The Active Side of Infinity (8 page)

"My goodness! Is that so?" he said, as if my words were an
explanation that he had wanted to
hear. "And now, may I ask
you, if you don't mind, how big is your grant? How much money did
they
give you?"

"A few thousand dollars to do preliminary fieldwork," I lied
again, to see what he would say.

"Ah! I like people who are direct," he said, relishing his
words. "I am sure that you and I are going to reach an agreement. I offer
you my services as a guide and as a key that can open many
secret
doors among the Yaquis. As you can see by my general appearance, I am a man of
taste
and
means."

"Oh, yes, definitely you are a man of good taste," I asserted.
"What I am saying to you," he
said, "is
that for a small fee, which you will find most reasonable, I will steer you to
the right
people, people to whom you could ask any question you
want. And for some very little more, I
will translate
their words to you, verbatim, into Spanish or English. I can also speak French
and
German, but I have the feeling that those languages do
not interest you."

"You are right, you are so very right," I said. "Those
languages don't interest me at all. But
how much would
your fees be?"

"Ah! My fees!" he said, and took a leather-covered notebook
out of his back pocket and
flipped it open in front of my face;
he scribbled quick notes on it, flipped it closed again, and put
it
in his pocket with precision and speed. I was sure that he wanted to give me
the impression of
being efficient and fast at calculating figures.

"I will charge you fifty dollars a day," he said, "with
transportation, plus my meals. I mean,
when you eat, I
eat. What do you say?"

At that moment, he leaned over to me and, almost in a whisper, said that
we should shift into English because he didn't want people to know the nature
of our transactions. He began to speak
to me then in
something that wasn't English at all. I was at a loss. I didn't know how to
respond. I
began to fret nervously as the man kept on talking
gibberish with the most natural air. He didn't
bat an eyelash.
He moved his hands in a very animated fashion and pointed around him as if he
were
instructing me. I didn't have the impression that he was speaking in tongues; I
thought
perhaps he was speaking the Yaqui language.

When people came around our table and looked at us, I nodded and said to
Jorge Campos,
"Yes, yes, indeed." At one point I said,
"You could say that again," and this sounded so funny to
me
that I broke into a belly laugh. He also laughed heartily, as if I had said the
funniest thing
possible.

He must have noticed that I was finally at my wits' end, and before I
could get up and tell him to get lost, he started to speak Spanish again.

"I don't want to tire you with my silly observations," he
said. "But if I'm going to be your
guide, as I
think I am going to be, we will be spending long hours chatting. I was testing
you just
now, to see if you are a good conversationalist. If I'm
going to spend time with you driving, I
need someone by
me who could be a good receptor and initiator. I'm glad to tell you that you
are
both."

Then he stood up, shook my hand, and left. As if on cue, the owner came
to my table, smiling
and shaking his head from side to side
like a little bear.

"Isn't he a fabulous guy?" he asked me.

I didn't want to commit myself to a statement, and Mr. Reyes
volunteered that Jorge Campos
was at that moment a go-between in an
extremely delicate and profitable transaction. He said that
some
mining companies in the United States were interested in the iron and copper
deposits that
belonged to the Yaqui Indians, . and that Jorge Campos
was there, in line to collect perhaps a
five-million-dollar
fee. I knew then that Jorge Campos was a con man. There were no iron or
copper deposits on the
lands owned by the Yaqui Indians. If there had been any, private
enterprises would have already moved the Yaquis
out of those lands and relocated them
somewhere
else. •

"He's fabulous," I said. "Most wonderful guy I ever met.
How can I get in touch with him
again?"

"Don't worry about that," Mr. Reyes said. "Jorge asked me
all about you. He has been
watching you since you came. He'll
probably come and knock on your door later today or
tomorrow."

Mr. Reyes was right. A couple of hours later, somebody woke me from my
afternoon nap. It
was Jorge Campos. I had intended to leave Guaymas
in the early evening and drive, all night, to
California
. I
explained to him that I was leaving, but that I would come back in a month or
so.

"Ah! But you must stay now that I have decided to be your guide,"
he said.

"I'm sorry, but we will have to wait for this because my time is
very limited now," I replied.
I knew that Jorge Campos was a
crook, yet I decided to reveal to him that I already had an
informant
who was waiting to work
with me, and that I had met him in Arizona. I described the old man and said that his name
was Juan
Matus, and that other people had characterized him as a shaman. Jorge Campos
smiled
at me broadly. I asked him if he knew the old man.

"Ah, yes, I know him," he said jovially. "You may say
that we are good friends." Without
being invited,
Jorge Campos came into the room and sat down at the table just inside the
balcony.
"Does he live around here?" I asked.

"He certainly does," he assured me.

"Would you take me to him?"

"I don't see why not," he said. "I would need a couple
of days to make my own inquiries, just
to make sure
that he is there, and then we will go and see him."

I knew that he was lying, yet I didn't want to believe it. I even
thought that my initial distrust
had perhaps been ill-founded. He seemed
so convincing at that moment.

"However," he continued, "in order to take you to see
the man, I will charge you a flat fee. My
honorarium will
be two hundred dollars."

That amount was more than I had at my disposal. I politely declined and
said that I didn't have
enough money with me.

"I don't want to appear mercenary," he said with his most
winning smile, "but how much
money can you afford? You must
take into consideration that I have to do a little bribing. The
Yaqui
Indians are very private, but there are always ways; there are always doors
that open with a
magical key-money."

In spite of all my misgivings, I was convinced that Jorge Campos was my
entry not only into
the Yaqui world but to finding the old man who had
intrigued me so much. I didn't want to haggle
over money. I
was almost embarrassed to offer him the fifty dollars I had in my pocket.

"I am at the end of my stay here," I said as a sort of
apology, "so I have nearly run out of
money. I have
only fifty dollars left."

Jorge Campos stretched his long legs under the table and crossed his
arms behind his head,
tipping his hat over his face.

"I'll take your fifty dollars and your watch," he said
shamelessly. "But for that money, I will
take you to
meet a minor shaman. Don't get impatient," he warned me, as if 1 were
going to
protest. "We must step carefully up the ladder,
from the lower ranks to the man himself, who I assure you is at the very
top."

"And when could I meet this minor shaman?" I asked, handing him
the money and my watch.
"Right now!" he replied as he
sat up straight and eagerly grabbed the money and the watch.
"Let's
go! There's not a minute to waste!"

We got into my car and he directed me to head off for the town of Potam, one of the
traditional Yaqui towns along the Yaqui River. As we drove, he revealed to me that we were
going to meet Lucas Coronado, a
man who was known for his sorcery feats, his shamanistic
trances,
and for the magnificent masks that he made for the Yaqui festivities of Lent.

Then he shifted the conversation to the old man, and what he said was in
total contradiction to what others had said to me about the man. While they had
described him as a hermit and retired shaman, Jorge Campos portrayed him as the
most prominent curer and sorcerer of the area, a man
whose fame had
turned him into a nearly inaccessible figure. He paused, like an actor, and
then
he
delivered his blow: He said that to talk to the old man on a steady basis, the
way
anthropologists like to do, was going to
cost me at least two thousand dollars.

I was going to protest such a drastic hike in price, but he anticipated
me.

"For
two hundred dollars, I could take you to him," he said. "Out of those
two hundred
dollars, I would clear about
thirty. The rest would go for bribes. But to talk to him at length will cost
more. You yourself could figure that out. He has actual bodyguards, people who
protect him.
I have to sweet-talk
them and come up with dough for them.

"In the end," he continued, "I will give you a total account
with receipts and everything for
your taxes. Then you will know that my
commission for setting it all up is minimal."

I felt a wave of admiration for him. He was aware of everything, even
receipts for income tax. He was quiet for a while, as if calculating his
minimal profit. I had nothing to say. I was busy
calculating
myself, trying to figure out a way to get two thousand dollars. I even thought
of really
applying for a grant.

"But are you sure the old man would talk to me?" I asked.

"Of course," he assured me. "Not only would he talk to
you, he's going to perform sorcery for
you, for what
you pay him. Then you could work out an agreement with him as to how much you
could
pay him for further lessons."

Jorge Campos kept silent again for a while, peering into my eyes.

"Do you think that you could pay me the two thousand
dollars?" he asked in a tone so
purposefully indifferent that I
instantly knew it was a sham.

"Oh, yes, I can easily afford that," I lied reassuringly.

He could not disguise his glee.

"Good boy! Good boy!" he cheered. "We're going to have a
ball!"

I tried to ask him some general questions about the old man; he
forcefully cut me off. "Save
all this for the man himself.
He'll be all yours," he said, smiling.

He began to tell me then about his life in the United States and about his business aspirations,
and to my utter bewilderment,
since I had already classified him as a phony who didn't speak a
word
of English, he shifted into English.

"You
do
speak English!" 1 exclaimed without any attempt
at hiding my surprise.

"Of course 1 do, my boy," he said, affecting a Texan accent,
which he carried on for the
duration of our conversation. "I
told you, I wanted to test you, to see if you are resourceful. You are. In
fact, you are quite clever, I may say."

His command of English was superb, and he delighted me with jokes and
stories. In no time at
all, we were in Potam. He directed me
to a house on the outskirts of town. We got out of the car.
He
led the way, calling loudly in Spanish for Lucas Coronado.

We heard a voice from the back of the house that said, also in Spanish,
"Come over here."

There was a man behind a small shack, sitting on the ground, on a
goatskin. He was holding a
piece of wood with his bare feet while
he worked on it with a chisel and a mallet. By holding the
piece of wood in place
with the pressure of his feet, he had fashioned a stupendous potter's
turning wheel, so to speak. His feet turned the
piece as his hands worked the chisel. I had never
seen anything like this in my life. He was making
a mask, hollowing it with a curved chisel. His
control of his feet in holding the wood and turning it around was
remarkable.

The man was very thin; he had a thin face with angular features, high
cheekbones, and a dark,
copperish complexion. The skin of his
face and neck seemed to be stretched to the maximum. He
sported
a thin, droopy mustache that gave his angular face a malevolent slant. He had
an aquiline
nose with a very thin bridge, and fierce black eyes. His
extremely black eyebrows appeared as if they had been drawn on with a pencil,
and so did his jet black hair, combed backward on his head. I had never seen a
more hostile face. The image that came to mind looking at him was that of an
Italian poisoner of the era of the Medicis. The words "truculent" and
"saturnine" seemed to be the most apt descriptions when I focused my
attention on Lucas Coronado's face.