The Active Side of Infinity (7 page)

At that instant, a bus pulled up to the bus stop. The old man muttered
that it was the bus he
had to take, then he earnestly asked me
to look him up so we could talk with more ease and swap
stories. There was an
ironic smirk on the comer of his mouth when he said that. With an
incredible agility for a man his age-I figured he
must have been in his eighties-he covered, in a few leaps, the fifty yards
between the bench where he was sitting and the door of the bus. As if
the bus had stopped just to pick him up, it moved
away as soon as he had jumped in and the door had closed.

After the old man left, I went back to the bench where Bill was sitting.

"What did he say, what did he say?" he asked excitedly.

"He told me to look him up and come to his house to visit," I
said. "He even said that we
could talk there."

"But what did you say to him to get him to invite you to his
house?" he demanded.

I told Bill that I had used my best sales pitch, and that I had promised
the old man to reveal to him everything I knew, from the point of view of my
reading, about medicinal plants.

Bill obviously didn't believe me. He accused me of holding out on him.
"I know the people
around this area," he said
belligerently, "and that old man is a very strange fart. He doesn't talk
to
anybody, Indians included. Why would he talk to you, a
perfect stranger? You're not even cute!" '

It was obvious that Bill was annoyed with me. I couldn't figure out why
though. I didn't dare
ask him for an explanation. He gave me
the impression of being a bit jealous. Perhaps he felt that
I
had succeeded where he had failed. However, my success had been so inadvertent
that it didn't
mean anything to me. Except for Bill's casual
remarks, I didn't have any conception of how
difficult it
was to approach that old man, and I couldn't have cared less. At the time, I
found
nothing remarkable in the exchange. It baffled me that
Bill was so upset about it.

"Do you know where his house is?" I asked him.

"I haven't the foggiest idea," he answered curtly. "I
have heard people from this area say that
he doesn't live
anywhere, that he just appears here and there unexpectedly, but that's a lot of
horse-shit. He probably lives in some shack in Nogales, Mexico."

"Why is he so important?" I asked him. My question made me
gather enough courage to add,
"You seem to be upset because he
talked to me. Why?"

Without any ado, he admitted that he was chagrined because he knew how
useless it was to
try to talk to that man. "That old man is as
rude as anyone can be," he added. "At best, he stares at
you
without saying a word when you talk to him. At other times, he doesn't even
look at you; he
treats you as if you didn't exist. The one time 1
tried to talk to him he brutally turned me down. Do you know what he said to
me? He said, 'If I were you, I wouldn't waste my energy opening
my
mouth. Save it. You need it.' If he weren't such an old fart, I would have
punched him in the
nose."

1 pointed out to Bill that to call him an "old" man was more a
figure of speech than an actual
description. He didn't really appear
to be that old, although he was definitely old. He possessed a
tremendous
vigor and agility. 1 felt that Bill would have failed miserably if he had tried
to punch him in the nose. That old Indian was powerful. In fact, he was
downright scary.

I didn't voice my thoughts. I let Bill go on telling me how disgusted
he was at the nastiness of
that old man, and how he would have
dealt with him had it not been for the fact that the old man was so feeble.

"Who do you think could give me some information about where he
might live?" I asked him.

"Perhaps some people in Yuma," he replied, a bit more relaxed.
"Maybe the people I
introduced you to at the beginning of
our trip. You wouldn't lose anything by asking them. Tell them that I sent you
to them."

I changed my plans right then and instead of going back to Los Angeles went directly to
Yuma
, Arizona
. I
saw the people to whom Bill had introduced me. They didn't know where the
old
Indian lived, but their comments about him inflamed my curiosity even more.
They said that
he was not from Yuma, but from Sonora, Mexico, and that in his youth he had been a fearsome
sorcerer who did incantations and put
spells on people, but that he had mellowed with age,
turning into an
ascetic hermit. They remarked that although he was a Yaqui Indian, he had once
run
around with a group of Mexican men who seemed to be extremely knowledgeable
about
bewitching practices. They all agreed that they hadn't
seen those men in the area for ages.

One of the men added that the old man was contemporaneous with his
grandfather, but that
while his grandfather was senile and
bedridden, the sorcerer seemed to be more vigorous than
ever.
The same man referred me to some people in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, who might
know the old man and be able to tell me more about him.
The prospect of going to Mexico was
not at all appealing to me. Sonora was too far away from my area of interest. Besides, I reasoned
that
I was better off doing urban anthropology after all and I went back to Los Angeles. But
before leaving for Los Angeles, I canvassed the area of Yuma, searching tor information about
the old man. No one knew anything about
him.

As the bus drove to Los Angeles, I experienced a unique sensation. On
the one hand, I felt totally cured of my obsession with fieldwork or my
interest in the old man. On the other hand, I
felt a strange
nostalgia. It was, truthfully, something I had never felt before. Its newness
struck
me profoundly. It was a mixture of anxiety and longing,
as if I were missing something of
tremendous importance. I had
the clear sensation as I approached Los Angeles that whatever had
been
acting on me around Yuma had begun to fade with distance; but its fading only
increased
my unwarranted longing.

"I want you to think deliberately about every detail of what
transpired between you and those
two men, Jorge Campos and Lucas
Coronado," don Juan said to me, "who are the ones who really
delivered
you to me, and then tell me all about it."

I found his request very difficult to fulfill, and yet I actually
enjoyed remembering everything
those two had said to me. He wanted
every detail possible, something that forced me to push my
memory
to its limits.

The story don Juan wanted me to recollect began in the city of Guaymas, in Sonora, Mexico.
In Yuma, Arizona, I had been given the names and
addresses of some people who, I was told,
might be able
to shed light on the mystery of the old man I had met in the bus depot. The
people I
went to see not only didn't know any retired old shaman,
they even doubted that such a man had
ever existed. They were all
filled to the brim, however, with scary stories about Yaqui shamans,
and
about the belligerent general mood of the Yaqui Indians. They insinuated that
perhaps in
Vicam,
a
railroad-station town between the cities
of Guaymas and Ciudad Obregon, I might
find someone
who could perhaps steer me in the proper direction.

"Is there anyone in particular 1 could look up?" I asked.
"Your best bet would be to talk to a
field
inspector of the official government bank," one of the men suggested.
"The bank has a lot of
field inspectors. They know all the
Indians of the area because the bank is the government
institution
that buys their crops, and every Yaqui is a farmer, the proprietor of a parcel
of land
that he can call his own as long as he cultivates
it." "Do you know any field inspectors?" I asked.
They
looked at each other and smiled apologetically at me. They didn't know any, but
strongly
recommended that I should approach one of those men on my
own and put my case to him.

In Vicam Station, my attempts at making contact with the field
inspectors of the government
bank were a total disaster. I met
three of them, and when I told them what I wanted, every one of
them
looked at me with utter distrust. They immediately suspected that I was a spy
sent there by
the Yankees to cause problems that they could not
clearly define, but about which they made wild
speculations
ranging from political agitation to industrial espionage. It was the
unsubstantiated
belief of everyone around that there were copper
deposits in the lands of the Yaqui Indians and
that the
Yankees coveted them.

After this resounding failure, I retreated to the city of Guaymas and stayed at a hotel that was
very close to a fabulous restaurant. I
went there three times a day. The food was superb. I liked it
so
much that I stayed in Guaymas for over a week. I practically lived in the restaurant,
and
became, in this manner, acquainted with the owner, Mr.
Reyes.

One afternoon while 1 was eating, Mr. Reyes came to my table with
another man, whom he
introduced to me as Jorge Campos, a
full-blooded Yaqui Indian entrepreneur who had lived in
Arizona
in
his youth, who spoke English perfectly, and who was more American than any
American. Mr. Reyes praised him as a true example of how hard work and
dedication could develop a person into an exceptional man.

Mr. Reyes
left and Jorge Campos sat down next to me and immediately took over. He
pretended to be modest and denied all praise but
it was obvious that he was as pleased as punch
with what Mr. Reyes had said about him. At first sight, I had the clear
impression that Jorge
Campos was an
entrepreneur of the particular kind that one finds in bars or on crowded
corners of
main streets trying to
sell an idea or simply trying to find a way to con people out of their savings.

Mr. Campos was very pleasant looking, around six feet tall and lean,
but with a high pot belly
like a habitual drinker of hard liquor.
He had a very dark complexion, with a touch of green to it, and wore expensive
blue jeans and shiny cowboy boots with pointed toes and angular heels, as if he
needed to dig them into the ground to stop being dragged by a lassoed steer.

He was wearing an impeccably ironed gray plaid shirt; in its right
pocket was a plastic pocket
guard into which he had inserted a row
of pens. I had seen the same pocket guard among office
workers who
didn't want to stain their shirt pockets with ink. His attire also included an
expensive-looking
fringed reddish-brown suede jacket and a tall Texas-style cowboy hat. His round
face was expressionless. He had no wrinkles even though he seemed to be in his
early
fifties. For some unknown reason, I believed that he was
dangerous. "Very pleased to meet you,
Mr.
Campos," I said in Spanish, extending my hand to him.

"Let's dispense with the formalities," he responded, also in
Spanish, shaking my hand vigorously. "I like to treat young people as
equals, regardless of age differences. Call me Jorge."

He was quiet for a moment, no doubt assessing my reaction. I didn't know
what to say. I
certainly didn't want to humor him, nor did I want
to take him seriously.

"I'm curious to know what you're doing in Guaymas," he went
on casually. "You don't seem
to be a tourist, nor do you seem
to be interested in deep-sea fishing." "I am an anthropology
student,"
I said, "and I am trying to establish my credentials with the local
Indians in order to do
some field research."

"And I am a businessman," he said. "My business is to
supply information, to be the go-between. You have the need, I have the
commodity. 1 charge for my services. However, my
services are
guaranteed. If you don't get satisfaction, you don't have to pay me."

"If your business is to supply information," I said, "I
will gladly
pay you whatever you charge."

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "You certainly need a guide, someone
with more education than the
average Indian here, to show you
around. Do you have a grant from the United States government
or
from another big institution?"

"Yes," I lied. "I have a grant from the Esoterical
Foundation of Los Angeles."

When I said that, I actually saw a glint of greed in his eyes.
"Ah!" he exclaimed again. "How
big is that
institution?" "Fairly big," I said.