year-old mystery for me.
"Why do you think don Juan never told me anything about Benigno?"
"Who knows? He must've had a reason. The Nagual never did anything
thoughtlessly."
I had to prop my aching back against her bed before resuming writing.
"Whatever happened to Benigno?"
"He's doing fine. He's perhaps better off than anyone else. You'll see
him. He's with Pablito and Nestor. Right now they're inseparable. Genaro's
brand is on them. The same thing happened to the girls; they're inseparable
because the Nagual's brand is on them."
I had to interrupt her again and ask her to explain what girls she was
talking about.
"My girls," she said.
"Your daughters? I mean Pablito's sisters?"
"They are not Pablito's sisters. They are the Nagual's apprentices."
Her disclosure shocked me. Ever since I had met Pablito, years before,
I had been led to believe that the four girls who lived in his house were
his sisters. Don Juan himself had told me so. I had a sudden relapse of the
feeling of despair I had experienced all afternoon. Dona Soledad was not to
be trusted; she was engineering something. I was sure that don Juan could
not under any conditions have misled me so grossly.
Dona Soledad examined me with overt curiosity.
"The wind just told me that you don't believe what I'm telling you,"
she said, and laughed.
"The wind is right," I said dryly.
"The girls that you've seen over the years are the Nagual's. They were
his apprentices. Now that the Nagual is gone they are the Nagual himself.
But they are also my girls. Mine!"
"You mean that you're not Pablito's mother and they are really your
daughters?"
"I mean that they are mine. The Nagual gave them to me for safekeeping.
You are always wrong because you rely on words to explain everything. Since
I am Pablito's mother and you heard that they were my girls, you figured out
that they must be brother and sisters. The girls are my true babies.
Pablito, although he's the child that came out of my womb, is my mortal
enemy."
My reaction to her statements was a mixture of revulsion and anger. I
thought that she was not only an aberrated woman, but a dangerous one.
Somehow, part of me had known that since the moment I had arrived.
She watched me for a long time. To avoid looking at her I sat down on
the bedspread again.
"The Nagual warned me about your weirdness," she said suddenly, "but I
couldn't understand what he meant. Now I know. He told me to be careful and
not to anger you because you're violent. I'm sorry I was not as careful as I
should've been. He also said that as long as you can write you could go to
hell itself and not even feel it. I haven't bothered you about that. Then he
told me that you're suspicious because words entangle you. I haven't
bothered you there, either. I've been talking my head off, trying not to
entangle you."
There was a silent accusation in her tone. I felt somehow embarrassed
at being annoyed with her.
"What you're telling me is very hard to believe," I said. "Either you
or don Juan has lied to me terribly."
"Neither of us has lied. You understand only what you want to. The
Nagual said that that is a condition of your emptiness.
"The girls are the Nagual's children, just like you and Eligio are his
children. He made six children, four women and two men. Genaro made three
men. There are nine altogether. One of them, Eligio, already made it, so now
it is up to the eight of you to try."
"Where did Eligio go?"
"He went to join the Nagual and Genaro."
"And where did the Nagual and Genaro go?"
"You know where they went. You're just kidding me, aren't you?"
"But that's the point, dona Soledad. I'm not kidding you."
"Then I will tell you. I can't deny you anything. The Nagual and Genaro
went back to the same place they came from, to the other world. When their
time was up they simply stepped out into the darkness out there, and since
they did not want to come back, the darkness of the night swallowed them up"
I felt it was useless to probe her any further. I was ready to change
the subject, but she spoke first.
"You caught a glimpse of the other world when you jumped," she went on.
"But maybe the jump has confused you. Too bad. There is nothing that anyone
can do about it. It is your fate to be a man. Women are better than men in
that sense. They don't have to jump into an abyss. Women have their own
ways. They have their own abyss. Women menstruate. The Nagual told me that
that was the door for them. During their period they become something else.
I know that that was the time when he taught my girls. It was too late for
me; I'm too old so I really don't know what that door looks like. But the
Nagual insisted that the girls pay attention to everything that happens to
them during that time. He would take them during those days into the
mountains and stay with them there until they would see the crack between
the worlds.
"The Nagual, since he had no qualms or fear about doing anything,
pushed them without mercy so they could find out for themselves that there
is a crack in women, a crack that they disguise very well. During their
period, no matter how well-made the disguise is, it falls away and women are
bare. The Nagual pushed my girls until they were half-dead to open that
crack. They did it. He made them do it, but it took them years."
"How did they become apprentices?"
"Lidia was his first apprentice. He found her one morning when he had
stopped at a disheveled hut in the mountains. The Nagual told me that there
was no one in sight and yet there had been omens calling him to that house
since early morning. The breeze had bothered him terribly. He said that he
couldn't even open his eyes every time he tried to walk away from that area.
So when he found the house he knew that something was there. He looked under
a pile of straw and twigs and found a girl. She was very ill. She could
hardly talk, but still she told him that she didn't need anyone to help her.
She was going to keep on sleeping there and if she didn't wake up anymore no
one would lose a thing. The Nagual liked her spirit and talked to her in her
language. He told her that he was going to cure her and take care of her
until she was strong again. She refused. She was an Indian who had known
only hardships and pain. She told the Nagual that she had already taken all
the medicine that her parents had given her and nothing helped.
"The more she talked the more the Nagual understood that the omen had
pointed her out to him in a most peculiar way. The omen was more like a
command.
"The Nagual picked the girl up and put her on his shoulders, like a
child, and brought her to Genaro's place. Genaro made medicine for her. She
couldn't open her eyes anymore. The lids were stuck together. They were
swollen and had a yellowish crud on them. They were festering. The Nagual
tended her until she was well. He hired me to look after her and cook her
meals. I helped her to get well with my food. She is my first baby. When she
was well, and that took nearly a year, the Nagual wanted to return her to
her parents, but the girl refused to go and went with him instead.
"A short time after he had found Lidia, while she was still sick and in
my care, the Nagual found you. You were brought to him by a man he had never
seen before in his life. The Nagual saw that the man's death was hovering
above his head, and he found it very odd that the man would point you out to
him at such a time. You made the Nagual laugh and right away the Nagual set
a test for you. He didn't take you, he told you to come and find him. He has
tested you ever since like he has tested no one else. He said that that was
your path.
"For three years he had only two apprentices, Lidia and you. Then one
day while he was visiting his friend Vicente, a curer from the north, some
people brought in a crazy girl, a girl who did nothing else but cry. The
people took the Nagual for Vicente and placed the girl in his hands. The
Nagual told me that the girl ran to him and clung to him as if she knew him.
The Nagual told her parents that they had to leave her with him. They were
worried about the cost but the Nagual assured them that it would be free. I
suppose that the girl was such a pain in the ass to them that they didn't
mind getting rid of her.
"The Nagual brought her to me. That was hell! She was truly crazy. That
was Josefina. It took the Nagual years to cure her. But even to this day
she's crazier than a bat. She was, of course, crazy about the Nagual and
there was a terrible fight between Lidia and Josefina. They hated each
other. But I liked them both. But the Nagual, when he saw that they couldn't
get along, became very firm with them. As you know the Nagual can't get mad
at anyone. So he scared them half to death. One day Lidia got mad and left.
She had decided to find herself a young husband. On the road she found a
tiny chicken. It had just been hatched and was lost in the middle of the
road. Lidia picked it up, and since she was in a deserted area with no
houses around, she figured that the chicken belonged to no one. She put it
inside her blouse, in between her breasts to keep it warm. Lidia told me
that she ran and in doing so the little chicken began to move to her side.
She tried to bring him back to the front but she couldn't catch him. The
chicken ran very fast around her sides and her back, inside her blouse. The
chicken's feet tickled her at first and then they drove her crazy. When she
realized that she couldn't get him out, she came back to me, screaming out
of her mind, and told me to get the damn thing out of her blouse. I
undressed her but that was to no avail. There was no chicken at all, and yet
she still felt its feet on her skin going around and around.
"The Nagual came over then and told her that only when she let go of
her old self would the chicken stop running. Lidia was crazy for three days
and three nights. The Nagual told me to tie her up. I fed her and cleaned
her and gave her water. On the fourth day she became very peaceful and calm.
I untied her and she put on her clothes and when she was dressed again, as
she had been the day she ran away, the little chicken came out. She took him
in her hand and petted and thanked him and returned him to the place where
she had found him. I walked with her part of the way.
"From that time on Lidia never bothered anyone. She accepted her fate.
The Nagual is her fate; without him she would have been dead. So what was
the point of trying to refuse or mold things which can only be accepted?
"Josefina went off next. She was already afraid of what happened to
Lidia but she soon forgot about it. One Sunday afternoon, when she was
coming back to the house, a dry leaf got stuck in the threads of her shawl.
Her shawl was loosely woven. She tried to pick out the small leaf, but she
was afraid of ruining her shawl. So when she came into the house she
immediately tried to loosen it, but there was no way, it was stuck.
Josefina, in a fit of anger, clutched the shawl and the leaf and crumbled it
inside her hand. She figured that small pieces would be easier to pick out.
I heard a maddening scream and Josefina fell to the ground. I ran to her and
found that she couldn't open her hand. The leaf had cut her hand to shreds
as if it were pieces of a razor blade. Lidia and I helped her and nursed her
for seven days. Josefina was more stubborn than anyone else. She nearly
died. At the end she managed to open her hand, but only after she had in her
own mind resolved to drop her old ways. She still gets pains in her body
from time to time, especially in her hand, due to the ugly disposition that
still returns to her. The Nagual told both of them that they shouldn't count
on their victory because it's a lifetime struggle that each of us wages
against our old selves.
"Lidia and Josefina never fought again. I don't think they like each
other, but they certainly get along. I love those two the most. They have
been with me all these years. I know that they love me too."
"What about the other two girls? Where do they fit?"
"A year later Elena came; she is la Gorda. She was by far in the worst
condition you could imagine. She weighed two hundred and twenty pounds. She
was a desperate woman. Pablito had given her shelter in his shop. She did
laundry and ironing to support herself. The Nagual came one night to get
Pablito and found the fat girl working while a circle of moths flew over her
head. He said that the moths had made a perfect circle for him to watch. He
saw that the woman was near the end of her life, yet the moths must have had
all the confidence in the world, in order for them to give him such an omen.
The Nagual acted fast and took her with him.
"She did fine for a while, but the bad habits that she had learned were
too deep and she couldn't give them up. So one day the Nagual sent for the
wind to help her. It was a matter of helping her or finishing her off. The
wind began to blow on her until it drove her out of the house; she was alone
that day and no one saw what was happening. The wind pushed her over hills
and into ravines until she fell into a ditch, a hole in the ground like a
grave. The wind kept her there for days. When the Nagual finally found her
she had managed to stop the wind, but she was too weak to walk."
"How did the girls manage to stop whatever was acting upon them?"
"Well, in the first place what was acting upon them was the gourd that
the Nagual carried tied to his belt."
"And what is in the gourd?"
"The allies that the Nagual carries with him. He said that the ally is
funneled through his gourd. Don't ask me any more because I know nothing
more about the ally. All I can tell you is that the Nagual commands two
allies and makes them help him. In the case of my girls the ally backed down
when they were ready to change. For them, of course, it was a case of either
change or death. But that's the case with all of us, one way or another. And
la Gorda changed more than anyone else. She was empty, in fact more empty
than I, but she worked her spirit until she became power itself. I don't
like her. I'm afraid of her. She knows me. She gets inside me and my
feelings and that bothers me. But no one can do anything to her because she
never lets her guard down. She doesn't hate me, but she thinks I am an evil
woman. She may be right. I think that she knows me too well, and I'm not as
impeccable as I want to be; but the Nagual told me not to worry about my
feelings toward her. She is like Eligio; the world no longer touches her."
"What did the Nagual do to her that was so special?"
"He taught her things he never taught anyone else. He never pampered
her or anything like that. He trusted her. She knows everything about
everybody. The Nagual also told me everything except things about her. Maybe
that's why I don't like her. The Nagual told her to be my jailer. Wherever I
go I find her. She knows whatever I do. Right now, for instance, I wouldn't
be surprised if she shows up."
"Do you think she would?"
"I doubt it. Tonight, the wind is with me."
"What is she supposed to do? Does she have a special task?"
"I've told you enough about her. I'm afraid that if I keep on talking
about her she will notice me from wherever she is, and I don't want that to
happen."
"Tell me, then, about the others."
"Some years after he found la Gorda, the Nagual found Eligio. He told
me that he had gone with you to his homeland. Eligio came to see you because
he was curious about you. The Nagual didn't notice him. He had known him
since he was a kid. But one morning, as the Nagual walked to the house where
you were waiting for him, he bumped into Eligio on the road. They walked
together for a short distance and then a dried piece of cholla got stuck on
the tip of Eligio's left shoe. He tried to kick it loose but its thorns were
like nails; they had gone deep into the sole of the shoe. The Nagual said
that Eligio pointed up to the sky with his finger and shook his foot and the
cholla came off like a bullet and went up into the air. Eligio thought it
was a big joke and laughed, but the Nagual knew that he had power, although
Eligio himself didn't even suspect it. That is why, with no trouble at all,
he became the perfect, impeccable warrior.
"It was my good fortune that I got to know him. The Nagual thought that
both of us were alike in one thing. Once we hook onto something we don't let
go of it. The good fortune of knowing Eligio was a fortune that I shared
with no one else, not even with la Gorda. She met Eligio but didn't really
get to know him, just like yourself. The Nagual knew from the beginning that
Eligio was exceptional and he isolated him. He knew that you and the girls
were on one side of the coin and Eligio was by himself on the other side.
The Nagual and Genaro were indeed very fortunate to have found him.
"I first met him when the Nagual brought him over to my house. Eligio
didn't get along with my girls. They hated him and feared him too. But he
was thoroughly indifferent. The world didn't touch him. The Nagual didn't
want you, in particular, to have much to do with Eligio. The Nagual said
that you are the kind of sorcerer one should stay away from. He said that
your touch doesn't soothe, it spoils instead. He told me that your spirit
takes prisoners. He was somehow revolted by you and at the same time he
liked you. He said that you were crazier than Josefina when he found you and
that you still are."
It was an unsettling feeling to hear someone else telling me what don
Juan thought of me. At first I tried to disregard what dona Soledad was
saying, but then I felt utterly stupid and out of place trying to protect my
ego.
"He bothered with you," she went on, "because he was commanded by power
to do so. And he, being the impeccable warrior he was, yielded to his master
and gladly did what power told him to do with you."
There was a pause. I was aching to ask her more about don Juan's
feelings about me. I asked her to tell me about her other girl instead.
"A month after he found Eligio, the Nagual found Rosa," she said. "Rosa
was the last one. Once he found her he knew that his number was complete."
"How did he find her?"
"He had gone to see Benigno in his homeland. He was approaching the
house when Rosa came out from the thick bushes on the side of the road,
chasing a pig that had gotten loose and was running away. The pig ran too
fast for Rosa. She bumped into the Nagual and couldn't catch up with the
pig. She then turned against the Nagual and began to yell at him. He made a
gesture to grab her and she was ready to fight him. She insulted him and
dared him to lay a hand on her. The Nagual liked her spirit immediately but
there was no omen. The Nagual said that he waited a moment before walking
away, and then the pig came running back and stood beside him. That was the
omen. Rosa put a rope around the pig. The Nagual asked her point-blank if
she was happy in her job. She said no. She was a live-in servant. The Nagual
asked her if she would go with him and she said that if it was what she
thought it was for, the answer was no. The Nagual said it was for work and
she wanted to know how much he would pay. He gave her a figure and then she
asked what kind of work it was. The Nagual said that it was to work with him
in the tobacco fields of Veracruz. She told him then that she had been
testing him; if he would have said he wanted her to work as a maid, she
would have known that he was a liar, because he looked like someone who had
never had a home in his life.
The Nagual was delighted with her and told her that if she wanted to
get out of the trap she was in she should come to Benigno's house before
noon. He also told her that he would wait no longer than twelve; if she came
she had to be prepared for a difficult life and plenty of work. She asked
him how far was the place of the tobacco fields. The Nagual said three days'
ride in a bus. Rosa said that if it was that far she would certainly be
ready to go as soon as she got the pig back in his pen. And she did just
that. She came here and everyone liked her. She was never mean or
bothersome; the Nagual didn't have to force her or trick her into anything.
She doesn't like me at all, and yet she takes care of me better than anyone
else. I trust her, and yet I don't like her at all, and when I leave I will
miss her the most. Can you beat that?"
I saw a flicker of sadness in her eyes. I could not sustain my
distrust. She wiped her eyes with a casual movement of her hand.
There was a natural break in the conversation at that point. It was
getting dark by then and writing was very difficult; besides I had to go to
the bathroom. She insisted that I use the outhouse before she did as the
Nagual himself would have done.
Afterward she brought two round tubs the size of a child's bathtub,
filled them half-full with warm water and added some green leaves after
mashing them thoroughly with her hands. She told me in an authoritative tone
to wash myself in one of the tubs while she did the same in the other. The
water had an almost perfumed smell. It caused a ticklish sensation. It felt
like a mild menthol on my face and arms.
We went back to her room. She put my writing gear, which I had left on
her bed, on top of one of her chests of drawers. The windows were open and
there was still light. It must have been close to seven.
Dona Soledad lay on her back. She was smiling at me. I thought that she
was the picture of warmth. But at the same time and in spite of her smile,
her eyes gave out a feeling of ruthlessness and unbending force.
I asked her how long she had been with don Juan as his woman or
apprentice. She made fun of my cautiousness in labeling her. Her answer was
seven years. She reminded me then that I had not seen her for five. I had
been convinced up to that point that I had seen her two years before. I
tried to remember the last time, but I could not.
She told me to lie down next to her. I knelt on the bed, by her side.
In a very soft voice she asked me if I was afraid. I said no, which was the
truth. There in her room, at that moment, I was being confronted by an old
response of mine, which had manifested itself countless times, a mixture of
curiosity and suicidal indifference.
Almost in a whisper she said that she had to be impeccable with me and
tell me that our meeting was crucial for both of us. She said that the
Nagual had given her direct and detailed orders of what to do. As she talked
I could not help laughing at her tremendous effort to sound like don Juan. I
listened to her statements and could predict what she would say next.
Suddenly she sat up. Her face was a few inches from mine. I could see
her white teeth shining in the semidarkness of the room. She put her arms
around me in an embrace and pulled me on top of her.
My mind was very clear, and yet something was leading me deeper and
deeper into a sort of morass. I was experiencing myself as something I had
no conception of. Suddenly I knew that I had, somehow, been feeling her
feelings all along. She was the strange one. She had mesmerized me with
words. She was a cold, old woman. And her designs were not those of youth
and vigor, in spite of her vitality and strength. I knew then that don Juan
had not turned her head in the same direction as mine. That thought would
have been ridiculous in any other context; nonetheless, at that moment I
took it as a true insight. A feeling of alarm swept through my body. I
wanted to get out of her bed. But there seemed to be an extraordinary force
around me that kept me fixed, incapable of moving away. I was paralyzed.
She must have felt my realization. All of a sudden she pulled the band
that tied her hair and in one swift movement she wrapped it around my neck.
I felt the tension of the band on my skin, but somehow it did not seem real.
Don Juan had always said to me that our great enemy is the fact that we
never believe what is happening to us. At the moment dona Soledad was
wrapping the cloth like a noose around my throat, I knew what he meant. But
even after I had had that intellectual reflection, my body did not react. I
remained flaccid, almost indifferent to what seemed to be my death.
I felt the exertion of her arms and shoulders as she tightened the band
around my neck. She was choking me with great force and expertise. I began
to gasp. Her eyes stared at me with a maddening glare. I knew then that she
intended to kill me.
Don Juan had said that when we finally realize what is going on it is
usually too late to turn back. He contended that it is always the intellect
that fools us, because it receives the message first, but rather than giving
it credence and acting on it immediately, it dallies with it instead.
I heard then, or perhaps I felt, a snapping sound at the base of my
neck, right behind my windpipe. I knew that she had cracked my neck. My ears
buzzed and then they tingled. I experienced an exceptional clarity of
hearing. I thought that I must be dying. I loathed my incapacity to do
anything to defend myself. I could not even move a muscle to kick her. I was
unable to breathe anymore. My body shivered, and suddenly I stood up and was
free, out of her deadly grip. I looked down on the bed. I seemed to be
looking down from the ceiling. I saw my body, motionless and limp on top of
hers. I saw horror in her eyes. I wanted her to let go of the noose. I had a
fit of wrath for having been so stupid and hit her smack on the forehead
with my fist. She shrieked and held her head and then passed out, but before
she did I caught a fleeting glimpse of a phantasmagoric scene. I saw dona
Soledad being hurled out of the bed by the force of my blow. I saw her
running toward the wall and huddling up against it like a frightened child.
The next impression I had was of having a terrible difficulty in
breathing. My neck hurt. My throat seemed to have dried up so intensely that
I could not swallow. It took me a long time to gather enough strength to get
up. I then examined dona Soledad. She was lying unconscious on the bed. She
had an enormous red lump on her forehead. I got some water and splashed it
on her face, the way don Juan had always done with me. When she regained
consciousness I made her walk, holding her by the armpits. She was soaked in
perspiration. I applied towels with cold water on her forehead. She threw
up, and I was almost sure she had a brain concussion. She was shivering. I
tried to pile clothes and blankets over her for warmth but she took off all
her clothes and turned her body to face the wind. She asked me to leave her
alone and said that if the wind changed direction, it would be a sign that
she was going to get well. She held my hand in a sort of brief handshake and
told me that it was fate that had pitted us against each other.
"I think one of us was supposed to die tonight," she said.
"Don't be silly. You're not finished yet," I said and really meant it.
Something made me feel confident that she was all right. I went
outside, picked up a stick and walked to my car. The dog growled. He was
still curled up on the seat. I told him to get out. He meekly jumped out.
There was something different about him. I saw his enormous shape trotting
away in the semidarkness. He went to his corral.
I was free. I sat in the car for a moment to deliberate. No, I was not
free. Something was pulling me back into the house. I had unfinished
business there. I was no longer afraid of dona Soledad. In fact, an
extraordinary indifference had taken possession of me. I felt that she had
given me, deliberately or unconsciously, a supremely important lesson. Under
the horrendous pressure of her attempt to kill me, I had actually acted upon
her from a level that would have been inconceivable under normal
circumstances. I had nearly been strangled; something in that confounded
room of hers had rendered me helpless and yet I had extricated myself. I
could not imagine what had happened. Perhaps it was as don Juan had always
maintained, that all of us have an extra potential, something which is there
but rarely gets to be used. I had actually hit dona Soledad from a phantom
position.
I took my flashlight from the car, went back into the house, lit all
the kerosene lanterns I could find and sat down at the table in the front
room to write. Working relaxed me.
Toward dawn dona Soledad stumbled out of her room. She could hardly
keep her balance. She was completely naked. She became ill and collapsed by
the door. I gave her some water and tried to cover her with a blanket. She
refused it. I became concerned with the possibility of her losing body heat.
She muttered that she had to be naked if she expected the wind to cure her.
She made a plaster of mashed leaves, applied it to her forehead and fixed it
in place with her turban. She wrapped a blanket around her body and came to
the table where I was writing and sat down facing me. Her eyes were red. She
looked truly sick.
"There is something I must tell you," she said in a weak voice. "The
Nagual set me up to wait for you; I had to wait even if it took twenty
years. He gave me instructions on how to entice you and steal your power. He
knew that sooner or later you had to come to see Pablito and Nestor, so he
told me to use that opportunity to bewitch you and take everything you have.
The Nagual said that if I lived an impeccable life my power would bring you
here when there would be no one else in the house. My power did that. Today
you came when everybody was gone. My impeccable life had helped me. All that
was left for me to do was to take your power and then kill you."
"But why would you want to do such a horrible thing?"
"Because I need your power for my own journey. The Nagual had to set it
up that way. You had to be the one; after all, I really don't know you. You
mean nothing to me. So why shouldn't I take something I need so desperately
from someone who doesn't count at all? Those were the Nagual's very words."
"Why would the Nagual want to hurt me? You yourself said that he
worried about me."
"What I've done to you tonight has nothing to do with what he feels for
you or myself. This is only between the two of us. There have been no
witnesses to what took place today between the two of us, because both of us
are part of the Nagual himself. But you in particular have received and kept
something of him that I don't have, something that I need desperately, the
special power that he gave you. The Nagual said that he had given something
to each of his six children. I can't reach Eligio. I can't take it from my
girls, so that leaves you as my prey. I made the power the Nagual gave me
grow, and in growing it changed my body. You made your power grow too. I
wanted that power from you and for that I had to kill you. The Nagual said
that even if you didn't die, you would fall under my spell and become my
prisoner for life if I wanted it so. Either way, your power was going to be
mine."
"But how could my death benefit you?"
"Not your death but your power. I did it because I need a boost;
without it I will have a hellish time on my journey. I don't have enough
guts. That's why I dislike la Gorda. She's young and has plenty of guts. I'm
old and have second thoughts and doubts. If you want to know the truth, the
real struggle is between Pablito and myself. He is my mortal enemy, not you.
The Nagual said that your power could make my journey easier and help me get
what I need."
"How on earth can Pablito be your enemy?"
"When the Nagual changed me, he knew what would eventually happen.
First of all, he set me up so my eyes would face the north, and although you
and my girls are the same, I am the opposite of you people. I go in a
different direction. Pablito, Nestor and Benigno are with you; the direction
of their eyes is the same as yours. All of you will go together toward
Yucatan.
"Pablito is my enemy not because his eyes were set in the opposite
direction, but because he is my son. This is what I had to tell you, even
though you don't know what I am talking about. I have to enter into the
other world. Where the Nagual is now. Where Genaro and Eligio are now. Even
if I have to destroy Pablito to do that."
"What are you saying, dona Soledad? You're crazy! "
"No, I am not. There is nothing more important for us living beings
than to enter into that world. I will tell you that for me that is true. To
get to that world I live the way the Nagual taught me. Without the hope of
that world I am nothing, nothing. I was a fat old cow. Now that hope gives
me a guide, a direction, and even if I can't take your power, I still have
my purpose."
She rested her head on the table, using her arms as a pillow. The force
of her statements had numbed me. I had not understood what exactly she had
meant, but I could almost empathize with her plea, although it was the
strangest thing I had yet heard from her that night. Her purpose was a
warrior's purpose, in don Juan's style and terminology. I never knew,
however, that one had to destroy people in order to fulfill it.
She lifted up her head and looked at me with half-closed eyelids.
"At the beginning everything worked fine for me today," she said. "I
was a bit scared when you drove up. I had waited years for that moment. The
Nagual told me that you like women. He said you are an easy prey for them,
so I played you for a quick finish. I figured that you would go for it. The
Nagual had taught me how I should grab you at the moment when you are the
weakest. I was leading you to that moment with my body. But you became
suspicious. I was too clumsy. I had taken you to my room, as the Nagual told
me to do, so the lines of my floor would entrap you and make you helpless.
But you fooled my floor by liking it and by watching its lines intently. It
had no power as long as your eyes were on its lines. Your body knew what to
do. Then you scared my floor, yelling the way you did. Sudden noises like
that are deadly, especially the voice of a sorcerer. The power of my floor
died out like a flame. I knew it, but you didn't.
"You were about to leave then so I had to stop you. The Nagual had
shown me how to use my hand to grab you. I tried to do that, but my power
was low. My floor was scared. Your eyes had numbed its lines. No one else
has ever laid eyes on them. So I failed in my attempt to grab your neck. You
got out of my grip before I had time to squeeze you. I knew then that you
were slipping away and I tried one final attack. I used the key the Nagual
said would affect you the most, fright. I frightened you with my shrieks and
that gave me enough power to subdue you. I thought I had you, but my stupid
dog got excited. He's stupid and knocked me off of you when I had you almost
under my spell. As I see it now, perhaps my dog was not so stupid after all.
Maybe he noticed your double and charged against it but knocked me over
instead."
"You said he wasn't your dog."
"I lied. He was my trump card. The Nagual taught me that I should
always have a trump card, an unsuspected trick. Somehow, I knew that I might
need my dog. When I took you to see my friend, it was really him; the coyote
is my girls' friend. I wanted my dog to sniff you. When you ran into the
house I had to be rough with him. I pushed him inside your car, making him
yell with pain. He's too big and could hardly fit over the seat. I told him
right then to maul you to shreds. I knew that if you had been badly bitten
by my dog you would have been helpless and I could have finished you off
without any trouble. You escaped again, but you couldn't leave the house. I
knew then that I had to be patient and wait for the darkness. Then the wind
changed direction and I was sure of my success.
"The Nagual had told me that he knew without a doubt that you would
like me as a woman. It was a matter of waiting for the right moment. The
Nagual said that you would kill yourself once you realized I had stolen your
power. But in case I failed to steal it, or in case you didn't kill
yourself, or in case I didn't want to keep you alive as my prisoner, I
should then use my headband to choke you to death. He even showed me the
place where I had to throw your carcass: a bottomless pit, a crack in the
mountains, not too far from here, where goats always disappear. The Nagual
never mentioned your awesome side, though. I've told you that one of us was
supposed to die tonight. I didn't know it was going to be me. The Nagual
gave me the feeling that I would win. How cruel of him not to tell me
everything about you."
"Think of me, dona Soledad. I knew even less than you did."
"It's not the same. The Nagual prepared me for years for this. I knew
every detail. You were in my bag. The Nagual even showed me the leaves I
should always keep fresh and handy to make you numb. I put them in the tub
as if they were for fragrance. You didn't notice that I used another kind of
leaf for my tub. You fell for everything I had prepared for you. And yet
your awesome side won in the end."
"What do you mean my awesome side?"
"The one that hit me and will kill me tonight. Your horrendous double
that came out to finish me. I will never forget it and if I live, which I
doubt, I will never be the same."
"Did it look like me?"
"It was you, of course, but not as you look now. I can't really say
what it looked like. When I want to think about it I get dizzy."
I told her about my fleeting perception that she had left her body with
the impact of my blow. I intended to prod her with the account. It seemed to
me that the reason behind the whole event had been to force us to draw from
sources that are ordinarily barred to us. I had positively given her a
dreadful blow; I had caused profound damage to her body, and yet I could not
have done it myself. I did feel I had hit her with my left fist, the
enormous red lump on her forehead attested to that, yet I had no swelling in
my knuckles or the slightest pain or discomfort in them. A blow of that
magnitude could even have broken my hand.
Upon hearing my description of how I had seen her huddling against the
wall, she became thoroughly desperate. I asked her if she had had any
inkling of what I had seen, such as a sensation of leaving her body, or a
fleeting perception of the room.
"I know now that I am doomed," she said. "Very few survive a touch of
the double. If my soul has left already I won't survive. I'll get weaker and
weaker until I die."
Her eyes had a wild glare. She raised herself and seemed to be on the
verge of striking me, but she slumped back.
"You've taken my soul," she said. "You must have it in your pouch now.
Why did you have to tell me, though?"
I swore to her that I had had no intentions of hurting her, that I had
acted in whatever form only in self-defense and therefore I bore no malice
toward her.
"If you don't have my soul in your pouch, it's even worse," she said.
"It must be roaming aimlessly around. I will never get it back, then."
Dona Soledad seemed to be void of energy. Her voice became weaker. I
wanted her to go and lie down. She refused to leave the table.
"The Nagual said that if I failed completely I should then give you his
message," she said. "He told me to tell you that he had replaced your body a
long time ago. You are himself now."
"What did he mean by that?"
"He's a sorcerer. He entered into your old body and replaced its
luminosity. Now you shine like the Nagual himself. You're not your father's
son anymore. You are the Nagual himself."
Dona Soledad stood up. She was groggy. She appeared to want to say
something else but had trouble vocalizing. She walked to her room. I helped
her to the door; she did not want me to enter. She dropped the blanket that
covered her and lay down on her bed. She asked in a very soft voice if I
would go to a hill a short distance away and watch from there to see if the
wind was coming. She added in a most casual manner that I should take her
dog with me. Somehow her request did not sound right. I said that I would
climb up on the roof and look from there. She turned her back to me and said
that the least I could do for her was to take her dog to the hill so that he
could lure the wind. I became very irritated with her. Her room in the
darkness gave out a most eerie feeling. I went into the kitchen and got two
lanterns and brought them back with me. At the sight of the light she
screamed hysterically. I let out a yell myself but for a different reason.
When the light hit the room I saw the floor curled up, like a cocoon, around
her bed. My perception was so fleeting that the next instant I could have
sworn that the shadow of the wire protective masks of the lanterns had
created that ghastly scene. My phantom perception made me furious. I shook
her by the shoulders. She wept like a child and promised not to try any more
of her tricks. I placed the lanterns on the chest of drawers and she fell
asleep instantly.
By midmorning the wind had changed. I felt a strong gust coming through
the north window. Around noon dona Soledad came out again. She seemed a bit
wobbly. The redness in her eyes had disappeared and the swelling of her
forehead had diminished; there was hardly any visible lump.
I felt that it was time for me to leave. I told her that although I had
written down the message that she had given me from don Juan, it did not
clarify anything.
"You're not your father's son anymore. You are now the Nagual himself,"
she said.
There was something truly incongruous about me. A few hours before I
had been helpless and dona Soledad had actually tried to kill me; but at
that moment, when she was speaking to me, I had forgotten the horror of that
event. And yet, there was another part of me that could spend days mulling
over meaningless confrontations with people concerning my personality or my
work. That part seemed to be the real me, the me that I had known all my
life. The me, however, who had gone through a bout with death that night,
and then forgotten about it, was not real. It was me and yet it was not. In
the light of such incongruities don Juan's claims seemed to be less
farfetched, but still unacceptable.
Dona Soledad seemed absentminded. She smiled peacefully.
"Oh, they are here!" she said suddenly. "How fortunate for me. My girls
are here. Now they'll take care of me."
She seemed to have had a turn for the worse. She looked as strong as
ever, but her behavior was more disassociated. My fears mounted. I did not
know whether to leave her there or take her to a hospital in the city,
several hundred miles away.
All of a sudden she jumped up like a little child and ran out the front
door and down the driveway toward the main road. Her dog ran after her. I
hurriedly got in my car in order to catch up with her. I had to drive down
the path in reverse since there was no space to turn around. As I approached
the road I saw through the back window that dona Soledad was surrounded by
four young women.
The Little Sisters
Dona Soledad seemed to be explaining something to the four women who
surrounded her. She moved her arms in dramatic gestures and held her head in
her hands. It was obvious she was telling them about me. I drove up the
driveway to where I had been parked before. I intended to wait for them
there. I deliberated whether to remain in the car or to sit casually on the
left fender. I opted to stand by the car door, ready to jump in and drive
away if something like the events of the previous day were going to be
repeated.
I was very tired. I had not slept a wink for over twenty-four hours. My
plan was to disclose to the young women as much as I could about the
incident with dona Soledad, so they could take the necessary steps to aid
her, and then I would leave. Their presence had brought about a definite
change. Everything seemed to be charged with new vigor and energy. I felt
the change when I saw dona Soledad surrounded by them.
Dona Soledad's revelation that they were don Juan's apprentices had
given them such a tantalizing appeal that I could hardly wait to meet them.
I wondered if they were like dona Soledad. She had said that they were like
myself and that we were going in the same direction. That could be easily
interpreted in a positive sense. I wanted to believe that more than anything
else.
Don Juan used to call them "las hermanitas," the little sisters, a most
befitting name at least for the two I had met, Lidia and Rosa, two wispy,
pixie-like, charming young women. I figured that they must have been in
their early twenties when I had first met them, although Pablito and Nestor
always refused to talk about their ages. The other two, Josefina and Elena,
were a total mystery to me. I used to hear their names being mentioned from
time to time, always in some unfavorable context. I had deduced from passing
remarks made by don Juan that they were somehow freakish, one was crazy and
the other obese; thus they were kept in isolation. Once I bumped into
Josefina as I walked into the house with don Juan. He introduced me to her,
but she covered her face and ran away before I had time to greet her.
Another time I caught Elena washing clothes. She was enormous. I thought
that she must be suffering from a glandular disorder. I said hello to her
but she did not turn around. I never saw her face.
After the buildup that dona Soledad had given them with her disclosure,
I felt driven to talk with the mysterious "hermanitas," and at the same time
I was almost afraid of them.
I casually looked down the driveway, bracing myself to meet all of them
at once. The driveway was deserted. There was no one approaching, and only a
minute before they had been no more than thirty yards from the house. I
climbed up on the roof of the car to look. There was no one coming, not even
the dog. I panicked. I slid down and was about to jump in the car and drive
away when I heard someone say, "Hey, look who's here."
I quickly turned around to face two girls who had just stepped out of
the house. I deduced that all of them must have run ahead of me and entered
the house through the back door. I sighed with relief.
The two young girls came toward me. I had to admit to myself that I had
never really noticed them before. They were beautiful, dark and extremely
lean, but without being skinny. Their long black hair was braided. They wore
plain skirts, blue denim jackets and low-heeled, soft-soled brown shoes.
They were barelegged and their legs were shapely and muscular. They must
have been about five feet three or five feet four inches. They seemed to be
very physical; they moved with great prowess. One of them was Lidia, the
other was Rosa.
I greeted them, and then in unison they initiated a handshake. They
flanked me. They looked healthy and vigorous. I asked them to help me get
the packages out of the trunk. As we were carrying them into the house, I
heard a deep growl, so deep and near that it seemed more like a lion's roar.
"What was that?" I asked Lidia.
"Don't you know?" she asked with a tone of disbelief.
"It must be the dog," Rosa said as they ran into the house, practically
dragging me with them.
We placed the packages on the table and sat on two benches. Both girls
were facing me. I told them that dona Soledad was very ill and that I was
about to take her to the hospital in the city, since I did not know what
else to do to help her.
As I spoke I realized that I was treading on dangerous ground. I had no
way of assessing how much information I should divulge to them about the
true nature of my bout with dona Soledad. I began to look for clues. I
thought that if I watched carefully, their voices or the expression on their
faces would betray how much they knew. But they remained silent and let me
do all the talking. I began to doubt that I should volunteer any information
at all. In my effort to figure out what to do and not blunder, I ended up
talking nonsense. Lidia cut me off. In a dry tone she said that I should not
concern myself with dona Soledad's health because they had already taken
steps to help her. That statement forced me to ask her if she knew what dona
Soledad's trouble was.
"You've taken her soul," she said accusingly.
My first reaction was to defend myself. I began to talk vehemently but
ended up contradicting myself. They stared at me. I was making no sense at
all. I tried again to say the same thing in a different way. My fatigue was
so intense that I could hardly organize my thoughts. Finally I gave up.
"Where are Pablito and Nestor?" I asked after a long pause.
"They'll be here shortly," Lidia said briskly.
"Were you with them?" I asked.
"No! " she exclaimed, and stared at me.
"We never go together," Rosa explained. "Those bums are different from
us."
Lidia made an imperative gesture with her foot to shut her up. She
seemed to be the one who gave the orders. Catching the movement of her feet
brought to my awareness a most peculiar facet of my relationship with don
Juan. In the countless times that we had roamed together, he had succeeded
in teaching me, without really trying, a system of covert communication
through some coded movements of the feet. I watched Lidia give Rosa the sign
for horrible, a sign given when anything that happens to be in sight of the
signers is unpleasant or dangerous. In this case me. I laughed. I remembered
that don Juan had given me that sign when I first met don Genaro.
I pretended not to be aware of what was going on in order to find out
if I could decode all their signs.
Rosa made the sign that she wanted to step on me. Lidia answered with
an imperative sign for no.
According to don Juan, Lidia was very talented. As far as he was
concerned she was more sensitive and alert than Pablito and Nestor and
myself. I had always been incapable of making friends with her. She was
aloof, and very cutting. She had enormous, black, shifty eyes that never
looked straight at anyone, high cheekbones and a chiseled nose, which was a
bit flat and broad at the bridge. I remembered her having red, sore eyelids
and everyone taunting her on account of that. The redness of her eyelids had
disappeared but she continued to rub her eyes and blink a great deal. During
my years of association with don Juan and don Genaro I had seen Lidia the
most, and yet we had probably never exchanged more than a dozen words with
each other. Pablito regarded her as a most dangerous being. I always thought
she was just extremely shy.
Rosa, on the other hand, was very boisterous. I thought she was the
youngest. Her eyes were very frank and shiny. She was never shifty, but very
bad-tempered. I had talked with Rosa more than anyone else. She was
friendly, very bold and very funny.
"Where are the others?" I asked Rosa. "Aren't they going to come out?"
"They will be out shortly," Lidia answered.
I could tell from their expressions that friendliness was not what they
had in mind. Judging from their foot messages they were as dangerous as dona
Soledad, and yet as I sat there looking at them it occurred to me that they
were gorgeously beautiful. I had the warmest feelings for them. In fact, the
more they stared into my eyes the more intense that feeling became. At one
moment it was sheer passion that I felt for them. They were so alluring that
I could have sat there for hours just looking at them, but a sobering
thought made me stand up. I was not going to repeat my bungling of the night
before. I decided that the best defense was to put my cards on the table. In
a firm tone I told them that don Juan had set up some sort of trial for me
using dona Soledad, or vice versa. Chances were that he had also set them up
in the same fashion, and we were going to be pitted against one another in
some sort of battle that could result in injury to some of us. I appealed to
their sense of warriorship. If they were the truthful heirs of don Juan,
they had to be impeccable with me, reveal their designs and not behave like
ordinary, greedy human beings.
I turned to Rosa and asked her the reason for wishing to step on me.
She was taken aback for an instant and then she became angry. Her eyes
flared with rage; her small mouth contracted.
Lidia, in a very coherent manner, said that I had nothing to fear from
them, and that Rosa was angry with me because I had hurt dona Soledad. Her
feelings were purely a personal reaction.
I said then that it was time I left. I stood up. Lidia made a gesture
to stop me. She seemed scared or deeply concerned. She began to protest,
when a noise coming from outside the door distracted me. The two girls
jumped to my side. Something heavy was leaning or pushing against the door.
I noticed then that the girls had secured it with the heavy iron bar. I had
a feeling of disgust. The whole affair was going to be repeated again and I
was sick and tired of it all.
The girls glanced at each other, then looked at me and then looked at
each other again.
I heard the whining and heavy breathing of a large animal outside the
house. It might have been the dog. Exhaustion blinded me at that point. I
rushed to the door, removed the heavy iron bar and started to open it. Lidia
threw herself against the door and shut it again.
"The Nagual was right," she said, out of breath. "You think and think.
You're dumber than I thought."
She pulled me back to the table. I rehearsed, in my mind, the best way
to tell them, once and for all, that I had had enough. Rosa sat next to me,
touching me; I could feel her leg nervously rubbing against mine. Lidia was
standing facing me, looking at me fixedly. Her burning black eyes seemed to
be saying something I could not understand.
I began to speak but I did not finish. I had a sudden and most profound
awareness. My body was aware of a greenish light, a fluorescence outside the
house. I did not see or hear anything. I was simply aware of the light as if
I were suddenly falling asleep and my thoughts were turning into images that
were superimposed on the world of everyday life. The light was moving at a
great speed. I could sense it with my stomach. I followed it, or rather I
focused my attention on it for an instant as it moved around. A great
clarity of mind ensued from focusing my attention on the light. I knew then
that in that house, in the presence of those people, it was wrong and
dangerous to behave as an innocent bystander.
"Aren't you afraid?" Rosa asked, pointing to the door.
Her voice disrupted my concentration.
I admitted that whatever was there was scaring me at a very deep level,
enough to make me die of fright. I wanted to say more, but right then I had
a surge of wrath and I wanted to see and talk with dona Soledad. I did not
trust her. I went directly to her room. She was not there. I began to call
her, bellowing her name. The house had one more room. I pushed the door open
and rushed inside. There was no one in there. My anger increased in the same
proportion as my fear.
I went out the back door and walked around to the front. Not even the
dog was in sight. I banged on the front door furiously. Lidia opened it. I
entered. I yelled at her to tell me where everybody was. She lowered her
eyes and did not answer. She wanted to close the door but I would not let
her. She quickly walked away and went into the other room.
I sat down again at the table. Rosa had not moved. She seemed to be
frozen on the spot.
"We are the same," she said suddenly. "The Nagual told us that."
"Tell me, then, what was prowling around the house?" I asked.
"The ally," she said.
"Where is it now?"
"It is still here. It won't go. The moment you're weak it'll squash
you. But we're not the ones who can tell you anything."
"Who can tell me, then?"
"La Gorda!" Rosa exclaimed, opening her eyes as wide as she could.
"She's the one. She knows everything."
Rosa asked me if she could close the door, just to be on the safe side.
Without waiting for an answer she inched her way to the door and slammed it
shut.
"There is nothing we can do except wait until everyone is here," she
said.
Lidia came back into the room with a package, an object wrapped up in a
piece of dark yellow cloth. She seemed very relaxed. I noticed that she had
a most commandeering touch. Somehow she imparted her mood to Rosa and
myself.
"Do you know what I have here?" she asked me.
I did not have the vaguest idea. She began to unwrap it in a very
deliberate manner, taking her time. Then she stopped and looked at me. She
seemed to vacillate. She grinned as if she were too shy to show what was in
the bundle.
"This package was left by the Nagual for you," she muttered, "but I
think we'd better wait for la Gorda."
I insisted that she unwrap it. She gave me a ferocious look and took
the package out of the room without saying another word.
I enjoyed Lidia's game. She had performed something quite in line with
don Juan's teachings. She had given me a demonstration of how to get the
best use out of an average situation. By bringing the package to me and
pretending that she was going to open it, after disclosing that don Juan had
left it for me, she had indeed created a mystery that was almost unbearable.
She knew that I had to stay if I wanted to find out the contents of that
package. I could think of a number of things that might be in that bundle.
Perhaps it was the pipe don Juan used when handling psychotropic mushrooms.
He had intimated that the pipe would be given to me for safekeeping. Or it
might have been his knife, or his leather pouch, or even his sorcery power
objects. On the other hand, it might have been merely a ploy on Lidia's
part; don Juan was too sophisticated, too abstract to leave me an heirloom.
I told Rosa that I was dead on my feet and weak from hunger. My idea
was to drive to the city, rest for a couple of days and then come back to
see Pablito and Nestor. I said that by then I might even get to meet the
other two girls.
Lidia returned then and Rosa told her of my intention to leave.
"The Nagual gave us orders to attend to you as if you were himself,"
Lidia said. "We are all the Nagual himself, but you are even more so, for
some reason that no one understands."
Both of them talked to me at once and guaranteed in various ways that
no one was going to attempt anything against me as dona Soledad had. Both of
them had such a fierce look of honesty in their eyes that my body was
overwhelmed. I trusted them.
"You must stay until la Gorda comes back," Lidia said.
"The Nagual said that you should sleep in his bed," Rosa added.
I began to pace the floor in the throes of a weird dilemma. On the one
hand, I wanted to stay and rest; I felt physically at ease and happy in
their presence, something I had not felt the day before with dona Soledad.
My reasonable side, on the other hand, had not relaxed at all. At that
level, I was as frightened as I had been all along. I had had moments of
blind despair and had taken bold actions, but after the momentum of those
actions had ceased, I had felt as vulnerable as ever.
I engaged in some soul-searching analysis as I paced the room almost
frantically. The two girls remained quiet, looking at me anxiously. Then all
of a sudden the riddle was solved; I knew that something in me was just
pretending to be afraid. I had become accustomed to reacting that way in don
Juan's presence. Throughout the years of our association I had relied
heavily on him to furnish me with convenient pacifiers for my fright. My
dependency on him had given me solace and security. But it was no longer
tenable. Don Juan was gone. His apprentices did not have his patience, or
his sophistication, or his sheer command. With them my need to seek solace
was plain stupidity.
The girls led me to the other room. The window faced the southeast, and
so did the bed, which was a thick mat, like a mattress. A two-foot-long,
bulky piece of maguey stalk had been carved so that the porous tissue served
as a pillow, or a neckrest. In the middle part of it there was a gentle dip.
The surface of the maguey was very smooth. It appeared to have been hand
rubbed. I tried the bed and the pillow. The comfort and bodily satisfaction
I experienced were unusual. Lying on don Juan's bed I felt secure and
fulfilled. An unequaled peace swept through my body. I had had a similar
feeling once before when don Juan had made a bed for me on top of a hill in
the desert in northern Mexico. I fell asleep.
I woke up in the early evening. Lidia and Rosa were nearly on top of
me, sound asleep. I stayed motionless for one or two seconds, then both of
them woke up at once.
Lidia yawned and said that they had had to sleep next to me in order to
protect me and make me rest. I was famished. Lidia sent Rosa to the kitchen
to make us some food. In the meantime she lit all the lanterns in the house.
When the food was ready we sat down at the table. I felt as if I had known
them or been with them all my life. We ate in silence.
When Rosa was clearing the table I asked Lidia if all of them slept in
the Nagual's bed; it was the only other bed in the house besides dona
Soledad's. Lidia said, in a matter-offact tone, that they had moved out of
that house years before to a place of their own in the same vicinity, and
that Pablito had also moved when they did and lived with Nestor and Benigno.
"But what's happened to you people? I thought that you were all
together," I said.
"Not anymore," Lidia replied. "Since the Nagual left we have had
separate tasks. The Nagual joined us and the Nagual took us apart."
"And where's the Nagual now?" I asked in the most casual tone I could
affect.
Both of them looked at me and then glanced at each other.
"Oh, we don't know," Lidia said. "He and Genaro left."
She seemed to be telling the truth, but I insisted once more that they
tell me what they knew.
"We really don't know anything," Lidia snapped at me, obviously
flustered by my questions. "They moved to another area. You have to ask that
question of la Gorda. She has something to tell you. She knew yesterday that
you had come and we rushed all night to get here. We were afraid that you
were dead. The Nagual told us that you are the only one we should help and
trust. He said that you are himself."
She covered her face and giggled and then added as an afterthought,
"But that's hard to believe."
"We don't know you," Rosa said. "That's the trouble. The four of us
feel the same way. We were afraid that you were dead and then when we saw
you, we got mad at you for not being dead. Soledad is like our mother; maybe
more than that."
They exchanged conspiratorial looks with each other. I immediately
interpreted that as a sign of trouble. They were up to no good. Lidia
noticed my sudden distrust, which must have been written all over my face.
She reacted with a series of assertions about their desire to help me. I
really had no reason to doubt their sincerity. If they had wanted to hurt me
they could have done so while I was asleep. She sounded so earnest that I
felt petty. I decided to distribute the gifts I had brought for them. I told
them that there were unimportant trinkets in the packages and that they
could choose any one they liked. Lidia said that they would prefer it if I
assigned the gifts myself. In a very polite tone she added that they would
be grateful if I would also cure Soledad.
"What do you think I should do to cure her?" I asked her after a long
silence.
"Use your double," she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
I carefully went over the fact that dona Soledad had nearly
assassinated me and that I had survived by the grace of something in me,
which was neither my skill nor my knowledge. As far as I was concerned that
undefined something that seemed to have delivered a blow to her was real,
but unreachable. In short, I could not help dona Soledad any more than I
could walk to the moon.
They listened to me attentively and remained quiet but agitated.
"Where is dona Soledad now?" I asked Lidia.
"She's with la Gorda," she said in a despondent tone. "La Gorda took
her away and is trying to cure her, but we really don't know where they are.
That's the truth."
"And where's Josefina?"
"She went to get the Witness. He is the only one who can cure Soledad.
Rosa thinks that you know more than the Witness, but since you're angry with
Soledad, you want her dead. We don't blame you."
I assured them that I was not angry with her, and above all I did not
want her dead.
"Cure her, then!" Rosa said in an angry, high-pitched voice. "The
Witness has told us that you always know what to do, and the Witness can't
be wrong."
"And who in the devil is the Witness?"
"Nestor is the Witness," Lidia said as if she were reluctant to voice
his name. "You know that. You have to."
I remembered that during our last meeting don Genaro had called Nestor
the Witness. I thought at the time that the name was a joke or a ploy that
don Genaro was using to ease the gripping tension and the anguish of those
last moments together.
"That was no joke," Lidia said in a firm tone. "Genaro and the Nagual
followed a different path with the Witness. They took him along with them
everywhere they went. And I mean everywhere! The Witness has witnessed all
there is to witness."
Obviously there was a tremendous misunderstanding between us. I labored
to explain that I was practically a stranger to them. Don Juan had kept me
away from everyone, including Pablito and Nestor. Outside of the casual
hellos and goodbyes that all of them had exchanged with me over the years,
we had never actually talked. I knew all of them mainly through the
descriptions that don Juan had given me. Although I had once met Josefina I
could not remember what she looked like, and all I had ever seen of la Gorda
was her gigantic behind. I said to them that I had not even known, until the
day before, that the four of them were don Juan's apprentices, and that
Benigno was part of the group as well.
They exchanged a coy look with each other. Rosa moved her lips to say
something but Lidia gave her a command with her feet. I felt that after my
long and soulful explanation they should not still sneak messages to each
other. My nerves were so taut that their covert foot movements were just the
thing to send me into a rage. I yelled at them at the top of my lungs and
banged on the table with my right hand. Rosa stood up with unbelievable
speed, and I suppose as a response to her sudden movement, my body, by
itself, without the notice of my reason, moved a step back, just in time to
avoid by inches a blow from a massive stick or some heavy object that Rosa
was wielding in her left hand. It came down on the table with a thunderous
noise.
I heard again, as I had heard the night before while dona Soledad was
choking me, a most peculiar and mysterious sound, a dry sound like a pipe
breaking, right behind my windpipe at the base of my neck. My ears popped,
and with the speed of lightning my left arm came down on top of Rosa's stick
and crushed it. I saw the whole scene myself, as if I had been watching a
movie.
Rosa screamed and I realized then that I had leaned forward with all my
weight and had struck the back of her hand with my left fist. I was
appalled. Whatever was happening to me was not real. It was a nightmare.
Rosa kept on screaming. Lidia took her into don Juan's room. I heard her
yells of pain for a few moments longer and then they stopped. I sat down at
the table. My thoughts were disassociated and incoherent.
The peculiar sound at the base of my neck was something I had become
keenly aware of. Don Juan had described it as the sound one makes at the
moment of changing speed. I had the faint recollection of having experienced
it in his company. Although I had become aware of it the previous night, I
had not fully acknowledged it until it happened with Rosa. I realized then
that the sound had created a special sensation of heat on the roof of my
mouth and inside my ears. The force and dryness of the sound made me think
of the peal of a large, cracked bell.
Lidia returned awhile later. She seemed more calm and collected. She
even smiled. I asked her to please help me unravel that riddle and tell me
what had happened. After a long vacillation she told me that when I had
yelled and banged on the table Rosa got excited and nervous, and believing I
was going to hurt them, she had tried to strike me with her "dream hand." I
had dodged her blow and hit her on the back of her hand, the same way I had
struck dona Soledad. Lidia said that Rosa's hand would be useless unless I
found a way to help her.
Rosa walked into the room then. Her arm was wrapped with a piece of
cloth. She looked at me. Her eyes were like those of a child. My feelings
were at the height of turmoil. Some part of me felt ugly and guilty. But
again another part remained unruffled. Had it not been for that part I would
not have survived either dona Soledad's attack or Rosa's devastating blow.
After a long silence I told them that it was very petty of me to be
annoyed by their foot messages, but that there was no comparison between
yelling or banging on the table and what Rosa had done. In view of the fact
that I had no familiarity with their practices, she could have severed my
arm with her blow.
I demanded, in a very intimidating tone, to see her hand. She
reluctantly unwrapped it. It was swollen and red. There was no doubt left in
my mind that these people were carrying out some sort of test that don Juan
had set up for me. By confronting them I was being hurled into a realm which
was impossible to reach or accept in rational terms. He had said time and
time again that my rationality comprised only a very small part of what he
had called the totality of oneself. Under the impact of the unfamiliar and
the altogether real danger of my physical annihilation, my body had had to
make use of its hidden resources, or die. The trick seemed to be in the
truthful acceptance of the possibility that such resources exist and can be
reached. The years of training had been but the steps to arrive to that
acceptance. Truthful to his premise of no compromise, don Juan had aimed at
a total victory or a total defeat for me. If the training had failed to put
me in contact with my hidden resources, the test would have made it evident,
in which case there would have been very little I could have done. Don Juan
had said to dona Soledad that I would have killed myself. Being such a
profound connoisseur of human nature, he was probably right.
It was time to adopt a new course of action. Lidia had said that I
could help Rosa and dona Soledad with the same force that had caused them
injury; the problem, therefore, was to get the right sequence of feelings,
or thoughts, or whatever, that led my body to unleash that force. I took
Rosa's hand and rubbed it. I willed it to be cured. I had only the best
feelings for her. I caressed her hand and hugged her for a long time. I
rubbed her head and she fell asleep on my shoulder but there was no change
in the redness or the swelling.
Lidia watched me without saying a word. She smiled at me. I wanted to
tell her that I was a fiasco as a healer. Her eyes seemed to catch my mood
and they held it until it froze.
Rosa wanted to sleep. She was either dead tired or ill. I did not want
to find out which. I picked her up in my arms; she was lighter than I would
have imagined. I took her to don Juan's bed and gently placed her on it.
Lidia covered her. The room was very dark. I looked out of the window and
saw a cloudless sky filled with stars. Up to that moment I had been
oblivious to the fact that we were at a very high altitude.
As I looked at the sky, I felt a surge of optimism. Somehow the stars
looked festive to me. The southeast was indeed a lovely direction to face.
I had a sudden urge that I felt obliged to satisfy. I wanted to see how
different the view of the sky was from dona Soledad's window, which faced
the north. I took Lidia by the hand with the intention of leading her there,
but a ticklish sensation on top of my head stopped me. It went like a ripple
down my back to my waist, and from there it went to the pit of my stomach. I
sat down on the mat. I made an effort to think about my feelings. It seemed
that at the very moment I had felt the tickling on my head my thoughts had
diminished in strength and number. I tried, but I could not involve myself
in the usual mental process that I call thinking.
My mental deliberations made me oblivious to Lidia. She had knelt on
the floor, facing me. I became aware that her enormous eyes were
scrutinizing me from a few inches away. I automatically took her hand again
and walked to dona Soledad's room. As we reached the door I felt her whole
body stiffening. I had to pull her. I was about to cross the threshold when
I caught sight of the bulky, dark mass of a human body huddled against the
wall opposite the door. The sight was so unexpected that I gasped and let go
of Lidia's hand. It was dona Soledad. She was resting her head against the
wall. I turned to Lidia. She had recoiled a couple of steps. I wanted to
whisper that dona Soledad had returned, but there were no sounds to my words
although I was sure I had vocalized them. I would have tried to talk again
had it not been that I had an urge to act. It was as if words took too much
time and I had very little of it. I stepped into the room and walked over to
dona Soledad. She appeared to be in great pain. I squatted by her side, and
rather than asking her anything, I lifted her face to look at her. I saw
something on her forehead; it looked like the plaster of leaves that she had
made for herself. It was dark, viscous to the touch. I felt the imperative
need to peel it off her forehead. In a very bold fashion I grabbed her head,
tilled it back and yanked the plaster off. It was like peeling off rubber.
She did not move or complain about pain. Underneath the plaster there was a
yellowishgreen blotch. It moved, as if it were alive or imbued with energy.
I looked at it for a moment, unable to do anything. I poked it with my
finger and it stuck to it like glue. I did not panic as I ordinarily would
have; I rather liked the stuff. I stirred it with the tips of my fingers and
all of it came off her forehead. I stood up. The gooey substance felt warm.
It was like a sticky paste for an instant and then it dried up between my
fingers and on the palm of my hand. I then felt another jolt of apprehension
and ran to don Juan's room. I grabbed Rosa's arm and wiped the same
fluorescent, yellowish-green stuff from her hand that I had wiped from dona
Soledad's forehead.
My heart was pounding so hard that I could hardly stand on my feet. I
wanted to lie down, but something in me pushed me to the window and made me
jog on the spot.
I cannot recall how long I jogged there. Suddenly I felt that someone
was wiping my neck and shoulders. I became aware then that I was practically
nude, perspiring profusely. Lidia had a cloth around my shoulders and was
wiping the sweat off my face. My normal thought processes came back to me
all at once. I looked around the room. Rosa was sound asleep. I ran to dona
Soledad's room. I expected to find her also asleep, but there was no one
there. Lidia had trailed behind me. I told her what had happened. She rushed
to Rosa and woke her up while I put on my clothes. Rosa did not want to wake
up. Lidia grabbed her injured hand and squeezed it. In one single, springing
movement Rosa stood up and was fully awake.
They began to rush around the house turning off the lanterns. They
seemed to be getting ready to run away. I wanted to ask them why they were
in such a hurry, when I realized that I had dressed in a great hurry myself.
We were rushing together; not only that, but they seemed to be waiting for
direct commands from me.
We ran out of the house carrying all the packages I had brought. Lidia
had advised me not to leave any of them behind; I had not yet assigned them
and they still belonged to me. I threw them in the back seat of the car
while the two girls crammed into the front. I started the car and backed up
slowly, finding my way in the darkness.
Once we were on the road I was brought face to face with the most
pressing issue. Both of them said in unison that I was the leader; their
actions were dependent on my decisions. I was the Nagual. We could not just
run out of the house and drive away aimlessly. I had to guide them. But the
truth was that I had no idea where to go or what to do. I turned casually to
look at them. The headlights cast a glare inside the car and their eyes were
like mirrors that reflected it. I remembered that don Juan's eyes did the
same; they seemed to reflect more light than the eyes of an average person.
I knew that the two girls were aware of my impasse. Rather than making
a joke about it in order to cover up my incapacity, I bluntly put the
responsibility of a solution in their laps. I said that I lacked practice as
the Nagual and would appreciate it if they would oblige me with a suggestion
or a hint as to where we should go. They seemed disgusted with me. They
clicked their tongues and shook their heads. I mentally shuffled through
various courses of action, none of which was feasible, such as driving them
to town, or taking them to Nestor's house, or even taking them to Mexico
City.
I stopped the car. I was driving toward town. I wanted more than
anything else in the world to have a heart-to-heart talk with the girls. I
opened my mouth to begin, but they turned away from me, faced each other and
put their arms around each other's shoulders. That appeared to be an
indication that they had locked themselves in and were not listening tome.
My frustration was enormous. What I craved for at that moment was don
Juan's mastery over any situation at hand, his intellectual companionship,
his humor. Instead I was in the company of two nincompoops.
I caught a gesture of dejection in Lidia's face and that stopped my
avalanche of self-pity. I became overtly aware, for the first time, that
there was no end to our mutual disappointment. Obviously they too were
accustomed, although in a different manner, to the mastery of don Juan. For
them the shift from the Nagual himself to me must have been disastrous.
I sat for a long while with the motor running. Then all at once I again
had a bodily shiver that started on the top of my head as a ticklish
sensation and I knew then what had happened when I had entered dona
Soledad's room awhile before. I had not seen her in an ordinary sense. What
I had thought was dona Soledad huddled against the wall was in fact the
memory of her leaving her body the instant after I had hit her. I also knew
that when I touched that gooey, phosphorescent substance I had cured her,
and that it was some sort of energy I had left in her head and in Rosa's
hand with my blows.
A vision of a particular ravine went through my mind. I became
convinced that dona Soledad and la Gorda were there. My knowledge was not a
mere conjecture, it was rather a truth that needed no further corroboration.
La Gorda had taken dona Soledad to the bottom of that particular ravine and
was at that precise moment attempting to cure her. I wanted to tell her that
it was wrong to treat the swelling in dona Soledad's forehead and that there
was no longer a need for them to stay there.
I described my vision to the girls. Both of them told me, the way don
Juan used to tell me, not to indulge. With him, however, that reaction was
more congruous. I had never really minded his criticisms or scorn, but the
two girls were in a different league. I felt insulted.
"I'll take you home," I said. "Where do you live?"
Lidia turned to me and in a most furious tone said that both of them
were my wards and that I had to deliver them to safety, since at the request
of the Nagual they had relinquished their freedom to act in order to help
me.
I had a fit of anger at that point. I wanted to slap the two girls, but
then I felt the curious shiver running through my body once more. It started
again as a tickling on top of my head which went down my back until it
reached my umbilical region, and then I knew where they lived. The
ticklishness was like a shield, a soft, warm sheet of film. I could sense it
physically, covering the area between my pubis and the edge of my rib cage.
My wrath disappeared and was replaced by a strange sobriety, an aloofness,
and at the same time a desire to laugh. I knew then of something
transcendental. Under the impact of dona Soledad and the little sisters'
actions, my body had suspended judgment; I had, in don Juan's terms, stopped
the world. I had amalgamated two disassociated sensations. The ticklishness
on the very top of my head and the dry cracking sound at the base of my
neck: between them lay the means to that suspension of judgment.
As I sat in my car with those two girls, on the side of a deserted
mountain road, I knew for a fact that for the first time I had had a
complete awareness of stopping the world. That feeling brought to my mind
the memory of another, similar, first-time bodily awareness I had had years
before. It had to do with the ticklishness on top of the head. Don Juan said
that sorcerers had to cultivate such a sensation and he described it at
great length. According to him, it was a sort of itching, which was neither
pleasurable nor painful, and which occurred on the very top of one's head.
In order to make me aware of it, on an intellectual level, he described and
analyzed its features and then, on the practical side, he attempted to guide
me in developing the necessary bodily awareness and memory of this feeling
by making me run under branches or rocks that protruded on a horizontal
plane a few inches above my height.
For years I tried to follow what he was pointing out to me, but on the
one hand I was incapable of understanding what he meant by his description,
and on the other hand I was incapable of providing my body with the adequate
memory by following his pragmatic steps. Never did I feel anything on top of
my head as I ran underneath the branches or rocks he had selected for his
demonstrations. But one day my body by itself discovered the sensation while
I was driving a high panel truck into a three-story parking structure. I
entered the gate of the structure at the same speed I usually did in my
small, two-door sedan; the result was that from the high seat of the truck I
perceived the transverse cement beam of the roof coming at my head. I could
not stop the truck in time and the feeling I got was that the cement beam
was scalping me. I had never driven a motor vehicle which was as high as
that truck, thus I was incapable of making the necessary perceptual
adjustments. The space between the roof of the truck and the roof of the
parking structure seemed nonexistent for me. I felt the beam with my scalp.
That day I drove for hours inside the structure, giving my body a
chance to store the memory of that ticklish sensation.
I faced the two girls and wanted to tell them that I had just found out
where they lived. I desisted. There was no way of describing to them that
the ticklish sensation had made me remember a casual remark that don Juan
had once made as we passed a house on our way to Pablito's place. He had
pointed out an unusual feature in the surroundings and said that that house
was an ideal place for quietness but was not a place to rest. I drove them
there.
Their house was rather big. It was also an adobe structure with a tile
roof like dona Soledad's. It had one long room in the front, a roofed,
open-air kitchen in back of the house, a huge patio next to the kitchen and
an area for chickens beyond the patio. The most important part of their
house, however, was a closed room with two doors, one opening to the front
room and the other to the back. Lidia said that they had built it
themselves. I wanted to see it, but both of them said that it was not the
appropriate time because Josefina and la Gorda were not present to show me
the parts of the room that belonged to them.
In the corner of the front room there was a sizable, built-in brick
platform. It was about eighteen inches high and had been constructed like a
bed with one end against the wall. Lidia put some thick straw mats on its
flat top and urged me to lie down and sleep while they watched over me.
Rosa had lit a lantern and hung it on a nail above the bed. There was
enough light to write. I explained to them that writing eased my tension and
asked if it bothered them.
"Why do you have to ask?" Lidia retorted. "Just do it!"
In the vein of a perfunctory explanation I told them that I had always
done some things, such as taking notes, which were strange even to don Juan
and don Genaro and would perforce be strange to them.
"We all do strange things," Lidia said dryly.
I sat down on the bed under the lantern, with my back against the wall.
They lay down next to me, one on each side. Rosa covered herself with a
blanket and went to sleep as if all she needed to do was to lie down. Lidia
said that then was the appropriate time and place for us to talk, although
she would prefer that I turn off the light because it made her sleepy.
Our conversation in the darkness centered around the whereabouts of the
other two girls. She said that she could not even imagine where la Gorda
was, but that Josefina was undoubtedly in the mountains, still looking for
Nestor, even though it was dark. She explained that Josefina was the most
capable one to take care of herself in eventualities such as being in a
deserted place in the dark. That was the reason why la Gorda had selected
her to run that errand.
I mentioned that in listening to them talk about la Gorda I had formed
the opinion that she was the boss. Lidia replied that la Gorda was indeed in
charge, and that the Nagual himself had put her in command. She added that
even if he had not done so, la Gorda would have taken over, sooner or later,
because she was the best.
I was compelled at that point to light the lantern in order to write.
Lidia complained that the light made it impossible to stay awake, but I
prevailed.
"What makes la Gorda the best?" I asked.
"She has more personal power," she said. "She knows everything.
Besides, the Nagual taught her how to control people."
"Do you envy la Gorda for being the best?"
"I used to, but not now."
"Why did you change?"
"I finally accepted my fate, as the Nagual told me."
"And what is your fate?"
"My fate. . . my fate is to be the breeze. To be a dreamer. My fate is
to be a warrior."
"Do Rosa or Josefina envy la Gorda?"
"No, they don't. All of us have accepted our fates. The Nagual said
that power comes only after we accept our fate without recriminations. I
used to complain a lot and feel terrible because I liked the Nagual. I
thought I was a woman. But he showed me that I was not. He showed me that I
was a warrior. My life had ended before I met him. This body that you see
here is new. The same thing happened to all of us. Perhaps you were not like
us, but to us the Nagual was a new life.
"When he told us that he was going to leave, because he had to do other
things, we thought we would die. But look at us now. We're alive, and do you
know why? Because the Nagual showed us that we were himself. He's here with
us. He'll always be here. We are his body and his spirit."
"Do all four of you feel the same way?"
"We are not four. We are one. That is our fate. We have to carry each
other. And you are the same. All of us are the same. Even Soledad is the
same, although she goes in a different direction."
"And Pablito, Nestor and Benigno? Where do they fit?"
"We don't know. We don't like them. Especially Pablito. He's a coward.
He has not accepted his fate and wants to wriggle out of it. He even wants
to chuck his chances as a sorcerer and live an ordinary life. That'll be
great for Soledad. But the Nagual gave us orders to help him. We arc getting
tired of helping him, though. Maybe one of these days la Gorda will push him
out of the way forever."
"Can she do that?"
"Can she do that! Of course she can. She's got more of the Nagual than
the rest of us. Perhaps even more than you."
"Why do you think the Nagual never told me that you were his
apprentices?"
"Because you're empty."
"Did he say that I was empty?"
"Everyone knows you're empty. It is written on your body."
"How can you tell that?"
"There is a hole in the middle."
"In the middle of my body? Where?"
She very gently touched a spot on the right side of my stomach. She
drew a circle with her finger as if she were following the edges of an
invisible hole four or five inches in diameter.
"Are you empty yourself, Lidia?"
"Are you kidding? I am complete. Can't you see?"
Her answers to my questions were taking a turn that I had not expected.
I did not want to antagonize her with my ignorance. I shook my head
affirmatively.
"Why do you think I have a hole here that makes me empty?" I asked
after deliberating what the most innocent question would be.
She did not answer. She turned her back to me and complained that the
light of the lantern bothered her eyes. I insisted on a response. She faced
me defiantly.
"I don't want to talk to you anymore," she said. "You are stupid. Not
even Pablito is that stupid and he's the worst."
I did not want to end up in another blind alley by pretending that I
knew what she was talking about, so I asked her again what caused my
emptiness. I coaxed her to talk, giving her ample assurances that don Juan
had never explained that topic to me. He had said time and time again that I
was empty and I understood him the way any Western man would understand that
statement. I thought he meant that I was somehow void of determination,
will, purpose or even intelligence. He had never spoken to me about a hole
in my body.
"There is a hole there on the right side," she said matter-offactly. "A
hole that a woman made when she emptied you."
"Would you know who the woman is?"
"Only you can tell that. The Nagual said that men, most of the time,
cannot tell who had emptied them. Women are more fortunate; they know for a
fact who emptied them."
"Are your sisters empty, like me?"
"Don't be stupid. How can they be empty?"
"Dona Soledad said that she was empty. Does she look like me?"
"No. The hole in her stomach was enormous. It was on both sides, which
meant that a man and a woman emptied her."
"What did dona Soledad do with a man and a woman?"
"She gave her completeness to them."
I vacillated for a moment before asking the next question. I wanted to
assess all the implications of her statement.
"La Gorda was even worse than Soledad," Lidia went on. "Two women
emptied her. The hole in her stomach was like a cavern. But now she has
closed it. She is complete again."
"Tell me about those two women."
"I just can't tell you anything more," she said in a most imperative
tone. "Only la Gorda can speak to you about this matter. Wait until she
comes."
"Why only la Gorda?"
"Because she knows everything."
"Is she the only one who knows everything?"
"The Witness knows as much, maybe even more, but he is Genaro himself
and that makes him very difficult to handle. We don't like him."
"Why don't you like him?"
"Those three bums are awful. They are crazy like Genaro. Well, they are
Genaro himself. They are always fighting us because they were afraid of the
Nagual and now they are taking their revenge on us. That's what la Gorda
says anyway."
"And what makes la Gorda say that?"
"The Nagual told her things he didn't tell the rest of us. She sees.
The Nagual said that you also see. Josefina, Rosa and I don't see, and yet
all five of us are the same. We are the same."
The phrase "we are the same," which dona Soledad had used the night
before, brought on an avalanche of thoughts and fears. I put my writing pad
away. I looked around. I was in a strange world lying in a strange bed in
between two young women I did not know. And yet I felt at ease there. My
body experienced abandon and indifference. I trusted them.
"Are you going to sleep here?" I asked.
"Where else?"
"How about your own room?"
"We can't leave you alone. We feel the same way you do; you are a
stranger, except that we are bound to help you. La Gorda said that no matter
how stupid you are, we have to look after you. She said we have to sleep in
the same bed with you as if you were the Nagual himself."
Lidia turned off the lantern. I remained sitting with my back against
the wall. I closed my eyes to think and I fell asleep instantly.
Lidia, Rosa and I had been sitting on a flat area just outside the
front door for nearly two hours, since eight o'clock in the morning. I had
tried to steer them into a conversation but they had refused to talk. They
seemed to be very relaxed, almost asleep. Their mood of abandonment was not
contagious, however. Sitting there in that forced silence had put me into a
mood of my own. Their house sat on top of a small hill; the front door faced
the east. From where I sat I could see almost the entire narrow valley that
ran from east to west. I could not see the town but I could see the green
areas of cultivated fields on the floor of the valley. On the other side and
flanking the valley in every direction, there were gigantic, round, eroded
hills. There were no high mountains in the vicinity of the valley, only
those enormous, eroded, round hills, the sight of which created in me the
most intense feeling of oppression. I had the sensation that those hills
were about to transport me to another time.
Lidia spoke to me all of a sudden and her voice disrupted my reverie.
She pulled my sleeve.
"Here comes Josefina," she said.
I looked at the winding trail that led from the valley to the house. I
saw a woman walking slowly up the trail, perhaps fifty yards away. I noticed
immediately the remarkable difference in age between Lidia and Rosa and the
approaching woman. I looked at her again. I would never have thought
Josefina to be that old. Judging by her slow gait and the posture of her
body, she seemed to be a woman in her midfifties. She was thin, wore a long,
dark skirt and was carrying a load of firewood on her back. She had a bundle
tied around her waist; it looked as though she had a bundled-up child riding
on her left hip. She seemed to be breast-feeding it as she walked. Her steps
were almost feeble. She could barely make the last steep slope before
reaching the house. When she finally stood in front of us, a few yards away,
she was panting so heavily that I attempted to help her sit down. She made a
gesture that seemed to say that she was all right.
I heard Lidia and Rosa giggling. I did not look at them because my
total attention had been taken by assault. The woman in front of me was
absolutely the most disgusting, foul creature I had ever seen. She untied
the bundle of firewood and dropped it on the floor with a loud clatter. I
jumped involuntarily, due in part to the loud noise and in part to the fact
that the woman nearly fell on my lap, pulled by the weight of the wood.
She looked at me for an instant and then lowered her eyes, seemingly
embarrassed by her clumsiness. She straightened her back and sighed with
apparent relief. Obviously, the load had been too great for her old body.
As she stretched her arms, her hair fell partially loose. She was
wearing a soiled headband tied over her forehead. Her hair was long and
graying and seemed dirty and matted. I could see the white hairs against the
dark brown of the headband. She smiled at me and sort of nodded her head.
All her teeth seemed to be missing; I could see the black hole of her
toothless mouth. She covered her face with her hand and laughed. She took
off her sandals and walked into the house without giving me time to say
anything. Rosa followed her.
I was dumbfounded. Dona Soledad had implied that Josefina was the same
age as Lidia and Rosa. I turned to Lidia. She was peering at me.
"I had no idea she was that old," I said.
"Yes, she's pretty old," she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Does she have a child?" I asked.
"Yes, and she takes him everywhere. She never leaves him with us. She's
afraid we are going to eat him."
"Is it a boy?"
"A boy."
"How old is he?"
"She's had him for some time. But I don't know his age. We thought that
she shouldn't have a child at her age. But she didn't pay any attention to
us."
"Whose child is he?"
"Josefina's, of course."
"I mean, who's the father?"
"The Nagual, who else?"
I thought that that development was quite extravagant and very
unnerving.
"I suppose anything is possible in the Nagual's world," I said.
I meant it more as a thought to myself than a statement made to Lidia.
"You bet," she said, and laughed.
The oppressiveness of those eroded hills became unbearable. There was
something truly abhorrent about that area, and Josefina had been the final
blow. On top of having an ugly, old, smelly body and no teeth, she also
seemed to have some sort of facial paralysis. The muscles on the left side
of her face appeared to be injured, a condition which created a most
unpleasant distortion of her left eye and the left side of her mouth. My
oppressive mood plummeted to one of sheer anguish. For an instant I toyed
with the idea, so familiar by then, of running to my car and driving away.
I complained to Lidia that I did not feel well. She laughed and said
that Josefina had no doubt scared me.
"She has that effect on people," she said. "Everybody hates her guts.
She's uglier than a cockroach."
"I remember seeing her once," I said, "but she was young."
"Things change," Lidia said philosophically, "one way or another. Look
at Soledad. What a change, eh? And you yourself have changed. You look more
massive than I remember you. You are looking more and more like the Nagual."
I wanted to say that the change in Josefina was abhorrent but I was
afraid that she might overhear me.
I looked at the eroded hills across the valley. I felt like fleeing
from them.
"The Nagual gave us this house," she said, "but it is not a house for
rest. We had another house before that was truly beautiful. This is a place
to steam up. Those mountains over there will drive you nuts."
Her boldness in reading my feelings gave me a respite. I did not know
what to say.
"We are all naturally lazy," she went on. "We don't like to strain
ourselves. The Nagual knew that, so he must have figured that this place
would drive us up the walls."
She stood up abruptly and said that she wanted something to eat. We
went to the kitchen, a semienclosed area with only two walls. At the open
end, to the right of the door, there was an earthen stove; at the other end,
where the two walls met, there was a large dining area with a long table and
three benches. The floor was paved with smooth river rocks. The flat roof
was about ten feet high and was resting on the two walls and on thick
supporting beams on the open sides.
Lidia poured me a bowl of beans and meat from a pot which cooked on a
very low fire. She heated up some tortillas over the fire. Rosa came in and
sat down next to me and asked Lidia to serve her some food.
I became immersed in watching Lidia use a ladle to scoop the beans and
meat. She seemed to have an eye for the exact amount. She must have been
aware that I was admiring her maneuvers. She took two or three beans from
Rosa's bowl and returned them to the pot.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Josefina coming into the kitchen. I
did not look at her, though. She sat facing me across the table. I had a
squeamish feeling in my stomach. I felt that I could not eat with that woman
looking at me. To ease my tension I joked with Lidia that there were still
two extra beans in Rosa's bowl that she had overlooked. She scooped up two
beans with the ladle with a precision that made me gasp. I laughed
nervously, knowing that once Lidia sat down I would have to move my eyes
from the stove and acknowledge the presence of Josefina.
I finally and reluctantly had to look across the table at Josefina.
There was a dead silence. I stared at her incredulously. My mouth fell open.
I heard the loud laughter of Lidia and Rosa. It took an endless moment for
me to put my thoughts and feelings in some sort of order. Whoever was facing
me was not the Josefina I had seen just awhile ago, but a very pretty girl.
She did not have Indian features as Lidia and Rosa did. She seemed to be
more Latin than Indian. She had a light olive complexion, a very small mouth
and a finely chiseled nose, small white teeth and short, black, curly hair.
She had a dimple on the left side of her face, which gave a definite
cockiness to her smile.
She was the girl I had met briefly years ago. She held my scrutiny. Her
eyes were friendly. I became possessed by degrees with some uncontrollable
nervousness. I ended up desperately clowning about my genuine bewilderment.
They laughed like children. After their laughter had subsided I wanted
to know what was the point of Josefina's histrionic display.
"She's practicing the art of stalking," Lidia said. "The Nagual taught
us to baffle people so they wouldn't notice us. Josefina is very pretty and
if she walks alone at night, no one will bother her if she is ugly and
smelly, but if she goes out as she really is, well, you yourself can tell
what would happen."
Josefina nodded affirmatively and then contorted her face into the
ugliest grimace possible.
"She can hold that face all day," Lidia said.
I contended that if I lived around that area I would certainly notice
Josefina in her disguise more readily than if she did not have one.
"That disguise was just for you," Lidia said, and all three of them
laughed. "And look how it baffled you. You noticed her child even more than
you noticed her."
Lidia went into their room and brought out a package of rags that
looked like a bundled-up child and threw it on the table in front of me. I
laughed uproariously with them.
"Do all of you have particular disguises?" I asked.
"No. Only Josefina. No one around here knows her as she really is,"
Lidia replied.
Josefina nodded and smiled but she remained silent. I liked her
tremendously. There was something so very innocent and sweet about her.
"Say something, Josefina," I said, grabbing her by her forearms.
She looked at me bewildered, and recoiled. I thought that I had gotten
carried away by my elation and perhaps grabbed her too hard. I let her go.
She sat up straight. She contorted her small mouth and thin lips and
produced a most grotesque outburst of grunts and shrieks.
Her whole face suddenly changed. A series of ugly, involuntary spasms
marred her tranquil expression of a moment before.
I looked at her, horrified. Lidia pulled me by the sleeve.
"Why do you have to scare her, stupid?" she whispered. "Don't you know
that she became mute and can't talk at all?"
Josefina obviously understood her and seemed bent on protesting. She
clenched her fist at Lidia and let out another outburst of extremely loud
and horrifying shrieks, and then choked and coughed. Rosa began to rub her
back. Lidia tried to do the same but Josefina nearly hit her in the face.
Lidia sat down next to me and made a gesture of impotence. She shrugged
her shoulders.
"She's that way," Lidia whispered to me.
Josefina turned to her. Her face was contorted in a most ugly grimace
of anger. She opened her mouth and bellowed at the top of her voice some
more frightening, guttural sounds.
Lidia slid off the bench and in a most unobtrusive manner left the
kitchen area.
Rosa held Josefina by the arm. Josefina seemed to be the epitome of
fury. She moved her mouth and contorted her face. In a matter of minutes she
had lost all the beauty and innocence that had enchanted me. I did not know
what to do. I tried to apologize but Josefina's inhuman sounds drowned out
my words. Finally Rosa took her into the house.
Lidia returned and sat across the table from me.
"Something went wrong up here," she said, touching her head.
"When did it happen?" I asked.
"A long time ago. The Nagual must have done something to her, because
all of a sudden she lost her speech."
Lidia seemed sad. I had the impression that her sadness showed against
her desire. I even felt tempted to tell her not to struggle so hard to hide
her emotions.
"How does Josefina communicate with you people?" I asked. "Does she
write?"
"Come on, don't be silly. She doesn't write. She's not you. She uses
her hands and feet to tell us what she wants."
Josefina and Rosa came back to the kitchen. They stood by my side. I
thought that Josefina was again the picture of innocence and candor. Her
beatific expression did not give the slightest inkling of the fact that she
could become so ugly, so fast. Looking at her I had the sudden realization
that her fabulous ability for gestures undoubtedly was intimately linked to
her aphasia. I reasoned that only a person who had lost her capacity to
verbalize could be so versed in mimicry.
Rosa said to me that Josefina had confided that she wished she could
talk, because she liked me very much.
"Until you came she was happy the way she was," Lidia said in a harsh
voice.
Josefina shook her head affirmatively, corroborating Lidia's statement,
and went into a mild outburst of sounds.
"I wish la Gorda was here," Rosa said. "Lidia always gets Josefina
angry."
"I don't mean to!" Lidia protested.
Josefina smiled at her and extended her arm to touch her. It seemed as
if she were attempting to apologize. Lidia brushed her hand away.
"Why, you mute imbecile," she muttered.
Josefina did not get angry. She looked away. There was so much sadness
in her eyes that I did not want to look at her. I felt compelled to
intercede.
"She thinks she's the only woman in the world who has problems," Lidia
snapped at me. "The Nagual told us to drive her hard and without mercy until
she no longer feels sorry for herself."
Rosa looked at me and reaffirmed Lidia's claim with a nod of her head.
Lidia turned to Rosa and ordered her to leave Josefina's side. Rosa
moved away complyingly and sat on the bench next to me.
"The Nagual said that one of these days she will talk again," Lidia
said to me.
"Hey!" Rosa said, pulling my sleeve. "Maybe you're the one who'll make
her talk."
"Yes! " Lidia exclaimed as if she had had the same thought. "Maybe
that's why we had to wait for you."
"It's so clear!" Rosa added with the expression of having had a true
revelation.
Both of them jumped to their feet and embraced Josefina.
"You're going to talk again!" Rosa exclaimed as she shook Josefina by
the shoulders.
Josefina opened her eyes and rolled them. She started making faint,
muffled sighs, as if she were sobbing, and ended up running back and forth,
crying like an animal. Her excitation was so great that she seemed to have
locked her jaws open. I honestly thought that she was on the brink of a
nervous breakdown. Lidia and Rosa ran to her side and helped her close her
mouth. But they did not try to calm her down.
"You're going to talk again! You're going to talk again!" they shouted.
Josefina sobbed and howled in a manner that sent chills down my spine.
I was absolutely confounded. I tried to talk sense to them. I appealed
to their reason, but then I realized that they had very little of it, by my
standards. I paced back and forth in front of them, trying to figure out
what to do.
"You are going to help her, aren't you?" Lidia demanded.
"Please, sir, please," Rosa pleaded with me.
I told them that they were crazy, that I could not possibly know what
to do. And yet, as I talked I noticed that there was a funny feeling of
optimism and certainty in the back of my mind. I wanted to discard it at
first, but it took hold of me. Once before I had had a similar feeling in
relation to a dear friend of mine who was mortally ill. I thought I could
make her well and actually leave the hospital where she lay dying. I even
consulted don Juan about it.
"Sure. You can cure her and make her walk out of that death trap," he
said.
"How?" I asked him.
"It's a very simple procedure," he said. "All you have to do is remind
her that she's an incurable patient. Since she's a terminal case she has
power. She has nothing to lose anymore. She's lost everything already. When
one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when
there is something we can still cling to."
"But is it enough just to remind her of that?"
"No. That will give her the boost she needs. Then she has to push the
disease away with her left hand. She must push her arm out in front of her
with her hand clenched as if she were holding a knob. She must push on and
on as she says out, out, out. Tell her that, since she has nothing else to
do, she must dedicate every second of her remaining life to performing that
movement. I assure you that she can get up and walk away, if she wants to."
"It sounds so simple," I said.
Don Juan chuckled.
"It seems simple," he said, "but it isn't. In order to do this your
friend needs an impeccable spirit."
He looked at me for a long time. He seemed to be measuring the concern
and sadness I felt for my friend.
"Of course," he added, "if your friend had an impeccable spirit she
wouldn't be there in the first place."
I told my friend what don Juan had said. But she was already too weak
even to attempt to move her arm.
In Josefina's case my rationale for my secret confidence was the fact
that she was a warrior with an impeccable spirit. Would it be possible, I
silently asked myself, to apply the same hand movement to her?
I told Josefina that her incapacity to speak was due to some sort of
blockage.
"Yes, yes, it's a blockage," Lidia and Rosa repeated after me.
I explained to Josefina the arm movement and told her that she had to
push that blockage by moving her arm in that fashion.
Josefina's eyes were transfixed. She seemed to be in a trance. She
moved her mouth, making barely audible sounds. She tried moving her arm, but
her excitation was so intense that she flung her arm without any
coordination. I tried to redirect her movements, but she appeared to be so
thoroughly befuddled that she could not even hear what I was saying. Her
eyes went out of focus and I knew she was going to faint. Rosa apparently
realized what was happening; she jumped away and grabbed a cup of water and
sprinkled it over Josefina's face. Josefina's eyes rolled back, showing the
whites of her eyes. She blinked repeatedly until she could focus her eyes
again. She moved her mouth, but she made no sound.
"Touch her throat!" Rosa yelled at me.
"No! No!" Lidia shouted back. "Touch her head. It's in her head, you
dummy! "
She grabbed my hand and I reluctantly let her place it on Josefina's
head.
Josefina shivered, and little by little she let out a series of faint
sounds. Somehow they seemed to me more melodious than the inhuman sounds she
made before.
Rosa also must have noticed the difference.
"Did you hear that? Did you hear that?" she asked me in a whisper.
But whatever the difference might have been, Josefina let out another
series of sounds more grotesque than ever. When she quieted down, she sobbed
for a moment and then entered into another state of euphoria. Lidia and Rosa
finally quieted her. She plunked down on the bench, apparently exhausted.
She could barely lift her eyelids to look at me. She smiled meekly.
"I am so very, very sorry," I said and held her hand.
Her whole body vibrated. She lowered her head and began to weep again.
I felt a surge of ultimate empathy for her. At that moment I would have
given my life to help her.
She sobbed uncontrollably as she tried to speak to me. Lidia and Rosa
appeared to be so caught up in her drama that they were making the same
gestures with their mouths.
"For heaven's sake, do something!" Rosa exclaimed in a pleading voice.
I experienced an unbearable anxiety. Josefina stood up and embraced me,
or rather clung to me in a frenzy and pushed me away from the table. At that
instant Lidia and Rosa, with astounding agility, speed and control, grabbed
me by the shoulders with both hands and at the same time hooked the heels of
my feet with their feet. The weight of Josefina's body and her embrace, plus
the speed of Lidia's and Rosa's maneuver, rendered me helpless. They all
moved at once, and before I knew what was happening, they had laid me on the
floor with Josefina on top of me. I felt her heart pounding. She held on to
me with great force; the sound of her heart reverberated in my ears. I felt
it pounding in my own chest. I tried to push her away but she held on fast.
Rosa and Lidia had me pinned down on the floor with their weight on my arms
and legs. Rosa cackled insanely and began nibbling on my side. Her small,
sharp teeth chattered as her jaws snapped open and shut with nervous spasms.
All at once I had a monstrous sensation of pain, physical revulsion and
terror. I lost my breath. My eyes could not focus. I knew that I was passing
out. I heard then the dry, cracking sound of a pipe breaking at the base of
my neck and felt the ticklish sensation on top of my head, running like a
shiver through my entire body. The next thing I knew I was looking at them
from the other side of the kitchen. The three girls were staring at me while
they lay on the floor.
"What are you people doing?" I heard someone say in a loud, harsh,
commanding voice.
I then had an inconceivable feeling. I felt Josefina let go of me and
stand up. I was lying on the floor, and yet I was also standing a distance
away from them, looking at a woman I had never seen before. She was by the
door. She walked toward me and stopped six or seven feet away. She stared at
me for a moment. I knew immediately that she was la Gorda. She demanded to
know what was going on.
"We were just playing a little joke on him," Josefina said clearing her
throat. "I was pretending to be mute."
The three girls huddled up close together and began to laugh. La Gorda
remained impassive, looking at me.
They had tricked me! I found my stupidity and gullibility so outrageous
that I had a fit of hysterical laughter, which was almost out of control. My
body shivered.
I knew that Josefina had not just been playing, as she had claimed. The
three of them had meant business. I had actually felt Josefina's body as a
force that, in fact, was getting inside my own body. Rosa's nibbling on my
side, which undoubtedly was a ruse to distract my attention, coincided with
the sensation I had had that Josefina's heart was pounding inside my chest.
I heard la Gorda urging me to calm down.
I had a nervous flutter in my midsection and then a quiet, calm anger
swept over me. I loathed them. I had had enough of them. I would have picked
up my jacket and writing pad and walked out of the house had it not been
that I was not quite myself yet. I was somewhat dizzy and my senses were
definitely out of line. I had had the sensation that when I had first looked
at the girls from across the kitchen, I was actually viewing them from a
position above my eye level, from a place close to the ceiling. But
something even more disconcerting was that I had actually perceived that the
ticklish sensation on top of my head was what scooped me from Josefina's
embrace. It was not as if something came out from the top of my head;
something actually did come out from the top of my head.
A few years before, don Juan and don Genaro had manoeuvred my
perception and I had had an impossible double sensation: I felt that don
Juan had fallen on top of me and pinned me to the ground, while at the same
time I felt I was still standing up. I was actually in both places at once.
In sorcerers' terms I could say that my body had stored the memory of that
double perception and seemed to have repeated it. There were, however, two
new things that had been added to my bodily memory this time. One was that
the ticklish sensation I had become so aware of during the course of my
confrontations with those women was the vehicle to arriving at that double
perception; and the other was that the sound at the base of my neck let
loose something in me that was capable of coming out of the top of my head.
After a minute or two I definitely felt that I was coming down from
near the ceiling until I was standing on the floor. It took a while for my
eyes to adjust to seeing at my normal eye level.
As I looked at the four women I felt naked and vulnerable. I then had
an instant of disassociation, or lack of perceptual continuity. It was as if
I had shut my eyes, and some force suddenly had made me twirl a couple of
times. When I opened my eyes the girls were staring at me with their mouths
open. But somehow I was myself again.
La Gorda
The first thing I noticed about la Gorda was her eyes: very dark and
calm. She seemed to be examining me from head to toe. Her eyes scanned my
body the same way don Juan's used to. In fact, her eyes had the same
calmness and force. I knew why she was the best. The thought that came to my
mind was that don Juan must have left her his eyes.
She was slightly taller than the other three girls. She had a lean,
dark body and a superb back. I noticed the graceful line of her broad
shoulders when she half turned her upper body to face the three girls.
She gave them an unintelligible command and the three of them sat down
on a bench, right behind her. She was actually shielding them from me with
her body.
She turned to face me again. Her expression was one of utmost
seriousness, but without a trace of gloom or heaviness. She did not smile
and yet she was friendly. She had very pleasant features: a nicely shaped
face, neither round nor angular; a small mouth with thin lips; a broad nose;
high cheekbones; and long, jet-black hair.
I could not help noticing her beautiful, muscular hands which she kept
clasped in front of her, over her umbilical region. The backs of her hands
were turned to me. I could see her muscles being contracted rhythmically as
she clasped her palms.
She was wearing a long, faded orange cotton dress with long sleeves and
a brown shawl. There was something terribly calming and final about her. I
felt the presence of don Juan. My body relaxed.
"Sit down, sit down," she said to me in a coaxing tone.
I walked back to the table. She pointed out a place for me to sit, but
I remained standing.
She smiled for the first time and her eyes became softer and shinier.
She was not as pretty as Josefina, and yet she was the most beautiful of all
of them.
We were quiet for a moment. In terms of an explanation she said that
they had done their best in the years since the Nagual left, and that
because of their dedication they had become accustomed to the task that he
had left for them to perform.
I did not quite understand what she was talking about, but as she spoke
I felt more than ever the presence of don Juan. It was not that she was
copying his manners, or the inflection of his voice. She had an inner
control that made her act the way don Juan did. Their similarity was from
the inside out.
I told her that I had come because I needed Pablito's and Nestor's
help. I said that I was rather slow or even stupid in understanding the ways
of sorcerers, but that I was sincere, and yet all of them had treated me
with malice and deceitfulness.
She began to apologize but I did not let her finish. I picked up my
things and went out the front door. She ran after me. She was not preventing
me from leaving but rather she was talking very fast, as if she needed to
say all she could before I drove away.
She said that I had to hear her out, and that she was willing to ride
with me until she had told me everything the Nagual had entrusted her to
tell me.
"I'm going to Mexico City," I said.
"I'll ride with you to Los Angeles if necessary," she said, and I knew
that she meant it.
"All right," I said just to test her, "get in the car."
She vacillated for an instant, then she stood silently and faced her
house. She put her clasped hands just below her navel. She turned and faced
the valley and did the same movement with her hands.
I knew what she was doing. She was saying good-bye to her house and to
those awesome round hills that surrounded it.
Don Juan had taught me that good-bye gesture years before. He had
stressed that it was an extremely powerful gesture, and that a warrior had
to use it sparingly. I had had very few occasions to perform it myself.
The good-bye movement la Gorda was executing was a variant of the one
don Juan had taught me. He had said that the hands were clasped as in
prayer, either gently or with great speed, even producing a clapping sound.
Done either way, the purpose of clasping the hands was to imprison the
feeling that the warrior did not wish to leave behind. As soon as the hands
had closed in and captured that feeling, they were taken with great force to
the middle of the chest, at the level of the heart. There the feeling became
a dagger and the warrior stabbed himself with it, as if holding the dagger
with both hands.
Don Juan had told me that a warrior said good-bye in that fashion only
when he had reason to feel he might not come back.
La Gorda's good-bye enthralled me.
"Are you saying good-bye?" I asked out of curiosity.
"Yes," she said dryly.
"Don't you put your hands to your chest?" I asked.
"Men do that. Women have wombs. They store their feelings there."
"Aren't you suppose to say good-bye like that only when you're not
coming back?" I asked.
"Chances are I may not come back," she replied. "I'm going with you."
I had an attack of unwarranted sadness, unwarranted in the sense that I
did not know that woman at all. I had only doubts and suspicions about her.
But as I peered into her clear eyes I had a sense of ultimate kinship with
her. I mellowed. My anger had disappeared and given way to a strange
sadness. I looked around, and I knew that those mysterious, enormous, round
hills were ripping me apart.
"Those hills over there are alive," she said, reading my thoughts.
I turned to her and told her that both the place and the women had
affected me at a very deep level, a level I could not ordinarily conceive. I
did not know which was more devastating, the place or the women. The women's
onslaughts had been direct and terrifying, but the effect of those hills was
a constant, nagging apprehension, a desire to flee from them. When I told
that to la Gorda she said that I was correct in assessing the effect of that
place, that the Nagual had left them there because of that effect, and that
I should not blame anyone for what had happened, because the Nagual himself
had given those women orders to try to do away with me.
"Did he give orders like that to you too?" I asked.
"No, not to me. I'm different than they are," she said. "They are
sisters. They are the same, exactly the same. Just like Pablito, Nestor and
Benigno are the same. Only you and I can be exactly the same. We are not now
because you're still incomplete. But someday we will be the same, exactly
the same."
"I've been told that you're the only one who knows where the Nagual and
Genaro are now," I said.
She peered at me for a moment and shook her head affirmatively.
"That's right," she said. "I know where they are. The Nagual told me to
take you there if I can."
I told her to stop beating around the bush and to reveal their exact
whereabouts to me immediately. My demand seemed to plunge her into chaos.
She apologized and reassured me that later on, when we were on our way, she
would disclose everything to me. She begged me not to ask her about them
anymore because she had strict orders not to mention anything until the
right moment.
Lidia and Josefina came to the door and stared at me. I hurriedly got
in the car. La Gorda got in after me, and as she did I could not help
observing that she had entered the car as she would have entered a tunnel.
She sort of crawled in. Don Juan used to do that. I jokingly said once,
after I had seen him do it scores of times, that it was more functional to
get in the way I did. I thought that perhaps his lack of familiarity with
automobiles was responsible for his strange way of entering. He explained
then that the car was a cave and that caves had to be entered in that
fashion if we were going to use them. There was an inherent spirit to caves,
whether they were natural or man-made, and that that spirit had to be
approached with respect. Crawling was the only way of showing that respect.
I was wondering whether or not to ask la Gorda if don Juan had
instructed her about such details, but she spoke first. She said that the
Nagual had given her specific instructions about what to do in case I would
survive the attacks of dona Soledad and the three girls. Then she casually
added that before I headed for Mexico City we had to go to a specific place
in the mountains where don Juan and I used to go, and that there she would
reveal all the information the Nagual had never disclosed to me.
I had a moment of indecision, and then something in me which was not my
reason made me head for the mountains. We drove in complete silence. I
attempted at various opportune moments to start up a conversation, but she
turned me down every time with a strong shake of her head. Finally she
seemed to have gotten tired of my trying and said forcefully that what she
had to say required a place of power and until we were in one we had to
abstain from draining ourselves with useless talk.
After a long drive and an exhausting hike away from the road, we
finally reached our destination. It was late afternoon. We were in a deep
canyon. The bottom of it was already dark, while the sun was still shining
on the top of the mountains above it. We walked until we came to a small
cave a few feet up the north side of the canyon, which ran from east to
west. I used to spend a great deal of time there with don Juan.
Before we entered the cave, la Gorda carefully swept the floor with
branches, the way don Juan used to, in order to clear the ticks and
parasites from the rocks. Then she cut a large heap of small branches with
soft leaves from the surrounding bushes and placed them on the rock floor
like a mat.
She motioned me to enter. I had always let don Juan enter first as a
sign of respect. I wanted to do the same with her, but she declined. She
said I was the Nagual. I crawled into the cave the same way she had crawled
into my car. I laughed at my inconsistency. I had never been able to treat
my car as a cave.
She coaxed me to relax and make myself comfortable.
"The reason the Nagual could not reveal all his designs to you was
because you're incomplete," la Gorda said all of a sudden. "You still are,
but now after your bouts with Soledad and the sisters, you are stronger than
before."
"What's the meaning of being incomplete? Everyone has told me that
you're the only one who can explain that," I said.
"It's a very simple matter," she said. "A complete person is one who
has never had children."
She paused as if she were allowing me time to write down what she had
said. I looked up from my notes. She was staring at me, judging the effect
of her words.
"I know that the Nagual told you exactly what I've just said," she
continued. "You didn't pay any attention to him and you probably haven't
paid any attention to me, either."
I read my notes out loud and repeated what she had said. She giggled.
"The Nagual said that an incomplete person is one who has had
children," she said as if dictating to me.
She scrutinized me, apparently waiting for a question or a comment. I
had none.
"Now I've told you everything about being complete and incomplete," she
said. "And I've told you just like the Nagual told me. It didn't mean
anything to me at that time, and it doesn't mean anything to you now."
I had to laugh at the way she patterned herself after don Juan.
"An incomplete person has a hole in the stomach," she went on. "A
sorcerer can see it as plainly as you can see my head. When the hole is on
the left side of one's stomach, the child who created that hole is of the
same sex. If it is on the right side, the child is of the opposite sex. The
hole on the left side is black, the one on the right is dark brown."
"Can you see that hole in anyone who has had children?"
"Sure. There are two ways of seeing it. A sorcerer may see it in
dreaming or by looking directly at a person. A sorcerer who sees has no
problems in viewing the luminous being to find out if there is a hole in the
luminosity of the body. But even if the sorcerer doesn't know how to see, he
can look and actually distinguish the darkness of the hole through the
clothing."
She stopped talking. I urged her to go on.
"The Nagual told me that you write and then you don't remember what you
wrote," she said with a tone of accusation.
I became entangled in words trying to defend myself. Nonetheless, what
she had said was the truth. Don Juan's words always had had a double effect
on me: once when I heard for the first time whatever he had said, and then
when I read at home whatever I had written down and had forgotten about.
Talking to la Gorda, however, was intrinsically different. Don Juan's
apprentices were not in any way as engulfing as he was. Their revelations,
although extraordinary, were only missing pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. The
unusual character of those pieces was that with them the picture did not
become clearer but that it became more and more complex.
"You had a brown hole in the right side of your stomach," she
continued. "That means that a woman emptied you. You made a female child.
"The Nagual said that I had a huge black hole myself, because I made
two women. I never saw the hole, but I've seen other people with holes like
mine."
"You said that I had a hole; don't I have it anymore?"
"No. It's been patched. The Nagual helped you to patch it. Without his
help you would be more empty than you are now."
"What kind of patch is it?"
"A patch in your luminosity. There is no other way of saying it. The
Nagual said that a sorcerer like himself can fill up the hole anytime. But
that that filling is only a patch without luminosity. Anyone who sees or
does dreaming can tell that it looks like a lead patch on the yellow
luminosity of the rest of the body.
"The Nagual patched you and me and Soledad. But then he left it up to
us to put back the shine, the luminosity."
"How did he patch us?"
"He's a sorcerer, he put things in our bodies. He replaced us. We are
no longer the same. The patch is what he put there himself."
"But how did he put those things there and what were they?"
"What he put in our bodies was his own luminosity and he used his hand
to do that. He simply reached into our bodies and left his fibers there. He
did the same with all of his six children and also with Soledad. All of them
are the same. Except Soledad; she's something else."
La Gorda seemed unwilling to go on. She vacillated and almost began to
stutter.
"What is dona Soledad?" I insisted.
"It's very hard to tell," she said after considerable coaxing. "She is
the same as you and me, and yet she's different. She has the same
luminosity, but she's not together with us. She goes in the opposite
direction. Right now she's more like you. Both of you have patches that look
like lead. Mine is gone and I'm again a complete, luminous egg. That is the
reason I said that you and I will be exactly the same someday when you
become complete again. Right now what makes us almost the same is the
Nagual's luminosity and the fact that both of us are going in the same
direction and that we both were empty."
"What does a complete person look like to a sorcerer?" I asked.
"Like a luminous egg made out of fibers," she said. "All the fibers are
complete; they look like strings, taut strings. It looks as if the strings
have been tightened like a drum is tightened.
"On an empty person, on the other hand, the fibers are crumpled up at
the edges of the hole. When they have had many children, the fibers don't
look like fibers anymore. Those people look like two chunks of luminosity,
separated by blackness. It is an awesome sight. The Nagual made me see them
one day when we were in a park in the city."
"Why do you think the Nagual never told me about all this?"
"He told you everything, but you never understood him correctly. As
soon as he realized that you were not understanding what he was saying, he
was compelled to change the subject. Your emptiness prevented you from
understanding. The Nagual said that it was perfectly natural for you not to
understand. Once a person becomes incomplete he's actually empty like a
gourd that has been hollowed out. It didn't matter to you how many times he
told you that you were empty; it didn't matter that he even explained it to
you. You never knew what he meant, or worse yet, you didn't want to know."
La Gorda was treading on dangerous ground. I tried to head her off with
another question, but she rebuffed me.
"You love a little boy and you don't want to understand what the Nagual
meant," she said accusingly. "The Nagual told me that you have a daughter
you've never seen, and that you love that little boy. One took your edge,
the other pinned you down. You have welded them together."
I had to stop writing. I crawled out of the cave and stood up. I began
to walk down the steep incline to the floor of the gully. La Gorda followed
me. She asked me if I was upset by her directness. I did not want to lie.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"You're fuming!" she exclaimed and giggled with an abandon that I had
witnessed only in don Juan and don Genaro.
She seemed about to lose her balance and grabbed my left arm. In order
to help her get down to the floor of the gully, I lifted her up by her
waist. I thought that she could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds.
She puckered her lips the way don Genaro used to and said that her weight
was a hundred and fifteen. We both laughed at once. It was a moment of
direct, instant communication.
"Why does it bother you so much to talk about these things?" she asked.
I told her that once I had had a little boy whom I had loved immensely.
I felt the imperative to tell her about him. Some extravagant need beyond my
comprehension made me open up with that woman who was a total stranger to
me.
As I began to talk about that little boy, a wave of nostalgia enveloped
me; perhaps it was the place or the situation or the time of the day.
Somehow I had merged the memory of that little boy with the memory of don
Juan, and for the first time in all the time I had not seen him I missed don
Juan. Lidia had said that they never missed him because he was always with
them; he was their bodies and their spirits. I had known instantly what she
meant. I felt the same way myself. In that gully, however, an unknown
feeling had overtaken me. I told la Gorda that I had never missed don Juan
until that moment. She did not answer. She looked away.
Possibly my feeling of longing for those two people had to do with the
fact that both of them had produced catharses in my life. And both of them
were gone. I had not realized until that moment how final that separation
was. I said to la Gorda that that little boy had been, more than anything
else, my friend, and that one day he was whisked away by forces I could not
control. That was perhaps one of the greatest blows I had ever received. I
even went to see don Juan to ask his assistance. It was the only time I had
ever asked him for help. He listened to my plea and then he broke into
uproarious laughter. His reaction was so unexpected that I could not even
get angry. I could only comment on what I thought was his insensitivity.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked.
I said that since he was a sorcerer perhaps he could help me to regain
my little friend for my solace.
"You're wrong. A warrior doesn't seek anything for his solace," he said
in a tone that did not admit reproach.
Then he proceeded to smash my arguments. He said that a warrior could
not possibly leave anything to chance, that a warrior actually affected the
outcome of events by the force of his awareness and his unbending intent. He
said that if I would have had the unbending intent to keep and help that
child, I would have taken measures to assure his stay with me. But as it
was, my love was merely a word, a useless outburst of an empty man. He then
told me something about emptiness and completeness, but I did not want to
hear it. All I felt was a sense of loss, and the emptiness that he had
mentioned, I was sure, referred to the feeling of having lost someone
irreplaceable.
"You loved him, you honored his spirit, you wished him well, now you
must forget him," he said.
But I had not been able to do so. There was something terribly alive in
my emotions even though time had mellowed them. At one point I thought I had
forgotten, but then one night an incident produced the deepest emotional
upheaval in me. I was walking to my office when a young Mexican woman
approached me. She had been sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus. She
wanted to know if that particular bus went to a children's hospital. I did
not know. She explained that her little boy had had a high temperature for a
long time and she was worried because she did not have any money. I moved
toward the bench and saw a little boy standing on the seat with his head
against the back of the bench. He was wearing a jacket and short pants and a
cap. He could not have been more than two years old. He must have seen me,
for he walked to the edge of the bench and put his head against my leg.
"My little head hurts," he said to me in Spanish.
His voice was so tiny and his dark eyes so sad that a wave of
irrepressible anguish welled up in me. I picked him up and drove him and his
mother to the nearest hospital. I left them there and gave the mother enough
money to pay the bill. But I did not want to stay or to know any more about
him. I wanted to believe that I had helped him, and that by doing so I had
paid back to the spirit of man.
I had learned the magical act of "paying back to the spirit of man"
from don Juan. I had asked him once, overwhelmed by the realization that I
could never pay him back for all he had done for me, if there was anything
in the world I could do to even the score. We were leaving a bank, after
exchanging some Mexican currency.
"I don't need you to pay me back," he said, "but if you still want to
pay back, make your deposit to the spirit of man. That's always a very small
account, and whatever one puts in it is more than enough."
By helping that sick child I had merely paid back to the spirit of man
for any help that my little boy may receive from strangers along his path.
I told la Gorda that my love for him would remain alive for the rest of
my life even though I would never see him again. I wanted to tell her that
the memory I had of him was buried so deep that nothing could touch it, but
I desisted. I felt it would have been superfluous to talk about it. Besides,
it was getting dark and I wanted to get out of that gully.
"We better go," I said. "I'll take you home. Maybe some other time we
can talk about these things again."
She laughed the way don Juan used to laugh at me. I had apparently said
something utterly funny.
"Why do you laugh, Gorda?" I asked.
"Because you know yourself that we can't leave this place just like
that," she said. "You have an appointment with power here. And so do 1."
She walked back to the cave and crawled in.
"Come on in," she yelled from inside. "There is no way to leave."
I reacted most incongruously. I crawled in and sat next to her again.
It was evident that she too had tricked me. I had not come there to have any
confrontations. I should have been furious. I was indifferent instead. I
could not lie to myself that I had only stopped there on my way to Mexico
City. I had gone there compelled by something beyond my comprehension.
She handed me my notebook and motioned me to write. She said that if I
wrote I would not only relax myself but I would also relax her.
"What is this appointment with power?" I asked.
"The Nagual told me that you and I have an appointment here with
something out there. You first had an appointment with Soledad and then one
with the little sisters. They were supposed to destroy you. The Nagual said
that if you survived their assaults I had to bring you here so that we
together could keep the third appointment."
"What kind of appointment is it?"
"I really don't know. Like everything else, it depends on us. Right now
there are some things out there that have been waiting for you. I say that
they have been waiting for you because I come here by myself all the time
and nothing ever happens. But tonight is different. You are here and those
things will come."
"Why is the Nagual trying to destroy me?" I asked.
"He's not trying to destroy anybody!" la Gorda exclaimed in protest.
"You are his child. Now he wants you to be himself. More himself than any of
us. But to be a true Nagual you have to claim your power. Otherwise he
wouldn't have been so careful in setting up Soledad and the little sisters
to stalk you. He taught Soledad how to change her shape and rejuvenate
herself. He made her construct a devilish floor in her room. A floor no one
can oppose. You see, Soledad is empty, so the Nagual set her up to do
something gigantic. He gave her a task, a most difficult and dangerous task,
but the only one which was suited for her, and that was to finish you off.
He told her that nothing could be more difficult than for one sorcerer to
kill another. It's easier for an average man to kill a sorcerer or for a
sorcerer to kill an average man, but two sorcerers don't fit well at all.
The Nagual told Soledad that her best bet was to surprise you and scare you.
And that's what she did. The Nagual set her up to be a desirable woman so
she could lure you into her room, and there her floor would have bewitched
you, because as I've said, no one, but no one, can stand up to that floor.
That floor was the Nagual's masterpiece for Soledad. But you did something
to her floor and Soledad had to change her tactics in accordance with the
Nagual's instructions. He told her that if her floor failed and she could
not frighten and surprise you, she had to talk to you and tell you
everything you wanted to know. The Nagual trained her to talk very well as
her last resource. But Soledad could not overpower you even with that."
"Why was it so important to overpower me? "
She paused and peered at me. She cleared her throat and sat up
straight. She looked up at the low roof of the cave and exhaled noisily
through her nose.
"Soledad is a woman like myself," she said. "I'll tell you something
about my own life and maybe you'll understand her.
"I had a man once. He got me pregnant when I was very young and I had
two daughters with him. One after the other. My life was hell. That man was
a drunkard and beat me day and night. And I hated him and he hated me. And I
got fat like a pig. One day another man came along and told me that he liked
me and wanted me to go with him to work in the city as a paid servant. He
knew I was a hardworking woman and only wanted to exploit me. But my life
was so miserable that I fell for it and went with him. He was worse than the
first man, mean and fearsome. He couldn't stand me after a week or so. And
he used to give me the worst beatings you can imagine. I thought he was
going to kill me and he wasn't even drunk, and all because I hadn't found
work. Then he sent me to beg on the streets with a sick baby. He would pay
the child's mother something from the money I got. And then he would beat me
because I hadn't made enough. The child got sicker and sicker and I knew
that if it died while I was begging, the man would kill me. So one day when
I knew that he was not there I went to the child's mother and gave her her
baby and some of the money I had made that day. That was a lucky day for me;
a kind foreign lady had given me fifty pesos to buy medicine for the baby.
"I had been with that horrible man for three months and I thought it
had been twenty years. I used the money to go back to my home. I was
pregnant again. The man had wanted me to have a child of my own, so that he
would not have to pay for one. When I got to my hometown I tried to go back
to see my children, but they had been taken away by their father's family.
All the family got together under the pretense that they wanted to talk to
me, but instead they took me to a deserted place and beat me with sticks and
rocks and left me for dead."
La Gorda showed me the many scars on her scalp.
"To this day I don't know how I made it back to town. I even lost the
child I had in my womb. I went to an aunt I still had; my parents were dead.
She gave me a place to rest and she tended to me. She fed me, the poor soul,
for two months before I could get up."
"Then one day my aunt told me that that man was in town looking for me.
He had talked to the police and had said that he had given me money in
advance to work and that I had run away, stealing the money after I had
killed a woman's baby. I knew that the end had come for me. But my luck
turned right again and I caught a ride in the truck of an American. I saw
the truck coming on the road and I lifted my hand in desperation and the man
stopped and let me get on. He drove me all the way to this part of Mexico.
He dropped me in the city. I didn't know a soul. I roamed all over the place
for days like a crazy dog, eating garbage from the street. That was when my
luck turned for the last time.
"I met Pablito, with whom I have a debt that I can't pay back. Pablito
took me to his carpentry shop and gave me a corner there to put my bed. He
did that because he felt sorry for me. He found me in the market after he
stumbled and fell on top of me. I was sitting there begging. A moth or a
bee, I don't know which, flew to him and hit him in the eye. He turned
around on his heels and stumbled and fell right on top of me. I thought he
would be so mad that he would hit me, but he gave me some money instead. I
asked him if he could give me work. That was when he took me to his shop and
set me up with an iron and an ironing board to do laundry.
"I did very well. Except that I got fatter, because most of the people
I washed for fed me with their leftovers. Sometimes I ate sixteen times a
day. I did nothing else but eat. Kids in the street used to taunt me and
sneak behind me and step on my heels and then someone would push me and I
would fall. Those kids made me cry with their cruel jokes, especially when
they used to spoil my wash on purpose.
"One day, very late in the afternoon, a weird old man came over to see
Pablito. I had never seen that man before. I had never known that Pablito
was in cahoots with such a scary, awesome man. I turned my back to him and
kept on working. I was alone there. Suddenly I felt the hands of that man on
my neck. My heart stopped. I could not scream, I couldn't even breathe. I
fell down and that awful man held my head, maybe for an hour. Then he left.
I was so frightened that I stayed where I had fallen until the next morning.
Pablito found me there; he laughed and said that I should be very proud and
happy because that old man was a powerful sorcerer and was one of his
teachers. I was dumbfounded; I couldn't believe Pablito was a sorcerer. He
said that his teacher had seen a perfect circle of moths flying over my
head. He had also seen my death circling around me. And that was why he had
acted like lightning and had changed the direction of my eyes. Pablito also
said that the Nagual had laid his hands on me and had reached into my body
and that soon I would be different. I had no idea what he was talking about.
I had no idea what that crazy old man had done, either. But it didn't matter
to me. I was like a dog that everyone kicked around. Pablito had been the
only person who had been kind to me. At first I had thought he wanted me for
his woman. But I was too ugly and fat and smelly. He just wanted to be kind
to me.
"The crazy old man came back another night and grabbed me again by the
neck from behind. He hurt me terribly. I cried and screamed. I didn't know
what he was doing. He never said a word to me. I was deathly afraid of him.
Then, later on he began to talk to me and told me what to do with my life. I
liked what he said. He took me everywhere with him. But my emptiness was my
worst enemy. I couldn't accept his ways, so one day he got sick and tired of
pampering me and sent the wind after me. I was in the back of Soledad's
house by myself that day, and I felt the wind getting very strong. It was
blowing through the fence. It got into my eyes. I wanted to get inside the
house, but my body was frightened and instead of walking through the door I
walked through the gate in the fence. The wind pushed me and made me twirl.
I tried to go back to the house, but it was useless. I couldn't break the
force of the wind. It pushed me over the hills and off the road and I ended
up in a deep hole, a hole like a tomb. The wind kept me there for days and
days, until I had decided to change and accept my fate without
recrimination. Then the wind stopped and the Nagual found me and took me
back to the house. He told me that my task was to give what I didn't have,
love and affection, and that I had to take care of the sisters, Lidia and
Josefina, better than if they were myself. I understood then what the Nagual
had been saying to me for years. My life had been over a long time ago. He
had offered me a new life and that life had to be completely new. I couldn't
bring to that new life my ugly old ways. That first night he found me, the
moths had pointed me out to him; I had no business rebelling against my
fate.
I began my change by taking care of Lidia and Josefina better than I
took care of myself. I did everything the Nagual told me, and one night in
this very gully in this very cave I found my completeness. I had fallen
asleep right here where I am now and then a noise woke me up. I looked up
and saw myself as I had once been, thin, young, fresh. It was my spirit that
was coming back to me. At first it didn't want to come closer because I
still looked pretty awful. But then it couldn't help itself and came to me.
I knew right then, and all at once, what the Nagual had struggled for years
to tell me. He had said that when one has a child that child takes the edge
of our spirit. For a woman to have a girl means the end of that edge. To
have had two as I did meant the end of me. The best of my strength and my
illusions went to those girls. They stole my edge, the Nagual said, in the
same way I had stolen it from my parents. That's our fate. A boy steals the
biggest part of his edge from his father, a girl from her mother. The Nagual
said that people who have had children could tell, if they aren't as
stubborn as you, that something is missing in them. Some craziness, some
nervousness, some power that they had before is gone. They used to have it,
but where is it now? The Nagual said that it is in the little child running
around the house, full of energy, full of illusions. In other words,
complete. He said that if we watch children we can tell that they are
daring, they move in leaps. If we watch their parents we can see that they
are cautious and timid. They don't leap anymore. The Nagual told me we
explain that by saying that the parents are grown-ups and have
responsibilities. But that's not true. The truth of the matter is that they
have lost their edge."
I asked la Gorda what the Nagual would have said if I had told him that
I knew parents with much more spirit and edge than their children.
She laughed, covering her face in a gesture of sham embarrassment.
"You can ask me," she said giggling. "You want to hear what I think?"
"Of course I want to hear it."
"Those people don't have more spirit, they merely had a lot of vigor to
begin with and have trained their children to be obedient and meek. They
have frightened their children all their lives, that's all."
I described to her the case of a man I knew, a father of four, who at
the age of fifty-three changed his life completely. That entailed leaving
his wife and his executive job in a large corporation after more than
twenty-five years of building a career and a family. He chucked it all very
daringly and went to live on an island in the Pacific.
"You mean he went there all by himself?" la Gorda asked with a tone of
surprise.
She had destroyed my argument. I had to admit that the man had gone
there with his twenty-three-year-old bride.
"Who no doubt is complete," la Gorda added.
I had to agree with her again.
"An empty man uses the completeness of a woman all the time," she went
on. "A complete woman is dangerous in her completeness, more so than a man.
She is unreliable, moody, nervous, but also capable of great changes. Women
like that can pick themselves up and go anywhere. They'll do nothing there,
but that's because they had nothing going to begin with. Empty people, on
the other hand, can't jump like that anymore, but they're more reliable. The
Nagual said that empty people are like worms that look around before moving
a bit and then they back up and then they move a little bit more again.
Complete people always jump, somersault and almost always land on their
heads, but it doesn't matter to them.
"The Nagual said that to enter into the other world one has to be
complete. To be a sorcerer one has to have all of one's luminosity: no
holes, no patches and all the edge of the spirit. So a sorcerer who is empty
has to regain completeness. Man or woman, they must be complete to enter
into that world out there, that eternity where the Nagual and Genaro are now
waiting for us."
She stopped talking and stared at me for a long moment. There was
barely enough light to write.
"But how did you regain your completeness?" I asked.
She jumped at the sound of my voice. I repeated my question. She stared
up at the roof of the cave before answering me.
"I had to refuse those two girls," she said. "The Nagual once told you
how to do that but you didn't want to hear it. His point was that one has to
steal that edge back. He said that we got it the hard way by stealing it and
that we must recover it the same way, the hard way.
"He guided me to do that, and the first thing he made me do was to
refuse my love for those two children. I had to do that in dreaming. Little
by little I learned not to like them, but the Nagual said that that was
useless, one has to learn not to care and not not to like. Whenever those
girls meant nothing to me I had to see them again, lay my eyes and my hands
on them. I had to pat them gently on the head and let my left side snatch
the edge out of them."
"What happened to them?"
"Nothing. They never felt a thing. They went home and are now like two
grown-up persons. Empty like most people around them. They don't like the
company of children because they have no use for them. I would say that they
are better off. I took the craziness out of them. They didn't need it, while
I did. I didn't know what I was doing when I gave it to them. Besides, they
still retain the edge they stole from their father. The Nagual was right: no
one noticed the loss, but I did notice my gain. As I looked out of this cave
I saw all my illusions lined up like a row of soldiers. The world was bright
and new. The heaviness of my body and my spirit had been lifted off and I
was truly a new being."
"Do you know how you took your edge from your children?"
"They are not my children! I have never had any. Look at me."
She crawled out of the cave, lifted her skirt and showed me her naked
body. The first thing I noticed was how slender and muscular she was.
She urged me to come closer and examine her. Her body was so lean and
firm that I had to conclude she could not possibly have had children. She
put her right leg on a high rock and showed me her vagina. Her drive to
prove her change was so intense that I had to laugh to bridge my
nervousness. I said that I was not a doctor and therefore I could not tell,
but that I was sure she must be right.
"Of course I'm right," she said as she crawled back into the cave.
"Nothing has ever come out of this womb."
After a moment's pause she answered my question, which I had already
forgotten under the onslaught of her display.
"My left side took my edge back," she said. "All I did was to go and
visit the girls. I went there four or five times to allow them time to feel
at ease with me. They were big girls and were going to school. I thought I
would have to fight not to like them, but the Nagual said that it didn't
matter, that I should like them if I wanted to. So I liked them. But my
liking them was just like liking a stranger. My mind was made up, my purpose
was unbending. I want to enter into the other world while I'm still alive,
as the Nagual told me. In order to do that I need all the edge of my spirit.
I need my completeness. Nothing can turn me away from that world! Nothing!"
She stared at me defiantly.
"You have to refuse both, the woman who emptied you and the little boy
who has your love, if you are seeking your completeness. The woman you can
easily refuse. The little boy is something else. Do you think that your
useless affection for that child is so worthy as to keep you from entering
into that realm?"
I had no answer. It was not that I wanted to think it over. It was
rather that I had become utterly confused.
"Soledad has to take her edge out of Pablito if she wants to enter into
the nagual," she went on. "How in the hell is she going to do that? Pablito,
no matter how weak he is, is a sorcerer. But the Nagual gave Soledad a
unique chance. He said to her that her only moment would come when you
walked into the house, and for that moment he not only made us move out into
the other house, but he made us help her widen the path to the house, so you
could drive your car to the very door. He told her that if she lived an
impeccable life she would bag you, and suck away all your luminosity, which
is all the power the Nagual left inside your body. That would not be
difficult for her to do. Since she's going in the opposite direction, she
could drain you to nothing. Her great feat was to lead you to a moment of
helplessness.
"Once she had killed you, your luminosity would have increased her
power and she would then have come after us. I was the only one who knew
that. Lidia, Josefina and Rosa love her. I don't. I knew what her designs
were. She would have taken us one by one, in her own time, since she had
nothing to lose and everything to gain. The Nagual said to me that there was
no other way for her. He entrusted me with the girls and told me what to do
in case Soledad killed you and came after our luminosity. He figured that I
had a chance to save myself and to save perhaps one of the three. You see,
Soledad is not a bad woman at all; she's simply doing what an impeccable
warrior would do. The little sisters like her more than they like their own
mothers. She's a real mother to them. That was, the Nagual said, the point
of her advantage. I haven't been able to pull the little sisters away from
her, no matter what I do. So if she had killed you, she would then have
taken at least two of those three trusting souls. Then without you in the
picture Pablito is nothing. Soledad would have squashed him like a bug. And
then with all her completeness and power she would have entered into that
world out there. If I had been in her place I would've tried to do exactly
as she did.
"So you see, it was all or nothing for her. When you first arrived
everyone was gone. It looked as if it was the end for you and for some of
us. But then at the end it was nothing for her and a chance for the sisters.
The moment I knew that you had succeeded I told the three girls that now it
was their turn. The Nagual had said that they should wait until the morning
to catch you unawares. He said that the morning was not a good time for you.
He commanded me to stay away and not interfere with the sisters and to come
in only if you would try to injure their luminosity."
"Were they supposed to kill me too?"
"Well, yes. You are the male side of their luminosity. Their
completeness is at times their disadvantage. The Nagual ruled them with an
iron hand and balanced them, but now that he's gone they have no way of
leveling off. Your luminosity could do that for them."
"How about you, Gorda? Are you supposed to finish me off too?"
"I've told you already that I'm different. I am balanced. My emptiness,
which was my disadvantage, is now my advantage. Once a sorcerer regains his
completeness he's balanced, while a sorcerer who was always complete is a
bit off. Like Genaro was a bit off. But the Nagual was balanced because he
had been incomplete, like you and me, even more so than you and me. He had
three sons and one daughter.
"The little sisters are like Genaro, a bit off. And most of the times
so taut that they have no measure."
"How about me, Gorda? Do I also have to go after them?"
"No. Only they could have profited by sucking away your luminosity. You
can't profit at all by anyone's death. The Nagual left a special power with
you, a balance of some kind, which none of us has."
"Can't they learn to have that balance?"
"Sure they can. But that has nothing to do with the task the little
sisters had to perform. Their task was to steal your power. For that, they
became so united that they are now one single being. They trained themselves
to sip you up like a glass of soda. The Nagual set them up to be deceivers
of the highest order, especially Josefina. She put on a show that was
peerless. Compared to their art, Soledad's attempt was child's play. She's a
crude woman. The little sisters are true sorceresses. Two of them gained
your confidence, while the third shocked you and rendered you helpless. They
played their cards to perfection. You fell for it all and nearly succumbed.
The only flaw was that you injured and cured Rosa's luminosity the night
before and that made her jumpy. Had it not been for her nervousness and her
biting your side so hard, chances are you wouldn't be here now. I saw
everything from the door. I came in at the precise moment you were about to
annihilate them."
"But what could I do to annihilate them?"
"How could I know that? I'm not you."
"I mean what did you see me doing?"
"I saw your double coming out of you." "What did it look like?"
"It looked like you, what else? But it was very big and menacing. Your
double would have killed them. So I came in and interfered with it. It took
the best of my power to calm you down. The sisters were no help. They were
lost. And you were furious and violent. You changed colors right in front of
us twice. One color was so violent that I feared you would kill me too."
"What color was it, Gorda?"
"White, what else? The double is white, yellowish white, like the sun."
I stared at her. The smile was very new to me.
"Yes," she continued, "we are pieces of the sun. That is why we are
luminous beings. But our eyes can't see that luminosity because it is very
faint. Only the eyes of a sorcerer can see it, and that happens after a
lifetime struggle."
Her revelation had taken me by total surprise. I tried to reorganize my
thoughts in order to ask the most appropriate question.
"Did the Nagual ever tell you anything about the sun?" I asked.
"Yes. We are all like the sun but very, very faint. Our light is too
weak, but it is light anyway."
"But, did he say that the sun was perhaps the nagual?" I insisted
desperately.
La Gorda did not answer. She made a series of involuntary noises with
her lips. She was apparently thinking how to answer my probe. I waited,
ready to write it down. After a long pause she crawled out of the cave.
"I'll show you my faint light," she said matter-of-factly.
She walked to the center of the narrow gully in front of the cave and
squatted. From where I was I could not see what she was doing so I had to
get out of the cave myself. I stood ten or twelve feet away from her. She
put her hands under her skirt, while she was still squatting. Suddenly, she
stood up. Her hands were loosely clasped into fists; she raised them over
her head and snapped her fingers open. I heard a quick, bursting sound and I
saw sparks flying from her fingers. She again clasped her hands and then
snapped them open and another volley of much larger sparks flew out of them.
She squatted once more and reached under her skirt. She seemed to be pulling
something from her pubis. She repeated the snapping movement of her fingers
as she threw her hands over her head, and I saw a spray of long, luminous
fibers flying away from her fingers. I had to tilt my head up to see them
against the already dark sky. They appeared to be long, fine filaments of a
reddish light. After a while they faded and disappeared.
She squatted once again, and when she let her fingers open a most
astonishing display of lights emanated from them. The sky was filled with
thick rays of light. It was a spellbinding sight. I became engrossed in it;
my eyes were fixed. I was not paying attention to la Gorda. I was looking at
the lights. I heard a sudden outcry that forced me to look at her, just in
time to see her grab one of the lines she was creating and spin to the very
top of the canyon. She hovered there for an instant like a dark, huge shadow
against the sky, and then descended to the bottom of the gully in spurts or
small leaps or as if she were coming down a stairway on her belly.
I suddenly saw her standing over me. I had not realized that I had
fallen on my seat. I stood up. She was soaked in perspiration and was
panting, trying to catch her breath. She could not speak for a long time.
She began to jog in place. I did not dare to touch her. Finally she seemed
to have calmed down enough to crawl back into the cave. She rested for a few
minutes.
Her actions had been so fast that I had hardly had any time to evaluate
what had happened. At the moment of her display I had felt an unbearable,
ticklish pain in the area just below my navel. I had not physically exerted
myself and yet I was also panting.
"I think it's time to go to our appointment," she said, out of breath.
"My flying opened us both. You felt my flying in your belly; that means you
are open and ready to meet the four forces."
"What four forces are you talking about?"
"The Nagual's and Genaro's allies. You've seen them. They are
horrendous. Now they are free from the Nagual's and Genaro's gourds. You
heard one of them around Soledad's house the other night. They are waiting
for you. The moment the darkness of the day sets in, they'll be
uncontainable. One of them even came after you in the daytime at Soledad's
place. Those allies now belong to you and me. We will take two each. I don't
know which ones. And I don't know how, either. All the Nagual told me was
that you and I would have to tackle them by ourselves."
"Wait, wait! " I shouted.
She did not let me speak. She gently put her hand over my mouth. I felt
a pang of terror in the pit of my stomach. I had been confronted in the past
with some inexplicable phenomena which don Juan and don Genaro had called
their allies. There were four of them and they were entities, as real as
anything in the world. Their presence was so outlandish that it would create
an unparalleled state of fear in me every time I perceived them. The first
one I had encountered was don Juan's; it was a dark, rectangular mass, eight
or nine feet high and four or five feet across. It moved with the crushing
weight of a giant boulder and breathed so heavily that it reminded me of the
sound of bellows. I had always encountered it at night, in the darkness. I
had fancied it to be like a door that walked by pivoting on one corner and
then on the other.
The second ally I came across was don Genaro's. It was a long-faced,
bald-headed, extraordinarily tall, glowing man, with thick lips and
enormous, droopy eyes. He always wore pants that were too short for his
long, skinny legs.
I had seen those two allies a great many times while in the company of
don Juan and don Genaro. The sight of them would invariably cause an
irreconcilable separation between my reason and my perception. On the one
hand, I had no rational ground whatsoever to believe that what was happening
to me was actually taking place, and on the other hand, there was no
possible way of discarding the truthfulness of my perception.
Since they had always appeared while don Juan and don Genaro were
around, I had filed them away as products of the powerful influence that
those two men had had on my suggestible personality. In my understanding it
was either that, or that don Juan and don Genaro had in their possession
forces they called their allies, forces which were capable of manifesting
themselves to me as those horrendous entities.
A feature of the allies was that they never allowed me to scrutinize
them thoroughly. I had tried various times to focus my undivided attention
on them, but every time I would get dizzy and disassociated.
The other two allies were more elusive. I had seen them only once, a
gigantic black jaguar with yellow glowing eyes, and a ravenous, enormous
coyote. The two beasts were ultimately aggressive and overpowering. The
jaguar was don Genaro's and the coyote was don Juan's.
La Gorda crawled out of the cave. I followed her. She led the way. We
walked out of the gully and reached a long, rocky plain. She stopped and let
me step ahead. I told her that if she was going to let me lead us I was
going to try to get to the car. She shook her head affirmatively and clung
to me. I could feel her clammy skin. She seemed to be in a state of great
agitation. It was perhaps a mile to where we had left the car, and to reach
it we had to cross the deserted, rocky plain. Don Juan had shown me a hidden
trail among some big boulders, almost on the side of the mountain that
flanked the plain toward the east. I headed for that trail. Some unknown
urge was guiding me; otherwise I would have taken the same trail we had
taken before when we had crossed the plain on the level ground.
La Gorda seemed to be anticipating something awesome. She grabbed onto
me. Her eyes were wild.
"Are we going the right way?" I asked.
She did not answer. She pulled her shawl and twisted it until it looked
like a long, thick rope. She encircled my waist with it, crossed over the
ends and encircled herself. She tied a knot and thus had us bound together
in a band that looked like a figure eight.
"What did you do this for?" I asked.
She shook her head. Her teeth chattered but she could not say a word.
Her fright seemed to be extreme. She pushed me to keep on walking. I could
not help wondering why I was not scared out of my wits myself.
As we reached the high trail the physical exertion began to take its
toll on me. I was wheezing and had to breathe through my mouth. I could see
the shape of the big boulders. There was no moon but the sky was so clear
that there was enough light to distinguish shapes. I could hear la Gorda
also wheezing.
I tried to stop to catch my breath but she pushed me gently as she
shook her head negatively. I wanted to make a joke to break the tension when
I heard a strange thumping noise. My head moved involuntarily to my right to
allow my left ear to scan the area. I stopped breathing for an instant and
then I clearly heard that someone else besides la Gorda and myself was
breathing heavily. I checked again to make sure before I told her. There was
no doubt that that massive shape was there among the boulders. I put my hand
on la Gorda's mouth as we kept on moving and signaled her to hold her
breath. I could tell that the massive shape was very close. It seemed to be
sliding as quietly as it could. It was wheezing softly.
La Gorda was startled. She squatted and pulled me down with her by the
shawl tied around my waist. She put her hands under her skirt for a moment
and then stood up; her hands were clasped and when she snapped her fingers
open a volley of sparks flew from them.
"Piss in your hands," la Gorda whispered through clenched teeth.
"Hub?" I said, unable to comprehend what she wanted me to do.
She whispered her order three or four times with increasing urgency.
She must have realized I did not know what she wanted, for she squatted
again and showed that she was urinating in her hands. I stared at her
dumbfounded as she made her urine fly like reddish sparks.
My mind went blank. I did not know which was more absorbing, the sight
la Gorda was creating with her urine, or the wheezing of the approaching
entity. I could not decide on which of the two stimuli to focus my
attention; both were enthralling.
"Quickly! Do it in your hands!" la Gorda grumbled between her teeth.
I heard her, but my attention was dislocated. With an imploring voice
la Gorda added that my sparks would make the approaching creature, whatever
it was, retreat. She began to whine and I began to feel desperate. I could
not only hear but I could sense with my whole body the approaching entity. I
tried to urinate in my hands; my effort was useless. I was too
self-conscious and nervous. I became possessed by la Gorda's agitation and
struggled desperately to urinate. I finally did it. I snapped my fingers
three or four times, but nothing flew out of them.
"Do it again," la Gorda said. "It takes a while to make sparks."
I told her that I had used up all the urine I had. There was the most
intense look of despair in her eyes.
At that instant I saw the massive, rectangular shape moving toward us.
Somehow it did not seem menacing to me, although la Gorda was about to faint
out of fear.
Suddenly she untied her shawl and leaped onto a small rock that was
behind me and hugged me from behind, putting her chin on my head. She had
practically climbed on my shoulders. The instant that we adopted that
position the shape ceased moving. It kept on wheezing, perhaps twenty feet
away from us.
I felt a giant tension that seemed to be focused in my midsection.
After a while I knew without the shadow of a doubt that if we remained in
that position we would have drained our energy and fallen prey to whatever
was stalking us.
I told her that we were going to run for our lives. She shook her head
negatively. She seemed to have regained her strength and confidence. She
said then that we had to bury our heads in our arms and lie down with our
thighs against our stomachs. I remembered then that years before don Juan
had made me do the same thing one night when I was caught in a deserted
field in northern Mexico by something equally unknown and yet equally real
to my senses. At that time don Juan had said that fleeing was useless and
the only thing one could do was to remain on the spot in the position la
Gorda had just prescribed.
I was about to kneel down when I had the unexpected feeling that we had
made a terrible mistake in leaving the cave. We had to go back to it at any
cost.
I looped la Gorda's shawl over my shoulders and under my arms. I asked
her to hold the tips above my head, climb to my shoulders and stand on them,
bracing herself by pulling up the ends of the shawl and fastening it like a
harness. Years before don Juan had told me that one should meet strange
events, such as the rectangular shape in front of us, with unexpected
actions. He said that once he himself stumbled upon a deer that "talked" to
him, and he stood on his head for the duration of that event, as a means of
assuring his survival and to ease the strain of such an encounter.
My idea was to try to walk around the rectangular shape, back to the
cave, with la Gorda standing on my shoulders.
She whispered that the cave was out of the question. The Nagual had
told her not to remain there at all. I argued, as I fixed the shawl for her,
that my body had the certainty that in the cave we would be all right. She
replied that that was true, and it would work except that we had no means
whatever to control those forces. We needed a special container, a gourd of
some sort, like those I had seen dangling from don Juan's and don Genaro's
belts.
She took off her shoes and climbed on my shoulders and stood there. I
held her by her calves. As she pulled on the ends of the shawl I felt the
tension of the band under my armpits. I waited until she had gained her
balance. To walk in the darkness carrying one hundred and fifteen pounds on
my shoulders was no mean feat. I went very slowly. I counted twenty-three
paces and I had to put her down. The pain on my shoulder blades was
unbearable. I told her that although she was very slender, her weight was
crushing my collarbone.
The interesting part, however, was that the rectangular shape was no
longer in sight. Our strategy had worked. La Gorda suggested that she carry
me on her shoulders for a stretch. I found the idea ludicrous; my weight was
more than what her small frame could stand. We decided to walk for a while
and see what happened.
There was a dead silence around us. We walked slowly, bracing each
other. We had moved no more than a few yards when I again began to hear
strange breathing noises, a soft, prolonged hissing like the hissing of a
feline. I hurriedly helped her to get back on my shoulders and walked
another ten paces.
I knew we had to maintain the unexpected as a tactic if we wanted to
get out of that place. I was trying to figure out another set of unexpected
actions we could use instead of la Gorda standing on my shoulders, when she
took off her long dress. In one single movement she was naked. She scrambled
on the ground looking for something. I heard a cracking sound and she stood
up holding a branch from a low bush. She manoeuvred her shawl around my
shoulders and neck and made a sort of riding support where she could sit
with her legs wrapped around my waist, like a child riding piggyback. She
then put the branch inside her dress and held it above her head. She began
to twirl the branch, giving the dress a strange bounce. To that effect she
added a whistle, imitating the peculiar cry of a night owl.
After a hundred yards or so I heard the same sounds coming from behind
us and from the sides. She changed to another birdcall, a piercing sound
similar to that made by a peacock. A few minutes later the same birdcalls
were echoing all around us.
I had witnessed a similar phenomenon of birdcalls being answered, years
before with don Juan. I had thought at the time that perhaps the sounds were
being produced by don Juan who was hiding nearby in the darkness, or even by
someone closely associated with him, such as don Genaro, who was aiding him
in creating an insurmountable fear in me, a fear that made me run in total
darkness without even stumbling. Don Juan had called that particular action
of running in darkness the gait of power.
I asked la Gorda if she knew how to do the gait of power. She said yes.
I told her that we were going to try it, even though I was not at all sure I
could do it. She said that it was neither the time nor the place for that
and pointed in front of us. My heart, which had been beating fast all along,
began to pound wildly inside my chest. Right ahead of us, perhaps ten feet
away, and smack in the middle of the trail was one of don Genaro's allies,
the strange glowing man, with the long face and the bald head. I froze on
the spot. I heard la Gorda's shriek as though it were coming from far away.
She frantically pounded on my sides with her fists. Her action broke my
fixation on the man. She turned my head to the left and then to the right.
On my left side, almost touching my leg, was the black mass of a giant
feline with glaring yellow eyes. To my right I saw an enormous
phosphorescent coyote. Behind us, almost touching la Gorda's back, was the
dark rectangular shape.
The man turned his back to us and began to move on the trail. I also
began to walk. La Gorda kept on shrieking and whining. The rectangular shape
was almost grabbing her back. I heard it moving with crushing thumps. The
sound of its steps reverberated on the hills around us. I could feel its
cold breath on my neck. I knew that la Gorda was about to go mad. And so was
1. The feline and the coyote were almost rubbing my legs. I could hear their
hissing and growling increasing in volume. I had, at that moment, the
irrational urge to make a certain sound don Juan had taught me. The allies
answered me. I kept on frantically making the sound and they answered me
back. The tension diminished by degrees, and before we reached the road I
was part of a most extravagant scene. La Gorda was riding piggyback, happily
bouncing her dress over her head as if nothing had ever happened, keeping
the bounces in rhythm with the sound I was making, while four creatures of
another world answered me back as they moved at my pace, flanking us on all
four sides.
We got to the road in that fashion. But I did not want to leave. There
seemed to be something missing. I stayed motionless with la Gorda on my back
and made a very special tapping sound don Juan had taught me. He had said
that it was the call of moths. In order to produce it one had to use the
inside edge of the left hand and the lips.
As soon as I made it everything seemed to come to rest peacefully. The
four entities answered me, and as they did I knew which were the ones that
would go with me.
I then walked to the car and eased la Gorda off my back onto the
driver's seat and pushed her over to her side. We drove away in absolute
silence. Something had touched me somewhere and my thoughts had been turned
off.
La Gorda suggested that we go to don Genaro's place instead of driving
to her house. She said that Benigno, Nestor ami Pablito lived there but they
were out of town. Her suggestion appealed to me.
Once we were in the house la Gorda lit a lantern. The place looked just
as it had the last time I had visited don Genaro. We sat on the floor. I
pulled up a bench and put my writing pad on it. I was not tired and I wanted
to write but I could not do it. I could not write at all.
"What did the Nagual tell you about the allies?" I asked.
My question seemed to catch her off guard. She did not know how to
answer.
"I can't think," she finally said.
It was as though she had never experienced that state before. She paced
back and forth in front of me. Tiny beads of perspiration had formed on the
tip of her nose and on her upper lip.
She suddenly grabbed me by the hand and practically pulled me out of
the house. She led me to a nearby ravine and there she got sick.
My stomach felt queasy. She said that the pull of the allies had been
too great and that I should force myself to throw up. I stared at her,
waiting for a further explanation. She took my head in her hands and stuck
her finger down my throat, with the certainty of a nurse dealing with a
child, and actually made me vomit. She explained that human beings had a
very delicate glow around the stomach and that that glow was always being
pulled by everything around. At times when the pull was too great, as in the
case of contact with the allies, or even in the case of contact with strong
people, the glow would become agitated, change color or even fade
altogether. In such instances the only thing one could do was simply to
throw up.
I felt better but not quite myself yet. I had a sense of tiredness, of
heaviness around my eyes. We walked back to the house. As we reached the
door la Gorda sniffed the air like a dog and said that she knew which allies
were mine. Her statement, which ordinarily would have had no other
significance than the one she alluded to, or the one I myself read into it,
had the special quality of a cathartic device. It made me explode into
thoughts. All at once, my usual intellectual deliberations came into being.
I felt myself leaping in the air, as if thoughts had an energy of their own.
The first thought that came to my mind was that the allies were actual
entities, as I had suspected without ever daring to admit it, even to
myself. I had seen them and felt them and communicated with them. I was
euphoric. I embraced la Gorda and began to explain to her the crux of my
intellectual dilemma. I had seen the allies without the aid of don Juan or
don Genaro and that act made all the difference in the world to me. I told
la Gorda that once when I had reported to don Juan that I had seen one of
the allies he had laughed and urged me not to take myself so seriously and
to disregard what I had seen.
I had never wanted to believe I was having hallucinations, but I did
not want to accept that there were allies, either. My rational background
was unbending. I could not bridge the gap. This time, however, everything
was different, and the thought that there were actually beings on this earth
that were from another world without being aliens to the earth was more than
I could bear. I said to la Gorda, half in jest, that secretly I would have
given anything to be crazy. That would have absolved some part of me from
the crushing responsibility of revamping my understanding of the world. The
irony of it was that I could not have been more willing to revamp my
understanding of the world, on an intellectual level, that is. But that was
not enough. That had never been enough. And that had been my insurmountable
obstacle all along, my deadly flaw. I had been willing to dally in don
Juan's world in a semiconvinced fashion; therefore, I had been a
quasisorcerer. All my efforts had been no more than my inane eagerness to
fence with the intellect, as if I were in academia where one can do that
very thing from 8: 00 a. m. to 5: 00 p. m., at which time, duly tired, one
goes home. Don Juan used to say as a joke that, after arranging the world in
a most beautiful and enlightened manner, the scholar goes home at five
o'clock in order to forget his beautiful arrangement.
While la Gorda made us some food I worked feverishly on my notes. I
felt much more relaxed after eating. La Gorda was in the best of spirits.
She clowned, the way don Genaro used to, imitating the gestures I made while
I wrote.
"What do you know about the allies, Gorda?" I asked.
"Only what the Nagual told me," she replied. "He said that the allies
were forces that a sorcerer learns to control. He had two inside his gourd
and so did Genaro."
"How did they keep them inside their gourds?"
"No one knows that. All the Nagual knew was that a tiny, perfect gourd
with a neck must be found before one could harness the allies."
"Where can one find that kind of gourd?"
"Anywhere. The Nagual left word with me, in case we survived the attack
of the allies, that we should start looking for the perfect gourd, which
must be the size of the thumb of the left hand. That was the size of the
Nagual's gourd."
"Have you seen his gourd?"
"No. Never. The Nagual said that a gourd of that kind is not in the
world of men. It's like a little bundle that one can distinguish hanging
from their belts. But if you deliberately look at it you will see nothing.
"The gourd, once it is found, must be groomed with great care. Usually
sorcerers find gourds like that on vines in the woods. They pick them and
dry them and then they hollow them out. And then they smooth them and polish
them. Once the sorcerer has his gourd he must offer it to the allies and
entice them to live there. If the allies consent, the gourd disappears from
the world of men and the allies become an aid to the sorcerer. The Nagual
and Genaro could make their allies do anything that needed to be done.
Things they themselves could not do. Such as, for instance, sending the wind
to chase me or sending that chicken to run inside Lidia's blouse."
I heard a peculiar, prolonged hissing sound outside the door. It was
the exact sound I had heard in dona Soledad's house two days before. This
time I knew it was the jaguar. The sound did not scare me. In fact, I would
have stepped out to see the jaguar had la Gorda not stopped me.
"You're still incomplete," she said. "The allies would feast on you if
you go out by yourself. Especially that daring one that's prowling out there
now."
"My body feels very safe," I protested.
She patted my back and held me down against the bench on which I was
writing.
"You're not a complete sorcerer yet," she said. "You have a huge patch
in your middle and the force of those allies would yank it out of place.
They are no joke."
"What are you supposed to do when an ally comes to you in this
fashion?"
"I don't bother with them one way or another. The Nagual taught me to
be balanced and not to seek anything eagerly. Tonight, for instance, I knew
which allies would go to you, if you can ever get a gourd and groom it. You
may be eager to get them. I'm not. Chances are I'll never get them myself.
They are a pain in the neck."
"Why?"
"Because they are forces and as such they can drain you to nothing. The
Nagual said that one is better off with nothing except one's purpose and
freedom. Someday when you're complete, perhaps we'll have to choose whether
or not to keep them."
I told her that I personally liked the jaguar even though there was
something overbearing about it. She peered at me. There was a look of
surprise and bewilderment in her eyes.
"I really like that one," I said.
"Tell me what you saw," she said.
I realized at that moment that I had automatically assumed that she had
seen the same things I had. I described in great detail the four allies as I
had seen them. She listened more than attentively; she appeared to be
spellbound by my description.
"The allies have no form," she said when I had finished. "They are like
a presence, like a wind, like a glow. The first one we found tonight was a
blackness that wanted to get inside my body. That's why I screamed. I felt
it reaching up my legs. The others were just colors. Their glow was so
strong, though, that it made the trail look as if it were daytime."
Her statements astounded me. I had finally accepted, after years of
struggle and purely on the basis of our encounter with them that night, that
the allies had a consensual form, a substance which could be perceived
equally by everyone's senses.
I jokingly told la Gorda that I had already written in my notes that
they were creatures with form.
"What am I going to do now?" I asked in a rhetorical sense.
"It's very simple," she said. "Write that they are not."
I thought that she was absolutely right.
"Why do I see them as monsters?" I asked.
"That's no mystery," she said. "You haven't lost your human form yet.
The same thing happened to me. I used to see the allies as people; all of
them were Indian men with horrible faces and mean looks. They used to wait
for me in deserted places. I thought they were after me as a woman. The
Nagual used to laugh his head off at my fears. But still I was half dead
with fright. One of them used to come and sit on my bed and shake it until I
would wake up. The fright that that ally used to give me was something that
I don't want repeated, even now that I'm changed. Tonight I think I was as
afraid of the allies as I used to be."
"You mean that you don't see them as human beings anymore?"
"No. Not anymore. The Nagual told you that an ally is formless. He is
right. An ally is only a presence, a helper that is nothing and yet it is as
real as you and me."
"Have the little sisters seen the allies?"
"Everybody has seen them one time or another."
"Are the allies just a force for them too?"
"No. They are like you; they haven't lost their human form yet. None of
them has. For all of them, the little sisters, the Genaros and Soledad, the
allies are horrendous things; with them the allies are malevolent, dreadful
creatures of the night. The sole mention of the allies sends Lidia and
Josefina and Pablito into a frenzy. Rosa and Nestor are not that afraid of
them, but they don't want to have anything to do with them, either. Benigno
has his own designs so he's not concerned with them. They don't bother him,
or me, for that matter. But the others are easy prey for the allies,
especially now that the allies are out of the Nagual's and Genaro's gourds.
They come all the time looking for you.
"The Nagual told me that as long as one clings to the human form, one
can only reflect that form, and since the allies feed directly onto our
life-force in the middle of the stomach, they usually make us sick, and then
we see them as heavy, ugly creatures."
"Is there something that we can do to protect ourselves, or to change
the shape of those creatures?"
"What all of you have to do is lose your human forms."
"What do you mean?"
My question did not seem to have any meaning for her. She stared at me
blankly as if waiting for me to clarify what I had just said. She closed her
eyes for a moment.
"You don't know about the human mold and the human form, do you?" she
asked.
I stared at her.
"I've just seen that you know nothing about them," she said and smiled.
"You are absolutely right," I said.
"The Nagual told me that the human form is a force," she said. "And the
human mold is. . . well. . . a mold. He said that everything has a
particular mold. Plants have molds, animals have molds, worms have molds.
Are you sure the Nagual never showed you the human mold?"
I told her that he had sketched the concept, but in a very brief
manner, once when he had tried to explain something about a dream I had had.
In the dream in question I had seen a man who seemed to be concealing
himself in the darkness of a narrow gully. To find him there scared me. I
looked at him for a moment and then the man stepped forward and made himself
visible to me. He was naked and his body glowed. He seemed to be delicate,
almost frail. I liked his eyes. They were friendly and profound. I thought
that they were very kind. But then he stepped back into the darkness of the
gully and his eyes became like two mirrors, like the eyes of a ferocious
animal.
Don Juan said that I had encountered the human mold in "dreaming." He
explained that sorcerers have the avenue of their "dreaming" to lead them to
the mold, and that the mold of men was definitely an entity, an entity which
could be seen by some of us at certain times when we are imbued with power,
and by all of us for sure at the moment of our death. He described the mold
as being the source, the origin of man, since, without the mold to group
together the force of life, there was no way for that force to assemble
itself into the shape of man.
He interpreted my dream as a brief and extraordinarily simplistic
glance at the mold. He said that my dream had restated the fact that I was a
simpleminded and very earthy man.
La Gorda laughed and said that she would have said the same thing
herself. To see the mold as an average naked man and then as an animal had
been indeed a very simplistic view view of the mold.
"Perhaps it was just a stupid, ordinary dream," I said, trying to
defend myself.
"No," she said with a large grin. "You see, the human mold glows and it
is always found in water holes and narrow gullies."
"Why in gullies and water holes?" I asked.
"It feeds on water. Without water there is no mold," she replied. "I
know that the Nagual took you to water holes regularly in hopes of showing
yon the mold. But your emptiness prevented you from seeing anything. The
same thing happened to me. He used to make me lie naked on a rock in the
very center of a particular dried-up water hole, but all I did was to feel
the presence of something that scared me out of my wits."
"Why does emptiness prevent one from seeing the mold?"
"The Nagual said that everything in the world is a force, a pull or a
push. In order for us to be pushed or pulled we need to be like a sail, like
a kite in the wind. But if we have a hole in the middle of our luminosity,
the force goes through it and never acts upon us.
"The Nagual told me that Genaro liked you very much and tried to make
you aware of the hole in your middle. He used to fly his sombrero as a kite
to tease you; he even pulled you from that hole until you had diarrhea, but
you never caught on to what he was doing."
"Why didn't they tell me as plainly as you have told me?"
"They did, but you didn't notice their words."
I found her statement impossible to believe. To accept that they had
told me about it and I had not acknowledged it was unthinkable.
"Did you ever see the mold, Gorda?" I asked.
"Sure, when I became complete again. I went to that particular water
hole one day by myself and there it was. It was a radiant, luminous being. I
could not look at it. It blinded me. But being in its presence was enough. I
felt happy and strong. And nothing else mattered, nothing. Just being there
was all I wanted. The Nagual said that sometimes if we have enough personal
power we can catch a glimpse of the mold even though we are not sorcerers;
when that happens we say that we have seen God. He said that if we call it
God it is the truth. The mold is God.
"I had a dreadful time understanding the Nagual, because I was a very
religious woman. I had nothing else in the world but my religion. So to hear
the Nagual say the things he used to say made me shiver. But then I became
complete and the forces of the world began to pull me, and I knew that the
Nagual was right. The mold is God. What do you think?"
"The day I see it I'll tell you, Gorda," I said.
She laughed, and said that the Nagual used to make fun of me, saying
that the day I would see the mold I would probably become a Franciscan
friar, because in the depths of me I was a religious soul.
"Was the mold you saw a man or a woman?" I asked.
"Neither. It was simply a luminous human. The Nagual said that I could
have asked something for myself. That a warrior cannot let that chance pass.
But I could not think of anything to ask for. It was better that way. I have
the most beautiful memory of it. The Nagual said that a warrior with enough
power can see the mold many, many times. What a great fortune that must be!"
"But if the human mold is what puts us together, what is the human
form?"
"Something sticky, a sticky force that makes us the people we are. The
Nagual told me that the human form has no form. Like the allies that he
carried in his gourd, it's anything, but in spite of not having form, it
possesses us during our lives and doesn't leave us until we die. I've never
seen the human form but I have felt it in my body."
She then described a very complex series of sensations that she had had
over a period of years that culminated in a serious illness, the climax of
which was a bodily state that reminded me of descriptions I had read of a
massive heart attack. She said that the human form, as the force that it is,
left her body after a serious internal battle that manifested itself as
illness.
"It sounds as if you had a heart attack," I said.
"Maybe I did," she replied, "but one thing I know for sure. The day I
had it, I lost my human form. I became so weak that for days I couldn't even
get out of my bed. Since that day I haven't had the energy to be my old
self. From time to time I have tried to get into my old habits, but I didn't
have the strength to enjoy them the way I used to. Finally I gave up
trying."
"What is the point of losing your form?"
"A warrior must drop the human form in order to change, to really
change. Otherwise there is only talk about change, like in your case. The
Nagual said that it is useless to think or hope that one can change one's
habits. One cannot change one iota as long as one holds on to the human
form. The Nagual told me that a warrior knows that he cannot change, and yet
he makes it his business to try to change, even though he knows that he
won't be able to. That's the only advantage a warrior has over the average
man. The warrior is never disappointed when he fails to change."
"But you are still yourself, Gorda, aren't you?"
"No. Not anymore. The only thing that makes you think you are yourself
is the form. Once it leaves, you are nothing."
"But you still talk and think and feel as you always did, don't you?"
"Not at all. I'm new."
She laughed and hugged me as if she were consoling a child.
"Only Eligio and I have lost our form," she went on. "It was our great
fortune that we lost it while the Nagual was among us. You people will have
a horrid time. That is your fate. Whoever loses it next will have only me as
a companion. I already feel sorry for whoever it will be."
"What else did you feel, Gorda, when you lost your form, besides not
having enough energy?"
"The Nagual told me that a warrior without form begins to see an eye. I
saw an eye in front of me every time I closed my eyes. It got so bad that I
couldn't rest anymore; the eye followed me wherever I went. I nearly went
mad. Finally, I suppose, I became used to it. Now I don't even notice it
because it has become part of me.
"The formless warrior uses that eye to start dreaming. If you don't
have a form, you don't have to go to sleep to do dreaming. The eye in front
of you pulls you every time you want to go."
"Where exactly is that eye, Gorda?"
She closed her eyes and moved her hand from side to side, right in
front of her eyes, covering the span of her face.
"Sometimes the eye is very small and other times it is enormous," she
went on. "When it's small your dreaming is precise. If it's big your
dreaming is like flying over the mountains and not really seeing much. I
haven't done enough dreaming yet, but the Nagual told me that that eye is my
trump card. One day when I become truly formless I won't see the eye
anymore; the eye will become just like me, nothing, and yet it'll be there
like the allies. The Nagual said that everything has to be sifted through
our human form. When we have no form, then nothing has form and yet
everything is present. I couldn't understand what he meant by that, but now
I see that he was absolutely right. The allies are only a presence and so
will be the eye. But at this time that eye is everything to me. In fact, in
having that eye I should need nothing else in order to call up my dreaming,
even when I'm awake. I haven't been able to do that yet. Perhaps I'm like
you, a bit stubborn and lazy."
"How did you do the flying you showed me tonight?"
"The Nagual taught me how to use my body to make lights, because we are
light anyway, so I make sparks and lights and they in turn lure the lines of
the world. Once I see one, it's easy to hook myself to it."
"How do you hook yourself?"
"I grab it."
She made a gesture with her hands. She clawed them and then placed them
together joined at the wrists, forming a sort of bowl, with the clawed
fingers upright.
"You have to grab the line like a jaguar," she went on, "and never
separate the wrists. If you do, you'll fall down and break your neck."
She paused and that forced me to look at her, waiting for more of her
revelations.
"You don't believe me, do you?" she asked.
Without giving me time to answer, she squatted and began again to
produce her display of sparks. I was calm and collected and could place my
undivided attention on her actions. When she snapped her fingers open, every
fiber of her muscles seemed to tense at once. That tension seemed to be
focused on the very tips of her fingers and was projected out like rays of
light. The moisture in her fingertips was actually a vehicle to carry some
sort of energy emanating from her body.
"How did you do that, Gorda?" I asked, truly marveling at her.
"I really don't know," she said. "I simply do it. I've done it lots and
lots of times and yet I don't know how I do it. When I grab one of those
rays I feel that I'm being pulled by something. I really don't do anything
else except let the lines I've grabbed pull me. When I want to get back
through, I feel that the line doesn't want to let me free and I get frantic.
The Nagual said that that was my worst feature. I get so frightened that one
of these days I'm going to injure my body. But I figure that one of these
days I'll be even more formless and then I won't get frightened, so as long
as I hold on until that day. I'm all right."
"Tell me then, Gorda, how do you let the lines pull you?"
"We're back again in the same spot. I don't know. The Nagual warned me
about you. You want to know things that cannot be known."
I struggled to make clear to her that what I was after were the
procedures. I had really given up looking for an explanation from all of
them because their explanations explained nothing to me. To describe to me
the steps that were followed was something altogether different.
"How did you learn to let your body hold onto the lines of the world?"
I asked.
"I learned that in dreaming,M-^T she said, "but I really don't know
how. Everything for a woman warrior starts in dreaming. The Nagual told me,
just as he told you, first to look for my hands in my dreams. I couldn't
find them at all. In my dreams I had no hands. I tried and tried for years
to find them. Every night I used to give myself the command to find my hands
but it was to no avail. I never found anything in my dreams. The Nagual was
merciless with me. He said that I had to find them or perish. So I lied to
him that I had found my hands in my dreams. The Nagual didn't say a word but
Genaro threw his hat on the floor and danced on it. He patted my head and
said that I was really a great warrior. The more he praised me the worse I
felt. I was about to tell the Nagual the truth when crazy Genaro aimed his
behind at me and let out the loudest and longest fart I had ever heard. He
actually pushed me backward with it. It was like a hot, foul wind,
disgusting and smelly, just like me. The Nagual was choking with laughter.
"I ran to the house and hid there. I was very fat then. I used to eat a
great deal and I had a lot of gas. So I decided not to eat for a while.
Lidia and Josefina helped me. I didn't eat anything for twenty-three days,
and then one night I found my hands in my dreams. They were old and ugly and
green, but they were mine. So that was the beginning. The rest was easy."
"And what was the rest, Gorda?"
"The next thing the Nagual wanted me to do was to try to find houses or
buildings in my dreams and look at them, trying not to dissolve the images.
He said that the art of the dreamer is to hold the image of his dream.
Because that's what we do anyway during all our lives."
"What did he mean by that?"
"Our art as ordinary people is that we know how to hold the image of
what we are looking at. The Nagual said that we do that but we don't know
how. We just do it; that is, our bodies do it. In dreaming we have to do the
same thing, except that in dreaming we have to learn how to do it. We have
to struggle not to look but merely to glance and yet hold the image.
"The Nagual told me to find in my dreams a brace for my belly button.
It took a long time because I didn't understand what he meant. He said that
in dreaming we pay attention with the belly button; therefore it has to be
protected. We need a little warmth or a feeling that something is pressing
the belly button in order to hold the images in our dreams.
"I found a pebble in my dreams that fit my belly button, and the Nagual
made me look for it day after day in water holes and canyons, until I found
it. I made a belt for it and I still wear it day and night. Wearing it made
it easier for me to hold images in my dreams.
"Then the Nagual gave me the task of going to specific places in my
dreaming. I was doing really well with my task but at that time I lost my
form and I began to see the eye in front of me. The Nagual said that the eye
had changed everything, and he gave me orders to begin using the eye to pull
myself away. He said that I didn't have time to get to my double in
dreaming, but that the eye was even better. I felt cheated. Now I don't
care. I've used that eye the best way I could. I let it pull me in my
dreaming. I close my eyes and fall asleep like nothing, even in the daytime
or anywhere. The eye pulls me and I enter into another world. Most of the
time I just wander around in it. The Nagual told me and the little sisters
that during our menstrual periods dreaming becomes power. I get a little
crazy for one thing. I become more daring. And like the Nagual showed us, a
crack opens in front of us during those days. You're not a woman so it can't
make any sense to you, but two days before her period a woman can open that
crack and step through it into another world."
With her left hand she followed the contour of an invisible line that
seemed to run vertically in front of her at arm's length.
"During that time a woman, if she wants to, can let go of the images of
the world," la Gorda went on. "That's the crack between the worlds, and as
the Nagual said, it is right in front of all of us women.
"The reason the Nagual believes women are better sorcerers than men is
because they always have the crack in front of them, while a man has to make
it.
"Well, it was during my periods that I learned in dreaming to fly with
the lines of the world. I learned to make sparks with my body to entice the
lines and then I learned to grab them. And that's all I have learned in
dreaming so far."
I laughed and told her that I had nothing to show for my years of
"dreaming."
"You've learned how to call the allies in dreaming," she said with
great assurance.
I told her that don Juan had taught me to make those sounds. She did
not seem to believe me.
"The allies must come to you, then, because they're seeking his
luminosity," she said, "the luminosity he left with you. He told me that
every sorcerer has only so much luminosity to give away. So he parcels it
out to all his children in accordance with an order that comes to him from
somewhere out there in that vastness. In your case he even gave you his own
call."
She clicked her tongue and winked at me.
"If you don't believe me," she went on, "why don't you make the sound
the Nagual taught you and see if the allies come to you?"
I felt reluctant to do it. Not because I believed that my sound would
bring anything, but because I did not want to humor her.
She waited for a moment, and when she was sure I was not going to try,
she put her hand to her mouth and imitated my tapping sound to perfection.
She played it for five or six minutes, stopping only to breathe.
"See what I mean?" she asked smiling. "The allies don't give a fig
about my calling, no matter how close it is to yours. Now try it yourself."
I tried. After a few seconds I heard the call being answered. La Gorda
jumped to her feet. I had the clear impression that she was more surprised
than I was. She hurriedly made me stop, turned off the lantern and gathered
up my notes.
She was about to open the front door, but she stopped short; a most
frightening sound came from just outside the door. It sounded to me like a
growl. It was so horrendous and ominous that it made us both jump back, away
from the door. My physical alarm was so intense that I would have fled if I
had had a place to go.
Something heavy was leaning against the door; it made the door creak. I
looked at la Gorda. She seemed to be even more alarmed. She was still
standing with her arm outstretched as if to open the door. Her mouth was
open. She seemed to have been frozen in midaction.
The door was about to be sprung open any moment. There were no bangs on
it, just a terrifying pressure, not only on the door but all around the
house.
La Gorda stood up and told me to embrace her quickly from behind,
locking my hands around her waist over her belly button. She performed then
a strange movement with her hands. It was as though she were flipping a
towel while holding it at the level of her eyes. She did it four times. Then
she made another strange movement. She placed her hands at the middle of her
chest with the palms up, one above the other without touching. Her elbows
were straight out to her sides. She clasped her hands as if she had suddenly
grabbed two unseen bars. She slowly turned her hands over until the palms
were facing down and then she made a most beautiful, exertive movement, a
movement that seemed to engage every muscle in her body. It was as though
she were opening a heavy sliding door that offered a great resistance. Her
body shivered with the exertion. Her arms moved slowly, as if opening a
very, very heavy door, until they were fully extended laterally.
I had the clear impression that as soon as she opened that door a wind
rushed through. That wind pulled us and we actually went through the wall.
Or rather, the walls of the house went through us, or perhaps all three, la
Gorda, the house and myself, went through the door she had opened. All of a
sudden I was out in an open field. I could see the dark shapes of the
surrounding mountains and trees. I was no longer holding onto la Gorda's
waist. A noise above me made me look up, and I saw her hovering perhaps ten
feet above me like the black shape of a giant kite. I felt a terrible itch
in my belly button and then la Gorda plummeted down to the ground at top
speed, but instead of crashing she came to a soft, total halt.
At the moment that la Gorda landed, the itch in my umbilical region
turned into a horribly exhausting nervous pain. It was as if her landing
were pulling my insides out. I screamed in pain at the top of my voice.
Then la Gorda was standing next to me, desperately out of breath. I was
sitting down. We were again in the room of don Genaro's house where we had
been.
La Gorda seemed unable to catch her breath. She was drenched in
perspiration.
"We've got to get out of here," she muttered.
It was a short drive to the little sisters' house. None of them was
around. La Gorda lit a lantern and led me directly to the open-air kitchen
in back. There she undressed herself and asked me to bathe her like a horse,
by throwing water on her body. I took a small tub full of water and
proceeded to pour it gently on her, but she wanted me to drench her.
She explained that a contact with the allies, like the one we had,
produced a most injurious perspiration that had to be washed off
immediately. She made me take off my clothes and then drenched me in
ice-cold water. Then she handed me a clean piece of cloth and we dried
ourselves as we walked back into the house. She sat on the big bed in the
front room after hanging the lantern on the wall above it. Her knees were up
and I could see every part of her body. I hugged her naked body, and it was
then that I realized what dona Soledad had meant when she said that la Gorda
was the Nagual's woman. She was formless like don Juan. I could not possibly
think of her as a woman.
I started to put on my clothes. She took them away from me. She said
that before I could wear them again I had to sun them. She gave me a blanket
to put over my shoulders and got another one for herself.
"That attack of the allies was truly scary," she said as we sat down on
the bed. "We were really lucky that we could get out of their grip. I had no
idea why the Nagual told me to go to Genaro's with you. Now I know. That
house is where the allies are the strongest. They missed us by the skin of
our teeth. We were lucky that I knew how to get out."
"How did you do it, Gorda?"
"I really don't know," she said. "I simply did it. My body knew how, I
suppose, but when I want to think how I did it, I can't.
"This was a great test for both of us. Until tonight I didn't know that
I could open the eye, but look what I did. I actually opened the eye, just
as the Nagual said I could. I've never been able to do it until you came
along. I've tried but it never worked. This time the fear of those allies
made me just grab the eye the way the Nagual told me to, by shaking it four
times in its four directions. He said that I should shake it as I shake a
bed sheet, and then I should open it as a door, by holding it right at the
middle. The rest was very easy. Once the door was opened I felt a strong
wind pulling me instead of blowing me away. The trouble, the Nagual said, is
to return. You have to be very strong to do that. The Nagual and Genaro and
Eligio could go in and out of that eye like nothing. For them the eye was
not even an eye; they said it was an orange light, like the sun. And so were
the Nagual and Genaro an orange light when they flew. I'm still very low on
the scale; the Nagual said that when I do my flying I spread out and look
like a pile of cow dung in the sky. I have no light. That's why the return
is so dreadful for me. Tonight you helped me and pulled me back twice. The
reason I showed you my flying tonight was because the Nagual gave me orders
to let you see it no matter how difficult or crummy it is. With my flying I
was supposed to be helping you, the same way you were supposed to be helping
me when you showed me your double. I saw your whole maneuver from the door.
You were so busy feeling sorry for Josefina that your body didn't notice my
presence. I saw how your double came out from the top of your head. It
wriggled out like a worm. I saw a shiver that began in your feet and went
through your body and then your double came out. It was like you, but very
shiny. It was like the Nagual himself. That's why the sisters were
petrified. I knew they thought that it was the Nagual himself. But I
couldn't see all of it. I missed the sound because I have no attention for
it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The double needs a tremendous amount of attention. The Nagual gave
that attention to you but not to me. He told me that he had run out of
time."
She said something else about a certain kind of attention but I was
very tired. I fell asleep so suddenly that I did not even have time to put
my notes away.
The Genaros
I woke up around eight the next morning and found that la Gorda had
sunned my clothes and made breakfast. We ate in the kitchen, in the dining
area. When we had finished I asked her about Lidia, Rosa and Josefina. They
seemed to have vanished from the house.
"They are helping Soledad," she said. "She's getting ready to leave."
"Where is she going?"
"Somewhere away from here. She has no more reason to stay. She was
waiting for you and you have already come."
"Are the little sisters going with her?"
"No. They just don't want to be here today. It looks as if today is not
a good day for them to stick around."
"Why isn't it a good day?"
"The Genaros are coming to see you today and the girls don't get along
with them. If all of them are here together, they'll get into a most
dreadful fight. The last time that happened they nearly killed one another."
"Do they fight physically?"
"You bet they do. All of them are very strong and none of them wants to
take second place. The Nagual told me that that would happen, but I am
powerless to stop them; and not only that but I have to take sides, so it's
a mess."
"How do you know that the Genaros are coming today?"
"I haven't talked to them. I just know that they will be here today,
that's all."
"Do you know that because you see, Gorda?"
"That's right. I see them coming. And one of them is coming directly to
you because you're pulling him." I assured her that I was not pulling anyone
in particular. I said that I had not revealed to anyone the purpose of my
trip, but that it had to do with something I had to ask Pablito and Nestor.
She smiled coyly and said that fate had paired me with Pablito, that we
were very alike, and that undoubtedly he was going to see me first. She
added that everything that happened to a warrior could be interpreted as an
omen; thus my encounter with Soledad was an omen of what I was going to find
out on my visit. I asked her to explain her point.
"The men will give you very little this time," she said. "It's the
women who will rip you to shreds, as Soledad did. That's what I would say if
I read the omen. You're waiting for the Genaros, but they are men like you.
And look at this other omen; they are a little bit behind. I would say a
couple of days behind. That's your fate as well as theirs, as men, to be
always a couple of days behind."
"Behind what, Gorda?"
"Behind everything. Behind us women, for instance."
She laughed and patted my head.
"No matter how stubborn you are," she went on, "you have to admit that
I'm right. Wait and see."
"Did the Nagual tell you that men are behind women?" I asked.
"Sure he did," she replied. "All you have to do is look around."
"I do, Gorda. But I don't see any such thing. Women are always behind.
They are dependent on men."
She laughed. Her laughter was not scornful or bitter; it was rather a
clear sound of joyfulness.
"You know the world of people better than I do," she said forcefully.
"But right now I'm formless and you're not. I'm telling you, women are
better sorcerers because there is a crack in front of our eyes and there is
none in front of yours."
She did not seem angry, but I felt obliged to explain that I asked
questions and made comments not because I was attacking or defending any
given point, but because I wanted her to talk.
She said that she had done nothing else but talk since the moment we
met, and that the Nagual had trained her to talk because her task was the
same as mine, to be in the world of people.
"Everything we say," she went on, "is a reflection of the world of
people. You will find out before your visit is over that you talk and act
the way you do because you're clinging to the human form, just as the
Genaros and the little sisters are clinging to the human form when they
fight to kill one another."
"But aren't all of you supposed to cooperate with Pablito, Nestor and
Benigno?"
"Genaro and the Nagual told every one of us that we should live in
harmony and help and protect one another, because we are alone in the world.
Pablito was left in charge of us four, but he's a coward. If it were left up
to him, he would let us die like dogs. When the Nagual was around, though,
Pablito was very nice to us and took very good care of us. Everyone used to
tease him and joke that he took care of us as if we were his wives. The
Nagual and Genaro told him, not too long before they left, that he had a
real chance to become the Nagual someday, because we might become his four
winds, his four corners. Pablito understood it to be his task and from that
day on he changed. He became insufferable. He began to order us around as if
we were really his wives.
"I asked the Nagual about Pablito's chances and he told me that I
should know that everything in a warrior's world depends on personal power
and personal power depends on impeccability. If Pablito were impeccable he
would have a chance. I laughed when he told me that. I know Pablito very
well. But the Nagual explained to me that I shouldn't take it so lightly. He
said. that warriors always have a chance, no matter how slim. He made me see
that I was a warrior myself and that I shouldn't hinder Pablito with my
thoughts. He said that I should turn them off and let Pablito be; that the
impeccable thing for me to do was to help Pablito in spite of what I knew
about him.
"I understood what the Nagual said. Besides, I have my own debt with
Pablito, and I welcomed the opportunity to help him. But I also knew that no
matter how I helped him he was going to fail. I knew all along that he
didn't have what it takes to be like the Nagual. Pablito is very childish
and he won't accept his defeat. He's miserable because he's not impeccable,
and yet he's still trying in his thoughts to be like the Nagual."
"How did he fail?"
"As soon as the Nagual left, Pablito had a deadly run-in with Lidia.
Years ago the Nagual had given him the task of being Lidia's husband, just
for appearances. The people around here thought that she was his wife. Lidia
didn't like that one bit. She's very tough. The truth of the matter is that
Pablito has always been scared to death of her. They could never get along
together and they tolerated each other only because the Nagual was around;
but when he left, Pablito got crazier than he already was and became
convinced that he had enough personal power to take us as his wives. The
three Genaros got together and discussed what Pablito should do and decided
that he should take the toughest woman first, Lidia. They waited until she
was alone and then all three of them came into the house and grabbed her by
the arms and threw her on the bed. Pablito got on top of her. She thought at
first that the Genaros were joking. But when she realized that they were
serious, she hit Pablito with her head in the middle of his forehead and
nearly killed him. The Genaros fled and Nestor had to tend to Pablito's
wound for months."
"Is there something that I can do to help them understand?"
"No. Unfortunately, understanding is not their problem. All six of them
understand very well. The real trouble is something else, something very
ugly that no one can help them with. They indulge in not trying to change.
Since they know they won't succeed in changing no matter how much they try,
or want to, or need to, they have given up trying altogether. That's as
wrong as feeling disappointed with our failures. The Nagual told each of
them that warriors, both men and women, must be impeccable in their effort
to change, in order to scare the human form and shake it away. After years
of impeccability a moment will come, the Nagual said, when the form cannot
stand it any longer and it leaves, just as it left me. In doing so, of
course, it injures the body and can even make it die, but an impeccable
warrior survives, always."
A sudden knock at the front door interrupted her. La Gorda stood up and
went over to unlatch the door. It was Lidia. She greeted me very formally
and asked la Gorda to go with her. They left together.
I welcomed being alone. I worked on my notes for hours. The open-air
dining area was cool and had very good light.
La Gorda returned around noon. She asked me if I wanted to eat. I was
not hungry, but she insisted that I eat. She said that contacts with the
allies were very debilitating, and that she felt very weak herself.
After eating I sat down with la Gorda and was getting ready to ask her
about "dreaming" when the front door opened loudly and Pablito walked in. He
was panting. He obviously had been running and appeared to be in a state of
great excitation. He stood at the door for a moment, catching his breath. He
hadn't changed much. He seemed a bit older, or heavier, or perhaps only more
muscular. He was, however, still very lean and wiry. His complexion was
pale, as if he had not been in the sun for a long time. The brownness of his
eyes was accentuated by a faint mark of weariness in his face. I remembered
Pablito as having a beguiling smile; as he stood there looking at me, his
smile was as charming as ever. He ran over to where I was sitting and
grasped my forearms for a moment, without saying a word. I stood up. He then
shook me gently and embraced me. I myself was utterly delighted to see him.
I was jumping up and down with an infantile joy. I did not know what to say
to him. He finally broke the silence.
"Maestro," he said softly, nodding his head slightly as if he were
bowing to me.
The title of "maestro," teacher, caught me by surprise. I turned around
as if I were looking for someone else who was just behind me. I deliberately
exaggerated my movements to let him know that I was mystified. He smiled,
and the only thing that occurred to me was to ask him how he knew I was
there.
He said that he, Nestor and Benigno had been forced to return because
of a most unusual apprehension, which made them run day and night without
any pause. Nestor had gone to their own house to find out if there was
something there that would account for the feeling that had driven them.
Benigno had gone to Soledad's place and he himself had come to the girls'
house.
"You hit the jackpot, Pablito," la Gorda said, and laughed.
Pablito did not answer. He glared at her.
"I'll bet that you're working yourself up to throw me out," he said in
a tone of great anger.
"Don't fight with me, Pablito," la Gorda said, unruffled.
Pablito turned to me and apologized, and then added in a very loud
voice, as if he wanted someone else in the house to hear him, that he had
brought his own chair to sit on and that he could put it wherever he
pleased.
"There's no one else around here except us," la Gorda said softly, and
chuckled.
"I'll bring in my chair anyway," Pablito said. "You don't mind,
Maestro, do you?"
I looked at la Gorda. She gave me an almost imperceptible go-ahead sign
with the tip of her foot.
"Bring it in. Bring anything you want," I said.
Pablito stepped out of the house.
"They're all that way," la Gorda said, "all three of them."
Pablito came back a moment later carrying an unusuallooking chair on
his shoulders. The chair was shaped to follow the contour of his back, so
when he had it on his shoulders, upside down, it looked like a backpack.
"May I put it down?" he asked me.
"Of course," I replied, moving the bench over to make room.
He laughed with exaggerated ease.
"Aren't you the Nagual?" he asked me, and then looked at la Gorda and
added, "Or do you have to wait for orders?"
"I am the Nagual," I said facetiously in order to humor him.
I sensed that he was about to pick a fight with la Gorda; she must have
sensed it too, for she excused herself and went out the back.
Pablito put his chair down and slowly circled around me as if he were
inspecting my body. Then he took his low-back narrow chair in one hand,
turned it around and sat down, resting his folded arms on the back of the
chair that was made to allow him the maximum comfort as he sat astride it. I
sat down facing him. His mood had changed completely the instant la Gorda
left.
"I must ask you to forgive me for acting the way I did," he said
smiling. "But I had to get rid of that witch."
"Is she that bad, Pablito?"
"You can bet on that," he replied.
To change the subject I told him that he looked very fine and
prosperous.
"You look very fine yourself. Maestro," he said.
"What's this nonsense of calling me Maestro?" I asked in a joking tone.
"Things are not the same as before," he replied. "We are in a new
realm, and the Witness says that you're a maestro now, and the Witness
cannot be wrong. But he will tell you the whole story himself. He'll be here
shortly, and will he be glad to see you again. I think that by now he must
have felt that you are here. As we were coming back, all of us had the
feeling that you might be on your way, but none of us felt that you had
already arrived."
I told him then that I had come for the sole purpose of seeing him and
Nestor, that they were the only two people in the world with whom I could
talk about our last meeting with don Juan and don Genaro, and that I needed
more than anything else to clear up the uncertainties that that last meeting
had created in me.
"We're bound to one another," he said. "I'll do anything I can to help.
You know that. But I must warn you that I'm not as strong as you would want
me to be. Perhaps it would be better if we didn't talk at all. But, on the
other hand, if we don't talk we'll never understand anything."
In a careful and deliberate manner I formulated my query. I explained
that there was one single issue at the crux of my rational predicament.
"Tell me, Pablito," I said, "did we truly jump with our bodies into the
abyss?"
"I don't know," he said. "I really don't know."
"But you were there with me."
"That's the point. Was I really there?"
I felt annoyed at his cryptic replies. I had the sensation that if I
would shake him or squeeze him, something in him would be set free. It was
apparent to me that he was deliberately withholding something of great
value. I protested that he would choose to be secretive with me when we had
a bond of total trust.
Pablito shook his head as if silently objecting to my accusation.
I asked him to recount to me his whole experience, starting from the
time prior to our jump, when don Juan and don Genaro had prepared us
together for the final onslaught.
Pablito's account was muddled and inconsistent. All he could remember
about the last moments before we jumped into the abyss was that after don
Juan and don Genaro had said good-bye to both of us and had disappeared into
the darkness, his strength waned, he was about to fall on his face, but I
held him by his arm and carried him to the edge of the abyss and there he
blacked out.
"What happened after you blacked out, Pablito?"
"I don't know."
"Did you have dreams or visions? What did you see?"
"As far as I'm concerned I had no visions, or if I did I couldn't pay
any attention to them. My lack of impeccability makes it impossible for me
to remember them."
"And then what happened?"
"I woke up at Genaro's old place. I don't know how I got there."
He remained quiet, while I frantically searched in my mind for a
question, a comment, a critical statement or anything that would add extra
breadth to his statements. As it was, nothing in Pablito's account was
usable to buttress what had happened to me. I felt cheated. I was almost
angry with him. My feelings were a mixture of pity for Pablito and myself
and at the same time a most intense disappointment.
"I'm sorry I'm such a letdown to you," Pablito said.
My immediate reaction to his words was to cover up my feelings and
assure him that I was not disappointed at all.
"I am a sorcerer," he said, laughing, "a poor one, but enough of a one
to know what my body tells me. And right now it tells me that you are angry
with me."
"I'm not angry, Pablito!" I exclaimed.
"That's what your reason says, but not your body," he said. "Your body
is angry. Your reason, however, finds no reason to feel anger toward me, so
you're caught in a cross fire. The least I can do for you is to untangle
this. Your body is angry because it knows that I am not impeccable and that
only an impeccable warrior can help you. Your body is angry because it feels
that I am wasting myself. It knew all that the minute I walked through that
door."
I did not know what to say. I felt a flood of post-fact realizations.
Perhaps he was right in saying that my body knew all that. At any rate, his
directness in confronting me with my feelings had blunted the edge of my
frustration. I began to wonder if Pablito was not just playing a game with
me. I told him that being so direct and bold he could not possibly be as
weak as he pictured himself to be.
"My weakness is that I'm made to have longings," he said almost in a
whisper. "I'm even to the point where I long for my life as an ordinary man.
Can you believe that?"
"You can't be serious, Pablito! " I exclaimed.
"I am," he replied. "I long for the grand privilege of walking the face
of the earth as an ordinary man, without this awesome burden."
I found his stand simply preposterous and caught myself exclaiming over
and over that he could not possibly be serious. Pablito looked at me and
sighed. I was overtaken by a sudden apprehension. He seemed to be on the
verge of tears. My apprehension gave way to an intense feeling of empathy.
Neither of us could help each other.
La Gorda came back to the kitchen at that moment. Pablito seemed to
experience an instantaneous revitalization. He jumped to his feet and
stomped on the floor.
"What the hell do you want?" he yelled in a shrill, nervous voice. "Why
are you snooping around?"
La Gorda addressed me as if he did not exist. She politely said that
she was going to Soledad's house.
"What the hell do we care where you go?" he yelled. "You can go to hell
for that matter."
He stomped on the floor like a spoiled child while la Gorda stood there
laughing.
"Let's get out of this house. Maestro," he said loudly.
His sudden shift from sadness to anger fascinated me. I became
engrossed in watching him. One of the features that I had always admired was
his nimbleness; even when he stomped his feet his movements had grace.
He suddenly reached across the table and nearly snatched my writing pad
away from me. He grabbed it with the thumb and index finger of his left
hand. I had to hold onto it with both hands, using all my strength. There
was such an extraordinary force in his pull that if he had really wanted to
take it he could have easily jerked it away from my grip. He let go, and as
he retrieved his hand I saw a fleeting image of an extension to it. It
happened so fast that I could have explained it as a visual distortion on my
part, a product of the jolt of having to stand up halfway, drawn by the
force of his pull. But I had learned by then that I could neither behave
with those people in my accustomed manner, nor could I explain anything in
my accustomed manner, so I did not even try.
"What's that in your hand, Pablito?" I asked.
He recoiled in surprise and hid his hand behind his back. He had a
blank expression and mumbled that he wanted us to leave that house because
he was becoming dizzy.
La Gorda began to laugh loudly and said that Pablito was as good a
deceiver as Josefina, maybe even better, and that if I pressed him to tell
me what was in his hand he would faint and Nestor would have to tend to him
for months.
Pablito began to choke. His face became almost purple. La Gorda told
him in a nonchalant tone to cut out the acting because he had no audience;
she was leaving and I did not have much patience. She then turned to me and
told me in a most commanding tone to stay there and not go to the Genaros'
house.
"Why in the hell not?" Pablito yelled and jumped in front of her as if
trying to stop her from leaving. "What gall! Telling the Maestro what to do!
"
"We had a bout with the allies in your house last night," la Gorda said
to Pablito matter-of-factly. "The Nagual and I are still weak from that. If
I were you, Pablito, I would put my attention to work. Things have changed.
Everything has changed since he came."
La Gorda left through the front door. I became aware then that indeed
she looked very tired. Her shoes seemed too tight, or perhaps she was so
weak that her feet dragged a little bit. She seemed small and frail.
I thought that I must have looked as tired. Since there were no mirrors
in their house, I had the urge to go outside and look at myself in the side
mirror of my car. I perhaps would have done it but Pablito thwarted me. He
asked me in the most earnest tone not to believe a word of what she had said
about his being a deceiver. I told him not to worry about that.
"You don't like la Gorda at all, do you?" I asked.
"You can say that again," he replied with a fierce look. "You know
better than anyone alive the kind of monsters those women are. The Nagual
told us that one day you were going to come here just to fall into their
trap. He begged us to be on the alert and warn you about their designs. The
Nagual said that you had one out of four chances: If out power was high we
could bring you here ourselves and warn you and save you; if our power was
low we ourselves would arrive here just in time to see your corpse; the
third chance was to find you either the slave to the witch Soledad or the
slave of those disgusting, mannish women; the fourth chance and the faintest
one of all was to find you alive and well.
"The Nagual told us that in case you survived, you would then be the
Nagual and we should trust you because only you could help us."
"I'll do anything for you, Pablito. You know that."
"Not just for me. I'm not alone. The Witness and Benigno are with me.
We are together and you have to help all of us."
"Of course, Pablito. That goes without saying."
"People around here have never bothered us. Our problems are with those
ugly, mannish freaks. We don't know what to do with them. The Nagual gave us
orders to stay around them no matter what. He gave me a personal task but
I've failed at it. I was very happy before. You remember. Now I can't seem
to manage my life anymore."
"What happened, Pablito?"
"Those witches drove me from my house. They took over and pushed me out
like trash. I now live in Genaro's house with Nestor and Benigno. We even
have to cook our own meals. The Nagual knew that this might happen and gave
la Gorda the task of mediating between us and those three bitches. But la
Gorda is still what the Nagual used to call her, Two Hundred and Twenty
Buttocks. That was her nickname for years and years, because she tipped the
scales at two hundred and twenty pounds."
Pablito chuckled at his recollection of la Gorda.
"She was the fattest, smelliest slob you'd ever want to see," he went
on. "Today she's half her real size, but she's still the same fat, slow
woman up there in her head, and she can't do a thing for us. But you're here
now. Maestro, and our worries are over. Now we are four against four."
I wanted to interject a comment but he stopped me.
"Let me finish what I have to say before that witch comes back to throw
me out," he said as he nervously looked at the door.
"I know that they have told you that the five of you are the same
because you are the Nagual's children. That's a lie! You're also like us,
the Genaros, because Genaro also helped to make your luminosity. You're one
of us too. See what I mean? So, don't you believe what they tell you. You
also belong to us. The witches don't know that the Nagual told us
everything. They think that they are the only ones who know. It took two
Toltecs to make us. We are the children of both. Those witches. .."
"Wait, wait, Pablito," I said, putting my hand over his mouth.
He stood up, apparently frightened by my sudden movement.
"What do you mean that it took two Toltecs to make us?"
"The Nagual told us that we are Toltecs. All of us are Toltecs. He said
that a Toltec is the receiver and holder of mysteries. The Nagual and Genaro
are Toltecs. They gave us their special luminosity and their mysteries. We
received their mysteries and now we hold them."
His usage of the word Toltec baffled me. I was familiar only with its
anthropological meaning. In that context, it always refers to a culture of
Nahuatl-speaking people in central and southern Mexico which was already
extinct at the time of the Conquest.
"Why did he call us Toltecs?" I asked, not knowing what else to say.
"Because that's what we are. Instead of saying that we are sorcerers or
witches, he said that we are Toltecs."
"If that's the case, why do you call the little sisters witches?"
"Oh, that's because I hate them. That has nothing to do with what we
are."
"Did the Nagual tell that to everyone?"
"Why, certainly. Everyone knows."
"But he never told me that."
"Oh, that's because you are a very educated man and are always
discussing stupid things."
He laughed in a forced, high-pitched tone and patted me on the back.
"Did the Nagual by any chance tell you that the Toltecs were ancient
people that lived in this part of Mexico?" I asked.
"See, there you go. That's why he didn't tell you. The old crow
probably didn't know that they were ancient people."
He rocked in his chair as he laughed. His laughter was very pleasing
and very contagious.
"We are the Toltecs, Maestro," he said. "Rest assured that we are.
That's all I know. But you can ask the Witness. He knows. I lost my interest
a long time ago."
He stood up and went over to the stove. I followed him. He examined a
pot of food cooking on a low fire. He asked me if I knew who had made that
food. I was pretty sure that la Gorda had made it, but I said that I did not
know. He sniffed it four or five times in short inhalations, like a dog.
Then he announced that his nose told him that la Gorda had cooked it. He
asked me if I had had some, and when I said that I had finished eating just
before he arrived, he took a bowl from a shelf and helped himself to an
enormous portion. He recommended in very strong terms that I should eat food
cooked only by la Gorda and that I should only use her bowl, as he himself
was doing. I told him that la Gorda and the little sisters had served me my
food in a dark bowl that they kept on a shelf apart from the others. He said
that that bowl belonged to the Nagual. We went back to the table. He ate
very slowly and did not talk at all. His total absorption in eating made me
realize that all of them did the same thing: they ate in complete silence.
"La Gorda is a great cook," he said as he finished his food. "She used
to feed me. That was ages ago, before she hated me, before she became a
witch, I mean a Toltec."
He looked at me with a glint in his eye and winked.
I felt obligated to comment that la Gorda did not strike me as being
capable of hating anyone. I asked him if he knew that she had lost her form.
"That's a lot of baloney!" he exclaimed.
He stared at me as if measuring my look of surprise and then hid his
face under his arm and giggled like an embarrassed child.
"Well, she actually did do that," he added. "She's just great."
"Why do you dislike her, then?"
"I'm going to tell you something, Maestro, because I trust you. I don't
dislike her at all. She's the very best. She's the Nagual's woman. I just
act that way with her because I like her to pamper me, and she does. She
never gets mad at me. I could do anything. Sometimes I get carried away and
I get physical with her and want to strike her. When that happens she just
jumps out of the way, like the Nagual used to do. The next minute she
doesn't even remember what I did. That's a true formless warrior for you.
She does the same thing with everyone. But the rest of us are a sorry mess.
We are truly bad. Those three witches hate us and we hate them back."
"You are sorcerers, Pablito; can't you stop all this bickering?"
"Sure we can, but we don't want to. What do you expect us to do, be
like brothers and sisters?"
I did not know what to say.
"They were the Nagual's women," he went on. "And yet everybody expected
me to take them. How in heaven's name am I going to do that! I tried with
one of them and instead of helping me the bastardly witch nearly killed me.
So now every one of those women is after my hide as if I had committed a
crime. All I did was to follow the Nagual's instructions. He told me that I
had to be intimate with each of them, one by one, until I could hold all of
them at once. But I couldn't be intimate with even one."
I wanted to ask him about his mother, dona Soledad, but I could not
figure out a way to bring her into the conversation at that point. We were
quiet for a moment.
"Do you hate them for what they tried to do to you?" he asked all of a
sudden.
I saw my chance.
"No, not at all," I said. "La Gorda explained to me their reasons. But
dona Soledad's attack was very scary. Do you see much of her?"
He did not answer. He looked at the ceiling. I repeated my question. I
noticed then that his eyes were filled with tears. His body shook, convulsed
by quiet sobs.
He said that once he had had a beautiful mother, whom, no doubt, I
could still remember. Her name was Manuelita, a saintly woman who raised two
children, working like a mule to support them. He felt the most profound
veneration for that mother who had loved and reared him. But one horrible
day his fate was fulfilled and he had the misfortune to meet Genaro and the
Nagual, and between the two of them they destroyed his life. In a very
emotional tone Pablito said that the two devils took his soul and his
mother's soul. They killed his Manuelita and left behind that horrendous
witch, Soledad. He peered at me with eyes flooded with tears and said that
that hideous woman was not his mother. She could not possibly be his
Manuelita.
He sobbed uncontrollably. I did not know what to say. His emotional
outburst was so genuine and his contentions so truthful that I felt swayed
by a tide of sentiment. Thinking as an average civilized man I had to agree
with him. It certainly looked as if it was a great misfortune for Pablito to
have crossed the path of don Juan and don Genaro.
I put my arm around his shoulders and almost wept myself. After a long
silence he stood up and went out to the back. I heard him blowing his nose
and washing his face in a pail of water. When he returned he was calmer. He
was even smiling.
"Don't get me wrong. Maestro," he said. "I don't blame anyone for what
has happened to me. It was my fate. Genaro and the Nagual acted like the
impeccable warriors they were. I'm just weak, that's all. And I have failed
in my task. The Nagual said that my only chance to avoid the attack of that
horrendous witch was to corral the four winds, and make them into my four
corners. But I failed. Those women were in cahoots with that witch Soledad
and didn't want to help me. They wanted me dead.
"The Nagual also told me that if I failed, you wouldn't stand a chance
yourself. He said that if she killed you, I had to flee and run for my life.
He doubted that I could even get as far as the road. He said that with your
power and with what the witch already knows, she would have been peerless.
So, when I felt I had failed to corral the four winds, I considered myself
dead. And of course I hated those women. But today, Maestro, you bring me
new hope."
I told him that his feelings for his mother had touched me very deeply.
I was in fact appalled by all that had happened but I doubted intensely that
I had brought hope of any kind to him.
"You have!" he exclaimed with great certainty. "I've felt terrible all
this time. To have your own mother coming after you with an ax is nothing
anyone can feel happy about. But now she's out of the way, thanks to you and
whatever you did.
"Those women hate me because they're convinced I'm a coward. They just
can't get it through their thick heads that we are different. You and those
four women are different than me and the Witness and Benigno in one
important way. All five of you were pretty much dead before the Nagual found
you. He told us that once you had even tried to kill yourself. We were not
that way. We were well and alive and happy. We are the opposite of you. You
are desperate people; we arc not. If Genaro hadn't come my way I would be a
happy carpenter today. Or perhaps I would have died. It doesn't matter. I
would've done what I could and that would have been fine."
His words plunged me into a curious mood. I had to admit that he was
right in that those women and myself were indeed desperate people. If I had
not met don Juan I would no doubt be dead, but I could not say, as Pablito
had, that it would have been fine with me either way. Don Juan had brought
life and vigor to my body and freedom to my spirit.
Pablito's statements made me remember something don Juan had told me
once when we were talking about an old man, a friend of mine. Don Juan had
said in very emphatic terms that the old man's life or death had no
significance whatsoever. I felt a bit cross at what I thought to be
redundance on don Juan's part. I told him that it went without saying that
the life and death of that old man had no significance, since nothing in the
world could possibly have any significance except to each one of us
personally.
"You said it!" he exclaimed, and laughed. "That's exactly what I mean.
That old man's life and death have no significance to him personally. He
could have died in nineteen twenty-nine, or in nineteen fifty, or he could
live until nineteen ninety-five. It doesn't matter. Everything is stupidly
the same to him."
My life before I met don Juan had been that way. Nothing had ever
mattered to me. I used to act as if certain things affected me, but that was
only a calculated ploy to appear as a sensitive man.
Pablito spoke to me and disrupted my reflections. He wanted to know if
he had hurt my feelings. I assured him that it was nothing. In order to
start up the conversation again, I asked him where he had met don Genaro.
"My fate was that my boss got ill," he said. "And I had to go to the
city market in his place to build a new section of clothing booths. I worked
there for two months. While I was there I met the daughter of the owner of
one of the booths. We fell in love. I built her father's stand a little
bigger than the others so I could make love to her under the counter while
her sister took care of the customers.
"One day Genaro brought a sack of medicinal plants to a retailer across
the aisle, and while they were talking he noticed that the clothing stand
was shaking. He looked carefully at the stand but he only saw the sister
sitting on a chair half-asleep. The man told Genaro that every day the stand
shook like that around that hour. The next day Genaro brought the Nagual to
watch the stand shaking, and sure enough that day it shook. They came back
the next day and it shook again. So they waited there until I came out. That
day I made their acquaintance, and soon after Genaro told me that he was an
herbalist and proposed to make me a potion that no woman could resist. I
liked women so I fell for it. He certainly made the potion for me, but it
took him ten years. In the meantime I got to know him very well, and I grew
to love him more than if he were my own brother. And now I miss him like
hell. So you see, he tricked me. Sometimes I'm glad that he did; most of the
time I resent it, though."
"Don Juan told me that sorcerers have to have an omen before they
choose someone. Was there something of that sort with you, Pablito?"
"Yes. Genaro said that he got curious watching the stand shaking and
then he saw that two people were making love under the counter. So he sat
down to wait for the people to come out; he wanted to see who they were.
After a while the girl appeared in the stand but he missed me. He thought it
was very strange that he would miss me after being so determined to set eyes
on me. The next day he came back with the Nagual. He also saw that two
people were making love, but when it was time to catch me, they both missed
me. They came back again the next day; Genaro went around to the back of the
stand while the Nagual stayed out in front. I bumped into Genaro while I was
crawling out. I thought he hadn't seen me because I was still behind the
piece of cloth that covered a small square opening I had made on the side
wall. I began to bark to make him think there was a small dog under the
drape. He growled and barked back at me and really made me believe that
there was a huge mad dog on the other side. I got so scared I ran out the
other way and crashed into the Nagual. If he would have been an ordinary
man, I would have thrown him to the ground because I ran right into him, but
instead, he lifted me up like a child. I was absolutely flabbergasted. For
being such an old man he was truly strong. I thought I could use a strong
man like that to carry lumber for me. Besides I didn't want to lose face
with the people who had seen me running out from under the counter. I asked
him if he would like to work for me. He said yes. That same day he went to
the shop and started to work as my assistant. He worked there every day for
two months. I didn't have a chance with those two devils."
The incongruous image of don Juan working for Pablito was extremely
humorous to me. Pablito began to imitate the way don Juan carried lumber on
his shoulders. I had to agree with la Gorda that Pablito was as good an
actor as Josefina.
"Why did they go to all that trouble, Pablito?"
"They had to trick me. You don't think that I would go with them just
like that, do you? I've heard all my life about sorcerers and curers and
witches and spirits, and I never believed a word of it. Those who talked
about things like that were just ignorant people. If Genaro had told me that
he and his friend were sorcerers, I would've walked out on them. But they
were too clever for me. Those two foxes were really sly. They were in no
hurry. Genaro said that he would've waited for me if it took him twenty
years. That's why the Nagual went to work for me. I asked him to, so it was
really me who gave them the key.
"The Nagual was a diligent worker. I was a little bit of a rascal in
those days and I thought I was the one playing a trick on him. I believed
that the Nagual was just a stupid old Indian so I told him that I was going
to tell the boss that he was my grandpa, otherwise they wouldn't hire him,
but I had to get a percentage of his salary. The Nagual said that it was
fine with him. He gave me something out of the few pesos he made each day.
"My boss was very impressed with my grandpa because he was such a hard
worker. But the other guys made fun of him. As you know, he had the habit of
cracking all his joints from time to time. In the shop he cracked them every
time he carried anything. People naturally thought that he was so old that
when he carried something on his back his whole body creaked.
"I was pretty miserable with the Nagual as my grandpa. But by then
Genaro had already prevailed on my greedy side. He had told me that he was
feeding the Nagual a special formula made out of plants and that it made him
strong as a bull. Every day he used to bring a small bundle of mashed-up
green leaves and feed it to him. Genaro said that his friend was nothing
without his concoction, and to prove it to me he didn't give it to him for
two days. Without the green stuff the Nagual seemed to be just a plain,
ordinary old man. Genaro told me that I could also use his concoction to
make women love me. I got very interested in it and he said that we could be
partners if I would help him prepare his formula and give it to his friend.
One day he showed me some American money and told me he had sold his first
batch to an American. That hooked me and I became his partner.
"My partner Genaro and I had great designs. He said that I should have
my own shop, because with the money that we were going to make with his
formula, I could afford anything. I bought a shop and my partner paid for
it. So I went wild. I knew that my partner was for real and I began to work
making his green stuff."
I had the strange conviction at that point that don Genaro must have
used psychotropic plants in making his concoction. I reasoned that he must
have tricked Pablito into ingesting it in order to assure his compliance.
"Did he give you power plants, Pablito?" I asked.
"Sure," he replied. "He gave me his green stuff. I ate tons of it."
He described and imitated how don Juan would sit by the front door of
don Genaro's house in a state of profound lethargy and then spring to life
as soon as his lips touched the concoction. Pablito said that in view of
such a transformation he was forced to try it himself.
"What was in that formula?" I asked.
"Green leaves," he replied. "Any green leaves he could get a hold of.
That was the kind of devil Genaro was. He used to talk about his formula and
make me laugh until I was as high as a kite. God, I really loved those
days."
I laughed out of nervousness. Pablito shook his head from side to side
and cleared his throat two or three times. He seemed to be struggling not to
weep.
"As I've already said. Maestro," he went on, "I was driven by greed. I
secretly planned to dump my partner once I had learned how to make the green
stuff myself. Genaro must have always known the designs I had in those days,
and just before he left he hugged me and told me that it was time to fulfill
my wish; it was time to dump my partner, for I had already learned to make
the green stuff."
Pablito stood up. His eyes were filled with tears.
"That son of a gun Genaro," he said softly. "That rotten devil. I truly
loved him, and if I weren't the coward I am, I would be making his green
stuff today."
I didn't want to write anymore. To dispel my sadness I told Pablito
that we should go look for Nestor.
I was arranging my notebooks in order to leave when the front door was
flung open with a loud bang. Pablito and I jumped up involuntarily and
quickly turned to look. Nestor was standing at the door. I ran to him. We
met in the middle of the front room. He sort of leaped on me and shook me by
the shoulders. He looked taller and stronger than the last time I had seen
him. His long, lean body had acquired an almost feline smoothness. Somehow,
the person facing me, peering at me, was not the Nestor I had known. I
remembered him as a very shy man who was embarrassed to smile because of
crooked teeth, a man who was entrusted to Pablito for his care. The Nestor
who was looking at me was a mixture of don Juan and don Genaro. He was wiry
and agile like don Genaro, but had the mesmeric command that don Juan had. I
wanted to indulge in being perplexed, but all I could do was laugh with him.
He patted me on the back. He took off his hat. Only then did I realize that
Pablito did not have one. I also noticed that Nestor was much darker, and
more rugged. Next to him Pablito looked almost frail. Both of them wore
American Levi's, heavy jackets and crepe-soled shoes.
Nestor's presence in the house lightened up the oppressive mood
instantly. I asked him to join us in the kitchen.
"You came right in time," Pablito said to Nestor with an enormous smile
as we sat down. "The Maestro and I were weeping here, remembering the Toltec
devils."
"Were yon really crying. Maestro?" Nestor asked with a malicious grin
on his face.
"You bet he was," Pablito replied.
A very soft cracking noise at the front door made Pablito and Nestor
stop talking. If I had been by myself I would not have noticed or heard
anything. Pablito and Nestor stood up; I did the same. We looked at the
front door; it was being opened in a most careful manner. I thought that
perhaps la Gorda had returned and was quietly opening the door so as not to
disturb us. When the door was finally opened wide enough to allow one person
to go through, Benigno came in as if he were sneaking into a dark room. His
eyes were shut and he was walking on the tips of his toes. He reminded me of
a kid sneaking into a movie theater through an unlocked exit door in order
to see a matinee, not daring to make any noise and at the same time not
capable of seeing a thing in the dark.
Everybody was quietly looking at Benigno. He opened one eye just enough
to peek out of it and orient himself and then he tiptoed across the front
room to the kitchen. He stood by the table for a moment with his eyes
closed. Pablito and Nestor sat down and signaled me to do the same. Benigno
then slid next to me on the bench. He gently shoved my shoulder with his
head; it was a light tap in order for me to move over to make room for him
on the bench; then he sat down comfortably with his eyes still closed.
He was dressed in Levi's like Pablito and Nestor. His face had filled
out a bit since the last time I had seen him, years before, and his hairline
was different, but I could not tell how. He had a lighter complexion than I
remembered, very small teeth, full lips, high cheekbones, a small nose and
big ears. He had always seemed to me like a child whose features had not
matured.
Pablito and Nestor, who had interrupted what they were saying to watch
Benigno's entrance, resumed talking as soon as he sat down as though nothing
had happened.
"Sure, he was crying with me," Pablito said.
"He's not a crybaby like you," Nestor said to Pablito.
Then he turned to me and embraced me.
"I'm so glad you're alive," he said. "We've just talked to la Gorda and
she said that you were the Nagual, but she didn't tell us how you survived.
How did you survive, Maestro?"
At that point I had a strange choice. I could have followed my rational
path, as I had always done, and said that I did not have the vaguest idea,
and I would have been truthful at that. Or I could have said that my double
had extricated me from the grip of those women. I was measuring in my mind
the possible effect of each alternative when I was distracted by Benigno. He
opened one eye a little bit and looked at me and then giggled and buried his
head in his arms.
"Benigno, don't you want to talk to me?" I asked.
He shook his head negatively.
I felt self-conscious with him next to me and decided to ask what was
the matter with him.
"What's he doing?" I asked Nestor in a low voice.
Nestor rubbed Benigno's head and shook him. Benigno opened his eyes and
then closed them again.
"He's that way, you know," Nestor said to me. "He's extremely shy.
He'll open his eyes sooner or later. Don't pay any attention to him. If he
gets bored he'll go to sleep."
Benigno shook his head affirmatively without opening his eyes.
"Well, how did you get out?" Nestor insisted.
"Don't you want to tell us?" Pablito asked.
I deliberately said that my double had come out from the top of my head
three times. I gave them an account of what had happened.
They did not seem in the least surprised and took my account as a
matter of course. Pablito became delighted with his own speculations that
dona Soledad might not recover and might eventually die. He wanted to know
if I had struck Lidia as well. Nestor made an imperative gesture for him to
be quiet and Pablito meekly stopped in the middle of a sentence.
"I'm sorry. Maestro," Nestor said, "but that was not your double."
"But everyone said that it was my double."
"I know for a fact that you misunderstood la Gorda, because as Benigno
and I were walking to Genaro's house, la Gorda overtook us on the road and
told us that you and Pablito were here in this house. She called you the
Nagual. Do you know why?"
I laughed and said that I believed it was due to her notion that I had
gotten most of the Nagual's luminosity.
"One of us here is a fool!" Benigno said in a booming voice without
opening his eyes.
The sound of his voice was so outlandish that I jumped away from him.
His thoroughly unexpected statement, plus my reaction to it, made all of
them laugh. Benigno opened one eye and looked at me for an instant and then
buried his face in his arms.
"Do you know why we called Juan Matus the Nagual?" Nestor asked me.
I said that I had always thought that that was their nice way of
calling don Juan a sorcerer.
Benigno laughed so loudly that the sound of his laughter drowned out
everybody else's. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He rested his
head on my shoulder as if it were a heavy object he could no longer support.
"The reason we called him the Nagual," Nestor went on, "is because he
was split in two. In other words, any time he needed to, he could get into
another track that we don't have ourselves; something would come out of him,
something that was not a double but a horrendous, menacing shape that looked
like him but was twice his size. We call that shape the nagual and anybody
who has it is, of course, the Nagual.
"The Nagual told us that all of us can have that shape coming out of
our heads if we wanted to, but chances are that none of us would want to.
Genaro didn't want it, so I think we don't want it, either. So it appears
that you're the one who's stuck with it."
They cackled and yelled as if they were corraling a herd of cattle.
Benigno put his arms around my shoulders without opening his eyes and
laughed until tears were rolling down his cheeks.
"Why do you say that I am stuck with it?" I asked Nestor.
"It takes too much energy," he said, "too much work. I don't know how
you can still be standing.
"The Nagual and Genaro split you once in the eucalyptus grove. They
took you there because eucalyptuses are your trees. I was there myself and I
witnessed when they split you and pulled your nagual out. They pulled you
apart by the ears until they had split your luminosity and you were not an
egg anymore, but two long chunks of luminosity. Then they put you together
again, but any sorcerer that sees can tell that there is a huge gap in the
middle."
"What's the advantage of being split?"
"You have one car that hears everything and one eye that sees
everything and you will always be able to go an extra mile in a moment of
need. That splitting is also the reason why they told us that you are the
Maestro.
"They tried to split Pablito but it looks like it failed. He's too
pampered and has always indulged like a bastard. That's why he's so screwed
up now."
"What's a double then?"
"A double is the other, the body that one gets in dreaming. It looks
exactly like oneself."
"Do all of you have a double?"
Nestor scrutinized me with a look of surprise.
"Hey, Pablito, tell the Maestro about our doubles," he said laughing.
Pablito reached across the table and shook Benigno.
"You tell him, Benigno," he said. "Better yet, show it to him."
Benigno stood up, opened his eyes as wide as he could and looked at the
roof, then he pulled down his pants and showed me his penis.
The Genaros went wild with laughter.
"Did you really mean it when you asked that, Maestro?" Nestor asked me
with a nervous expression.
I assured him that I was deadly serious in my desire to know anything
related to their knowledge. I went into a long elucidation of how don Juan
had kept me outside of their realm for reasons I could not fathom, thus
preventing me from knowing more about them.
"Think of this," I said. "I didn't know until three days ago that those
four girls were the Nagual's apprentices, or that Benigno was don Genaro's
apprentice."
Benigno opened his eyes.
"Think of this yourself," he said. "I didn't know until now that you
were so stupid."
He closed his eyes again and all of them laughed insanely. I had no
choice but to join them.
"We were just teasing you. Maestro," Nestor said in way of an apology.
"We thought that you were teasing us, rubbing it in. The Nagual told us that
you see. If you do, you can tell that we are a sorry lot. We don't have the
body of dreaming. None of us has a double."
In a very serious and earnest manner Nestor said that something had
come in between them and their desire to have a double. I understood him as
saying that a sort of barrier had been created since don Juan and don Genaro
had left. He thought that it might be the result of Pablito flubbing his
task. Pablito added that since the Nagual and Genaro had gone, something
seemed to be chasing them, and even Benigno, who was living in the
southernmost tip of Mexico at that time, had to return. Only when the three
of them were together did they feel at ease.
"What do you think it is?" I asked Nestor.
"There is something out there in that immensity that's pulling us," he
replied. "Pablito thinks it's his fault for antagonizing those women."
Pablito turned to me. There was an intense glare in his eyes.
"They've put a curse on me. Maestro," he said. "I know that the cause
of all our trouble is me. I wanted to disappear from these parts after my
fight with Lidia, and a few months later I took off for Veracruz. I was
actually very happy there with a girl I wanted to marry. I got a job and was
doing fine until one day I came home and found that those four mannish
freaks, like beasts of prey, had tracked me down by my scent. They were in
my house tormenting my woman. That bitch Rosa put her ugly hand on my
woman's belly and made her shit in the bed, just like that. Their leader.
Two Hundred and Twenty Buttocks, told me that they had walked across the
continent looking for me. She just grabbed me by the belt and pulled me out.
They pushed me to the bus depot to bring me here. I got madder than the
devil but I was no match for Two Hundred and Twenty Buttocks. She put me on
the bus. But on our way here I ran away. I ran through bushes and over hills
until my feet got so swollen that I couldn't get my shoes off. I nearly
died. I was ill for nine months. If the Witness hadn't found me, I would
have died."
"I didn't find him," Nestor said to me. "La Gorda found him. She took
me to where he was and between the two of us we carried him to the bus and
brought him here. He was delirious and we had to pay an extra fare so that
the bus driver would let him stay on the bus."
In a most dramatic tone Pablito said that he had not changed his mind;
he still wanted to die.
"But why?" I asked him.
Benigno answered for him in a booming, guttural voice.
"Because his pecker doesn't work," he said.
The sound of his voice was so extraordinary that for an instant I had
the impression that he was talking inside a cavern. It was at once
frightening and incongruous. I laughed almost out of control.
Nestor said that Pablito had attempted to fulfill his task of
establishing sexual relations with the women, in accordance with the
Nagual's instructions. He had told Pablito that the four corners of his
world were already set in position and all he had to do was to claim them.
But when Pablito went to claim his first corner, Lidia, she nearly killed
him. Nestor added that it was his personal opinion as a witness of the event
that the reason Lidia rammed him with her head was because Pablito could not
perform as a man, and rather than being embarrassed by the whole thing, she
hit him.
"Did Pablito really get sick as a result of that blow or was he
pretending?" I asked half in jest.
Benigno answered again in the same booming voice.
"He was just pretending!" he said. "All he got was a bump on the head!
"
Pablito and Nestor cackled and yelled.
"We don't blame Pablito for being afraid of those women," Nestor said.
"They are all like the Nagual himself, fearsome warriors. They're mean and
crazy."
"Do you really think they're that bad?" I asked him.
"To say they're bad is only one part of the whole truth," Nestor said.
"They're just like the Nagual. They're serious and gloomy. When the Nagual
was around, they used to sit close to him and stare into the distance with
half-closed eyes for hours, sometimes for days."
"Is it true that Josefina was really crazy a long time ago?" I asked.
"That's a laugh," Pablito said. "Not a long time ago; she's crazy now.
She's the most insane of the bunch."
I told them what she had done to me. I thought that they would
appreciate the humor of her magnificent performance. But my story seemed to
affect them the wrong way. They listened to me like frightened children;
even Benigno opened his eyes to listen to my account.
"Wow!" Pablito exclaimed. "Those bitches are really awful. And you know
that their leader is Two Hundred and Twenty Buttocks. She's the one that
throws the rock and then hides her hand and pretends to be an innocent
little girl. Be careful of her, Maestro."
"The Nagual trained Josefina to be anything," Nestor said. "She can do
anything you want: cry, laugh, get angry, anything."
"But what is she like when she is not acting?" I asked Nestor.
"She's just crazier than a bat," Benigno answered in a soft voice. "I
met Josefina the first day she arrived. I had to carry her into the house.
The Nagual and I used to tie her down to her bed all the time. Once she
began to cry for her friend, a little girl she used to play with. She cried
for three days. Pablito consoled her and fed her like a baby. She's like
him. Both of them don't know how to stop once they begin."
Benigno suddenly began to sniff the air. He stood up and went over to
the stove.
"Is he really shy?" I asked Nestor.
"He's shy and eccentric," Pablito answered. "He'll be that way until he
loses his form. Genaro told us that we will lose our form sooner or later,
so there is no point in making ourselves miserable in trying to change
ourselves the way the Nagual told us to. Genaro told us to enjoy ourselves
and not worry about anything. You and the women worry and try; we on the
other hand, enjoy. You don't know how to enjoy things and we don't know how
to make ourselves miserable. The Nagual called making yourself miserable,
impeccability; we call it stupidity, don't we?"
"You are speaking for yourself, Pablito," Nestor said.
"Benigno and I don't feel that way." Benigno brought a bowl of food
over and placed it in front of me. He served everyone. Pablito examined the
bowls and asked Benigno where he had found them. Benigno said that they were
in a box where la Gorda had told him she had stored them. Pablito confided
in me that those bowls used to belong to them before their split.
"We have to be careful," Pablito said in a nervous tone. "These bowls
are no doubt bewitched. Those bitches put something in them. I'd rather eat
out of la Gorda's bowl."
Nestor and Benigno began to eat. I noticed then that Benigno had given
me the brown bowl. Pablito seemed to be in a great turmoil. I wanted to put
him at ease but Nestor stopped me.
"Don't take him so seriously," he said. "He loves to be that way. He'll
sit down and eat. This is where you and the women fail. There is no way for
you to understand that Pablito is like that. You expect everybody to be like
the Nagual. La Gorda is the only one who's unruffled by him, not because she
understands but because she has lost her form."
Pablito sat down to eat and among the four of us we finished a whole
pot of food. Benigno washed the bowls and carefully put them back in the box
and then all of us sat down comfortably around the table.
Nestor proposed that as soon as it got dark we should all go for a walk
in a ravine nearby, where don Juan, don Genaro and I used to go. I felt
somehow reluctant. I did not feel confident enough in their company. Nestor
said that they were used to walking in the darkness and that the art of a
sorcerer was to be inconspicuous even in the midst of people. I told him
what don Juan had once said to me, before he had left me in a deserted place
in the mountains not too far from there. He had demanded that I concentrate
totally on trying not to be obvious. He said that the people of the area
knew everyone by sight. There were not very many people, but those who lived
there walked around all the time and could spot a stranger from miles away.
He told me that many of those people had firearms and would have thought
nothing of shooting me.
"Don't be concerned with beings from the other world," don Juan had
said laughing. "The dangerous ones are the Mexicans."
"That's still valid," Nestor said. "That has been valid all the time.
That's why the Nagual and Genaro were the artists they were. They learned to
become unnoticeable in the middle of all this. They knew the art of
stalking."
It was still too early for our walk in the dark. I wanted to use the
time to ask Nestor my critical question. I had been avoiding it all along;
some strange feeling had prevented me from asking. It was as if I had
exhausted my interest after Pablito's reply. But Pablito himself came to my
aid and all of a sudden he brought up the subject as if he had been reading
my mind.
"Nestor also jumped into the abyss the same day we did," he said. "And
in that way he became the Witness, you became the Maestro and I became the
village idiot."
In a casual manner I asked Nestor to tell me about his jump into the
abyss. I tried to sound only mildly interested. But Pablito was aware of the
true nature of my forced indifference. He laughed and told Nestor that I was
being cautious because I had been deeply disappointed with his own account
of the event.
"I went over after you two did," Nestor said, and looked at me as if
waiting for another question.
"Did you jump immediately after us?" I asked.
"No. It took me quite a while to get ready," he said. "Genaro and the
Nagual didn't tell me what to do. That day was a test day for all of us."
Pablito seemed despondent. He stood up from his chair and paced the
room. He sat down again, shaking his head in a gesture of despair.
"Did you actually see us going over the edge?" I asked Nestor.
"I am the Witness," he said. "To witness was my path of knowledge; to
tell you impeccably what I witness is my task."
"But what did you really see?" I asked.
"I saw you two holding each other and running toward the edge," he
said. "And then I saw you both like two kites against the sky. Pablito moved
farther out in a straight line and then fell down. You went up a little and
then you moved away from the edge a short distance, before falling down."
"But, did we jump with our bodies?" I asked.
"Well, I don't think there was another way to do it," he said, and
laughed.
"Could it have been an illusion?" I asked.
"What are you trying to say. Maestro?" he asked in a dry tone.
"I want to know what really happened," I said.
"Did you by any chance black out, like Pablito?" Nestor asked with a
glint in his eye.
I tried to explain to him the nature of my quandary about the jump. He
could not hold still and interrupted me. Pablito intervened to bring him to
order and they became involved in an argument. Pablito squeezed himself out
of it by walking half seated around the table, holding onto his chair.
"Nestor doesn't see beyond his nose," he said to me. "Benigno is the
same. You'll get nothing from them. At least you got my sympathy."
Pablito cackled, making his shoulders shiver, and hid his face with
Benigno's hat.
"As far as I'm concerned, you two jumped," Nestor said to me in a
sudden outburst. "Genaro and the Nagual had left you with no other choice.
That was their art, to corral you and then lead you to the only gate that
was open. And so you two went over the edge. That was what I witnessed.
Pablito says that he didn't feel a thing; that is questionable. I know that
he was perfectly aware of everything, but he chooses to feel and say that he
wasn't."
"I really wasn't aware," Pablito said to me in an apologetic tone.
"Perhaps," Nestor said dryly. "But I was aware myself, and I saw your
bodies doing what they had to do, jump."
Nestor's assertions put me in a strange frame of mind. All along I had
been seeking validation for what I had perceived myself. But once I had it,
I realized that it made no difference. To know that I had jumped and to be
afraid of what I had perceived was one thing; to seek consensual validation
was another. I knew then that one had no necessary correlation with the
other. I had thought all along that to have someone else corroborate that I
had taken that plunge would absolve my intellect of its doubts and fears. I
was wrong. I became instead more worried, more involved with the issue.
I began to tell Nestor that although I had come to see the two of them
for the specific purpose of having them confirm that I had jumped, I had
changed my mind and I really did not want to talk about it anymore. Both of
them started talking at once, and at that point we fell into a three-way
argument. Pablito maintained that he had not been aware, Nestor shouted that
Pablito was indulging and I said that I didn't want to hear anything more
about the jump.
It was blatantly obvious to me for the first time that none of us had
calmness and self-control. None of us Was willing to give the other person
our undivided attention, the way don Juan and don Genaro did. Since I was
incapable of maintaining any order in our exchange of opinions, I immersed
myself in my own deliberations. I had always thought that the only flaw that
had prevented me from entering fully into don Juan's world was my insistence
on rationalizing everything, but the presence of Pablito and Nestor had
given me a new insight into myself. Another flaw of mine was my timidity.
Once I strayed outside the safe railings of common sense, I could not trust
myself and became intimidated by the awesomeness of what unfolded in front
of me. Thus, I found it was impossible to believe that I had jumped into an
abyss.
Don Juan had insisted that the whole issue of sorcery was perception,
and truthful to that, he and don Genaro staged, for our last meeting, an
immense, cathartic drama on the flat mountaintop. After they made me voice
my thanks in loud clear words to everyone who had ever helped me, I became
transfixed with elation. At that point they had caught all my attention and
led my body to perceive the only possible act within their frame of
references: the jump into the abyss. That jump was the practical
accomplishment of my perception, not as an average man but as a sorcerer.
I had been so absorbed in writing down my thoughts I had not noticed
that Nestor and Pablito had stopped talking and all three of them were
looking at me. I explained to them that there was no way for me to
understand what had taken place with that jump.
"There's nothing to understand," Nestor said. "Things just happen and
no one can tell how. Ask Benigno if he wants to understand."
"Do you want to understand?" I asked Benigno as a joke.
"You bet I do!" he exclaimed in a deep bass voice, making everyone
laugh.
"You indulge in saying that you want to understand," Nestor went on.
"Just like Pablito indulges in saying that he doesn't remember anything."
He looked at Pablito and winked at me. Pablito lowered his head.
Nestor asked me if I had noticed something about Pablito's mood when we
were about to take our plunge. I had to admit that I had been in no position
to notice anything so subtle as Pablito's mood.
"A warrior must notice everything," he said. "That's his trick, and as
the Nagual said, there lies his advantage."
He smiled and made a deliberate gesture of embarrassment, hiding his
face with his hat.
"What was it that I missed about Pablito's mood?" I asked him.
"Pablito had already jumped before he went over," he said. "He didn't
have to do anything. He may as well have sat down on the edge instead of
jumping."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"Pablito was already disintegrating," he replied. "That's why he thinks
he passed out. Pablito lies. He's hiding something."
Pablito began to speak to me. He muttered some unintelligible words,
then gave up and slumped back in his chair. Nestor also started to say
something. I made him stop. I was not sure I had understood him correctly.
"Was Pablito's body distegrating?" I asked.
He peered at me for a long time without saying a word. He was sitting
to my right. He moved quietly to the bench opposite me.
"You must take what I say seriously," he said. "There is no way to turn
back the wheel of time to what we were before that jump. The Nagual said
that it is an honor and a pleasure to be a warrior, and that it is the
warrior's fortune to do what he has to do. I have to tell you impeccably
what I have witnessed. Pablito was disintegrating. As you two ran toward the
edge only you were solid. Pablito was like a cloud. He thinks that he was
about to fall on his face, and you think that you held him by the arm to
help him make it to the edge. Neither of you is correct, and I wouldn't
doubt that it would have been better for both of you if you hadn't picked
Pablito up."
I felt more confused than ever. I truly believed that he was sincere in
reporting what he had perceived, but I remembered that I had only held
Pablito's arm.
"What would have happened if I hadn't interfered?" I asked.
"I can't answer that," Nestor replied. "But I know that you affected
each other's luminosity. At the moment you put your arm around him, Pablito
became more solid, but you wasted your precious power for nothing."
"What did you do after we jumped?" I asked Nestor after a long silence.
"Right after you two had disappeared," he said, "my nerves were so
shattered that I couldn't breathe and I too passed out, I don't know for how
long. I thought it was only for a moment. When I came to my senses again, I
looked around for Genaro and Nagual; they were gone. I ran back and forth on
the top of that mountain, calling them until my voice was hoarse. Then I
knew I was alone. I walked to the edge of the cliff and tried to look for
the sign that the earth gives when a warrior is not going to return, but I
had already missed it. I knew then that Genaro and the Nagual were gone
forever. I had not realized until then that they had turned to me after they
had said good-bye to you two, and as you were running to the edge they waved
their hands and said good-bye to me.
"Finding myself alone at that time of day, on that deserted spot, was
more than I could bear. In one sweep I had lost all the friends I had in the
world. I sat down and wept. And as I got more and more scared I began to
scream as loud as I could. I called Genaro's name at the top of my voice. By
then it was pitch-black. I could no longer distinguish any landmarks. I knew
that as a warrior I had no business indulging in my grief. In order to calm
myself down I began to howl like a coyote, the way the Nagual had taught me.
After howling for a while I felt so much better that I forgot my sadness. I
forgot that the world existed. The more I howled the easier it was to feel
the warmth and protection of the earth.
"Hours must have passed. Suddenly I felt a blow inside of me, behind my
throat, and the sound of a bell in my cars. I remembered what the Nagual had
told Eligio and Benigno before they jumped. He said that the feeling in the
throat came just before one was ready to change speed, and that the sound of
the bell was the vehicle that one could use to accomplish anything that one
needed. I wanted to be a coyote then. I looked at my arms, which were on the
ground in front of me. They had changed shape and looked like a coyote's. I
saw the coyote's fur on my arms and chest. I was a coyote! That made me so
happy that I cried like a coyote must cry. I felt my coyote teeth and my
long and pointed muzzle and tongue. Somehow, I knew that I had died, but I
didn't care. It didn't matter to me to have turned into a coyote, or to be
dead, or to be alive. I walked like a coyote, on four legs, to the edge of
the precipice and leaped into it. There was nothing else for me to do.
"I felt that I was falling down and my coyote body turned in the air.
Then I was myself again twirling in midair. But before I hit the bottom I
became so light that I didn't fall anymore but floated. The air went through
me. I was so light! I believed that my death was finally coming inside me.
Something stirred my insides and I disintegrated like dry sand. It was
peaceful and perfect where I was. I somehow knew that I was there and yet I
wasn't. I was nothing. That's all I can say about it. Then, quite suddenly,
the same thing that had made me like dry sand put me together again. I came
back to life and I found myself sitting in the hut of an old Mazatec
sorcerer. He told me his name was Porfirio. He said that he was glad to see
me and began to teach me certain things about plants that Genaro hadn't
taught me. He took me with him to where the plants were being made and
showed me the mold of plants, especially the marks on the molds. He said
that if I watched for those marks in the plants I could easily tell what
they're good for, even if I had never seen those plants before. Then when he
knew that I had learned the marks he said good-bye but invited me to come
see him again. At that moment I felt a strong pull and I disintegrated, like
before. I became a million pieces.
"Then I was pulled again into myself and went back to see Porfirio. He
had, after all, invited me. I knew that I could have gone anywhere I wanted
but I chose Porfirio's hut because he was kind to me and taught me. I didn't
want to risk finding awful things instead. Porfirio took me this time to see
the mold of the animals. There I saw my own nagual animal. We knew each
other on sight. Porfirio was delighted to see such friendship. I saw
Pablito's and your own nagual too, but they didn't want to talk to me. They
seemed sad. I didn't insist on talking to them. I didn't know how you had
fared in your jump. I knew that I was dead myself, but my nagual said that I
wasn't and that you both were also alive. I asked about Eligio, and my
nagual said that he was gone forever. I remembered then that when I had
witnessed Eligio's and Benigno's jump I had heard the Nagual giving Benigno
instructions not to seek bizarre visions or worlds outside his own. The
Nagual told him to learn only about his own world, because in doing so he
would find the only form of power available to him. The Nagual gave them
specific instructions to let their pieces explode as far as they could in
order to restore their strength. I did the same myself. I went back and
forth from the tonal to the nagual eleven times. Every time, however, I was
received by Porfirio who instructed me further. Every time my strength waned
I restored it in the nagual until a time when I restored it so much that I
found myself back on this earth."
"Dona Soledad told me that Eligio didn't have to jump into the abyss,"
I said.
"He jumped with Benigno," Nestor said. "Ask him, he'll tell you in his
favorite voice."
I turned to Benigno and asked him about his jump.
"You bet we jumped together!" he replied in a blasting voice. "But I
never talk about it."
"What did Soledad say Eligio did?" Nestor asked.
I told them that dona Soledad had said that Eligio was twirled by a
wind and left the world while he was working in an open field.
"She's thoroughly confused," Nestor said. "Eligio was twirled by the
allies. But he didn't want any of them, so they let him go. That has nothing
to do with the jump. La Gorda said that you had a bout with allies last
night; I don't know what you did, but if you had wanted to catch them or
entice them to stay with you, you had to spin with them. Sometimes they come
of their own accord to the sorcerer and spin him. Eligio was the best
warrior there was so the allies came to him of their own accord. If any of
us want the allies, we would have to beg them for years, and even if we did,
I doubt that the allies would consider helping us.
"Eligio had to jump like everybody else. I witnessed his jump. He was
paired with Benigno. A lot of what happens to us as sorcerers depends on
what your partner does. Benigno is a bit off his rocker because his partner
didn't come back. Isn't that so, Benigno?"
"You bet it is!" Benigno answered in his favorite voice.
I succumbed at that point to a great curiosity that had plagued me from
the first time I had heard Benigno speak. I asked him how he made his
booming voice. He turned to face me. He sat up straight and pointed to his
mouth as if he wanted me to look fixedly at it.
"I don't know!" he boomed. "I just open my mouth and this voice comes
out of it! "
He contracted the muscles of his forehead, curled up his lips and made
a profound booing sound. I then saw that he had tremendous muscles in his
temples, which had given his head a different contour. It was not his
hairline that was different but the whole upper front part of his head.
"Genaro left him his noises," Nestor said to me. "Wait until he farts."
I had the feeling that Benigno was getting ready to demonstrate his
abilities.
"Wait, wait, Benigno," I said, "it's not necessary."
"Oh, shucks!" Benigno exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. "I had the
best one just for you."
Pablito and Nestor laughed so hard that even Benigno lost his deadpan
expression and cackled with them.
"Tell me what else happened to Eligio," I asked Nestor after they had
calmed down again.
"After Eligio and Benigno jumped," Nestor replied, "the Nagual made me
look quickly over the edge, in order to catch the sign the earth gives when
warriors jump into the abyss. If there is something like a little cloud, or
a faint gust of wind, the warrior's time on earth is not over yet. The day
Eligio and Benigno jumped I felt one puff of air on the side Benigno had
jumped and I knew that his time was not up. But Eligio's side was silent."
"What do you think happened to Eligio? Did he die?"
All three of them stared at me. They were quiet for a moment. Nestor
scratched his temples with both hands. Benigno giggled and shook his head. I
attempted to explain but Nestor made a gesture with his hands to stop me.
"Are you serious when you ask us questions?" he asked me.
Benigno answered for me. When he was not clowning, his voice was deep
and melodious. He said that the Nagual and Genaro had set us up so all of us
had pieces of information that the others did not have.
"Well, if that's the case we'll tell you what's what," Nestor said,
smiling as if a great load had been lifted off his shoulders. "Eligio did
not die. Not at all."
"Where is he now?" I asked.
They looked at one another again. They gave me the feeling that they
were struggling to keep from laughing. I told them that all I knew about
Eligio was what dona Soledad had told me. She had said that Eligio had gone
to the other world to join the Nagual and Genaro. To me that sounded as if
the three of them had died.
"Why do you talk like that. Maestro?" Nestor asked with a tone of deep
concern. "Not even Pablito talks like that."
I thought Pablito was going to protest. He almost stood up, but he
seemed to change his mind.
"Yes, that's right," he said. "Not even I talk like that."
"Well, if Eligio didn't die, where is he?" I asked.
"Soledad already told you," Nestor said softly. "Eligio went to join
the Nagual and Genaro."
I decided that it was best not to ask any more questions. I did not
mean my probes to be aggressive, but they always turned out that way.
Besides, I had the feeling that they did not know much more than I did.
Nestor suddenly stood up and began to pace back and forth in front of
me. Finally he pulled me away from the table by my armpits. He did not want
me to write. He asked me if I had really blacked out like Pablito had at the
moment of jumping and did not remember anything. I told him that I had had a
number of vivid dreams or visions that I could not explain and that I had
come to see them to seek clarification. They wanted to hear about all the
visions I had had.
After they had heard my accounts, Nestor said that my visions were of a
bizarre order and only the first two were of great importance and of this
earth; the rest were visions of alien worlds. He explained that my first
vision was of special value because it was an omen proper. He said that
sorcerers always took a first event of any series as the blueprint or the
map of what was going to develop subsequently.
In that particular vision I had found myself looking at an outlandish
world. There was an enormous rock right in front of my eyes, a rock which
had been split in two. Through a wide gap in it I could see a boundless
phosphorescent plain, a valley of some sort, which was bathed in a
greenish-yellow light. On one side of the valley, to the right, and
partially covered from my view by the enormous rock, there was an
unbelievable domelike structure. It was dark, almost a charcoal gray. If my
size was what it is in the world of everyday life, the dome must have been
fifty thousand feet high and miles and miles across. Such an enormity
dazzled me. I had a sensation of vertigo and plummeted into a state of
disintegration.
Once more I rebounded from it and found myself on a very uneven and yet
flat surface. It was a shiny, interminable surface just like the plain I had
seen before. It went as far as I could see. I soon realized that I could
turn my head in any direction I wanted on a horizontal plane, but I could
not look at myself. I was able, however, to examine the surroundings by
rotating my head from left to right and vice versa. Nevertheless, when I
wanted to turn around to look behind me, I could not move my bulk.
The plain extended itself monotonously, equally to my left and to my
right. There was nothing else in sight but an endless, whitish glare. I
wanted to look at the ground underneath my feet but my eyes could not move
down. I lifted my head up to look at the sky; all I saw was another
limitless, whitish surface that seemed to be connected to the one I was
standing on. I then had a moment of apprehension and felt that something was
just about to be revealed to me. But the sudden and devastating jolt of
disintegration stopped my revelation. Some force pulled me downward. It was
as if the whitish surface had swallowed me.
Nestor said that my vision of a dome was of tremendous importance
because that particular shape had been isolated by the Nagual and Genaro as
the vision of the place where all of us were supposed to meet them someday.
Benigno spoke to me at that point and said that he had heard Eligio
being instructed to find that particular dome. He said that the Nagual and
Genaro insisted that Eligio understand their point correctly. They always
had believed Eligio to be the best; therefore, they directed him to find
that dome and to enter its whitish vaults over and over again.
Pablito said that all three of them were instructed to find that dome
if they could, but that none of them had. I said then, in a complaining
tone, that neither don Juan nor don Genaro had ever mentioned anything like
that to me. I had had no instruction of any sort regarding a dome.
Benigno, who was sitting across the table from me, suddenly stood up
and came to my side. He sat to my left and whispered very softly in my ear
that perhaps the two old men had instructed me but I did not remember, or
that they had not said anything about it so I would not fix my attention on
it once I had found it.
"Why was the dome so important?" I asked Nestor.
"Because that's where the Nagual and Genaro are now," he replied.
"And where's that dome?" I asked.
"Somewhere on this earth," he said.
I had to explain to them at great length that it was impossible that a
structure of that magnitude could exist on our planet. I said that my vision
was more like a dream and domes of that height could exist only in
fantasies. They laughed and patted me gently as if they were humoring a
child.
"You want to know where Eligio is," Nestor said all of a sudden. "Well,
he is in the white vaults of that dome with the Nagual and Genaro."
"But that dome was a vision," I protested.
"Then Eligio is in a vision," Nestor said. "Remember what Benigno just
said to you. The Nagual and Genaro didn't tell you to find that dome and go
back to it over and over. If they had, you wouldn't be here. You'd be like
Eligio, in the dome of that vision. So you see, Eligio did not die like a
man in the street dies. He simply did not return from his jump."
His claim was staggering to me. I could not brush aside the memory of
the vividness of the visions I had had, but for some strange reason I wanted
to argue with him. Nestor, without giving me time to say anything, drove his
point a notch further. He reminded me of one of my visions: the next to the
last. That particular one had been the most nightmarish of them all. I had
found myself being chased by a strange, unseen creature. I knew that it was
there but I could not see it, not because it was invisible but because the
world I was in was so incredibly unfamiliar that I could not tell what
anything was. Whatever the elements of my vision were, they were certainly
not from this earth. The emotional distress I experienced upon being lost in
such a place was almost more than I could bear. At one moment, the surface
where I stood began to shake. I felt that it was caving in under my feet and
I grabbed a sort of branch, or an appendage of a thing that reminded me of a
tree, which was hanging just above my head on a horizontal plane. The
instant I touched it, the thing wrapped around my wrist, as if had been
filled with nerves that sensed everything. I felt that I was being hoisted
to a tremendous height. I looked down and saw an incredible animal; I knew
it was the unseen creature that had been chasing me. It was coming out of a
surface that looked like the ground. I could see its enormous mouth open
like a cavern. I heard a chilling, thoroughly unearthly roar, something like
a shrill, metallic gasp, and the tentacle that had me caught unraveled and I
fell into that cavernous mouth, I saw every detail of that mouth as I was
falling into it. Then it closed with me inside. I felt an instantaneous
pressure that mashed my body.
"You have already died," Nestor said. "That animal ate you. You
ventured beyond this world and found horror itself. Our life and our death
are no more and no less real than your short life in that place and your
death in the mouth of that monster. This life that we are having now is only
a long vision. Don't you see?"
Nervous spasms ran through my body.
"I didn't go beyond this world," he went on, "but I know what I'm
talking about. I don't have tales of horror like you. All I did was to visit
Porfirio ten times. If it had been up to me I would've gone there forever,
but my eleventh bounce was so powerful that it changed my direction. I felt
that I had overshot Porfirio's hut, and instead of finding myself at his
door, I found myself in the city, very close to the place of a friend of
mine. I thought it was funny. I knew that I was journeying between the tonal
and the nagual. Nobody had said to me that the journeys had to be of any
special kind. So I got curious and decided to see my friend. I began to
wonder if I really would get to see him. I came to his house and knocked on
the door just as I had knocked scores of times. His wife let me in as she
had always done and sure enough my friend was home. I told him that I had
come to the city on business and he even paid me some money he owed me. I
put the money in my pocket. I knew that my friend, and his wife, and the
money, and his house, and the city were just like Porfirio's hut, a vision.
I knew that a force beyond me was going to disintegrate me any moment. So I
sat down to enjoy my friend to the fullest. We laughed and joked. And I dare
say that I was funny and light and charming. I stayed there for a long time,
waiting for the jolt; since it didn't come I decided to leave. I said
good-bye and thanked him for the money and for his friendship. I walked
away. I wanted to see the city before the force took me away. I wandered
around all night. I walked all the way to the hills overlooking the city,
and at the moment the sun rose a realization struck me like a thunderbolt. I
was back in the world and the force that will disintegrate me was at ease
and was going to let me stay for a while. I was going to see my homeland and
this marvelous earth for a while longer. What a great joy. Maestro! But I
couldn't say that I had not enjoyed Porfirio's friendship. Both visions are
equal, but I prefer the vision of my form and my earth. It's my indulging
perhaps."
Nestor stopped talking and all of them stared at me. I felt threatened
as I had never been before. Some part of me was in awe of what he had said,
another wanted to fight with him. I began to argue with him without any
sense. My inane mood lasted for a few moments, then I became aware that
Benigno was looking at me with a very mean expression. He had fixed his eyes
on my chest. I felt that something ominous was suddenly pressing on my
heart. I began to perspire as if a heater were right in front of my face. My
ears began to buzz.
La Gorda walked up to me at that precise moment. She was a most
unexpected sight. I was sure that the Genaros felt the same way. They
stopped what they were doing and looked at her. Pablito was the first to
recover from his surprise.
"Why do you have to come in like that?" he asked in a pleading tone.
"You were listening from the other room, weren't you?"
She said that she had been in the house only a few minutes and then she
stepped out to the kitchen. And the reason she stayed quiet was not so much
to listen but to exercise her ability to be inconspicuous. Her presence had
created a strange lull. I wanted to pick up again the flow of Nestor's
revelations, but before I could say anything la Gorda said that the little
sisters were on their way to the house and would be coming through the door
any minute. The Genaros stood up at once as if they had been pulled by the
same string. Pablito put his chair on his shoulder.
"Let's go for a hike in the dark. Maestro," Pablito said to me.
La Gorda said in a most imperative tone that I could not go with them
yet because she had not finished telling me everything the Nagual had
instructed her to tell me.
Pablito turned to me and winked.
"I've told you," he said. "They're bossy, gloomy bitches. I certainly
hope you're not like that. Maestro."
Nestor and Benigno said good night and embraced me. Pablito just walked
away carrying his chair like a backpack. They went out through the back.
A few seconds later a horribly loud bang on the front door made la
Gorda and me jump to our feet. Pablito walked in again, carrying his chair.
"You thought I wasn't going to say good night, didn't you?" he asked me
and left laughing.
The Art of Dreaming
The next day I was by myself all morning. I worked on my notes, in the
afternoon I used my car to help la Gorda and the little sisters transport
the furniture from dona Soledad's house to their house.
In the early evening la Gorda and I sat in the dining area alone. We
were silent for a while. I was very tired.
La Gorda broke the silence and said that all of them had been too
complacent since the Nagual and Genaro had left. Each of them had been
absorbed in his or her particular tasks. She said that the Nagual had
commanded her to be an impassionate warrior and to follow whatever path her
fate selected for her. If Soledad had stolen my power, la Gorda had to flee
and try to save the little sisters and then join Benigno and Nestor, the
only two Genaros who would have survived. If the little sisters had killed
me, she had to join the Genaros because the little sisters would have had no
more need to be with her. If I had not survived the attack of the allies and
she did, she had to leave that area and be on her own. She told me, with a
glint in her eye, that she had been sure that neither one of us would
survive, and that that was why she had said goodbye to her sisters, to her
house and to the hills.
"The Nagual told me that in case you and I survived the allies," she
went on, "I have to do anything for you, because that would be my warrior's
path. That was why I interfered with what Benigno was doing to you last
night. He was pressing on your chest with his eyes. That is his art as a
stalker. You saw Pablito's hand earlier yesterday; that was also part of the
same art."
"What art is that, Gorda?"
"The art of the stalker. That was the Nagual's predilection and the
Genaros are his true children at that. We, on the other hand, are dreamers.
Your double is dreaming."
What she was saying was new to me. I wanted her to elucidate her
statements. I paused for a moment to read what I had written in order to
select the most appropriate question. I told her that I first wanted to find
out what she knew about my double and then I wanted to know about the art of
stalking.
"The Nagual told me that your double is something that takes a lot of
power to come out," she said. "He figured that you might have enough energy
to get it out of you twice. That's why he set up Soledad and the little
sisters either to kill you or to help you."
La Gorda said that I had had more energy than the Nagual thought, and
that my double came out three times. Apparently Rosa's attack had not been a
thoughtless action; on the contrary, she had very cleverly calculated that
if she injured me, I would have been helpless: the same ploy dona Soledad
had tried with her dog. I had given Rosa a chance to strike me when I yelled
at her, but she failed to injure me. My double came out and injured her
instead. La Gorda said that Lidia had told her that Rosa did not want to
wake up when all of us had to rush out of Soledad's house, so Lidia squeezed
the hand that had been injured. Rosa did not feel any pain and knew in an
instant that I had cured her, which meant to them that I had drained my
power. La Gorda affirmed that the little sisters were very clever and had
planned to drain me of power; to that effect they had kept on insisting that
I cure Soledad. As soon as Rosa realized that I had also cured her, she
thought that I had weakened myself beyond repair. All they had to do was to
wait for Josefina in order to finish me off.
"The little sisters didn't know that when you cured Rosa and Soledad
you also replenished yourself," la Gorda said, and laughed as if it were a
joke. "That was why you had enough energy to get your double out a third
time when the little sisters tried to take your luminosity."
I told her about the vision I had had of dona Soledad huddled against
the wall of her room, and how I had merged that vision with my tactile sense
and ended up feeling a viscous substance on her forehead.
"That was true seeing," la Gorda said. "You saw Soledad in her room
although she was with me around Genaro's place, and then you saw your nagual
on her forehead."
I felt compelled at that point to recount to her the details of my
whole experience, especially the realization I had had that I was actually
curing dona Soledad and Rosa by touching the viscous substance, which I felt
was part of me.
"To see that thing on Rosa's hand was also true seeing," she said. "And
you were absolutely right, that substance was yourself. It came out of your
body and it was your nagual. By touching it, you pulled it back."
La Gorda told me then, as though she were unveiling a mystery, that the
Nagual had commanded her not to disclose the fact that since all of us had
the same luminosity, if my nagual touched one of them, I would not get
weakened, as would ordinarily be the case if my nagual touched an average
man.
"If your nagual touches us," she said, giving me a gentle slap on the
head, "your luminosity stays on the surface. You can pick it up again and
nothing is lost."
I told her that the content of her explanation was impossible for me to
believe. She shrugged her shoulders as if saying that that was not any of
her concern. I asked her then about her usage of the word nagual. I said
that don Juan had explained the nagual to me as being the indescribable
principle, the source of everything.
"Sure," she said smiling. "I know what he meant. The nagual is in
everything."
I pointed out to her, a bit scornfully, that one could also say the
opposite, that the tonal is in everything. She carefully explained that
there was no opposition, that my statement was correct, the tonal was also
in everything. She said that the tonal which is in everything could be
easily apprehended by our senses, while the nagual which is in everything
manifested itself only to the eye of the sorcerer. She added that we could
stumble upon the most outlandish sights of the tonal and be scared of them,
or awed by them, or be indifferent to them, because all of us could view
those sights. A sight of the nagual, on the other hand, needed the
specialized senses of a sorcerer in order to be seen at all. And yet, both
the tonal and the nagual were present in everything at all times. It was
appropriate, therefore, for a sorcerer to say that "looking" consisted in
viewing the tonal which is in everything, and "seeing," on the other hand,
consisted in viewing the nagual which also is in everything. Accordingly, if
a warrior observed the world as a human being, he was looking, but if he
observed it as a sorcerer, he was "seeing," and what he was "seeing" had to
be properly called the nagual.
She then reiterated the reason, which Nestor had given me earlier, for
calling don Juan the Nagual and confirmed that I was also the Nagual because
of the shape that came out of my head.
I wanted to know why they had called the shape that had come out of my
head the double. She said that they had thought they were sharing a private
joke with me. They had always called that shape the double, because it was
twice the size of the person who had it.
"Nestor told me that that shape was not such a good thing to have," I
said.
"It's neither good nor bad," she said. "You have it and that makes you
the Nagual. That's all. One of us eight had to be the Nagual and you're the
one. It might have been Pablito or me or anyone."
"Tell me now, what is the art of stalking?" I asked.
"The Nagual was a stalker," she said, and peered at me. "You must know
that. He taught you to stalk from the beginning."
It occurred to me that what she was referring to was what don Juan had
called the hunter. He had certainly taught me to be a hunter. I told her
that don Juan had shown me how to hunt and make traps. Her usage of the term
stalker, however, was more accurate.
"A hunter just hunts," she said. "A stalker stalks anything, including
himself."
"How does he do that?"
"An impeccable stalker can turn anything into prey. The Nagual told me
that we can even stalk our own weaknesses."
I stopped writing and tried to remember if don Juan had ever presented
me with such a novel possibility: to stalk my weaknesses. I could not recall
him ever putting it in those terms.
"How can one stalk one's weaknesses, Gorda?"
"The same way you stalk prey. You figure out your routines until you
know all the doing of your weaknesses and then you come upon them and pick
them up like rabbits inside a cage."
Don Juan had taught me the same thing about routines, but in the vein
of a general principle that hunters must be aware of. Her understanding and
application of it, however, were more pragmatic than mine.
Don Juan had said that any habit was, in essence, a "doing, "and that a
doing needed all its parts in order to function. If some parts were missing,
a doing was disassembled. By doing, he meant any coherent and meaningful
series of actions. In other words, a habit needed all its component actions
in order to be a live activity.
La Gorda then described how she had stalked her own weakness of eating
excessively. She said that the Nagual had suggested she first tackle the
biggest part of that habit, which was connected with her laundry work; she
ate whatever her customers fed her as she went from house to house
delivering her wash. She expected the Nagual to tell her what to do, but he
only laughed and made fun of her, saying that as soon as he would mention
something for her to do, she would fight not to do it. He said that that was
the way human beings are; they love to be told what to do, but they love
even more to fight and not do what they are told, and thus they get
entangled in hating the one who told them in the first place.
For many years she could not think of anything to do to stalk her
weakness. One day, however, she got so sick and tired of being fat that she
refused to eat for twenty-three days. That was the initial action that broke
her fixation. She then had the idea of stuffing her mouth with a sponge to
make her customers believe that she had an infected tooth and could not eat.
The subterfuge worked not only with her customers, who stopped giving her
food, but with her as well, as she had the feeling of eating as she chewed
on the sponge. La Gorda laughed when she told me how she had walked around
with a sponge stuffed in her mouth for years until her habit of eating
excessively had been broken.
"Was that all you needed to stop your habit?" I asked.
"No. I also had to learn how to eat like a warrior."
"And how does a warrior eat?"
"A warrior eats quietly, and slowly, and very little at a time. I used
to talk while I ate, and I ate very fast, and I ate lots and lots of food at
one sitting. The Nagual told me that a warrior eats four mouthfuls of food
at one time. A while later he eats another four mouthfuls and so on.
"A warrior also walks miles and miles every day. My eating weakness
never let me walk. I broke it by eating four mouthfuls every hour and by
walking. Sometimes I walked all day and all night. That was the way I lost
the fat on my buttocks."
She laughed at her own recollection of the nickname don Juan had given
her.
"But stalking your weaknesses is not enough to drop them," she said.
"You can stalk them from now to doomsday and it won't make a bit of
difference. That's why the Nagual didn't want to tell me what to do. What a
warrior really needs in order to be an impeccable stalker is to have a
purpose."
La Gorda recounted how she had lived from day to day, before she met
the Nagual, with nothing to look forward to. She had no hopes, no dreams, no
desire for anything. The opportunity to eat, however, was always accessible
to her; for some reason that she could not fathom, there had been plenty of
food available to her every single day of her life. So much of it, in fact,
that at one time she weighed two hundred and thirty-six pounds.
"Eating was the only thing I enjoyed in life," la Gorda said. "Besides,
I never saw myself as being fat. I thought I was rather pretty and that
people liked me as I was. Everyone said that I looked healthy.
"The Nagual told me something very strange. He said that I had an
enormous amount of personal power and due to that I had always managed to
get food from friends while the relatives in my own house were going hungry.
"Everybody has enough personal power for something. The trick for me
was to pull my personal power away from food to my warrior's purpose."
"And what is that purpose, Gorda?" I asked half in jest.
"To enter into the other world," she replied with a grin and pretended
to hit me on top of my head with her knuckles, the way don Juan used to do
when he thought I was indulging.
There was no more light for me to write. I wanted her to bring a
lantern but she complained that she was too tired and had to sleep a bit
before the little sisters arrived.
We went into the front room. She gave me a blanket, then wrapped
herself in another one and fell asleep instantly. I sat with my back against
the wall. The brick surface of the bed was hard even with four straw mats.
It was more comfortable to lie down. The moment I did I fell asleep.
I woke up suddenly with an unbearable thirst. I wanted to go to the
kitchen to drink some water but I could not orient myself in the darkness. I
could feel la Gorda bundled up in her blanket next to me. I shook her two or
three times and asked her to help me get some water. She grumbled some
unintelligible words. She apparently was so sound asleep that she did not
want to wake up. I shook her again and suddenly she woke up; only it was not
la Gorda. Whoever I was shaking yelled at me in a gruff, masculine voice to
shut up. There was a man there in place of la Gorda! My fright was
instantaneous and uncontrollable. I jumped out of bed and ran for the front
door. But my sense of orientation was off and I ended up out in the kitchen.
I grabbed a lantern and lit it as fast as I could. La Gorda came out of the
outhouse in the back at that moment and asked me if there was something
wrong. I nervously told her what had happened. She seemed a bit disoriented
herself. Her mouth was open and her eyes had lost their usual sheen. She
shook her head vigorously and that seemed to restore her alertness. She took
the lantern and we walked into the front room.
There was no one in the bed. La Gorda lit three more lanterns. She
appeared to be worried. She told me to stay where I was, then she opened the
door to their room. I noticed that there was light coming from inside. She
closed the door again and said in a matter-of-fact tone not to worry, that
it was nothing, and that she was going to make us something to eat. With the
speed and efficiency of a short-order cook she made some food. She also made
a hot chocolate drink with cornmeal. We sat across from each other and ate
in complete silence.
The night was cold. It looked as if it was going to rain. The three
kerosene lanterns that she had brought to the dining area cast a yellowish
light that was very soothing. She took some boards that were stacked up on
the floor, against the wall, and placed them vertically in a deep groove on
the transverse supporting beam of the roof. There was a long slit in the
floor parallel to the beam that served to hold the boards in place. The
result was a portable wall that enclosed the dining area.
"Who was in the bed?" I asked.
"In bed, next to you, was Josefina, who else?" she replied as if
savoring her words, and then laughed. "She's a master at jokes like that.
For a moment I thought it was something else, but then I caught the scent
that Josefina's body has when she's carrying out one of her pranks."
"What was she trying to do? Scare me to death?" I asked.
"You're not their favorite, you know," she replied. "They don't like to
be taken out of the path they're familiar with. They hate the fact that
Soledad is leaving. They don't want to understand that we are all leaving
this area. It looks like our time is up. I knew that today. As I left the
house I felt that those barren hills out there were making me tired. I had
never felt that way until today."
"Where are you going to go?"
"I don't know yet. It looks as if that depends on you. On your power."
"On me? In what way, Gorda?"
"Let me explain. The day before you arrived the little sisters and I
went to the city. I wanted to find you in the city because I had a very
strange vision in my dreaming. In that vision I was in the city with you. I
saw you in my vision as plainly as I see you now. You didn't know who I was
but you talked to me. I couldn't make out what you said. I went back to the
same vision three times but I was not strong enough in my dreaming to find
out what you were saying to me. I figured that my vision was telling me that
I had to go to the city and trust my power to find you there. I was sure
that you were on your way."
"Did the little sisters know why you took them to the city?" I asked.
"I didn't tell them anything," she replied. "I just took them there. We
wandered around the streets all morning."
Her statements put me in a very strange frame of mind. Spasms of
nervous excitation ran through my entire body. I had to stand up and walk
around for a moment. I sat down again and told her that I had been in the
city the same day, and that I had wandered around the marketplace all
afternoon looking for don Juan. She stared at me with her mouth open.
"We must have passed each other," she said and sighed. "We were in the
market and in the park. We sat on the steps of the church most of the
afternoon so as not to attract attention to ourselves."
The hotel where I had stayed was practically next door to the church. I
remembered that I had stood for a long time looking at the people on the
steps of the church. Something was pulling me to examine them. I had the
absurd notion that both don Juan and don Genaro were going to be among those
people, sitting like beggars just to surprise me.
"When did you leave the city?" I asked.
"We left around five o'clock and headed for the Nagual's spot in the
mountains," she replied.
I had also had the certainty that don Juan had left at the end of the
day. The feelings I had had during that entire episode of looking for don
Juan became very clear to me. In light of what she had told me I had to
revise my stand. I had conveniently explained away the certainty I had had
that don Juan was there in the streets of the city as an irrational
expectation, a result of my consistently finding him there in the past. But
la Gorda had been in the city actually looking for me and she was the being
closest to don Juan in temperament. I had felt all along that his presence
was there. La Gorda's statement had merely confirmed something that my body
knew beyond the shadow of a doubt.
I noticed a flutter of nervousness in her body when I told her the
details of my mood that day.
"What would've happened if you had found me?" I asked.
"Everything would've been changed," she replied. "For me to find you
would've meant that I had enough power to move forward. That's why I took
the little sisters with me. All of us, you, me and the little sisters,
would've gone away together that day."
"Where to, Gorda?"
"Who knows? If I had the power to find you I would've also had the
power to know that. It's your turn now. Perhaps you will have enough power
now to know where we should go. Do you see what I mean?"
I had an attack of profound sadness at that point. I felt more acutely
than ever the despair of my human frailty and temporariness. Don Juan had
always maintained that the only deterrent to our despair was the awareness
of our death, the key to the sorcerer's scheme of things. His idea was that
the awareness of our death was the only thing that could give us the
strength to withstand the duress and pain of our lives and our fears of the
unknown. But what he could never tell me was how to bring that awareness to
the foreground. He had insisted, every time I had asked him, that my
volition alone was the deciding factor; in other words, I had to make up my
mind to bring that awareness to bear witness to my acts. I thought I had
done so. But confronted with la Gorda's determination to find me and go away
with me, I realized that if she had found me in the city that day I would
never have returned to my home, never again would I have seen those I held
dear. I had not been prepared for that. I had braced myself for dying, but
not for disappearing for the rest of my life in full awareness, without
anger or disappointment, leaving behind the best of my feelings.
I was almost embarrassed to tell la Gorda that I was not a warrior
worthy of having the kind of power that must be needed to perform an act of
that nature: to leave for good and to know where to go and what to do.
"We are human creatures," she said. "Who knows what's waiting for us or
what kind of power we may have?"
I told her that my sadness in leaving like that was too great. The
changes that sorcerers went through were too drastic and too final. I
recounted to her what Pablito had told me about his unbearable sadness at
having lost his mother.
"The human form feeds itself on those feelings," she said dryly. "I
pitied myself and my little children for years. I couldn't understand how
the Nagual could be so cruel to ask me to do what I did: to leave my
children, to destroy them and to forget them."
She said that it took her years to understand that the Nagual also had
had to choose to leave the human form. He was not being cruel. He simply did
not have any more human feelings. To him everything was equal. He had
accepted his fate. The problem with Pablito, and myself for that matter, was
that neither of us had accepted our fate. La Gorda said, in a scornful way,
that Pablito wept when he remembered his mother, his Manuelita, especially
when he had to cook his own food. She urged me to remember Pablito's mother
as she was: an old, stupid woman who knew nothing else but to be Pablito's
servant. She said that the reason all of them thought he was a coward was
because he could not be happy that his servant Manuelita had become the
witch Soledad, who could kill him like she would step on a bug.
La Gorda stood up dramatically and leaned over the table until her
forehead was almost touching mine.
"The Nagual said that Pablito's good fortune was extraordinary," she
said. "Mother and son fighting for the same thing. If he weren't the coward
he is, he would accept his fate and oppose Soledad like a warrior, without
fear or hatred. In the end the best would win and take all. If Soledad is
the winner, Pablito should be happy with his fate and wish her well. But
only a real warrior can feel that kind of happiness."
"How does dona Soledad feel about all this?"
"She doesn't indulge in her feelings," la Gorda replied and sat down
again. "She has accepted her fate more readily than any one of us. Before
the Nagual helped her she was worse off than myself. At least I was young;
she was an old cow, fat and tired, begging for her death to come. Now death
will have to fight to claim her."
The time element in dona Soledad's transformation was a detail that had
puzzled me. I told la Gorda that I remembered having seen dona Soledad no
more than two years before and she was the same old lady I had always known.
La Gorda said that the last time I had been in Soledad's house, under the
impression that it was still Pablito's house, the Nagual had set them up to
act as if everything were the same. Dona Soledad greeted me, as she always
did, from the kitchen, and I really did not face her. Lidia, Rosa, Pablito
and Nestor played their roles to perfection in order to keep me from finding
out about their true activities.
"Why would the Nagual go to all that trouble, Gorda?"
"He was saving you for something that's not clear yet. He kept you away
from every one of us deliberately. He and Genaro told me never to show my
face when you were around."
"Did they tell Josefina the same thing? "
"Yes. She's crazy and can't help herself. She wanted to play her pranks
on you. She used to follow you around and you never knew it. One night when
the Nagual had taken you to the mountains, she nearly pushed you down a
ravine in the darkness. The Nagual found her in the nick of time. She
doesn't do those things out of meanness, but because she enjoys being that
way. That's her human form. She'll be that way until she loses it. I've told
you that all six of them are a bit off. You must be aware of that so as not
to be caught in their webs. If you do get caught, don't get angry. They
can't help themselves."
She was silent for a while. I caught the almost imperceptible sign of a
flutter in her body. Her eyes seemed to get out of focus and her mouth
dropped as if the muscles of her jaw had given in. I became engrossed in
watching her. She shook her head two or three times.
"I've just seen something," she said. "You're just like the little
sisters and the Genaros."
She began to laugh quietly. I did not say anything. I wanted her to
explain herself without my meddling.
"Everybody gets angry with you because it hasn't dawned on them yet
that you're no different than they are," she went on. "They see you as the
Nagual and they don't understand that you indulge in your ways just like
they do in theirs."
She said that Pablito whined and complained and played at being a
weakling. Benigno played the shy one, the one who could not even open his
eyes. Nestor played to be the wise one, the one who knows everything. Lidia
played the tough woman who could crush anyone with a look. Josefina was the
crazy one who could not be trusted. Rosa was the bad-tempered girl who ate
the mosquitoes that bit her. And I was the fool that came from Los Angeles
with a pad of paper and lots of wrong questions. And all of us loved to be
the way we were.
"I was once a fat, smelly woman," she went on after a pause. "I didn't
mind being kicked around like a dog as long as I was not alone. That was my
form.
"I will have to tell everybody what I have seen about you so they won't
feel offended by your acts."
I did not know what to say. I felt that she was undeniably right. The
important issue for me was not so much her accurateness but the fact that I
had witnessed her arriving at her unquestionable conclusion.
"How did you see all that?" I asked.
"It just came to me," she replied.
"How did it come to you?"
"I felt the feeling of seeing coming to the top of my head, and then I
knew what I've just told you."
I insisted that she describe to me every detail of the feeling of
seeing that she was alluding to. She complied after a moment's vacillation
and gave me an account of the same ticklish sensation I had become so aware
of during my confrontations with dona Soledad and the little sisters. La
Gorda said that the sensation started on the top of her head and then went
down her back and around her waist to her womb. She felt it inside her body
as a consuming ticklishness, which turned into the knowledge that I was
clinging to my human form, like all the rest, except that my particular way
was incomprehensible to them.
"Did you hear a voice telling you all that?" I asked.
"No. I just saw everything I've told you about yourself," she replied.
I wanted to ask her if she had had a vision of me clinging to
something, but I desisted. I did not want to indulge in my usual behavior.
Besides, I knew what she meant when she said that she "saw." The same thing
had happened to me when I was with Rosa and Lidia. I suddenly "knew" where
they lived; I had not had a vision of their house. I simply felt that I knew
it.
I asked her if she had also felt a dry sound of a wooden pipe being
broken at the base of her neck.
"The Nagual taught all of us how to get the feeling on top of the
head," she said. "But not everyone of us can do it. The sound behind the
throat is even more difficult. None of us has ever felt it yet. It's strange
that you have when you're still empty."
"How does that sound work?" I asked. "And what is it?"
"You know that better than I do. What more can I tell you?" she replied
in a harsh voice.
She seemed to catch herself being impatient. She smiled sheepishly and
lowered her head.
"I feel stupid telling you what you already know," she said. "Do you
ask me questions like that to test if I have really lost my form?"
I told her that I was confused, for I had the feeling that I knew what
that sound was and yet it was as if I did not know anything about it,
because for me to know something I actually had to be able to verbalize my
knowledge. In this case, I did not even know how to begin verbalizing it.
The only thing I could do, therefore, was to ask her questions, hoping that
her answers would help me.
"I can't help you with that sound," she said.
I experienced a sudden and tremendous discomfort. I told her that I was
habituated to dealing with don Juan and that I needed him then, more than
ever, to explain everything to me.
"Do you miss the Nagual?" she asked.
I said that I did, and that I had not realized how much I missed him
until I was back again in his homeland.
"You miss him because you're still clinging to your human form," she
said, and giggled as if she were delighted at my sadness.
"Don't you miss him yourself, Gorda?"
"No. Not me. I'm him. All my luminosity has been changed; how could I
miss something that is myself?"
"How is your luminosity different?"
"A human being, or any other living creature, has a pale yellow glow.
Animals are more yellow, humans are more white. But a sorcerer is amber,
like clear honey in the sunlight. Some women sorceresses are greenish. The
Nagual said that those are the most powerful and the most difficult."
"What color are you, Gorda?"
"Amber, just like you and all the rest of us. That's what the Nagual
and Genaro told me. I've never seen myself. But I've seen everyone else. All
of us are amber. And all of us, with the exception of you, are like a
tombstone. Average human beings are like eggs; that's why the Nagual called
them luminous eggs. Sorcerers change not only the color of their luminosity
but their shape. We are like tombstones; only we are round at both ends."
"Am I still shaped like an egg, Gorda?"
"No. You're shaped like a tombstone, except that you have an ugly, dull
patch in your middle. As long as you have that patch you won't be able to
fly, like sorcerers fly, like I flew last night for you. You won't even be
able to drop your human form."
I became entangled in a passionate argument not so much with her as
with myself. I insisted that their stand on how to regain that alleged
completeness was simply preposterous. I told her that she could not possibly
argue successfully with me that one had to turn one's back to one's own
children in order to pursue the vaguest of all possible goals: to enter into
the world of the nagual. I was so thoroughly convinced that I was right that
I got carried away and shouted angry words at her. She was not in any way
flustered by my outburst.
"Not everybody has to do that," she said. "Only sorcerers who want to
enter into the other world. There are plenty of good sorcerers who see and
are incomplete. To be complete is only for us Toltecs.
"Take Soledad, for instance. She's the best witch you can find and
she's incomplete. She had two children; one of them was a girl. Fortunately
for Soledad her daughter died. The Nagual said that the edge of the spirit
of a person who dies goes back to the givers, meaning that that edge goes
back to the parents. If the givers are dead and the person has children, the
edge goes to the child who is complete. And if all the children are
complete, that edge goes to the one with power and not necessarily to the
best or the most diligent. For example, when Josefina's mother died, the
edge went to the craziest of the lot, Josefina. It should have gone to her
brother who is a hardworking, responsible man, but Josefina is more powerful
than her brother. Soledad's daughter died without leaving any children and
Soledad got a boost that closed half her hole. Now, the only hope she has to
close it completely is for Pablito to die. And by the same token, Pablito's
great hope for a boost is for Soledad to die."
I told her in very strong terms that what she was saying was disgusting
and horrifying to me. She agreed that I was right. She affirmed that at one
time she herself had believed that that particular sorcerers' stand was the
ugliest thing possible. She looked at me with shining eyes. There was
something malicious about her grin.
"The Nagual told me that you understand everything but you don't want
to do anything about it," she said in a soft voice.
I began to argue again. I told her that what the Nagual had said about
me had nothing to do with my revulsion for the particular stand that we were
discussing. I explained that I liked children, that I had the most profound
respect for them, and that I empathized very deeply with their helplessness
in the awesome world around them. I could not conceive hurting a child in
any sense, not for any reason.
"The Nagual didn't make the rule," she said. "The rule is made
somewhere out there, and not by a man."
I defended myself by saying that I was not angry with her or the Nagual
but that I was arguing in the abstract, because I could not fathom the value
of it all.
"The value is that we need all our edge, all our power, our
completeness in order to enter into that other world," she said. "I was a
religious woman. I could tell you what I used to repeat without knowing what
I meant. I wanted my soul to enter the kingdom of heaven. I still want that,
except that I'm on a different path. The world of the nagual is the kingdom
of heaven."
I objected to her religious connotation on principle. I had become
accustomed by don Juan never to dwell on that subject. She very calmly
explained that she saw no difference in terms of life-style between us and
true nuns and priests. She pointed out that not only were true nuns and
priests complete as a rule, but they did not even weaken themselves with
sexual acts.
"The Nagual said that that is the reason they will never be
exterminated, no matter who tries to exterminate them," she said. "Those who
are after them are always empty; they don't have the vigor that true nuns
and priests have. I liked the Nagual for saying that. I will always cheer
for the nuns and priests. We are alike. We have given up the world and yet
we are in the midst of it. Priests and nuns would make great flying
sorcerers if someone would tell them that they can do it."
The memory of my father's and my grandfather's admiration for the
Mexican revolution came to my mind. They mostly admired the attempt to
exterminate the clergy. My father inherited that admiration from his father
and I inherited it from both of them. It was a sort of affiliation that we
had. One of the first things that don Juan undermined in my personality was
that affiliation.
I once told don Juan, as if I were voicing my own opinion, something I
had heard all my life, that the favorite ploy of the Church was to keep us
in ignorance. Don Juan had a most serious expression on his face. It was as
if my statements had touched a deep fiber in him. I thought immediately of
the centuries of exploitation that the Indians had endured.
"Those dirty bastards," he said. "They have kept me in ignorance, and
you too."
I caught his irony tight away and we both laughed. I had never really
examined that stand. I did not believe it but I had nothing else to take its
place. I told don Juan about my grandfather and my father and their views on
religion as the liberal men they were.
"It doesn't matter what anybody says or does," he said. "You must be an
impeccable man yourself. The fight is right here in this chest."
He patted my chest gently.
"If your grandfather and father would be trying to be impeccable
warriors," don Juan went on, "they wouldn't have time for petty fights. It
takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us.
And that's what matters. The rest is of no importance. Nothing of what your
grandfather or father said about the Church gave them well-being. To be an
impeccable warrior, on the other hand, will give you vigor and youth and
power. So, it is proper for you to choose wisely."
My choice was the impeccability and simplicity of a warrior's life.
Because of that choice I felt that I had to take la Gorda's words in a most
serious manner and that was more threatening to me than even don Genaro's
acts. He used to frighten me at a most profound level. His actions, although
certifying, were assimilated, however, into the coherent continuum of their
teachings. La Gorda's words and actions were a different kind of threat to
me, somehow more concrete and real than the other.
La Gorda's body shivered for a moment. A ripple went through it, making
her contract the muscles of her shoulders and arms. She grabbed the edge of
the table with an awkward rigidity. Then she relaxed until she was again her
usual self.
She smiled at me. Her eyes and smile were dazzling. She said in a
casual tone that she had just "seen" my dilemma.
"It's useless to close your eyes and pretend that you don't want to do
anything or that you don't know anything," she said. "You can do that with
people but not with me. I know now why the Nagual commissioned me to tell
you all this. I'm a nobody. You admire great people; the Nagual and Genaro
were the greatest of all."
She stopped and examined me. She seemed to be waiting for my reaction
to what she said.
"You fought against what the Nagual and Genaro told you, all the way,"
she went on. "That's why you're behind. And you fought them because they
were great. That's your particular way of being. But you can't fight against
what I tell you, because you can't look up to me at all. I am your peer; I
am in your cycle. You like to fight those who are better than you. It's no
challenge to fight my stand. So, those two devils have finally bagged you
through me. Poor little Nagual, you've lost the game."
She came closer to me and whispered in my ear that the Nagual had also
said that she should never try to take my writing pad away from me because
that would be as dangerous as trying to snatch a bone from a hungry dog's
mouth.
She put her arms around me, resting her head on my shoulders, and
laughed quietly and softly.
Her "seeing" had numbed me. I knew that she was absolutely right. She
had pegged me to perfection. She bugged me for a long time with her head
against mine. The proximity of her body somehow was very soothing. She was
just like don Juan at that. She exuded strength and conviction and purpose.
She was wrong to say that I could not admire her.
"Let's forget this," she said suddenly. "Let's talk about what we have
to do tonight."
"What exactly are we going to do tonight, Gorda?"
"We have our last appointment with power."
"Is it another dreadful battle with somebody?"
"No. The little sisters are simply going to show you something that
will complete your visit here. The Nagual told me that after that you may go
away and never return, or that you may choose to stay with us. Either way,
what they have to show you is their art. The art of the dreamer."
"And what is that art? "
"Genaro told me that he tried time and time again to acquaint you with
the art of the dreamer. He showed you his other body, his body of dreaming;
once he even made you be in two places at once, but your emptiness did not
let you see what he was pointing out to you. It looks as if all his efforts
went through the hole in your body.
"Now it seems that it is different. Genaro made the little sisters the
dreamers that they are and tonight they will show you Genaro's art. In that
respect, the little sisters are the true children of Genaro."
That reminded me of what Pablito had said earlier, that we were the
children of both, and that we were Toltecs. I asked her what he had meant by
that.
"The Nagual told me that sorcerers used to be called Toltecs in his
benefactor's language," she replied.
"And what language was that, Gorda?"
"He never told me. But he and Genaro used to speak a language that none
of us could understand. And here, between all of us, we understand four
Indian languages."
"Did don Genaro also say that he was a Toltec?"
"His benefactor was the same man, so he also said the same thing."
From la Gorda's responses I could surmise that she either did not know
a great deal on the subject or she did not want to talk to me about it. I
confronted her with my conclusions. She confessed that she had never paid
much attention to it and wondered why I was putting so much value on it. I
practically gave her a lecture on the ethnography of central Mexico.
"A sorcerer is a Toltec when that sorcerer has received the mysteries
of stalking and dreaming," she said casually. "The Nagual and Genaro
received those mysteries from their benefactor and then they held them in
their bodies. We are doing the same, and because of that we are Toltecs like
the Nagual and Genaro.
"The Nagual taught you and me equally to be dispassionate. I am more
dispassionate than you because I'm formless. You still have your form and
are empty, so you get caught in every snag. One day, however, you'll be
complete again and you'll understand then that the Nagual was right. He said
that the world of people goes up and down and people go up and down with
their world; as sorcerers we have no business following them in their ups
and downs.
"The art of sorcerers is to be outside everything and be unnoticeable.
And more than anything else, the art of sorcerers is never to waste their
power. The Nagual told me that your problem is that you always get caught in
idiocies, like what you're doing now. I'm sure that you're going to ask
everyone of us about the Toltecs, but you're not going to ask anyone of us
about our attention."
Her laughter was clear and contagious. I admitted to her that she was
right. Small issues had always fascinated me. I also told her that I was
mystified by her usage of the word attention.
"I've told you already what the Nagual told me about attention," she
said. "We hold the images of the world with our attention. A male sorcerer
is very difficult to train because his attention is always closed, focused
on something. A female, on the other hand, is always open because most of
the time she is not focusing her attention on anything. Especially during
her menstrual period. The Nagual told me and then showed me that during that
time I could actually let my attention go from the images of the world. If I
don't focus my attention on the world, the world collapses."
"How is that done, Gorda?"
"It's very simple. When a woman menstruates she cannot focus her
attention. That's the crack the Nagual told me about. Instead of fighting to
focus, a woman should let go of the images, by gazing fixedly at distant
hills, or by gazing at water, like a river, or by gazing at the clouds.
"If you gaze with your eyes open, you get dizzy and the eyes get tired,
but if you half-close them and blink a lot and move them from mountain to
mountain, or from cloud to cloud, you can look for hours, or days if
necessary.
"The Nagual used to make us sit by the door and gaze at those round
hills on the other side of the valley. Sometimes we used to sit there for
days until the crack would open."
I wanted to hear more about it, but she stopped talking and hurriedly
sat very close to me. She signaled me with her hand to listen. I heard a
faint swishing sound and suddenly Lidia stepped out into the kitchen. I
thought that she must have been asleep in their room and the sound of our
voices had woken her up.
She had changed the Western clothes she had been wearing the last time
I had seen her and had put on a long dress like the Indian women of the area
wore. She had a shawl on her shoulders and was barefoot. Her long dress,
instead of making her look older and heavier, made her look like a child
clad in an older woman's clothes.
She walked up to the table and greeted la Gorda with a formal "Good
evening, Gorda." She then turned to me and said, "Good evening, Nagual."
Her greeting was so unexpected and her tone so serious that I was about
to laugh. I caught a warning from la Gorda. She pretended to be scratching
the top of her head with the back of her left hand, which was clawed.
I answered Lidia the same way la Gorda had: "Good evening to you,
Lidia."
She sat down at the end of the table to the right of me. I did not know
whether or not to start up a conversation. I was about to say something when
la Gorda tapped my leg with her knee, and with a subtle movement of her
eyebrows signaled me to listen. I heard again the muffled sound of a long
dress as it touched the floor. Josefina stood for a moment at the door
before walking toward the table. She greeted Lidia, la Gorda and myself in
that order. I could not keep a straight face with her. She was also wearing
a long dress, a shawl and no shoes, but in her case the dress was three or
four sizes larger and she had put a thick padding into it. Her appearance
was thoroughly incongruous; her face was lean and young, but her body looked
grotesquely bloated.
She took a bench and placed it at the left end of the table and sat
down. All three of them looked extremely serious. They were sitting with
their legs pressed together and their backs very straight.
I heard once more the rustle of a dress and Rosa come out. She was
dressed just like the others and was also barefoot. Her greeting was as
formal and the order naturally included Josefina. Everyone answered her in
the same formal tone. She sat across the table facing me. All of us remained
in absolute silence for quite a while.
La Gorda spoke suddenly, and the sound of her voice made everyone else
jump. She said, pointing to me, that the Nagual was going to show them his
allies, and that he was going to use his special call to bring them into the
room.
I tried to make a joke and said that the Nagual was not there, so he
could not bring any allies. I thought they were going to laugh. La Gorda
covered her face and the little sisters glared at me. La Gorda put her hand
on my mouth and whispered in my ear that it was absolutely necessary that I
refrain from saying idiotic things. She looked right into my eyes and said
that I had to call the allies by making the moths' call.
I reluctantly began. But no sooner had I started than the spirit of the
occasion took over and I found that in a matter of seconds I had given my
maximum concentration to producing the sound. I modulated its outflow and
controlled the air being expelled from my lungs in order to produce the
longest possible tapping. It sounded very melodious.
I took an enormous gasp of air to start a new series. I stopped
immediately. Something outside the house was answering my call. The tapping
sounds came from all around the house, even from the roof. The little
sisters stood up and huddled like frightened children around la Gorda and
myself.
"Please, Nagual, don't bring anything into the house," Lidia pleaded
with me.
Even la Gorda seemed a bit frightened. She gave me a strong command
with her hand to stop. I had not intended to keep on producing the sound
anyway. The allies, however, either as formless forces or as beings that
were prowling outside the door, were not dependent on my tapping sound. I
felt again, as I had felt two nights before in don Genaro's house, an
unbearable pressure, a heaviness leaning against the entire house. I could
sense it in my navel as an itch, a nervousness that soon turned into sheer
physical anguish.
The three little sisters were beside themselves with fear, especially
Lidia and Josefina. Both of them were whining like wounded dogs. All of them
surrounded me and then clung to me. Rosa crawled under the table and pushed
her head up between my legs. La Gorda stood behind me as calmly as she
could. After a few moments the hysteria and fear of those three girls
mounted to enormous proportions. La Gorda leaned over and whispered that I
should make the opposite sound, the sound that would disperse them. I had a
moment of supreme uncertainty. I really did not know any other sound. But
then I had a quick sensation of ticklishness on the top of my head, a shiver
in my body, and I remembered out of nowhere a peculiar whistling that don
Juan used to perform at night and had endeavored to teach me. He had
presented it to me as a means to keep one's balance while walking so as not
to stray away from the trail in the darkness.
I began my whistling and the pressure in my umbilical region ceased. La
Gorda smiled and sighed with relief and the little sisters moved away from
my side, giggling as if all of it had been merely a joke. I wanted to
indulge in some soulsearching deliberations about the abrupt transition from
the rather pleasant exchange I was having with la Gorda to that unearthly
situation. For an instant I pondered over whether or not the whole thing was
a ploy on their part. But I was too weak. I felt I was about to pass out. My
ears were buzzing. The tension around my stomach was so intense that I
believed I was going to become ill right there. I rested my head on the edge
of the table. After a few minutes, however, I was again relaxed enough to
sit up straight.
The three girls seemed to have forgotten how frightened they had been.
In fact, they were laughing and pushing each other as they each tied their
shawls around their hips. La Gorda did not seem nervous nor did she seem
relaxed. Rosa was pushed at one moment by the other two girls and fell off
the bench where all three of them were sitting. She landed on her seat. I
thought that she was going to get furious but she giggled. I looked at la
Gorda for directions. She Was sitting with a very straight back. Her eyes
were half-closed, fixed on Rosa. The little sisters were laughing very
loudly, like nervous schoolgirls. Lidia pushed Josefina and sent her
tumbling over the bench to fall next to Rosa on the floor. The instant
Josefina was on the floor their laughter stopped. Rosa and Josefina shook
their bodies, making an incomprehensible movement with their buttocks; they
moved them from side to side as if they were grinding something against the
floor. Then they sprang up like two silent jaguars and took Lidia by the
arms. All three of them, without making the slightest noise, spun around a
couple of times. Rosa and Josefina lifted Lidia by the armpits and carried
her as they tiptoed two or three times around the table. Then all three of
them collapsed as if they had springs on their knees that had contracted at
the same time. Their long dresses puffed up, giving them the appearance of
huge balls.
As soon as they were on the floor they became even more quiet. There
was no other sound except the soft swishing of their dresses as they rolled
and crawled. It was as if I were watching a three-dimensional movie with the
sound turned off.
La Gorda, who had been quietly sitting next to me watching them,
suddenly stood up and with the agility of an acrobat ran toward the door of
their room at the corner of the dining area. Before she reached the door she
tumbled on her right side and shoulder just enough to turn over once, then
stood up, pulled by the momentum of her rolling, and flung open the door.
She performed all her movements with absolute quietness.
The three girls rolled and crawled into the room like giant pill bugs.
La Gorda signaled me to come over to where she was; we entered the room and
she had me sit on the floor with my back against the frame of the door. She
sat to my right with her back also against the frame. She made me interlock
my fingers and then placed my hands over my belly button.
I was at first forced to divide my attention between la Gorda, the
little sisters and the room. But once la Gorda had arranged my sitting
position, my attention was taken up by the room. The three girls were lying
in the middle of a large, white, square room with a brick floor. There were
four gasoline lanterns, one on each wall, placed on built-in supporting
ledges approximately six feet above the ground. The room had no ceiling. The
supporting beams of the roof had been darkened and that gave the effect of
an enormous room with no top. The two doors were placed on the very corners
opposite each other. As I looked at the closed door across from where I was,
I noticed that the walls of the room were oriented to follow the cardinal
points. The door where we were was at the northwest corner.
Rosa, Lidia and Josefina rolled counterclockwise around the room
several times. I strained to hear the swish of their dresses but the silence
was absolute. I could only hear la Gorda breathing. The little sisters
finally stopped and sat down with their backs against the wall, each under a
lantern. Lidia sat at the east wall, Rosa, at the north and Josefina, at the
west.
La Gorda stood up, closed the door behind us and secured it with an
iron bar. She made me slide over a few inches, without changing my position,
until I was sitting with my back against the door. Then she silently rolled
the length of the room and sat down underneath the lantern on the south
wall; her getting into that sitting position seemed to be the cue.
Lidia stood up and began to walk on the tips of her toes along the
edges of the room, close to the walls. It was not a walk proper but rather a
soundless sliding. As she increased her speed she began to move as if she
were gliding, stepping on the angle between the floor and the walls. She
would jump over Rosa, Josefina, la Gorda and myself every time she got to
where we were sitting. I felt her long dress brushing me every time she went
by. The faster she ran, the higher she got on the wall. A moment came when
Lidia was actually running silently around the four walls of the room seven
or eight feet above the floor. The sight of her, running perpendicular to
the walls, was so unearthly that it bordered on the grotesque. Her long gown
made the sight even more eerie. Gravity did not seem to have any effect on
Lidia, but it did on her long skirt; it dragged downward. I felt it every
time she passed over my head, sweeping my face like a hanging drape.
She had captured my attentiveness at a level I could not imagine. The
strain of giving her my undivided attention was so great that I began to get
stomach convulsions; I felt her running with my stomach. My eyes were
getting out of focus. With the last bit of my remaining concentration, I saw
Lidia walk down on the east wall diagonally and come to a halt in the middle
of the room.
She was panting, out of breath, and drenched in perspiration like la
Gorda had been after her flying display. She could hardly keep her balance.
After a moment she walked to her place at the east wall and collapsed on the
floor like a wet rag. I thought she had fainted, but then I noticed that she
was deliberately breathing through her mouth.
After some minutes of stillness, long enough for Lidia to recover her
strength and sit up straight, Rosa stood up and ran without making a sound
to the center of the room, turned on her heels and ran back to where she had
been sitting. Her running allowed her to gain the necessary momentum to make
an outlandish jump. She leaped up in the air, like a basketball player,
along the vertical span of the wall, and her hands went beyond the height of
the wall, which was perhaps ten feet. I saw her body actually hitting the
wall, although there was no corresponding crashing sound. I expected her to
rebound to the floor with the force of the impact, but she remained hanging
there, attached to the wall like a pendulum. From where I sat it looked as
if she were holding a hook of some sort in her left hand. She swayed
silently in a pendulum-like motion for a moment and then catapulted herself
three or four feet over to her left by pushing her body away from the wall
with her right arm, at the moment in which her swing was the widest. She
repeated the swaying and catapulting thirty or forty times. She went around
the whole room and then she went up to the beams of the roof where she
dangled precariously, hanging from an invisible hook.
While she was on the beams I became aware that what I had thought was a
hook in her left hand was actually some quality of that hand that made it
possible for her to suspend her weight from it. It was the same hand she had
attacked me with two nights before.
Her display ended with her dangling from the beams over the very center
of the room. Suddenly she let go. She fell down from a height of fifteen or
sixteen feet. Her long dress flowed upward and gathered around her head. For
an instant, before she landed without a sound, she looked like an umbrella
turned inside out by the force of the wind; her thin, naked body looked like
a stick attached to the dark mass of her dress.
My body felt the impact of her plummeting down, perhaps more than she
did herself. She landed in a squat position and remained motionless, trying
to catch her breath. I was sprawled out on the floor with painful cramps in
my stomach.
La Gorda rolled across the room, took her shawl and tied it around my
umbilical region, like a band, looping it around my body two or three times.
She rolled back to the south wall like a shadow.
While she had been arranging the shawl around my waist, I had lost
sight of Rosa. When I looked up she was again sitting by the north wall. A
moment later, Josefina quietly moved to the center of the room. She paced
back and forth with noiseless steps, between where Lidia was sitting and her
own spot at the west wall. She faced me all the time. Suddenly, as she
approached her spot, she raised her left forearm and placed it right in
front of her face, as if she wanted to block me from her view. She hid half
of her face for an instant behind her forearm. She lowered it and raised it
again, that time hiding her entire face. She repeated the movement of
lowering and raising her left forearm countless times, as she paced
soundlessly from one side of the room to the other. Every time she raised
her forearm a bigger portion of her body disappeared from my view. A moment
came when she had hidden her entire body, puffed up with clothes, behind her
thin forearm.
It was as if by blocking her view of my body, sitting ten to twelve
feet away from her, a thing she could have easily done with the width of her
forearm, she also made me block the view of her body, a thing which could
not possibly be done with just the width of her forearm.
Once she had hidden her entire body, all I was able to make out was a
silhouette of a forearm suspended in midair, bouncing from one side of the
room to the other, and at one point I could hardly see the arm itself.
I felt a revulsion, an unbearable nausea. The bouncing forearm depleted
me of energy. I slid down on my side, unable to keep my balance. I saw the
arm falling to the ground. Josefina was lying on the floor covered with
garments, as if her puffed-up clothes had exploded. She lay on her back with
her arms spread out.
It took a long time to get back my physical balance. My clothes were
soaked in perspiration. I was not the only one affected. All of them were
exhausted and drenched in sweat. La Gorda was the most poised, but her
control seemed to be on the verge of collapsing. I could hear all of them,
including la Gorda, breathing through their mouths.
When I was in full control again everybody sat on her spot. The little
sisters were looking at me fixedly. I saw out of the corner of my eye that
la Gorda's eyes were half-closed. She suddenly rolled noiselessly to my side
and whispered in my ear that I should begin to make my moth call, keeping it
up until the allies had rushed into the house and were about to take us.
I had a moment of vacillation. She whispered that there was no way to
change directions, and that we had to finish what we had started. After
untying her shawl from my waist, she rolled back to her spot and sat down.
I put my left hand to my lips and tried to produce the tapping sound. I
found it very difficult at first. My lips were dry and my hands were sweaty,
but after an initial clumsiness, a feeling of vigor and well-being came over
me. I produced the most flawless tapping noise I had ever done. It reminded
me of the tapping noise I had been hearing all along as a response to mine.
As soon as I stopped to breathe, I could hear the tapping sound being
answered from all directions.
La Gorda signaled me to go on with it. I produced three more series.
The last one was utterly mesmeric. I did not need to intake a gulp of air
and let it out in small spurts, as I had been doing all along. This time the
tapping sound came out of my mouth freely. I did not even have to use the
edge of my hand to produce it.
La Gorda suddenly rushed to me, lifted me up bodily by my armpits and
pushed me to the middle of the room. Her action disrupted my absolute
concentration. I noticed that Lidia was holding onto my right arm, Josefina
to my left, and Rosa had backed up against the front of me and was holding
me by the waist with her arms extended backward. La Gorda was in back of me.
She ordered me to put my arms behind and grab onto her shawl, which she had
looped around her neck and shoulders like a harness.
I noticed at that moment that something besides us was there in the
room, but I could not tell what it was. The little sisters were shivering. I
knew that they were aware of something which I was unable to distinguish. I
also knew that la Gorda was going to try to do what she had done in don
Genaro's house. All of a sudden, I felt the wind of the eye -- door pulling
us. I grabbed onto la Gorda's shawl with all my strength while the little
sisters grabbed onto me. I felt that we were spinning, tumbling and swaying
from side to side like a giant, weightless leaf.
I opened my eyes and saw that we were like a bundle. We were either
standing up or we were lying horizontally in the air. I could not tell which
because I had no sensorial point of reference. Then, as suddenly as we had
been lifted off, we were dropped. I sensed our falling in my midsection. I
yelled with pain and my screams were united with those of the little
sisters. The insides of my knees hurt. I felt an unbearable jolt on my legs;
I thought I must have broken them.
My next impression was that something was getting inside my nose. It
was very dark and I was lying on my back. I sat up. I realized then that la
Gorda was tickling my nostrils with a twig.
I did not feel exhausted or even mildly tired. I jumped to my feet and
only then was I stricken by the realization that we were not in the house.
We were on a hill, a rocky, barren hill. I took a step and nearly fell down.
I had stumbled over a body. It was Josefina. She was extremely hot to the
touch. She seemed to be feverish. I tried to make her sit up, but she was
limp. Rosa was next to her. As a contrast, her body was icy cold. I put one
on top of the other and rocked them. That motion brought them back to their
senses.
La Gorda had found Lidia and was making her walk. After a few minutes,
all of us were standing. We were perhaps half a mile east of the house.
Years before don Juan had produced in me a similar experience but with
the aid of a psychotropic plant. He seemingly made me fly and I landed a
distance from his house. At the time, I had tried to explain the event in
rational terms, but there was no ground for rational explanations and, short
of accepting that I had flown, I had to fall back onto the only two avenues
left open: I could explain it all by arguing that don Juan had transported
me to the distant field while I was still unconscious under the effect of
the psychotropic alkaloids of that plant; or by arguing that under the
influence of the alkaloids I had believed what don Juan was ordering me to
believe, that I was flying.
This time I had no other recourse but to brace myself for accepting, on
its face value, that I had flown. I wanted to indulge in doubts and began to
wonder about the possibilities of the four girls carrying me to that hill. I
laughed loudly, incapable of containing an obscure delight. I was having a
relapse of my old malady. My reason, which had been blocked off temporarily,
was beginning to take hold of me again. I wanted to defend it. Or perhaps it
would be more appropriate to say, in light of the outlandish acts I had
witnessed and performed since my arrival, that my reason was defending
itself, independently of the more complex whole that seemed to be the "me" I
did not know. I was witnessing, almost in the fashion of an interested
observer, how my reason struggled to find suitable rationales, while
another, much larger portion of me could not have cared less about
explaining anything.
La Gorda made the three girls line up. She then pulled me to her side.
All of them folded their arms behind their backs. La Gorda made me do the
same. She stretched my arms as far back as they would go and then made me
bend them and grab each forearm as tightly as possible as close to the
elbows as I could. That created a great muscular pressure at the
articulations of my shoulders. She pushed my trunk forward until I was
almost stooping. Then she made a peculiar birdcall. That was a signal. Lidia
started walking. In the darkness her movements reminded me of an ice skater.
She walked swiftly and silently and in a few minutes she disappeared from my
view.
La Gorda made two more birdcalls, one after the other, and Rosa and
Josefina took off in the same manner Lidia had. La Gorda told me to follow
close to her. She made one more birdcall and we both started walking.
I was surprised at the ease with which I walked. My entire balance was
centered in my legs. The fact that I had my arms behind my back, instead of
hindering my movements, aided me in maintaining a strange equilibrium. But
above all what surprised me the most was the quietness of my steps.
When we reached the road we began to walk normally. We passed two men
going in the opposite direction. La Gorda greeted them and they answered
back. When we arrived at the house we found the little sisters standing by
the door, not daring to go in. La Gorda told them that although I could not
control the allies I could either call them or tell them to leave, and that
the allies would not bother us any longer. The girls believed her, something
I myself could not do in that instance.
We went inside. In a very quiet and efficient manner all of them
undressed, drenched themselves with cold water and put on a fresh change of
clothes. I did the same. I put on the old clothes I used to keep in don
Juan's house, which la Gorda brought to me in a box.
All of us were in high spirits. I asked la Gorda to explain to me what
we had done.
"We'll talk about that later," she said in a firm tone.
I remembered then that the packages I had for them were still in the
car. I thought that while la Gorda was cooking some food for us it would be
a good opportunity to distribute them. I went out and got them and brought
them into the house. I placed them on the table. Lidia asked me if I had
already assigned the gifts as she had suggested. I said that I wanted them
to pick one they liked. She declined. She said that no doubt I had something
special for Pablito and Nestor and a bunch of trinkets for them, which I
would throw on the table with the intention that they fight over them.
"Besides, you didn't bring anything for Benigno," Lidia said as she
came to my side and looked at me with mock seriousness. "You can't hurt the
Genaros' feelings by giving two gifts for three."
They all laughed. I felt embarrassed. She was absolutely right in
everything that she had said.
"You are careless, that's why I've never liked you," Lidia said to me,
changing her smile into a frown. "You have never greeted me with affection
or respect. Every time we saw each other you only pretended to be happy to
see me."
She imitated my obviously contrived effusive greeting, a greeting I
must have given her countless times in the past.
"Why didn't you ever ask me what I was doing here?" Lidia asked me.
I stopped writing to consider her point. It had never occurred to me to
ask her anything. I told her that I had no excuse. La Gorda interceded and
said that the reason that I had never said more than two words to either
Lidia or Rosa each time I saw them was because I was accustomed to talking
only to women that I was enamored of, in one way or another. La Gorda added
that the Nagual had told them that if I would ask them anything directly
they were supposed to answer my questions, but as long as I did not ask,
they were not supposed to mention anything.
Rosa said that she did not like me because I was always laughing and
trying to be funny. Josefina added that since I had never seen her, she
disliked me just for fun, for the hell of it.
"I want you to know that I don't accept you as the Nagual," Lidia said
to me. "You're too dumb. You know nothing. I know more than you do. How can
I respect you?"
Lidia added that as far as she was concerned I could go back where I
came from or go jump in a lake for that matter.
Rosa and Josefina did not say a word. Judging by the serious and mean
expressions on their faces, however, they seemed to agree with Lidia.
"How can this man lead us?" Lidia asked la Gorda. "He's not a true
nagual. He's a man. He's going to make us into idiots like himself."
As she was talking I could see the mean expressions on Rosa's and
Josefina's faces getting even harder.
La Gorda intervened and explained to them what she had "seen" earlier
about me. She added that since she had recommended to me not to get
entangled in their webs, she was recommending the same thing to them, not to
get entangled in mine.
After Lidia's initial display of genuine and well-founded animosity, I
was flabbergasted to see how easily she acquiesced to la Gorda's remarks.
She smiled at me. She even came and sat next to me.
"You're really like us, eh?" she asked in a tone of bewilderment.
I did not know what to say. I was afraid of blundering.
Lidia was obviously the leader of the little sisters. The moment she
smiled at me the other two seemed to be infused instantly with the same
mood.
La Gorda told them not to mind my pencil and paper and my asking
questions and that in return I would not be flustered when they became
involved in doing what they loved the most, to indulge in themselves.
The three of them sat close to me. La Gorda walked over to the table,
got the packages and took them out to my car. I asked Lidia to forgive me
for my inexcusable blunderings of the past and asked all of them to tell me
how they had become don Juan's apprentices. In order to make them feel at
ease I gave them an account of how I had met don Juan. Their accounts were
the same as what dona Soledad had already told me.
Lidia said that all of them had been free to leave don Juan's world but
their choice had been to stay. She, in particular, being the first
apprentice, was given an opportunity to go away. After the Nagual and Genaro
had cured her, the Nagual had pointed to the door and told her that if she
did not go through it then, the door would close her in and would never open
again.
"My fate was sealed when that door closed," Lidia said to me. "Just
like what happened to you. The Nagual told me that after he had put a patch
on you, you had a chance to leave but you didn't want to take it."
I remembered that particular decision more vividly than anything else.
I recounted to them how don Juan had tricked me into believing that a
sorceress was after him, and then he gave me the choice of either leaving
for good or staying to help him wage a war against his attacker. It turned
out that his alleged attacker was one of his confederates. By confronting
her, on what I thought was don Juan's behalf, I turned her against me and
she became what he called my "worthy opponent."
I asked Lidia if they had had a worthy opponent themselves.
"We are not as dumb as you are," she said. "We never needed anyone to
spur us."
"Pablito is that dumb," Rosa said. "Soledad is his opponent. I don't
know how worthy she is, though. But as the saying goes, if you can't feed on
a capon, feed on an onion."
They laughed and banged on the table.
I asked them if any of them knew the sorceress don Juan had pitted me
against, la Catalina.
They shook their heads negatively.
"I know her," la Gorda said from the stove. "She's from the Nagual's
cycle, but she looks as if she's thirty."
"What is a cycle, Gorda?" I asked.
She walked over to the table and put her foot on the bench and rested
her chin on her arm and knee.
"Sorcerers like the Nagual and Genaro have two cycles," she said. "The
first is when they're human, like ourselves. We are in our first cycle. Each
of us has been given a task and that task is making us leave the human form.
Eligio, the five of us, and the Genaros are of the same cycle.
"The second cycle is when a sorcerer is not human anymore, like the
Nagual and Genaro. They came to teach us, and after they taught us they
left. We are the second cycle to them.
"The Nagual and la Catalina are like you and Lidia. They are in the
same positions. She's a scary sorceress, just like Lidia."
La Gorda went back to the stove. The little sisters seemed nervous.
"That must be the woman who knows power plants," Lidia said to la
Gorda.
La Gorda said that she was the one. I asked them if the Nagual had ever
given them power plants.
"No, not to us three," Lidia replied. "Power plants are given only to
empty people. Like yourself and la Gorda."
"Did the Nagual give you power plants, Gorda?" I asked loudly.
La Gorda raised two fingers over her head.
"The Nagual gave her his pipe twice," Lidia said. "And she went off her
rocker both times."
"What happened, Gorda?" I asked.
"I went off my rocker," she said as she walked over to the table.
"Power plants were given to use because the Nagual was putting a patch on
our bodies. Mine hooked fast, but yours was difficult. The Nagual said that
you were crazier than Josefina, and impossible like Lidia, and he had to
give you a lot of them."
La Gorda explained that power plants were used only by sorcerers who
had mastered their art. Those plants were such a powerful affair that in
order to be properly handled, the most impeccable attention was needed on
the part of the sorcerer. It took a lifetime to train one's attention to the
degree needed. La Gorda said that complete people do not need power plants,
and that neither the little sisters nor the Genaros had ever taken them, but
that someday when they had perfected their art as dreamers, they would use
them to get a final and total boost, a boost of such magnitude that it would
be impossible for us to understand.
"Would you and I take them too?" I asked la Gorda.
"All of us," she replied. "The Nagual said that you should understand
this point better than any of us."
I considered the issue for a moment. The effect of psychotropic plants
had indeed been terrifying for me. They seemed to reach a vast reservoir in
me, and extract from it a total world. The drawback in taking them had been
the toll they took on my physical well-being and the impossibility of
controlling their effect. The world they plunged me into was unamenable and
chaotic. I lacked the control, the power, in don Juan's terms, to make use
of such a world. If I would have the control, however, the possibilities
would be staggering to the mind.
"I took them, myself," Josefina said all of a sudden. "When I was crazy
the Nagual gave me his pipe, to cure me or kill me. And it cured me! "
"The Nagual really gave Josefina his smoke," la Gorda said from the
stove and then came over to the table. "He knew that she was pretending to
be crazier than she was. She's always been a bit off, and she's very daring
and indulges in herself like no one else. She always wanted to live where
nobody would bother her and she could do whatever she wanted. So the Nagual
gave her his smoke and took her to live in a world of her liking for
fourteen days, until she was so bored with it that she got cured. She cut
her indulging. That was her cure."
La Gorda went back to the stove. The little sisters laughed and patted
one another on the back.
I remembered then that at dona Soledad's house Lidia had not only
intimated that don Juan had left a package for me but she had actually shown
me a bundle that had made me think of the sheath in which don Juan used to
keep his pipe. I reminded Lidia that she had said that they would give me
that package when la Gorda was present.
The little sisters looked at one another and then turned to la Gorda.
She made a gesture with her head. Josefina stood up and went to the front
room. She returned a moment later with the bundle that Lidia had shown me.
I had a pang of anticipation in the pit of my stomach. Josefina
carefully placed the bundle on the table in front of me. All of them
gathered around. She began to untie it as ceremoniously as Lidia had done
the first time. When the package was completely unwrapped, she spilled the
contents on the table. They were menstruation rags.
I got flustered for an instant. But the sound of la Gorda's laughter,
which was louder than the others', was so pleasing that I had to laugh
myself.
"That's Josefina's personal bundle," la Gorda said. "It was her
brilliant idea to play on your greed for a gift from the Nagual, in order to
make you stay."
"You have to admit that it was a good idea," Lidia said to me.
She imitated the look of greed I had on my face when she was opening
the package and then my look of disappointment when she did not finish.
I told Josefina that her idea had indeed been brilliant, that it had
worked as she had anticipated, and that I had wanted that package more than
I would care to admit.
"You can have it, if you want it," Josefina said and made everybody
laugh.
La Gorda said that the Nagual had known from the beginning that
Josefina was not really ill, and that that was the reason it had been so
difficult for him to cure her. People who are actually sick are more
pliable. Josefina was too aware of everything and very unruly and he had had
to smoke her a great many times.
Don Juan had once said the same thing about me, that he had smoked me.
I had always believed that he was referring to having used psychotropic
mushrooms to have a view of me.
"How did he smoke you?" I asked Josefina.
She shrugged her shoulders and did not answer.
"The same way he smoked you," Lidia said. "He pulled your luminosity
and dried it with the smoke from a fire that he had made."
I was sure that don Juan had never explained such a thing to me. I
asked Lidia to tell me what she knew about the subject. She turned to la
Gorda.
"Smoke is very important for sorcerers," la Gorda said. "Smoke is like
fog. Fog is of course better, but it's too hard to handle. It's not as handy
as smoke is. So if a sorcerer wants to see and know someone who is always
hiding, like you and Josefina, who are capricious and difficult, the
sorcerer makes a fire and lets the smoke envelop the person. Whatever
they're hiding comes out in the smoke."
La Gorda said that the Nagual used smoke not only to "see" and know
people but also to cure. He gave Josefina smoke baths; he made her stand or
sit by the fire in the direction the wind was blowing. The smoke would
envelop her and make her choke and cry, but her discomfort was only
temporary and of no consequence; the positive effects, on the other hand,
were a gradual cleansing of the luminosity.
"The Nagual gave all of us smoke baths," la Gorda said. "He gave you
even more baths than Josefina. He said that you were unbearable, and you
were not even pretending, like she was."
It all became clear to me. She was right; don Juan had made me sit in
front of a fire hundreds of times. The smoke used to irritate my throat and
eyes to such a degree that I dreaded to see him begin to gather dry twigs
and branches. He said that I had to learn to control my breathing and feel
the smoke while I kept my eyes closed; that way I could breathe without
choking.
La Gorda said that smoke had helped Josefina to be ethereal and very
elusive, and that no doubt it had helped me to cure my madness, whatever it
was.
"The Nagual said that smoke takes everything out of you," la Gorda went
on. "It makes you clear and direct."
I asked her if she knew how to bring out with the smoke whatever a
person was hiding. She said that she could easily do it because of having
lost her form, but that the little sisters and the Genaros, although they
had seen the Nagual and Genaro do it scores of times, could not yet do it
themselves.
I was curious to know why don Juan had never mentioned the subject to
me, in spite of the fact that he had smoked me like dry fish hundreds of
times.
"He did," la Gorda said with her usual conviction. "The Nagual even
taught you fog gazing. He told us that once you smoked a whole place in the
mountains and saw what was hiding behind the scenery. He said that he was
spellbound himself."
I remembered an exquisite perceptual distortion, a hallucination of
sorts, which I had had and thought was the product of a play between a most
dense fog and an electrical storm that was occurring at the same time. I
narrated to them the episode and added that don Juan had never really
directly taught me anything about the fog or the smoke. His procedure had
been to build fires or to take me into fog banks.
La Gorda did not say a word. She stood up and went back to the stove.
Lidia shook her head and clicked her tongue.
"You sure are dumb," she said. "The Nagual taught you everything. How
do you think you saw what you have just told us about?"
There was an abyss between our understanding of how to teach something.
I told them that if I were to teach them something I knew, such as how to
drive a car, I would go step by step, making sure that they understood every
facet of the whole procedure.
La Gorda returned to the table.
"That's only if the sorcerer is teaching something about the tonal,"
she said. "When the sorcerer is dealing with the nagual, he must give the
instruction, which is to show the mystery to the warrior. And that's all he
has to do. The warrior who receives the mysteries must claim knowledge as
power, by doing what he has been shown.
"The Nagual showed you more mysteries than all of us together. But
you're lazy, like Pablito, and prefer to be confused. The tonal and the
nagual are two different worlds. In one you talk, in the other you act."
At the moment she spoke, her words made absolute sense to me. I knew
what she was talking about. She went back to the stove, stirred something in
a pot and came back again.
"Why are you so dumb?" Lidia bluntly asked me.
"He's empty," Rosa replied.
They made me stand up and forced themselves to squint as they scanned
my body with their eyes. All of them touched my umbilical region.
"But why are you still empty?" Lidia asked.
"You know what to do, don't you?" Rosa added.
"He was crazy," Josefina said to them. "He must still be crazy now."
La Gorda came to my aid and told them that I was still empty for the
same reason they still had their form. All of us secretly did not want the
world of the nagual. We were afraid and had second thoughts. In short, none
of us was better than Pablito.
They did not say a word. All three of them seemed thoroughly
embarrassed.
"Poor little Nagual," Lidia said to me with a tone of genuine concern.
"You're as scared as we are. I pretend to be tough, Josefina pretends to be
crazy, Rosa pretends to be ill-tempered and you pretend to be dumb."
They laughed, and for the first time since I had arrived they made a
gesture of comradeship toward me. They embraced me and put their heads
against mine.
La Gorda sat facing me and the little sisters sat around her. I was
facing all four of them.
"Now we can talk about what happened tonight," la Gorda said. "The
Nagual told me that if we survived the last contact with the allies we
wouldn't be the same. The allies did something to us tonight. They have
hurled us away."
She gently touched my writing hand.
"Tonight was a special night for you," she went on. "Tonight all of us
pitched in to help you, including the allies. The Nagual would have liked
it. Tonight you saw all the way through."
"I did?" I asked.
"There you go again," Lidia said, and everybody laughed.
"Tell me about my seeing, Gorda," I insisted. "You know that I'm dumb.
There should be no misunderstandings between us."
"All right," she said. "I see what you mean. Tonight you saw the little
sisters."
I said to them that I had also witnessed incredible acts performed by
don Juan and don Genaro. I had seen them as plainly as I had seen the little
sisters and yet don Juan and don Genaro had always concluded that I had not
seen. I failed, therefore, to determine in what way could the acts of the
little sisters be different.
"You mean you didn't see how they were holding onto the lines of the
world?" She asked.
"No, I didn't."
"You didn't see them slipping through the crack between the worlds?"
I narrated to them what I had witnessed. They listened in silence. At
the end of my account la Gorda seemed to be on the verge of tears.
"What a pity! " she exclaimed.
She stood up and walked around the table and embraced me. Her eyes were
clear and restful. I knew she bore no malice toward me.
"It's our fate that you are plugged up like this," she said. "But
you're still the Nagual to us. I won't hinder you with ugly thoughts. You
can at least be assured of that."
I knew that she meant it. She was speaking to me from a level that I
had witnessed only in don Juan. She had repeatedly explained her mood as the
product of having lost her human form; she was indeed a formless warrior. A
wave of profound affection for her enveloped me. I was about to weep. It was
at the instant that I felt she was a most marvelous warrior that quite an
intriguing thing happened to me. The closest way of describing it would be
to say that I felt that my ears had suddenly popped. Except that I felt the
popping in the middle of my body, right below my navel, more acutely than in
my ears. Right after the popping everything became clearer; sounds, sights,
odors. Then I felt an intense buzzing, which oddly enough did not interfere
with my hearing capacity; the buzzing was loud but did not drown out any
other sounds. It was as if I were hearing the buzzing with some part of me
other than my ears. A hot flash went through my body. And then I suddenly
recalled something I had never seen. It was as though an alien memory had
taken possession of me.
I remembered Lidia pulling herself from two horizontal, reddish ropes
as she walked on the wall. She was not really walking; she was actually
gliding on a thick bundle of lines that she held with her feet. I remembered
seeing her panting with her mouth open, from the exertion of pulling the
reddish ropes. The reason I could not hold my balance at the end of her
display was because I was seeing her as a light that went around the room so
fast that it made me dizzy; it pulled me from the area around my navel.
I remembered Rosa's actions and Josefina's as well. Rosa had actually
brachiated, with her left arm holding onto long, vertical, reddish fibers
that looked like vines dropping from the dark roof. With her right arm she
was also holding some vertical fibers that seemed to give her stability. She
also held onto the same fibers with her toes. Toward the end of her display
she was like a phosphorescence on the roof. The lines of her body had been
erased.
Josefina was hiding herself behind some lines that seemed to come out
of the floor. What she was doing with her raised forearm was moving the
lines together to give them the necessary width to conceal her bulk. Her
puffed-up clothes were a great prop; they had somehow contracted her
luminosity. The clothes were bulky only for the eye that looked. At the end
of her display Josefina, like Lidia and Rosa, was just a patch of light. I
could switch from one recollection to the other in my mind.
When I told them about my concurrent memories the little sisters looked
at me bewildered. La Gorda was the only one who seemed to be following what
was happening to me. She laughed with true delight and said that the Nagual
was right in saying that I was too lazy to remember what I had "seen";
therefore, I only bothered with what I had looked at.
Is it possible, I thought to myself, that I am unconsciously selecting
what I recall? Or is it la Gorda who is creating all this? If it was true
that I had selected my recall at first and then released what I had
censored, then it also had to be true that I must have perceived much more
of don Juan's and don Genaro's actions, and yet I could only recall a
selective part of my total perception of those events.
"It's hard to believe," I said to la Gorda, "that I can remember now
something I didn't remember at all a while ago."
"The Nagual said that everyone can see, and yet we choose not to
remember what we see," she said. "Now I understand how right he was. All of
us can see; some, more than others."
I told la Gorda that some part of me knew that I had found then a
transcendental key. A missing piece had been handed down to me by all of
them. But it was difficult to discern what it was.
She announced that she had just "seen" that I had practiced a good deal
of "dreaming," and that I had developed my attention, and yet I was fooled
by my own appearance of not knowing anything.
"I've been trying to tell you about attention," she proceeded, "but you
know as much as we do about it."
I assured her that my knowledge was intrinsically different from
theirs; theirs was infinitely more spectacular than mine. Anything they
might say to me in relation to their practices, therefore, was a bonus to
me.
"The Nagual told us to show you that with our attention we can hold the
images of a dream in the same way we hold the images of the world," la Gorda
said. "The art of the dreamer is the art of attention."
Thoughts came down on me like a landslide. I had to stand up and walk
around the kitchen. I sat down again. We remained quiet for a long time. I
knew what she had meant when she said that the art of dreamers was the art
of attention. I knew then that don Juan had told me and showed me everything
he could. I had not been able, however, to realize the premises of his
knowledge in my body while he was around. He had said that my reason was the
demon that kept me chained, and that I had to vanquish it if I wanted to
achieve the realization of his teachings. The issue, therefore, had been how
to vanquish my reason. It had never occurred to me to press him for a
definition of what he meant by reason. I presumed all along that he meant
the capacity for comprehending, inferring or thinking, in an orderly,
rational way. From what la Gorda had said, I knew that to him reason meant
attention.
Don Juan said that the core of our being was the act of perceiving, and
that the magic of our being was the act of awareness. For him perception and
awareness were a single, functional, inextricable unit, a unit which had two
domains. The first one was the "attention of the tonal"; that is to say, the
capacity of average people to perceive and place their awareness on the
ordinary world of everyday life. Don Juan also called this form of attention
our "first ring of power," and described it as our awesome but
taken-for-granted ability to impart order to our perception of our daily
world.
The second domain was the "attention of the nagual"; that is to say,
the capacity of sorcerers to place their awareness on the nonordinary world.
He called this domain of attention the "second ring of power," or the
altogether portentous ability that all of us have, but only sorcerers use,
to impart order to the nonordinary world.
La Gorda and the little sisters, in demonstrating to me that the art of
dreamers was to hold the images of their dreams with their attention, had
brought in the pragmatic aspect of don Juan's scheme. They were the
practitioners who had gone beyond the theoretical aspect of his teachings.
In order to give me a demonstration of that art, they had to make use of
their "second ring of power," or the "attention of the nagual." In order for
me to witness their art, I had to do the same. In fact it was evident that I
had placed my attention on both domains. Perhaps all of us are continually
perceiving in both fashions but choose to isolate one for recollection and
discard the other or perhaps we file it away, as I myself had done. Under
certain conditions of stress or acquiescence, the censored memory surfaces
and we can then have two distinct memories of one event.
What don Juan had struggled to vanquish, or rather suppress in me, was
not my reason as the capacity for rational thought, but my "attention of the
tonal," or my awareness of the world of common sense. His motive for wanting
me to do so was explained by la Gorda when she said that the daily world
exists because we know how to hold its images; consequently, if one drops
the attention needed to maintain those images, the world collapses.
"The Nagual told us that practice is what counts," la Gorda said
suddenly. "Once you get your attention on the images of your dream, your
attention is hooked for good. In the end you can be like Genaro, who could
hold the images of any dream."
"We each have five other dreams," Lidia said. "But we showed you the
first one because that was the dream the Nagual gave us."
"Can all of you go into dreaming any time you want?" I asked.
"No," la Gorda replied. "Dreaming takes too much power. None of us has
that much power. The reason the little sisters had to roll on the floor so
many times was that in rolling the earth was giving them energy. Maybe you
could also remember seeing them as luminous beings getting energy from the
light of the earth. The Nagual said that the best way of getting energy is,
of course, to let the sun inside the eyes, especially the left eye."
I told her that I knew nothing about it, and she described a procedure
that don Juan had taught them. As she spoke I remembered that don Juan had
also taught the same procedure to me. It consisted in moving my head slowly
from side to side as I caught the sunlight with my half-closed left eye. He
said that one could not only use the sun but could use any kind of light
that could shine on the eyes.
La Gorda said that the Nagual had recommended that they tie their
shawls below their waists in order to protect their hipbones when they
rolled.
I commented that don Juan had never mentioned rolling to me. She said
that only women could roll because they had wombs and energy came directly
into their wombs; by rolling around they distributed that energy over the
rest of their bodies. In order for a man to be energized he had to be on his
back, with his knees bent so that the soles of his feet touched each other.
His arms had to be extended laterally, with his forearms raised vertically,
and the fingers clawed in an upright position.
"We have been dreaming those dreams for years," Lidia said. "Those
dreams are our best, because our attention is complete. In the other dreams
that we have, our attention is still shaky."
La Gorda said that holding the images of dreams was a Toltec art. After
years of consuming practice each one of them was able to perform one act in
any dream. Lidia could walk on anything, Rosa could dangle from anything,
Josefina could hide behind anything and she herself could fly. But they were
only beginners, apprentices of the art. They had complete attention for only
one activity. She added that Genaro was the master of "dreaming" and could
turn the tables around and have attention for as many activities as we have
in our daily life, and that for him the two domains of attention had the
same value.
I felt compelled to ask them my usual question: I had to know their
procedures, how they held the images of their dreams.
"You know that as well as we do," la Gorda said. "The only thing I can
say is that after going to the same dream over and over, we began to feel
the lines of the world. They helped us to do what you saw us doing."
Don Juan had said that our "first ring of power" is engaged very early
in our lives and that we live under the impression that that is all there is
to us. Our "second ring of power," the "attention of the nagual," remains
hidden for the immense majority of us, and only at the moment of our death
is it revealed to us. There is a pathway to reach it, however, which is
available to every one of us, but which only sorcerers take, and that
pathway is through "dreaming." "Dreaming" was in essence the transformation
of ordinary dreams into affairs involving volition. Dreamers, by engaging
their "attention of the nagual" and focusing it on the items and events of
their ordinary dreams, change those dreams into "dreaming."
Don Juan said that there were no procedures to arrive at the attention
of the nagual. He only gave me pointers. Finding my hands in my dreams was
the first pointer; then the exercise of paying attention was elongated to
finding objects, looking for specific features, such as buildings, streets
and so on. From there the jump was to "dreaming" about specific places at
specific times of the day. The final stage was drawing the "attention of the
nagual" to focus on the total self. Don Juan said that that final stage was
usually ushered in by a dream that many of us have had at one time or
another, in which one is looking at oneself sleeping in bed. By the time a
sorcerer has had such a dream, his attention has been developed to such a
degree that instead of waking himself up, as most of us would do in a
similar situation, he turns on his heels and engages himself in activity, as
if he were acting in the world of everyday life. From that moment on there
is a breakage, a division of sorts in the otherwise unified personality. The
result of engaging the "attention of the nagual" and developing it to the
height and sophistication of our daily attention of the world was, in don
Juan's scheme, the other self, an identical being as oneself, but made in
"dreaming."
Don Juan had told me that there are no definite standard steps for
teaching that double, as there are no definite steps for us to reach our
daily awareness. We simply do it by practicing. He contended that in the act
of engaging our "attention of the nagual," we would find the steps. He urged
me to practice "dreaming" without letting my fears make it into an
encumbering production.
He had done the same with la Gorda and the little sisters, but
obviously something in them had made them more receptive to the idea of
another level of attention.
"Genaro was in his body of dreaming most of the time," la Gorda said.
"He liked it better. That's why he could do the weirdest things and scare
you half to death. Genaro could go in and out of the crack between the
worlds like you and I can go in and out a door."
Don Juan had also talked to me at great length about the crack between
the worlds. I had always believed that he was talking in a metaphorical
sense about a subtle division between the world that the average man
perceives and the world that sorcerers perceive.
La Gorda and the little sisters had shown me that the crack between the
worlds was more than a metaphor. It was rather the capacity to change levels
of attention. One part of me understood la Gorda perfectly, while another
part of me was more frightened than ever.
"You have been asking where the Nagual and Genaro went," la Gorda said.
"Soledad was very blunt and told you that they went to the other world;
Lidia told you they left this area; the Genaros were stupid and scared you.
The truth is that the Nagual and Genaro went through that crack."
For some reason, undefinable to me, her statements plunged me into
profound chaos. I had felt all along that they had left for good. I knew
that they had not left in an ordinary sense, but I had kept that feeling in
the realm of a metaphor. Although I had even voiced it to close friends, I
think I never really believed it myself. In the depths of me I had always
been a rational man. But la Gorda and the little sisters had turned my
obscure metaphors into real possibilities. La Gorda had actually transported
us half a mile with the energy of her "dreaming."
La Gorda stood up and said that I had understood everything, and that
it was time for us to eat. She served us the food that she had cooked. I did
not feel like eating. At the end of the meal she stood up and came to my
side.
"I think it's time for you to leave," she said to me.
That seemed to be a cue for the little sisters. They also stood up.
"If you stay beyond this moment, you won't be able to leave anymore,"
la Gorda went on. "The Nagual gave you freedom once, but you chose to stay
with him. He told me that if we all survive the last contact with the allies
I should feed all of you, make you feel good and then say good-bye to all of
you. I figure that the little sisters and myself have no place to go, so
there is no choice for us. But you are different."
The little sisters surrounded me and each said good-bye to me.
There was a monstrous irony in that situation. I was free to leave but
I had no place to go. There was no choice for me, either. Years before don
Juan gave me a chance to back out, I stayed because already then I had no
place to go.
"We choose only once," he had said then. "We choose either to be
warriors or to be ordinary men. A second choice does not exist. Not on this
earth."
The Second Attention
"You have to leave later on today," la Gorda said to me right after
breakfast. "Since you have decided to go with us, you have committed
yourself to helping us fulfill our new task. The Nagual left me in charge
only until you came. He entrusted me, as you already know, with certain
things to tell you. I've told you most of them. But there are still some I
couldn't mention to you until you made your choice. Today we will take care
of them. Right after that you must leave in order to give us time to get
ready. We need a few days to settle everything and to prepare to leave these
mountains forever. We have been here a very long time. It's hard to break
away. But everything has come to a sudden end. The Nagual warned us of the
total change that you would bring, regardless of the outcome of your bouts,
but I think no one really believed him."
"I fail to see why you have to change anything," I said.
"I've explained it to you already," she protested. "We have lost our
old purpose. Now we have a new one and that new purpose requires that we
become as light as the breeze. The breeze is our new mood. It used to be the
hot wind. You have changed our direction."
"You are talking in circles, Gorda."
"Yes, but that's because you're empty. I can't make it any clearer.
When you return, the Genaros will show you the art of the stalker and right
after that all of us will leave. The Nagual said that if you decide to be
with us the first thing I should tell you is that you have to remember your
bouts with Soledad and the little sisters and examine every single thing
that happened to you with them, because everything is an omen of what will
happen to you on your path. If you are careful and impeccable, you'll find
that those bouts were gifts of power."
"What's dona Soledad going to do now?"
"She's leaving. The little sisters have already helped her to take her
floor apart. That floor aided her to reach her attention of the nagual. The
lines had power to do that. Each of them helped her gather a piece of that
attention. To be incomplete is no handicap to reaching that attention for
some warriors. Soledad was transformed because she got to that attention
faster than any of us. She doesn't have to gaze at her floor anymore to go
into that other world, and now that there is no more need for the floor, she
has returned it to the earth where she got it."
"You are really determined to leave, Gorda, aren't you?"
"All of us are. That's why I'm asking you to go away for a few days to
give us time to pull down everything we have."
"Am I the one who has to find a place for all of you, Gorda?"
"If you were an impeccable warrior you would do just that. But you're
not an impeccable warrior, and neither are we. But still we will have to do
our best to meet our new challenge."
I felt an oppressive sense of doom. I have never been one to thrive on
responsibilities. I thought that the commitment to guide them was a crushing
burden that I could not handle.
"Maybe we don't have to do anything," I said.
"Yes. That's right," she said, and laughed. "Why don't you tell
yourself that over and over until you feel safe? The Nagual told you time
and time again that the only freedom warriors have is to behave impeccably."
She told me how the Nagual had insisted that all of them understand
that not only was impeccability freedom but it was the only way to scare
away the human form.
I narrated to her the way don Juan made me understand what was meant by
impeccability. He and I were hiking one day through a very steep ravine when
a huge boulder got loose from its matrix on the rock wall and came down with
a formidable force and landed on the floor of the canyon, twenty or thirty
yards from where we were standing. The size of the boulder made its fall a
very impressive event. Don Juan seized the opportunity to create a dramatic
lesson. He said that the force that rules our destinies is outside of
ourselves and has nothing to do with our acts or volition. Sometimes that
force would make us stop walking on our way and bend over to tie our
shoelaces, as I had just done. And by making us stop, that force makes us
gain a precious moment. If we had kept on walking, that enormous boulder
would have most certainly crushed us to death. Some other day, however, in
another ravine the same outside deciding force would make us stop again to
bend over and tie our shoelaces while another boulder would get loose
precisely above where we are standing. By making us stop, that force would
have made us lose a precious moment. That time if we had kept on walking, we
would have saved ourselves. Don Juan said that in view of my total lack of
control over the forces which decide my destiny, my only possible freedom in
that ravine consisted in my tying my shoelaces impeccably.
La Gorda seemed to be moved by my account. For an instant she held my
face in her hands from across the table.
"Impeccability for me is to tell you, at the right time, what the
Nagual told me to tell you," she said. "But power has to time perfectly what
I have to reveal to yon, or it won't have any effect."
She paused in a dramatic fashion. Her delay was very studied but
terribly effective with me.
"What is it?" I asked desperately.
She did not answer. She took me by the arm and led me to the area just
outside the front door. She made me sit on the hard-packed ground with my
back against a thick pole about one and a half feet high that looked like a
tree stump which had been planted in the ground almost against the wall of
the house. There was a row of five such poles planted about two feet apart.
I had meant to ask la Gorda what their function was. My first impression had
been that a former owner of the house had tied animals to them. My
conjecture seemed incongruous, however, because the area just outside the
front door was a kind of roofed porch.
I told la Gorda my supposition as she sat down next to me to my left,
with her back against another pole. She laughed and said that the poles were
indeed used for tying animals of sorts, but not by a former owner, and that
she had nearly broken her back digging the holes for them.
"What do you use them for?" I asked.
"Let's say that we tie ourselves to them," she replied. "And this
brings me to the next thing the Nagual asked me to tell you. He said that
because you were empty he had to gather your second attention, your
attention of the nagual, in a way different than ours. We gathered that
attention through dreaming and you did it with his power plants. The Nagual
said that his power plants gathered the menacing side of your second
attention in one clump, and that's the shape that came out of your head. He
said that that's what happens to sorcerers when they are given power plants.
If they don't die, the power plants spin their second attention into that
awful shape that comes out of their heads.
"Now we're coming to what he wanted you to do. He said that you must
change directions now and begin gathering your second attention in another
way, more like us. You can't keep on the path of knowledge unless you
balance your second attention. So far, that attention of yours has been
riding on the Nagual's power, but now you are alone. That's what he wanted
me to tell you."
"How do I balance my second attention?"
"You have to do dreaming the way we do it. Dreaming is the only way to
gather the second attention without injuring it, without making it menacing
and awesome. Your second attention is fixed on the awful side of the world;
ours is on the beauty of it. You have to change sides and come with us.
That's what you chose last night when you decided to go with us."
"Could that shape come out of me at any time?"
"No. The Nagual said that it won't come out again until you're as old
as he is. Your nagual has already come out as many times as was needed. The
Nagual and Genaro have seen to that. They used to tease it out of you. The
Nagual told me that sometimes you were a hair away from dying because your
second attention is very indulging. He said that once you even scared him;
your nagual attacked him and he had to sing to it to calm it down. But the
worst thing happened to you in Mexico City; there he pushed you one day and
you went into an office and in that office you went through the crack
between the worlds. He intended only to dispel your attention of the tonal;
you were worried sick over some stupid thing. But when he shoved you, your
whole tonal shrunk and your entire being went through the crack. He had a
hellish time finding you. He told me that for a moment he thought you had
gone farther than he could reach. But then he saw you roaming around
aimlessly and he brought you back. He told me that you went through the
crack around ten in the morn
ing. So, on that day, ten in the morning became your new time."
"My new time for what?"
"For everything. If you remain a man you will die around that time. If
you become a sorcerer you will leave this world around that time.
"Eligio also went on a different path, a path none of us knew about. We
met him just before he left. Eligio was a most marvelous dreamer. He was so
good that the Nagual and Genaro used to take him through the crack and he
had the power to withstand it, as if it were nothing. He didn't even pant.
The Nagual and Genaro gave him a final boost with power plants. He had the
control and the power to handle that boost. And that's what sent him to
wherever he is."
"The Genaros told me that Eligio jumped with Benigno. Is that true?"
"Sure. By the time Eligio had to jump, his second attention had already
been in that other world. The Nagual said that yours had also been there,
but that for you it was a nightmare because you had no control. He said that
his power plants had made you lopsided; they had made you cut through your
attention of the tonal and had put you directly in the realm of your second
attention, but without any mastery over that attention. The Nagual didn't
give power plants to Eligio until the very last."
"Do you think that my second attention has been injured, Gorda?"
"The Nagual never said that. He thought you were dangerously crazy, but
that has nothing to do with power plants. He said that both of your
attentions are unmanageable. If you could conquer them you'd be a great
warrior."
I wanted her to tell me more on the subject. She put her hand on my
writing pad and said that we had a terribly busy day ahead of us and we
needed to store energy in order to withstand it. We had, therefore, to
energize ourselves with the sunlight. She said that the circumstances
required that we take the sunlight with the left eye. She began to move her
head slowly from side to side as she glanced directly into the sun through
her half-closed eyes.
A moment later Lidia, Rosa and Josefina joined us. Lidia sat to my
right, Josefina sat next to her, while Rosa sat next to la Gorda. All of
them were resting their backs against the poles. I was in the middle of the
row.
It was a clear day. The sun was just above the distant range of
mountains. They started moving their heads in perfect synchronization. I
joined them and had the feeling that I too had synchronized my motion with
theirs. They kept it up for about a minute and then stopped.
All of them wore hats and used the brims to protect their faces from
the sunlight when they were not bathing their eyes in it. La Gorda had given
me my old hat to wear.
We sat there for about half an hour. In that time we repeated the
exercise countless times. I intended to make a mark on my pad for each time
but la Gorda very casually pushed my pad out of reach.
Lidia suddenly stood up, mumbling something unintelligible. La Gorda
leaned over to me and whispered that the Genaros were coming up the road. I
strained to look but there was no one in sight. Rosa and Josefina also stood
up and then went with Lidia inside the house.
I told la Gorda that I could not see anyone approaching. She replied
that the Genaros had been visible at one point on the road and added that
she had dreaded the moment when all of us would have to get together, but
that she was confident that I could handle the situation. She advised me to
be extra careful with Josefina and Pablito because they had no control over
themselves. She said that the most sensible thing for me to do would be to
take the Genaros away after an hour or so.
I kept looking at the road. There was no sign of anyone approaching.
"Are you sure they're coming?" I asked.
She said that she had not seen them but that Lidia had. The Genaros had
been visible just for Lidia because she had been gazing at the same time she
had been bathing her eyes. I was not sure what la Gorda had meant and asked
her to explain.
"We are gazers," she said. "Just like yourself. We are all the same.
There is no need to deny that you're a gazer. The Nagual told us about your
great feats of gazing."
"My great feats of gazing! What are you talking about, Gorda?"
She contracted her mouth and appeared to be on the verge of being
irritated by my question; she seemed to catch herself. She smiled and gave
me a gentle shove.
At that moment she had a sudden flutter in her body. She stared blankly
past me, then she shook her head vigorously. She said that she had just
"seen" that the Genaros were not coming after all; it was too early for
them. They were going to wait for a while before they made their appearance.
She smiled as if she were delighted with the delay.
"It's too early for us to have them here anyway," she said. "And they
feel the same way about us."
"Where are they now?" I asked.
"They must be sitting beside the road somewhere," she replied. "Benigno
had no doubt gazed at the house as they were walking and saw us sitting here
and that's why they have decided to wait. That's perfect. That will give us
time."
"You scare me, Gorda. Time for what?"
"You have to round up your second attention today, just for us four."
"How can I do that?"
"I don't know. You are very mysterious to us. The Nagual has done
scores of things to you with his power plants, but you can't claim that as
knowledge. That is what I've been trying to tell you. Only if you have
mastery over your second attention can you perform with it; otherwise you'll
always stay fixed halfway between the two, as you are now. Everything that
has happened to you since you arrived has been directed to force that
attention to spin. I've been giving you instructions little by little, just
as the Nagual told me to do. Since you took another path, you don't know the
things that we know, just like we don't know anything about 'power plants.
Soledad knows a bit more, because the Nagual took her to his homeland.
Nestor knows about medicinal plants, but none of us has been taught the way
you were. We don't need your knowledge yet. But someday when we are ready
you are the one who will know what to do to give us a boost with power
plants. I am the only one who knows where the Nagual's pipe is hidden,
waiting for that day.
"The Nagual's command is that you have to change your path and go with
us. That means that you have to do dreaming with us and stalking with the
Genaros. You can't afford any longer to be where you are, on the awesome
side of your second attention. Another jolt of your nagual coming out of you
could kill you. The Nagual told me that human beings are frail creatures
composed of many layers of luminosity. When you see them, they seem to have
fibers, but those fibers are really layers, like an onion. Jolts of any kind
separate those layers and can even cause human beings to die."
She stood up and led me back to the kitchen. We sat down facing each
other. Lidia, Rosa and Josefina were busy in the yard. I could not see them
but I could hear them talking and laughing.
"The Nagual said that we die because our layers become separated," la
Gorda said. "Jolts are always separating them but they get together again.
Sometimes, though, the jolt is so great that the layers get loose and can't
get back together anymore."
"Have you ever seen the layers, Gorda?"
"Sure. I sou a man dying in the street. The Nagual told me that you
also found a man dying, but you didn't see his death. The Nagual made me see
the dying man's layers. They were like the peels of an onion. When human
beings are healthy they are like luminous eggs, but if they are injured they
begin to peel, like an onion.
"The Nagual told me that your second attention was so strong sometimes
that it pushed all the way out. He and Genaro had to hold your layers
together; otherwise you would've died. That's why he figured that you might
have enough energy to get your nagual out of you twice. He meant that you
could hold your layers together by yourself twice. You did it more times
than that and now you are finished; you have no more energy to hold your
layers together in case of another jolt. The Nagual has entrusted me to take
care of everyone; in your case, I have to help you to tighten your layers.
The Nagual said that death pushes the layers apart. He explained to me that
the center of our luminosity, which is the attention of the nagual, is
always pushing out, and that's what loosens the layers. So it's easy for
death to come in between them and push them completely apart. Sorcerers have
to do their best to keep their own layers closed. That's why the Nagual
taught us dreaming. Dreaming tightens the layers. When sorcerers learn
dreaming they tie together their two attentions and there is no more need
for that center to push out."
"Do you mean that sorcerers do not die?"
"That is right. Sorcerers do not die."
"Do you mean that none of us is going to die?"
"I didn't mean us. We are nothing. We are freaks, neither here nor
there. I meant sorcerers. The Nagual and Genaro are sorcerers. Their two
attentions are so tightly together that perhaps they'll never die."
"Did the Nagual say that, Gorda?"
"Yes. He and Genaro both told me that. Not too long before they left,
the Nagual explained to us the power of attention. I never knew about the
tonal and the nagual until then."
La Gorda recounted the way don Juan had instructed them about that
crucial tonal-nagual dichotomy. She said that one day the Nagual had all of
them gather together in order to take them for a long hike to a desolate,
rocky valley in the mountains. He made a large, heavy bundle with all kinds
of items; he even put Pablito's radio in it. He then gave the bundle to
Josefina to carry and put a heavy table on Pablito's shoulders and they all
started hiking. He made all of them take turns carrying the bundle and the
table as they hiked nearly forty miles to that high, desolate place. When
they arrived there, the Nagual made Pablito set the table in the very center
of the valley. Then he asked Josefina to arrange the contents of the bundle
on the table. When the table was filled, he explained to them the difference
between the tonal and the nagual, in the same terms he had explained it to
me in a restaurant in Mexico City, except that in their case his example was
infinitely more graphic.
He told them that the tonal was the order that we are aware of in our
daily world and also the personal order that we carry through life on our
shoulders, like they had carried that table and the bundle. The personal
tonal of each of us was like the table in that valley, a tiny island filled
with the things we are familiar with. The nagual, on the other hand, was the
inexplicable source that held that table in place and was like the vastness
of that deserted valley.
He told them that sorcerers were obligated to watch their tonals from a
distance in order to have a better grasp of what was really around them. He
made them walk to a ridge from where they could view the whole area. From
there the table was hardly visible. He then made them go back to the table
and had them all loom over it in order to show that an average man does not
have the grasp that a sorcerer has because an average man is right on top of
his table, holding onto every item on it.
He then made each of them, one at a time, casually look at the objects
on the table, and tested their recall by taking something and hiding it, to
see if they had been attentive. All of them passed the test with flying
colors. He pointed out to them that their ability to remember so easily the
items on that table was due to the fact that all of them had developed their
attention of the tonal, or their attention over the table.
He next asked them to look casually at everything that was on the
ground underneath the table, and tested their recall by removing the rocks,
twigs or whatever else was there. None of them could remember what they had
seen under the table.
The Nagual then swept everything off the top of the table and made each
of them, one at a time, lie across it on their stomachs and carefully
examine the ground underneath. He explained to them that for a sorcerer the
nagual was the area just underneath the table. Since it was unthinkable to
tackle the immensity of the nagual, as exemplified by that vast, desolate
place, sorcerers took as their domain of activity the area directly below
the island of the tonal, as graphically shown by what was underneath that
table. That area was the domain of what he called the second attention, or
the attention of the nagual, or the attention under the table. That
attention was reached only after warriors had swept the top of their tables
clean. He said that reaching the second attention made the two attentions
into a single unit, and that unit was the totality of oneself.
La Gorda said that his demonstration was so clear to her that she
understood at once why the Nagual had made her clean her own life, sweep her
island of the tonal, as he had called it. She felt that she had indeed been
fortunate in having followed every suggestion that he had put to her. She
was still a long way from unifying her two attentions, but her diligence had
resulted in an impeccable life, which was, as he had assured her, the only
way for her to lose her human form. Losing the human form was the essential
requirement for unifying the two attentions.
"The attention under the table is the key to everything sorcerers do,"
she went on. "In order to reach that attention the Nagual and Genaro taught
us dreaming, and you were taught about power plants. I don't know what they
did to you to teach you how to trap your second attention with power plants,
but to teach us how to do dreaming, the Nagual taught us gazing. He never
told us what he was really doing to us. He just taught us to gaze. We never
knew that gazing was the way to trap our second attention. We thought gazing
was just for fun. That was not so. Dreamers have to be gazers before they
can trap their second attention.
"The first thing the Nagual did was to put a dry leaf on the ground and
make me look at it for hours. Every day he brought a leaf and put it in
front of me. At first I thought that it was the same leaf that he saved from
day to day, but then I noticed that leaves are different. The Nagual said
that when we realized that, we are not looking anymore, but gazing.
"Then he put stacks of dry leaves in front of me. He told me to
scramble them with my left hand and feel them as I gazed at them. A dreamer
moves the leaves in spirals, gazes at them and then dreams of the designs
that the leaves make. The Nagual said that dreamers can consider themselves
as having mastered leaf gazing when they dream the designs of the leaves
first and then find those same designs the next day in their pile of dry
leaves.
"The Nagual said that gazing at leaves fortifies the second attention.
If you gaze at a pile of leaves for hours, as he used to make me do, your
thoughts get quiet. Without thoughts the attention of the tonal wanes and
suddenly your second attention hooks onto the leaves and the leaves become
something else. The Nagual called the moment when the second attention hooks
onto something stopping the world. And that is correct, the world stops. For
this reason there should always be someone around when you gaze. We never
know about the quirks of our second attention. Since we have never used it,
we have to become familiar with it before we could venture into gazing
alone.
"The difficulty in gazing is to learn to quiet down the thoughts. The
Nagual said that he preferred to teach us how to do that with a pile of
leaves because we could get all the leaves we needed any time we wanted to
gaze. But anything else would do the same job.
"Once you can stop the world you are a gazer. And since the only way of
stopping the world is by trying, the Nagual made all of us gaze at dry
leaves for years and years. I think it's the best way to reach our second
attention.
"He combined gazing at dry leaves and looking for our hands in
dreaming. It took me about a year to find my hands, and four years to stop
the world. The Nagual said that once you have trapped your second attention
with dry leaves, you do gazing and dreaming to enlarge it. And that's all
there is to gazing."
"You make it sound so simple, Gorda."
"Everything the Toltecs do is very simple. The Nagual said that all we
needed to do in order to trap our second attention was to try and try. All
of us stopped the world by gazing at dry leaves. You and Eligio were
different. You yourself did it with power plants, but I don't know what path
the Nagual followed with Eligio. He never wanted to tell me. He told me
about you because we have the same task."
I mentioned that I had written in my notes that I had had the first
complete awareness of having stopped the world only a few days before. She
laughed.
"You stopped the world before any of us," she said. "What do you think
you did when you took all those power plants? You've never done it by gazing
like we did, that's all."
"Was the pile of dry leaves the only thing the Nagual made you gaze
at?"
"Once dreamers know how to stop the world, they can gaze at other
things; and finally when the dreamers lose their form altogether, they can
gaze at anything. I do that. I can go into anything. He made us follow a
certain order in gazing, though.
"First we gazed at small plants. The Nagual warned us that small plants
are very dangerous. Their power is concentrated; they have a very intense
light and they feel when dreamers are gazing at them; they immediately move
their light and shoot it at the gazer. Dreamers have to choose one kind of
plant to gaze at.
"Next we gazed at trees. Dreamers also have a particular kind of tree
to gaze at. In this respect you and I are the same; both of us are
eucalyptus gazers."
By the look on my face she must have guessed my next question.
"The Nagual said that with his smoke you could very easily get your
second attention to work," she went on. "You focused your attention lots of
times on the Nagual's predilection, the crows. He said that once, your
second attention focused so perfectly on a crow that it flew away, like a
crow flies, to the only eucalyptus tree that was around."
For years I had dwelled upon that experience. I could not regard it in
any other way except as an inconceivably complex hypnotic state, brought
about by the psychotropic mushrooms contained in don Juan's smoking mixture
in conjunction with his expertise as a manipulator of behavior. He suggested
a perceptual catharsis in me, that of turning into a crow and perceiving the
world as a crow. The result was that I perceived the world in a manner that
could not have possibly been part of my inventory of past experiences. La
Gorda's explanation somehow had simplified everything.
She said that the Nagual next made them gaze at moving, living
creatures. He told them that small insects were by far the best subject.
Their mobility made them innocuous to the gazer, the opposite of plants
which drew their light directly from the earth.
The next step was to gaze at rocks. She said that rocks were very old
and powerful and had a specific light which was rather greenish in contrast
with the white light of plants and the yellowish light of mobile, living
beings. Rocks did not open up easily to gazers, but it was worthwhile for
gazers to persist because rocks had special secrets concealed in their core,
secrets that could aid sorcerers in their "dreaming."
"What are the things that rocks reveal to you?" I asked.
"When I gaze into the very core of a rock," she said, "I always catch a
whiff of a special scent proper to that rock. When I roam around in my
dreaming, I know where I am because I'm guided by those scents."
She said that the time of the day was an important factor in tree and
rock gazing. In the early morning trees and rocks were stiff and their light
was faint. Around noon was when they were at their best, and gazing at that
time was done for borrowing their light and power. In the late afternoon and
early evening trees and rocks were quiet and sad, especially trees. La Gorda
said that at that hour trees gave the feeling that they were gazing back at
the gazer.
A second series in the order of gazing was to gaze at cyclic phenomena:
rain and fog. She said that gazers can focus their second attention on the
rain itself and move with it, or focus it on the background and use the rain
as a magnifying glass of sorts to reveal hidden features. Places of power or
places to be avoided are found by gazing through rain. Places of power are
yellowish and places to be avoided are intensely green.
La Gorda said that fog was unquestionably the most mysterious thing on
earth for a gazer and that it could be used in the same two ways that rain
was used. But it did not easily yield to women, and even after she had lost
her human form, it remained unattainable to her. She said that the Nagual
once made her "see" a green mist at the head of a fog bank and told her that
was the second attention of a fog gazer who lived in the mountains where she
and the Nagual were, and that he was moving with the fog. She added that fog
was used to uncover the ghosts of things that were no longer there and that
the true feat of fog gazers was to let their second attention go into
whatever their gazing was revealing to them.
I told her that once while I was with don Juan I had seen a bridge
formed out of a fog bank. I was aghast at the clarity and precise detail of
that bridge. To me it was more than real. The scene was so intense and vivid
that I had been incapable of forgetting it. Don Juan's comments had been
that I would have to cross that bridge someday.
"I know about it," she said. "The Nagual told me that someday when you
have mastery over your second attention you'll cross that bridge with that
attention, the same way you flew like a crow with that attention. He said
that if you become a sorcerer, a bridge will form for you out of the fog and
you will cross it and disappear from this world forever. Just like he
himself has done."
"Did he disappear like that, over a bridge?"
"Not over a bridge. But you witnessed how he and Genaro stepped into
the crack between the worlds in front of your very eyes. Nestor said that
only Genaro waved his hand to say good-bye the last time you saw them; the
Nagual did not wave because he was opening the crack. The Nagual told me
that when the second attention has to be called upon to assemble itself, all
that is needed is the motion of opening that door. That's the secret of the
Toltec dreamers once they are formless."
I wanted to ask her about don Juan and don Genaro stepping through that
crack. She made me stop with a light touch of her hand on my mouth.
She said that another series was distance and cloud gazing. In both,
the effort of gazers was to let their second attention go to the place they
were gazing at. Thus, they covered great distances or rode on clouds. In the
case of cloud gazing, the Nagual never permitted them to gaze at
thunderheads. He told them that they had to be formless before they could
attempt that feat, and that they could not only ride on a thunderhead but on
a thunderbolt itself.
La Gorda laughed and asked me to guess who would be daring and crazy
enough actually to try gazing at thunderheads. I could think of no one else
but Josefina. La Gorda said that Josefina tried gazing at thunderheads every
time she could when the Nagual was away, until one day a thunderbolt nearly
killed her.
"Genaro was a thunderbolt sorcerer," she went on. "His first two
apprentices, Benigno and Nestor, were singled out for him by his friend the
thunder. He said that he was looking for plants in a very remote area where
the Indians are very private and don't like visitors of any kind. They had
given Genaro permission to be on their land since he spoke their language.
Genaro was picking some plants when it began to rain. There were some houses
around but the people were unfriendly and he didn't want to bother them; he
was about to crawl into a hole when he saw a young man coming down the road
riding a bicycle heavily laden with goods. It was Benigno, the man from the
town, who dealt with those Indians. His bicycle got stuck in the mud and
right there a thunderbolt struck him. Genaro thought that he had been
killed. People in the houses had seen what happened and came out. Benigno
was more scared than hurt, but his bicycle and all his merchandise were
ruined. Genaro stayed with him for a week and cured him.
"Almost the same thing happened to Nestor. He used to buy medicinal
plants from Genaro, and one day he followed him into the mountains to see
where he picked his plants, so he wouldn't have to pay for them anymore.
Genaro went very far into the mountains on purpose; he intended to make
Nestor get lost. It wasn't raining but there were thunderbolts, and suddenly
a thunderbolt struck the ground and ran over the dry ground like a snake. It
ran right between Nestor's legs and hit a rock ten yards away.
"Genaro said that the bolt had charred the inside of Nestor's legs. His
testicles were swollen and he got very ill. Genaro had to cure him for a
week right in those mountains.
"By the time Benigno and Nestor were cured, they were also hooked. Men
have to be hooked. Women don't need that. Women go freely into anything.
That's their power and at the same time their drawback. Men have to be led
and women have to be contained."
She giggled and said that no doubt she had a lot of maleness in her,
for she needed to be led, and that I must have a lot of femaleness in me,
for I needed to be contained.
The last series was fire, smoke and shadow gazing. She said that for a
gazer, fire is not bright but black, and so is smoke. Shadows, on the other
hand, are brilliant and have color and movement in them.
There were two more things that were kept separate, star and water
gazing. Stargazing was done by sorcerers who have lost their human form. She
said that she had fared very well at stargazing, but could not handle gazing
at water, especially running water, which was used by formless sorcerers to
gather their second attention and transport it to anyplace they needed to
go.
"All of us are terrified of water," she went on. "A river gathers the
second attention and takes it away and there is no way of stopping. The
Nagual told me about your feats of water gazing. But he also told me that
one time you nearly disintegrated in the water of a shallow river and that
you can't even take a bath now."
Don Juan had made me stare at the water of an irrigation ditch behind
his house various times while he had me under the influence of his smoking
mixture. I had experienced inconceivable sensations. Once I saw myself all
green as if I were covered with algae. After that he recommended that I
avoid water.
"Has my second attention been injured by water?" I asked.
"It has," she replied. "You are a very indulging man. The Nagual warned
you to be cautious, but you went beyond your limits with running water. The
Nagual said that you could've used water like no one else, but it wasn't
your fate to be moderate."
She pulled her bench closer to mine.
"That's all there is to gazing," she said. "But there are other things
I must tell you before you leave."
"What things, Gorda?"
"First of all, before I say anything, you must round up your second
attention for the little sisters and me."
"I don't think I can do that."
La Gorda stood up and went into the house. She came back a moment later
with a small, thick, round cushion made out of the same natural fiber used
in making nets. Without saying a word she led me again to the front porch.
She said that she had made that cushion herself for her comfort when she was
learning to gaze, because the position of the body was of great importance
while one was gazing. One had to sit on the ground on a soft mat of leaves,
or on a cushion made out of natural fibers. The back had to be propped
against a tree, or a stump, or a flat rock. The body had to be thoroughly
relaxed. The eyes were never fixed on the object, in order to avoid tiring
them. The gaze consisted in scanning very slowly the object gazed at, going
counterclockwise but without moving the head. She added that the Nagual had
made them plant those thick poles so they could use them to prop themselves.
She had me sit on her cushion and prop my back against a pole. She told
me that she was going to guide me in gazing at a power spot that the Nagual
had in the round hills across the valley. She hoped that by gazing at it I
would get the necessary energy to round up my second attention.
She sat down very close to me, to my left, and began giving me
instructions. Almost in a whisper she told me to keep my eyelids half closed
and stare at the place where two enormous round hills converged. There was a
narrow, steep water canyon there. She said that that particular gazing
consisted of four separate actions. The first one was to use the brim of my
hat as a visor to shade off the excessive glare from the sun and allow only
a minimal amount of light to come to my eyes; then to half-close my eyelids;
the third step was to sustain the opening of my eyelids in order to maintain
a uniform flow of light; and the fourth step was to distinguish the water
canyon in the background through the mesh of light fibers on my eyelashes.
I could not follow her instructions at first. The sun was high over the
horizon and I had to tilt my head back. I tipped my hat until I had blocked
off most of the glare with the brim. That seemed to be all that was needed.
As soon as I half closed my eyes, a bit of light that appeared as if it were
coming from the tip of my hat literally exploded on my eyelashes, which were
acting as a filter that created a web of light. I kept my eyelids half
closed and played with the web of light for a moment until I could
distinguish the dark, vertical outline of the water canyon in the
background.
La Gorda told me then to gaze at the middle part of the canyon until I
could spot a very dark brown blotch. She said that it was a hole in the
canyon which was not there for the eye that looks, but only for the eye that
"sees." She warned me that I had to exercise my control as soon as I had
isolated that blotch, so that it would not pull me toward it. Rather, I was
supposed to zoom in on it and gaze into it. She suggested that the moment I
found the hole I should press my shoulders on hers to let her know. She slid
sideways until she was leaning on me.
I struggled for a moment to keep the four actions coordinated and
steady, and suddenly a dark spot was formed in the middle of the canyon. I
noticed immediately that I was not seeing it in the way I usually see. The
dark spot was rather an impression, a visual distortion of sorts. The moment
my control waned it disappeared. It was in my field of perception only if I
kept the four actions under control. I remembered then that don Juan had
engaged me countless times in a similar activity. He used to hang a small
piece of cloth from a low branch of a bush, which was strategically located
to be in line with specific geological formations in the mountains in the
background, such as water canyons or slopes. By making me sit about fifty
feet away from that piece of cloth, and having me stare through the low
branches of the bush where the cloth hung, he used to create a special
perceptual effect in me. The piece of cloth, which was always a shade darker
than the geological formation I was staring at, seemed to be at first a
feature of that formation. The idea was to let my perception play without
analyzing it. I failed every time because I was thoroughly incapable of
suspending judgment, and my mind always entered into some rational
speculation about the mechanics of my phantom perception.
This time I felt no need whatsoever for speculations. La Gorda was not
an imposing figure that I unconsciously needed to fight, as don Juan had
obviously been to me.
The dark blotch in my field of perception became almost black. I leaned
on la Gorda's shoulder to let her know. She whispered in my ear that I
should struggle to keep my eyelids in the position they were in and breathe
calmly from my abdomen. I should not let the blotch pull me, but gradually
go into it. The thing to avoid was letting the hole grow and suddenly engulf
me. In the event that that happened I had to open my eyes immediately.
I began to breathe as she had prescribed, and thus I could keep my
eyelids fixed indefinitely at the appropriate aperture.
I remained in that position for quite some time. Then I noticed that I
had begun to breathe normally and that it had not disturbed my perception of
the dark blotch. But suddenly the dark blotch began to move, to pulsate, and
before I could breathe calmly again, the blackness moved forward and
enveloped me. I became frantic and opened my eyes.
La Gorda said that I was doing distance gazing and for that it was
necessary to breathe the way she had recommended. She urged me to start all
over again. She said that the Nagual used to make them sit for entire days
rounding up their second attention by gazing at that spot. He cautioned them
repeatedly about the danger of being engulfed because of the jolt the body
suffered.
It took me about an hour of gazing to do what she had delineated. To
zoom in on the brown spot and gaze into it meant that the brown patch in my
field of perception lightened up quite suddenly. As it became clearer I
realized that something in me was performing an impossible act. I felt that
I was actually advancing toward that spot; thus the impression I was having
that it was clearing up. Then I was so near to it that I could distinguish
features in it, like rocks and vegetation. I came even closer and could look
at a peculiar formation on one rock. It looked like a roughly carved chair.
I liked it very much; compared to it the rest of the rocks seemed pale and
uninteresting.
I don't know how long I gazed at it. I could focus on every detail of
it. I felt that I could lose myself forever in its detail because there was
no end to it. But something dispelled my view; another strange image was
superimposed on the rock, and then another one, and another yet. I became
annoyed with the interference. At the instant I became annoyed I also
realized that la Gorda was moving my head from side to side from behind me.
In a matter of seconds the concentration of my gazing had been thoroughly
dissipated.
La Gorda laughed and said that she understood why I had caused the
Nagual such an intense concern. She had seen for herself that I indulged
beyond my limits. She sat against the pole next to me and said that she and
the little sisters were going to gaze into the Nagual's power place. She
then made a piercing birdcall. A moment later the little sisters came out of
the house and sat down to gaze with her.
Their gazing mastery was obvious. Their bodies acquired a strange
rigidity. They did not seem to be breathing at all. Their stillness was so
contagious that I caught myself half closing my eyes and staring into the
hills.
Gazing had been a true revelation to me. In performing it I had
corroborated some important issues of don Juan's teachings. La Gorda had
delineated the task in a definitely vague manner. "To zoom in on it" was
more a command than a description of a process, and yet it was a
description, providing that one essential requirement had been fulfilled;
don Juan had called that requirement stopping the internal dialogue. From la
Gorda's statements about gazing it was obvious to me that the effect don
Juan had been after in making them gaze was to teach them to stop the
internal dialogue. La Gorda had expressed it as "quieting down the
thoughts." Don Juan had taught me to do that very same thing, although he
had made me follow the opposite path; instead of teaching me to focus my
view, as gazers did, he taught me to open it, to flood my awareness by not
focusing my sight on anything. I had to sort of feel with my eyes everything
in the 180 -- degree range in front of me, while I kept my eyes unfocused
just above the line of the horizon.
It was very difficult for me to gaze, because it entailed reversing
that training. As I tried to gaze, my tendency was to open up. The effort of
keeping that tendency in check, however, made me shut off my thoughts. Once
I had turned off my internal dialogue, it was not difficult to gaze as la
Gorda had prescribed.
Don Juan had asserted time and time again that the essential feature of
his sorcery was shutting off the internal dialogue. In terms of the
explanation la Gorda had given me about the two realms of attention,
stopping the internal dialogue was an operational way of describing the act
of disengaging the attention of the tonal.
Don Juan had also said that once we stop our internal dialogue we also
stop the world. That was an operational description of the inconceivable
process of focusing our second attention. He had said that some part of us
is always kept under lock and key because we are afraid of it, and that to
our reason, that part of us was like an insane relative that we keep locked
in a dungeon. That part was, in la Gorda's terms, our second attention, and
when it finally could focus on something the world stopped. Since we, as
average men, know only the attention of the tonal, it is not too farfetched
to say that once that attention is canceled, the world indeed has to stop.
The focusing of our wild, untrained second attention has to be, perforce,
terrifying. Don Juan was right in saying that the only way to keep that
insane relative from bursting in on us was by shielding ourselves with our
endless internal dialogue.
La Gorda and the little sisters stood up after perhaps thirty minutes
of gazing. La Gorda signaled me with her head to follow them. They went to
the kitchen. La Gorda pointed to a bench for me to sit on. She said that she
was going up the road to meet the Genaros and bring them over. She left
through the front door.
The little sisters sat around me. Lidia volunteered to answer anything
I wanted to ask her. I asked her to tell me about her gazing into don Juan's
power spot, but she did not understand me.
"I'm a distance and shadow gazer," she said. "After I became a gazer
the Nagual made me start all over again and had me gaze this time at the
shadows of leaves and plants and trees and rocks. Now I never look at
anything anymore; I just look at their shadows. Even if there is no light at
all, there are shadows; even at night there are shadows. Because I'm a
shadow gazer I'm also a distance gazer. I can gaze at shadows even in the
distance.
"The shadows in the early morning don't tell much. The shadows rest at
that time. So it's useless to gaze very early in the day. Around six in the
morning the shadows wake up, and they are best around five in the afternoon.
Then they are fully awake."
"What do the shadows tell you?"
"Everything I want to know. They tell me things because they have heat,
or cold, or because they move, or because they have colors. I don't know yet
all the things that colors and heat and cold mean. The Nagual left it up to
me to learn."
"How do you learn?"
"In my dreaming. Dreamers must gaze in order to do dreaming and then
they must look for their dreams in their gazing. For example, the Nagual
made me gaze at the shadows of rocks, and then in my dreaming I found out
that those shadows had light, so I looked for the light in the shadows from
then on until I found it. Gazing and dreaming go together. It took me a lot
of gazing at shadows to get my dreaming of shadows going. And then it took
me a lot of dreaming and gazing to get the two together and really see in
the shadows what I was seeing in my dreaming. See what I mean? Everyone of
us does the same. Rosa's dreaming is about trees because she's a tree gazer
and Josefina's is about clouds because she's a cloud gazer. They gaze at
trees and clouds until they match their dreaming"
Rosa and Josefina shook their heads in agreement.
"What about la Gorda?" I asked.
"She's a flea gazer," Rosa said, and all of them laughed.
"La Gorda doesn't like to be bitten by fleas," Lidia explained. "She is
formless and can gaze at anything, but she used to be a rain gazer."
"What about Pablito?"
"He gazes at women's crotches," Rosa answered with a deadpan
expression.
They laughed. Rosa slapped me on the back.
"I understand that since he's your partner he's taking after you," she
said.
They banged on the table and shook the benches with their feet as they
laughed.
"Pablito is a rock gazer," Lidia said. "Nestor is a rain and plant
gazer and Benigno is a distance gazer. But don't ask me any more about
gazing because I will lose my power if I tell you more."
"How come la Gorda tells me everything?"
"La Gorda lost her form," Lidia replied. "Whenever I lose mine I'll
tell you everything too. But by then you won't care to hear it. You care
only because you're stupid like us. The day we lose our form we'll all stop
being stupid."
"Why do you ask so many questions when you know all this?" Rosa asked.
"Because he's like us," Lidia said. "He's not a true nagual. He's still
a man."
She turned and faced me. For an instant her face was hard and her eyes
piercing and cold, but her expression softened as she spoke to me.
"You and Pablito are partners," she said. "You really like him, don't
you?"
I thought for a moment before I answered. I told her that somehow I
trusted him implicitly. For no overt reason at all I had a feeling of
kinship with him.
"You like him so much that you fouled him up," she said in an accusing
tone. "On that mountaintop where you jumped, he was getting to his second
attention by himself and you forced him to jump with you."
"I only held him by the arm," I said in protest.
"A sorcerer doesn't hold another sorcerer by the arm," she said. "Each
of us is very capable. You don't need any of us three to help you. Only a
sorcerer who sees and is formless can help. On that mountaintop where you
jumped, you were supposed to go first. Now Pablito is tied to you. I suppose
you intended to help us in the same way. God, the more I think about you,
the more I despise you."
Rosa and Josefina mumbled their agreement. Rosa stood up and faced me
with rage in her eyes. She demanded to know what I intended to do with them.
I said that I intended to leave very soon. My statement seemed to shock
them. They all spoke at the same time. Lidia's voice rose above the others.
She said that the time to leave had been the night before, and that she had
hated it the moment I decided to stay. Josefina began to yell obscenities at
me.
I felt a sudden shiver and stood up and yelled at them to be quiet with
a voice that was not my own. They looked at me horrified. I tried to look
casual, but I had frightened myself as much as I had frightened them.
At that moment la Gorda stepped out to the kitchen as if she had been
hiding in the front room waiting for us to start a fight. She said that she
had warned all of us not to fall into one another's webs. I had to laugh at
the way she scolded us as if we were children. She said that we owed respect
to each other, that respect among warriors was a most delicate matter. The
little sisters knew how to behave like warriors with each other, so did the
Genaros among themselves, but when I would come into either group, or when
the two groups got together, all of them ignored their warrior's knowledge
and behaved like slobs.
We sat down. La Gorda sat next to me. After a moment's pause Lidia
explained that she was afraid I was going to do to them what I had done to
Pablito. La Gorda laughed and said that she would never let me help any of
them in that manner. I told her that I could not understand what I had done
to Pablito that was so wrong. I had not been aware of what I had done, and
if Nestor had not told me I would never have known that I had actually
picked Pablito up. I even wondered if Nestor had perhaps exaggerated a bit,
or that maybe he had made a mistake.
La Gorda said that the Witness would not make a stupid mistake like
that, much less exaggerate it, and that the Witness was the most perfect
warrior among them.
"Sorcerers don't help one another like you helped Pablito," she went
on. "You behaved like a man in the street. The Nagual had taught us all to
be warriors. He said that a warrior had no compassion for anyone. For him,
to have compassion meant that you wished the other person to be like you, to
be in your shoes, and you lent a hand just for that purpose. You did that to
Pablito. The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be.
When I was fat I worried because Lidia and Josefina did not eat enough. I
was afraid that they would get ill and die from not eating. I did my utmost
to fatten them and I meant only the best. The impeccability of a warrior is
to let them be and to support them in what they are. That means, of course,
that you trust them to be impeccable warriors themselves."
"But what if they are not impeccable warriors?" I said.
"Then it's your duty to be impeccable yourself and not say a word," she
replied. "The Nagual said that only a sorcerer who sees and is formless can
afford to help anyone. That's why he helped us and made us what we are. You
don't think that you can go around picking people up off the street to help
them, do you?"
Don Juan had already put me face to face with the dilemma that I could
not help my fellow beings in any way. In fact, to his understanding, every
effort to help on our part was an arbitrary act guided by our own
self-interest alone.
One day when I was with him in the city, I picked up a snail that was
in the middle of the sidewalk and tucked it safely under some vines. I was
sure that if I had left it in the middle of the sidewalk, people would
sooner or later have stepped on it. I thought that by moving it to a safe
place I had saved it.
Don Juan pointed out that my assumption was a careless one, because I
had not taken into consideration two important possibilities. One was that
the snail might have been escaping a sure death by poison under the leaves
of the vine, and the other possibility was that the snail had enough
personal power to cross the sidewalk. By interfering I had not saved the
snail but only made it lose whatever it had so painfully gained.
I wanted, of course, to put the snail back where I had found it, but he
did not let me. He said that it was the snail's fate that an idiot crossed
its path and made it lose its momentum. If I left it where I had put it, it
might be able again to gather enough power to go wherever it was going.
I thought I had understood his point. Obviously I had only given him a
shallow agreement. The hardest thing for me was to let others be.
I told them the story. La Gorda patted my back.
"We're all pretty bad," she said. "All five of us are awful people who
don't want to understand. I've gotten rid of most of my ugly side, but not
all of it yet. We are rather slow, and in comparison to the Genaros we are
gloomy and domineering. The Genaros, on the other hand, are all like Genaro;
there is very little awfulness in them."
The little sisters shook their heads in agreement.
"You are the ugliest among us," Lidia said to me. "I don't think we're
that bad in comparison to you."
La Gorda giggled and tapped my leg as if telling me to agree with
Lidia. I did, and all of them laughed like children.
We remained silent for a long time.
"I'm getting now to the end of what I had to tell you," la Gorda said
all of a sudden.
She made all of us stand up. She said that they were going to show me
the Toltec warrior's power stand. Lidia stood by my right side, facing me.
She grabbed my hand with her right hand, palm to palm, but without
interlocking the fingers. Then she hooked my arm right above the elbow with
her left arm and held me tightly against her chest. Josefina did exactly the
same thing on my left side. Rosa stood face to face with me and hooked her
arms under my armpits and grabbed my shoulders. La Gorda came from behind me
and embraced me at my waist, interlocking her fingers over my navel.
All of us were about the same height and they could press their heads
against my head. La Gorda spoke very softly behind my left ear, but loud
enough for all of us to hear her. She said that we were going to try to put
our second attention in the Nagual's power place, without anyone or anything
prodding us. This time there was no teacher to aid us or allies to spur us.
We were going to go there just by the force of our desire.
I had the invincible urge to ask her what I should do. She said that I
should let my second attention focus on what I had gazed at.
She explained that the particular formation which we were in was a
Toltec power arrangement. I was at that moment the center and binding force
of the four corners of the world. Lidia was the east, the weapon that the
Toltec warrior holds in his right hand; Rosa was the north, the shield
harnessed on the front of the warrior; Josefina was the west, the spirit
catcher that the warrior holds in his left hand; and la Gorda was the south,
the basket which the warrior carries on his back and where he keeps his
power objects. She said that the natural position of every warrior was to
face the north, since he had to hold the weapon, the east, in his right
hand. But the direction that we ourselves had to face was the south,
slightly toward the east; therefore, the act of power that the Nagual had
left for us to perform was to change directions.
She reminded me that one of the first things that the Nagual had done
to us was to turn our eyes to face the southeast. That had been the way he
had enticed our second attention to perform the feat which we were going to
attempt then. There were two alternatives to that feat. One was for all of
us to turn around to face the south, using me as an axis, and in so doing
change around the basic value and function of all of them. Lidia would be
the west, Josefina, the east, Rosa, the south and she, the north. The other
alternative was for us to change our direction and face the south but
without turning around. That was the alternative of power, and it entailed
putting on out second face.
I told la Gorda that I did not understand what our second face was. She
said that she had been entrusted by the Nagual to try getting the second
attention of all of us bundled up together, and that every Toltec warrior
had two faces and faced two opposite directions. The second face was the
second attention.
La Gorda suddenly released her grip. All the others did the same. She
sat down again and motioned me to sit by her. The little sisters remained
standing. La Gorda asked me if everything was clear to me. It was, and at
the same time it was not. Before I had time to formulate a question, she
blurted out that one of the last things the Nagual had entrusted her to tell
me was that I had to change my direction by summing up my second attention
together with theirs, and put on my power face to see what was behind me.
La Gorda stood up and motioned me to follow her. She led me to the door
of their room. She gently pushed me into the room. Once I had crossed the
threshold, Lidia, Rosa, Josefina and she joined me, in that order, and then
la Gorda closed the door.
The room was very dark. It did not seem to have any windows. La Gorda
grabbed me by the arm and placed me in what I thought was the center of the
room. All of them surrounded me. I could not see them at all; I could only
feel them flanking me on four sides.
After a while my eyes became accustomed to the darkness. I could see
that the room had two windows which had been blocked off by panels. A bit of
light came through them and I could distinguish everybody. Then all of them
held me the way they had done a few minutes before, and in perfect unison
they placed their heads against mine. I could feel their hot breaths all
around me. I closed my eyes in order to sum up the image of my gazing. I
could not do it. I felt very tired and sleepy. My eyes itched terribly; I
wanted to rub them, but Lidia and Josefina held my arms tightly.
We stayed in that position for a very long time. My fatigue was
unbearable and finally I slumped. I thought that my knees had given in. I
had the feeling that I was going to collapse on the floor and fall asleep
right there. But there was no floor. In fact, there was nothing underneath
me. My fright upon realizing that was so intense that I was fully awake in
an instant; a force greater than my fright, however, pushed me back into
that sleepy state again. I abandoned myself. I was floating with them like a
balloon. It was as if I had fallen asleep and was dreaming and in that dream
I saw a series of disconnected images. We were no longer in the darkness of
their room. There was so much light that it blinded me. At times I could see
Rosa's face against mine; out of the corner of my eyes I could also see
Lidia's and Josefina's. I could feel their foreheads pressed hard against my
ears. And then the image would change and I would see instead la Gorda's
face against mine. Every time that happened she would put her mouth on mine
and breathe. I did not like that at all. Some force in me tried to get
loose. I felt terrified. I tried to push all of them away. The harder I
tried, the harder they held me. That convinced me that la Gorda had tricked
me and had finally led me into a death trap. But contrary to the others la
Gorda had been an impeccable player. The thought that she had played an
impeccable hand made me feel better. At one point I did not care to struggle
any longer. I became curious about the moment of my death, which I believed
was imminent, and I let go of myself. I experienced then an unequaled joy,
an exuberance that I was sure was the herald of my end, if not my death
itself. I pulled Lidia and Josefina even closer to me. At that moment la
Gorda was in front of me. I did not mind that she was breathing in my mouth;
in fact I was surprised that she stopped then. The instant she did, all of
them also stopped pressing their heads on mine. They began to look around
and by so doing they also freed my head. I could move it. Lidia, la Gorda
and Josefina were so close to me that I could see only through the opening
in between their heads. I could not figure out where we were. One thing I
was certain of, we were not standing on the ground. We were in the air.
Another thing I knew for sure was that we had shifted our order. Lidia was
to my left and Josefina, to my right. La Gorda's face was covered with
perspiration and so were Lidia's and Josefina's. I could only feel Rosa
behind me. I could see her hands coming from my armpits and holding onto my
shoulders.
La Gorda was saying something I could not hear. She enunciated her
words slowly as if she were giving me time to read her lips, but I got
caught up in the details of her mouth. At one instant I felt that the four
of them were moving me; they were deliberately rocking me. That forced me to
pay attention to la Gorda's silent words. I clearly read her lips this time.
She was telling me to turn around. I tried but my head seemed to be fixed. I
felt that someone was biting my lips. I watched la Gorda. She was not biting
me but she was looking at me as she mouthed her command to turn my head
around. As she talked, I also felt that she was actually licking my entire
face or biting my lips and cheeks.
La Gorda's face was somehow distorted. It looked big and yellowish. I
thought that perhaps since the whole scene was yellowish, her face was
reflecting that glow. I could almost hear her ordering me to turn my head
around. Finally the annoyance that the biting was causing me made me shake
my head. And suddenly the sound of la Gorda's voice became clearly audible.
She was in back of me and she was yelling at me to turn my attention around.
Rose was the one who was licking my face. I pushed her away from my face
with my forehead. Rosa was weeping. Her face was covered with perspiration.
I could hear la Gorda's voice behind me. She said that I had exhausted them
by fighting them and that she did not know what to do to catch our original
attention. The little sisters were whining.
My thoughts were crystal clear. My rational processes, however, were
not deductive. I knew things quickly and directly and there was no doubt of
any sort in my mind. For instance, I knew immediately that I had to go back
to sleep again, and that that would make us plummet down. But I also knew
that I had to let them bring us to their house. I was useless for that. If I
could focus my second attention at all, it had to be on a place that don
Juan had given me in northern Mexico. I had always been able to picture it
in my mind like nothing else in the world. I did not dare to sum up that
vision. I knew that we would have ended up there.
I thought that I had to tell la Gorda what I knew, but I could not
talk. Yet some part of me knew that she understood. I trusted her implicitly
and I fell asleep in a matter of seconds. In my dream I was looking at the
kitchen of their house. Pablito, Nestor and Benigno were there. They looked
extraordinarily large and they glowed. I could not focus my eyes on them,
because a sheet of transparent plastic material was in between them and
myself. Then I realized that it was as if I were looking at them through a
glass window while somebody was throwing water on the glass. Finally the
glass shattered and the water hit me in the face.
Pablito was drenching me with a bucket. Nestor and Benigno were also
standing there. La Gorda, the little sisters and I were sprawled on the
ground in the yard behind the house. The Genaros were drenching us with
buckets of water.
I sprang up. Either the cold water or the extravagant experience I had
just been through had invigorated me. La Gorda and the little sisters put on
a change of clothes that the Genaros must have laid out in the sun. My
clothes had also been neatly laid on the ground. I changed without a word. I
was experiencing the peculiar feeling that seems to follow the focusing of
the second attention; I could not talk, or rather I could talk but I did not
want to. My stomach was upset. La Gorda seemed to sense it and pulled me
gently to the area in back of the fence. I became ill. La Gorda and the
little sisters were affected the same way.
I returned to the kitchen area and washed my face. The coldness of the
water seemed to restore my awareness. Pablito, Nestor and Benigno were
sitting around the table. Pablito had brought his chair. He stood up and
shook hands with me. Then Nestor and Benigno did the same. La Gorda and the
little sisters joined us.
There seemed to be something wrong with me. My ears were buzzing. I
felt dizzy. Josefina stood up and grabbed onto Rosa for support. I turned to
ask la Gorda what to do. Lidia was falling backward over the bench. I caught
her, but her weight pulled me down and I fell over with her.
I must have fainted. I woke up suddenly. I was lying on a straw mat in
the front room. Lidia, Rosa and Josefina were sound asleep next to me. I had
to crawl over them to stand up. I nudged them but they did not wake up. I
walked out to the kitchen. La Gorda was sitting with the Genaros around the
table.
"Welcome back," Pablito said.
He added that la Gorda had woken up a short while before. I felt that I
was my old self again. I was hungry. La Gorda gave me a bowl of food. She
said that they had already eaten. After eating I felt perfect in every
respect except I could not think as I usually do. My thoughts had quieted
down tremendously. I did not like that state. I noticed then that it was
late afternoon. I had a sudden urge to jog in place facing the sun, the way
don Juan used to make me do. I stood up and la Gorda joined me. Apparently
she had had the same idea. Moving like that made me perspire. I got winded
very quickly and returned to the table. La Gorda followed me. We sat down
again. The Genaros were staring at us. La Gorda handed me my writing pad.
"The Nagual here got us lost," la Gorda said.
The moment she spoke I experienced a most peculiar bursting. My
thoughts came back to me in an avalanche. There must have been a change in
my expression, for Pablito embraced me and so did Nestor and Benigno.
"The Nagual is going to live! " Pablito said loudly.
La Gorda also seemed delighted. She wiped her forehead in a gesture of
relief. She said that I had nearly killed all of them and myself with my
terrible tendency to indulge.
"To focus the second attention is no joke," Nestor said.
"What happened to us, Gorda?" I asked.
"We got lost," she said. "You began to indulge in your fear and we got
lost in that immensity. We couldn't focus our attention of the tonal
anymore. But we succeeded in bundling up our second attention with yours and
now you have two faces."
Lidia, Rosa and Josefina stepped out into the kitchen at that moment.
They were smiling and seemed as fresh and vigorous as ever. They helped
themselves to some food. They sat down and nobody uttered a word while they
ate. The moment the last one had finished eating, la Gorda picked up where
she had left off.
"Now you're a warrior with two faces," she went on. "The Nagual said
that all of us have to have two faces to fare well in both attentions. He
and Genaro helped us to round up our second attention and turned us around
so we could face in two directions, but they didn't help you, because to be
a true nagual you have to claim your power all by yourself. You're still a
long way from that, but let's say that now you're walking upright instead of
crawling, and when you've regained your completeness and have lost your
form, you'll be gliding."
Benigno made a gesture with his hand of a plane in flight and imitated
the roar of the engine with his booming voice. The sound was truly
deafening.
Everybody laughed. The little sisters seemed to be delighted.
I had not been fully aware until then that it was late afternoon. I
said to la Gorda that we must have slept for hours, for we had gone into
their room before noon. She said that we had not slept long at all, that
most of that time we had been lost in the other world, and that the Genaros
had been truly frightened and despondent, because there was nothing they
could do to bring us back.
I turned to Nestor and asked him what they had actually done or seen
while we were gone. He stared at me for a moment before answering.
"We brought a lot of water to the yard," he said, pointing to some
empty oil barrels. "Then all of you staggered into the yard and we poured
water on you, that's all."
"Did we come out of the room?" I asked him.
Benigno laughed loudly. Nestor looked at la Gorda as if asking for
permission or advice.
"Did we come out of the room?" la Gorda asked.
"No," Nestor replied.
La Gorda seemed to be as anxious to know as I was, and that was
alarming to me. She even coaxed Nestor to speak.
"You came from nowhere," Nestor said. "I should also say that it was
frightening. All of you were like fog. Pablito saw you first. You may have
been in the yard for a long time, but we didn't know where to look for you.
Then Pablito yelled and all of us saw you. We have never seen anything like
that."
"What did we look like?" I asked.
The Genaros looked at one another. There was an unbearably long
silence. The little sisters were staring at Nestor with their mouths open.
"You were like pieces of fog caught in a web," Nestor said. "When we
poured water on you, you became solid again."
I wanted him to keep on talking but la Gorda said that there was very
little time left, for I had to leave at the end of the day and she still had
things to tell me. The Genaros stood up and shook hands with the little
sisters and la Gorda. They embraced me and told me that they only needed a
few days in order to get ready to move away. Pablito put his chair upside
down on his back. Josefina ran to the area around the stove, picked up a
bundle they had brought from dona Soledad's house and placed it between the
legs of Pablito's chair, which made an ideal carrying device.
"Since you're going home you might as well take this," she said. "It
belongs to you anyway."
Pablito shrugged his shoulders and shifted his chair in order to
balance the load.
Nestor signaled Benigno to take the bundle but Pablito would not let
him.
"It's all right," he said. "I might as well be a jackass as long as I'm
carrying this damn chair."
"Why do you carry it, Pablito?" I asked.
"I have to store my power," he replied. "I can't go around sitting on
just anything. Who knows what kind of a creep sat there before me?"
He cackled and made the bundle wiggle by shaking his shoulders.
After the Genaros left, la Gorda explained to me that Pablito began his
crazy involvement with his chair to tease Lidia. He did not want to sit
where she had sat, but he had gotten carried away, and since he loved to
indulge he would not sit anywhere else except on his chair.
"He's capable of carrying it through life," la Gorda said to me with
great certainty. "He's almost as bad as you. He's your partner; you'll carry
your writing pad through life and he'll carry his chair. What's the
difference? Both of you indulge more than the rest of us."
The little sisters surrounded me and laughed, patting me on the back.
"It's very hard to get into our second attention," la Gorda went on,
"and to manage it when you indulge as you do is even harder. The Nagual said
that you should know how difficult that managing is better than any of us.
With his power plants, you learned to go very far into that other world.
That's why you pulled us so hard today that we nearly died. We wanted to
gather our second attention on the Nagual's spot, and you plunged us into
something we didn't know. We are not ready for it, but neither are you. You
can't help yourself, though; the power plants made you that way. The Nagual
was right: all of us have to help you contain your second attention, and you
have to help all of us to push ours. Your second attention can go very far,
but it has no control; ours can go only a little bit, but we have absolute
control over it."
La Gorda and the little sisters, one by one, told me how frightening
the experience of being lost in the other world had been.
"The Nagual told me," la Gorda went on, "that when he was gathering
your second attention with his smoke, you focused it on a gnat, and then the
little gnat became the guardian of the other world for you."
I told her that that was true. At her request I narrated to them the
experience don Juan had made me undergo. With the aid of his smoking mixture
I had perceived a gnat as a hundredfoot-high, horrifying monster that moved
with incredible speed and agility. The ugliness of that creature was
nauseating, and yet there was an awesome magnificence to it.
I also had had no way to accommodate that experience in my rational
scheme of things. The only support for my intellect was my deep-seated
certainty that one of the effects of the psychotropic smoking mixture was to
induce me to hallucinate the size of the gnat.
I presented to them, especially to la Gorda, my rational, causal
explanation of what had taken place. They laughed.
"There are no hallucinations," la Gorda said in a firm tone. "If
anybody suddenly sees something different, something that was not there
before, it is because that person's second attention has been gathered and
that person is focusing it on something. Now, whatever is gathering that
person's attention might be anything, maybe it's liquor, or maybe it's
madness, or maybe it's the Nagual's smoking mixture.
"You saw a gnat and it became the guardian of the other world for you.
And do you know what that other world is? That other world is the world of
our second attention. The Nagual thought that perhaps your second attention
was strong enough to pass the guardian and go into that world. But it
wasn't. If it had been, you might have gone into that world and never
returned. The Nagual told me that he was prepared to follow you. But the
guardian didn't let you pass and nearly killed you. The Nagual had to stop
making you focus your second attention with his power plants because you
could only focus on the awesomeness of things. He had you do dreaming
instead, so you could gather it in another way. But he was sure your
dreaming would also be awesome. There was nothing he could do about it. You
were following him in his own footsteps and he had an awesome, fearsome
side."
They remained silent. It was as if all of them had been engulfed by
their memories.
La Gorda said that the Nagual had once pointed out to me a very special
red insect, in the mountains of his homeland. She asked me if I remembered
it.
I did remember it. Years before don Juan had taken me to an area
unknown to me, in the mountains of northern Mexico. With extreme care he
showed me some round insects, the size of a ladybug. Their backs were
brilliantly red. I wanted to get down on the ground and examine them, but he
would not let me. He told me that I should watch them, without staring,
until I had memorized their shape, because I was supposed to remember them
always. He then explained some intricate details of their behavior, making
it sound like a metaphor. He was telling me about the arbitrary importance
of our most cherished mores. He pointed out some alleged mores of those
insects and pitted them against ours. The comparison made the importance of
our beliefs look ridiculous.
"Just before he and Genaro left," la Gorda went on, "the Nagual took me
to that place in the mountains where those little bugs lived. I had already
been there once, and so had everyone else. The Nagual made sure that all of
us knew those little creatures, although he never let us gaze at them.
"While I was there with him he told me what to do with you and what I
should tell you. I've already told you most of what he asked me to, except
for this last thing. It has to do with what you've been asking everybody
about: Where are the Nagual and Genaro? Now I'll tell you exactly where they
are. The Nagual said that you will understand this better than any of us.
None of us has ever seen the guardian. None of us has ever been in that
yellow sulfur world where he lives. You are the only one among us who has.
The Nagual said that he followed you into that world when you focused your
second attention on the guardian. He intended to go there with you, perhaps
forever, if you would've been strong enough to pass. It was then that he
first found out about the world of those little red bugs. He said that their
world was the most beautiful and perfect thing one could imagine. So, when
it was time for him and Genaro to leave this world, they gathered all their
second attention and focused it on that world. Then the Nagual opened the
crack, as you yourself witnessed, and they slipped through it into that
world, where they are waiting for us to join them someday. The Nagual and
Genaro liked beauty. They went there for their sheer enjoyment."
She looked at me. I had nothing to say. She had been right in saying
that power had to time her revelation perfectly if it were going to be
effective. I felt an anguish I could not express. It was as if I wanted to
weep and yet I was not sad or melancholy. I longed for something
inexpressible, but that longing was not mine. Like so many of the feelings
and sensations I had had since my arrival, it was alien to me.
Nestor's assertions about Eligio came to my mind. I told la Gorda what
he had said, and she asked me to narrate to them the visions of my journey
between the tonal and the nagual which I had had upon jumping into the
abyss. When I finished they all seemed frightened. La Gorda immediately
isolated my vision of the dome.
"The Nagual told us that our second attention would someday focus on
that dome," she said. "That day we will be all second attention, just like
the Nagual and Genaro are, and that day we will join them."
"Do you mean, Gorda, that we will go as we are?" I asked.
"Yes, we will go as we are. The body is the first attention, the
attention of the tonal. When it becomes the second attention, it simply goes
into the other world. Jumping into the abyss gathered all your second
attention for a while. But Eligio was stronger and his second attention was
fixed by that jump. That's what happened to him and he was just like all of
us. But there is no way of telling where he is. Even the Nagual himself
didn't know. But if he is someplace he is in that dome. Or he is bouncing
from vision to vision, perhaps for a whole eternity."
La Gorda said that in my journey between the tonal and the nagual I had
corroborated on a grand scale the possibility that our whole being becomes
all second attention, and on a much smaller scale when I got all of them
lost in the world of that attention, earlier that day, and also when she
transported us half a mile in order to flee from the allies. She added that
the problem the Nagual had left for us as a challenge was whether or not we
would be capable of developing our will, or the power of our second
attention to focus indefinitely on anything we wanted.
We were quiet for a while. It seemed that it was time for me to leave,
but I could not move. The thought of Eligio's fate had paralyzed me. Whether
he had made it to the dome of our rendezvous, or whether he had gotten
caught in the tremendum, the image of his journey was maddening. It took no
effort at all for me to envision it, for I had the experience of my own
journey.
The other world, which don Juan had referred to practically since the
moment we met, had always been a metaphor, an obscure way of labeling some
perceptual distortion, or at best a way of talking about some undefinable
state of being. Even though don Juan had made me perceive indescribable
features of the world, I could not consider my experiences to be anything
beyond a play on my perception, a directed mirage of sorts that he had
managed to make me undergo, either by means of psychotropic plants, or by
means I could not deduce rationally. Every time that had happened. I had
shielded myself with the thought that the unity of the "me" I knew and was
familiar with had been only temporarily displaced. Inevitably, as soon as
that unity was restored, the world became again the sanctuary for my
inviolable, rational self. The scope that la Gorda had opened with her
revelations was terrifying.
She stood up and pulled me up off the bench. She said that I had to
leave before the twilight set in. All of them walked with me to my car and
we said good-bye.
La Gorda gave me a last command. She told me that on my return I should
go directly to the Genaros' house.
"We don't want to see you until you know what to do," she said with a
radiant smile. "But don't delay too long."
The little sisters nodded.
"Those mountains are not going to let us stay here much longer," she
said, and with a subtle movement of her chin she pointed to the ominous,
eroded hills across the valley.
I asked her one more question. I wanted to know if she had any idea
where the Nagual and Genaro would go after we had completed our rendezvous.
She looked up at the sky, raised her arms and made an indescribable gesture
with them to point out that there was no limit to that vastness.
Популярность: 47, Last-modified: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:26:14 GmT