The Second Ring of Power (7 page)

I could not follow the flow of her narrative because of her unstated
assumption that I knew
what she was referring to. In this case
I had no idea what Eligio or la Gorda had done.

"In what way was la Gorda different from Eligio?" I asked.

She looked at me for a moment as if measuring something in me. Then she
sat up with her
knees against her chest.

"The Nagual told me everything," she said briskly. "The
Nagual had no secrets from me.
Eligio was the best; that's why he is
not in the world now. He didn't return. In fact he was so good
that
he didn't have to jump from a precipice when his apprenticeship was over. He
was like
Genaro; one day while he was working in the field
something came to him and took him away.
He knew how to
let go."

I felt like asking her if I had really jumped into the abyss. I
deliberated for a moment before
going ahead with my question. After
all I had come to see Pablito and Nestor to clarify that point. Any information
I could get on the topic from anyone involved in don Juan's world was indeed a
bonus tome.

She laughed at my question, as I had anticipated.

"You mean you don't know what you yourself did?" she asked.

"It's too farfetched to be real," I said.

"That is the Nagual's world for sure. Not a thing in it is real.
He himself told me not to believe
anything. But still the male
apprentices have to jump. Unless they are truly magnificent, like
Eligio.

"The Nagual took us, me and la Gorda, to that mountain and made us
look down to the bottom of it. There he showed us the kind of flying Nagual he
was. But only la Gorda could follow him. She also wanted to jump into the
abyss. The Nagual told her that that was useless. He said female
warriors
have to do things more painful and more difficult than that. He also told us
that the jump
was only for the four of you. And that is what happened,
the four of you jumped."

She had said that the four of us had jumped, but I only knew of Pablito
and myself having
done that. In light of her statements I figured
that don Juan and don Genaro must have followed
us. That did
not seem odd to me; it was rather pleasing and touching.

"What are you talking about?" she asked after I had voiced my
thoughts. "I meant you and the three apprentices of Genaro. You, Pablito
and Nestor jumped on the same day."
"Who is
the other apprentice of don Genaro? I know only Pablito and Nestor?"
"You
mean that you didn't know that Benigno was Genaro's apprentice?"

"No, I didn't."

"He was Genaro's oldest apprentice. He jumped before you did and he
jumped by himself."

Benigno was one of five Indian youths I had once found while roaming in
the Sonoran Desert with don Juan. They were in search of power objects. Don
Juan told me that all of them were
apprentices of sorcery. I struck
up a peculiar friendship with Benigno in the few times I had seen
him
after that day. He was from southern Mexico. I liked him very much. For some
unknown
reason he seemed to delight himself by creating a
tantalizing mystery about his personal life. I could never find out who he was
or what he did. Every time I talked to him he baffled me with the disarming
candor with which he evaded my probes. Once don Juan volunteered some
information
about Benigno and said that he was very fortunate in having found a teacher and
a
benefactor. I took don Juan's statements as a casual remark that meant
nothing. Dona Soledad had
clarified a ten-year-old mystery for
me.

"Why do you think don Juan never told me anything about
Benigno?"

"Who knows? He must've had a reason. The Nagual never did anything
thoughtlessly." I had to prop my aching back against her bed before
resuming writing.

"Whatever happened to Benigno?"

"He's doing fine. He's perhaps better off than anyone else. You'll
see him. He's with Pablito
and Nestor. Right now they're
inseparable. Genaro's brand is on them. The same thing happened to the girls;
they're inseparable because the Nagual's brand is on them."

I had to interrupt her again and ask her to explain what girls she was
talking about.
"My girls," she said.

"Your daughters? I mean Pablito's sisters?"

"They are not Pablito's sisters. They are the Nagual's
apprentices."

Her disclosure shocked me. Ever since I had met Pablito, years before,
I had been led to
believe that the four girls who lived in his house
were his sisters. Don Juan himself had told me
so. I had a
sudden relapse of the feeling of despair I had experienced all afternoon. Dona
Soledad
was not to be trusted; she was engineering something. I
was sure that don Juan could not under
any conditions
have misled me so grossly.

Dona Soledad examined me with overt curiosity.

"The wind just told me that you don't believe what I'm telling
you," she said, and laughed.
"The wind is right," I
said dryly.

"The girls that you've seen over the years are the Nagual's. They
were his apprentices. Now
that the Nagual is gone they are the
Nagual himself. But they are also my girls. Mine!"

"You mean that you're not Pablito's mother and they are really your
daughters?"

"I mean that they are mine. The Nagual gave them to me for
safekeeping. You are always
wrong because you rely on words to
explain everything. Since I am Pablito's mother and you
heard
that they were my girls, you figured out that they must be brother and sisters.
The girls are my true babies. Pablito, although he's the child that came out of
my womb, is my mortal enemy."

My reaction to her statements was a mixture of revulsion and anger. I
thought that she was not
only an aberrated woman, but a
dangerous one. Somehow, part of me had known that since the moment I had
arrived.

She watched me for a long time. To avoid looking at her I sat down on
the bedspread again.

"The Nagual warned me about your weirdness," she said
suddenly, "but I couldn't understand
what he meant.
Now I know. He told me to be careful and not to anger you because you're
violent.
I'm sorry I was not as careful as I should've been. He also said that as long
as you can write you could go to hell itself and not even feel it. I haven't
bothered you about that. Then he
told me that you're suspicious because
words entangle you. I haven't bothered you there, either. I've been talking my
head off, trying not to entangle you."

There was a silent accusation in her tone. I felt somehow embarrassed
at being annoyed with
her.

"What you're telling me is very hard to believe," I said.
"Either you or don Juan has lied to me
terribly."

"Neither of us has lied. You understand only what you want to. The
Nagual said that that is a
condition of your emptiness.

"The girls are the Nagual's children, just like you and Eligio are
his children. He made six children, four women and two men. Genaro made three
men. There are nine altogether. One of
them, Eligio,
already made it, so now it is up to the eight of you to try."

"Where did Eligio go?"

"He went to join the Nagual and Genaro."

"And where did the Nagual and Genaro go?"

"You know where they went. You're just kidding me, aren't
you?"

"But that's the point, dona Soledad. I'm not kidding you."

"Then I will tell you. I can't deny you anything. The Nagual and
Genaro went back to the same
place they came from, to the other
world. When their time was up they simply stepped out into the darkness out
there, and since they did not want to come back, the darkness of the night
swallowed
them up"

I felt it was useless to probe her any further. I was ready to change
the subject, but she spoke
first.

"You caught a glimpse of the other world when you jumped," she
went on. "But maybe the
jump has confused you. Too bad. There
is nothing that anyone can do about it. It is your fate to be a man. Women are
better than men in that sense. They don't have to jump into an abyss. Women
have
their own ways. They have their own abyss. Women menstruate. The Nagual told me
that
that was the door for them. During their period they
become something else. I know that that was
the time when
he taught my girls. It was too late for me; I'm too old so I really don't know
what
that door looks like. But the Nagual insisted that the
girls pay attention to everything that happens
to them during
that time. He would take them during those days into the mountains and stay
with
them there until they would see the crack between the
worlds.

"The Nagual, since he had no qualms or fear about doing anything,
pushed them without
mercy so they could find out for themselves that
there is a crack in women, a crack that they
disguise very
well. During their period, no matter how well-made the disguise is, it falls
away and
women are bare. The Nagual pushed my girls until they
were half-dead to open that crack. They
did it. He made
them do it, but it took them years."

"How did they become apprentices?"

"Lidia
was his first apprentice. He found her one morning when he had stopped at a
disheveled hut in the mountains. The Nagual told
me that there was no one in sight and yet there
had been omens calling him to that house since early morning. The breeze
had bothered him terribly. He said that he couldn't even open his eyes every
time he tried to walk away from that
area.
So when he found the house he knew that something was there. He looked under a
pile of
straw and twigs and found a
girl. She was very ill. She could hardly talk, but still she told him
that she didn't need anyone to help her. She was
going to keep on sleeping there and if she didn't
wake up anymore no one would lose a thing. The
Nagual liked her spirit and talked to her in her
language. He told her that he was going to cure her and take care of her
until she was strong
again. She
refused. She was an Indian who had known only hardships and pain. She told the
Nagual that she had already taken all the medicine
that her parents had given her and nothing
helped.

"The more she talked the more the Nagual understood that the omen
had pointed her out to
him in a most peculiar way. The omen
was more like a command.

"The Nagual picked the girl up and put her on his shoulders, like
a child, and brought her to
Genaro's place. Genaro made medicine
for her. She couldn't open her eyes anymore. The lids
were stuck
together. They were swollen and had a yellowish crud on them. They were
festering.
The Nagual tended her until she was well. He hired me to
look after her and cook her meals. I
helped her to get well with my
food. She is my first baby. When she was well, and that took
nearly
a year, the Nagual wanted to return her to her parents, but the girl refused to
go and went
with him instead.

"A short time after he had found Lidia, while she was still sick
and in my care, the Nagual
found you. You were brought to him by
a man he had never seen before in his life. The Nagual
saw
that the man's death was hovering above his head, and he found it very odd that
the man
would point you out to him at such a time. You made the
Nagual laugh and right away the Nagual
set a test for
you. He didn't take you, he told you to come and find him. He has tested you
ever
since like he has tested no one else. He said that that
was your path.

"For three years he had only two apprentices, Lidia and you. Then
one day while he was
visiting his friend Vicente, a curer
from the north, some people brought in a crazy girl, a girl who
did
nothing else but cry. The people took the Nagual for Vicente and placed the
girl in his hands. The Nagual told me that the girl ran to him and clung to him
as if she knew him. The Nagual told
her parents that they had to
leave her with him. They were worried about the cost but the Nagual
assured
them that it would be free. I suppose that the girl was such a pain in the ass
to them that they didn't mind getting rid of her.

"The Nagual brought her to me. That was hell! She was truly crazy.
That was Josefina. It took
the Nagual years to cure her. But even
to this day she's crazier than a bat. She was, of course,
crazy
about the Nagual and there was a terrible fight between Lidia and Josefina.
They hated each
other. But I liked them both. But the Nagual, when
he saw that they couldn't get along, became
very firm with
them. As you know the Nagual can't get mad at anyone. So he scared them half to
death. One day Lidia got mad and left. She had decided to find herself
a young husband. On the
road she found a tiny chicken. It had
just been hatched and was lost in the middle of the road. Lidia picked it up,
and since she was in a deserted area with no houses around, she figured that
the chicken belonged to no one. She put it inside her blouse, in between her
breasts to keep it
warm. Lidia told me that she ran and in doing so
the little chicken began to move to her side. She
tried to bring
him back to the front but she couldn't catch him. The chicken ran very fast
around
her sides and her back, inside her blouse. The chicken's
feet tickled her at first and then they
drove her
crazy. When she realized that she couldn't get him out, she came back to me,
screaming out of her mind, and told me to get the damn thing out of her blouse.
I undressed her but that was
to no avail. There was no chicken at
all, and yet she still felt its feet on her skin going around and
around.