The Second Ring of Power (6 page)

She stopped. I waited for an explanation of what had happened. She
seemed distracted,
pensive perhaps.

"What exactly happened, dona Soledad?" I asked, incapable of
containing myself. "Did he do
something to you?"

"Yes. He twisted my neck in order to change the direction of my
eyes," she said and laughed
loudly at my look of surprise.

"I mean, did he. . . ?"

"Yes. He changed my direction," she went on, oblivious to my
probes. "He did that to you and to all the others."

"That's true. He did that to me. But why do you think he did
that?"

"He had to. That is the most important thing to do."

She was referring to a peculiar act that don Juan had deemed absolutely
necessary. I had never
talked about it with anyone. In fact, I
had almost forgotten about it. At the beginning of my
apprenticeship,
he once built two small fires in the mountains of northern Mexico. They were perhaps twenty feet apart. He made me stand another twenty feet away from
them, holding my
body, especially my head, in a most relaxed and
natural position. He then made me face one fire, and coming from behind me, he
twisted my neck to the left, and aligned my eyes, but not my shoulders, with
the other fire. He held my head in that position for hours, until the fire was
extinguished.
The new direction was the southeast, or rather he had aligned the second fire
in a
southeasterly direction. I had understood the whole
affair as one of don Juan's inscrutable
peculiarities,
one of his nonsensical rites.

"The Nagual said that all of us throughout our lives develop one
direction to look," she went
on. "That becomes the direction of the eyes of
the spirit. Through the years that direction
becomes
overused, and weak and unpleasant, and since we are bound to that particular
direction we become weak and unpleasant ourselves. The day the Nagual twisted
my neck and held it until
I fainted
out of fear, he gave me a new direction."

"What direction did he give you?"

"Why do you ask that?" she said with unnecessary force.
"Do you think that perhaps the
Nagual gave me a different
direction?"

"I can tell you the direction that he gave me," I said.

"Never mind," she snapped. "He told me that
himself."

She seemed agitated. She changed position and lay on her stomach. My
back hurt from
writing. I asked her if I could sit on her floor
and use the bed as a table. She stood up and handed me the folded bedspread to
use as a cushion.

"What else did the Nagual do to you?" I asked.

"After changing my direction the Nagual really began to talk to me
about
power
," she said,
lying down again. "He
mentioned things in a casual way at first, because he didn't know exactly what
to do with me. One day he took me for a short walking trip in the sierras. Then
another day he took me on a bus to his homeland in the desert. Little by little
I became accustomed to going
away with him."

"Did he ever give you power plants?"

"He gave me Mescalito, once when we were in the desert. But since I
was an empty woman Mescalito refused me. I had a horrid encounter with him. It
was then that the Nagual knew that he
ought to acquaint me with the
wind instead. That was, of course, after he got an omen. He had said, over and
over that day, that although he was a sorcerer that had learned to
see
,
if he didn't
get an omen he had no way of knowing which way to go. He
had already waited for days for a
certain indication about me.
But power didn't want to give it. In desperation, I suppose, he
introduced
me to his
guaje
, and I
saw
Mescalito."

I interrupted her. Her use of the word "guaje," gourd, was
confusing to me. Examined in the
context of what she was telling me,
the word had no meaning. I thought that perhaps she was
speaking
metaphorically, or that gourd was a euphemism.

"What is a
guaje
, dona Soledad?"

There was a look of surprise in her eyes. She paused before answering.

"Mescalito is the Nagual's
guaje
," she finally said.

Her answer was even more confusing. I felt mortified by the fact that
she really seemed
concerned with making sense to me. When I asked her
to explain further, she insisted that I knew
everything
myself. That was don Juan's favorite stratagem to foil my probes. I said to her
that don
Juan had told me that Mescalito was a deity, or force
contained in the peyote buttons. To say that
Mescalito was
his gourd made absolutely no sense.

"The Nagual can acquaint you with anything through his
gourd
,"
she said after a pause. "That
is the key to his power. Anyone
can give you peyote, but only a sorcerer, through his
gourd
, can
acquaint
you with Mescalito."

She stopped talking and fixed her eyes on me. Her look was ferocious.

"Why do you have to make me repeat what you already know?" she
asked in an angry tone.
I was completely taken aback by her
sudden shift. A moment before she had been almost
sweet.

"Never mind my changes of mood," she said, smiling again.
"I'm the north wind. I'm very
impatient. All my life I never
dared to speak my mind. Now I fear no one. I say what I feel. To
meet
with me you have to be strong."

She slid closer to me on her stomach.

"Well, the Nagual acquainted me with the Mescalito that came out
of his
gourd
," she went on.
"But he
couldn't guess what would happen to me. He expected something like your own
meeting
or Eligio's meeting with Mescalito. In both cases he was
at a loss and let his
gourd
decide what to
do next. In
both cases his
gourd
helped him. With me it was different; Mescalito
told him never
to bring me around. The Nagual and I left that
place in a great hurry. We went north instead of
coming home. We
took a bus to go to Mexicali, but we got out in the middle of the desert. It
was
very late. The sun was setting behind the mountains. The
Nagual wanted to cross the road and go
south on foot.
We were waiting for some speeding cars to go by, when suddenly he tapped my
shoulder
and pointed toward the road ahead of us. I saw a spiral of dust. A gust of wind
was
raising dust on the side of the road. We watched it move
toward us. The Nagual ran across the
road and the wind enveloped me.
It actually made me spin very gently and then it vanished. That was the omen
the Nagual was waiting for. From then on we went to the mountains or the desert
for the purpose of seeking the wind. The wind didn't like me at first, because
I was my old self.

So the Nagual endeavored to change me. He first made me build this room
and this floor. Then he
made me wear new clothes and sleep on a
mattress instead of a straw mat. He made me wear
shoes, and have
drawers full of clothes. He forced me to walk hundreds of miles and taught me
to be quiet. I learned very fast. He also made me do strange things for no
reason at all.

"One day, while we were in the mountains of his homeland, I
listened to the wind for the first
time. It came directly to my
womb. I was lying on top of a flat rock and the wind twirled around
me.
I had already seen it that day whirling around the bushes, but this time it
came over me and
stopped. It felt like a bird that had landed on my
stomach. The Nagual had made me take off all
my clothes; I
was stark naked but I was not cold because the wind was warming me up."

"Were you afraid, dona Soledad?"

"Afraid? I was petrified. The wind was alive; it licked me from my
head to my toes. And then
it got inside my whole body. I was like
a balloon, and the wind came out of my ears and my
mouth and
other parts I don't want to mention. I thought I was going to die, and I
would've run away had it not been that the Nagual held me to the rock. He spoke
to me in my ear and calmed
me down. I lay quietly and let the wind
do whatever it wanted with me. It was then that it told me
what
to do."

"What to do with what?"

"With my life, my things, my room, my feelings. It was not clear at
first. I thought it was me thinking. The Nagual said that all of us do that.
When we are quiet, though, we realize that it is
something else
telling us things."

"Did you hear a voice?"

"No. The wind moves inside the body of a woman. The Nagual says
that that is so because
women have wombs. Once it's inside the
womb the wind simply picks you up and tells you to do
things. The
more quiet and relaxed the woman is the better the results. You may say that
all of a
sudden the woman finds herself doing things that she had
no idea how to do.

"From that day on the wind came to me all the time. It spoke to me
in my womb and told me
everything I wanted to know. The
Nagual saw from the beginning that I was the north wind.
Other
winds never spoke to me like that, although I had learned to distinguish
them."

"How many kinds of winds are there?"

"There are four winds, like there are four directions. That's, of
course, for sorcerers and for
whatever sorcerers do. Four is a power number for them. The
first wind is the breeze, the
morning. It
brings hope and brightness; it is the herald of the day. It comes and goes and
gets into
everything. Sometimes it is
mild and unnoticeable; other times it is nagging and bothersome.

"Another wind is the hard wind, either hot or cold or both. A
midday wind. Blasting full of
energy but also full of blindness. It
breaks through doors and brings down walls. A sorcerer must be terribly strong
to tackle the hard wind.

"Then there is the cold wind of the afternoon. Sad and trying. A
wind that would never leave
you in peace. It will chill you and
make you cry. The Nagual said that there is such depth to it,
though,
that it is more than worthwhile to seek it.

"And at last there is the hot wind. It warms and protects and
envelops everything. It is a night
wind for sorcerers. Its power
goes together with the darkness.

"Those are the four winds. They are also associated with the four
directions. The breeze is the
east. The cold wind is the west. The
hot one is the south. The hard wind is the north.

"The four winds also have personalities. The breeze is gay and
sleek and shifty. The cold wind
is moody and melancholy and always
pensive. The hot wind is happy and abandoned and bouncy.
The
hard wind is energetic and commandeering and impatient.

"The Nagual told me that the four winds are women. That is why
female warriors seek them.
Winds and women are alike. That is also the reason why women are better than
men. I would say that women learn faster if they cling to their specific
wind."

"How can a woman know what her specific wind is?"

"If the woman quiets down and is not talking to herself, her wind
will pick her up, just like
that."

She made a gesture of grabbing.

"Does she have to lie naked?"

"That helps. Especially if she is shy. I was a fat old woman. I had
never taken off my clothes
in my life. I slept in them and when I
took a bath I always had my slip on. For me to show my fat
body
to the wind was like dying. The Nagual knew that and played it for all it was
worth. He knew of the friendship of women and the wind, but he introduced me to
Mescalito because he
was baffled by me.

"After turning my head that first terrible day, the Nagual found
himself with me on his hands.
He told me that he had no idea what to
do with me. But one thing was for sure, he didn't want a
fat
old woman snooping around his world. The Nagual said that he felt about me the
way he felt
about you. Baffled. Both of us shouldn't be here. You're
not an Indian and I'm an old cow. We are
both useless if
you come right down to it. And look at us. Something must have happened.

"A woman, of course, is much more supple than a man. A woman
changes very easily with the
power of a sorcerer. Especially with
the power of a sorcerer like the Nagual. A male apprentice,
according
to the Nagual, is extremely difficult. For example, you yourself haven't
changed as much as la Gorda, and she started her apprenticeship way after you
did. A woman is softer and
more gentle, and above all a woman is
like a
gourd
; she receives. But somehow a man commands
more
power
. The Nagual never agreed with that, though. He believed that women
are unequaled,
tops. He also believed that I felt men were better
only because I am an empty woman. He must be
right. I have
been empty for so long that I can't remember what it feels like to be complete.
The Nagual said that if I ever become complete I will change my feelings about
it. But if he was right his Gorda would have done as well as Eligio, and as you
know, she hasn't."