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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
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