The Second Ring of Power (36 page)

That reminded me of what Pablito had said earlier, that we were the
children of both, and that we were Toltecs. I asked her what he had meant by
that.

"The Nagual told me that sorcerers used to be called Toltecs in
his benefactor's language," she
replied.

"And what language was that, Gorda?"

"He never told me. But he and Genaro used to speak a language that
none of us could
understand. And here, between all of us, we
understand four Indian languages."

"Did don Genaro also say that he was a Toltec?"

"His benefactor was the same man, so he also said the same
thing."

From la Gorda's responses I could surmise that she either did not know
a great deal on the
subject or she did not want to talk to me about it.
I confronted her with my conclusions. She
confessed that
she had never paid much attention to it and wondered why I was putting so much
value
on it. I practically gave her a lecture on the ethnography of central Mexico.

"A sorcerer is a Toltec when that sorcerer has received the
mysteries of stalking and
dreaming
," she
said casually. "The Nagual and Genaro received those mysteries from their
benefactor
and then they held them in their bodies. We are doing the same, and because of
that we are Toltecs like the Nagual and Genaro.

"The Nagual taught you and me equally to be dispassionate. I am
more dispassionate than you
because I'm formless. You still have
your form and are empty, so you get caught in every snag.
One
day, however, you'll be complete again and you'll understand then that the
Nagual was right. He said that the world of people goes up and down and people
go up and down with their world; as sorcerers we have no business following
them in their ups and downs.

"The art of sorcerers is to be outside everything and be
unnoticeable. And more than anything
else, the art of sorcerers is
never to waste their power. The Nagual told me that your problem is that you
always get caught in idiocies, like what you're doing now. I'm sure that you're
going to
ask
everyone of us about the Toltecs, but you're not going to ask anyone of us
about our
attention."

Her laughter was clear and contagious. I admitted to her that she was
right. Small issues had
always fascinated me. I also told her
that I was mystified by her usage of the word "attention".

"I've told you already what the Nagual told me about
attention," she said. "We hold the images of the world with our
attention. A male sorcerer is very difficult to train because his attention is
always
closed, focused on something. A female, on the other hand, is always open
because most
of the time she is not focusing her attention on anything.
Especially during her menstrual period.
The Nagual
told me and then showed me that during that time I could actually let my
attention go
from the images of the world. If I don't focus my
attention on the world, the world collapses."

"How is that done, Gorda?"

"It's very simple. When a woman menstruates she cannot focus her
attention. That's the crack
the Nagual told me about. Instead of
fighting to focus, a woman should let go of the images, by
gazing
fixedly at distant hills, or by gazing at water, like a river, or by gazing at
the clouds.

"If you gaze with your eyes open, you get dizzy and the eyes get
tired, but if you half-close
them and blink a lot and move them from
mountain to mountain, or from cloud to cloud, you can
look for hours,
or days if necessary.

"The Nagual used to make us sit by the door and gaze at those round
hills on the other side of the valley. Sometimes we used to sit there for days
until the crack would open."

I wanted to hear more about it, but she stopped talking and hurriedly sat
very close to me. She
signaled me with her hand to listen. I
heard a faint swishing sound and suddenly Lidia stepped
out
into the kitchen. I thought that she must have been asleep in their room and
the sound of our
voices had woken her up.

She had changed the Western clothes she had been wearing the last time I
had seen her and
had put on a long dress like the Indian women of
the area wore. She had a shawl on her shoulders
and was
barefoot. Her long dress, instead of making her look older and heavier, made
her look
like a child clad in an older woman's clothes.

She walked up to the table and greeted la Gorda with a formal
"Good evening, Gorda." She
then turned to me and said,
"Good evening, Nagual."

Her greeting was so unexpected and her tone so serious that I was about
to laugh. I caught a
warning from la Gorda. She pretended
to be scratching the top of her head with the back of her
left
hand, which was clawed.

I answered Lidia the same way la Gorda had: "Good evening to you,
Lidia."

She sat down at the end of the table to the right of me. I did not know
whether or not to start
up a conversation. I was about to say
something when la Gorda tapped my leg with her knee, and
with
a subtle movement of her eyebrows signaled me to listen. I heard again the
muffled sound of
a long dress as it touched the floor. Josefina
stood for a moment at the door before walking
toward the
table. She greeted Lidia, la Gorda and myself in that order. I could not keep a
straight
face with her. She was also wearing a long dress, a
shawl and no shoes, but in her case the dress
was three or
four sizes larger and she had put a thick padding into it. Her appearance was
thoroughly
incongruous; her face was lean and young, but her body looked grotesquely
bloated.

She took a bench and placed it at the left end of the table and sat
down. All three of them
looked extremely serious. They were
sitting with their legs pressed together and their backs very
straight.

I heard once more the rustle of a dress and Rosa come out. She was
dressed just like the others
and was also barefoot. Her greeting
was as formal and the order naturally included Josefina.
Everyone
answered her in the same formal tone. She sat across the table facing me. All
of us remained in absolute silence for quite a while.

La Gorda spoke suddenly, and the sound of her voice made everyone else
jump. She said,
pointing to me, that the Nagual was going to show
them his allies, and that he was going to use
his special
call to bring them into the room.

I tried to make a joke and said that the Nagual was not there, so he
could not bring any allies. I thought they were going to laugh. La Gorda
covered her face and the little sisters glared at me. La
Gorda
put her hand on my mouth and whispered in my ear that it was absolutely
necessary that I
refrain from saying idiotic things. She looked
right into my eyes and said that I had to call the
allies by
making the moths' call.

I reluctantly began. But no sooner had I started than the spirit of the
occasion took over and I
found that in a matter of seconds I had
given my maximum concentration to producing the sound.
I modulated
its outflow and controlled the air being expelled from my lungs in order to
produce
the longest possible tapping. It sounded very melodious.

I took an enormous gasp of air to start a new series. I stopped
immediately. Something outside the house was answering my call. The tapping
sounds came from all around the house, even from
the roof. The
little sisters stood up and huddled like frightened children around la Gorda
and
myself.

"Please, Nagual, don't bring anything into the house," Lidia
pleaded with me.

Even la Gorda seemed a bit frightened. She gave me a strong command with
her hand to stop.
I had not intended to keep on producing the sound anyway. The allies,
however, either as
formless forces or as
beings that were prowling outside the door, were not dependent on my
tapping sound. I felt again, as I had felt two
nights before in don Genaro's house, an unbearable pressure, a heaviness
leaning against the entire house. I could sense it in my navel as an itch, a
nervousness that soon turned into sheer physical
anguish.

The three little sisters were beside themselves with fear, especially
Lidia and Josefina. Both of them were whining like wounded dogs. All of them
surrounded me and then clung to me. Rosa
crawled under
the table and pushed her head up between my legs. La Gorda stood behind me as
calmly as she could. After a few moments the hysteria and fear of those three
girls mounted to
enormous proportions. La Gorda leaned over and
whispered that I should make the opposite
sound, the
sound that would disperse them. I had a moment of supreme uncertainty. I really
did
not know any other sound. But then I had a quick
sensation of ticklishness on the top of my head,
a shiver in my
body, and I remembered out of nowhere a peculiar whistling that don Juan used
to
perform at night and had endeavored to teach me. He had
presented it to me as a means to keep
one's balance while walking so
as not to stray away from the trail in the darkness.

I began my whistling and the pressure in my umbilical region ceased. La
Gorda smiled and
sighed with relief and the little sisters moved
away from my side, giggling as if all of it had been merely a joke. I wanted to
indulge in some soulsearching deliberations about the abrupt transition
from
the rather pleasant exchange I was having with la Gorda to that unearthly
situation. For an
instant I pondered over whether or not the whole
thing was a ploy on their part. But I was too
weak. I felt I
was about to pass out. My ears were buzzing. The tension around my stomach was
so
intense that I believed I was going to become ill right there. I rested my head
on the edge of
the table. After a few minutes, however, I was
again relaxed enough to sit up straight.

The three girls seemed to have forgotten how frightened they had been.
In fact, they were
laughing and pushing each other as they each tied
their shawls around their hips. La Gorda did not seem nervous nor did she seem
relaxed. Rosa was pushed at one moment by the other two
girls
and fell off the bench where all three of them were sitting. She landed on her
seat. I thought
that she was going to get furious but she giggled.
I looked at la Gorda for directions. She was
sitting with a
very straight back. Her eyes were half-closed, fixed on Rosa. The little
sisters were
laughing very loudly, like nervous schoolgirls. Lidia
pushed Josefina and sent her tumbling over the bench to fall next to Rosa on the floor. The instant Josefina was on the floor their laughter
stopped.
Rosa and Josefina shook their bodies, making an incomprehensible movement with
their
buttocks; they moved them from side to side as if they
were grinding something against the floor.
Then they
sprang up like two silent jaguars and took Lidia by the arms. All three of
them, without
making the slightest noise, spun around a couple of
times. Rosa and Josefina lifted Lidia by the
armpits and
carried her as they tiptoed two or three times around the table. Then all three
of them
collapsed as if they had springs on their knees that had
contracted at the same time. Their long
dresses puffed
up, giving them the appearance of huge balls.

As soon as they were on the floor they became even more quiet. There
was no other sound
except the soft swishing of their dresses as they
rolled and crawled. It was as if I were watching a
three-dimensional
movie with the sound turned off.

La Gorda, who had been quietly sitting next to me watching them,
suddenly stood up and with the agility of an acrobat ran toward the door of
their room at the corner of the dining area. Before
she reached the
door she tumbled on her right side and shoulder just enough to turn over once,
then
stood up, pulled by the momentum of her rolling, and flung open the door. She
performed all her movements with absolute quietness.

The three girls rolled and crawled into the room like giant pill bugs.
La Gorda signaled me to come over to where she was; we entered the room and she
had me sit on the floor with my back
against the frame of the door.
She sat to my right with her back also against the frame. She made
me
interlock my fingers and then placed my hands over my belly button.

I was at first forced to divide my attention between la Gorda, the
little sisters and the room.
But once la Gorda had arranged my
sitting position, my attention was taken up by the room. The three girls were
lying in the middle of a large, white, square room with a brick floor. There
were
four gasoline lanterns, one on each wall, placed on
built-in supporting ledges approximately six
feet above the
ground. The room had no ceiling. The supporting beams of the roof had been
darkened and that gave the effect of an enormous room with no top. The two
doors were placed
on the very corners opposite each other. As I
looked at the closed door across from where I was, I
noticed that
the walls of the room were oriented to follow the cardinal points. The door
where we were was at the northwest corner.