I puffed and sweated and rubbed the rope until I had nearly worn it through. Then I braced one foot against the column, wrapped the rope around my forearms again, and pulled it desperately until it snapped, throwing me back into the house.
As I crashed backward through the open door, don Juan, Vicente, and Silvio Manuel were standing in the middle of the room, applauding.
“What a dramatic reentry,” Vicente said, helping me up. “You fooled me. I didn’t think you were capable of such explosions.”
Don Juan came to me and snapped the knot open, freeing my neck from the piece of rope around it.
I was shaking with fear, exertion, and anger. In a faltering voice, I asked don Juan why he was tormenting me like this. The three of them laughed and at that moment seemed the farthest thing from threatening.
“We wanted to test you and find out what sort of a man you really are,” don Juan said.
He led me to one of the couches and politely offered me a seat. Vicente and Silvio Manuel sat in the armchairs, don Juan sat facing me on the other couch.
I laughed nervously but was no longer apprehensive about my situation, nor about don Juan and his friends. All three regarded me with frank curiosity. Vicente could not stop smiling, although he seemed to be trying desperately to appear serious. Silvio Manuel shook his head rhythmically as he stared at me. His eyes were unfocused but fixed on me.
“We tied you down,” don Juan went on, “because we wanted to know whether you are sweet or patient or ruthless or cunning. We found out you are none of those things. Rather you’re a king-sized indulger, just as I had said.
“If you hadn’t indulged in being violent, you would certainly have noticed that the formidable knot in the rope around your neck was a fake. It snaps. Vicente designed that knot to fool his friends.”
“You tore the rope violently. You’re certainly not sweet,” Silvio Manuel said.
They were all quiet for a moment, then began to laugh.
“You’re neither ruthless nor cunning,” don Juan went on. “If you were, you would easily have snapped open both knots and run away with a valuable leather rope. You’re not patient either. If you were, you would have whined and cried until you realized that there was a pair of clippers by the wall with which you could have cut the rope in two seconds and saved yourself all the agony and exertion.
“You can’t be taught, then, to be violent or obtuse. You already are that. But you can learn to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet.”
Don Juan explained to me that ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness were the essence of stalking. They were the basics that with all their ramifications had to be taught in careful, meticulous steps.
He was definitely addressing me, but he talked looking at Vicente and Silvio Manuel, who listened with utmost attention and shook their heads in agreement from time to time.
He stressed repeatedly that teaching stalking was one of the most difficult things sorcerers did. And he insisted that no matter what they themselves did to teach me stalking, and no matter what I believed to the contrary, it was impeccability which dictated their acts.
“Rest assured we know what we’re doing. Our benefactor, the nagual Julian, saw to it,” don Juan said, and all three of them broke into such uproarious laughter that I felt quite uncomfortable. I did not know what to think.
Don Juan reiterated that a very important point to consider was that, to an onlooker, the behavior of sorcerers might appear malicious, when in reality their behavior was always impeccable.
“How can you tell the difference, if you’re at the receiving end?” I asked.
“Malicious acts are performed by people for personal gain,” he said. “Sorcerers, though, have an ulterior purpose for their acts, which has nothing to do with personal gain. The fact that they enjoy their acts does not count as gain. Rather, it is a condition of their character. The average man acts only if there is the chance for profit. Warriors say they act not for profit but for the spirit.”
I thought about it. Acting without considering gain was truly an alien concept. I had been reared to invest and to hope for some kind of reward for everything I did.
Don Juan must have taken my silence and thoughtfulness as skepticism. He laughed and looked at his two companions.
“Take the four of us, as an example,” he went on. “You, yourself, believe that you’re investing in this situation and eventually you are going to profit from it. If you get angry with us, or if we disappoint you, you may resort to malicious acts to get even with us. We, on the contrary, have no thought of personal gain. Our acts are dictated by impeccability—we can’t be angry or disillusioned with you.”
Don Juan smiled and told me that from the moment we had met at the bus depot that day, everything he had done to me, although it might not have seemed so, was dictated by impeccability. He explained that he needed to get me into an unguarded position to help me enter heightened awareness. It was to that end that he had told me my fly was open.
“It was a way of jolting you,” he said with a grin. “We are crude Indians, so all our jolts are somehow primitive. The more sophisticated the warrior, the greater his finesse and elaboration of his jolts. But I have to admit we got a big kick out of our crudeness, especially when we tied you at the neck like a dog.”
The three of them grinned and then laughed quietly as if there was someone else inside the house whom they did not want to disturb.
In a very low voice don Juan said that because I was in a state of heightened awareness, I could understand more readily what he was going to tell me about the two masteries: stalking and intent. He called them the crowning glory of sorcerers old and new, the very thing sorcerers were concerned with today, just as sorcerers had been thousands of years before. He asserted that stalking was the beginning, and that before anything could be attempted on the warrior’s path, warriors must learn to stalk; next they must learn to intend, and only then could they move their assemblage point at will.
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I knew, without knowing how, what moving the assemblage point could accomplish. But I did not have the words to explain what I knew. I tried repeatedly to voice my knowledge to them. They laughed at my failures and coaxed me to try again.
“How would you like it if I articulate it for you?” don Juan asked. “I might be able to find the very words you want to use but can’t”
From his look, I decided he was seriously asking my permission. I found the situation so incongruous that I began to laugh.
Don Juan, displaying great patience, asked me again, and I got another attack of laughter. Their look of surprise and concern told me my reaction was incomprehensible to them. Don Juan got up and announced that I was too tired and it was time for me to return to the world of ordinary affairs.
“Wait, wait,” I pleaded. “I am all right. I just find it funny that you should be asking me to give you permission.”
“I have to ask your permission,” don Juan said, “because you’re the only one who can allow the words pent up inside you to be tapped. I think I made the mistake of assuming you understand more than you do. Words are tremendously powerful and important and are the magical property of whoever has them.
“Sorcerers have a rule of thumb: they say that the deeper the assemblage point moves, the greater the feeling that one has knowledge and no words to explain it. Sometimes the assemblage point of average persons can move without a known cause and without their being aware of it, except that they become tongue-tied, confused, and evasive.”
Vicente interrupted and suggested I stay with them a while longer. Don Juan agreed and turned to face me.
“The very first principle of stalking is that a warrior stalks himself,” he said. “He stalks himself ruthlessly, cunningly, patiently, and sweetly.”
I wanted to laugh, but he did not give me time. Very succinctly he defined stalking as the art of using behavior in novel ways for specific purposes. He said that normal human behavior in the world of everyday life was routine. Any behavior that broke from routine caused an unusual effect on our total being. That unusual effect was what sorcerers sought, because it was cumulative.
He explained that the sorcerer seers of ancient times, through their seeing, had first noticed that unusual behavior produced a tremor in the assemblage point. They soon discovered that if unusual behavior was practiced systematically and directed wisely, it eventually forced the assemblage point to move.