The Second Ring of Power (27 page)

I wanted to interject a comment but he stopped me.

"Let me finish what I have to say before that witch comes back to
throw me out," he said as he
nervously looked at the door.

"I know that they have told you that the five of you are the same
because you are the Nagual's children. That's a lie! You're also like us, the
Genaros, because Genaro also helped to make your
luminosity.
You're one of us too. See what I mean? So, don't you believe what they tell
you. You also belong to us. The witches don't know that the Nagual told us
everything. They think that they
are the only ones who know. It took two
Toltecs to make us. We are the children of both. Those
witches..."

"Wait, wait, Pablito," I said, putting my hand over his mouth.

He stood up, apparently frightened by my sudden movement.

"What do you mean that it took two Toltecs to make us?"

"The Nagual told us that we are Toltecs. All of us are Toltecs. He said
that a Toltec is the
receiver and holder of mysteries. The
Nagual and Genaro are Toltecs. They gave us their special
luminosity
and their mysteries. We received their mysteries and now we hold them."

His usage of the word Toltec baffled me. I was familiar only with its
anthropological meaning.
In that context, it always refers to a
culture of Nahuatl-speaking people in central and southern
Mexico
which was already extinct at the time of the Conquest.

"Why did he call us Toltecs?" I asked, not knowing what else
to say.

"Because that's what we are. Instead of saying that we are
sorcerers or witches, he said that we are Toltecs."

"If that's the case, why do you call the little sisters
witches?"

"Oh, that's because I hate them. That has nothing to do with what
we are."

"Did the Nagual tell that to everyone?"

"Why, certainly. Everyone knows."

"But he never told me that."

"Oh, that's because you are a very educated man and are always
discussing stupid things." He laughed in a forced, high-pitched tone and
patted me on the back.

"Did the Nagual by any chance tell you that the Toltecs were
ancient people that lived in this
part of Mexico?" I asked.

"See, there you go. That's why he didn't tell you. The old crow
probably didn't know that they
were ancient people."

He rocked in his chair as he laughed. His laughter was very pleasing
and very contagious. "We are the Toltecs, Maestro," he said.
"Rest assured that we are. That's all I know. But you
can
ask the Witness. He knows. I lost my interest a long time ago."

He stood up and went over to the stove. I followed him. He examined a
pot of food cooking on
a low fire. He asked me if I knew who
had made that food. I was pretty sure that la Gorda had
made
it, but I said that I did not know. He sniffed it four or five times in short
inhalations, like a
dog. Then he announced that his nose told him that
la Gorda had cooked it. He asked me if I had
had some, and
when I said that I had finished eating just before he arrived, he took a bowl
from a
shelf and helped himself to an enormous portion. He
recommended in very strong terms that I
should eat food
cooked only by la Gorda and that I should only use her bowl, as he himself was
doing.
I told him that la Gorda and the little sisters had served me my food in a dark
bowl that they kept on a shelf apart from the others. He said that that bowl
belonged to the Nagual. We went back to the table. He ate very slowly and did
not talk at all. His total absorption in eating
made me realize
that all of them did the same thing: they ate in complete silence.

"La Gorda is a great cook," he said as he finished his food.
"She used to feed me. That was
ages ago, before she hated me,
before she became a witch, I mean a Toltec."

He looked at me with a glint in his eye and winked.

I felt obligated to comment that la Gorda did not strike me as being
capable of hating anyone. I asked him if he knew that she had lost her form.

"That's a lot of baloney!" he exclaimed.

He stared at me as if measuring my look of surprise and then hid his
face under his arm and
giggled like an embarrassed child.

"Well, she actually did do that," he added. "She's just
great."

"Why do you dislike her, then?"

"I'm going to tell you something, Maestro, because I trust you. I
don't dislike her at all. She's
the very best. She's the Nagual's
woman. I just act that way with her because I like her to pamper
me,
and she does. She never gets mad at me. I could do anything. Sometimes I get
carried away and I get physical with her and want to strike her. When that
happens she just jumps out of the
way, like the Nagual used to
do. The next minute she doesn't even remember what I did. That's a
true
formless warrior for you. She does the same thing with everyone. But the rest
of us are a
sorry mess. We are truly bad. Those three witches hate us
and we hate them back."

"You are sorcerers, Pablito; can't you stop all this
bickering?"

"Sure we can, but we don't want to. What do you expect us to do,
be like brothers and sisters?"
I did not know what to say.

"They were the Nagual's women," he went on. "And yet
everybody expected me to take them.
How in heaven's name am I going
to do that! I tried with one of them and instead of helping me the bastardly
witch nearly killed me. So now every one of those women is after my hide as if
I
had committed a crime. All I did was to follow the Nagual's
instructions. He told me that I had to
be intimate
with each of them, one by one, until I could hold all of them at once. But I
couldn't be
intimate with even one."

I wanted to ask him about his mother, dona Soledad, but I could not
figure out a way to bring
her into the conversation at that
point. We were quiet for a moment.

"Do you hate them for what they tried to do to you?" he asked
all of a sudden.

I saw my chance.

"No, not at all," I said. "La Gorda explained to me
their reasons. But dona Soledad's attack
was very scary.
Do you see much of her?"

He did not answer. He looked at the ceiling. I repeated my question. I
noticed then that his
eyes were filled with tears. His body
shook, convulsed by quiet sobs.

He said that once he had had a beautiful mother, whom, no doubt, I could
still remember. Her
name was Manuelita, a saintly woman who raised two
children, working like a mule to support
them. He felt
the most profound veneration for that mother who had loved and reared him. But
one
horrible day his fate was fulfilled and he had the misfortune to meet Genaro
and the Nagual,

and between the two of them they destroyed his life. In a very
emotional tone Pablito said that the
two devils took his soul and his
mother's soul. They killed his Manuelita and left behind that
horrendous witch, Soledad. He peered at me with eyes flooded with tears and said that that
hideous woman was not his mother. She could not
possibly be his Manuelita.

He sobbed uncontrollably. I did not know what to say. His emotional
outburst was so genuine and his contentions so truthful that I felt swayed by a
tide of sentiment. Thinking as an average
civilized man
I had to agree with him. It certainly looked as if it was a great misfortune
for
Pablito to have crossed the path of don Juan and don
Genaro.

I put my arm around his shoulders and almost wept myself. After a long
silence he stood up
and went out to the back. I heard him blowing his
nose and washing his face in a pail of water.
When he returned
he was calmer. He was even smiling.

"Don't get me wrong. Maestro," he said. "I don't blame
anyone for what has happened to me.
It was my fate. Genaro and the
Nagual acted like the impeccable warriors they were. I'm just
weak,
that's all. And I have failed in my task. The Nagual said that my only chance
to avoid the
attack of that horrendous witch was to corral the four
winds, and make them into my four corners.
But I failed.
Those women were in cahoots with that witch Soledad and didn't want to help me.
They wanted me dead.

"The Nagual also told me that if I failed, you wouldn't stand a
chance yourself. He said that if
she killed you, I had to flee and run
for my life. He doubted that I could even get as far as the
road.
He said that with your power and with what the witch already knows, she would
have been
peerless. So, when I felt I had failed to corral the four
winds, I considered myself dead. And of course I hated those women. But today,
Maestro, you bring me new hope."

I told him that his feelings for his mother had touched me very deeply.
I was in fact appalled
by all that had happened but I doubted
intensely that I had brought hope of any kind to him.

"You have!" he exclaimed with great certainty. "I've
felt terrible all this time. To have your
own mother
coming after you with an axe is nothing anyone can feel happy about. But now
she's out of the way, thanks to you and whatever you did.

"Those women hate me because they're convinced I'm a coward. They
just can't get it through their thick heads that we are different. You and
those four women are different than me and the
Witness and
Benigno in one important way. All five of you were pretty much dead before the
Nagual
found you. He told us that once you had even tried to kill yourself. We were
not that way. We were well and alive and happy. We are the opposite of you. You
are desperate people; we are
not. If Genaro hadn't come my way I
would be a happy carpenter today. Or perhaps I would have
died.
It doesn't matter. I would've done what I could and that would have been
fine."

His words plunged me into a curious mood. I had to admit that he was
right in that those
women and myself were indeed desperate people. If I
had not met don Juan I would no doubt be
dead, but I
could not say, as Pablito had, that it would have been fine with me either way.
Don Juan had brought life and vigor to my body and freedom to my spirit.

Pablito's statements made me remember something don Juan had told me
once when we were
talking about an old man, a friend of mine. Don
Juan had said in very emphatic terms that the old
man's life or
death had no significance whatsoever. I felt a bit cross at what I thought to
be
redundance on don Juan's part. I told him that it went
without saying that the life and death of that
old man had no
significance, since nothing in the world could possibly have any significance
except
to each one of us personally.

"You said it!" he exclaimed, and laughed. "That's
exactly what I mean. That old man's life and death have no significance to him
personally. He could have died in nineteen twenty-nine, or in
nineteen
fifty, or he could live until nineteen ninety-five. It doesn't matter.
Everything is stupidly
the same to him."

My life before I met don Juan had been that way. Nothing had ever
mattered to me. I used to
act as if certain things affected me,
but that was only a calculated ploy to appear as a sensitive
man.

Pablito spoke to me and disrupted my reflections. He wanted to know if
he had hurt my
feelings. I assured him that it was nothing. In
order to start up the conversation again, I asked him
where he had
met don Genaro.

"My fate was that my boss got ill," he said. "And I had
to go to the city market in his place to
build a new
section of clothing booths. I worked there for two months. While I was there I
met
the daughter of the owner of one of the booths. We fell
in love. I built her father's stand a little bigger than the others so I could
make love to her under the counter while her sister took care of the customers.

"One day Genaro brought a sack of medicinal plants to a retailer
across the aisle, and while
they were talking he noticed that the
clothing stand was shaking. He looked carefully at the stand but he only saw
the sister sitting on a chair half-asleep. The man told Genaro that every day
the
stand shook like that around that hour. The next day
Genaro brought the Nagual to watch the
stand shaking,
and sure enough that day it shook. They came back the next day and it shook
again.
So they waited there until I came out. That day I made their acquaintance, and
soon after
Genaro told me that he was an herbalist and proposed to
make me a potion that no woman could
resist. I liked women so I fell
for it. He certainly made the potion for me, but it took him ten
years.
In the meantime I got to know him very well, and I grew to love him more than
if he were
my own brother. And now I miss him like hell. So you
see, he tricked me. Sometimes I'm glad
that he did;
most of the time I resent it, though."