The Second Ring of Power (12 page)

Both of them talked to me at once and guaranteed in various ways that
no one was going to attempt anything against me as dona Soledad had. Both of
them had such a fierce look of honesty
in their eyes
that my body was overwhelmed. I trusted them.

"You must stay until la Gorda comes back," Lidia said.

"The Nagual said that you should sleep in his bed," Rosa added.

I began to pace the floor in the throes of a weird dilemma. On the one
hand, I wanted to stay
and rest; I felt physically at ease and
happy in their presence, something I had not felt the day before with dona Soledad. My reasonable side, on the other hand, had not relaxed at all. At that level, I
was as frightened as I had been all along. I had had moments of blind despair
and had taken bold actions, but after the momentum of those actions had ceased,
I had felt as vulnerable
as ever.

I engaged in some soul-searching analysis as I paced the room almost
frantically. The two
girls remained quiet, looking at me
anxiously. Then all of a sudden the riddle was solved; I knew
that
something in me was just pretending to be afraid. I had become accustomed to
reacting that
way in don Juan's presence. Throughout the years of our
association I had relied heavily on him
to furnish me
with convenient pacifiers for my fright. My dependency on him had given me
solace
and security. But it was no longer tenable. Don Juan was gone. His apprentices
did not
have his patience, or his sophistication, or his sheer
command. With them my need to seek solace
was plain
stupidity.

The girls led me to the other room. The window faced the southeast, and
so did the bed, which was a thick mat, like a mattress. A two-foot-long, bulky
piece of maguey stalk had been carved so
that the
porous tissue served as a pillow, or a neckrest. In the middle part of it there
was a gentle
dip. The surface of the maguey was very smooth. It
appeared to have been hand rubbed. I tried
the bed and
the pillow. The comfort and bodily satisfaction I experienced were unusual.
Lying on
don Juan's bed I felt secure and fulfilled. An unequaled
peace swept through my body. I had had a
similar feeling
once before when don Juan had made a bed for me on top of a hill in the desert
in
northern Mexico. I fell asleep.

I woke up in the early evening. Lidia and Rosa were nearly on top of me,
sound asleep. I
stayed motionless for one or two seconds, then both
of them woke up at once.

Lidia yawned and said that they had had to sleep next to me in order to
protect me and make me rest. I was famished. Lidia sent Rosa to the kitchen to
make us some food. In the meantime
she lit all the lanterns in the
house. When the food was ready we sat down at the table. I felt as if I had
known them or been with them all my life. We ate in silence.

When Rosa was clearing the table I asked Lidia if all of them slept in
the Nagual's bed; it was
the only other bed in the house besides
dona Soledad's. Lidia said, in a matter-of-fact tone, that
they
had moved out of that house years before to a place of their own in the same
vicinity, and
that Pablito had also moved when they did and lived with
Nestor and Benigno.

"But what's happened to you people? I thought that you were all
together," I said.

"Not anymore," Lidia replied. "Since the Nagual left we
have had separate tasks. The Nagual
joined us and the Nagual took us
apart."

"And where's the Nagual now?" I asked in the most casual tone
I could affect.

Both of them looked at me and then glanced at each other.

"Oh, we don't know," Lidia said. "He and Genaro
left."

She seemed to be telling the truth, but I insisted once more that they
tell me what they knew.

"We really don't know anything," Lidia snapped at me,
obviously flustered by my questions.
"They moved to another
area. You have to ask that question of la Gorda. She has something to tell you.
She knew yesterday that you had come and we rushed all night to get here. We
were
afraid that you were dead. The Nagual told us that you
are the only one we should help and trust.
He said that
you are himself."

She covered her face and giggled and then added as an afterthought,
"But that's hard to
believe."

"We don't know you," Rosa said. "That's the trouble. The
four of us feel the same way. We
were afraid that you were dead and
then when we saw you, we got mad at you for not being dead.
Soledad
is
like our mother; maybe more than that."

They exchanged conspiratorial looks with each other. I immediately
interpreted that as a sign of trouble. They were up to no good. Lidia noticed
my sudden distrust, which must have been
written all
over my face. She reacted with a series of assertions about their desire to help
me. I
really had no reason to doubt their sincerity. If they
had wanted to hurt me they could have done
so while I was
asleep. She sounded so earnest that I felt petty. I decided to distribute the
gifts I
had brought for them. I told them that there were
unimportant trinkets in the packages and that
they could
choose any one they liked. Lidia said that they would prefer it if I assigned
the gifts
myself. In a very polite tone she added that they would
be grateful if I would also cure Soledad.

"What do you think I should do to cure her?" I asked her after
a long silence.

"Use your
double
," she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

I carefully went over the fact that dona Soledad had nearly assassinated
me and that I had survived by the grace of something in me, which was neither
my skill nor my knowledge. As far
as I was concerned that
undefined something that seemed to have delivered a blow to her was
real,
but unreachable. In short, I could not help dona Soledad any more than I could
walk to the
moon.

They listened to me attentively and remained quiet but agitated.

"Where is dona Soledad now?" I asked Lidia.

"She's with la Gorda," she said in a despondent tone.
"La Gorda took her away and is trying to
cure her, but
we really don't know where they are. That's the truth."

"And where's Josefina?"

"She went to get the Witness. He is the only one who can cure Soledad. Rosa thinks that you know more than the Witness, but since you're angry with Soledad, you want her dead. We don't
blame you."

I assured them that I was not angry with her, and above all I did not
want her dead.

"Cure her, then!" Rosa said in an angry, high-pitched voice.
"The Witness has told us that you
always know
what to do, and the Witness can't be wrong."

"And who in the devil is the Witness?"

"Nestor is the Witness," Lidia said as if she were reluctant
to voice his name. "You know that.
You have
to."

I remembered that during our last meeting don Genaro had called Nestor
the Witness. I
thought at the time that the name was a joke or a
ploy that don Genaro was using to ease the
gripping
tension and the anguish of those last moments together.

"That was no joke," Lidia said in a firm tone. "Genaro
and the Nagual followed a different path with the Witness. They took him along
with them everywhere they went. And I mean
everywhere! The
Witness has witnessed all there is to witness."

Obviously there was a tremendous misunderstanding between us. I labored
to explain that I
was practically a stranger to them. Don Juan had
kept me away from everyone, including Pablito
and Nestor.
Outside of the casual hellos and goodbyes that all of them had exchanged with
me
over the years, we had never actually talked. I knew all
of them mainly through the descriptions that don Juan had given me. Although I
had once met Josefina I could not remember what she looked like, and all I had
ever seen of la Gorda was her gigantic behind. I said to them that I had
not
even known, until the day before, that the four of them were don Juan's
apprentices, and that
Benigno was part of the group as well.

They exchanged a coy look with each other. Rosa moved her lips to say
something but Lidia
gave her a command with her feet. I felt that after
my long and soulful explanation they should
not still
sneak messages to each other. My nerves were so taut that their covert foot
movements
were just the thing to send me into a rage. I yelled at
them at the top of my lungs and banged on
the table with
my right hand. Rosa stood up with unbelievable speed, and I suppose as a
response
to her sudden movement, my body, by itself, without the
notice of my reason, moved a step back, just in time to avoid by inches a blow
from a massive stick or some heavy object that Rosa was
wielding
in her left hand. It came down on the table with a thunderous noise.

I heard again, as I had heard the night before while dona Soledad was
choking me, a most
peculiar and mysterious sound, a dry sound like a
pipe breaking, right behind my windpipe at the
base of my
neck. My ears popped, and with the speed of lightning my left arm came down on
top of Rosa's stick and crushed it. I saw the whole scene myself, as if I had
been watching a movie.

Rosa
screamed and I realized then that I had leaned forward
with all my weight and had struck
the back of her hand with my
left fist. I was appalled. Whatever was happening to me was not
real.
It was a nightmare. Rosa kept on screaming. Lidia took her into don Juan's
room. I heard her
yells of pain for a few moments longer and then they stopped. I sat down
at the table. My
thoughts were disassociated
and incoherent.

The peculiar sound at the base of my neck was something I had become
keenly aware of. Don Juan had described it as the sound one makes at the moment
of changing speed. I had the faint
recollection of having
experienced it in his company. Although I had become aware of it the
previous
night, I had not fully acknowledged it until it happened with Rosa. I realized
then that
the sound had created a special sensation of heat on the
roof of my mouth and inside my ears. The
force and
dryness of the sound made me think of the peal of a large, cracked bell.

Lidia returned awhile later. She seemed more calm and collected. She
even smiled. I asked her to please help me unravel that riddle and tell me what
had happened. After a long vacillation she
told me that when I had yelled and
banged on the table Rosa got excited and nervous, and believing I was going to
hurt them, she had tried to strike me with her "dream hand." I had
dodged her blow and hit her on the back of her
hand, the same way I had struck dona Soledad.
Lidia said that Rosa's hand would be useless unless I found a way to
help her.

Rosa
walked into the room then. Her arm was wrapped with a
piece of cloth. She looked at
me. Her eyes were like those of a
child. My feelings were at the height of turmoil. Some part of
me
felt ugly and guilty. But again another part remained unruffled. Had it not
been for that part I
would not have survived either dona Soledad's attack or Rosa's devastating blow.

After a long silence I told them that it was very petty of me to be
annoyed by their foot
messages, but that there was no
comparison between yelling or banging on the table and what
Rosa
had
done. In view of the fact that I had no familiarity with their practices, she
could have
severed my arm with her blow.

I demanded, in a very intimidating tone, to see her hand. She
reluctantly unwrapped it. It was
swollen and red. There was no doubt
left in my mind that these people were carrying out some
sort
of test that don Juan had set up for me. By confronting them I was being hurled
into a realm
which was impossible to reach or accept in rational
terms. He had said time and time again that
my rationality
comprised only a very small part of what he had called the totality of oneself.
Under the impact of the unfamiliar and the altogether real danger of my
physical annihilation, my body had had to make use of its hidden resources, or
die. The trick seemed to be in the truthful
acceptance of
the possibility that such resources exist and can be reached. The years of training
had been but the steps to arrive to that acceptance. Truthful to his
premise of no compromise, don
Juan had aimed at a total victory or a
total defeat for me. If the training had failed to put me in
contact
with my hidden resources, the test would have made it evident, in which case
there would
have been very little I could have done. Don Juan had
said to dona Soledad that I would have
killed myself.
Being such a profound connoisseur of human nature, he was probably right.