The Power of Silence (26 page)

"You
knew all along that there was never any monster. You lied to me," he
accused the nagual Julian, who, with his head down and his eyes filled with
tears, admitted his guilt.

"I
have certainly lied to you," he mumbled. "There was never any
monster. What you saw as a monster was simply a surge of energy. Your fear made
it into a monstrosity."

"You
told me that that monster was going to devour me. How could you have lied to me
like that?" don Juan shouted at him.

"Being
devoured by that monster was symbolic," the nagual Julian replied softly.
"Your real enemy is your stupidity. You are in mortal danger of being
devoured by that monster now."

Don Juan
yelled that he did not have to put up with silly statements. And he insisted
they reassure him there were no longer any restrictions on his freedom to
leave.

"You
can go any time you want," the nagual Julian said curtly.

"You
mean I can go right now?" don Juan asked.

"Do
you want to?" the nagual asked.

"Of
course, I want to leave this miserable place and the miserable bunch of liars
who live here," don Juan shouted.

The nagual
Julian ordered that don Juan's savings be paid him in full, and with shining
eyes wished him happiness, prosperity, and wisdom.

The women
did not want to say goodbye to him. They stared at him until he lowered his
head to avoid their burning eyes.

Don Juan
put his money in his pocket and without a backward glance walked out, glad his
ordeal was over. The outside world was a question mark to him. He yearned for
it. Inside that house he had been removed from it. He was young, strong. He had
money in his pocket and a thirst for living.

He left
them without saying thank you. His anger, bottled up by his fear for so long,
was finally able to surface. He had even learned to like them - and now he felt
betrayed. He wanted to run as far away from that place as he could.

In the
city, he had his first unpleasant encounter. Traveling was very difficult and
very expensive. He learned that if he wanted to leave the city at once he would
not be able to choose his destination, but would have to wait for whatever
muleteers were willing to take him. A few days later he left with a reputable
muleteer for the port of Mazatlan.

"Although
I was only twenty-three years old at the time," don Juan said, "I
felt I had lived a full life. The only thing I had not experienced was sex. The
nagual Julian had told me that it was the fact I had not been with a woman that
gave me my strength and endurance, and that he had little time left to set
things up before the world would catch up with me."

"What
did he mean, don Juan?" I asked.

"He
meant that I had no idea about the kind of hell I was heading for," don
Juan replied, "and that he had very little time to set up my barricades,
my silent protectors."

"What's
a silent protector, don Juan?" I asked.

"It's
a lifesaver," he said. "A silent protector is a surge of inexplicable
energy that comes to a warrior when nothing else works.

"My
benefactor knew what direction my life would take once I was no longer under
his influence. So he struggled to give me as many sorcerers' options as
possible. Those sorcerers' options were to be my silent protectors."

"What
are sorcerers' options?" I asked.

"Positions
of the assemblage point," he replied, "the infinite number of
positions which the assemblage point can reach. In each and every one of those
shallow or deep shifts, a sorcerer can strengthen his new continuity."

He
reiterated that everything he had experienced either with his benefactor or
while under his guidance had been the result of either a minute or a
considerable shift of his assemblage point. His benefactor had made him experience
countless sorcerers' options, more than the number that would normally be
necessary, because he knew that don Juan's destiny would be to be called upon
to explain what sorcerers were and what they did.

"The
effect of those shifts of the assemblage point is cumulative," he
continued. "It weighs on you whether you understand it or not. That
accumulation worked for me, at the end.

"Very
soon after I came into contact with the nagual, my point of assemblage moved so
profoundly that I was capable of
seeing
. I
saw
an energy field as a monster. And the point kept on moving
until I
saw
the
monster as what it really was: an energy field. I had succeeded in
seeing
, and I didn't know it. I
thought I had done nothing, had learned nothing. I was stupid beyond belief."

"You
were too young, don Juan," I said. "You couldn't have done
otherwise."

He laughed.
He was on the verge of replying, when he seemed to change his mind. He shrugged
his shoulders and went on with his account.

Don Juan
said that when he arrived in Mazatlan he was practically a seasoned muleteer,
and was offered a permanent job running a mule train. He was very satisfied
with the arrangements. The idea that he would be making the trip between Durango and Mazatlan pleased him no end. There were two things, however, that bothered
him: first, that he had not yet been with a woman, and second, a strong but
unexplainable urge to go north. He did not know why. He knew only that somewhere
to the north something was waiting for him. The feeling persisted so strongly
that in the end he was forced to refuse the security of a permanent job so he
could travel north.

His
superior strength and a new and unaccountable cunning enabled him to find jobs
even where there were none to be had, as he steadily worked his way north to
the state of Sinaloa. And there his journey ended. He met a young widow, like
himself a Yaqui Indian, who had been the wife of a man to whom don Juan was
indebted.

He
attempted to repay his indebtedness by helping the widow and her children, and
without being aware of it, he fell into the role of husband and father.

His new
responsibilities put a great burden on him. He lost his freedom of movement and
even his urge to journey farther north. He felt compensated for that loss,
however, by the profound affection he felt for the woman and her children.

"I
experienced moments of sublime happiness as a husband and father," don
Juan said. "But it was at those moments when I first noticed that
something was terribly wrong. I realized that I was losing the feeling of
detachment, the aloofness I had acquired during my time in the nagual Julian's
house. Now I found myself identifying with the people who surrounded me."

Don Juan
said that it took about a year of unrelenting abrasion to make him lose every
vestige of the new personality he had acquired at the nagual's house. He had
begun with a profound yet aloof affection for the woman and her children. This
detached affection allowed him to play the role of husband and father with
abandon and gusto. As time went by, his detached affection turned into a
desperate passion that made him lose his effectiveness.

Gone was
his feeling of detachment, which was what had given him the power to love.
Without that detachment, he had only mundane needs, desperation, and hopelessness:
the distinctive features of the world of everyday life. Gone as well was his
enterprise. During his years at the nagual's house, he had acquired a dynamism
that had served him well when he set out on his own.

But the
most draining pain was knowing that his physical energy had waned. Without
actually being in ill health, one day he became totally paralyzed. He did not
feel pain. He did not panic. It was as if his body had understood that he would
get the peace and quiet he so desperately needed only if it ceased to move.

As he lay
helpless in bed, he did nothing but think. And he came to realize that he had
failed because he did not have an abstract purpose. He knew that the people in
the nagual's house were extraordinary because they pursued freedom as their
abstract purpose. He did not understand what freedom was, but he knew that it
was the opposite of his own concrete needs.

His lack of
an abstract purpose had made him so weak and ineffective that he was incapable
of rescuing his adopted family from their abysmal poverty. Instead, they had
pulled him back to the very misery, sadness, and despair which he himself had
known prior to encountering the nagual.

As he
reviewed his life, he became aware that the only time he had not been poor and
had not had concrete needs was during his years with the nagual. Poverty was
the state of being that had reclaimed him when his concrete needs overpowered
him.

For the
first time since he had been shot and wounded so many years before, don Juan
fully understood that the nagual Julian was indeed the nagual, the leader, and
his benefactor. He understood what it was his benefactor had meant when he said
to him that there was no freedom without the nagual's intervention. There was
now no doubt in don Juan's mind that his benefactor and all the members of his
benefactor's household were sorcerers. But what don Juan understood with the
most painful clarity was that he had thrown away his chance to be with them.

When the
pressure of his physical helplessness seemed unendurable, his paralysis ended
as mysteriously as it had begun. One day he simply got out of bed and went to
work. But his luck did not get any better. He could hardly make ends meet.

Another
year passed. He did not prosper, but there was one thing in which he succeeded beyond
his expectations: he made a total recapitulation of his life. He understood
then why he loved and could not leave those children, and why he could not stay
with them, and he also understood why he could neither act one way nor the
other.

Don Juan
knew that he had reached a complete impasse, and that to die like a warrior was
the only action congruous with what he had learned at his benefactor's house.
So every night, after a frustrating day of hardship and meaningless toil, he
patiently waited for his death to come.

He was so
utterly convinced of his end that his wife and her children waited with him -
in a gesture of solidarity, they too wanted to die. All four sat in perfect
immobility, night after night, without fail, and recapitulated their lives
while they waited for death.

Don Juan
had admonished them with the same words his benefactor had used to admonish
him.

"Don't
wish for it," his benefactor had said. "Just wait until it comes.
Don't try to imagine what death is like. Just be there to be caught in its
flow."

The time
spent quietly strengthened them mentally, but physically their emaciated bodies
told of their losing battle.

One day,
however, don Juan thought his luck was beginning to change. He found temporary
work with a team of farm laborers during the harvest season. But the spirit had
other designs for him. A couple of days after he started work, someone stole
his hat. It was impossible for him to buy a new one, but he had to have one to
work under the scorching sun.

He
fashioned a protection of sorts by covering his head with rags and handfuls of
straw. His coworkers began to laugh and taunt him. He ignored them. Compared to
the lives of the three people who depended on his labor, how he looked had
little meaning for him. But the men did not stop. They yelled and laughed until
the foreman, fearing that they would riot, fired don Juan.

A wild rage
overwhelmed don Juan's sense of sobriety and caution. He knew he had been
wronged. The moral right was with him. He let out a chilling, piercing scream,
and grabbed one of the men, and lifted him over his shoulders, meaning to crack
his back. But he thought of those hungry children. He thought of their
disciplined little bodies as they sat with him night after night awaiting
death. He put the man down and walked away.

Don Juan
said that he sat down at the edge of the field where the men were working, and
all the despair that had accumulated in him finally exploded. It was a silent
rage, but not against the people around him. He raged against himself. He raged
until all his anger was spent.

"I sat
there in view of all those people and began to weep," don Juan continued.
"They looked at me as if I were crazy, which I really was, but I didn't
care. I was beyond caring.

"The
foreman felt sorry for me and came over to give a word of advice. He thought I
was weeping for myself. He couldn't have possibly known that I was weeping for
the spirit."

Don Juan
said that a silent protector came to him after his rage was spent. It was in
the form of an unaccountable surge of energy that left him with the clear
feeling that his death was imminent. He knew that he was not going to have time
to see his adopted family again. He apologized to them in a loud voice for not
having had the fortitude and wisdom necessary to deliver them from their hell
on earth.

The farm
workers continued to laugh and mock him. He vaguely heard them. Tears swelled
in his chest as he addressed and thanked the spirit for having placed him in
the nagual's path, giving him an undeserved chance to be free. He heard the
howls of the uncomprehending men. He heard their insults and yells as if from
within himself. They had the right to ridicule him. He had been at the portals
of eternity and had been unaware of it.