The Second Ring of Power (29 page)

"I know for a fact that you misunderstood la Gorda, because as
Benigno and I were walking to
Genaro's house, la Gorda overtook us on
the road and told us that you and Pablito were here in
this house. She
called you the Nagual. Do you know why?"

I laughed and said that I believed it was due to her notion that I had
gotten most of the
Nagual's luminosity.

"One of us here is a fool!" Benigno said in a booming voice
without opening his eyes.

The sound of his voice was so outlandish that I jumped away from him.
His thoroughly unexpected statement, plus my reaction to it, made all of them
laugh. Benigno opened one eye
and looked at me for an instant and
then buried his face in his arms.

"Do you know why we called Juan Matus the Nagual?" Nestor
asked me.

I said that I had always thought that that was their nice way of calling
don Juan a sorcerer.

Benigno laughed so loudly that the sound of his laughter drowned out
everybody else's. He
seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
He rested his head on my shoulder as if it were a
heavy object he
could no longer support.

"The reason we called him the Nagual," Nestor went on,
"is because he was split in two. In
other words,
any time he needed to, he could get into another track that we don't have
ourselves;
something would come out of him, something that was not
a
double
but a horrendous, menacing
shape that
looked like him but was twice his size. We call that shape the nagual and
anybody who has it is, of course, the Nagual.

"The Nagual told us that all of us can have that shape coming out
of our heads if we wanted
to, but chances are that none of us
would want to. Genaro didn't want it, so I think we don't want
it,
either. So it appears that you're the one who's stuck with it."

They cackled and yelled as if they were corraling a herd of cattle.
Benigno put his arms
around my shoulders without opening
his eyes and laughed until tears were rolling down his
cheeks.

"Why do you say that I am stuck with it?" I asked Nestor.

"It takes too much energy," he said, "too much work. I
don't know how you can still be
standing.

"The Nagual and Genaro split you once in the eucalyptus grove.
They took you there because
eucalyptuses are your trees. I was
there myself and I witnessed when they split you and pulled
your
nagual out. They pulled you apart by the ears until they had split your
luminosity and you were not an egg anymore, but two long chunks of luminosity.
Then they put you together again, but any sorcerer that
sees
can tell
that there is a huge gap in the middle."

"What's the advantage of being split?"

"You have one ear that hears everything and one eye that sees
everything and you will always
be able to go an extra mile in a
moment of need. That splitting is also the reason why they told us
that
you are the Maestro.

"They tried to split Pablito but it looks like it failed. He's too
pampered and has always
indulged like a bastard. That's why
he's so screwed up now."

"What's a
double
then?"

"A
double
is the other, the body that one gets in
dreaming
.
It looks exactly like oneself."
"Do all of you have a
double
?"

Nestor scrutinized me with a look of surprise.

"Hey, Pablito, tell the Maestro about our
doubles
," he
said laughing.

Pablito reached across the table and shook Benigno.

"You tell him, Benigno," he said. "Better yet, show it to
him."

Benigno stood up, opened his eyes as wide as he could and looked at the
roof, then he pulled
down his pants and showed me his penis.

The Genaros went wild with laughter.

"Did you really mean it when you asked that, Maestro?" Nestor
asked me with a nervous
expression.

I assured him that I was deadly serious in my desire to know anything
related to their
knowledge. I went into a long elucidation of how
don Juan had kept me outside of their realm for
reasons I could
not fathom, thus preventing me from knowing more about them.

"Think of this," I said. "I didn't know until three days
ago that those four girls were the
Nagual's apprentices, or that
Benigno was don Genaro's apprentice."

Benigno opened his eyes.

"Think of this yourself," he said. "I didn't know until
now that you were so stupid."

He closed his eyes again and all of them laughed insanely. I had no
choice but to join them.
"We were just teasing you.
Maestro," Nestor said in way of an apology. "We thought that you
were
teasing us, rubbing it in. The Nagual told us that you
see
. If you do,
you can tell that we are
a sorry lot. We don't have the body of
dreaming
.
None of us has a
double
."

In a very serious and earnest manner Nestor said that something had come
in between them
and their desire to have a
double
. I
understood him as saying that a sort of barrier had been
created
since don Juan and don Genaro had left. He thought that it might be the result
of Pablito
flubbing his task. Pablito added that since the Nagual
and Genaro had gone, something seemed to
be chasing
them, and even Benigno, who was living in the southernmost tip of Mexico at that
time, had to return. Only when the three of them were
together did they feel at ease.

"What do you think it is?" I asked Nestor.

"There is something out there in that immensity that's pulling
us," he replied. "Pablito thinks it's his fault for antagonizing
those women."

Pablito turned to me. There was an intense glare in his eyes.

"They've put a curse on me. Maestro," he said. "I know
that the cause of all our trouble is me.

I wanted to disappear from these parts after my fight with Lidia, and a
few months later I took off
for Veracruz. I was actually very happy
there with a girl I wanted to marry. I got a job and was
doing
fine until one day I came home and found that those four mannish freaks, like
beasts of
prey, had tracked me down by my scent. They were in my
house tormenting my woman. That
bitch Rosa put her ugly hand on my
woman's belly and made her shit in the bed, just like that.
Their
leader. Two Hundred and Twenty Buttocks, told me that they had walked across
the
continent looking for me. She just grabbed me by the belt
and pulled me out. They pushed me to the bus depot to bring me here. I got
madder than the devil but I was no match for Two Hundred
and
Twenty Buttocks. She put me on the bus. But on our way here I ran away. I ran
through
bushes and over hills until my feet got so swollen that
I couldn't get my shoes off. I nearly died. I
was ill for
nine months. If the Witness hadn't found me, I would have died."

"I didn't find him," Nestor said to me. "La Gorda found
him. She took me to where he was and
between the two of us we
carried him to the bus and brought him here. He was delirious and we
had
to pay an extra fare so that the bus driver would let him stay on the
bus."

In a most dramatic tone Pablito said that he had not changed his mind;
he still wanted to die.
"But why?" I asked him.

Benigno answered for him in a booming, guttural voice.

"Because his pecker doesn't work," he said.

The sound of his voice was so extraordinary that for an instant I had
the impression that he
was talking inside a cavern. It was at
once frightening and incongruous. I laughed almost out of
control.

Nestor said that Pablito had attempted to fulfill his task of
establishing sexual relations with
the women, in accordance with
the Nagual's instructions. He had told Pablito that the four corners
of
his world were already set in position and all he had to do was to claim them.
But when Pablito
went to claim his first corner, Lidia, she nearly
killed him. Nestor added that it was his personal
opinion as a
witness of the event that the reason Lidia rammed him with her head was because
Pablito could not perform as a man, and rather than being embarrassed
by the whole thing, she hit
him.

"Did Pablito really get sick as a result of that blow or was he
pretending?" I asked half in jest.
Benigno
answered again in the same booming voice.

"He was just pretending!" he said. "All he got was a bump
on the head! "

Pablito and Nestor cackled and yelled.

"We don't blame Pablito for being afraid of those women,"
Nestor said. "They are all like the
Nagual himself,
fearsome warriors. They're mean and crazy."

"Do you really think they're that bad?" I asked him.

"To say they're bad is only one part of the whole truth,"
Nestor said. "They're just like the
Nagual.
They're serious and gloomy. When the Nagual was around, they used to sit close
to him
and stare into the distance with half-closed eyes for
hours, sometimes for days."

"Is it true that Josefina was really crazy a long time ago?" I
asked.

"That's a laugh," Pablito said. "Not a long time ago;
she's crazy now. She's the most insane of the bunch."

I told them what she had done to me. I thought that they would
appreciate the humor of her
magnificent performance. But my story
seemed to affect them the wrong way. They listened to
me like
frightened children; even Benigno opened his eyes to listen to my account.

"Wow!" Pablito exclaimed. "Those bitches are really
awful. And you know that their leader is
Two Hundred
and Twenty Buttocks. She's the one that throws the rock and then hides her hand
and pretends to be an innocent little girl. Be careful of her,
Maestro."

"The Nagual trained Josefina to be anything," Nestor said.
"She can do anything you want:
cry, laugh, get angry,
anything."

"But what is she like when she is not acting?" I asked Nestor.

"She's just crazier than a bat," Benigno answered in a soft
voice. "I met Josefina the first day
she arrived. I
had to carry her into the house. The Nagual and I used to tie her down to her
bed all
the time. Once she began to cry for her friend, a little
girl she used to play with. She cried for
three days.
Pablito consoled her and fed her like a baby. She's like him. Both of them
don't know
how to stop once they begin."

Benigno suddenly began to sniff the air. He stood up and went over to
the stove.
"Is he really shy?" I asked Nestor.

"He's shy and eccentric," Pablito answered. "He'll be
that way until he loses his form. Genaro
told us that
we will lose our form sooner or later, so there is no point in making ourselves
miserable in trying to change ourselves the way the Nagual told us to.
Genaro told us to enjoy
ourselves and not worry about anything.
You and the women worry and try; we on the other
hand, enjoy.
You don't know how to enjoy things and we don't know how to make ourselves
miserable.
The Nagual called making yourself miserable, impeccability; we call it
stupidity, don't
we?"

"You are speaking for yourself, Pablito," Nestor said.

"Benigno and I don't feel that way."

Benigno brought a bowl of food over and placed it in front of me. He
served everyone. Pablito
examined the bowls and asked Benigno
where he had found them. Benigno said that they were in
a
box where la Gorda had told him she had stored them. Pablito confided in me
that those bowls
used to belong to them before their split.

"We have to be careful," Pablito said in a nervous tone.
"These bowls are no doubt bewitched.
Those bitches
put something in them. I'd rather eat out of la Gorda's bowl."

Nestor and Benigno began to eat. I noticed then that Benigno had given
me the brown bowl.
Pablito seemed to be in a great turmoil. I wanted
to put him at ease but Nestor stopped me.

"Don't take him so seriously," he said. "He loves to be
that way. He'll sit down and eat. This is
where you and
the women fail. There is no way for you to understand that Pablito is like
that. You expect everybody to be like the Nagual. La Gorda is the only one
who's unruffled by him,
not because she understands but because
she has lost her form."