He said that la Catalina had been attached to one of the superb women seers of the nagual Julian’s party, who taught her extraordinary maneuvers to shift her assemblage point to the area below. That seer was one of the last to leave the world. She lived to an extremely old age, and since both she and la Catalina were originally from Sonora, they returned, in her advanced years, to the desert and lived together until the seer left the world. In the years they spent together, la Catalina became her most dedicated helper and disciple, a disciple who was willing to learn the extrava-gant ways the old seers knew to make the assemblage point shift.
I asked don Juan if la Catalina’s knowledge was inherently different from his own.
“We are exactly the same,” he replied. “She’s more like Silvio Manuel or Genaro; she is really the female version of them, but, of course, being a woman she’s infinitely more aggressive and dangerous than both of them.”
Genaro assented with a nod of his head. “Infinitely more,” he said and winked again.
“Is she attached to your party?” I asked don Juan.
“I said that she’s like a cousin or an aunt to us,” he replied. “I meant she belongs to the older generation, although she’s younger than all of us. She is the last of that group. She is rarely in contact with us. She doesn’t quite like us. We are too stiff for her, because she’s used to the nagual Julian’s touch. She prefers the high adventure of the unknown to the quest for freedom.”
“What is the difference between the two?” I asked don Juan.
“In the last part of my explanation of the truths about awareness,” he replied, “we are going to discuss that difference slowly and thoroughly. What’s important for you to know. at this moment, is that you’re jealously guarding weird secrets in your left-side awareness; that is why la Catalina and you like each other.”
I insisted again that it was not that I liked her, it was rather that I admired her great strength.
Don Juan and Genaro laughed and patted me as if they knew something I did not.
“She likes you because she knows what you’re like,” Genaro said and smacked his lips. “She knew the nagual Julian very well.”
Both of them gave me a long look that made me feel embarrassed.
“What are you driving at?” I asked Genaro in a belligerent tone.
He grinned at me and moved his eyebrows up and down in a comical gesture. But he kept quiet.
Don Juan spoke and broke the silence.
“There are very strange points in common between the nagual Julian and you,” he said. “Genaro is just trying to figure out if you’re aware of it.”
I asked both of them how on earth I would be aware of something so farfetched.
“La Catalina thinks you are,” Genaro said. “She says so because she knew the nagual Julian better than any of us here.”
I commented that I couldn’t believe that she knew the nagual Julian, since he had left the world nearly forty years ago.
“La Catalina is no spring chicken,” Genaro said. “She just looks young; that’s part of her knowledge. Just as it was part of the nagual Julian’s knowledge. You’ve seen her only when she looks young. If you see her when she looks old, she’ll scare the living daylights out of you.”
“What la Catalina does,” don Juan interrupted, “can be explained only in terms of the three master-ies: the mastery of awareness, the mastery of stalking, and the mastery of intent.
“But today, we are going to examine what she does only in light of the last truth about awareness: the truth that says that the assemblage point can assemble worlds different from our own after it moves from its original position.”
Don Juan signaled me to get up. Genaro also stood up. I automatically grabbed the burlap sack filled with medicinal plants. Genaro stopped me as I was about to put it on my shoulders.
“Leave the sack alone,” he said, smiling. “We have to take a little hike up the hill and meet la Catalina.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Up there,” Genaro said, pointing to the top of a small hill. “If you stare with your eyes half-closed, you’ll see her as a very dark spot against the green shrubbery.”
I strained to see the dark spot, but I couldn’t see anything.
“Why don’t you walk up there?” don Juan suggested to me.
I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. Don Juan urged me with a movement of his hand to go up, but I didn’t dare move. Finally, Genaro took me by the arm and both of us climbed toward the top of the hill. When we got there, I realized that don Juan had come up right behind us. The three of us reached the top at the same time.
Don Juan very calmly began to talk to Genaro. He asked him if he remembered the many times the na-gual Julian was about to choke both of them to death, because they indulged in their fears.
Genaro turned to me and assured me that the nagual Julian had been a ruthless teacher. He and his own teacher, the nagual Elias, who was still in the world then, used to push everyone’s assemblage points be-yond a crucial limit and let them fend for themselves.
“I once told you that the nagual Julian recommended us not to waste our sexual energy,” Genaro went on. “He meant that for the assemblage point to shift, one needs energy. If one doesn’t have it, the nagual’s blow is not the blow of freedom, but the blow of death.”
“Without enough energy,” don Juan said, “the force of alignment is crushing. You have to have en-ergy to sustain the pressure of alignments which never take place under ordinary circumstances.”
Genaro said that the nagual Julian was an inspiring teacher. He always found ways to teach and at the same time entertain himself. One of his favorite teaching devices was to catch them unawares once or twice, in their normal awareness, and make their assemblage points shift. From then on, all he had to do to have their undivided attention was to threaten them with an unexpected nagual’s blow.
“The nagual Julian was really an unforgettable man,” don Juan said. “He had a great touch with people. He would do the worst things in the world, but done by him they were great. Done by anyone else, they would have been crude and callous.
“The nagual Ellas, on the other hand, had no touch, but he was indeed a great, great teacher.”
“The nagual Elias was very much like the nagual Juan Matus,” Genaro said to me. “They got along very fine. And the nagual Elias taught him everything without ever raising his voice, or playing tricks on him.
“But the nagual Julian was quite different,” Genaro went on, giving me a friendly shove. “I’d say that he jealously guarded strange secrets in his left side, just like you. Wouldn’t you say so?” he asked don Juan.
Don Juan did not answer, but nodded affirmatively. He seemed to be holding back his laughter.
“He had a playful nature,” don Juan said, and both of them broke into a great laughter.
The fact that they were obviously alluding to something they knew made me feel even more threatened.
Don Juan matter-of-factly said that they were referring to the bizarre sorcery techniques that the nagual Julian had learned in the course of his life. Genaro added that the nagual Julian had a unique teacher besides the nagual Elias. A teacher who had liked him immensely and had taught him novel and complex ways of moving his assemblage point. As a result of this, the nagual Julian was extraordinarily eccentric in his behavior.
“Who was that teacher, don Juan?” I asked.
Don Juan and Genaro looked at each other and giggled like two children.
“That is a very tough question to answer,” don Juan replied. “All I can say is that he was the teacher that deviated the course of our line. He taught us many things, good and bad, but among the worst, he taught us what the old seers did. So, some of us got trapped. The nagual Julian was one of them, and so is la Catalina. We only hope that you won’t follow them.”
I immediately began to protest. Don Juan interrupted me. He said that I did not know what I was protesting.
As don Juan spoke, I became terribly angry with him and Genaro. Suddenly, I was raging, yelling at them at the top of my voice. My reaction was so out of tone with me that it scared me. It was as if I were someone else. I stopped and looked at them for help.
Genaro had his hands on don Juan’s shoulders as if he needed support. Both of them were laughing uncontrollably.