“But puncturing your rationality was not enough,” don Juan went on. “I knew that if your assemblage point was going to reach the place of no pity, I had to break every vestige of my continuity. That was when I became really senile and made you run around town, and finally got angry at you and slapped you.
“You were shocked, but you were on the road to instant recovery when I gave your mirror of self-image what should have been its final blow. I yelled bloody murder. I didn’t expect you to run away. I had forgotten about your violent outbursts.”
He said that in spite of my on-the-spot recovery tactics, my assemblage point reached the place of no pity when I became enraged at his senile behavior. Or perhaps it had been the opposite: I became enraged because my assemblage point had reached the place of no pity. It did not really matter. What counted was that my assemblage point did arrive there.
Once it was there, my own behavior changed markedly. I became cold and calculating and indifferent to my personal safety.
I asked don Juan whether he had seen all this. I did not remember telling him about it. He replied that to know what I was feeling all he had to do was introspect and remember his own experience.
He pointed out that my assemblage point became fixed in its new position when he reverted to his natural self. By then, my conviction about his normal continuity had suffered such a profound upheaval that continuity no longer functioned as a cohesive force. And it was at that moment, from its new position, that my assemblage point allowed me to build another type of continuity, one which I expressed in terms of a strange, detached hardness—a hardness that became my normal mode of behavior from then on.
“Continuity is so important in our lives that if it breaks it’s always instantly repaired,” he went on. “In the case of sorcerers, however, once their assemblage points reach the place of no pity, continuity is never the same.
“Since you are naturally slow, you haven’t noticed yet that since that day in Guaymas you have become, among other things, capable of accepting any kind of discontinuity at its face value—after a token struggle of your reason, of course.”
His eyes were shining with laughter.
“It was also that day that you acquired your masked ruthlessness,” he went on. “Your mask wasn’t as well developed as it is now, of course, but what you got then was the rudiments of what was to become your mask of generosity.”
I tried to protest. I did not like the idea of masked ruthlessness, no matter how he put it.
“Don’t use your mask on me,” he said, laughing. “Save it for a better subject: someone who doesn’t know you.”
He urged me to recollect accurately the moment the mask came to me.
“As soon as you felt that cold fury coming over you,” he went on, “you had to mask it. You didn’t joke about it, as my benefactor would have done. You didn’t try to sound reasonable about it, like I would. You didn’t pretend to be intrigued by it, like the nagual Elías would have. Those are the three nagual’s masks I know. What did you do then? You calmly walked to your car and gave half of your packages away to the guy who was helping you carry them.”
Until that moment I had not remembered that indeed someone helped me carry the packages. I told don Juan that I had seen lights dancing before my face, and I had thought I was seeing them because, driven by my cold fury, I was on the verge of fainting.
“You were not on the verge of fainting,” don Juan answered. “You were on the verge of entering a dreaming state and seeing the spirit all by yourself, like Talia and my benefactor.”
I said to don Juan that it was not generosity that made me give away the packages but cold fury. I had to do something to calm myself, and that was the first thing that occurred to me.
“But that’s exactly what I’ve been telling you. Your generosity is not genuine,” he retorted and began to laugh at my dismay.
THE TICKET TO IMPECCABILITY
It had gotten dark while don Juan was talking about breaking the mirror of self-reflection. I told him I was thoroughly exhausted, and we should cancel the rest of the trip and return home, but he maintained that we
had to use every minute of our available time to review the sorcery stories or recollect by making my assemblage point move as many times as possible.
I was in a complaining mood. I said that a state of deep fatigue such as mine could only breed uncertainty and lack of conviction.
“Your uncertainty is to be expected,” don Juan said matter-of-factly. “After all, you are dealing with a new type of continuity. It takes time to get used to it. Warriors spend years in limbo where they are neither average men nor sorcerers.”
“What happens to them in the end?” I asked. “Do they choose sides?”
“No. They have no choice,” he replied. “All of them become aware of what they already are: sorcerers. The difficulty is that the mirror of self-reflection is extremely powerful and only lets its victims go after a ferocious struggle.”
He stopped talking and seemed lost in thought. His body entered into the state of rigidity I had seen before whenever he was engaged in what I characterized as reveries, but which he described as instances in which his assemblage point had moved and he was able to recollect.
“I’m going to tell you the story of a sorcerer’s ticket to impeccability,” he suddenly said after some thirty minutes of total silence. “I’m going to tell you the story of my death.”
He began to recount what had happened to him after his arrival in Durango still disguised in women’s clothes, following his month-long journey through central Mexico. He said that old Belisario took him directly to a hacienda to hide from the monstrous man who was chasing him.
As soon as he arrived, don Juan—very daringly in view of his taciturn nature—introduced himself to everyone in the house. There were seven beautiful women and a strange unsociable man who did not utter a single word. Don Juan delighted the lovely women with his rendition of the monstrous man’s efforts to capture him. Above all, they were enchanted with the disguise which he still wore, and the story that went with it. They never tired of hearing the details of his trip, and all of them advised him on how to perfect the knowledge he had acquired during his journey. What surprised don Juan was their poise and assuredness, which were unbelievable to him.
The seven women were exquisite and they made him feel happy. He liked them and trusted them. They treated him with respect and consideration. But something in their eyes told him that under their facades of charm there existed a terrifying coldness, an aloofness he could never penetrate.
The thought occurred to him that in order for these strong and beautiful women to be so at ease and to have no regard for formalities, they had to be loose women. Yet it was obvious to him that they were not.
Don Juan was left alone to roam the property. He was dazzled by the huge mansion and its grounds. He had never seen anything like it. It was an old colonial house with a high surrounding wall. Inside were balconies with flowerpots and patios with enormous fruit trees that provided shade, privacy, and quiet.
There were large rooms, and on the ground floor airy corridors around the patios. On the upper floor there were mysterious bedrooms, where don Juan was not permitted to set foot.
During the following days don Juan was amazed by the profound interest the women took in his well-being. They did everything for him. They seemed to hang on his every word. Never before had people been so kind to him. But also, never before had he felt so solitary. He was always in the company of the beautiful, strange women, and yet he had never been so alone.
Don Juan believed that his feeling of aloneness came from being unable to predict the behavior of the women or to know their real feelings. He knew only what they told him about themselves.
A few days after his arrival, the woman who seemed to be their leader gave him some brand-new men’s clothes and told him that his woman’s disguise was no longer necessary, because whoever the monstrous man might have been, he was now nowhere in sight. She told him he was free to go whenever he pleased.
Don Juan begged to see Belisario, whom he had not seen since the day they arrived. The woman said that Belisario was gone. He had left word, however, that don Juan could stay in the house as long as he wanted —but only if he was in danger.