The Second Ring of Power (46 page)

La Gorda stood up and motioned me to follow her. She led me to the door
of their room. She gently pushed me into the room. Once I had crossed the
threshold, Lidia, Rosa, Josefina and she
joined me, in
that order, and then la Gorda closed the door.

The room was very dark. It did not seem to have any windows. La Gorda
grabbed me by the arm and placed me in what I thought was the center of the
room. All of them surrounded me. I
could not see them at all; I
could only feel them flanking me on four sides.

After a while my eyes became accustomed to the darkness. I could see
that the room had two
windows which had been blocked off by
panels. A bit of light came through them and I could
distinguish
everybody. Then all of them held me the way they had done a few minutes before,
and in perfect unison they placed their heads against mine. I could feel
their hot breaths all
around me. I closed my eyes in order
to sum up the image of my gazing. I could not do it. I felt
very
tired and sleepy. My eyes itched terribly; I wanted to rub them, but Lidia and
Josefina held my arms tightly.

We stayed in that position for a very long time. My fatigue was
unbearable and finally I slumped. I thought that my knees had given in. I had
the feeling that I was going to collapse on
the floor and
fall asleep right there. But there was no floor. In fact, there was nothing
underneath
me. My fright upon realizing that was so intense that I
was fully awake in an instant; a force
greater than my
fright, however, pushed me back into that sleepy state again. I abandoned
myself.
I was floating with them like a balloon. It was as if I
had fallen asleep and was dreaming and in
that dream I
saw a series of disconnected images. We were no longer in the darkness of their
room. There was so much light that it blinded me. At times I could see Rosa's face against mine;
out of the corner of my eyes I could also see Lidia's
and Josefina's. I could feel their foreheads
pressed hard
against my ears. And then the image would change and I would see instead la
Gorda's
face against mine. Every time that happened she would put her mouth on mine and
breathe. I did not like that at all. Some force in me tried to get
loose. I felt terrified. I tried to push
all of them
away. The harder I tried, the harder they held me. That convinced me that la
Gorda
had tricked me and had finally led me into a death trap.
But contrary to the others la Gorda had
been an
impeccable player. The thought that she had played an impeccable hand made me
feel
better. At one point I did not care to struggle any
longer. I became curious about the moment of
my death, which
I believed was imminent, and I let go of myself. I experienced then an
unequaled
joy, an exuberance that I was sure was the herald of my
end, if not my death itself. I pulled Lidia
and Josefina
even closer to me. At that moment la Gorda was in front of me. I did not mind
that
she was breathing in my mouth; in fact I was surprised
that she stopped then. The instant she did,
all of them
also stopped pressing their heads on mine. They began to look around and by so
doing
they also freed my head. I could move it. Lidia, la Gorda
and Josefina were so close to me that I
could see only
through the opening in between their heads. I could not figure out where we
were.
One thing I was certain of, we were not standing on the
ground. We were in the air. Another thing I knew for sure was that we had
shifted our order. Lidia was to my left and Josefina, to my right.
La
Gorda's face was covered with perspiration and so were Lidia's and Josefina's.
I could only feel Rosa behind me. I could see her hands coming from my armpits
and holding onto my
shoulders.

La Gorda was saying something I could not hear. She enunciated her
words slowly as if she
were giving me time to read her lips,
but I got caught up in the details of her mouth. At one
instant
I felt that the four of them were moving me; they were deliberately rocking me.
That
forced me to pay attention to la Gorda's silent words. I
clearly read her lips this time. She was telling me to turn around. I tried but
my head seemed to be fixed. I felt that someone was biting
my
lips. I watched la Gorda. She was not biting me but she was looking at me as
she mouthed her
command to turn my head around. As she talked, I
also felt that she was actually licking my
entire face or
biting my lips and cheeks.

La Gorda's face was somehow distorted. It looked big and yellowish. I
thought that perhaps
since the whole scene was yellowish,
her face was reflecting that glow. I could almost hear her
ordering
me to turn my head around. Finally the annoyance that the biting was causing me
made
me shake my head. And suddenly the sound of la Gorda's
voice became clearly audible. She was
in back of me and she was
yelling at me to turn my attention around. Rose was the one who was
licking
my face. I pushed her away from my face with my forehead. Rosa was weeping. Her
face
was covered with perspiration. I could hear la Gorda's
voice behind me. She said that I had
exhausted them by fighting them
and that she did not know what to do to catch our original
attention.
The little sisters were whining.

My thoughts were crystal clear. My rational processes, however, were
not deductive. I knew
things quickly and directly and there
was no doubt of any sort in my mind. For instance, I knew
immediately
that I had to go back to sleep again, and that that would make us plummet down.
But
I also knew that I had to let them bring us to their
house. I was useless for that. If I could focus
my second
attention at all, it had to be on a place that don Juan had given me in
northern Mexico.
I had always been able to picture it in my mind
like nothing else in the world. I did not dare to
sum up that
vision. I knew that we would have ended up there.

I thought that I had to tell la Gorda what I knew, but I could not talk.
Yet some part of me
knew that she understood. I trusted her implicitly
and I fell asleep in a matter of seconds. In my
dream I was
looking at the kitchen of their house. Pablito, Nestor and Benigno were there.
They
looked extraordinarily large and they glowed. I could not
focus my eyes on them, because a sheet
of transparent
plastic material was in between them and myself. Then I realized that it was as
if I were looking at them through a glass window while somebody was throwing water
on the glass.
Finally the glass shattered and the water hit me in the
face.

Pablito was drenching me with a bucket. Nestor and Benigno were also
standing there. La
Gorda, the little sisters and I were sprawled on
the ground in the yard behind the house. The
Genaros were
drenching us with buckets of water.

I sprang up. Either the cold water or the extravagant experience I had
just been through had
invigorated me. La Gorda and the little
sisters put on a change of clothes that the Genaros must
have
laid out in the sun. My clothes had also been neatly laid on the ground. I
changed without a
word. I was experiencing the peculiar feeling that
seems to follow the focusing of the second
attention; I
could not talk, or rather I could talk but I did not want to. My stomach was
upset. La
Gorda seemed to sense it and pulled me gently to the
area in back of the fence. I became ill. La
Gorda and the
little sisters were affected the same way.

I returned to the kitchen area and washed my face. The coldness of the
water seemed to restore
my awareness. Pablito, Nestor and
Benigno were sitting around the table. Pablito had brought his
chair.
He stood up and shook hands with me. Then Nestor and Benigno did the same. La
Gorda
and the little sisters joined us.

There seemed to be something wrong with me. My ears were buzzing. I felt
dizzy. Josefina
stood up and grabbed onto Rosa for support. I
turned to ask la Gorda what to do. Lidia was falling
backward over
the bench. I caught her, but her weight pulled me down and I fell over with
her.

I must have fainted. I woke up suddenly. I was lying on a straw mat in
the front room. Lidia, Rosa and Josefina were sound asleep next to me. I had to
crawl over them to stand up. I nudged
them but they did not wake up. I
walked out to the kitchen. La Gorda was sitting with the
Genaros
around the table.

"Welcome back," Pablito said.

He added that la Gorda had woken up a short while before. I felt that I
was my old self again. I
was hungry. La Gorda gave me a bowl of
food. She said that they had already eaten. After eating I felt perfect in
every respect except I could not think as I usually do. My thoughts had quieted
down tremendously. I did not like that state. I noticed then that it was
late afternoon. I had a
sudden urge to jog in place facing the
sun, the way don Juan used to make me do. I stood up and
la
Gorda joined me. Apparently she had had the same idea. Moving like that made me
perspire. I
got winded very quickly and returned to the table. La
Gorda followed me. We sat down again.
The Genaros were staring at us.
La Gorda handed me my writing pad.

"The Nagual here got us lost," la Gorda said.

The moment she spoke I experienced a most peculiar bursting. My thoughts
came back to me in an avalanche. There must have been a change in my expression,
for Pablito embraced me and so did Nestor and Benigno.

"The Nagual is going to live! " Pablito said loudly.

La Gorda also seemed delighted. She wiped her forehead in a gesture of
relief. She said that I
had nearly killed all of them and
myself with my terrible tendency to indulge.

"To focus the second attention is no joke," Nestor said.

"What happened to us, Gorda?" I asked.

"We got lost," she said. "You began to indulge in your
fear and we got lost in that immensity.
We couldn't
focus our attention of the tonal anymore. But we succeeded in bundling up our
second
attention with yours and now you have two faces."

Lidia, Rosa and Josefina stepped out into the kitchen at that moment.
They were smiling and
seemed as fresh and vigorous as ever.
They helped themselves to some food. They sat down and
nobody uttered
a word while they ate. The moment the last one had finished eating, la Gorda
picked
up where she had left off.

"Now you're a warrior with two faces," she went on. "The
Nagual said that all of us have to
have two faces to fare well in
both attentions. He and Genaro helped us to round up our second
attention
and turned us around so we could face in two directions, but they didn't help
you,
because to be a true nagual you have to claim your power
all by yourself. You're still a long way
from that, but
let's say that now you're walking upright instead of crawling, and when you've
regained your completeness and have lost your form, you'll be gliding."

Benigno made a gesture with his hand of a plane in flight and imitated
the roar of the engine
with his booming voice. The sound was
truly deafening.

Everybody laughed. The little sisters seemed to be delighted.

I had not been fully aware until then that it was late afternoon. I said
to la Gorda that we must
have slept for hours, for we had gone
into their room before noon. She said that we had not slept
long
at all, that most of that time we had been lost in the other world, and that
the Genaros had
been truly frightened and despondent, because there
was nothing they could do to bring us back.

I turned to Nestor and asked him what they had actually done or seen
while we were gone. He
stared at me for a moment before
answering.

"We brought a lot of water to the yard," he said, pointing to
some empty oil barrels. "Then all
of you
staggered into the yard and we poured water on you, that's all."

"Did we come out of the room?" I asked him.

Benigno laughed loudly. Nestor looked at la Gorda as if asking for
permission or advice.
"Did we come out of the
room?" la Gorda asked.

"No," Nestor replied.

La Gorda seemed to be as anxious to know as I was, and that was
alarming to me. She even
coaxed Nestor to speak.

"You came from nowhere," Nestor said. "I should also say
that it was frightening. All of you were like fog. Pablito saw you first. You
may have been in the yard for a long time, but we didn't
know
where to look for you. Then Pablito yelled and all of us saw you. We have never
seen
anything like that."