He promised don Juan that they would pay him plenty, and that he would even be in a position to save money, because he didn’t have to spend any, for he was going to live and eat in the house.
The way the man laughed was terrifying. Don Juan knew that he had to escape immediately. He ran for the gate, but the man cut in front of him with a re-volver in his hand. He cocked it and rammed it into don Juan’s stomach. “You’re here to work yourself to the bone,” he said. “And don’t you forget it.” He shoved don Juan around with a billy club. Then he took him to the side of the house and, after observing that he worked his men every day from sunrise to sunset without a break, he put don Juan to work dig-ging out two enormous tree stumps. He also told don Juan that if he ever tried to escape or went to the authorities he would shoot him dead?and that if don Juan should ever get away, he would swear in court that don Juan had tried to murder the boss. “You’ll work here until you die,” he said. “Another Indian will get your job then, just as you’re taking a dead Indian’s place.”
Don Juan said that the house looked like a fortress, with armed men with machetes everywhere. So he got busy working and tried not to think about his predica-ment. At the end of the day, the man came back and kicked him all the way to the kitchen, because he did not like the defiant look in don Juan’s eyes. He threatened to cut the tendons of don Juan’s arms if he didn’t obey him.
In the kitchen an old woman brought food, but don Juan was so upset and afraid that he couldn’t eat. The old woman advised him to eat as much as he could. He had to be strong, she said, because his work would never end. She warned him that the man who had held his job had died just a day earlier. He was too weak to work and had fallen from a second-story window.
Don Juan said that he worked at the boss’s place for three weeks and that the man bullied him every mo-ment of every day. He made him work under the most dangerous conditions, doing the heaviest work imaginable, under the constant threat of his knife, gun, or billy club. He sent him daily to the stables to clean the stalls while the nervous stallions were in them. At the beginning of every day don Juan thought it would be his last one on earth. And surviving meant only that he had to go through the same hell again the next day.
What precipitated the end was don Juan’s request to have some time off. The pretext was that he needed to go to town to pay the foreman of the sugar mill the money that he owed him. The other foreman retorted that don Juan could not stop working, not even for a minute, because he was in debt up to his ears just for the privilege of working there.
Don Juan knew that he was done for. He understood the man’s maneuvers. Both he and the other foreman were in cahoots to get lowly Indians from the mill, work them to death, and divide their salaries. That realization angered him so intensely that he ran through the kitchen screaming and got inside the main house. The foreman and the other workers were caught totally by surprise. He ran out the front door and almost got away, but the foreman caught up with him on the road and shot him in the chest. He left him for dead.
Don Juan said that it was not his destiny to die; his benefactor found him there and tended him until he got well.
“When I told my benefactor the whole story,” don Juan said, “he could hardly contain his excitement. That foreman is really a prize, ‘ my benefactor said. ‘He is too good to be wasted. Someday you must go back to that house. ‘
“He raved about my luck in finding a one-in-a-mil- lion petty tyrant with almost unlimited power. I thought the old man was nuts. It was years before I fully understood what he was talking about.”
“That is one of the most horrible stories I have ever heard,” I said. “Did you really go back to that house?”
“I certainly did, three years later. My benefactor was right. A petty tyrant like that one was one in a million and couldn’t be wasted.”
“How did you manage to go back?”
“My benefactor developed a strategy using the four attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing.”
Don Juan said that his benefactor, in explaining to him what he had to do to profit from facing that ogre of a man, also told him what the new seers considered to be the four steps on the path of knowledge. The first step is the decision to become apprentices. After the apprentices change their views about themselves and the world they take the second step and become warriors, which is to say, beings capable of the utmost discipline and control over themselves. The third step, after acquiring forbearance and timing, is to become men of knowledge. When men of knowledge learn to see they have taken the fourth step and have become seers.
His benefactor stressed the fact that don Juan had been on the path of knowledge long enough to have acquired a minimum of the first two attributes: control and discipline. Don Juan emphasized that both of these attributes refer to an inner state. A warrior is self-oriented, not in a selfish way, but in the sense of a total and continuous examination of the self.
“At that time, I was barred from the other two attributes,” don Juan went on. “Forbearance and tim-ing are not quite an inner state. They are in the domain of the man of knowledge. My benefactor showed them to me through his strategy.”
“Does this mean that you couldn’t have faced the petty tyrant by yourself?” I asked.
“I’m sure that I could have done it myself, although I have always doubted that I would have carried it off with flair and joyfulness. My benefactor was simply enjoying the encounter by directing it. The idea of using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior’s spirit, but also for enjoyment and happiness.”
“How could anyone enjoy the monster you described?”
“He was nothing in comparison to the real monsters that the new seers faced during the Conquest. By all indications those seers enjoyed themselves blue dealing with them. They proved that even the worst tyrants can bring delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior.”
Don Juan explained that the mistake average men make in confronting petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings, as well as those of the petty tyrants, are all-important. Warriors, on the other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from self-im- portance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have understood that reality is an interpretation we make. That knowledge was the definitive advantage that the new seers had over the simple-minded Spaniards.
He said that he became convinced he could defeat the foreman using only the single realization that petty tyrants take themselves with deadly seriousness while warriors do not.
Following his benefactor’s strategic plan, therefore, don Juan got a job in the same sugar mill as before. Nobody remembered that he had worked there in the past; peons came to that sugar mill and left it without leaving a trace.
His benefactor’s strategy specified that don Juan had to be solicitous of whoever came to look for another victim. As it happened, the same woman came and spotted him, as she had done years ago. This time he was physically even stronger than before.
The same routine took place. The strategy, however, called for refusing payment to the foreman from the outset. The man had never been turned down and was taken aback. He threatened to fire don Juan from the job. Don Juan threatened him back, saying that he would go directly to the lady’s house and see her. Don Juan knew that the woman, who was the wife of the owner of the mill, did not know what the two foremen were up to. He told the foreman that he knew where she lived, because he had worked in the surrounding fields cutting sugar cane. The man began to haggle, and don Juan demanded money from him before he would accept going to the lady’s house. The foreman gave in and handed him a few bills. Don Juan was perfectly aware that the foreman’s acquiescence was just a ruse to get him to go to the house.