the word nagual. I said that don Juan had explained the nagual to me as being the indescribable principle, the source of everything. "Sure," she said smiling. "I know what he meant. The nagual is in everything." I pointed out to her, a bit scornfully, that one could also say the opposite, that the tonal is in everything. She carefully explained that there was no opposition, that my statement was correct, the tonal was also in everything. She said that the tonal which is in everything could be easily apprehended by our senses, while the nagual which is in everything manifested itself only to the eye of the sorcerer. She added that we could stumble upon the most outlandish sights of the tonal and be scared of them, or awed by them, or be indifferent to them, because all of us could view those sights. A sight of the nagual, on the other hand, needed the specialized senses of a sorcerer in order to be seen at all. And yet, both the tonal and the nagual were present in everything at all times. It was appropriate, therefore, for a sorcerer to say that "looking" consisted in viewing the tonal which is in everything, and "seeing," on the other hand, consisted in viewing the nagual which also is in everything. Accordingly, if a warrior observed the world as a human being, he was looking, but if he observed it as a sorcerer, he was "seeing," and what he was "seeing" had to be properly called the nagual. She then reiterated the reason, which Nestor had given me earlier, for calling don Juan the Nagual and confirmed that I was also the Nagual because of the shape that came out of my head. I wanted to know why they had called the shape that had come out of my head the double. She said that they had thought they were sharing a private joke with me. They had always called that shape the double, because it was twice the size of the person who had it. "Nestor told me that that shape was not such a good thing to have," I said. "It's neither good nor bad," she said. "You have it and that makes you the Nagual. That's all. One of us eight had to be the Nagual and you're the one. It might have been Pablito or me or anyone." "Tell me now, what is the art of stalking?" I asked. "The Nagual was a stalker," she said, and peered at me. "You must know that. He taught you to stalk from the beginning." It occurred to me that what she was referring to was what don Juan had called the hunter. He had certainly taught me to be a hunter. I told her that don Juan had shown me how to hunt and make traps. Her usage of the term stalker, however, was more accurate. "A hunter just hunts," she said. "A stalker stalks anything, including himself." "How does he do that?" "An impeccable stalker can turn anything into prey. The Nagual told me that we can even stalk our own weaknesses." I stopped writing and tried to remember if don Juan had ever presented me with such a novel possibility: to stalk my weaknesses. I could not recall him ever putting it in those terms. "How can one stalk one's weaknesses, Gorda?" "The same way you stalk prey. You figure out your routines until you know all the doing of your weaknesses and then you come upon them and pick them up like rabbits inside a cage." Don Juan had taught me the same thing about routines, but in the vein of a general principle that hunters must be aware of. Her understanding and application of it, however, were more pragmatic than mine. Don Juan had said that any habit was, in essence, a "doing, "and that a doing needed all its parts in order to function. If some parts were missing, a doing was disassembled. By doing, he meant any coherent and meaningful series of actions. In other words, a habit needed all its component actions in order to be a live activity. La Gorda then described how she had stalked her own weakness of eating excessively. She said that the Nagual had suggested she first tackle the biggest part of that habit, which was connected with her laundry work; she ate whatever her customers fed her as she went from house to house delivering her wash. She expected the Nagual to tell her what to do, but he only laughed and made fun of her, saying that as soon as he would mention something for her to do, she would fight not to do it. He said that that was the way human beings are; they love to be told what to do, but they love even more to fight and not do what they are told, and thus they get entangled in hating the one who told them in the first place. For many years she could not think of anything to do to stalk her weakness. One day, however, she got so sick and tired of being fat that she refused to eat for twenty-three days. That was the initial action that broke her fixation. She then had the idea of stuffing her mouth with a sponge to make her customers believe that she had an infected tooth and could not eat. The subterfuge worked not only with her customers, who stopped giving her food, but with her as well, as she had the feeling of eating as she chewed on the sponge. La Gorda laughed when she told me how she had walked around with a sponge stuffed in her mouth for years until her habit of eating excessively had been broken. "Was that all you needed to stop your habit?" I asked. "No. I also had to learn how to eat like a warrior." "And how does a warrior eat?" "A warrior eats quietly, and slowly, and very little at a time. I used to talk while I ate, and I ate very fast, and I ate lots and lots of food at one sitting. The Nagual told me that a warrior eats four mouthfuls of food at one time. A while later he eats another four mouthfuls and so on. "A warrior also walks miles and miles every day. My eating weakness never let me walk. I broke it by eating four mouthfuls every hour and by walking. Sometimes I walked all day and all night. That was the way I lost the fat on my buttocks." She laughed at her own recollection of the nickname don Juan had given her. "But stalking your weaknesses is not enough to drop them," she said. "You can stalk them from now to doomsday and it won't make a bit of difference. That's why the Nagual didn't want to tell me what to do. What a warrior really needs in order to be an impeccable stalker is to have a purpose." La Gorda recounted how she had lived from day to day, before she met the Nagual, with nothing to look forward to. She had no hopes, no dreams, no desire for anything. The opportunity to eat, however, was always accessible to her; for some reason that she could not fathom, there had been plenty of food available to her every single day of her life. So much of it, in fact, that at one time she weighed two hundred and thirty-six pounds. "Eating was the only thing I enjoyed in life," la Gorda said. "Besides, I never saw myself as being fat. I thought I was rather pretty and that people liked me as I was. Everyone said that I looked healthy. "The Nagual told me something very strange. He said that I had an enormous amount of personal power and due to that I had always managed to get food from friends while the relatives in my own house were going hungry. "Everybody has enough personal power for something. The trick for me was to pull my personal power away from food to my warrior's purpose." "And what is that purpose, Gorda?" I asked half in jest. "To enter into the other world," she replied with a grin and pretended to hit me on top of my head with her knuckles, the way don Juan used to do when he thought I was indulging. There was no more light for me to write. I wanted her to bring a lantern but she complained that she was too tired and had to sleep a bit before the little sisters arrived. We went into the front room. She gave me a blanket, then wrapped herself in another one and fell asleep instantly. I sat with my back against the wall. The brick surface of the bed was hard even with four straw mats. It was more comfortable to lie down. The moment I did I fell asleep. I woke up suddenly with an unbearable thirst. I wanted to go to the kitchen to drink some water but I could not orient myself in the darkness. I could feel la Gorda bundled up in her blanket next to me. I shook her two or three times and asked her to help me get some water. She grumbled some unintelligible words. She apparently was so sound asleep that she did not want to wake up. I shook her again and suddenly she woke up; only it was not la Gorda. Whoever I was shaking yelled at me in a gruff, masculine voice to shut up. There was a man there in place of la Gorda! My fright was instantaneous and uncontrollable. I jumped out of bed and ran for the front door. But my sense of orientation was off and I ended up out in the kitchen. I grabbed a lantern and lit it as fast as I could. La Gorda came out of the outhouse in the back at that moment and asked me if there was something wrong. I nervously told her what had happened. She seemed a bit disoriented herself. Her mouth was open and her eyes had lost their usual sheen. She shook her head vigorously and that seemed to restore her alertness. She took the lantern and we walked into the front room. There was no one in the bed. La Gorda lit three more lanterns. She appeared to be worried. She told me to stay where I was, then she opened the door to their room. I noticed that there was light coming from inside. She closed the door again and said in a matter-of-fact tone not to worry, that it was nothing, and that she was going to make us something to eat. With the speed and efficiency of a short-order cook she made some food. She also made a hot chocolate drink with cornmeal. We sat across from each other and ate in complete silence. The night was cold. It looked as if it was going to rain. The three kerosene lanterns that she had brought to the dining area cast a yellowish light that was very soothing. She took some boards that were stacked up on the floor, against the wall, and placed them vertically in a deep groove on the transverse supporting beam of the roof. There was a long slit in the floor parallel to the beam that served to hold the boards in place. The result was a portable wall that enclosed the dining area. "Who was in the bed?" I asked. "In bed, next to you, was Josefina, who else?" she replied as if savoring her words, and then laughed. "She's a master at jokes like that. For a moment I thought it was something else, but then I caught the scent that Josefina's body has when she's carrying out one of her pranks." "What was she trying to do? Scare me to death?" I asked. "You're not their favorite, you know," she replied. "They don't like to be taken out of the path they're familiar with. They hate the fact that Soledad is leaving. They don't want to understand that we are all leaving this area. It looks like our time is up. I knew that today. As I left the house I felt that those barren hills out there were making me tired. I had never felt that way until today." "Where are you going to go?" "I don't know yet. It looks as if that depends on you. On your power." "On me? In what way, Gorda?" "Let me explain. The day before you arrived the little sisters and I went to the city. I wanted to find you in the city because I had a very strange vision in my dreaming. In that vision I was in the city with you. I saw you in my vision as plainly as I see you now. You didn't know who I was but you talked to me. I couldn't make out what you said. I went back to the same vision three times but I was not strong enough in my dreaming to find out what you were saying to me. I figured that my vision was telling me that I had to go to the city and trust my power to find you there. I was sure that you were on your way." "Did the little sisters know why you took them to the city?" I asked. "I didn't tell them anything," she replied. "I just took them there. We wandered around the streets all morning." Her statements put me in a very strange frame of mind. Spasms of nervous excitation ran through my entire body. I had to stand up and walk around for a moment. I sat down again and told her that I had been in the city the same day, and that I had wandered around the marketplace all afternoon looking for don Juan. She stared at me with her mouth open. "We must have passed each other," she said and sighed. "We were in the market and in the park. We sat on the steps of the church most of the afternoon so as not to attract attention to ourselves." The hotel where I had stayed was practically next door to the church. I remembered that I had stood for a long time looking at the people on the steps of the church. Something was pulling me to examine them. I had the absurd notion that both don Juan and don Genaro were going to be among those people, sitting like beggars just to surprise me. "When did you leave the city?" I asked. "We left around five o'clock and headed for the Nagual's spot in the mountains," she replied. I had also had the certainty that don Juan had left at the end of the day. The feelings I had had during that entire episode of looking for don Juan became very clear to me. In light of what she had told me I had to revise my stand. I had conveniently explained away the certainty I had had that don Juan was there in the streets of the city as an irrational expectation, a result of my consistently finding him there in the past. But la Gorda had been in the city actually looking for me and she was the being closest to don Juan in temperament. I had felt all along that his presence was there. La Gorda's statement had merely confirmed something that my body knew beyond the shadow of a doubt. I noticed a flutter of nervousness in her body when I told her the details of my mood that day. "What would've happened if you had found me?" I asked. "Everything would've been changed," she replied. "For me to find you would've meant that I had enough power to move forward. That's why I took the little sisters with me. All of us, you, me and the little sisters, would've gone away together that day." "Where to, Gorda?" "Who knows? If I had the power to find you I would've also had the power to know that. It's your turn now. Perhaps you will have enough power now to know where we should go. Do you see what I mean?" I had an attack of profound sadness at that point. I felt more acutely than ever the despair of my human frailty and temporariness. Don Juan had always maintained that the only deterrent to our despair was the awareness of our death, the key to the sorcerer's scheme of things. His idea was that the awareness of our death was the only thing that could give us the strength to withstand the duress and pain of our lives and our fears of the unknown. But what he could never tell me was how to bring that awareness to the foreground. He had insisted, every time I had asked him, that my volition alone was the deciding factor; in other words, I had to make up my mind to bring that awareness to bear witness to my acts. I thought I had done so. But confronted with la Gorda's determination to find me and go away with me, I realized that if she had found me in the city that day I would never have returned to my home, never again would I have seen those I held dear. I had not been prepared for that. I had braced myself for dying, but not for disappearing for the rest of my life in full awareness, without anger or disappointment, leaving behind the best of my feelings. I was almost embarrassed to tell la Gorda that I was not a warrior worthy of having the kind of power that must be needed to perform an act of that nature: to leave for good and to know where to go and what to do. "We are human creatures," she said. "Who knows what's waiting for us or what kind of power we may have?" I told her that my sadness in leaving like that was too great. The changes that sorcerers went through were too drastic and too final. I recounted to her what Pablito had told me about his unbearable sadness at having lost his mother. "The human form feeds itself on those feelings," she said dryly. "I pitied myself and my little children for years. I couldn't understand how the Nagual could be so cruel to ask me to do what I did: to leave my children, to destroy them and to forget them." She said that it took her years to understand that the Nagual also had had to choose to leave the human form. He was not being cruel. He simply did not have any more human feelings. To him everything was equal. He had accepted his fate. The problem with Pablito, and myself for that matter, was that neither of us had accepted our fate. La Gorda said, in a scornful way, that Pablito wept when he remembered his mother, his Manuelita, especially when he had to cook his own food. She urged me to remember Pablito's mother as she was: an old, stupid woman who knew nothing else but to be Pablito's servant. She said that the reason all of them thought he was a coward was because he could not be happy that his servant Manuelita had become the witch Soledad, who could kill him like she would step on a bug. La Gorda stood up dramatically and leaned over the table until her forehead was almost touching mine. "The Nagual said that Pablito's good fortune was extraordinary," she said. "Mother and son fighting for the same thing. If he weren't the coward he is, he would accept his fate and oppose Soledad like a warrior, without fear or hatred. In the end the best would win and take all. If Soledad is the winner, Pablito should be happy with his fate and wish her well. But only a real warrior can feel that kind of happiness." "How does dona Soledad feel about all this?" "She doesn't indulge in her feelings," la Gorda replied and sat down again. "She has accepted her fate more readily than any one of us. Before the Nagual helped her she was worse off than myself. At least I was young; she was an old cow, fat and tired, begging for her death to come. Now death will have to fight to claim her." The time element in dona Soledad's transformation was a detail that had puzzled me. I told la Gorda that I remembered having seen dona Soledad no more than two years before and she was the same old lady I had always known. La Gorda said that the last time I had been in Soledad's house, under the impression that it was still Pablito's house, the Nagual had set them up to act as if everything were the same. Dona Soledad greeted me, as she always did, from the kitchen, and I really did not face her. Lidia, Rosa, Pablito and Nestor played their roles to perfection in order to keep me from finding out about their true activities. "Why would the Nagual go to all that trouble, Gorda?" "He was saving you for something that's not clear yet. He kept you away from every one of us deliberately. He and Genaro told me never to show my face when you were around." "Did they tell Josefina the same thing? " "Yes. She's crazy and can't help herself. She wanted to play her pranks on you. She used to follow you around and you never knew it. One night when the Nagual had taken you to the mountains, she nearly pushed you down a ravine in the darkness. The Nagual found her in the nick of time. She doesn't do those things out of meanness, but because she enjoys being that way. That's her human form. She'll be that way until she loses it. I've told you that all six of them are a bit off. You must be aware of that so as not to be caught in their webs. If you do get caught, don't get angry. They can't help themselves." She was silent for a while. I caught the almost imperceptible sign of a flutter in her body. Her eyes seemed to get out of focus and her mouth dropped as if the muscles of her jaw had given in. I became engrossed in watching her. She shook her head two or three times. "I've just seen something," she said. "You're just like the little sisters and the Genaros." She began to laugh quietly. I did not say anything. I wanted her to explain herself without my meddling. "Everybody gets angry with you because it hasn't dawned on them yet that you're no different than they are," she went on. "They see you as the Nagual and they don't understand that you indulge in your ways just like they do in theirs." She said that Pablito whined and complained and played at being a weakling. Benigno played the shy one, the one who could not even open his eyes. Nestor played to be the wise one, the one who knows everything. Lidia played the tough woman who could crush anyone with a look. Josefina was the crazy one who could not be trusted. Rosa was the bad-tempered girl who ate the mosquitoes that bit her. And I was the fool that came from Los Angeles with a pad of paper and lots of wrong questions. And all of us loved to be the way we were. "I was once a fat, smelly woman," she went on after a pause. "I didn't mind being kicked around like a dog as long as I was not alone. That was my form. "I will have to tell everybody what I have seen about you so they won't feel offended by your acts." I did not know what to say. I felt that she was undeniably right. The important issue for me was not so much her accurateness but the fact that I had witnessed her arriving at her unquestionable conclusion. "How did you see all that?" I asked. "It just came to me," she replied. "How did it come to you?" "I felt the feeling of seeing coming to the top of my head, and then I knew what I've just told you." I insisted that she describe to me every detail of the feeling of seeing that she was alluding to. She complied after a moment's vacillation and gave me an account of the same ticklish sensation I had become so aware of during my confrontations with dona Soledad and the little sisters. La Gorda said that the sensation started on the top of her head and then went down her back and around her waist to her womb. She felt it inside her body as a consuming ticklishness, which turned into the knowledge that I was clinging to my human form, like all the rest, except that my particular way was incomprehensible to them. "Did you hear a voice telling you all that?" I asked. "No. I just saw everything I've told you about yourself," she replied. I wanted to ask her if she had had a vision of me clinging to something, but I desisted. I did not want to indulge in my usual behavior. Besides, I knew what she meant when she said that she "saw." The same thing had happened to me when I was with Rosa and Lidia. I suddenly "knew" where they lived; I had not had a vision of their house. I simply felt that I knew it. I asked her if she had also felt a dry sound of a wooden pipe being broken at the base of her neck. "The Nagual taught all of us how to get the feeling on top of the head," she said. "But not everyone of us can do it. The sound behind the throat is even more difficult. None of us has ever felt it yet. It's strange that you have when you're still empty." "How does that sound work?" I asked. "And what is it?" "You know that better than I do. What more can I tell you?" she replied in a harsh voice. She seemed to catch herself being impatient. She smiled sheepishly and lowered her head. "I feel stupid telling you what you already know," she said. "Do you ask me questions like that to test if I have really lost my form?" I told her that I was confused, for I had the feeling that I knew what that sound was and yet it was as if I did not know anything about it, because for me to know something I actually had to be able to verbalize my knowledge. In this case, I did not even know how to begin verbalizing it. The only thing I could do, therefore, was to ask her questions, hoping that her answers would help me. "I can't help you with that sound," she said. I experienced a sudden and tremendous discomfort. I told her that I was habituated to dealing with don Juan and that I needed him then, more than ever, to explain everything to me. "Do you miss the Nagual?" she asked. I said that I did, and that I had not realized how much I missed him until I was back again in his homeland. "You miss him because you're still clinging to your human form," she said, and giggled as if she were delighted at my sadness. "Don't you miss him yourself, Gorda?" "No. Not me. I'm him. All my luminosity has been changed; how could I miss something that is myself?" "How is your luminosity different?" "A human being, or any other living creature, has a pale yellow glow. Animals are more yellow, humans are more white. But a sorcerer is amber, like clear honey in the sunlight. Some women sorceresses are greenish. The Nagual said that those are the most powerful and the most difficult." "What color are you, Gorda?" "Amber, just like you and all the rest of us. That's what the Nagual and Genaro told me. I've never seen myself. But I've seen everyone else. All of us are amber. And all of us, with the exception of you, are like a tombstone. Average human beings are like eggs; that's why the Nagual called them luminous eggs. Sorcerers change not only the color of their luminosity but their shape. We are like tombstones; only we are round at both ends." "Am I still shaped like an egg, Gorda?" "No. You're shaped like a tombstone, except that you have an ugly, dull patch in your middle. As long as you have that patch you won't be able to fly, like sorcerers fly, like I flew last night for you. You won't even be able to drop your human form." I became entangled in a passionate argument not so much with her as with myself. I insisted that their stand on how to regain that alleged completeness was simply preposterous. I told her that she could not possibly argue successfully with me that one had to turn one's back to one's own children in order to pursue the vaguest of all possible goals: to enter into the world of the nagual. I was so thoroughly convinced that I was right that I got carried away and shouted angry words at her. She was not in any way flustered by my outburst. "Not everybody has to do that," she said. "Only sorcerers who want to enter into the other world. There are plenty of good sorcerers who see and are incomplete. To be complete is only for us Toltecs. "Take Soledad, for instance. She's the best witch you can find and she's incomplete. She had two children; one of them was a girl. Fortunately for Soledad her daughter died. The Nagual said that the edge of the spirit of a person who dies goes back to the givers, meaning that that edge goes back to the parents. If the givers are dead and the person has children, the edge goes to the child who is complete. And if all the children are complete, that edge goes to the one with power and not necessarily to the best or the most diligent. For example, when Josefina's mother died, the edge went to the craziest of the lot, Josefina. It should have gone to her brother who is a hardworking, responsible man, but Josefina is more powerful than her brother. Soledad's daughter died without leaving any children and Soledad got a boost that closed half her hole. Now, the only hope she has to close it completely is for Pablito to die. And by the same token, Pablito's great hope for a boost is for Soledad to die." I told her in very strong terms that what she was saying was disgusting and horrifying to me. She agreed that I was right. She affirmed that at one time she herself had believed that that particular sorcerers' stand was the ugliest thing possible. She looked at me with shining eyes. There was something malicious about her grin. "The Nagual told me that you understand everything but you don't want to do anything about it," she said in a soft voice. I began to argue again. I told her that what the Nagual had said about me had nothing to do with my revulsion for the particular stand that we were discussing. I explained that I liked children, that I had the most profound respect for them, and that I empathized very deeply with their helplessness in the awesome world around them. I could not conceive hurting a child in any sense, not for any reason. "The Nagual didn't make the rule," she said. "The rule is made somewhere out there, and not by a man." I defended myself by saying that I was not angry with her or the Nagual but that I was arguing in the abstract, because I could not fathom the value of it all. "The value is that we need all our edge, all our power, our completeness in order to enter into that other world," she said. "I was a religious woman. I could tell you what I used to repeat without knowing what I meant. I wanted my soul to enter the kingdom of heaven. I still want that, except that I'm on a different path. The world of the nagual is the kingdom of heaven." I objected to her religious connotation on principle. I had become accustomed by don Juan never to dwell on that subject. She very calmly explained that she saw no difference in terms of life-style between us and true nuns and priests. She pointed out that not only were true nuns and priests complete as a rule, but they did not even weaken themselves with sexual acts. "The Nagual said that that is the reason they will never be exterminated, no matter who tries to exterminate them," she said. "Those who are after them are always empty; they don't have the vigor that true nuns and priests have. I liked the Nagual for saying that. I will always cheer for the nuns and priests. We are alike. We have given up the world and yet we are in the midst of it. Priests and nuns would make great flying sorcerers if someone would tell them that they can do it." The memory of my father's and my grandfather's admiration for the Mexican revolution came to my mind. They mostly admired the attempt to exterminate the clergy. My father inherited that admiration from his father and I inherited it from both of them. It was a sort of affiliation that we had. One of the first things that don Juan undermined in my personality was that affiliation. I once told don Juan, as if I were voicing my own opinion, something I had heard all my life, that the favorite ploy of the Church was to keep us in ignorance. Don Juan had a most serious expression on his face. It was as if my statements had touched a deep fiber in him. I thought immediately of the centuries of exploitation that the Indians had endured. "Those dirty bastards," he said. "They have kept me in ignorance, and you too." I caught his irony tight away and we both laughed. I had never really examined that stand. I did not believe it but I had nothing else to take its place. I told don Juan about my grandfather and my father and their views on religion as the liberal men they were. "It doesn't matter what anybody says or does," he said. "You must be an impeccable man yourself. The fight is right here in this chest." He patted my chest gently. "If your grandfather and father would be trying to be impeccable warriors," don Juan went on, "they wouldn't have time for petty fights. It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us. And that's what matters. The rest is of no importance. Nothing of what your grandfather or father said about the Church gave them well-being. To be an impeccable warrior, on the other hand, will give you vigor and youth and power. So, it is proper for you to choose wisely." My choice was the impeccability and simplicity of a warrior's life. Because of that choice I felt that I had to take la Gorda's words in a most serious manner and that was more threatening to me than even don Genaro's acts. He used to frighten me at a most profound level. His actions, although certifying, were assimilated, however, into the coherent continuum of their teachings. La Gorda's words and actions were a different kind of threat to me, somehow more concrete and real than the other. La Gorda's body shivered for a moment. A ripple went through it, making her contract the muscles of her shoulders and arms. She grabbed the edge of the table with an awkward rigidity. Then she relaxed until she was again her usual self. She smiled at me. Her eyes and smile were dazzling. She said in a casual tone that she had just "seen" my dilemma. "It's useless to close your eyes and pretend that you don't want to do anything or that you don't know anything," she said. "You can do that with people but not with me. I know now why the Nagual commissioned me to tell you all this. I'm a nobody. You admire great people; the Nagual and Genaro were the greatest of all." She stopped and examined me. She seemed to be waiting for my reaction to what she said. "You fought against what the Nagual and Genaro told you, all the way," she went on. "That's why you're behind. And you fought them because they were great. That's your particular way of being. But you can't fight against what I tell you, because you can't look up to me at all. I am your peer; I am in your cycle. You like to fight those who are better than you. It's no challenge to fight my stand. So, those two devils have finally bagged you through me. Poor little Nagual, you've lost the game." She came closer to me and whispered in my ear that the Nagual had also said that she should never try to take my writing pad away from me because that would be as dangerous as trying to snatch a bone from a hungry dog's mouth. She put her arms around me, resting her head on my shoulders, and laughed quietly and softly. Her "seeing" had numbed me. I knew that she was absolutely right. She had pegged me to perfection. She bugged me for a long time with her head against mine. The proximity of her body somehow was very soothing. She was just like don Juan at that. She exuded strength and conviction and purpose. She was wrong to say that I could not admire her. "Let's forget this," she said suddenly. "Let's talk about what we have to do tonight." "What exactly are we going to do tonight, Gorda?" "We have our last appointment with power." "Is it another dreadful battle with somebody?" "No. The little sisters are simply going to show you something that will complete your visit here. The Nagual told me that after that you may go away and never return, or that you may choose to stay with us. Either way, what they have to show you is their art. The art of the dreamer." "And what is that art? " "Genaro told me that he tried time and time again to acquaint you with the art of the dreamer. He showed you his other body, his body of dreaming; once he even made you be in two places at once, but your emptiness did not let you see what he was pointing out to you. It looks as if all his efforts went through the hole in your body. "Now it seems that it is different. Genaro made the little sisters the dreamers that they are and tonight they will show you Genaro's art. In that respect, the little sisters are the true children of Genaro." That reminded me of what Pablito had said earlier, that we were the children of both, and that we were Toltecs. I asked her what he had meant by that. "The Nagual told me that sorcerers used to be called Toltecs in his benefactor's language," she replied. "And what language was that, Gorda?" "He never told me. But he and Genaro used to speak a language that none of us could understand. And here, between all of us, we understand four Indian languages." "Did don Genaro also say that he was a Toltec?" "His benefactor was the same man, so he also said the same thing." From la Gorda's responses I could surmise that she either did not know a great deal on the subject or she did not want to talk to me about it. I confronted her with my conclusions. She confessed that she had never paid much attention to it and wondered why I was putting so much value on it. I practically gave her a lecture on the ethnography of central Mexico. "A sorcerer is a Toltec when that sorcerer has received the mysteries of stalking and dreaming," she said casually. "The Nagual and Genaro received those mysteries from their benefactor and then they held them in their bodies. We are doing the same, and because of that we are Toltecs like the Nagual and Genaro. "The Nagual taught you and me equally to be dispassionate. I am more dispassionate than you because I'm formless. You still have your form and are empty, so you get caught in every snag. One day, however, you'll be complete again and you'll understand then that the Nagual was right. He said that the world of people goes up and down and people go up and down with their world; as sorcerers we have no business following them in their ups and downs. "The art of sorcerers is to be outside everything and be unnoticeable. And more than anything else, the art of sorcerers is never to waste their power. The Nagual told me that your problem is that you always get caught in idiocies, like what you're doing now. I'm sure that you're going to ask everyone of us about the Toltecs, but you're not going to ask anyone of us about our attention." Her laughter was clear and contagious. I admitted to her that she was right. Small issues had always fascinated me. I also told her that I was mystified by her usage of the word attention. "I've told you already what the Nagual told me about attention," she said. "We hold the images of the world with our attention. A male sorcerer is very difficult to train because his attention is always closed, focused on something. A female, on the other hand, is always open because most of the time she is not focusing her attention on anything. Especially during her menstrual period. The Nagual told me and then showed me that during that time I could actually let my attention go from the images of the world. If I don't focus my attention on the world, the world collapses." "How is that done, Gorda?" "It's very simple. When a woman menstruates she cannot focus her attention. That's the crack the Nagual told me about. Instead of fighting to focus, a woman should let go of the images, by gazing fixedly at distant hills, or by gazing at water, like a river, or by gazing at the clouds. "If you gaze with your eyes open, you get dizzy and the eyes get tired, but if you half-close them and blink a lot and move them from mountain to mountain, or from cloud to cloud, you can look for hours, or days if necessary. "The Nagual used to make us sit by the door and gaze at those round hills on the other side of the valley. Sometimes we used to sit there for days until the crack would open." I wanted to hear more about it, but she stopped talking and hurriedly sat very close to me. She signaled me with her hand to listen. I heard a faint swishing sound and suddenly Lidia stepped out into the kitchen. I thought that she must have been asleep in their room and the sound of our voices had woken her up. She had changed the Western clothes she had been wearing the last time I had seen her and had put on a long dress like the Indian women of the area wore. She had a shawl on her shoulders and was barefoot. Her long dress, instead of making her look older and heavier, made her look like a child clad in an older woman's clothes. She walked up to the table and greeted la Gorda with a formal "Good evening, Gorda." She then turned to me and said, "Good evening, Nagual." Her greeting was so unexpected and her tone so serious that I was about to l