The Power of Silence (20 page)

I paid him
and he helped don Juan stand up. He guided him by the arm out of the
restaurant. The waiter even helped him out to the street and said goodbye to
him effusively.

We walked
back to the car in the same laborious way, don Juan leaning heavily on my arm,
panting and stopping to catch his breath every few steps. The waiter stood in
the doorway, as if to make sure I was not going to let don Juan fall.

Don Juan
took two or three full minutes to climb into the car.

"Tell
me, what can I do for you, don Juan?" I pleaded.

"Turn
the car around," he ordered in a faltering, barely audible voice. "I
want to go to the other side of town, to the store. They know me there, too.
They are my friends."

I told him
I had no idea what store he was talking about. He mumbled incoherently and had
a tantrum. He stamped on the floor of the car with both feet. He pouted and
actually drooled on his shirt. Then he seemed to have an instant of lucidity. I
got extremely nervous, watching him struggle to arrange his thoughts. He
finally succeeded in telling me how to get to the store.

My
discomfort was at its peak. I was afraid that the stroke don Juan had suffered
was more serious than I thought. I wanted to be rid of him, to take him to his
family or his friends, but I did not know who they were. I did not know what
else to do. I made a U-turn and drove to the store which he said was on the
other side of town.

I wondered
about going back to the restaurant to ask the waiter if he knew don Juan's
family. I hoped someone in the store might know him. The more I thought about
my predicament, the sorrier I felt for myself. Don Juan was finished. I had a
terrible sense of loss, of doom. I was going to miss him, but my sense of loss
was offset by my feeling of annoyance at being saddled with him at his worst.

I drove
around for almost an hour looking for the store. I could not find it. Don Juan
admitted that he might have made a mistake, that the store might be in a
different town. By then I was completely exhausted and had no idea what to do
next.

In my
normal state of awareness I always had the strange feeling that I knew more
about him than my reason told me. Now, under the pressure of his mental
deterioration, I was certain, without knowing why, that his friends were
waiting for him somewhere in Mexico, although I did not know where.

My
exhaustion was more than physical. It was a combination of worry and guilt. It
worried me that I was stuck with a feeble old man who might, for all I knew, be
mortally ill. And I felt guilty for being so disloyal to him.

I parked my
car near the waterfront. It took nearly ten minutes for don Juan to get out of
the car. We walked toward the ocean, but as we got closer, don Juan shied like
a mule and refused to go on. He mumbled that the water of Guaymas Bay scared him.

He turned
around and led me to the main square: a dusty plaza without even benches. Don
Juan sat down on the curb. A street-cleaning truck went by, rotating its steel
brushes, but no water was squirting into them. The cloud of dust made me cough.

I was so
disturbed by my situation that the thought of leaving him sitting there crossed
my mind. I felt embarrassed at having had such a thought and patted don Juan's
back.

"You
must make an effort and tell me where I can take you," I said softly.
"Where do you want me to go."

"I
want you to go to hell!" he replied in a cracked, raspy voice.

Hearing him
speak to me like this, I had the suspicion that don Juan might not have
suffered from a stroke, but some other crippling brain condition that had made
him lose his mind and become violent.

Suddenly he
stood up and walked away from me. I noticed how frail he looked. He had aged in
a matter of hours. His natural vigor was gone, and what I saw before me was a
terribly old, weak man.

I rushed to
lend him a hand. A wave of immense pity enveloped me. I saw myself old and
weak, barely able to walk. It was intolerable. I was close to weeping, not for
don Juan but for myself. I held his arm and made him a silent promise that I
would look after him, no matter what.

I was lost
in a reverie of self-pity when I felt the numbing force of a slap across my
face. Before I recovered from the surprise, don Juan slapped me again across
the back of my neck. He was standing facing me, shivering with rage. His mouth
was half open and shook uncontrollably.

"Who
are you?" he yelled in a strained voice.

He turned
to a group of onlookers who had immediately gathered.

"I
don't know who this man is," he said to them. "Help me. I'm a lonely
old Indian. He's a foreigner and he wants to kill me. They do that to helpless
old people, kill them for pleasure." There was a murmur of disapproval.
Various young, husky men looked at me menacingly. "What are you doing, don
Juan?" I asked him in a loud voice. I wanted to reassure the crowd that I
was with him.

"I
don't know you," don Juan shouted. "Leave me alone."

He turned
to the crowd and asked them to help him. He wanted them to restrain me until
the police came.

"Hold
him," he insisted. "And someone, please call the police. They'll know
what to do with this man."

I had the
image of a Mexican jail. No one would know where I was. The idea that months
would go by before anyone noticed my disappearance made me react with vicious
speed. I kicked the first young man who came close me, then took off at a
panicked run. I knew I was running for my life. Several young men ran after me.
As I raced toward the main street, I realized that in a small city like Guaymas
there were policemen all over the place patrolling on foot. There were none in
sight, and before I ran into one, I entered the first store in my path. I
pretended to be looking for curios.

The young
men running after me went by noisily. I conceived a quick plan: to buy as many
things as I could. I was counting on being taken for a tourist by the people in
the store. Then I was going to ask someone to help me carry the packages to my
car. It took me quite a while to select what I wanted. I paid a young man in
the store to help me carry my packages, but as I got closer to my car, I saw
don Juan standing by it, still surrounded by people. He was talking to a
policeman, who was taking notes.

It was
useless. My plan had failed. There was no way to get to my car. I instructed
the young man to leave my packages on the sidewalk. I told him a friend of mine
was going to drive by presently to take me to my hotel. He left and I remained
hidden behind the packages I was holding in front of my face, out of sight of
don Juan and the people around him.

I saw the
policeman examining my California license plates. And that completely convinced
me I was done for. The accusation of the crazy old man was too grave. And the
fact that I had run away would have only reinforced my guilt in the eyes of any
policeman. Besides, I would not have put it past the policeman to ignore the
truth, just to arrest a foreigner.

I stood in
a doorway for perhaps an hour. The policeman left, but the crowd remained around
don Juan, who was shouting and agitatedly moving his arms. I was too far away
to hear what he was saying but I could imagine the gist of his fast, nervous
shouting.

I was in
desperate need of another plan. I considered checking into a hotel and waiting
there for a couple of days before venturing out to get my car. I thought of
going back to the store and having them call a taxi. I had never had to hire a
cab in Guaymas and I had no idea if there were any. But my plan died instantly
with the realization that if the police were fairly competent, and had taken
don Juan seriously, they would check the hotels. Perhaps the policeman had left
don Juan in order to do just that.

Another
alternative that crossed my mind was to get to the bus station and catch a bus
to any town along the international border. Or to take any bus leaving Guaymas
any direction. I abandoned the idea immediately. I was sure don Juan had given
my name to the policeman and the police had probably already alerted the bus
companies. My mind plunged into blind panic. I took short breaths to calm my
nerves.

I noticed
then that the crowd around don Juan was beginning to disperse. The policeman
returned with a colleague, and the two of them moved away, walking slowly
toward the end of the street. It was at that point that I felt sudden
uncontrollable urge. It was as if my body were disconnected from my brain. I
walked to my car, carrying the packages. Without even the slightest trace of
fear or concern, I opened the trunk, put the packages inside, then opened the
driver's door.

Don Juan
was on the sidewalk, by my car, looking at me absentmindedly. I stared at him
with a thoroughly uncharacteristic coldness. Never in my life had I had such a
feeling. It was not hatred I felt, or even anger. I was not even annoyed with
him. What I felt was not resignation or patience, either. And it was certainly
not kindness. Rather it was a cold indifference, a frightening lack of pity. At
that instant, I could not have cared less about what happened to don Juan or
myself.

Don Juan
shook his upper body the way a dog shakes itself dry after a swim. And then, as
if all of it had only been a bad dream, he was again the man I knew. He quickly
turned his jacket inside out. It was a reversible jacket, beige on one side and
black on the other. Now he was wearing a black jacket. He threw his straw hat
inside the car and carefully combed his hair. He pulled his shirt collar over
the jacket collar, instantly making himself look younger. Without saying a
word, he helped me put the rest of the packages in the car.

When the
two policemen ran back to us, blowing their whistles, drawn by the noise of the
car doors being opened and closed, don Juan very nimbly rushed to meet them. He
listened to them attentively and assured them they had nothing to worry about.
He explained that they must have encountered his father, a feeble old Indian
who suffered from brain damage. As he talked to them, he opened and closed the
car doors, as if checking the locks. He moved the packages from the trunk to
the back seat. His agility and youthful strength were the opposite of the old
man's movements of a few minutes ago. I knew that he was acting for the benefit
of the policeman who had seen him before. If I had been that man, there would
have been no doubt in my mind that I was now seeing the son of the old
braindamaged Indian.

Don Juan
gave them the name of the restaurant where they knew his father and then bribed
them shamelessly.

I did not
bother to say anything to the policemen. There was something that made me feel
hard, cold, efficient, silent.

We got in
the car without a word. The policemen did not attempt to ask me anything. They
seemed too tired even to try. We drove away.

"What
kind of act did you pull out there, don Juan?" I asked, and the coldness
in my tone surprised me.

"It
was the first lesson in ruthlessness," he said.

He remarked
that on our way to Guaymas he had warned me about the impending lesson on
ruthlessness.

I confessed
that I had not paid attention because I had thought that we were just making
conversation to break the monotony of driving.

"I
never just make conversation," he said sternly. "You should know that
by now. What I did this afternoon was to create the proper situation for you to
move your assemblage point to the precise spot where pity disappears. That spot
is known as the place of no pity.

"The
problem that sorcerers have to solve," he went on, "is that the place
of no pity has to be reached with only minimal help. The nagual sets the scene,
but it is the apprentice who makes his assemblage point move.

"Today
you just did that. I helped you, perhaps a bit dramatically, by moving my own
assemblage point to specific position that made me into a feeble and
unpredictable old man. I was not just
acting
old and feeble. I
was
old"

The
mischievous glint in his eyes told me that he was enjoying the moment.

"It
was not absolutely necessary that I do that," he went on. "I could
have directed you to move your assemblage point without the hard tactics, but I
couldn't help myself, this event will never be repeated, I wanted to know
whether or not I could act, in some measure, like my own benefactor. Believe
me, I surprised myself as much as I must have surprised you."

I felt
incredibly at ease. I had no problems in accepting what he was saying to me,
and no questions, because I understood everything without needing him to
explain. He then said something which I already knew, but could not verbalize,
because I would not have been able to find the appropriate words to describe
it. He said that everytling sorcerers did was done as a consequence of a
movement of their assemblage points, and that such movements were ruled by the
amount of energy sorcerers had at their command.

I mentioned
to don Juan that I knew all that and much more. And he commented that inside
every human being was a gigantic, dark lake of silent knowledge which each of
us could intuit. He told me I could intuit it perhaps with a bit more clarity
than the average man because of my involvement in the warrior's path. He then
said that sorcerers were the only beings on earth who deliberately went beyond
the intuitive level by training themselves to do two transcendental things:
first, to conceive the existence of the assemblage point, and second, to make
that assemblage point move.