The women laughed as if he were telling the funniest joke. Only the nagual Julian seemed contrite, especially when don Juan, his voice cracking with resentment, described his three years of constant fear. The nagual Julian broke down and wept openly as don Juan demanded an apology for the shameful way he had been exploited.
“But we told you the monster didn’t exist,” one of the women said.
Don Juan glared at the nagual Julian, who cowered meekly.
“He knew the monster existed,” don Juan yelled, pointing an accusing finger at the nagual.
But at the same time he was aware he was talking nonsense, because the nagual Julian had originally told him that the monster did not exist.
“The monster didn’t exist,” don Juan corrected himself, shaking with rage. “It was one of his tricks.”
The nagual Julian, weeping uncontrollably, apologized to don Juan, while the women howled with laughter. Don Juan had never seen them laughing so hard.
“You knew all along that there was never any monster. You lied to me,” he accused the nagual Julian, who, with his head down and his eyes filled with tears, admitted his guilt.
“I have certainly lied to you,” he mumbled. “There was never any monster. What you saw as a monster was simply a surge of energy. Your fear made it into a monstrosity.”
“You told me that that monster was going to devour me. How could you have lied to me like that?” don Juan shouted at him.
“Being devoured by that monster was symbolic,” the nagual Julian replied softly. “Your real enemy is your stupidity. You are in mortal danger of being devoured by that monster now.”
Don Juan yelled that he did not have to put up with silly statements. And he insisted they reassure him there were no longer any restrictions on his freedom to leave.
“You can go any time you want,” the nagual Julian said curtly.
“You mean I can go right now?” don Juan asked.
“Do you want to?” the nagual asked.
“Of course, I want to leave this miserable place and the miserable bunch of liars who live here,” don Juan shouted.
The nagual Julian ordered that don Juan’s savings be paid him in full, and with shining eyes wished him happiness, prosperity, and wisdom.
The women did not want to say goodbye to him. They stared at him until he lowered his head to avoid their burning eyes.
Don Juan put his money in his pocket and without a backward glance walked out, glad his ordeal was over. The outside world was a question mark to him. He yearned for it. Inside that house he had been removed from it. He was young, strong. He had money in his pocket and a thirst for living.
He left them without saying thank you. His anger, bottled up by his fear for so long, was finally able to surface. He had even learned to like them—and now he felt betrayed. He wanted to run as far away from that place as he could.
In the city, he had his first unpleasant encounter. Traveling was very difficult and very expensive. He learned that if he wanted to leave the city at once he would not be able to choose his destination, but would have to wait for whatever muleteers were willing to take him. A few days later he left with a reputable muleteer for the port of Mazatlan.
“Although I was only twenty-three years old at the time,” don Juan said, “I felt I had lived a full life. The only thing I had not experienced was sex. The nagual Julian had told me that it was the fact I had not been with a woman that gave me my strength and endurance, and that he had little time left to set things up before the world would catch up with me.”
“What did he mean, don Juan?” I asked.
“He meant that I had no idea about the kind of hell I was heading for,” don Juan replied, “and that he had very little time to set up my barricades, my silent protectors.”
“What’s a silent protector, don Juan?” I asked.
“It’s a lifesaver,” he said. “A silent protector is a surge of inexplicable energy that comes to a warrior when nothing else works.
“My benefactor knew what direction my life would take once I was no longer under his influence. So he struggled to give me as many sorcerers’ options as possible. Those sorcerers’ options were to be my silent protectors.”
“What are sorcerers’ options?” I asked.
“Positions of the assemblage point,” he replied, “the infinite number of positions which the assemblage point can reach. In each and every one of those shallow or deep shifts, a sorcerer can strengthen his new continuity.”
He reiterated that everything he had experienced either with his benefactor or while under his guidance had been the result of either a minute or a considerable shift of his assemblage point. His benefactor had made him experience countless sorcerers’ options, more than the number that would normally be necessary, because he knew that don Juan’s destiny would be to be called upon to explain what sorcerers were and what they did.
“The effect of those shifts of the assemblage point is cumulative,” he continued. “It weighs on you whether you understand it or not. That accumulation worked for me, at the end.
“Very soon after I came into contact with the nagual, my point of assemblage moved so profoundly that I was capable of seeing. I saw an energy field as a monster. And the point kept on moving until I saw the monster as what it really was: an energy field. I had succeeded in seeing, and I didn’t know it. I thought I had done nothing, had learned nothing. I was stupid beyond belief.”
“You were too young, don Juan,” I said. “You couldn’t have done otherwise.”
He laughed. He was on the verge of replying, when he seemed to change his mind. He shrugged his shoulders and went on with his account.
Don Juan said that when he arrived in Mazatlan he was practically a seasoned muleteer, and was offered a permanent job running a mule train. He was very satisfied with the arrangements. The idea that he would be making the trip between Durango and Mazatlan pleased him no end. There were two things, however, that bothered him: first, that he had not yet been with a woman, and second, a strong but unexplainable urge to go north. He did not know why. He knew only that somewhere to the north something was waiting for him. The feeling persisted so strongly that in the end he was forced to refuse the security of a permanent job so he could travel north.
His superior strength and a new and unaccountable cunning enabled him to find jobs even where there were none to be had, as he steadily worked his way north to the state of Sinaloa. And there his journey ended. He met a young widow, like himself a Yaqui Indian, who had been the wife of a man to whom don Juan was indebted.
He attempted to repay his indebtedness by helping the widow and her children, and without being aware of it, he fell into the role of husband and father.
His new responsibilities put a great burden on him. He lost his freedom of movement and even his urge to journey farther north. He felt compensated for that loss, however, by the profound affection he felt for the woman and her children.
“I experienced moments of sublime happiness as a husband and father,” don Juan said. “But it was at those moments when I first noticed that something was terribly wrong. I realized that I was losing the feeling of detachment, the aloofness I had acquired during my time in the nagual Julian’s house. Now I found myself identifying with the people who surrounded me.”
Don Juan said that it took about a year of unrelenting abrasion to make him lose every vestige of the new personality he had acquired at the nagual’s house. He had begun with a profound yet aloof affection for the woman and her children. This detached affection allowed him to play the role of husband and father with abandon and gusto. As time went by, his detached affection turned into a desperate passion that made him lose his effectiveness.
Gone was his feeling of detachment, which was what had given him the power to love. Without that detachment, he had only mundane needs, desperation, and hopelessness: the distinctive features of the world of everyday life. Gone as well was his enterprise. During his years at the nagual’s house, he had acquired a dynamism that had served him well when he set out on his own.
But the most draining pain was knowing that his physical energy had waned. Without actually being in ill health, one day he became totally paralyzed. He did not feel pain. He did not panic. It was as if his body had understood that he would get the peace and quiet he so desperately needed only if it ceased to move.