The Second Ring of Power (30 page)

Pablito sat down to eat and among the four of us we finished a whole pot
of food. Benigno
washed the bowls and carefully put them back in
the box and then all of us sat down comfortably
around the
table. Nestor proposed that as soon as it got dark we should all go for a walk
in a
ravine nearby, where don Juan, don Genaro and I used to
go. I felt somehow reluctant. I did not
feel confident
enough in their company. Nestor said that they were used to walking in the
darkness
and that the art of a sorcerer was to be inconspicuous even in the midst of
people. I told
him what don Juan had once said to me, before he
had left me in a deserted place in the
mountains not
too far from there. He had demanded that I concentrate totally on trying not to
be
obvious. He said that the people of the area knew
everyone by sight. There were not very many
people, but
those who lived there walked around all the time and could spot a stranger from
miles
away. He told me that many of those people had firearms
and would have thought nothing of
shooting me.

"Don't be concerned with beings from the other world," don
Juan had said laughing. "The
dangerous ones are the
Mexicans."

"That's still valid," Nestor said. "That has been valid
all the time. That's why the Nagual and Genaro were the artists they were. They
learned to become unnoticeable in the middle of all this.
They
knew the art of stalking."

It was still too early for our walk in the dark. I wanted to use the
time to ask Nestor my critical
question. I had been avoiding it all
along; some strange feeling had prevented me from asking. It was as if I had
exhausted my interest after Pablito's reply. But Pablito himself came to my aid
and
all of a sudden he brought up the subject as if he had
been reading my mind.

"Nestor also jumped into the abyss the same day we did," he
said. "And in that way he became
the Witness, you became the
Maestro and I became the village idiot."

In a casual manner I asked Nestor to tell me about his jump into the
abyss. I tried to sound
only mildly interested. But Pablito was
aware of the true nature of my forced indifference. He
laughed and
told Nestor that I was being cautious because I had been deeply disappointed
with his own account of the event.

"I went over after you two did," Nestor said, and looked at me
as if waiting for another
question.

"Did you jump immediately after us?" I asked.

"No. It took me quite a while to get ready," he said.
"Genaro and the Nagual didn't tell me
what to do. That
day was a test day for all of us."

Pablito seemed despondent. He stood up from his chair and paced the
room. He sat down
again, shaking his head in a gesture of despair.

"Did you actually see us going over the edge?" I asked Nestor.

"I am the Witness," he said. "To witness was my path of
knowledge; to tell you impeccably
what I witness is my task."

"But what did you really see?" I asked.

"I saw you two holding each other and running toward the
edge," he said. "And then I saw you both like two kites against the
sky. Pablito moved farther out in a straight line and then fell down.
You
went up a little and then you moved away from the edge a short distance, before
falling
down."

"But, did we jump with our bodies?" I asked.

"Well, I don't think there was another way to do it," he said,
and laughed.

"Could it have been an illusion?" I asked.

"What are you trying to say. Maestro?" he asked in a dry tone.

"I want to know what really happened," I said.

"Did you by any chance black out, like Pablito?" Nestor asked with
a glint in his eye.

I tried to explain to him the nature of my quandary about the jump. He
could not hold still and
interrupted me. Pablito intervened to
bring him to order and they became involved in an
argument.
Pablito squeezed himself out of it by walking half seated around the table,
holding onto
his chair.

"Nestor doesn't see beyond his nose," he said to me.
"Benigno is the same. You'll get nothing
from them. At
least you got my sympathy."

Pablito cackled, making his shoulders shiver, and hid his face with
Benigno's hat.

"As far as I'm concerned, you two jumped," Nestor said to me
in a sudden outburst. "Genaro and the Nagual had left you with no other
choice. That was their art, to corral you and then lead
you
to the only gate that was open. And so you two went over the edge. That was
what I witnessed. Pablito says that he didn't feel a thing; that is
questionable. I know that he was
perfectly aware of everything, but he
chooses to feel and say that he wasn't."

"I really wasn't aware," Pablito said to me in an apologetic
tone.

"Perhaps," Nestor said dryly. "But I was aware myself,
and I saw your bodies doing what they
had to do, jump."

Nestor's assertions put me in a strange frame of mind. All along I had
been seeking validation
for what I had perceived myself. But
once I had it, I realized that it made no difference. To know
that
I had jumped and to be afraid of what I had perceived was one thing; to seek
consensual validation was another. I knew then that one had no necessary
correlation with the other. I had
thought all along that to have
someone else corroborate that I had taken that plunge would
absolve
my intellect of its doubts and fears. I was wrong. I became instead more
worried, more
involved with the issue.

I began to tell Nestor that although I had come to see the two of them
for the specific purpose
of having them confirm that I had
jumped, I had changed my mind and I really did not want to
talk
about it anymore. Both of them started talking at once, and at that point we
fell into a three-

way argument. Pablito maintained that he had not been aware, Nestor
shouted that Pablito was
indulging and I said that I didn't want
to hear anything more about the jump.

It was blatantly obvious to me for the first time that none of us had
calmness and self-control.
None of us was willing to give the
other person our undivided attention, the way don Juan and
don
Genaro did. Since I was incapable of maintaining any order in our exchange of
opinions, I
immersed myself in my own deliberations. I had always thought
that the only flaw that had prevented me from entering fully into don Juan's
world was my insistence on rationalizing
everything,
but the presence of Pablito and Nestor had given me a new insight into myself.
Another
flaw of mine was my timidity. Once I strayed outside the safe railings of
common sense,
I could not trust myself and became intimidated by the
awesomeness of what unfolded in front of
me. Thus, I
found it was impossible to believe that I had jumped into an abyss.

Don Juan had insisted that the whole issue of sorcery was perception,
and truthful to that, he
and don Genaro staged, for our last meeting, an immense,
cathartic drama on the flat
mountaintop.
After they made me voice my thanks in loud clear words to everyone who had ever
helped me, I became transfixed with
elation. At that point they had caught all my attention and
led my body to perceive the only possible act
within their frame of references: the jump into the
abyss. That jump was the practical accomplishment
of my perception, not as an average man but as a sorcerer.

I had been so absorbed in writing down my thoughts I had not noticed
that Nestor and Pablito
had stopped talking and all three of
them were looking at me. I explained to them that there was
no
way for me to understand what had taken place with that jump.

"There's nothing to understand," Nestor said. "Things
just happen and no one can tell how.
Ask Benigno if he wants to
understand."

"Do you want to understand?" I asked Benigno as a joke.

"You bet I do!" he exclaimed in a deep bass voice, making
everyone laugh.

"You indulge in saying that you want to understand," Nestor
went on. "Just like Pablito
indulges in saying that he doesn't
remember anything."

He looked at Pablito and winked at me. Pablito lowered his head.

Nestor asked me if I had noticed something about Pablito's mood when we
were about to take our plunge. I had to admit that I had been in no position to
notice anything so subtle as Pablito's
mood.

"A warrior must notice everything," he said. "That's his
trick, and as the Nagual said, there lies
his
advantage."

He smiled and made a deliberate gesture of embarrassment, hiding his
face with his hat.
"What was it that I missed about Pablito's
mood?" I asked him.

"Pablito had already jumped before he went over," he said.
"He didn't have to do anything. He
may as well
have sat down on the edge instead of jumping."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"Pablito was already disintegrating," he replied.
"That's why he thinks he passed out. Pablito
lies. He's
hiding something."

Pablito began to speak to me. He muttered some unintelligible words,
then gave up and
slumped back in his chair. Nestor also started to
say something. I made him stop. I was not sure I
had understood
him correctly.

"Was Pablito's body distegrating?" I asked.

He peered at me for a long time without saying a word. He was sitting to
my right. He moved
quietly to the bench opposite me.

"You must take what I say seriously," he said. "There is
no way to turn back the wheel of time
to what we were before that
jump. The Nagual said that it is an honor and a pleasure to be a
warrior,
and that it is the warrior's fortune to do what he has to do. I have to tell
you impeccably
what I have witnessed. Pablito was disintegrating.
As you two ran toward the edge only you were
solid. Pablito
was like a cloud. He thinks that he was about to fall on his face, and you
think that
you held him by the arm to help him make it to the edge.
Neither of you is correct, and I wouldn't
doubt that it
would have been better for both of you if you hadn't picked Pablito up."

I felt more confused than ever. I truly believed that he was sincere in
reporting what he had
perceived, but I remembered that I had
only held Pablito's arm.

"What would have happened if I hadn't interfered?" I asked.

"I can't answer that," Nestor replied. "But I know that
you affected each other's luminosity. At
the moment you
put your arm around him, Pablito became more solid, but you wasted your
precious
power for nothing."

"What did you do after we jumped?" I asked Nestor after a long
silence.

"Right after you two had disappeared," he said, "my
nerves were so shattered that I couldn't
breathe and I
too passed out, I don't know for how long. I thought it was only for a moment.
When
I came to my senses again, I looked around for Genaro and Nagual; they were
gone. I ran
back and forth on the top of that mountain, calling them
until my voice was hoarse. Then I knew I
was alone. I
walked to the edge of the cliff and tried to look for the sign that the earth
gives when
a warrior is not going to return, but I had already
missed it. I knew then that Genaro and the
Nagual were
gone forever. I had not realized until then that they had turned to me after
they had
said good-bye to you two, and as you were running to the
edge they waved their hands and said
good-bye to me.

"Finding myself alone at that time of day, on that deserted spot,
was more than I could bear. In
one sweep I had lost all the friends I
had in the world. I sat down and wept. And as I got more and
more
scared I began to scream as loud as I could. I called Genaro's name at the top
of my voice.
By then it was pitch-black. I could no longer
distinguish any landmarks. I knew that as a warrior I
had no
business indulging in my grief. In order to calm myself down I began to howl
like a
coyote, the way the Nagual had taught me. After howling
for a while I felt so much better that I
forgot my
sadness. I forgot that the world existed. The more I howled the easier it was
to feel the
warmth and protection of the earth.