men moved as if they were not in a hurry; they meandered towards where we
were in a leisurely way. When they were closer to us I noticed that they
were four young Indians.
They seemed to recognize don Juan. He talked to them in Spanish. They
were very soft spoken and treated him with great deference. Only one of them
spoke to me. I asked don Juan in a whisper if I could also talk to them and
he nodded his head affirmatively. Once I engaged them in conversation they
were very friendly and communicative, especially the one who had first
spoken to me. They told me they were there in search of power quartz
crystals. They said that they had been wandering around the lava mountains
for several days but they had not had any luck.
Don Juan looked around and pointed to a rocky area about two hundred
yards away.
"That's a good place to camp for a while, " he said. He began to walk
towards the rocks and we all followed him. The area he had selected was very
rugged. There were no bushes on it. We sat down on the rocks. Don Juan
announced that he was going to go back into the chaparral to gather dry
branches for a fire. I wanted to help him, but he whispered to me that this
was a special fire for those brave young men and he did not need my help.
The young men sat down around me in a close cluster. One of them sat
with his back against mine. I felt a bit embarrassed. When don Juan returned
with a pile of sticks, he commended them for their carefulness and told me
that the young men were a sorcerer's apprentices, and that it was the rule
to make a circle and have two people back to back in the center when going
on hunting parties for power objects.
One of the young men asked me if I had ever found any crystals myself.
I told him that don Juan had never taken me to look for them. Don Juan
selected a place close to a big boulder and started to make a fire. None of
the young men moved to help him but watched him attentively. When all the
sticks were burning, don Juan sat with his back against the boulder. The
fire was to his right.
The young men apparently knew what was going on, but I did not have the
faintest idea about the procedure to follow when one was dealing with
sorcerer's apprentices.
I watched the young men. They sat facing don Juan, making a perfect
half circle. I noticed then that don Juan was directly facing me and two of
the young men had sat to my left and the other two to my right.
Don Juan began telling them that I was in the lava mountains to learn
"not-doing" and that an ally had been following us. I thought that that was
a very dramatic beginning and I was right. The young men changed positions
and sat with their left legs tucked under their seats. I had not observed
how they were sitting before. I had assumed that they were sitting the same
way I was, cross-legged. A casual glance at don Juan revealed to me that he
was also sitting with his left leg tucked in. He made a barely perceptible
gesture with his chin to point at my sitting position. I casually tucked in
my left leg.
Don Juan had once told me that that was the posture that a sorcerer
used when things were uncertain. It had always proved, however, to be a very
tiring position for me. I felt it was going to be a terrible imposition on
me to remain seated in that fashion for the duration of his talk. Don Juan
seemed to be thoroughly aware of my handicap and in a succinct manner
explained to the young men that quartz crystals could be found in certain
specific spots in that area, and that once they were found they had to be
coaxed to leave their abode by means of special techniques. The crystals
then became the man himself, and their power went beyond our understanding.
He said that ordinarily quartz crystals were found in clusters, and
that it was up to the man who had found them to choose five of the longest
and best-looking blades of quartz and sever them from their matrix. The
finder was responsible for carving and polishing them in order to make them
pointed and to make them fit perfectly to the size and shape of the fingers
of his right hand. Then he told us that the quartz crystals were weapons
used for sorcery, that they were usually hurled to kill, and that they
penetrated the enemy's body and then returned to their owner's hand as
though they had never left it.
Next he talked about the search for the spirit that would turn the
ordinary crystals into weapons and said that the first thing one had to do
was to find a propitious place to lure out the spirit. That place had to be
on a hilltop and was found by sweeping the hand, with the palm turned
towards the earth, until a certain heat was detected with the palm of the
hand. A fire had to be made on that spot. Don Juan explained that the ally
was attracted by the flames and manifested itself through a series of
consistent noises. The person searching for an ally had to follow the
direction of the noises until the ally revealed itself, and then wrestle it
to the ground in order to overpower it. It was at that point that one could
make the ally touch the crystals to imbue them with power.
He warned us that there were other forces at large in those lava
mountains, forces which did not resemble the allies; they did not make any
noise, but appeared only as fleeting shadows, and did not have any power at
all.
Don Juan added that a brilliantly colored feather or some highly
polished quartz crystals would attract the attention of an ally, but in the
long run any object whatever would be equally effective, because the
important part was not to find the objects but to find the force that would
imbue them with power.
"What's the use of having beautifully polished crystals if you never
find the spirit giver of power?" he said. "On the other hand, if you don't
have the crystals but do find the spirit you may put anything in his way to
be touched. You could put your dicks in the way if you can't find anything
else."
The young men giggled. The most daring of them, the one who talked to
me first, laughed loudly. I noticed that don Juan had crossed his legs and
was sitting in a relaxed manner. All the young men had also crossed their
legs. I tried to slip casually into a more relaxed posture, but my left knee
seemed to have a pinched nerve or a sore muscle and I had to stand up and
jog on the spot for a few minutes.
Don Juan made a joking comment. He said I was out of practice kneeling
down, because I had not been to confession in years, ever since I had begun
running around with him.
That produced a great commotion among the young men. They laughed in
spurts. Some of them covered their faces and giggled nervously.
"I'm going to show you fellows something, " don Juan said casually
after the young men had stopped laughing. My guess was that he was going to
let us see some power objects he had in his pouch. For an instant I thought
the young men were going to cluster around him, for they made a sudden
movement in unison. All of them bent forward a little bit, as if they were
going to stand up, but then they all tucked their left legs in and went back
to that mysterious position that was so hard on my knees.
I tucked my left leg in as casually as possible. I found that if I did
not sit on my left foot, that is, if I kept a half kneeling position, my
knees did not hurt as much. Don Juan stood up and walked around the big
boulder until he was out of sight. He must have fed the fire before he stood
up, while I was tucking in my leg, for the new sticks chirped as they
ignited and long flames spurted out. The effect was extremely dramatic. The
flames grew twice as big. Don Juan suddenly stepped out from behind the
boulder and stood where he had been sitting. I had a moment of bewilderment.
Don Juan had put on a funny black hat. It had peaks on the side, by the
ears, and it was round on top. It occurred to me that it was actually a
pirate's hat. He was wearing a long black coat with tails, fastened with a
single shiny metallic button, and he had a peg leg.
I laughed to myself. Don Juan really looked silly in his pirate's
costume. I began to wonder where he had gotten that outfit out there in the
wilderness. I assumed that it must have been hidden behind the rock. I
commented to myself that all don Juan needed was a patch over his eye and a
parrot on his shoulder to be the perfect stereotype of a pirate.
Don Juan looked at every member of the group, sweeping his eyes slowly
from right to left. Then he looked up above us and stared into the darkness
behind us. He remained in that position for a moment and then he went around
the boulder and disappeared. I did not notice how he walked. Obviously he
must have had his knee bent in order to depict a man with a wooden leg; when
he turned around to walk behind the boulder I should have seen his bent leg,
but I was so mystified by his acts that I did not pay any attention to
details.
The flames lost their strength at the very moment don Juan went around
the boulder. I thought that his timing had been superb; he must have
calculated how long it would take for the sticks he had added to the fire to
burn and had arranged his appearance and exit according to that calculation.
The change in the intensity of the fire was very dramatic for the
group; there was a ripple of nervousness among the young men. As the flames
diminished in size the young men went back in unison to a cross-legged
sitting position.
I expected don Juan to step out from behind the boulder right away and
sit down again but he did not. He remained out of sight. I waited
impatiently. The young men were sitting with an impassive look on their
faces.
I could not understand what don Juan had intended with all those
histrionics. After a long wait I turned to the young man on my right and
asked him in a low voice if any of the items don Juan had put on - the funny
hat and the long tail coat - and the fact he was standing on a peg leg had
any meaning to him.
The young man looked at me with a funny blank expression. He seemed
confused. I repeated my question and the other young man next to him looked
at me attentively in order to listen. They looked at each other seemingly in
utter confusion. I said that to me the hat and the stump and the coat made
him into a pirate. By then all four young men had come closer together
around me. They giggled softly and fretted nervously. They seemed to be at a
loss for words. The most daring of them finally spoke to me. He said that
don Juan did not have a hat on, was not wearing a long coat, and was
certainly not standing on a stump, but that he had a black cowl or shawl
over his head and a jet black tunic, like a friar's, that went all the way
to the ground.
"No!" another young man exclaimed softly. "He didn't have a cowl."
"That's right, " the others said.
The young man who had spoken first looked at me with an expression of
total disbelief.
I told them that we had to review what had happened very carefully and
very quietly, and that I was sure don Juan had wanted us to do so and thus
he had left us alone.
The young man who was to my extreme right said that don Juan was in
rags. He had on a tattered poncho, or some sort of Indian coat, and a most
beat-up sombrero. He was holding a basket with things in it, but he was not
sure what those things were. He added that don Juan was not really dressed
as a beggar but rather as a man who was coming back from an interminable
journey loaded with strange things.
The young man who had seen don Juan with a black cowl said that he had
nothing in his hands but that his hair was long and wild, as if he were a
wild man that had just killed a friar and had put on his clothes but could
not hide his wildness.
The young man to my left chuckled softly and commented on the weirdness
of it all. He said that don Juan was dressed as an important man who had
just gotten off his horse. He had leather leggings for horseback riding, big
spurs, a whip that he kept beating on his left palm, a Chihuahua hat with a
conical crown, and two .45-caliber automatic pistols. He said that don Juan
was the picture of a well-to-do "ranchero."
The young man to my extreme left laughed shyly and did not volunteer to
reveal what he had seen. I coaxed him, but the others did not seem to be
interested. He appeared to be rather too shy to talk.
The fire was about to be extinguished when don Juan came out from
behind the boulder. "We better leave the young men to their doings, " he
said to me. "Bid them goodbye." He did not look at them. He began to walk
away slowly to give me time to say goodbye. The young men embraced me.
There were no flames in the fire, but the live coals reflected enough
glare. Don Juan was like a dark shadow a few feet away and the young men
were a circle of neatly defined static silhouettes. They were like a row of
jet black statues set in a background of darkness. It was at that point that
the total event had an impact on me. A chill ran up my spine. I caught up
with don Juan. He told me in a tone of great urgency not to turn around to
look at the young men, because at that moment they were a circle of shadows.
My stomach felt a force coming from the outside. It was as if a hand
had grabbed me. I screamed involuntarily. Don Juan whispered that there was
so much power in that area that it would be very easy for me to use the
"gait of power." We jogged for hours. I fell down five times. Don Juan
counted out loud every time I lost my balance. Then he came to a halt. "Sit
down, huddle against the rocks, and cover your belly with your hands, " he
whispered in my ear.
Sunday, April 16, 1962
As soon as there was enough light in the morning we started walking.
Don Juan guided me to the place where I had left my car. I was hungry but I
felt otherwise invigorated and well rested.
We ate some crackers and drank some bottled mineral water that I had in
my car. I wanted to ask him some questions that were overwhelming me, but he
put his finger to his lips. By mid-afternoon we were in the border town
where he wanted me to leave him. We went to a restaurant to eat lunch. The
place was empty; we sat at a table by a window looking out at the busy main
street and ordered our food. Don Juan seemed relaxed; his eyes shone with a
mischievous glint. I felt encouraged and began a barrage of questions. I
mainly wanted to know about his disguise.
"I showed you a little bit of my not-doing" he said and his eyes seemed
to glow.
"But none of us saw the same disguise, " I said. "How did you do that?"
"It's all very simple, " he replied. "They were only disguises, because
everything we do is in some way merely a disguise. Everything we do, as I
have told you, is a matter of doing. A man of knowledge could hook himself
to everyone's doing and come up with weird things. But they are not weird,
not really. They are weird only to those who are trapped in doing.
"Those four young men and yourself are not aware yet of not-doing, so
it was easy to fool all of you."
"But how did you fool us?"
"It won't make sense to you. There is no way for you to understand it."
"Try me, don Juan, please."
"Let's say that when every one of us is born we bring with us a little
ring of power. That little ring is almost immediately put to use. So every
one of us is already hooked from birth and our rings of power are joined to
everyone else's. In other words, our rings of power are hooked to the doing
of the world in order to make the world."
"Give me an example so I could understand it, " I said.
"For instance, our rings of power, yours and mine, are hooked right now
to the doing in this room. We are making this room. Our rings of power are
spinning this room into being at this very moment."
"Wait, wait, " I said. "This room is here by itself. I am not creating
it. I have nothing to do with it."
Don Juan did not seem to be concerned with my argumentative protests.
He very calmly maintained that the room we were in was brought to being and
was kept in place because of the force of everybody's ring of power.
"You see, " he continued, "every one of us knows the doing of rooms
because, in one way or another, we have spent much of our lives in rooms. A
man of knowledge, on the other hand, develops another ring of power. I would
call it the ring of not-doing, because it is hooked to not-doing. With that
ring, therefore, he can spin another world."
A young waitress brought our food and seemed to be suspicious of us.
Don Juan whispered that I should pay her to show her that I had enough
money.
"I don't blame her for distrusting you, " he said and roared with
laughter. "You look like hell."
I paid the woman and tipped her, and when she left us alone I stared at
don Juan, trying to find a way to recapture the thread of our conversation.
He came to my rescue. "Your difficulty is that you haven't yet developed
your extra ring of power and your body doesn't know not-doing." he said.
I did not understand what he had said. My mind was locked in quite a
prosaic concern. All I wanted to know was whether or not he had put on a
pirate's outfit.
Don Juan did not answer but laughed uproariously. I begged him to
explain.
"But I've just explained it to you, " he retorted.
"You mean, that you didn't put on any disguise?" I asked.
"All I did was to hook my ring of power to your own doing, " he said.
"You yourself did the rest and so did the others."
"That's incredible!" I exclaimed.
"We all have been taught to agree about doing, " he said softly. "You
don't have any idea of the power that that agreement brings with it. But,
fortunately, not-doing is equally miraculous, and powerful."
I felt an uncontrollable ripple in my stomach. There was an
unbridgeable abysm between my first-hand experience and his explanation. As
an ultimate defense I ended up, as I had always done, with a tinge of doubt
and distrust and with the question, "What if don Juan was really in cahoots
with the young men and he himself had set it all up?"
I changed the subject and asked him about the four apprentices.
"Did you tell me that they were shadows?" I asked.
"That's right."
"Were they allies?"
"No. They were apprentices of a man I know."
"Why did you call them shadows?"
"Because at that moment they had been touched by the power of
not-doing, and since they are not as stupid as you are, they shifted into
something quite different from what you know. I didn't want you to look at
them for that reason. It would have only injured you." I did not have any
more questions. I was not hungry either.
Don Juan ate heartily and seemed to be in an excellent mood. But I felt
dejected. Suddenly a consuming fatigue possessed me. I realized that don
Juan's path was too arduous for me. I commented that I did not have the
qualifications to become a sorcerer.
"Perhaps another meeting with Mescalito will help you, " he said.
I assured him that that was the farthest thing from my mind, and that I
would not even consider the possibility. "Very drastic things have to happen
to you in order for you to allow your body to profit from all you have
learned," he said. I ventured the opinion that since I was not an Indian I
was
not really qualified to live the unusual life of a sorcerer.
"Perhaps if I could disentangle myself from all my commitments I could
fare in your world a little better, " I said.
"Or if I would go into the wilderness with you and live there.
As it is now, the fact I have a foot in both worlds makes me useless in
either."
He stared at me for a long moment.
"This is your world, " he said, pointing to the busy street outside the
window. "You are a man of that world. And out there, in that world, is your
hunting ground. There is no way to escape the doing of our world, so what a
warrior does is to turn his world into his hunting ground. As a hunter, a
warrior knows that the world is made to be used. So he uses every bit of it.
A warrior is like a pirate that has no qualms in taking and using anything
he wants, except that the warrior doesn't mind or he doesn't feel insulted
when he is used and taken himself."
A WORTHY OPPONENT
Tuesday, December 11, 1962
My traps were perfect; the setting was correct; I saw rabbits,
squirrels and other rodents, quail, and birds, but I could not catch
anything at all during the whole day. Don Juan had told me, as we left his
house in the early morning, that I had to wait that day for a "gift of
power," an exceptional animal that might be lured into my traps and whose
flesh I could dry for "power food." Don Juan seemed to be in a pensive mood.
He did not make a single suggestion or comment. Near the end of the day he
finally made a statement.
"Someone is interfering with your hunting, " he said.
"Who?" I asked, truly surprised.
He looked at me and smiled and shook his head in a gesture of
disbelief.
"You act as if you didn't know who, " he said. "And you've known who
all day."
I was going to protest but I saw no point in it. I knew he was going to
say "la Catalina, " and if that was the kind of knowledge he was talking
about, then he was right, I did know who.
"We either go home now, " he continued, "or we wait until dark and use
the twilight to catch her."
He appeared to be waiting for my decision. I wanted to leave. I began
to gather some thin rope that I was using but before I could voice my wish
he stopped me with a direct command.
"Sit down, " he said. "It would be a simpler and more sober decision to
just leave now, but this is a peculiar case and I think we must stay. This
show is just for you."
"What do you mean?"
"Someone is interfering with you, in particular, so that makes it your
show. I know who and you also know who."
"You scare me, " I said.
"Not me, " he replied, laughing. "That woman, who is out there
prowling, is scaring you." He paused as if he were waiting for the effect of
his words to show on me. I had to admit that I was terrified. Over a month
before, I had had a horrendous confrontation with a sorceress called "la
Catalina." I had faced her at the risk of my life because don Juan had
convinced me that she was
after his life and that he was incapable of fending off her onslaughts.
After I had come in contact with her, don Juan disclosed to me that she had
never really been of any danger to him, and that the whole affair had been a
trick, not in the sense of a malicious prank but in the sense of a trap to
ensnare me. His method was so unethical to me that I became furious with
him.
Upon hearing my angry outburst don Juan had begun to sing some Mexican
tunes. He imitated popular crooners and his renditions were so comical that
I had ended up laughing like a child. He entertained me for hours. I never
knew he had such a repertoire of idiotic songs. "Let me tell you something,
" he had finally said on that occasion. "If we wouldn't be tricked, we would
never learn.
The same thing happened to me, and it'll happen to anyone. The art of a
benefactor is to take us to the brink. A benefactor can only point the way
and trick. I tricked you before.
You remember the way I recaptured your hunter's spirit, don't you? You
yourself told me that hunting made you forget about plants. You were willing
to do a lot of things in order to be a hunter, things you wouldn't have done
in order to learn about plants. Now you must do a lot more in order to
survive."
He stared at me and broke into a fit of laughter.
"This is all crazy, " I said. "We are rational beings."
"You're rational, " he retorted. "I am not."
"Of course you are, " I insisted. "You are one of the most rational men
I have ever met."
"All right!" he exclaimed. "Let us not argue. I am rational, so what?"
I involved him in the argument of why it was necessary for two rational
beings to proceed in such an insane way, as we had proceeded with the lady
witch.
"You're rational, all right, " he said fiercely. "And that means you
believe that you know a lot about the world, but do you? Do you really? You
have only seen the acts of people. Your experiences are limited only to what
people have done to you or to others. You know nothing about this mysterious
unknown world."
He signaled me to follow him to my car and we drove to the small
Mexican town nearby.
I did not ask what we were going to do. He made me park my car by a
restaurant and then we walked around the bus depot and the general store.
Don Juan walked on my right side, leading me. Suddenly I became aware that
someone else was walking side by side with me to my left, but before I had
time to turn to look, don Juan made a fast and sudden movement; he leaned
forward, as if he were picking something from the ground, and then grabbed
me by the armpit when
I nearly stumbled over him. He dragged me to my car and did not let go
of my arm even to allow me to unlock the door. I fumbled with the keys for a
moment. He shoved me gently into the car and then got in himself. "Drive
slowly and stop in front of the store, " he said.
When I had stopped, don Juan signaled me with a nod of his head to
look. "La Catalina" was standing at the place where don Juan had grabbed me.
I recoiled involuntarily. The woman took a couple of steps towards the car
and stood there defiantly. I scrutinized her carefully and concluded that
she was a beautiful woman. She was very dark and had a plump body but she
seemed to be strong and muscular. She had a round full face with high
cheekbones and two long braids of jet black hair. What surprised me the most
was her youth.
She was at the most in her early thirties. "Let her come closer if she
wants, " don Juan whispered.
She took three or four steps towards my car and stopped perhaps ten
feet away. We looked at each other. At that moment I felt there was nothing
threatening about her. I smiled and waved at her. She giggled as if she were
a shy little girl and covered her mouth. Somehow I felt delighted. I turned
to don Juan to comment on her appearance and behavior, and he scared me half
to death with a yell.
"Don't turn your back to that woman, damn it!" he said in a forceful
voice.
I quickly turned to look at the woman. She had taken another couple of
steps towards my car and was standing barely five feet away from my door.
She was smiling; her teeth were big and white and very clean. There was
something eerie about her smile, however. It was not friendly; it was a
contained grin; only her mouth smiled. Her eyes were black and cold and were
staring at me fixedly. I experienced a chill all over my body. Don Juan
began to laugh in a rhythmical cackle; after a moment's wait the woman
slowly backed away and disappeared among people.
We drove away and don Juan speculated that if I did not tighten up my
life and learn, she was going to step on me as one steps on a defenseless
bug.
"She is the worthy opponent I told you I had found for you, " he said.
Don Juan said that we had to wait for an omen before we knew what to do
with the woman who was interfering with my hunting.
"If we see or hear a crow, we'll know for sure that we can wait, and
we'll also know where to wait, " he added.
He slowly turned around in a complete circle, scanning all the
surroundings.
"This is not the place to wait, " he said in a whisper.
We began to walk towards the east. It was already fairly dark. Suddenly
two crows flew out from behind some tall bushes and disappeared behind a
hill. Don Juan said that the hill was our destination.
Once we arrived there he circled it and chose a place facing the
southeast at the bottom of the hill. He cleaned the dry twigs and leaves and
other debris from a circular spot five or six feet in diameter. I attempted
to help him, but he refused me with a strong movement of his hand. He put
his finger over his lips and made a gesture of silence. When he had finished
he pulled me to the center of the circle, made me face the south away from
the hill, and whispered in my ear that I
had to imitate his movements. He began a sort of dance, making a
rhythmical thump with his right foot; it consisted of seven even beats
spaced by a cluster of three fast thumps.
I tried to adapt myself to his rhythm and after a few clumsy attempts I
was more or less capable of reproducing the same thumping.
"What's this for?" I whispered in his ear.
He told me, also in a whisper, that I was thumping like a rabbit and
that sooner or later the prowler would be attracted by the noise and would
show up to see what was going on. Once I had copied the rhythm, don Juan
ceased to thump himself but had me continue, marking the pace with a
movement of his hand.
From time to time he would listen attentively, with his head slightly
tilted to the right, seemingly to pick out noises in the chaparral. At one
point he signaled me to stop and he remained in a most alert position; it
was as if he were ready to spring up and jump on an unknown and unseen
assailant.
Then he motioned me to continue the thumping and after a while he
stopped me again. Every time I stopped he listened with such a concentration
that every fiber in his body seemed to be tense to the point of bursting.
Suddenly he jumped to my side and whispered in my ear that the twilight
was at its full power.
I looked around. The chaparral was a dark mass, and so were the hills
and the rocks. The sky was dark blue and I could not see the clouds any
more. The whole world seemed to be a uniform mass of dark silhouettes which
did not have any visible boundaries. I heard the eerie distant cry of an
animal, a coyote or perhaps a night bird. It happened so suddenly that I did
not pay attention to it. But don Juan's body jerked a bit. I felt its
vibration as he stood next to me.
"Here we go, " he whispered. "Thump again and be ready.
She's here."
I began to thump furiously and don Juan put his foot over mine and
signaled me frantically to relax and thump rhythmically.
"Don't scare her away, " he whispered in my ear. "Calm down and don't
lose your marbles."
He again began to mark the pace of my thumping, and after the second
time he made me stop I heard the same cry again. This time it seemed to be
the cry of a bird which was flying over the hill.
Don Juan made me thump once more and just when I stopped I heard a
peculiar rustling sound to my left. It was the sound a heavy animal would
make while moving about in the dry underbrush. The thought of a bear crossed
my mind, but then I realized that there were no bears in the desert. I
grabbed on to don Juan's arm and he smiled at me and put his finger to his
mouth in a gesture of silence. I stared into the darkness towards my left,
but he signaled me not to. He repeatedly pointed directly above me and then
he made me turn around slowly and silently until I was facing the dark mass
of the hill. Don Juan kept his finger leveled at a certain point on the
hill.
I kept my eyes glued to that spot and suddenly, as if in a nightmare, a
dark shadow leaped at me. I shrieked and fell down to the ground on my back.
For a moment the dark silhouette was superimposed against the dark blue sky
and then it sailed through the air and landed beyond us, in the bushes. I
heard the sound of a heavy body crashing into the shrubs and then an eerie
outcry.
Don Juan helped me up and guided me in the darkness to the place where
I had left my traps. He made me gather and disassemble them and then he
scattered the pieces away in all directions. He performed all this without
saying a single word.
We did not speak at all on our way back to his house.
"What do you want me to say?" don Juan asked after I had urged him
repeatedly to explain the events I had witnessed a few hours before.
"What was it? "I asked.
"You know damn well who it was, " he said. "Don't water it down with
'what was it?' It is who it was that is important."
I had worked out an explanation that seemed to suit me. The figure I
had seen looked very much like a kite that someone had let out over the hill
while someone else, behind us, had pulled it
to the ground, thus the effect of a dark silhouette sailing through the
air perhaps fifteen or twenty yards.
He listened attentively to my explanation and then laughed until tears
rolled down his cheeks.
"Quit beating around the bush, " he said. "Get to the point. Wasn't it
a woman?"
I had to admit that when I fell down and looked up I saw the dark
silhouette of a woman with a long skirt leaping over me in a very slow
motion; then something seemed to have pulled the dark silhouette and it flew
over me with great speed and crashed into the bushes. In fact, that movement
was what had given me the idea of a kite.
Don Juan refused to discuss the incident any further. The next day he
left to fulfill some mysterious errand and I went to visit some Yaqui
friends in another community.
Wednesday, December 12, 1962
As soon as I arrived at the Yaqui community, the Mexican storekeeper
told me that he had rented a record player and twenty records from an outfit
in Ciudad Obregon for the "fiesta" he was planning to give that night in
honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe. He had already told everybody that he had
made all the necessary arrangements through Julio, the traveling salesman
who came to the Yaqui settlement twice a month to collect installments on a
layaway plan for cheap articles of clothing which he had succeeded in
selling to some Yaqui Indians. Julio brought the record player early in the
afternoon and hooked it to the dynamo that provided electricity for the
store. He made sure that it worked; then he turned up the volume to its
maximum, reminded the storekeeper not to touch any knobs, and began to sort
the twenty records. "I know how many scratches each of them has, " Julio
said to the storekeeper.
"Tell that to my daughter, " the storekeeper replied.
"You're responsible, not your daughter."
"Just the same, she's the one who'll be changing the records."
Julio insisted that it did not make any difference to him whether she
or someone else was going to actually handle the record player as long as
the storekeeper paid for any records that were damaged. The storekeeper
began to argue with Julio. Julio's face became red. He turned from time to
time to the large group of Yaqui Indians congregated in front of the More
and made signs of despair or frustration by moving his hands or contorting
his face in a grimace. Seemingly as a final resort, he demanded a cash
deposit. That precipitated another long argument about what constituted a
damaged record. Julio Mured with authority that any broken record had to be
paid for in full, as if it were new. The storekeeper became angrier and
began to pull out his extension cords. He seemed bent upon unhooking the
record player and canceling the party. He made it clear to his clients
congregated in front of the More that he had tried his best to come to terms
with Julio. For a moment it seemed that the party was going to fail before
it had started. lilas, the old Yaqui Indian in whose house I was staying,
made some derogatory comments in a loud voice about the Yiiquis' sad state
of affairs that they could not even celebrate their most revered religious
festivity, the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I wanted to intervene and
offer my help, but Bias stopped me. He said that if I were to make the cash
deposit, the storekeeper himself would smash the records.
"He's worse than anybody, " he said. "Let him pay the deposit. He
bleeds us, so why shouldn't he pay?"
After a long discussion in which, strangely enough, everyone present
was in favor of Julio, the storekeeper hit upon terms which were mutually
agreeable. He did not pay a cash deposit but accepted responsibility for the
records and the record player.
Julio's motorcycle left a trail of dust as he headed for some of the
more remote houses in the locality. Bias said that he was trying to get to
his customers before they came to the store and spent all their money buying
booze. As he was saying this a group of Indians emerged from behind the
store. Bias looked at them and began to laugh and so did everyone else
there.
Bias told me that those Indians were Julio's customers and had been
hiding behind the store waiting for him to leave.
The party began early. The storekeeper's daughter put a record on the
turntable and brought the arm down; there was a terrible loud screech and a
high-pitched buzz and then came a blasting sound of a trumpet and some
guitars.
The party consisted of playing the records at full volume.
There were four young Mexican men who danced with the storekeeper's two
daughters and three other young Mexican women. The Yaquis did not dance;
they watched with apparent delight every movement the dancers made. They
seemed to be enjoying themselves just watching and gulping down cheap
tequila.
I bought individual drinks for everybody I knew. I wanted to avoid any
feelings of resentment. I circulated among the numerous Indians and talked
to them and then offered them drinks. My pattern of behavior worked until
they realized I was not drinking at all. That seemed to annoy everyone at
once. It was as if collectively they had discovered that I did not belong
there. The Indians became very gruff and gave me sly looks.
The Mexicans, who were as drunk as the Indians, also realized at the
same time that I had not danced; and that appeared to offend them even more.
They became very aggressive. One of them forcibly took me by the arm and
dragged me closer to the record player; another served me a full cup of
tequila and wanted me to drink it all in one gulp and prove that I was a
"macho."
I tried to stall them and laughed idiotically as if I were actually
enjoying the situation. I said that I would like to dance first and then
drink. One of the young men called out the name of a song. The girl in
charge of the record player began to search in the pile of records. She
seemed to be a little tipsy, although none of the women had openly been
drinking, and had trouble fitting a record on the turntable. A young man
said that the record she had selected was not a twist; she fumbled with the
pile, trying to find the suitable one, and everybody closed in around her
and left me. That gave me time to run behind the store, away from the
lighted area, and out of sight.
I stood about thirty yards away in the darkness of some bushes trying
to decide what to do. I was tired. I felt it was time to get in my car and
go back home. I began to walk to Bias's house, where my car was parked. I
figured that if I drove slowly no one would notice that I was leaving. The
people in charge of the record player were apparently still looking for the
record - all I could hear was the highpitched buzzing of the loudspeaker -
but then came the blasting sound of a twist. I laughed out loud, thinking
that they had probably turned to where I had been and found out that I had
disappeared.
I saw some dark silhouettes of people walking in the opposite
direction, going towards the store. We passed each other and they mumbled,
"Buenas noches." I recognized them and spoke to them. I told them that it
was a great party.
Before I came to a sharp bend in the road I encountered two other
people, whom I did not recognize, but I greeted them anyway. The blasting
sound of the record player was almost as loud there on the road as it was in
front of the store. It was a dark starless night, but the glare from the
store lights allowed me to have a fairly good visual perception of my
surroundings.
Bias's house was very near and I accelerated my pace. I noticed then
the dark shape of a person, sitting or perhaps squatting to my left, at the
bend of the road. I thought for an instant that it might have been one of
the people from the party who had left before I had. The person seemed to be
defecating on the side of the road. That seemed odd. People in the community
went into the thick bushes to perform their bodily functions. I thought that
whoever it was in front of me must have been drunk.
I came to the bend and said, "Buenas noches." The person answered me
with an eerie, gruff, inhuman howl. The hair on my body literally stood on
end. For a second I was paralyzed. Then I began to walk fast. I took a quick
glance. I saw that the dark silhouette had stood up halfway; it was a woman.
She was stooped over, leaning forward; she walked in that position for a few
yards and then she hopped. I began to run, while the woman hopped like a
bird by my side, keeping up with my speed. By the time I arrived at Bias's
house she was cutting in front of me and we had almost touched. I leaped
across a small dry ditch in front of the house and crashed through the
flimsy door. Bias was already in the house and seemed unconcerned with my
story.
"They pulled a good one on you, " he said reassuringly. "The Indians
take delight in teasing foreigners." My experience had been so unnerving
that the next day I drove to don Juan's house instead of going home as I had
planned to do.
Don Juan returned in the late afternoon. I did not give him time to say
anything but blurted out the whole story, including Bias's commentary. Don
Juan's face became somber. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I thought
he was worried. "Don't put so much stock in what Bias told you, " he said in
a serious tone. "He knows nothing of the struggles between sorcerers.
"You should have known that it was something serious the moment you
noticed that the shadow was to your left. You shouldn't have run either."
"What was I supposed to do? Stand there?"
"Right. When a warrior encounters his opponent and the opponent is not
an ordinary human being, he must make his stand. That is the only thing that
makes him invulnerable."
"What are you saying, don Juan?"
"I'm saying that you have had your third encounter with your worthy
opponent. She's following you around, waiting for a moment of weakness on
your part. She almost bagged you this time."
I felt a surge of anxiety and accused him of putting me in unnecessary
danger. I complained that the game he was playing with me was cruel.
"It would be cruel if this would have happened to an average man, " he
said. "But the instant one begins to live like a warrior, one is no longer
ordinary. Besides, I didn't find you a worthy opponent because I want to
play with you, or tease you, or annoy you. A worthy opponent might spur you
on; under the influence of an opponent like 'la Catalina' you may have to
make use of everything I have taught you. You don't have any other
alternative."
We were quiet for a while. His words had aroused a tremendous
apprehension in me. He then wanted me to imitate as close as possible the
cry I had heard after I had said "Buenas noches."
I attempted to reproduce the sound and came up with some weird howling
that scared me. Don Juan must have found my rendition funny; he laughed
almost uncontrollably.
Afterwards he asked me to reconstruct the total sequence; the distance
I ran, the distance the woman was from me at the time I encountered her, the
distance she was from me at the time I reached the house, and the place
where she had begun hopping. "No fat Indian woman could hop that way, " he
said after assessing all those variables. "They could not even run that
far."
He made me hop. I could not cover more than four feet each time, and if
I were correct in my perception, the woman had hopped at least ten feet with
each leap. "Of course, you know that from now on you must be on the lookout,
" he said in a tone of great urgency. "She will try to tap you on your left
shoulder during a moment when you are unaware and weak."
"What should I do? "I asked.
"It is meaningless to complain, " he said. "What's important from this
point on is the strategy of your life." I could not concentrate at all on
what he was saying. I took notes automatically. After a long silence he
asked if I had any pain behind my ears or in the nape of my neck. I said no,
and he told me that if I had experienced an uncomfortable sensation in
were in a leisurely way. When they were closer to us I noticed that they
were four young Indians.
They seemed to recognize don Juan. He talked to them in Spanish. They
were very soft spoken and treated him with great deference. Only one of them
spoke to me. I asked don Juan in a whisper if I could also talk to them and
he nodded his head affirmatively. Once I engaged them in conversation they
were very friendly and communicative, especially the one who had first
spoken to me. They told me they were there in search of power quartz
crystals. They said that they had been wandering around the lava mountains
for several days but they had not had any luck.
Don Juan looked around and pointed to a rocky area about two hundred
yards away.
"That's a good place to camp for a while, " he said. He began to walk
towards the rocks and we all followed him. The area he had selected was very
rugged. There were no bushes on it. We sat down on the rocks. Don Juan
announced that he was going to go back into the chaparral to gather dry
branches for a fire. I wanted to help him, but he whispered to me that this
was a special fire for those brave young men and he did not need my help.
The young men sat down around me in a close cluster. One of them sat
with his back against mine. I felt a bit embarrassed. When don Juan returned
with a pile of sticks, he commended them for their carefulness and told me
that the young men were a sorcerer's apprentices, and that it was the rule
to make a circle and have two people back to back in the center when going
on hunting parties for power objects.
One of the young men asked me if I had ever found any crystals myself.
I told him that don Juan had never taken me to look for them. Don Juan
selected a place close to a big boulder and started to make a fire. None of
the young men moved to help him but watched him attentively. When all the
sticks were burning, don Juan sat with his back against the boulder. The
fire was to his right.
The young men apparently knew what was going on, but I did not have the
faintest idea about the procedure to follow when one was dealing with
sorcerer's apprentices.
I watched the young men. They sat facing don Juan, making a perfect
half circle. I noticed then that don Juan was directly facing me and two of
the young men had sat to my left and the other two to my right.
Don Juan began telling them that I was in the lava mountains to learn
"not-doing" and that an ally had been following us. I thought that that was
a very dramatic beginning and I was right. The young men changed positions
and sat with their left legs tucked under their seats. I had not observed
how they were sitting before. I had assumed that they were sitting the same
way I was, cross-legged. A casual glance at don Juan revealed to me that he
was also sitting with his left leg tucked in. He made a barely perceptible
gesture with his chin to point at my sitting position. I casually tucked in
my left leg.
Don Juan had once told me that that was the posture that a sorcerer
used when things were uncertain. It had always proved, however, to be a very
tiring position for me. I felt it was going to be a terrible imposition on
me to remain seated in that fashion for the duration of his talk. Don Juan
seemed to be thoroughly aware of my handicap and in a succinct manner
explained to the young men that quartz crystals could be found in certain
specific spots in that area, and that once they were found they had to be
coaxed to leave their abode by means of special techniques. The crystals
then became the man himself, and their power went beyond our understanding.
He said that ordinarily quartz crystals were found in clusters, and
that it was up to the man who had found them to choose five of the longest
and best-looking blades of quartz and sever them from their matrix. The
finder was responsible for carving and polishing them in order to make them
pointed and to make them fit perfectly to the size and shape of the fingers
of his right hand. Then he told us that the quartz crystals were weapons
used for sorcery, that they were usually hurled to kill, and that they
penetrated the enemy's body and then returned to their owner's hand as
though they had never left it.
Next he talked about the search for the spirit that would turn the
ordinary crystals into weapons and said that the first thing one had to do
was to find a propitious place to lure out the spirit. That place had to be
on a hilltop and was found by sweeping the hand, with the palm turned
towards the earth, until a certain heat was detected with the palm of the
hand. A fire had to be made on that spot. Don Juan explained that the ally
was attracted by the flames and manifested itself through a series of
consistent noises. The person searching for an ally had to follow the
direction of the noises until the ally revealed itself, and then wrestle it
to the ground in order to overpower it. It was at that point that one could
make the ally touch the crystals to imbue them with power.
He warned us that there were other forces at large in those lava
mountains, forces which did not resemble the allies; they did not make any
noise, but appeared only as fleeting shadows, and did not have any power at
all.
Don Juan added that a brilliantly colored feather or some highly
polished quartz crystals would attract the attention of an ally, but in the
long run any object whatever would be equally effective, because the
important part was not to find the objects but to find the force that would
imbue them with power.
"What's the use of having beautifully polished crystals if you never
find the spirit giver of power?" he said. "On the other hand, if you don't
have the crystals but do find the spirit you may put anything in his way to
be touched. You could put your dicks in the way if you can't find anything
else."
The young men giggled. The most daring of them, the one who talked to
me first, laughed loudly. I noticed that don Juan had crossed his legs and
was sitting in a relaxed manner. All the young men had also crossed their
legs. I tried to slip casually into a more relaxed posture, but my left knee
seemed to have a pinched nerve or a sore muscle and I had to stand up and
jog on the spot for a few minutes.
Don Juan made a joking comment. He said I was out of practice kneeling
down, because I had not been to confession in years, ever since I had begun
running around with him.
That produced a great commotion among the young men. They laughed in
spurts. Some of them covered their faces and giggled nervously.
"I'm going to show you fellows something, " don Juan said casually
after the young men had stopped laughing. My guess was that he was going to
let us see some power objects he had in his pouch. For an instant I thought
the young men were going to cluster around him, for they made a sudden
movement in unison. All of them bent forward a little bit, as if they were
going to stand up, but then they all tucked their left legs in and went back
to that mysterious position that was so hard on my knees.
I tucked my left leg in as casually as possible. I found that if I did
not sit on my left foot, that is, if I kept a half kneeling position, my
knees did not hurt as much. Don Juan stood up and walked around the big
boulder until he was out of sight. He must have fed the fire before he stood
up, while I was tucking in my leg, for the new sticks chirped as they
ignited and long flames spurted out. The effect was extremely dramatic. The
flames grew twice as big. Don Juan suddenly stepped out from behind the
boulder and stood where he had been sitting. I had a moment of bewilderment.
Don Juan had put on a funny black hat. It had peaks on the side, by the
ears, and it was round on top. It occurred to me that it was actually a
pirate's hat. He was wearing a long black coat with tails, fastened with a
single shiny metallic button, and he had a peg leg.
I laughed to myself. Don Juan really looked silly in his pirate's
costume. I began to wonder where he had gotten that outfit out there in the
wilderness. I assumed that it must have been hidden behind the rock. I
commented to myself that all don Juan needed was a patch over his eye and a
parrot on his shoulder to be the perfect stereotype of a pirate.
Don Juan looked at every member of the group, sweeping his eyes slowly
from right to left. Then he looked up above us and stared into the darkness
behind us. He remained in that position for a moment and then he went around
the boulder and disappeared. I did not notice how he walked. Obviously he
must have had his knee bent in order to depict a man with a wooden leg; when
he turned around to walk behind the boulder I should have seen his bent leg,
but I was so mystified by his acts that I did not pay any attention to
details.
The flames lost their strength at the very moment don Juan went around
the boulder. I thought that his timing had been superb; he must have
calculated how long it would take for the sticks he had added to the fire to
burn and had arranged his appearance and exit according to that calculation.
The change in the intensity of the fire was very dramatic for the
group; there was a ripple of nervousness among the young men. As the flames
diminished in size the young men went back in unison to a cross-legged
sitting position.
I expected don Juan to step out from behind the boulder right away and
sit down again but he did not. He remained out of sight. I waited
impatiently. The young men were sitting with an impassive look on their
faces.
I could not understand what don Juan had intended with all those
histrionics. After a long wait I turned to the young man on my right and
asked him in a low voice if any of the items don Juan had put on - the funny
hat and the long tail coat - and the fact he was standing on a peg leg had
any meaning to him.
The young man looked at me with a funny blank expression. He seemed
confused. I repeated my question and the other young man next to him looked
at me attentively in order to listen. They looked at each other seemingly in
utter confusion. I said that to me the hat and the stump and the coat made
him into a pirate. By then all four young men had come closer together
around me. They giggled softly and fretted nervously. They seemed to be at a
loss for words. The most daring of them finally spoke to me. He said that
don Juan did not have a hat on, was not wearing a long coat, and was
certainly not standing on a stump, but that he had a black cowl or shawl
over his head and a jet black tunic, like a friar's, that went all the way
to the ground.
"No!" another young man exclaimed softly. "He didn't have a cowl."
"That's right, " the others said.
The young man who had spoken first looked at me with an expression of
total disbelief.
I told them that we had to review what had happened very carefully and
very quietly, and that I was sure don Juan had wanted us to do so and thus
he had left us alone.
The young man who was to my extreme right said that don Juan was in
rags. He had on a tattered poncho, or some sort of Indian coat, and a most
beat-up sombrero. He was holding a basket with things in it, but he was not
sure what those things were. He added that don Juan was not really dressed
as a beggar but rather as a man who was coming back from an interminable
journey loaded with strange things.
The young man who had seen don Juan with a black cowl said that he had
nothing in his hands but that his hair was long and wild, as if he were a
wild man that had just killed a friar and had put on his clothes but could
not hide his wildness.
The young man to my left chuckled softly and commented on the weirdness
of it all. He said that don Juan was dressed as an important man who had
just gotten off his horse. He had leather leggings for horseback riding, big
spurs, a whip that he kept beating on his left palm, a Chihuahua hat with a
conical crown, and two .45-caliber automatic pistols. He said that don Juan
was the picture of a well-to-do "ranchero."
The young man to my extreme left laughed shyly and did not volunteer to
reveal what he had seen. I coaxed him, but the others did not seem to be
interested. He appeared to be rather too shy to talk.
The fire was about to be extinguished when don Juan came out from
behind the boulder. "We better leave the young men to their doings, " he
said to me. "Bid them goodbye." He did not look at them. He began to walk
away slowly to give me time to say goodbye. The young men embraced me.
There were no flames in the fire, but the live coals reflected enough
glare. Don Juan was like a dark shadow a few feet away and the young men
were a circle of neatly defined static silhouettes. They were like a row of
jet black statues set in a background of darkness. It was at that point that
the total event had an impact on me. A chill ran up my spine. I caught up
with don Juan. He told me in a tone of great urgency not to turn around to
look at the young men, because at that moment they were a circle of shadows.
My stomach felt a force coming from the outside. It was as if a hand
had grabbed me. I screamed involuntarily. Don Juan whispered that there was
so much power in that area that it would be very easy for me to use the
"gait of power." We jogged for hours. I fell down five times. Don Juan
counted out loud every time I lost my balance. Then he came to a halt. "Sit
down, huddle against the rocks, and cover your belly with your hands, " he
whispered in my ear.
Sunday, April 16, 1962
As soon as there was enough light in the morning we started walking.
Don Juan guided me to the place where I had left my car. I was hungry but I
felt otherwise invigorated and well rested.
We ate some crackers and drank some bottled mineral water that I had in
my car. I wanted to ask him some questions that were overwhelming me, but he
put his finger to his lips. By mid-afternoon we were in the border town
where he wanted me to leave him. We went to a restaurant to eat lunch. The
place was empty; we sat at a table by a window looking out at the busy main
street and ordered our food. Don Juan seemed relaxed; his eyes shone with a
mischievous glint. I felt encouraged and began a barrage of questions. I
mainly wanted to know about his disguise.
"I showed you a little bit of my not-doing" he said and his eyes seemed
to glow.
"But none of us saw the same disguise, " I said. "How did you do that?"
"It's all very simple, " he replied. "They were only disguises, because
everything we do is in some way merely a disguise. Everything we do, as I
have told you, is a matter of doing. A man of knowledge could hook himself
to everyone's doing and come up with weird things. But they are not weird,
not really. They are weird only to those who are trapped in doing.
"Those four young men and yourself are not aware yet of not-doing, so
it was easy to fool all of you."
"But how did you fool us?"
"It won't make sense to you. There is no way for you to understand it."
"Try me, don Juan, please."
"Let's say that when every one of us is born we bring with us a little
ring of power. That little ring is almost immediately put to use. So every
one of us is already hooked from birth and our rings of power are joined to
everyone else's. In other words, our rings of power are hooked to the doing
of the world in order to make the world."
"Give me an example so I could understand it, " I said.
"For instance, our rings of power, yours and mine, are hooked right now
to the doing in this room. We are making this room. Our rings of power are
spinning this room into being at this very moment."
"Wait, wait, " I said. "This room is here by itself. I am not creating
it. I have nothing to do with it."
Don Juan did not seem to be concerned with my argumentative protests.
He very calmly maintained that the room we were in was brought to being and
was kept in place because of the force of everybody's ring of power.
"You see, " he continued, "every one of us knows the doing of rooms
because, in one way or another, we have spent much of our lives in rooms. A
man of knowledge, on the other hand, develops another ring of power. I would
call it the ring of not-doing, because it is hooked to not-doing. With that
ring, therefore, he can spin another world."
A young waitress brought our food and seemed to be suspicious of us.
Don Juan whispered that I should pay her to show her that I had enough
money.
"I don't blame her for distrusting you, " he said and roared with
laughter. "You look like hell."
I paid the woman and tipped her, and when she left us alone I stared at
don Juan, trying to find a way to recapture the thread of our conversation.
He came to my rescue. "Your difficulty is that you haven't yet developed
your extra ring of power and your body doesn't know not-doing." he said.
I did not understand what he had said. My mind was locked in quite a
prosaic concern. All I wanted to know was whether or not he had put on a
pirate's outfit.
Don Juan did not answer but laughed uproariously. I begged him to
explain.
"But I've just explained it to you, " he retorted.
"You mean, that you didn't put on any disguise?" I asked.
"All I did was to hook my ring of power to your own doing, " he said.
"You yourself did the rest and so did the others."
"That's incredible!" I exclaimed.
"We all have been taught to agree about doing, " he said softly. "You
don't have any idea of the power that that agreement brings with it. But,
fortunately, not-doing is equally miraculous, and powerful."
I felt an uncontrollable ripple in my stomach. There was an
unbridgeable abysm between my first-hand experience and his explanation. As
an ultimate defense I ended up, as I had always done, with a tinge of doubt
and distrust and with the question, "What if don Juan was really in cahoots
with the young men and he himself had set it all up?"
I changed the subject and asked him about the four apprentices.
"Did you tell me that they were shadows?" I asked.
"That's right."
"Were they allies?"
"No. They were apprentices of a man I know."
"Why did you call them shadows?"
"Because at that moment they had been touched by the power of
not-doing, and since they are not as stupid as you are, they shifted into
something quite different from what you know. I didn't want you to look at
them for that reason. It would have only injured you." I did not have any
more questions. I was not hungry either.
Don Juan ate heartily and seemed to be in an excellent mood. But I felt
dejected. Suddenly a consuming fatigue possessed me. I realized that don
Juan's path was too arduous for me. I commented that I did not have the
qualifications to become a sorcerer.
"Perhaps another meeting with Mescalito will help you, " he said.
I assured him that that was the farthest thing from my mind, and that I
would not even consider the possibility. "Very drastic things have to happen
to you in order for you to allow your body to profit from all you have
learned," he said. I ventured the opinion that since I was not an Indian I
was
not really qualified to live the unusual life of a sorcerer.
"Perhaps if I could disentangle myself from all my commitments I could
fare in your world a little better, " I said.
"Or if I would go into the wilderness with you and live there.
As it is now, the fact I have a foot in both worlds makes me useless in
either."
He stared at me for a long moment.
"This is your world, " he said, pointing to the busy street outside the
window. "You are a man of that world. And out there, in that world, is your
hunting ground. There is no way to escape the doing of our world, so what a
warrior does is to turn his world into his hunting ground. As a hunter, a
warrior knows that the world is made to be used. So he uses every bit of it.
A warrior is like a pirate that has no qualms in taking and using anything
he wants, except that the warrior doesn't mind or he doesn't feel insulted
when he is used and taken himself."
A WORTHY OPPONENT
Tuesday, December 11, 1962
My traps were perfect; the setting was correct; I saw rabbits,
squirrels and other rodents, quail, and birds, but I could not catch
anything at all during the whole day. Don Juan had told me, as we left his
house in the early morning, that I had to wait that day for a "gift of
power," an exceptional animal that might be lured into my traps and whose
flesh I could dry for "power food." Don Juan seemed to be in a pensive mood.
He did not make a single suggestion or comment. Near the end of the day he
finally made a statement.
"Someone is interfering with your hunting, " he said.
"Who?" I asked, truly surprised.
He looked at me and smiled and shook his head in a gesture of
disbelief.
"You act as if you didn't know who, " he said. "And you've known who
all day."
I was going to protest but I saw no point in it. I knew he was going to
say "la Catalina, " and if that was the kind of knowledge he was talking
about, then he was right, I did know who.
"We either go home now, " he continued, "or we wait until dark and use
the twilight to catch her."
He appeared to be waiting for my decision. I wanted to leave. I began
to gather some thin rope that I was using but before I could voice my wish
he stopped me with a direct command.
"Sit down, " he said. "It would be a simpler and more sober decision to
just leave now, but this is a peculiar case and I think we must stay. This
show is just for you."
"What do you mean?"
"Someone is interfering with you, in particular, so that makes it your
show. I know who and you also know who."
"You scare me, " I said.
"Not me, " he replied, laughing. "That woman, who is out there
prowling, is scaring you." He paused as if he were waiting for the effect of
his words to show on me. I had to admit that I was terrified. Over a month
before, I had had a horrendous confrontation with a sorceress called "la
Catalina." I had faced her at the risk of my life because don Juan had
convinced me that she was
after his life and that he was incapable of fending off her onslaughts.
After I had come in contact with her, don Juan disclosed to me that she had
never really been of any danger to him, and that the whole affair had been a
trick, not in the sense of a malicious prank but in the sense of a trap to
ensnare me. His method was so unethical to me that I became furious with
him.
Upon hearing my angry outburst don Juan had begun to sing some Mexican
tunes. He imitated popular crooners and his renditions were so comical that
I had ended up laughing like a child. He entertained me for hours. I never
knew he had such a repertoire of idiotic songs. "Let me tell you something,
" he had finally said on that occasion. "If we wouldn't be tricked, we would
never learn.
The same thing happened to me, and it'll happen to anyone. The art of a
benefactor is to take us to the brink. A benefactor can only point the way
and trick. I tricked you before.
You remember the way I recaptured your hunter's spirit, don't you? You
yourself told me that hunting made you forget about plants. You were willing
to do a lot of things in order to be a hunter, things you wouldn't have done
in order to learn about plants. Now you must do a lot more in order to
survive."
He stared at me and broke into a fit of laughter.
"This is all crazy, " I said. "We are rational beings."
"You're rational, " he retorted. "I am not."
"Of course you are, " I insisted. "You are one of the most rational men
I have ever met."
"All right!" he exclaimed. "Let us not argue. I am rational, so what?"
I involved him in the argument of why it was necessary for two rational
beings to proceed in such an insane way, as we had proceeded with the lady
witch.
"You're rational, all right, " he said fiercely. "And that means you
believe that you know a lot about the world, but do you? Do you really? You
have only seen the acts of people. Your experiences are limited only to what
people have done to you or to others. You know nothing about this mysterious
unknown world."
He signaled me to follow him to my car and we drove to the small
Mexican town nearby.
I did not ask what we were going to do. He made me park my car by a
restaurant and then we walked around the bus depot and the general store.
Don Juan walked on my right side, leading me. Suddenly I became aware that
someone else was walking side by side with me to my left, but before I had
time to turn to look, don Juan made a fast and sudden movement; he leaned
forward, as if he were picking something from the ground, and then grabbed
me by the armpit when
I nearly stumbled over him. He dragged me to my car and did not let go
of my arm even to allow me to unlock the door. I fumbled with the keys for a
moment. He shoved me gently into the car and then got in himself. "Drive
slowly and stop in front of the store, " he said.
When I had stopped, don Juan signaled me with a nod of his head to
look. "La Catalina" was standing at the place where don Juan had grabbed me.
I recoiled involuntarily. The woman took a couple of steps towards the car
and stood there defiantly. I scrutinized her carefully and concluded that
she was a beautiful woman. She was very dark and had a plump body but she
seemed to be strong and muscular. She had a round full face with high
cheekbones and two long braids of jet black hair. What surprised me the most
was her youth.
She was at the most in her early thirties. "Let her come closer if she
wants, " don Juan whispered.
She took three or four steps towards my car and stopped perhaps ten
feet away. We looked at each other. At that moment I felt there was nothing
threatening about her. I smiled and waved at her. She giggled as if she were
a shy little girl and covered her mouth. Somehow I felt delighted. I turned
to don Juan to comment on her appearance and behavior, and he scared me half
to death with a yell.
"Don't turn your back to that woman, damn it!" he said in a forceful
voice.
I quickly turned to look at the woman. She had taken another couple of
steps towards my car and was standing barely five feet away from my door.
She was smiling; her teeth were big and white and very clean. There was
something eerie about her smile, however. It was not friendly; it was a
contained grin; only her mouth smiled. Her eyes were black and cold and were
staring at me fixedly. I experienced a chill all over my body. Don Juan
began to laugh in a rhythmical cackle; after a moment's wait the woman
slowly backed away and disappeared among people.
We drove away and don Juan speculated that if I did not tighten up my
life and learn, she was going to step on me as one steps on a defenseless
bug.
"She is the worthy opponent I told you I had found for you, " he said.
Don Juan said that we had to wait for an omen before we knew what to do
with the woman who was interfering with my hunting.
"If we see or hear a crow, we'll know for sure that we can wait, and
we'll also know where to wait, " he added.
He slowly turned around in a complete circle, scanning all the
surroundings.
"This is not the place to wait, " he said in a whisper.
We began to walk towards the east. It was already fairly dark. Suddenly
two crows flew out from behind some tall bushes and disappeared behind a
hill. Don Juan said that the hill was our destination.
Once we arrived there he circled it and chose a place facing the
southeast at the bottom of the hill. He cleaned the dry twigs and leaves and
other debris from a circular spot five or six feet in diameter. I attempted
to help him, but he refused me with a strong movement of his hand. He put
his finger over his lips and made a gesture of silence. When he had finished
he pulled me to the center of the circle, made me face the south away from
the hill, and whispered in my ear that I
had to imitate his movements. He began a sort of dance, making a
rhythmical thump with his right foot; it consisted of seven even beats
spaced by a cluster of three fast thumps.
I tried to adapt myself to his rhythm and after a few clumsy attempts I
was more or less capable of reproducing the same thumping.
"What's this for?" I whispered in his ear.
He told me, also in a whisper, that I was thumping like a rabbit and
that sooner or later the prowler would be attracted by the noise and would
show up to see what was going on. Once I had copied the rhythm, don Juan
ceased to thump himself but had me continue, marking the pace with a
movement of his hand.
From time to time he would listen attentively, with his head slightly
tilted to the right, seemingly to pick out noises in the chaparral. At one
point he signaled me to stop and he remained in a most alert position; it
was as if he were ready to spring up and jump on an unknown and unseen
assailant.
Then he motioned me to continue the thumping and after a while he
stopped me again. Every time I stopped he listened with such a concentration
that every fiber in his body seemed to be tense to the point of bursting.
Suddenly he jumped to my side and whispered in my ear that the twilight
was at its full power.
I looked around. The chaparral was a dark mass, and so were the hills
and the rocks. The sky was dark blue and I could not see the clouds any
more. The whole world seemed to be a uniform mass of dark silhouettes which
did not have any visible boundaries. I heard the eerie distant cry of an
animal, a coyote or perhaps a night bird. It happened so suddenly that I did
not pay attention to it. But don Juan's body jerked a bit. I felt its
vibration as he stood next to me.
"Here we go, " he whispered. "Thump again and be ready.
She's here."
I began to thump furiously and don Juan put his foot over mine and
signaled me frantically to relax and thump rhythmically.
"Don't scare her away, " he whispered in my ear. "Calm down and don't
lose your marbles."
He again began to mark the pace of my thumping, and after the second
time he made me stop I heard the same cry again. This time it seemed to be
the cry of a bird which was flying over the hill.
Don Juan made me thump once more and just when I stopped I heard a
peculiar rustling sound to my left. It was the sound a heavy animal would
make while moving about in the dry underbrush. The thought of a bear crossed
my mind, but then I realized that there were no bears in the desert. I
grabbed on to don Juan's arm and he smiled at me and put his finger to his
mouth in a gesture of silence. I stared into the darkness towards my left,
but he signaled me not to. He repeatedly pointed directly above me and then
he made me turn around slowly and silently until I was facing the dark mass
of the hill. Don Juan kept his finger leveled at a certain point on the
hill.
I kept my eyes glued to that spot and suddenly, as if in a nightmare, a
dark shadow leaped at me. I shrieked and fell down to the ground on my back.
For a moment the dark silhouette was superimposed against the dark blue sky
and then it sailed through the air and landed beyond us, in the bushes. I
heard the sound of a heavy body crashing into the shrubs and then an eerie
outcry.
Don Juan helped me up and guided me in the darkness to the place where
I had left my traps. He made me gather and disassemble them and then he
scattered the pieces away in all directions. He performed all this without
saying a single word.
We did not speak at all on our way back to his house.
"What do you want me to say?" don Juan asked after I had urged him
repeatedly to explain the events I had witnessed a few hours before.
"What was it? "I asked.
"You know damn well who it was, " he said. "Don't water it down with
'what was it?' It is who it was that is important."
I had worked out an explanation that seemed to suit me. The figure I
had seen looked very much like a kite that someone had let out over the hill
while someone else, behind us, had pulled it
to the ground, thus the effect of a dark silhouette sailing through the
air perhaps fifteen or twenty yards.
He listened attentively to my explanation and then laughed until tears
rolled down his cheeks.
"Quit beating around the bush, " he said. "Get to the point. Wasn't it
a woman?"
I had to admit that when I fell down and looked up I saw the dark
silhouette of a woman with a long skirt leaping over me in a very slow
motion; then something seemed to have pulled the dark silhouette and it flew
over me with great speed and crashed into the bushes. In fact, that movement
was what had given me the idea of a kite.
Don Juan refused to discuss the incident any further. The next day he
left to fulfill some mysterious errand and I went to visit some Yaqui
friends in another community.
Wednesday, December 12, 1962
As soon as I arrived at the Yaqui community, the Mexican storekeeper
told me that he had rented a record player and twenty records from an outfit
in Ciudad Obregon for the "fiesta" he was planning to give that night in
honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe. He had already told everybody that he had
made all the necessary arrangements through Julio, the traveling salesman
who came to the Yaqui settlement twice a month to collect installments on a
layaway plan for cheap articles of clothing which he had succeeded in
selling to some Yaqui Indians. Julio brought the record player early in the
afternoon and hooked it to the dynamo that provided electricity for the
store. He made sure that it worked; then he turned up the volume to its
maximum, reminded the storekeeper not to touch any knobs, and began to sort
the twenty records. "I know how many scratches each of them has, " Julio
said to the storekeeper.
"Tell that to my daughter, " the storekeeper replied.
"You're responsible, not your daughter."
"Just the same, she's the one who'll be changing the records."
Julio insisted that it did not make any difference to him whether she
or someone else was going to actually handle the record player as long as
the storekeeper paid for any records that were damaged. The storekeeper
began to argue with Julio. Julio's face became red. He turned from time to
time to the large group of Yaqui Indians congregated in front of the More
and made signs of despair or frustration by moving his hands or contorting
his face in a grimace. Seemingly as a final resort, he demanded a cash
deposit. That precipitated another long argument about what constituted a
damaged record. Julio Mured with authority that any broken record had to be
paid for in full, as if it were new. The storekeeper became angrier and
began to pull out his extension cords. He seemed bent upon unhooking the
record player and canceling the party. He made it clear to his clients
congregated in front of the More that he had tried his best to come to terms
with Julio. For a moment it seemed that the party was going to fail before
it had started. lilas, the old Yaqui Indian in whose house I was staying,
made some derogatory comments in a loud voice about the Yiiquis' sad state
of affairs that they could not even celebrate their most revered religious
festivity, the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I wanted to intervene and
offer my help, but Bias stopped me. He said that if I were to make the cash
deposit, the storekeeper himself would smash the records.
"He's worse than anybody, " he said. "Let him pay the deposit. He
bleeds us, so why shouldn't he pay?"
After a long discussion in which, strangely enough, everyone present
was in favor of Julio, the storekeeper hit upon terms which were mutually
agreeable. He did not pay a cash deposit but accepted responsibility for the
records and the record player.
Julio's motorcycle left a trail of dust as he headed for some of the
more remote houses in the locality. Bias said that he was trying to get to
his customers before they came to the store and spent all their money buying
booze. As he was saying this a group of Indians emerged from behind the
store. Bias looked at them and began to laugh and so did everyone else
there.
Bias told me that those Indians were Julio's customers and had been
hiding behind the store waiting for him to leave.
The party began early. The storekeeper's daughter put a record on the
turntable and brought the arm down; there was a terrible loud screech and a
high-pitched buzz and then came a blasting sound of a trumpet and some
guitars.
The party consisted of playing the records at full volume.
There were four young Mexican men who danced with the storekeeper's two
daughters and three other young Mexican women. The Yaquis did not dance;
they watched with apparent delight every movement the dancers made. They
seemed to be enjoying themselves just watching and gulping down cheap
tequila.
I bought individual drinks for everybody I knew. I wanted to avoid any
feelings of resentment. I circulated among the numerous Indians and talked
to them and then offered them drinks. My pattern of behavior worked until
they realized I was not drinking at all. That seemed to annoy everyone at
once. It was as if collectively they had discovered that I did not belong
there. The Indians became very gruff and gave me sly looks.
The Mexicans, who were as drunk as the Indians, also realized at the
same time that I had not danced; and that appeared to offend them even more.
They became very aggressive. One of them forcibly took me by the arm and
dragged me closer to the record player; another served me a full cup of
tequila and wanted me to drink it all in one gulp and prove that I was a
"macho."
I tried to stall them and laughed idiotically as if I were actually
enjoying the situation. I said that I would like to dance first and then
drink. One of the young men called out the name of a song. The girl in
charge of the record player began to search in the pile of records. She
seemed to be a little tipsy, although none of the women had openly been
drinking, and had trouble fitting a record on the turntable. A young man
said that the record she had selected was not a twist; she fumbled with the
pile, trying to find the suitable one, and everybody closed in around her
and left me. That gave me time to run behind the store, away from the
lighted area, and out of sight.
I stood about thirty yards away in the darkness of some bushes trying
to decide what to do. I was tired. I felt it was time to get in my car and
go back home. I began to walk to Bias's house, where my car was parked. I
figured that if I drove slowly no one would notice that I was leaving. The
people in charge of the record player were apparently still looking for the
record - all I could hear was the highpitched buzzing of the loudspeaker -
but then came the blasting sound of a twist. I laughed out loud, thinking
that they had probably turned to where I had been and found out that I had
disappeared.
I saw some dark silhouettes of people walking in the opposite
direction, going towards the store. We passed each other and they mumbled,
"Buenas noches." I recognized them and spoke to them. I told them that it
was a great party.
Before I came to a sharp bend in the road I encountered two other
people, whom I did not recognize, but I greeted them anyway. The blasting
sound of the record player was almost as loud there on the road as it was in
front of the store. It was a dark starless night, but the glare from the
store lights allowed me to have a fairly good visual perception of my
surroundings.
Bias's house was very near and I accelerated my pace. I noticed then
the dark shape of a person, sitting or perhaps squatting to my left, at the
bend of the road. I thought for an instant that it might have been one of
the people from the party who had left before I had. The person seemed to be
defecating on the side of the road. That seemed odd. People in the community
went into the thick bushes to perform their bodily functions. I thought that
whoever it was in front of me must have been drunk.
I came to the bend and said, "Buenas noches." The person answered me
with an eerie, gruff, inhuman howl. The hair on my body literally stood on
end. For a second I was paralyzed. Then I began to walk fast. I took a quick
glance. I saw that the dark silhouette had stood up halfway; it was a woman.
She was stooped over, leaning forward; she walked in that position for a few
yards and then she hopped. I began to run, while the woman hopped like a
bird by my side, keeping up with my speed. By the time I arrived at Bias's
house she was cutting in front of me and we had almost touched. I leaped
across a small dry ditch in front of the house and crashed through the
flimsy door. Bias was already in the house and seemed unconcerned with my
story.
"They pulled a good one on you, " he said reassuringly. "The Indians
take delight in teasing foreigners." My experience had been so unnerving
that the next day I drove to don Juan's house instead of going home as I had
planned to do.
Don Juan returned in the late afternoon. I did not give him time to say
anything but blurted out the whole story, including Bias's commentary. Don
Juan's face became somber. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I thought
he was worried. "Don't put so much stock in what Bias told you, " he said in
a serious tone. "He knows nothing of the struggles between sorcerers.
"You should have known that it was something serious the moment you
noticed that the shadow was to your left. You shouldn't have run either."
"What was I supposed to do? Stand there?"
"Right. When a warrior encounters his opponent and the opponent is not
an ordinary human being, he must make his stand. That is the only thing that
makes him invulnerable."
"What are you saying, don Juan?"
"I'm saying that you have had your third encounter with your worthy
opponent. She's following you around, waiting for a moment of weakness on
your part. She almost bagged you this time."
I felt a surge of anxiety and accused him of putting me in unnecessary
danger. I complained that the game he was playing with me was cruel.
"It would be cruel if this would have happened to an average man, " he
said. "But the instant one begins to live like a warrior, one is no longer
ordinary. Besides, I didn't find you a worthy opponent because I want to
play with you, or tease you, or annoy you. A worthy opponent might spur you
on; under the influence of an opponent like 'la Catalina' you may have to
make use of everything I have taught you. You don't have any other
alternative."
We were quiet for a while. His words had aroused a tremendous
apprehension in me. He then wanted me to imitate as close as possible the
cry I had heard after I had said "Buenas noches."
I attempted to reproduce the sound and came up with some weird howling
that scared me. Don Juan must have found my rendition funny; he laughed
almost uncontrollably.
Afterwards he asked me to reconstruct the total sequence; the distance
I ran, the distance the woman was from me at the time I encountered her, the
distance she was from me at the time I reached the house, and the place
where she had begun hopping. "No fat Indian woman could hop that way, " he
said after assessing all those variables. "They could not even run that
far."
He made me hop. I could not cover more than four feet each time, and if
I were correct in my perception, the woman had hopped at least ten feet with
each leap. "Of course, you know that from now on you must be on the lookout,
" he said in a tone of great urgency. "She will try to tap you on your left
shoulder during a moment when you are unaware and weak."
"What should I do? "I asked.
"It is meaningless to complain, " he said. "What's important from this
point on is the strategy of your life." I could not concentrate at all on
what he was saying. I took notes automatically. After a long silence he
asked if I had any pain behind my ears or in the nape of my neck. I said no,
and he told me that if I had experienced an uncomfortable sensation in