The Second Ring of Power (13 page)

It was time to adopt a new course of action. Lidia had said that I could
help Rosa and dona
Soledad
with the same force that had
caused them injury; the problem, therefore, was to get the
right
sequence of feelings, or thoughts, or whatever, that led my body to unleash
that force. I took
Rosa
's hand and rubbed it. I willed it to
be cured. I had only the best feelings for her. I caressed
her
hand and hugged her for a long time. I rubbed her head and she fell asleep on
my shoulder but
there was no change in the redness or the swelling.

Lidia watched me without saying a word. She smiled at me. I wanted to
tell her that I was a
fiasco as a healer. Her eyes seemed to
catch my mood and they held it until it froze.

Rosa
wanted to sleep. She was either dead tired or ill. I did
not want to find out which. I
picked her up in my arms; she was
lighter than I would have imagined. I took her to don Juan's
bed
and gently placed her on it. Lidia covered her. The room was very dark. I
looked out of the
window and saw a cloudless sky filled with stars. Up
to that moment I had been oblivious to the
fact that we
were at a very high altitude.

As I looked at the sky, I felt a surge of optimism. Somehow the stars
looked festive to me. The
southeast was indeed a lovely direction
to face.

I had a sudden urge that I felt obliged to satisfy. I wanted to see how
different the view of the
sky was from dona Soledad's window,
which faced the north. I took Lidia by the hand with the
intention
of leading her there, but a ticklish sensation on top of my head stopped me. It
went like a ripple down my back to my waist, and from there it went to the pit
of my stomach. I sat down on the mat. I made an effort to think about my
feelings. It seemed that at the very moment I had
felt the
tickling on my head my thoughts had diminished in strength and number. I tried,
but I
could not involve myself in the usual mental process that
I call thinking.

My mental deliberations made me oblivious to Lidia. She had knelt on
the floor, facing me. I
became aware that her enormous eyes
were scrutinizing me from a few inches away. I
automatically
took her hand again and walked to dona Soledad's room. As we reached the door I
felt her whole body stiffening. I had to pull her. I was about to cross
the threshold when I caught
sight of the bulky, dark mass of a
human body huddled against the wall opposite the door. The
sight
was so unexpected that I gasped and let go of Lidia's hand. It was dona Soledad. She was
resting her head against the wall. I turned to Lidia. She
had recoiled a couple of steps. I wanted to
whisper that
dona Soledad had returned, but there were no sounds to my words although I was
sure I had vocalized them. I would have tried to talk again had it not been
that I had an urge to
act. It was as if words took too much
time and I had very little of it. I stepped into the room and walked over to
dona Soledad. She appeared to be in great pain. I squatted by her side, and
rather
than asking her anything, I lifted her face to look at
her. I saw something on her forehead; it
looked like
the plaster of leaves that she had made for herself. It was dark, viscous to
the touch. I
felt the imperative need to peel it off her forehead. In
a very bold fashion I grabbed her head, tilled it back and yanked the plaster
off. It was like peeling off rubber. She did not move or
complain
about pain. Underneath the plaster there was a yellowish-green blotch. It
moved, as if it
were alive or imbued with energy. I looked at it
for a moment, unable to do anything. I poked it
with my finger
and it stuck to it like glue. I did not panic as I ordinarily would have; I
rather liked
the stuff. I stirred it with the tips of my fingers and
all of it came off her forehead. I stood up. The
gooey substance
felt warm. It was like a sticky paste for an instant and then it dried up
between
my fingers and on the palm of my hand. I then felt
another jolt of apprehension and ran to don
Juan's room. I
grabbed Rosa's arm and wiped the same fluorescent, yellowish-green stuff from
her
hand that I had wiped from dona Soledad's forehead.

My heart was pounding so hard that I could hardly stand on my feet. I
wanted to lie down, but
something in me pushed me to the window
and made me jog on the spot.

I cannot recall how long I jogged there. Suddenly I felt that someone
was wiping my neck and
shoulders. I became aware then that I
was practically nude, perspiring profusely. Lidia had a cloth
around
my shoulders and was wiping the sweat off my face. My normal thought processes
came
back to me all at once. I looked around the room. Rosa was sound asleep. I ran to dona Soledad's room. I expected to find her also asleep,
but there was no one there. Lidia had trailed behind me. I
told
her what had happened. She rushed to Rosa and woke her up while I put on my
clothes. Rosa
did not want to wake up. Lidia grabbed her injured hand
and squeezed it. In one single, springing
movement Rosa stood up and was fully awake.

They began to rush around the house turning off the lanterns. They
seemed to be getting ready to run away. I wanted to ask them why they were in
such a hurry, when I realized that I had
dressed in a
great hurry myself. We were rushing together; not only that, but they seemed to
be
waiting for direct commands from me.

We ran out of the house carrying all the packages I had brought. Lidia
had advised me not to leave any of them behind; I had not yet assigned them and
they still belonged to me. I threw them
in the back
seat of the car while the two girls crammed into the front. I started the car
and backed up slowly, finding my way in the darkness.

Once we were on the road I was brought face to face with the most
pressing issue. Both of
them said in unison that I was the
leader; their actions were dependent on my decisions. I was the
Nagual.
We could not just run out of the house and drive away aimlessly. I had to guide
them.
But the truth was that I had no idea where to go or what
to do. I turned casually to look at them. The headlights cast a glare inside
the car and their eyes were like mirrors that reflected it. I remembered that
don Juan's eyes did the same; they seemed to reflect more light than the eyes
of an average person.

I knew that the two girls were aware of my impasse. Rather than making a
joke about it in
order to cover up my incapacity, I bluntly put the
responsibility of a solution in their laps. I said
that I lacked
practice as the Nagual and would appreciate it if they would oblige me with a
suggestion
or a hint as to where we should go. They seemed disgusted with me. They clicked
their tongues and shook their heads. I mentally shuffled through
various courses of action, none of which was feasible, such as driving them to
town, or taking them to Nestor's house, or even
taking them to Mexico City.

I stopped the car. I was driving toward town. I wanted more than
anything else in the world to
have a heart-to-heart talk with the
girls. I opened my mouth to begin, but they turned away from
me,
faced each other and put their arms around each other's shoulders. That
appeared to be an
indication that they had locked themselves in and
were not listening to me.

My frustration was enormous. What I craved for at that moment was don
Juan's mastery over any situation at hand, his intellectual companionship, his
humor. Instead I was in the company of
two
nincompoops.

I caught a gesture of dejection in Lidia's face and that stopped my
avalanche of self-pity. I
became overtly aware, for the first
time, that there was no end to our mutual disappointment. Obviously they too
were accustomed, although in a different manner, to the mastery of don Juan.
For
them the shift from the Nagual himself to me must have been disastrous.

I sat for a long while with the motor running. Then all at once I again
had a bodily shiver that
started on the top of my head as a
ticklish sensation and I knew then what had happened when I
had
entered dona Soledad's room awhile before. I had not seen her in an ordinary
sense. What I
had thought was dona Soledad huddled against the wall was
in fact the memory of her leaving her
body the instant after I had
hit her. I also knew that when I touched that gooey, phosphorescent
substance
I had cured her, and that it was some sort of energy I had left in her head and
in Rosa's hand with my blows.

A vision of a particular ravine went through my mind. I became
convinced that dona Soledad
and la Gorda were there. My knowledge
was not a mere conjecture, it was rather a truth that
needed no further corroboration. La
Gorda had taken dona Soledad to the bottom of that
particular ravine and was at that precise moment attempting to cure
her. I wanted to tell her that it
was
wrong to treat the swelling in dona Soledad's forehead and that there was no
longer a need
for them to stay there.

I described my vision to the girls. Both of them told me, the way don
Juan used to tell me, not
to indulge. With him, however, that
reaction was more congruous. I had never really minded his
criticisms
or scorn, but the two girls were in a different league. I felt insulted.

"I'll take you home," I said. "Where do you live?"

Lidia turned to me and in a most furious tone said that both of them
were my wards and that I
had to deliver them to safety, since
at the request of the Nagual they had relinquished their
freedom
to act in order to help me.

I had a fit of anger at that point. I wanted to slap the two girls, but
then I felt the curious shiver
running through my body once more. It
started again as a tickling on top of my head which went
down
my back until it reached my umbilical region, and then I knew where they lived.
The ticklishness was like a shield, a soft, warm sheet of film. I could sense
it physically, covering the
area between my pubis and the edge of
my rib cage. My wrath disappeared and was replaced by a strange sobriety, an
aloofness, and at the same time a desire to laugh. I knew then of something
transcendental.
Under the impact of dona Soledad and the little sisters' actions, my body had
suspended
judgment; I had, in don Juan's terms,
stopped the world
. I had
amalgamated two
disassociated sensations. The ticklishness on the
very top of my head and the dry cracking sound
at the base of
my neck: between them lay the means to that suspension of judgment.

As I sat in my car with those two girls, on the side of a deserted
mountain road, I knew for a
fact that for the first time I had had
a complete awareness of
stopping the world
. That feeling
brought
to my mind the memory of another, similar, first-time bodily awareness I had
had years before. It had to do with the ticklishness on top of the head. Don
Juan said that sorcerers had to
cultivate such a sensation and he
described it at great length. According to him, it was a sort of
itching,
which was neither pleasurable nor painful, and which occurred on the very top
of one's
head. In order to make me aware of it, on an intellectual
level, he described and analyzed its features and then, on the practical side,
he attempted to guide me in developing the necessary
bodily
awareness and memory of this feeling by making me run under branches or rocks
that
protruded on a horizontal plane a few inches above my
height.

For years I tried to follow what he was pointing out to me, but on the
one hand I was incapable
of understanding what he meant by his
description, and on the other hand I was incapable of
providing my
body with the adequate memory by following his pragmatic steps. Never did I
feel
anything on top of my head as I ran underneath the
branches or rocks he had selected for his
demonstrations.
But one day my body by itself discovered the sensation while I was driving a
high
panel truck into a three-story parking structure. I entered the gate of the
structure at the same
speed I usually did in my small,
two-door sedan; the result was that from the high seat of the
truck
I perceived the transverse cement beam of the roof coming at my head. I could
not stop the
truck in time and the feeling I got was that the cement
beam was scalping me. I had never driven
a motor vehicle
which was as high as that truck, thus I was incapable of making the necessary
perceptual
adjustments. The space between the roof of the truck and the roof of the
parking
structure seemed nonexistent for me. I felt the beam with
my scalp.