Part 2 of 2
Nestor's presence in the house lightened up the oppressive mood instantly. I asked him to join us in the kitchen.
"You came right in time," Pablito said to Nestor with an enormous smile as we sat down. "The Maestro and I were weeping here, remembering the Toltec devils."
"Were you really crying. Maestro?" Nestor asked with a malicious grin on his face.
"You bet he was," Pablito replied.
A very soft cracking noise at the front door made Pablito and Nestor stop talking. If I had been by myself I would not have noticed or heard anything. Pablito and Nestor stood up; I did the same. We looked at the front door; it was being opened in a most careful manner. I thought that perhaps la Gorda had returned and was quietly opening the door so as not to disturb us. When the door was finally opened wide enough to allow one person to go through, Benigno came in as if he were sneaking into a dark room. His eyes were shut and he was walking on the tips of his toes. He reminded me of a kid sneaking into a movie theater through an unlocked exit door in order to see a matinee, not daring to make any noise and at the same time not capable of seeing a thing in the dark.
Everybody was quietly looking at Benigno. He opened one eye just enough to peek out of it and orient himself and then he tiptoed across the front room to the kitchen. He stood by the table for a moment with his eyes closed. Pablito and Nestor sat down and signaled me to do the same. Benigno then slid next to me on the bench. He gently shoved my shoulder with his head; it was a light tap in order for me to move over to make room for him on the bench; then he sat down comfortably with his eyes still closed.
He was dressed in Levi's like Pablito and Nestor. His face had filled out a bit since the last time I had seen him, years before, and his hairline was different, but I could not tell how. He had a lighter complexion than I remembered, very small teeth, full lips, high cheekbones, a small nose and big ears. He had always seemed to me like a child whose features had not matured.
Pablito and Nestor, who had interrupted what they were saying to watch Benigno's entrance, resumed talking as soon as he sat down as though nothing had happened.
"Sure, he was crying with me," Pablito said.
"He's not a crybaby like you," Nestor said to Pablito.
Then he turned to me and embraced me.
"I'm so glad you're alive," he said. "We've just talked to la Gorda and she said that you were the Nagual, but she didn't tell us how you survived. How did you survive, Maestro?"
At that point I had a strange choice. I could have followed my rational path, as I had always done, and said that I did not have the vaguest idea, and I would have been truthful at that. Or I could have said that my double had extricated me from the grip of those women. I was measuring in my mind the possible effect of each alternative when I was distracted by Benigno. He opened one eye a little bit and looked at me and then giggled and buried his head in his arms.
"Benigno, don't you want to talk to me?" I asked.
He shook his head negatively.
I felt self-conscious with him next to me and decided to ask what was the matter with him.
"What's he doing?" I asked Nestor in a low voice.
Nestor rubbed Benigno's head and shook him. Benigno opened his eyes and then closed them again.
"He's that way, you know," Nestor said to me. "He's extremely shy. He'll open his eyes sooner or later. Don't pay any attention to him. If he gets bored he'll go to sleep."
Benigno shook his head affirmatively without opening his eyes.
"Well, how did you get out?" Nestor insisted.
"Don't you want to tell us?" Pablito asked.
I deliberately said that my double had come out from the top of my head three times. I gave them an account of what had happened.
They did not seem in the least surprised and took my account as a matter of course. Pablito became delighted with his own speculations that dona Soledad might not recover and might eventually die. He wanted to know if I had struck Lidia as well. Nestor made an imperative gesture for him to be quiet and Pablito meekly stopped in the middle of a sentence.
"I'm sorry. Maestro," Nestor said, "but that was not your double."
"But everyone said that it was my double."
"I know for a fact that you misunderstood la Gorda, because as Benigno and I were walking to Genaro's house, la Gorda overtook us on the road and told us that you and Pablito were here in this house. She called you the Nagual. Do you know why?"
I laughed and said that I believed it was due to her notion that I had gotten most of the Nagual's luminosity.
"One of us here is a fool!" Benigno said in a booming voice without opening his eyes.
The sound of his voice was so outlandish that I jumped away from him. His thoroughly unexpected statement, plus my reaction to it, made all of them laugh. Benigno opened one eye and looked at me for an instant and then buried his face in his arms.
"Do you know why we called Juan Matus the Nagual?" Nestor asked me.
I said that I had always thought that that was their nice way of calling don Juan a sorcerer.
Benigno laughed so loudly that the sound of his laughter drowned out everybody else's. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He rested his head on my shoulder as if it were a heavy object he could no longer support.
"The reason we called him the Nagual," Nestor went on, "is because he was split in two. In other words, any time he needed to, he could get into another track that we don't have ourselves; something would come out of him, something that was not a double but a horrendous, menacing shape that looked like him but was twice his size. We call that shape the nagual and anybody who has it is, of course, the Nagual.
"The Nagual told us that all of us can have that shape coming out of our heads if we wanted to, but chances are that none of us would want to. Genaro didn't want it, so I think we don't want it, either. So it appears that you're the one who's stuck with it."
They cackled and yelled as if they were corraling a herd of cattle. Benigno put his arms around my shoulders without opening his eyes and laughed until tears were rolling down his cheeks.
"Why do you say that I am stuck with it?" I asked Nestor.
"It takes too much energy," he said, "too much work. I don't know how you can still be standing.
"The Nagual and Genaro split you once in the eucalyptus grove. They took you there because eucalyptuses are your trees. I was there myself and I witnessed when they split you and pulled your nagual out. They pulled you apart by the ears until they had split your luminosity and you were not an egg anymore, but two long chunks of luminosity. Then they put you together again, but any sorcerer that sees can tell that there is a huge gap in the middle."
"What's the advantage of being split?"
"You have one car that hears everything and one eye that sees everything and you will always be able to go an extra mile in a moment of need. That splitting is also the reason why they told us that you are the Maestro.
"They tried to split Pablito but it looks like it failed. He's too pampered and has always indulged like a bastard. That's why he's so screwed up now."
"What's a double then?"
"A double is the other, the body that one gets in dreaming. It looks exactly like oneself."
"Do all of you have a double?"
Nestor scrutinized me with a look of surprise.
"Hey, Pablito, tell the Maestro about our doubles," he said laughing.
Pablito reached across the table and shook Benigno.
"You tell him, Benigno," he said. "Better yet, show it to him."
Benigno stood up, opened his eyes as wide as he could and looked at the roof, then he pulled down his pants and showed me his penis.
The Genaros went wild with laughter.
"Did you really mean it when you asked that, Maestro?" Nestor asked me with a nervous expression.
I assured him that I was deadly serious in my desire to know anything related to their knowledge. I went into a long elucidation of how don Juan had kept me outside of their realm for reasons I could not fathom, thus preventing me from knowing more about them.
"Think of this," I said. "I didn't know until three days ago that those four girls were the Nagual's apprentices, or that Benigno was don Genaro's apprentice."
Benigno opened his eyes.
"Think of this yourself," he said. "I didn't know until now that you were so stupid."
He closed his eyes again and all of them laughed insanely. I had no choice but to join them.
"We were just teasing you. Maestro," Nestor said in way of an apology. "We thought that you were teasing us, rubbing it in. The Nagual told us that you see. If you do, you can tell that we are a sorry lot. We don't have the body of dreaming. None of us has a double."
In a very serious and earnest manner Nestor said that something had come in between them and their desire to have a double. I understood him as saying that a sort of barrier had been created since don Juan and don Genaro had left. He thought that it might be the result of Pablito flubbing his task. Pablito added that since the Nagual and Genaro had gone, something seemed to be chasing them, and even Benigno, who was living in the southernmost tip of Mexico at that time, had to return. Only when the three of them were together did they feel at ease.
"What do you think it is?" I asked Nestor.
"There is something out there in that immensity that's pulling us," he replied. "Pablito thinks it's his fault for antagonizing those women."
Pablito turned to me. There was an intense glare in his eyes.
"They've put a curse on me. Maestro," he said. "I know that the cause of all our trouble is me. I wanted to disappear from these parts after my fight with Lidia, and a few months later I took off for Veracruz. I was actually very happy there with a girl I wanted to marry. I got a job and was doing fine until one day I came home and found that those four mannish freaks, like beasts of prey, had tracked me down by my scent. They were in my house tormenting my woman. That bitch Rosa put her ugly hand on my woman's belly and made her shit in the bed, just like that. Their leader. Two Hundred and Twenty Buttocks, told me that they had walked across the continent looking for me. She just grabbed me by the belt and pulled me out. They pushed me to the bus depot to bring me here. I got madder than the devil but I was no match for Two Hundred and Twenty Buttocks. She put me on the bus. But on our way here I ran away. I ran through bushes and over hills until my feet got so swollen that I couldn't get my shoes off. I nearly died. I was ill for nine months. If the Witness hadn't found me, I would have died."
"I didn't find him," Nestor said to me. "La Gorda found him. She took me to where he was and between the two of us we carried him to the bus and brought him here. He was delirious and we had to pay an extra fare so that the bus driver would let him stay on the bus."
In a most dramatic tone Pablito said that he had not changed his mind; he still wanted to die.
"But why?" I asked him.
Benigno answered for him in a booming, guttural voice.
"Because his pecker doesn't work," he said.
The sound of his voice was so extraordinary that for an instant I had the impression that he was talking inside a cavern. It was at once frightening and incongruous. I laughed almost out of control.
Nestor said that Pablito had attempted to fulfill his task of establishing sexual relations with the women, in accordance with the Nagual's instructions. He had told Pablito that the four corners of his world were already set in position and all he had to do was to claim them. But when Pablito went to claim his first corner, Lidia, she nearly killed him. Nestor added that it was his personal opinion as a witness of the event that the reason Lidia rammed him with her head was because Pablito could not perform as a man, and rather than being embarrassed by the whole thing, she hit him.
"Did Pablito really get sick as a result of that blow or was he pretending?" I asked half in jest.
Benigno answered again in the same booming voice.
"He was just pretending!" he said. "All he got was a bump on the head! "
Pablito and Nestor cackled and yelled.
"We don't blame Pablito for being afraid of those women," Nestor said. "They are all like the Nagual himself, fearsome warriors. They're mean and crazy."
"Do you really think they're that bad?" I asked him.
"To say they're bad is only one part of the whole truth," Nestor said. "They're just like the Nagual. They're serious and gloomy. When the Nagual was around, they used to sit close to him and stare into the distance with half-closed eyes for hours, sometimes for days."
"Is it true that Josefina was really crazy a long time ago?" I asked.
"That's a laugh," Pablito said. "Not a long time ago; she's crazy now. She's the most insane of the bunch."
I told them what she had done to me. I thought that they would appreciate the humor of her magnificent performance. But my story seemed to affect them the wrong way. They listened to me like frightened children; even Benigno opened his eyes to listen to my account.
"Wow!" Pablito exclaimed. "Those bitches are really awful. And you know that their leader is Two Hundred and Twenty Buttocks. She's the one that throws the rock and then hides her hand and pretends to be an innocent little girl. Be careful of her, Maestro."
"The Nagual trained Josefina to be anything," Nestor said. "She can do anything you want: cry, laugh, get angry, anything."
"But what is she like when she is not acting?" I asked Nestor.
"She's just crazier than a bat," Benigno answered in a soft voice. "I met Josefina the first day she arrived. I had to carry her into the house. The Nagual and I used to tie her down to her bed all the time. Once she began to cry for her friend, a little girl she used to play with. She cried for three days. Pablito consoled her and fed her like a baby. She's like him. Both of them don't know how to stop once they begin."
Benigno suddenly began to sniff the air. He stood up and went over to the stove.
"Is he really shy?" I asked Nestor.
"He's shy and eccentric," Pablito answered. "He'll be that way until he loses his form. Genaro told us that we will lose our form sooner or later, so there is no point in making ourselves miserable in trying to change ourselves the way the Nagual told us to. Genaro told us to enjoy ourselves and not worry about anything. You and the women worry and try; we on the other hand, enjoy. You don't know how to enjoy things and we don't know how to make ourselves miserable. The Nagual called making yourself miserable, impeccability; we call it stupidity, don't we?"
"You are speaking for yourself, Pablito," Nestor said.
"Benigno and I don't feel that way." Benigno brought a bowl of food over and placed it in front of me. He served everyone. Pablito examined the bowls and asked Benigno where he had found them. Benigno said that they were in a box where la Gorda had told him she had stored them. Pablito confided in me that those bowls used to belong to them before their split.
"We have to be careful," Pablito said in a nervous tone. "These bowls are no doubt bewitched. Those bitches put something in them. I'd rather eat out of la Gorda's bowl."
Nestor and Benigno began to eat. I noticed then that Benigno had given me the brown bowl. Pablito seemed to be in a great turmoil. I wanted to put him at ease but Nestor stopped me.
"Don't take him so seriously," he said. "He loves to be that way. He'll sit down and eat. This is where you and the women fail. There is no way for you to understand that Pablito is like that. You expect everybody to be like the Nagual. La Gorda is the only one who's unruffled by him, not because she understands but because she has lost her form."
Pablito sat down to eat and among the four of us we finished a whole pot of food. Benigno washed the bowls and carefully put them back in the box and then all of us sat down comfortably around the table.
Nestor proposed that as soon as it got dark we should all go for a walk in a ravine nearby, where don Juan, don Genaro and I used to go. I felt somehow reluctant. I did not feel confident enough in their company. Nestor said that they were used to walking in the darkness and that the art of a sorcerer was to be inconspicuous even in the midst of people. I told him what don Juan had once said to me, before he had left me in a deserted place in the mountains not too far from there. He had demanded that I concentrate totally on trying not to be obvious. He said that the people of the area knew everyone by sight. There were not very many people, but those who lived there walked around all the time and could spot a stranger from miles away. He told me that many of those people had firearms and would have thought nothing of shooting me.
"Don't be concerned with beings from the other world," don Juan had said laughing. "The dangerous ones are the Mexicans."
"That's still valid," Nestor said. "That has been valid all the time. That's why the Nagual and Genaro were the artists they were. They learned to become unnoticeable in the middle of all this. They knew the art of stalking."
It was still too early for our walk in the dark. I wanted to use the time to ask Nestor my critical question. I had been avoiding it all along; some strange feeling had prevented me from asking. It was as if I had exhausted my interest after Pablito's reply. But Pablito himself came to my aid and all of a sudden he brought up the subject as if he had been reading my mind.
"Nestor also jumped into the abyss the same day we did," he said. "And in that way he became the Witness, you became the Maestro and I became the village idiot."
In a casual manner I asked Nestor to tell me about his jump into the abyss. I tried to sound only mildly interested. But Pablito was aware of the true nature of my forced indifference. He laughed and told Nestor that I was being cautious because I had been deeply disappointed with his own account of the event.
"I went over after you two did," Nestor said, and looked at me as if waiting for another question.
"Did you jump immediately after us?" I asked.
"No. It took me quite a while to get ready," he said. "Genaro and the Nagual didn't tell me what to do. That day was a test day for all of us."
Pablito seemed despondent. He stood up from his chair and paced the room. He sat down again, shaking his head in a gesture of despair.
"Did you actually see us going over the edge?" I asked Nestor.
"I am the Witness," he said. "To witness was my path of knowledge; to tell you impeccably what I witness is my task."
"But what did you really see?" I asked.
"I saw you two holding each other and running toward the edge," he said. "And then I saw you both like two kites against the sky. Pablito moved farther out in a straight line and then fell down. You went up a little and then you moved away from the edge a short distance, before falling down."
"But, did we jump with our bodies?" I asked.
"Well, I don't think there was another way to do it," he said, and laughed.
"Could it have been an illusion?" I asked.
"What are you trying to say. Maestro?" he asked in a dry tone.
"I want to know what really happened," I said.
"Did you by any chance black out, like Pablito?" Nestor asked with a glint in his eye.
I tried to explain to him the nature of my quandary about the jump. He could not hold still and interrupted me. Pablito intervened to bring him to order and they became involved in an argument. Pablito squeezed himself out of it by walking half seated around the table, holding onto his chair.
"Nestor doesn't see beyond his nose," he said to me. "Benigno is the same. You'll get nothing from them. At least you got my sympathy."
Pablito cackled, making his shoulders shiver, and hid his face with Benigno's hat.
"As far as I'm concerned, you two jumped," Nestor said to me in a sudden outburst. "Genaro and the Nagual had left you with no other choice. That was their art, to corral you and then lead you to the only gate that was open. And so you two went over the edge. That was what I witnessed. Pablito says that he didn't feel a thing; that is questionable. I know that he was perfectly aware of everything, but he chooses to feel and say that he wasn't."
"I really wasn't aware," Pablito said to me in an apologetic tone.
"Perhaps," Nestor said dryly. "But I was aware myself, and I saw your bodies doing what they had to do, jump."
Nestor's assertions put me in a strange frame of mind. All along I had been seeking validation for what I had perceived myself. But once I had it, I realized that it made no difference. To know that I had jumped and to be afraid of what I had perceived was one thing; to seek consensual validation was another. I knew then that one had no necessary correlation with the other. I had thought all along that to have someone else corroborate that I had taken that plunge would absolve my intellect of its doubts and fears. I was wrong. I became instead more worried, more involved with the issue.
I began to tell Nestor that although I had come to see the two of them for the specific purpose of having them confirm that I had jumped, I had changed my mind and I really did not want to talk about it anymore. Both of them started talking at once, and at that point we fell into a three-way argument. Pablito maintained that he had not been aware, Nestor shouted that Pablito was indulging and I said that I didn't want to hear anything more about the jump.
It was blatantly obvious to me for the first time that none of us had calmness and self-control. None of us Was willing to give the other person our undivided attention, the way don Juan and don Genaro did. Since I was incapable of maintaining any order in our exchange of opinions, I immersed myself in my own deliberations. I had always thought that the only flaw that had prevented me from entering fully into don Juan's world was my insistence on rationalizing everything, but the presence of Pablito and Nestor had given me a new insight into myself. Another flaw of mine was my timidity. Once I strayed outside the safe railings of common sense, I could not trust myself and became intimidated by the awesomeness of what unfolded in front of me. Thus, I found it was impossible to believe that I had jumped into an abyss.
Don Juan had insisted that the whole issue of sorcery was perception, and truthful to that, he and don Genaro staged, for our last meeting, an immense, cathartic drama on the flat mountaintop. After they made me voice my thanks in loud clear words to everyone who had ever helped me, I became transfixed with elation. At that point they had caught all my attention and led my body to perceive the only possible act within their frame of references: the jump into the abyss. That jump was the practical accomplishment of my perception, not as an average man but as a sorcerer.
I had been so absorbed in writing down my thoughts I had not noticed that Nestor and Pablito had stopped talking and all three of them were looking at me. I explained to them that there was no way for me to understand what had taken place with that jump.
"There's nothing to understand," Nestor said. "Things just happen and no one can tell how. Ask Benigno if he wants to understand."
"Do you want to understand?" I asked Benigno as a joke.
"You bet I do!" he exclaimed in a deep bass voice, making everyone laugh.
"You indulge in saying that you want to understand," Nestor went on. "Just like Pablito indulges in saying that he doesn't remember anything."
He looked at Pablito and winked at me. Pablito lowered his head.
Nestor asked me if I had noticed something about Pablito's mood when we were about to take our plunge. I had to admit that I had been in no position to notice anything so subtle as Pablito's mood.
"A warrior must notice everything," he said. "That's his trick, and as the Nagual said, there lies his advantage."
He smiled and made a deliberate gesture of embarrassment, hiding his face with his hat.
"What was it that I missed about Pablito's mood?" I asked him.
"Pablito had already jumped before he went over," he said. "He didn't have to do anything. He may as well have sat down on the edge instead of jumping."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"Pablito was already disintegrating," he replied. "That's why he thinks he passed out. Pablito lies. He's hiding something."
Pablito began to speak to me. He muttered some unintelligible words, then gave up and slumped back in his chair. Nestor also started to say something. I made him stop. I was not sure I had understood him correctly.
"Was Pablito's body distegrating?" I asked.
He peered at me for a long time without saying a word. He was sitting to my right. He moved quietly to the bench opposite me.
"You must take what I say seriously," he said. "There is no way to turn back the wheel of time to what we were before that jump. The Nagual said that it is an honor and a pleasure to be a warrior, and that it is the warrior's fortune to do what he has to do. I have to tell you impeccably what I have witnessed. Pablito was disintegrating. As you two ran toward the edge only you were solid. Pablito was like a cloud. He thinks that he was about to fall on his face, and you think that you held him by the arm to help him make it to the edge. Neither of you is correct, and I wouldn't doubt that it would have been better for both of you if you hadn't picked Pablito up."
I felt more confused than ever. I truly believed that he was sincere in reporting what he had perceived, but I remembered that I had only held Pablito's arm.
"What would have happened if I hadn't interfered?" I asked.
"I can't answer that," Nestor replied. "But I know that you affected each other's luminosity. At the moment you put your arm around him, Pablito became more solid, but you wasted your precious power for nothing."
"What did you do after we jumped?" I asked Nestor after a long silence.
"Right after you two had disappeared," he said, "my nerves were so shattered that I couldn't breathe and I too passed out, I don't know for how long. I thought it was only for a moment. When I came to my senses again, I looked around for Genaro and Nagual; they were gone. I ran back and forth on the top of that mountain, calling them until my voice was hoarse. Then I knew I was alone. I walked to the edge of the cliff and tried to look for the sign that the earth gives when a warrior is not going to return, but I had already missed it. I knew then that Genaro and the Nagual were gone forever. I had not realized until then that they had turned to me after they had said good-bye to you two, and as you were running to the edge they waved their hands and said good-bye to me.
"Finding myself alone at that time of day, on that deserted spot, was more than I could bear. In one sweep I had lost all the friends I had in the world. I sat down and wept. And as I got more and more scared I began to scream as loud as I could. I called Genaro's name at the top of my voice. By then it was pitch-black. I could no longer distinguish any landmarks. I knew that as a warrior I had no business indulging in my grief. In order to calm myself down I began to howl like a coyote, the way the Nagual had taught me. After howling for a while I felt so much better that I forgot my sadness. I forgot that the world existed. The more I howled the easier it was to feel the warmth and protection of the earth.
"Hours must have passed. Suddenly I felt a blow inside of me, behind my throat, and the sound of a bell in my cars. I remembered what the Nagual had told Eligio and Benigno before they jumped. He said that the feeling in the throat came just before one was ready to change speed, and that the sound of the bell was the vehicle that one could use to accomplish anything that one needed. I wanted to be a coyote then. I looked at my arms, which were on the ground in front of me. They had changed shape and looked like a coyote's. I saw the coyote's fur on my arms and chest. I was a coyote! That made me so happy that I cried like a coyote must cry. I felt my coyote teeth and my long and pointed muzzle and tongue. Somehow, I knew that I had died, but I didn't care. It didn't matter to me to have turned into a coyote, or to be dead, or to be alive. I walked like a coyote, on four legs, to the edge of the precipice and leaped into it. There was nothing else for me to do.
"I felt that I was falling down and my coyote body turned in the air. Then I was myself again twirling in midair. But before I hit the bottom I became so light that I didn't fall anymore but floated. The air went through me. I was so light! I believed that my death was finally coming inside me. Something stirred my insides and I disintegrated like dry sand. It was peaceful and perfect where I was. I somehow knew that I was there and yet I wasn't. I was nothing. That's all I can say about it. Then, quite suddenly, the same thing that had made me like dry sand put me together again. I came back to life and I found myself sitting in the hut of an old Mazatec sorcerer. He told me his name was Porfirio. He said that he was glad to see me and began to teach me certain things about plants that Genaro hadn't taught me. He took me with him to where the plants were being made and showed me the mold of plants, especially the marks on the molds. He said that if I watched for those marks in the plants I could easily tell what they're good for, even if I had never seen those plants before. Then when he knew that I had learned the marks he said good-bye but invited me to come see him again. At that moment I felt a strong pull and I disintegrated, like before. I became a million pieces.
"Then I was pulled again into myself and went back to see Porfirio. He had, after all, invited me. I knew that I could have gone anywhere I wanted but I chose Porfirio's hut because he was kind to me and taught me. I didn't want to risk finding awful things instead. Porfirio took me this time to see the mold of the animals. There I saw my own nagual animal. We knew each other on sight. Porfirio was delighted to see such friendship. I saw Pablito's and your own nagual too, but they didn't want to talk to me. They seemed sad. I didn't insist on talking to them. I didn't know how you had fared in your jump. I knew that I was dead myself, but my nagual said that I wasn't and that you both were also alive. I asked about Eligio, and my nagual said that he was gone forever. I remembered then that when I had witnessed Eligio's and Benigno's jump I had heard the Nagual giving Benigno instructions not to seek bizarre visions or worlds outside his own. The Nagual told him to learn only about his own world, because in doing so he would find the only form of power available to him. The Nagual gave them specific instructions to let their pieces explode as far as they could in order to restore their strength. I did the same myself. I went back and forth from the tonal to the nagual eleven times. Every time, however, I was received by Porfirio who instructed me further. Every time my strength waned I restored it in the nagual until a time when I restored it so much that I found myself back on this earth."
"Dona Soledad told me that Eligio didn't have to jump into the abyss," I said.
"He jumped with Benigno," Nestor said. "Ask him, he'll tell you in his favorite voice."
I turned to Benigno and asked him about his jump.
"You bet we jumped together!" he replied in a blasting voice. "But I never talk about it."
"What did Soledad say Eligio did?" Nestor asked.
I told them that dona Soledad had said that Eligio was twirled by a wind and left the world while he was working in an open field.
"She's thoroughly confused," Nestor said. "Eligio was twirled by the allies. But he didn't want any of them, so they let him go. That has nothing to do with the jump. La Gorda said that you had a bout with allies last night; I don't know what you did, but if you had wanted to catch them or entice them to stay with you, you had to spin with them. Sometimes they come of their own accord to the sorcerer and spin him. Eligio was the best warrior there was so the allies came to him of their own accord. If any of us want the allies, we would have to beg them for years, and even if we did, I doubt that the allies would consider helping us.
"Eligio had to jump like everybody else. I witnessed his jump. He was paired with Benigno. A lot of what happens to us as sorcerers depends on what your partner does. Benigno is a bit off his rocker because his partner didn't come back. Isn't that so, Benigno?"
"You bet it is!" Benigno answered in his favorite voice.
I succumbed at that point to a great curiosity that had plagued me from the first time I had heard Benigno speak. I asked him how he made his booming voice. He turned to face me. He sat up straight and pointed to his mouth as if he wanted me to look fixedly at it.
"I don't know!" he boomed. "I just open my mouth and this voice comes out of it! "
He contracted the muscles of his forehead, curled up his lips and made a profound booing sound. I then saw that he had tremendous muscles in his temples, which had given his head a different contour. It was not his hairline that was different but the whole upper front part of his head.
"Genaro left him his noises," Nestor said to me. "Wait until he farts."
I had the feeling that Benigno was getting ready to demonstrate his abilities.
"Wait, wait, Benigno," I said, "it's not necessary."
"Oh, shucks!" Benigno exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. "I had the best one just for you."
Pablito and Nestor laughed so hard that even Benigno lost his deadpan expression and cackled with them.
"Tell me what else happened to Eligio," I asked Nestor after they had calmed down again.
"After Eligio and Benigno jumped," Nestor replied, "the Nagual made me look quickly over the edge, in order to catch the sign the earth gives when warriors jump into the abyss. If there is something like a little cloud, or a faint gust of wind, the warrior's time on earth is not over yet. The day Eligio and Benigno jumped I felt one puff of air on the side Benigno had jumped and I knew that his time was not up. But Eligio's side was silent."
"What do you think happened to Eligio? Did he die?"
All three of them stared at me. They were quiet for a moment. Nestor scratched his temples with both hands. Benigno giggled and shook his head. I attempted to explain but Nestor made a gesture with his hands to stop me.
"Are you serious when you ask us questions?" he asked me.
Benigno answered for me. When he was not clowning, his voice was deep and melodious. He said that the Nagual and Genaro had set us up so all of us had pieces of information that the others did not have.
"Well, if that's the case we'll tell you what's what," Nestor said, smiling as if a great load had been lifted off his shoulders. "Eligio did not die. Not at all."
"Where is he now?" I asked.
They looked at one another again. They gave me the feeling that they were struggling to keep from laughing. I told them that all I knew about Eligio was what dona Soledad had told me. She had said that Eligio had gone to the other world to join the Nagual and Genaro. To me that sounded as if the three of them had died.
"Why do you talk like that. Maestro?" Nestor asked with a tone of deep concern. "Not even Pablito talks like that."
I thought Pablito was going to protest. He almost stood up, but he seemed to change his mind.
"Yes, that's right," he said. "Not even I talk like that."
"Well, if Eligio didn't die, where is he?" I asked.
"Soledad already told you," Nestor said softly. "Eligio went to join the Nagual and Genaro."
I decided that it was best not to ask any more questions. I did not mean my probes to be aggressive, but they always turned out that way. Besides, I had the feeling that they did not know much more than I did.
Nestor suddenly stood up and began to pace back and forth in front of me. Finally he pulled me away from the table by my armpits. He did not want me to write. He asked me if I had really blacked out like Pablito had at the moment of jumping and did not remember anything. I told him that I had had a number of vivid dreams or visions that I could not explain and that I had come to see them to seek clarification. They wanted to hear about all the visions I had had.
After they had heard my accounts, Nestor said that my visions were of a bizarre order and only the first two were of great importance and of this earth; the rest were visions of alien worlds. He explained that my first vision was of special value because it was an omen proper. He said that sorcerers always took a first event of any series as the blueprint or the map of what was going to develop subsequently.
In that particular vision I had found myself looking at an outlandish world. There was an enormous rock right in front of my eyes, a rock which had been split in two. Through a wide gap in it I could see a boundless phosphorescent plain, a valley of some sort, which was bathed in a greenish-yellow light. On one side of the valley, to the right, and partially covered from my view by the enormous rock, there was an unbelievable domelike structure. It was dark, almost a charcoal gray. If my size was what it is in the world of everyday life, the dome must have been fifty thousand feet high and miles and miles across. Such an enormity dazzled me. I had a sensation of vertigo and plummeted into a state of disintegration.
Once more I rebounded from it and found myself on a very uneven and yet flat surface. It was a shiny, interminable surface just like the plain I had seen before. It went as far as I could see. I soon realized that I could turn my head in any direction I wanted on a horizontal plane, but I could not look at myself. I was able, however, to examine the surroundings by rotating my head from left to right and vice versa. Nevertheless, when I wanted to turn around to look behind me, I could not move my bulk.
The plain extended itself monotonously, equally to my left and to my right. There was nothing else in sight but an endless, whitish glare. I wanted to look at the ground underneath my feet but my eyes could not move down. I lifted my head up to look at the sky; all I saw was another limitless, whitish surface that seemed to be connected to the one I was standing on. I then had a moment of apprehension and felt that something was just about to be revealed to me. But the sudden and devastating jolt of disintegration stopped my revelation. Some force pulled me downward. It was as if the whitish surface had swallowed me.
Nestor said that my vision of a dome was of tremendous importance because that particular shape had been isolated by the Nagual and Genaro as the vision of the place where all of us were supposed to meet them someday.
Benigno spoke to me at that point and said that he had heard Eligio being instructed to find that particular dome. He said that the Nagual and Genaro insisted that Eligio understand their point correctly. They always had believed Eligio to be the best; therefore, they directed him to find that dome and to enter its whitish vaults over and over again.
Pablito said that all three of them were instructed to find that dome if they could, but that none of them had. I said then, in a complaining tone, that neither don Juan nor don Genaro had ever mentioned anything like that to me. I had had no instruction of any sort regarding a dome.
Benigno, who was sitting across the table from me, suddenly stood up and came to my side. He sat to my left and whispered very softly in my ear that perhaps the two old men had instructed me but I did not remember, or that they had not said anything about it so I would not fix my attention on it once I had found it.
"Why was the dome so important?" I asked Nestor.
"Because that's where the Nagual and Genaro are now," he replied.
"And where's that dome?" I asked.
"Somewhere on this earth," he said.
I had to explain to them at great length that it was impossible that a structure of that magnitude could exist on our planet. I said that my vision was more like a dream and domes of that height could exist only in fantasies. They laughed and patted me gently as if they were humoring a child.
"You want to know where Eligio is," Nestor said all of a sudden. "Well, he is in the white vaults of that dome with the Nagual and Genaro."
"But that dome was a vision," I protested.
"Then Eligio is in a vision," Nestor said. "Remember what Benigno just said to you. The Nagual and Genaro didn't tell you to find that dome and go back to it over and over. If they had, you wouldn't be here. You'd be like Eligio, in the dome of that vision. So you see, Eligio did not die like a man in the street dies. He simply did not return from his jump."
His claim was staggering to me. I could not brush aside the memory of the vividness of the visions I had had, but for some strange reason I wanted to argue with him. Nestor, without giving me time to say anything, drove his point a notch further. He reminded me of one of my visions: the next to the last. That particular one had been the most nightmarish of them all. I had found myself being chased by a strange, unseen creature. I knew that it was there but I could not see it, not because it was invisible but because the world I was in was so incredibly unfamiliar that I could not tell what anything was. Whatever the elements of my vision were, they were certainly not from this earth. The emotional distress I experienced upon being lost in such a place was almost more than I could bear. At one moment, the surface where I stood began to shake. I felt that it was caving in under my feet and I grabbed a sort of branch, or an appendage of a thing that reminded me of a tree, which was hanging just above my head on a horizontal plane. The instant I touched it, the thing wrapped around my wrist, as if had been filled with nerves that sensed everything. I felt that I was being hoisted to a tremendous height. I looked down and saw an incredible animal; I knew it was the unseen creature that had been chasing me. It was coming out of a surface that looked like the ground. I could see its enormous mouth open like a cavern. I heard a chilling, thoroughly unearthly roar, something like a shrill, metallic gasp, and the tentacle that had me caught unraveled and I fell into that cavernous mouth, I saw every detail of that mouth as I was falling into it. Then it closed with me inside. I felt an instantaneous pressure that mashed my body.
"You have already died," Nestor said. "That animal ate you. You ventured beyond this world and found horror itself. Our life and our death are no more and no less real than your short life in that place and your death in the mouth of that monster. This life that we are having now is only a long vision. Don't you see?"
Nervous spasms ran through my body.
"I didn't go beyond this world," he went on, "but I know what I'm talking about. I don't have tales of horror like you. All I did was to visit Porfirio ten times. If it had been up to me I would've gone there forever, but my eleventh bounce was so powerful that it changed my direction. I felt that I had overshot Porfirio's hut, and instead of finding myself at his door, I found myself in the city, very close to the place of a friend of mine. I thought it was funny. I knew that I was journeying between the tonal and the nagual. Nobody had said to me that the journeys had to be of any special kind. So I got curious and decided to see my friend. I began to wonder if I really would get to see him. I came to his house and knocked on the door just as I had knocked scores of times. His wife let me in as she had always done and sure enough my friend was home. I told him that I had come to the city on business and he even paid me some money he owed me. I put the money in my pocket. I knew that my friend, and his wife, and the money, and his house, and the city were just like Porfirio's hut, a vision. I knew that a force beyond me was going to disintegrate me any moment. So I sat down to enjoy my friend to the fullest. We laughed and joked. And I dare say that I was funny and light and charming. I stayed there for a long time, waiting for the jolt; since it didn't come I decided to leave. I said good-bye and thanked him for the money and for his friendship. I walked away. I wanted to see the city before the force took me away. I wandered around all night. I walked all the way to the hills overlooking the city, and at the moment the sun rose a realization struck me like a thunderbolt. I was back in the world and the force that will disintegrate me was at ease and was going to let me stay for a while. I was going to see my homeland and this marvelous earth for a while longer. What a great joy. Maestro! But I couldn't say that I had not enjoyed Porfirio's friendship. Both visions are equal, but I prefer the vision of my form and my earth. It's my indulging perhaps."
Nestor stopped talking and all of them stared at me. I felt threatened as I had never been before. Some part of me was in awe of what he had said, another wanted to fight with him. I began to argue with him without any sense. My inane mood lasted for a few moments, then I became aware that Benigno was looking at me with a very mean expression. He had fixed his eyes on my chest. I felt that something ominous was suddenly pressing on my heart. I began to perspire as if a heater were right in front of my face. My ears began to buzz.
La Gorda walked up to me at that precise moment. She was a most unexpected sight. I was sure that the Genaros felt the same way. They stopped what they were doing and looked at her. Pablito was the first to recover from his surprise.
"Why do you have to come in like that?" he asked in a pleading tone. "You were listening from the other room, weren't you?"
She said that she had been in the house only a few minutes and then she stepped out to the kitchen. And the reason she stayed quiet was not so much to listen but to exercise her ability to be inconspicuous. Her presence had created a strange lull. I wanted to pick up again the flow of Nestor's revelations, but before I could say anything la Gorda said that the little sisters were on their way to the house and would be coming through the door any minute. The Genaros stood up at once as if they had been pulled by the same string. Pablito put his chair on his shoulder.
"Let's go for a hike in the dark. Maestro," Pablito said to me.
La Gorda said in a most imperative tone that I could not go with them yet because she had not finished telling me everything the Nagual had instructed her to tell me.
Pablito turned to me and winked.
"I've told you," he said. "They're bossy, gloomy bitches. I certainly hope you're not like that. Maestro."
Nestor and Benigno said good night and embraced me. Pablito just walked away carrying his chair like a backpack. They went out through the back.
A few seconds later a horribly loud bang on the front door made la Gorda and me jump to our feet. Pablito walked in again, carrying his chair.
"You thought I wasn't going to say good night, didn't you?" he asked me and left laughing.