The Active Side of Infinity (24 page)

I didn't believe a word of what he was saying. I knew that Falelo
Quiroga was a crook, a
racketeer. I liked, however, the idea
of playing billiards with people I didn't know, and I struck a
bargain
with him.

"Will you give me some coffee and Danish pastries like the ones
you gave me today?" I said.
"Of course, my boy," he
replied. "If you come to play for me, I will buy you the bakery! I will
have the baker bake them just for you. Take my word."

I warned Falelo Quiroga that the only drawback was my incapacity to get
out of my house; I
had too many aunts who watched me like hawks, and
besides, my bedroom was on the second
floor.

"That's no problem," Falelo Quiroga assured me. "You're
quite small. Mr. Falcon will catch
you if you jump from your
window into his arms. He's as big as a house! I recommend that you
go
to bed early tonight. Mr. Falcon will wake you up by whistling and throwing
rocks at your
window. You have to watch out, though! He's an impatient
man."

I went home in the midst of the most astounding excitation. I couldn't
go to sleep. I was quite
awake when I heard Mr. Falcon
whistling and throwing small pebbles against the glass panes of
the
window. I opened the window. Mr. Falcon was right below me, on the street.

"Jump into my arms, kid," he said to me in a constricted
voice, which he tried to modulate into a loud whisper. "If you don't aim
at my arms, I'll drop you and you'll die. Remember that.
Don't
make me run around. Just aim at my arms. Jump! Jump!"

I did, and he caught me with the ease of someone catching a bag of
cotton. He put me down
and told me to run. He said that I was
a child awakened from a deep sleep, and that he had to
make me run so
I would be fully awake by the time I got to the billiards house.

I played that night with two men, and I won both games. I had the most
delicious coffee and
pastries that one could imagine.
Personally, I was in heaven. It was around seven in the morning
when
I returned home. Nobody had noticed my absence. It was time to go to school.
For all
practical purposes, everything was normal except for the
fact that I was so tired that I couldn't
keep my eyes
open all day.

From that day on, Falelo Quiroga sent Mr. Falcon to pick me up two or
three times a week,
and I won every game that he made me play. And
faithful to his promise, he paid for anything
that I bought,
including meals at my favorite Chinese restaurant, where I used to go daily.
Sometimes, I even invited my friends, whom I mortified no end by running out of
the restaurant
screaming when the waiter brought the bill. They
were amazed at the fact that they were never
taken to the
police for consuming food and not paying for it.

What was an ordeal for me was that I had never conceived of the fact
that I would have to
contend with the hopes and expectations
of all the people who bet on me. The ordeal of ordeals,
however,
took place when a crack player from a nearby city challenged Falelo Quiroga and
backed his challenge with a giant bet. The night of the game was an
inauspicious night. My
grandfather became ill and couldn't
fall asleep. The entire family was in an uproar. It appeared
that
nobody went to bed. I doubted that I had any possibility of sneaking out of my
bedroom, but
Mr. Falcon's whistling and the pebbles hitting the glass of
my window were so insistent that I
took a chance and jumped from my
window into Mr. Falcon's arms.

It seemed that every male in town had congregated at the billiards
place. Anguished faces
silently begged me not to lose. Some
of the men boldly assured me that they had bet their houses
and
all their belongings. One man, in a half-joking tone, said that he had bet his
wife; if I didn't
win, he would be a cuckold that night, or a
murderer. He didn't specify whether he meant he
would kill his
wife in order not to be a cuckold, or me, for losing the game.

Falelo Quiroga paced back and forth. He had hired a masseur to massage
me. He wanted me
relaxed. The masseur put hot towels on my arms and
wrists and cold towels on my forehead. He
put on my feet
the most comfortable, soft shoes that I had ever worn. They had hard, military
heels and arch supports. Falelo Quiroga even outfitted me with a beret to keep
my hair from falling in my face, as well as a pair of loose overalls with a
belt.

Half of the people around the billiard table were strangers from
another town. They glared at
me. They gave me the feeling that they
wanted me dead.

Falelo Quiroga flipped a coin to decide who would go first. My opponent
was a Brazilian of
Chinese descent, young, round-faced, very spiffy
and confident. He started first, and he made a
staggering
amount of caroms. I knew by the color of his face that Falelo Quiroga was about
to have a heart attack, and so were the other people who had bet everything
they had on me.

I played very well that night, and as 1 approached the number of caroms
that the other man had made, the nervousness of the ones who had bet on me
reached its peak. Falelo Quiroga was
the most hysterical of them all.
He yelled at everybody and demanded that someone open the
windows
because the cigarette smoke made the air unbreathable for me. He wanted the
masseur to relax my arms and shoulders. Finally, I had to stop everyone, and in
a real hurry, I made the
eight caroms that I needed to win. The
euphoria of those who had bet on me was indescribable. I
was
oblivious to all that, for it was already morning and they had to take me home
in a hurry.

My exhaustion that day knew no limits. Very obligingly, Falelo Quiroga
didn't send for me
for a whole week. However, one afternoon, Mr.
Falcon picked me up from school and took me to
the billiards
house. Falelo Quiroga was extremely serious. He didn't even offer me coffee or
Danish
pastries. He sent everybody out of his office and got directly to the point. He
pulled his chair close tome.

"I have put a lot of money in the bank for you," he said very
solemnly. "I am true to what I
promised you. I give you my
word that I will always look after you. You know that! Now, if you
do
what I am going to tell you to do, you will make so much money that you won't
have to work a
day in your life. I want you to lose your next game
by one carom. I know that you can do it. But I want you to miss by only a hair.
The more dramatic, the better."

I was dumbfounded. All of this was incomprehensible to me. Falelo
Quiroga repeated his
request and further explained that he
was going to bet anonymously all he had against me, and
that
that was the nature of our new deal.

"Mr.
Falcon has been guarding you for months," he said. "All I need to
tell you is that Mr.
Falcon uses all his
force to protect you, but he could do the opposite with the same
strength."
Falelo Quiroga's
threat couldn't have been more obvious. He must have seen in my face the horror
that I felt, for he relaxed and laughed.

"Oh, but don't you worry about things like that," he said
reassuringly, "because we are
brothers."

This was the first time in my life that I had been placed in an
untenable position. I wanted
with all my might to run away from
Falelo Quiroga, from the fear that he had evoked in me. But
at
the same time, and with equal force, I wanted to stay; I wanted the ease of
being able to buy
anything I wanted from any store, and above all,
the ease of being able to eat at any restaurant of my choice, without paying. I
was never confronted, however, with having to choose one or the
other.

Unexpectedly, at least for me, my grandfather moved to another area,
quite distant. It was as if
he knew what was going on, and he sent
me ahead of everyone else. I doubted that he actually
knew what was taking place. It
seemed that sending me away was one of his usual intuitive
actions. Don Juan's return brought me out of my
recollection. I had lost track of time. I should
have been famished but I wasn't hungry at all. I was filled with nervous
energy. Don Juan lit a kerosene lantern and hung it from a nail on the wall.
Its dim light cast strange, dancing shadows
in the room. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the
semidarkness. I entered then into a
state
of profound sadness. It was a strangely detached feeling, a far-reaching
longing that came
from that
semidarkness, or perhaps from the sensation of being trapped. I was so tired
that I
wanted to leave, but at the
same time, and with the same force, I wanted to stay.

Don Juan's voice brought me a measure of control. He appeared to know
the reason for and the depth of my turmoil, and modulated his voice to fit the
occasion. The severity of his tone
helped me to gain control over
something that could easily have turned into a hysterical reaction to fatigue and
mental stimulation.

"To recount events is magical for sorcerers," he said.
"It isn't just telling stories. It is
seeing
the underlying fabric
of events. This is the reason recounting is so important and vast."

At his request, I told don Juan the event I had recollected.

"How appropriate," he said, and chuckled with delight.
"The only commentary I can make is that warrior-travelers roll with the
punches. They go wherever the impulse may take them. The
power
of warrior-travelers is to be alert, to get maximum effect from minimal
impulse. And
above all, their power lies in not interfering. Events
have a force, a gravity of their own, and
travelers are
just travelers. Everything around them is for their eyes alone. In this
fashion,
travelers construct the meaning of every situation,
without ever asking how it happened this way
or that way.

"Today, you remembered an event that sums up your total
life," he continued. "You are
always faced
with a situation that is the same as the one that you never resolved. You never
really
had to choose whether to accept or reject Falelo
Quiroga's crooked deal.

"Infinity
always puts us
in this terrible position of having to choose," he went on. "We want
infinity,
but at the same time, we want to run away from it. You
want to tell me to go and jump in a lake, but at the same time you are
compelled to stay. It would be infinitely easier for you to just be compelled
to stay."

The clarity of the
usher
brought a new impetus to my
recapitulation.
A new mood replaced
the old one. From then on, I began to
recollect events in my life with maddening clarity. It was
exactly
as if a barrier had been built inside me that had kept me holding rigidly on to
meager and
unclear memories, and the
usher
had smashed it.
My memory faculty had been for me, prior to
that event, a
vague way of referring to things that had happened, but which I wanted most of
the
time to forget. Basically, I had no interest whatsoever
in remembering anything of my life.
Therefore, I honestly saw
absolutely no point in this futile exercise of
recapitulating,
which don
Juan had
practically imposed on me. For me, it was a chore that tired me instantly and
did
nothing but point out my incapacity for
concentrating.

I had dutifully made, nevertheless, lists of people, and I had engaged
in a haphazard effort of
quasi-remembering my interactions with
them. My lack of clarity in bringing those people into
focus didn't
dissuade me. I fulfilled what I considered to be my duty, regardless of the way
I
really felt. With practice, the clarity of my recollection improved, I
thought remarkably. I was
able to descend, so to speak, on
certain choice events with a fair amount of keenness that was at
once
scary and rewarding. After don Juan presented me with the idea of the
usher,
however, the
power of my recollection became something for which
I had no name.

Following my list of people made the
recapitulation
extremely
formal and exigent, the way don Juan wanted it. But from time to time,
something in me got loose, something that forced me
to focus on
events unrelated to my list, events whose clarity was so maddening that I was
caught
and submerged in them, perhaps even more intensely than
I had been when I had lived the
experiences themselves. Every time I
recapitulated
in such a fashion, I had a degree of
detachment
which allowed me to see things I had disregarded when I had really been in the
throes
of
them.