The Power of Silence (35 page)

Yet in
spite of his unpleasant personality, to the chagrin of all the apprentices,
Tulio had
undue influence on the household - especially on the nagual Julian, who seemed
to dote on him.

One morning
the nagual Julian sent all the apprentices on a day-long errand to the city.
The only person left in the house, besides the older members of the household,
was don Juan.

Around
midday the nagual Julian headed for his study to do his daily bookkeeping. As
he was going in, he casually asked don Juan to help him with the accounts.

Don Juan
began to look through the receipts and soon realized that to continue he needed
some information that Tulio, the overseer of the property, had, and had
forgotten to note down.

The nagual
Julian was definitely angry at Tulio's oversight, which pleased don Juan. The
nagual impatiently ordered don Juan to find Tulio, who was out in the fields
supervising the workers, and ask him to come to the study.

Don Juan,
gloating at the idea of annoying Tulio, ran half a mile to the fields,
accompanied, of course, by a field hand to protect him from the monstrous man.
He found Tulio supervising the workers from a distance, as always. Don Juan had
noticed that Tulio hated to come into direct contact with people and always
watched them from afar.

In a harsh
voice and with an exaggeratedly imperious manner, don Juan demanded that Tulio
accompany him to the house because the nagual required his services. Tulio, his
voice barely audible, replied that he was too busy at the moment, but that in
about an hour he would be free to come.

Don Juan
insisted, knowing that Tulio would not bother to argue with him and would
simply dismiss him with a turn of his head. He was shocked when Tulio began to
yell obscenities at him. The scene was so out of character for Tulio that even
the farm workers stopped their labor and looked at one another questioningly.
Don Juan was sure they had never heard Tulio raise his voice, much less yell
improprieties. His own surprise was so great that he laughed nervously, which
made Tulio extremely angry. He even hurled a rock at the frightened don Juan,
who fled.

Don Juan
and his bodyguard immediately ran back to the house. At the front door they
found Tulio. He was quietly talking and laughing with some of the women. As was
his custom, he turned his head away, ignoring don Juan. Don Juan began angrily
to chastise him for socializing there when the nagual wanted him in his study.
Tulio and the women looked at don Juan as if he had gone mad.

But Tulio
was not his usual self that day. Instantly he yelled at don Juan to shut his
damned mouth and mind his own damned business. He blatantly accused don Juan of
trying to put him in a bad light with the nagual Julian.

The women
showed their dismay by gasping loudly and looking disapprovingly at don Juan.
They tried to calm Tulio. Don Juan ordered Tulio to go to the nagual's study
and explain the accounts. Tulio told him to go to hell.

Don Juan
was shaking with anger. The simple task of asking for the accounts had turned
into a nightmare. He controlled his temper. The women were watching him
intently, which angered him all over again. In a silent rage he ran to the
nagual's study. Tulio and the women went back to talking and laughing quietly
as though they were celebrating a private joke.

Don Juan's
surprise was total when he entered the study and found Tulio sitting at the
nagual's desk absorbed in his bookkeeping. Don Juan made a supreme effort and
controlled his anger. He smiled at Tulio. He no longer had the need to confront
Tulio. He had suddenly understood that the nagual Julian was using Tulio to
test him, to see if he would lose his temper. He would not give him that
satisfaction.

Without
looking up from his accounts, Tulio said that if don Juan was looking for the
nagual, he would probably find him at the other end of the house.

Don Juan
raced to the other end of the house to find the nagual Julian walking slowly
around the patio with Tulio at his side. The nagual appeared to be engrossed in
his conversation with Tulio. Tulio gently nudged the nagual's sleeve and said
in a low voice that his assistant was there.

The nagual
matter-of-factly explained to don Juan everything about the account they had
been working on. It was a long, detailed, and thorough explanation. He said
then that all don Juan had to do was to bring the account book from the study
so that they could make the entry and have Tulio sign it.

Don Juan
could not understand what was happening. The detailed explanation and the
nagual's matter-of-fact tone had brought everything into the realm of mundane
affairs. Tulio impatiently ordered don Juan to hurry up and fetch the book,
because he was busy. He was needed somewhere else.

By now don
Juan had resigned himself to being a clown. He knew that the nagual was up to
something; he had that strange look in his eyes which don Juan always
associated with his beastly jokes. Besides, Tulio had talked more that day than
he had in the entire two years don Juan had been in the house.

Without
uttering a word, don Juan went back to the study. And as he had expected, Tulio
had gotten there first. He was sitting on the corner of the desk, waiting for
don Juan, impatiently tapping the floor with the hard heel of his boot. He held
out the ledger don Juan was after, gave it to him, and told him to be on his
way.

Despite
being prepared, don Juan was astonished. He stared at the man, who became angry
and abusive. Don Juan had to struggle not to explode. He kept saying to himself
that all this was merely a test of his attitude. He had visions of being thrown
out of the house if he failed the test.

In the
midst of his turmoil, he was still able to wonder about the speed with which
Tulio managed always to be one jump ahead of him.

Don Juan
certainly anticipated that Tulio would be waiting with the nagual. Still, when
he saw him there, although he was not surprised, he was incredulous. He had
raced through the house, following the shortest route. There was no way that
Tulio could run faster than he. Furthermore, if Tulio had run, he would have
had to run right alongside don Juan.

The nagual
Julian took the account book from don Juan with an air of indifference. He made
the entry; Tulio signed it. Then they continued talking about the account,
disregarding don Juan, whose eyes were fixed on Tulio. Don Juan wanted to
figure out what kind of test they were putting him through. It had to be a test
of his attitude, he thought. After all, in that house, his attitude had always
been the issue.

The nagual
dismissed don Juan, saying he wanted to be alone with Tulio to discuss
business. Don Juan immediately went looking for the women to find out what they
would say about this strange situation. He had gone ten feet when he
encountered two of the women and Tulio. The three of them were caught up in a
most animated conversation. He saw them before they had seen him, so he ran
back to the nagual. Tulio was there, talking with the nagual.

An
incredible suspicion entered don Juan's mind. He ran to the study; Tulio was
immersed in his bookkeeping and did not even acknowledge don Juan. Don Juan
asked him what was going on. Tulio was his usual self this time: he did not
answer or look at don Juan.

Don Juan
had at that moment another inconceivable thought. He ran to the stable, saddled
two horses and asked his morning bodyguard to accompany him again. They
galloped to the place where they had seen Tulio earlier. He was exactly where
they had left him. He did not speak to don Juan. He shrugged his shoulders and
turned his head when don Juan questioned him.

Don Juan
and his companion galloped back to the house. He left the man to care for the
horses and rushed into the house. Tulio was lunching with the women. And Tulio
was also talking to the nagual. And Tulio was also working on the books.

Don Juan
sat down and felt the cold sweat of fear. He knew that the nagual Julian was
testing him with one of his horrible jokes. He reasoned that he had three
courses of action. He could behave as if nothing out of the ordinary was
happening; he could figure out the test himself; or, since the nagual had
engraved in his mind that he was there to explain anything don Juan wanted, he
could confront the nagual and ask for clarification.

He decided
to ask. He went to the nagual and asked him to explain what was being done to
him. The nagual was alone then, still working on his accounts. He put the
ledger aside and smiled at don Juan. He said that the twenty-one not-doings he
had taught don Juan to perform were the tools that could sever the three
thousand heads of self-importance, but that those tools had not been effective
with don Juan at all. Thus, he was trying the second method for destroying
self-importance which meant putting don Juan into the state of being called the
place of no pity.

Don Juan
was convinced then that the nagual Julian was utterly mad. Hearing him talk
about not-doings or about monsters with three thousand heads or about places of
no pity, don Juan felt almost sorry for him.

The nagual
Julian very calmly asked don Juan to go to the storage shed in the back of the
house and ask Tulio to come out.

Don Juan
sighed and did his best not to burst out laughing. The nagual's methods were
too obvious. Don Juan knew that the nagual wanted to continue the test, using
Tulio.

Don Juan
stopped his narration and asked me what I thought about Tulio's behavior. I
said that, guided by what I knew about the sorcerers' world, I would say that
Tulio was a sorcerer and somehow he was moving his own assemblage point in a
very sophisticated manner to give don Juan the impression that he was in four
places at the same time.

"So
what do you think I found in the shed?" don Juan asked with a big grin.

"I
would say either you found Tulio or you didn't find anybody," I replied.

"But
if either of these had happened, there would have been no shock to my continuity,"
don Juan said.

I tried to
imagine bizarre things and I proposed that perhaps he found Tulio's dreaming
body. I reminded don Juan that he himself had done something similar to me with
one of the members of his party of sorcerers.

"No,"
don Juan retorted. "What I found was a joke that has no equivalent in
reality. And yet it was not bizarre; it was not out of this world. What do you
think it was?"

I told don
Juan I hated riddles. I said that with all the bizarre things he had made me
experience, the only things I could conceive would be more bizarreness, and
since that was ruled out, I gave up guessing.

"When
I went into that shed I was prepared to find that Tulio was hiding," don
Juan said. "I was sure that the next part of the test was going to be an
infuriating game of hide-and-seek. Tulio was going to drive me crazy hiding
inside that shed.

"But
nothing I had prepared myself for happened. I walked into that shed and found
four Tulios."

"What
do you mean, four Tulios?" I asked.

"There
were four men in that shed," don Juan replied. "And all of them were
Tulio. Can you imagine my surprise? All of them were sitting in the same
position, their legs crossed and pressed tightly together. They were waiting
for me. I looked at them and ran away screaming.

"My
benefactor held me down on the ground outside the door. And then, truly
horrified, I saw how the four Tulios came out of the shed and advanced toward
me. I screamed and screamed while the Tulios pecked me with their hard fingers,
like huge birds attacking. I screamed until I felt something give in me and I
entered a state of superb indifference. Never in all my life had I felt
something so extraordinary. I brushed off the Tulios and got up. They had just
been tickling me. I went directly to the nagual and asked him to explain the
four men to me."

What the
nagual Julian explained to don Juan was that those four men were the paragons
of stalking. Their names had been invented by their teacher, the nagual Elias,
who, as an exercise in controlled folly, had taken the Spanish numerals uno,
dos, tres, cuatro, added them to the name of Tulio, and obtained in that manner
the names Tuliuno, Tuliodo, Tulitre, and Tulicuatro.

The nagual
Julian introduced each in turn to don Juan. The four men were standing in a
row. Don Juan faced each of them and nodded, and each nodded to him. The nagual
said the four men were stalkers of such extraordinary talent, as don Juan had
just corroborated, that praise was meaningless. The Tulios were the nagual
Elias's triumph; they were the essence of unobtrusiveness. They were such
magnificent stalkers that, for all practical purposes, only one of them
existed. Although people saw and dealt with them daily, nobody outside the
members of the household knew that there were four Tulios.

Don Juan
understood with perfect clarity everything the nagual Julian was saying about
the men. Because of his unusual clarity, he knew he had reached the place of no
pity. And he understood, all by himself, that the place of no pity was a
position of the assemblage point, a position which rendered self-pity
inoperative. But don Juan also knew that his insight and wisdom were extremely
transitory. Unavoidably, his assemblage point would return to its point of
departure.