said to me in a coaxing tone.
     I walked back to the table. She pointed out a place for me to  sit, but
I remained standing.
     She smiled for the  first time and  her eyes became softer and shinier.
She was not as pretty as Josefina, and yet she was the most beautiful of all
of them.
     We  were quiet for a moment.  In  terms of an explanation she said that
they  had  done  their  best in  the years  since the  Nagual left, and that
because of  their dedication they had become accustomed  to the task that he
had left for them to perform.
     I did not quite understand what she was talking about, but as she spoke
I felt more  than ever  the  presence of  don Juan.  It was not that she was
copying his manners,  or  the  inflection  of his  voice. She had  an  inner
control  that  made her act the way don Juan  did. Their similarity was from
the inside out.
     I told  her that  I had  come  because I needed  Pablito's and Nestor's
help. I said that I was rather slow or even stupid in understanding the ways
of  sorcerers, but that  I was sincere, and  yet all of them  had treated me
with malice and deceitfulness.
     She began  to apologize but I  did not  let her finish.  I picked up my
things and went out the front door. She ran after me. She was not preventing
me  from leaving but rather she  was talking very fast, as if she  needed to
say all she could before I drove away.
     She said that I had to hear her  out, and that she  was willing to ride
with me until  she had told  me  everything the Nagual  had entrusted her to
tell me.
     "I'm going to Mexico City," I said.
     "I'll ride with  you to Los Angeles if necessary," she said, and I knew
that she meant it.
     "All right," I said just to test her, "get in the car."
     She vacillated for  an instant,  then she stood silently and faced  her
house. She put her clasped  hands just below her navel. She turned and faced
the valley and did the same movement with her hands.
     I  knew what she was doing. She was saying good-bye to her house and to
those awesome round hills that surrounded it.
     Don  Juan had  taught  me that  good-bye gesture  years  before. He had
stressed that it was an extremely powerful gesture, and that  a  warrior had
to use it sparingly. I had had very few occasions to perform it myself.
     The  good-bye movement  la Gorda was executing was a variant of the one
don Juan  had  taught  me.  He  had said  that the hands were clasped  as in
prayer, either  gently or with great speed, even producing a clapping sound.
Done  either  way, the purpose of clasping the  hands  was  to  imprison the
feeling  that the warrior did not wish to leave behind. As soon as the hands
had closed in and captured that feeling, they were taken with great force to
the middle of the chest, at the level of the heart. There the feeling became
a  dagger and the warrior stabbed himself with it, as if  holding the dagger
with both hands.
     Don Juan had told me that a warrior  said good-bye in that fashion only
when he had reason to feel he might not come back.
     La Gorda's good-bye enthralled me.
     "Are you saying good-bye?" I asked out of curiosity.
     "Yes," she said dryly.
     "Don't you put your hands to your chest?" I asked.
     "Men do that. Women have wombs. They store their feelings there."
     "Aren't you suppose to  say  good-bye  like that only when  you're  not
coming back?" I asked.
     "Chances are I may not come back," she replied. "I'm going with you."
     I had an attack of unwarranted sadness, unwarranted in the sense that I
did not know that woman at all. I  had only doubts and suspicions about her.
But  as I peered into her clear eyes I had  a sense of ultimate kinship with
her.  I  mellowed.  My anger  had disappeared  and  given way to  a  strange
sadness. I looked around, and I knew that those  mysterious, enormous, round
hills were ripping me apart.
     "Those hills over there are alive," she said, reading my thoughts.
     I turned  to  her and  told her that both  the place and  the women had
affected me at a very deep level, a level I could not ordinarily conceive. I
did not know which was more devastating, the place or the women. The women's
onslaughts had been direct and terrifying, but the effect of those hills was
a  constant, nagging apprehension, a desire to flee from them.  When I  told
that to la Gorda she said that I was correct in assessing the effect of that
place, that  the Nagual had left them there because of that effect, and that
I  should not blame anyone for what had happened, because the Nagual himself
had given those women orders to try to do away with me.
     "Did he give orders like that to you too?" I asked.
     "No, not to  me.  I'm different  than  they  are," she said. "They  are
sisters.  They are the same, exactly the same. Just like Pablito, Nestor and
Benigno are the same. Only you and I can be exactly the same. We are not now
because you're  still  incomplete. But someday we  will be the same, exactly
the same."
     "I've been told that you're the only one who knows where the Nagual and
Genaro are now," I said.
     She peered at me for a moment and shook her head affirmatively.
     "That's right," she said. "I know where they are. The Nagual told me to
take you there if I can."
     I  told her to stop beating around the bush  and to reveal  their exact
whereabouts to me  immediately. My demand  seemed to plunge her into  chaos.
She apologized and reassured me that later on, when we  were on our way, she
would disclose  everything to me. She begged me  not  to ask her  about them
anymore  because she had  strict orders not to  mention  anything until  the
right moment.
     Lidia and Josefina  came to the door and stared at me.  I hurriedly got
in  the  car.  La Gorda got in  after me, and  as she did  I  could not help
observing that  she had entered the car as she would  have entered a tunnel.
She sort  of crawled  in. Don Juan used  to do that.  I  jokingly said once,
after I had  seen him do it  scores of times, that it was more functional to
get in the way I did. I  thought  that perhaps his lack  of familiarity with
automobiles was responsible for his strange  way of  entering.  He explained
then that  the car  was  a cave  and  that  caves had to  be entered in that
fashion if we were going to use them. There was an inherent spirit to caves,
whether  they  were  natural  or man-made,  and that  that spirit  had to be
approached with respect. Crawling was the only way of showing that respect.
     I  was  wondering  whether or  not  to ask la Gorda  if  don  Juan  had
instructed her  about such details,  but she spoke first.  She said that the
Nagual had given her specific instructions about what to  do in case I would
survive the attacks  of dona Soledad and the three girls.  Then she casually
added that before I headed for Mexico City we  had to go to a specific place
in the mountains where don Juan and  I used to  go, and that there she would
reveal all the information the Nagual had never disclosed to me.
     I had a moment of indecision, and then something in me which was not my
reason  made  me  head  for the mountains. We drove in  complete  silence. I
attempted at various opportune moments to start  up a conversation, but  she
turned me  down  every time with  a  strong shake of her head.  Finally  she
seemed to  have gotten tired of my trying and said  forcefully that what she
had  to  say  required a place of  power and until we were in one we had  to
abstain from draining ourselves with useless talk.
     After  a long  drive and  an exhausting hike  away from  the  road,  we
finally  reached our destination. It was  late afternoon. We  were in a deep
canyon.  The bottom of it was already dark, while the  sun was still shining
on the  top  of the mountains above it. We walked  until we came to  a small
cave  a few feet up the  north  side  of the canyon, which ran  from east to
west. I used to spend a great deal of time there with don Juan.
     Before  we  entered  the cave, la  Gorda carefully swept the floor with
branches, the  way don Juan  used  to,  in  order  to  clear  the ticks  and
parasites from  the rocks. Then she cut a large heap of small branches  with
soft leaves  from the surrounding bushes  and placed them on  the rock floor
like a mat.
     She motioned me to enter. I  had always  let don Juan enter first as  a
sign  of respect. I wanted to do  the same with her,  but  she declined. She
said I  was the Nagual. I crawled into the cave the same way she had crawled
into my car. I laughed at my inconsistency.  I had never been  able to treat
my car as a cave.
     She coaxed me to relax and make myself comfortable.
     "The reason the Nagual could  not  reveal all  his  designs to you  was
because you're incomplete," la  Gorda said all of a sudden. "You still  are,
but now after your bouts with Soledad and the sisters, you are stronger than
before."
     "What's  the meaning of  being  incomplete? Everyone has  told  me that
you're the only one who can explain that," I said.
     "It's  a very simple matter," she  said.  "A complete person is one who
has never had children."
     She paused as if she  were  allowing me time to write down what she had
said. I looked up from my  notes. She was staring at me, judging  the effect
of her words.
     "I know  that  the  Nagual told  you exactly  what I've just said," she
continued. "You didn't pay  any attention  to  him and  you probably haven't
paid any attention to me, either."
     I read my notes out loud and repeated what she had said. She giggled.
     "The  Nagual  said  that  an  incomplete  person  is  one  who has  had
children," she said as if dictating to me.
     She scrutinized  me, apparently waiting for a question or a  comment. I
had none.
     "Now I've told you everything about being complete and incomplete," she
said.  "And I've told you just like  the  Nagual told  me.  It  didn't  mean
anything to me at that time, and it doesn't mean anything to you now."
     I had to laugh at the way she patterned herself after don Juan.
     "An incomplete person has a  hole  in  the  stomach,"  she went on.  "A
sorcerer can see it as plainly as  you  can see my head. When the hole is on
the left side  of one's stomach, the  child who created that  hole is of the
same sex.  If it is on the right side, the child is of the opposite sex. The
hole on the left side is black, the one on the right is dark brown."
     "Can you see that hole in anyone who has had children?"
     "Sure.  There  are  two ways of  seeing it. A sorcerer  may see  it  in
dreaming or by  looking  directly at a person. A  sorcerer who sees  has  no
problems in viewing the luminous being to find out if there is a hole in the
luminosity of the body. But even if the sorcerer doesn't know how to see, he
can  look  and  actually distinguish the  darkness  of the hole through  the
clothing."
     She stopped talking. I urged her to go on.
     "The Nagual told me that you write and then you don't remember what you
wrote," she said with a tone of accusation.
     I became entangled in words trying  to defend myself. Nonetheless, what
she had said was the truth. Don Juan's words  always had had a double effect
on me: once when  I heard  for the first time whatever he had said, and then
when I read at home whatever I had written down and had forgotten about.
     Talking to la Gorda,  however, was  intrinsically different. Don Juan's
apprentices were not in any  way as engulfing as he was.  Their revelations,
although  extraordinary,  were  only  missing pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. The
unusual character of those pieces was that  with them  the picture  did  not
become clearer but that it became more and more complex.
     "You  had  a  brown  hole  in the  right  side  of  your stomach,"  she
continued. "That means that a woman emptied you. You made a female child.
     "The Nagual said that I had a huge black hole myself,  because  I  made
two women. I never saw the hole, but I've seen other people with  holes like
mine."
     "You said that I had a hole; don't I have it anymore?"
     "No. It's been  patched. The Nagual helped you to patch it. Without his
help you would be more empty than you are now."
     "What kind of patch is it?"
     "A patch  in your luminosity. There is no  other way of  saying it. The
Nagual  said that a sorcerer like himself can  fill up the hole anytime. But
that that filling is only  a  patch without  luminosity. Anyone who sees  or
does  dreaming  can tell  that it  looks  like a  lead patch  on the  yellow
luminosity of the rest of the body.
     "The  Nagual patched you  and me and Soledad. But then he left it up to
us to put back the shine, the luminosity."
     "How did he patch us?"
     "He's  a sorcerer, he put things in our bodies. He  replaced us. We are
no longer the same. The patch is what he put there himself."
     "But how did he put those things there and what were they?"
     "What he put in our bodies was his  own luminosity and he used his hand
to do that. He simply reached into our bodies  and left his fibers there. He
did the same with all of his six children and also with Soledad. All of them
are the same. Except Soledad; she's something else."
     La Gorda seemed unwilling to go on. She vacillated and almost began  to
stutter.
     "What is dona Soledad?" I insisted.
     "It's very hard to tell," she said after  considerable coaxing. "She is
the  same  as  you  and me,  and  yet  she's  different. She  has  the  same
luminosity,  but  she's  not  together  with us.  She  goes in the  opposite
direction. Right now she's more like you. Both of you have patches that look
like lead. Mine is gone and I'm again a complete, luminous  egg. That is the
reason I said that  you and I  will be  exactly  the same  someday  when you
become complete  again.  Right  now  what  makes  us almost  the same is the
Nagual's luminosity  and the  fact that  both of us  are going  in  the same
direction and that we both were empty."
     "What does a complete person look like to a sorcerer?" I asked.
     "Like a luminous egg made out of fibers," she said. "All the fibers are
complete;  they look like strings, taut strings. It looks  as if the strings
have been tightened like a drum is tightened.
     "On an  empty person, on the  other hand, the fibers are crumpled up at
the edges of  the hole. When they have  had many children, the  fibers don't
look like fibers anymore. Those people  look like two chunks  of luminosity,
separated by blackness. It is an  awesome sight. The Nagual made me see them
one day when we were in a park in the city."
     "Why do you think the Nagual never told me about all this?"
     "He  told you everything, but you  never understood  him correctly.  As
soon as he  realized that you were not understanding what he was  saying, he
was  compelled  to  change  the subject.  Your  emptiness prevented you from
understanding. The Nagual  said that it was perfectly natural for you not to
understand.  Once  a person becomes  incomplete he's actually empty  like  a
gourd that  has been hollowed out. It didn't matter to you how many times he
told you that you were empty; it  didn't matter that he even explained it to
you. You never knew what he meant, or worse yet, you didn't want to know."
     La Gorda was treading on dangerous ground. I tried to head her off with
another question, but she rebuffed me.
     "You love a little boy and you don't want to understand what the Nagual
meant,"  she said accusingly. "The Nagual told me  that you have a  daughter
you've never seen, and  that you love that  little boy. One took your  edge,
the other pinned you down. You have welded them together."
     I had to stop writing. I crawled out of  the cave and stood up. I began
to walk down the steep incline to the  floor of the gully. La Gorda followed
me. She asked me if I was upset by her directness. I did not want to lie.
     "What do you think?" I asked.
     "You're fuming!" she exclaimed  and giggled with an abandon  that I had
witnessed only in don Juan and don Genaro.
     She seemed about to lose her balance and grabbed  my left arm. In order
to help her get down  to  the floor  of the  gully,  I  lifted her up by her
waist. I thought that she could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds.
She puckered  her lips  the way don Genaro used to  and said that her weight
was a hundred and  fifteen. We both laughed  at once.  It was  a  moment  of
direct, instant communication.
     "Why does it bother you so much to talk about these things?" she asked.
     I told her that once I had had a little boy whom I had loved immensely.
I felt the imperative to tell her about him. Some extravagant need beyond my
comprehension made  me open up with that  woman  who was a total stranger to
me.
     As I began to talk about that little boy, a wave of nostalgia enveloped
me;  perhaps it was the  place  or the  situation or  the time  of the  day.
Somehow I  had merged the memory  of that little boy with the memory of  don
Juan, and for the first time in all the time I had not seen him I missed don
Juan. Lidia had  said that they never missed  him because he was always with
them; he was their bodies and their spirits. I had  known instantly what she
meant.  I felt the  same way  myself.  In  that  gully, however, an  unknown
feeling had overtaken me. I told la Gorda that I  had  never missed don Juan
until that moment. She did not answer. She looked away.
     Possibly my feeling of longing for those two people had to  do with the
fact that both of  them had produced catharses  in my life. And both of them
were gone. I  had not realized  until that moment  how final that separation
was. I said to  la Gorda that that little boy had been,  more than  anything
else, my friend, and that one day he was whisked away by  forces I could not
control. That was  perhaps one  of the greatest blows I had ever received. I
even went to see don Juan to ask his assistance. It was the  only time I had
ever  asked  him for help. He  listened  to my plea and then  he broke  into
uproarious laughter. His reaction was  so  unexpected that I could  not even
get angry. I could only comment on what I thought was his insensitivity.
     "What do you want me to do?" he asked.
     I said that since he was a sorcerer perhaps he could  help me to regain
my little friend for my solace.
     "You're wrong. A warrior doesn't seek anything for his solace," he said
in a tone that did not admit reproach.
     Then he proceeded to smash my arguments. He  said  that a warrior could
not possibly leave anything to chance, that a warrior actually affected  the
outcome of events by the force of his awareness and his unbending intent. He
said that if  I  would  have had the unbending intent to keep and help  that
child,  I would have taken measures to assure his  stay with  me. But  as it
was, my  love was merely a word, a useless outburst of an empty man. He then
told me something about emptiness  and  completeness, but I did not want  to
hear  it.  All I  felt was a sense  of loss,  and the emptiness that he  had
mentioned,  I  was  sure, referred to the  feeling of  having  lost  someone
irreplaceable.
     "You loved  him,  you honored his spirit, you wished  him well, now you
must forget him," he said.
     But I had not been able to do so. There was something terribly alive in
my emotions even though time had mellowed them. At one point I thought I had
forgotten, but then  one night an  incident produced  the deepest  emotional
upheaval  in  me. I was walking to my  office  when a  young  Mexican  woman
approached  me. She  had been sitting  on  a bench,  waiting  for a bus. She
wanted to know if that particular  bus went to a children's hospital.  I did
not know. She explained that her little boy had had a high temperature for a
long time and she was worried  because she did  not have any money. I  moved
toward the bench and  saw a little  boy standing on the  seat with his  head
against the back of the bench. He was wearing a jacket and short pants and a
cap.  He could  not have been more than two years old. He must have seen me,
for he walked to the edge of the bench and put his head against my leg.
     "My little head hurts," he said to me in Spanish.
     His  voice  was  so  tiny  and  his  dark eyes so  sad that  a wave  of
irrepressible anguish welled up in me. I picked him up and drove him and his
mother to the nearest hospital. I left them there and gave the mother enough
money to pay the bill. But I did not want  to stay or to know any more about
him. I  wanted to believe that I had helped him, and that by doing  so I had
paid back to the spirit of man.
     I had learned  the magical  act  of "paying back to  the spirit of man"
from don Juan.  I had asked him once, overwhelmed by  the realization that I
could never pay him back for all he had  done  for me, if there was anything
in  the world I could do to even the score.  We  were leaving  a bank, after
exchanging some Mexican currency.
     "I don't need you to pay  me back,"  he said, "but if you still want to
pay back, make your deposit to the spirit of man. That's always a very small
account, and whatever one puts in it is more than enough."
     By helping  that sick child I had merely paid back to the spirit of man
for any help that my little boy may receive from strangers along his path.
     I told la Gorda that my love for him would remain alive for the rest of
my life  even though I  would never see him again. I wanted to tell her that
the memory I had  of him was buried so deep that nothing could touch it, but
I desisted. I felt it would have been superfluous to talk about it. Besides,
it was getting dark and I wanted to get out of that gully.
     "We better go,"  I said. "I'll  take you home. Maybe some other time we
can talk about these things again."
     She laughed the way don Juan used to laugh at me. I had apparently said
something utterly funny.
     "Why do you laugh, Gorda?" I asked.
     "Because  you  know yourself that we can't leave this  place just  like
that," she said. "You have an appointment with power here. And so do 1."
     She walked back to the cave and crawled in.
     "Come on in," she yelled from inside. "There is no way to leave."
     I reacted  most incongruously. I crawled in and sat next to  her again.
It was evident that she too had tricked me. I had not come there to have any
confrontations. I  should  have  been furious. I was  indifferent instead. I
could not lie to myself that I had only stopped  there on my way  to  Mexico
City. I had gone there compelled by something beyond my comprehension.
     She handed me my notebook and motioned me to write. She said  that if I
wrote I would not only relax myself but I would also relax her.
     "What is this appointment with power?" I asked.
     "The  Nagual told  me that you and  I  have  an appointment  here  with
something out there. You first had an appointment with Soledad and then  one
with the little sisters.  They were supposed to destroy you. The Nagual said
that if  you  survived their assaults I  had to bring  you  here  so that we
together could keep the third appointment."
     "What kind of appointment is it?"
     "I really don't know. Like everything else, it depends on us. Right now
there are some things out there that  have been waiting  for you. I say that
they have  been waiting for you because I come here by  myself  all the time
and nothing  ever  happens. But tonight is different. You are here and those
things will come."
     "Why is the Nagual trying to destroy me?" I asked.
     "He's  not trying to destroy anybody!" la Gorda exclaimed  in  protest.
"You are his child. Now he wants you to be himself. More himself than any of
us. But to be  a true Nagual  you have  to claim  your  power.  Otherwise he
wouldn't have been so careful in setting  up Soledad and the  little sisters
to  stalk  you.  He taught Soledad how  to change her  shape  and rejuvenate
herself. He made her construct a devilish floor in her room. A floor  no one
can oppose.  You see, Soledad is empty,  so the  Nagual set  her  up  to  do
something gigantic. He gave her a task, a most difficult and dangerous task,
but  the only one which was suited for her, and that  was to finish you off.
He  told her that nothing could be more  difficult  than for one sorcerer to
kill another.  It's easier for an average man to kill  a  sorcerer  or for a
sorcerer to kill an average man,  but  two sorcerers don't fit  well at all.
The Nagual told Soledad that her best bet was to surprise you and scare you.
And that's what she did. The Nagual set her up  to  be a desirable  woman so
she could lure you into her room, and there her  floor  would have bewitched
you, because as I've said, no  one, but  no one, can stand up to that floor.
That  floor was the  Nagual's masterpiece for Soledad. But you did something
to her floor and  Soledad had to change her tactics in  accordance  with the
Nagual's  instructions. He told  her that if  her floor failed and she could
not  frighten  and  surprise you,  she  had to talk  to  you  and  tell  you
everything  you wanted to know. The Nagual  trained her to talk very well as
her last resource. But Soledad could not overpower you even with that."
     "Why was it so important to overpower me? "
     She  paused  and  peered  at  me. She  cleared her throat  and  sat  up
straight.  She looked up at the  low roof of the  cave  and exhaled  noisily
through her nose.
     "Soledad is a  woman like myself," she said.  "I'll  tell you something
about my own life and maybe you'll understand her.
     "I had  a man once. He got me  pregnant when I was very young and I had
two daughters with him. One after the other. My life was hell. That man  was
a drunkard and beat me day and night. And I hated him and he hated me. And I
got fat like a pig. One day another man came along and told me that he liked
me  and wanted  me  to go with him to work in the city as a paid servant. He
knew I  was a  hardworking woman and only  wanted to exploit me. But my life
was so miserable that I fell for it and went with him. He was worse than the
first man, mean and fearsome. He  couldn't stand me after a week  or so. And
he used to  give me the  worst beatings you can imagine.  I  thought  he was
going to kill me and  he wasn't even  drunk, and all because I hadn't  found
work. Then he  sent me to beg on the streets with a  sick baby. He would pay
the child's mother something from the money I got. And then he would beat me
because  I  hadn't made  enough. The child got sicker  and sicker and I knew
that if it died while I was begging,  the man would kill me. So one day when
I knew that he was not there I went to the  child's mother and gave  her her
baby and some of the money I had made that day. That was a lucky day for me;
a kind foreign lady had given me fifty pesos to buy medicine for the baby.
     "I had been with that horrible  man for  three  months and I thought it
had been  twenty years.  I  used  the money  to go  back to my  home. I  was
pregnant again. The man had wanted me to  have a child of my own, so that he
would not have  to pay for one. When I got to my hometown I tried to go back
to see my  children, but they had been  taken away by their father's family.
All the family got  together under the pretense that they wanted  to talk to
me, but instead they took me to a deserted place and beat me with sticks and
rocks and left me for dead."
     La Gorda showed me the many scars on her scalp.
     "To  this day I don't know how I made it back to town. I even lost  the
child I had in my womb. I went to an aunt I still had; my parents were dead.
She gave me a place to rest and she tended to me. She fed me, the poor soul,
for two months before I could get up."
     "Then one day my aunt told me that that man was in town looking for me.
He had  talked to  the  police and had said  that he  had given  me money in
advance to  work and  that I  had run away,  stealing the  money after I had
killed a woman's baby. I  knew that the end had  come for me.  But  my  luck
turned right again and I caught a ride in  the truck  of an American.  I saw
the truck coming on the road and I lifted my hand in desperation and the man
stopped and let me get on. He drove me all  the  way to this part of Mexico.
He dropped me in the city. I didn't know a soul. I roamed all over the place
for days like a crazy dog,  eating garbage from the street. That was when my
luck turned for the last time.
     "I  met Pablito, with whom I have a debt that I can't pay back. Pablito
took me to his carpentry shop and gave me a  corner there to put my bed.  He
did that because he felt sorry for me.  He found  me in the market after  he
stumbled and fell  on top  of me. I  was sitting there begging. A moth  or a
bee,  I don't know  which, flew  to  him and hit him  in the eye. He  turned
around  on his heels and stumbled  and fell right on top of me. I thought he
would be  so  mad that he would hit me, but he gave me some money instead. I
asked him if he could give me work. That was when he took me to his shop and
set me up with an iron and an ironing board to do laundry.
     "I did very well. Except that I  got fatter, because most of the people
I washed  for  fed me with  their leftovers. Sometimes I ate sixteen times a
day.  I  did nothing else but  eat. Kids in the street used  to taunt me and
sneak behind me  and step on my heels and then someone  would push  me and I
would  fall. Those kids made  me cry with their cruel jokes, especially when
they used to spoil my wash on purpose.
     "One day, very late in the afternoon, a  weird old man came over to see
Pablito.  I had never seen  that man before. I  had never known that Pablito
was in cahoots  with  such a scary, awesome man. I turned my back to him and
kept on working. I was alone there. Suddenly I felt the hands of that man on
my  neck. My heart stopped. I could not  scream,  I couldn't even breathe. I
fell down and that awful man held my head, maybe for an  hour. Then he left.
I was so frightened that I stayed where I had fallen until the next morning.
Pablito found  me there; he laughed and said that I should be very proud and
happy because  that old  man was  a  powerful  sorcerer  and  was one of his
teachers. I was  dumbfounded; I couldn't believe Pablito was  a sorcerer. He
said  that his  teacher had seen a  perfect circle of moths  flying  over my
head. He had also seen my death circling around me.  And that was why he had
acted like lightning and had changed  the direction of my eyes. Pablito also
said that the Nagual had laid his hands on me and had  reached  into my body
and that soon I would be different. I had no idea what he was talking about.
I had no idea what that crazy old man had done, either. But it didn't matter
to me.  I was like  a dog that everyone kicked around. Pablito had  been the
only person who had been kind to me. At first I had thought he wanted me for
his woman. But I was too ugly and fat  and smelly. He just wanted to be kind
to me.
     "The crazy old man  came back another night and grabbed me again by the
neck from behind.  He hurt me terribly. I cried and  screamed. I didn't know
what  he was doing. He never said a word to me. I was deathly afraid of him.
Then, later on he began to talk to me and told me what to do with my life. I
liked what he  said. He took me everywhere with him. But my emptiness was my
worst enemy. I couldn't accept his ways, so one day he got sick and tired of
pampering me  and sent  the wind after me.  I was  in  the back of Soledad's
house by myself that  day, and I felt the  wind getting  very strong. It was
blowing through the fence. It got into my eyes.  I wanted to  get inside the
house, but my  body was frightened and instead of walking through the door I
walked through the gate in the fence. The wind pushed me  and made me twirl.
I tried to  go back to the house, but  it  was useless. I couldn't break the
force of the wind. It pushed me over the hills  and off the road and I ended
up in a deep hole, a hole  like a tomb. The wind kept  me there for days and
days,  until  I  had   decided  to   change   and  accept  my  fate  without
recrimination. Then  the wind  stopped and the Nagual found  me and  took me
back  to the house. He told me  that my task was to give what I didn't have,
love  and affection, and that I  had  to take care of the sisters, Lidia and
Josefina, better than if they were myself. I understood then what the Nagual
had been saying to me for years. My life had been over  a long time  ago. He
had offered me a new life and that life had to be completely new. I couldn't
bring to that new  life my ugly  old ways. That first night he found me, the
moths had pointed me out to  him;  I  had no  business  rebelling against my
fate.
     I began my  change  by taking care of  Lidia and Josefina better than I
took care  of myself. I did everything the Nagual told me,  and one night in
this very gully  in this very cave  I  found my  completeness. I  had fallen
asleep right here where I am now and then a noise  woke  me up. I looked  up
and saw myself as I had once been, thin, young, fresh. It was my spirit that
was coming  back to  me.  At first it didn't want to come  closer  because I
still looked pretty awful. But then it couldn't help  itself and came to me.
I knew right then, and all  at once, what the Nagual had struggled for years
to tell me. He had said that when one has a child that  child takes the edge
of  our spirit. For a woman to have a girl means  the  end of that edge.  To
have had two  as I did meant the end of  me. The best of my strength  and my
illusions went to  those girls. They stole my edge, the  Nagual said, in the
same way I had stolen it from  my parents. That's our fate. A boy steals the
biggest part of his edge from his father, a girl from her mother. The Nagual
said  that  people who have  had  children  could  tell, if  they aren't  as
stubborn as you,  that something is missing  in  them.  Some craziness, some
nervousness, some power that they had before  is gone. They used to have it,
but where is it now? The Nagual said that it is  in the little child running
around  the house,  full  of  energy, full  of  illusions.  In other  words,
complete. He said that  if  we  watch children  we can  tell  that  they are
daring, they move in leaps. If we watch their parents we  can see  that they
are cautious  and  timid. They don't  leap anymore.  The Nagual  told  me we
explain  that  by  saying   that  the   parents   are   grown-ups  and  have
responsibilities. But that's not true. The  truth of the matter is that they
have lost their edge."
     I asked la Gorda what the Nagual would have said if I had told him that
I knew parents with much more spirit and edge than their children.
     She laughed, covering her face in a gesture of sham embarrassment.
     "You can ask me," she said giggling. "You want to hear what I think?"
     "Of course I want to hear it."
     "Those people don't have more spirit, they merely had a lot of vigor to
begin  with and have trained  their  children to be obedient and meek.  They
have frightened their children all their lives, that's all."
     I described to her the case of a man  I knew, a father of  four, who at
the age of fifty-three changed his life  completely.  That  entailed leaving
his  wife  and his  executive  job in a large  corporation  after  more than
twenty-five years of building  a career and a family. He chucked it all very
daringly and went to live on an island in the Pacific.
     "You  mean he went there all by himself?" la Gorda asked with a tone of
surprise.
     She had destroyed my argument.  I had to  admit  that the man had  gone
there with his twenty-three-year-old bride.
     "Who no doubt is complete," la Gorda added.
     I had to agree with her again.
     "An empty man  uses the completeness of a woman all the time," she went
on. "A complete woman is dangerous in her completeness, more so than  a man.
She is unreliable, moody, nervous, but also capable of great  changes. Women
like that can  pick themselves up and go anywhere. They'll do nothing there,
but that's because they  had nothing going  to begin with. Empty  people, on
the other hand, can't jump like that anymore, but they're more reliable. The
Nagual said that  empty people are like worms that look around before moving
a bit and then they  back  up and  then  they move a  little bit more again.
Complete  people  always jump, somersault  and  almost always land  on their
heads, but it doesn't matter to them.
     "The  Nagual said that  to  enter  into the  other world one has  to be
complete. To  be  a sorcerer one has  to have all  of  one's  luminosity: no
holes, no patches and all the edge of the spirit. So a sorcerer who is empty
has  to regain completeness. Man or  woman, they must be  complete  to enter
into that world out there, that eternity where the Nagual and Genaro are now
waiting for us."
     She  stopped talking  and stared  at  me for a  long moment.  There was
barely enough light to write.
     "But how did you regain your completeness?" I asked.
     She jumped at the sound of my voice. I repeated my question. She stared
up at the roof of the cave before answering me.
     "I had to refuse those two girls,"  she said. "The Nagual once told you
how to do that but you didn't want to hear it. His point was that one has to
steal that edge back. He said that we got it the hard way by stealing it and
that we must recover it the same way, the hard way.
     "He guided  me to  do  that, and the  first thing he made  me do was to
refuse my love  for those two children. I had to do that in dreaming. Little
by little I  learned not  to  like  them, but the Nagual said  that that was
useless, one  has  to learn not to care and not not to like.  Whenever those
girls meant  nothing to me I had to see them again, lay my eyes and my hands
on them. I  had to pat them  gently on the head and let  my left side snatch
the edge out of them."
     "What happened to them?"
     "Nothing. They never felt a  thing. They went home and are now like two
grown-up  persons. Empty  like most people  around them. They don't like the
company of children because they have no use for them. I would say that they
are better off. I took the craziness out of them. They didn't need it, while
I did. I didn't know what I was doing when I gave  it to them. Besides, they
still retain the edge they stole from their father. The Nagual was right: no
one noticed the loss, but I did notice my gain. As I looked out of this cave
I saw all my illusions lined up like a row of soldiers. The world was bright
and new. The heaviness of my body and my  spirit  had been lifted off and  I
was truly a new being."
     "Do you know how you took your edge from your children?"
     "They are not my children! I have never had any. Look at me."
     She crawled out of the cave,  lifted  her skirt and showed me her naked
body. The first thing I noticed was how slender and muscular she was.
     She urged me to  come closer and examine her. Her body was so lean  and
firm that I  had to conclude she could  not  possibly have had children. She
put her right  leg on a  high rock and showed me her  vagina.  Her  drive to
prove  her  change  was  so  intense  that  I had  to  laugh  to  bridge  my
nervousness. I said that I was not a doctor and therefore I could not  tell,
but that I was sure she must be right.
     "Of course  I'm  right," she said  as she crawled back into  the  cave.
"Nothing has ever come out of this womb."
     After  a moment's pause she answered my  question, which I  had already
forgotten under the onslaught of her display.
     "My left side took my edge back," she  said. "All I  did was to go  and
visit the girls. I went there four or five times to allow them time  to feel
at ease with me. They were big girls and were going  to school.  I thought I
would  have to  fight not to like them, but the Nagual said  that  it didn't
matter,  that I should like them if I  wanted  to. So  I liked them. But  my
liking them was just like liking a stranger. My mind was made up, my purpose
was unbending. I want to enter into  the other world  while I'm still alive,
as the Nagual told me. In order to do that I need all the edge of my spirit.
I need my completeness. Nothing can turn me away from that world! Nothing!"
     She stared at me defiantly.
     "You have to refuse both,  the woman who emptied you and the little boy
who has your love, if you are  seeking your completeness. The  woman you can
easily  refuse. The litt