I greeted them, and then in unison they initiated a hand-shake. They flanked me. They looked healthy and vigorous. I asked them to help me get the packages out of the trunk. As we were carrying them into the house, I heard a deep growl, so deep and near that it seemed more like a lion’s roar.
“What was that?” I asked Lidia.
“Don’t you know?” she asked with a tone of disbelief.
“It must be the dog,” Rosa said as they ran into the house, practically dragging me with them.
We placed the packages on the table and sat on two benches. Both girls were facing me. I told them that dona Soledad was very ill and that I was about to take her to the hospital in the city, since I did not know what else to do to help her.
As I spoke I realized that I was treading on dangerous ground. I had no way of assessing how much information I should divulge to them about the true nature of my bout with dona Soledad. I began to look for clues. I thought that if I watched carefully, their voices or the expression on their faces would betray how much they knew. But they remained silent and let me do all the talking. I began to doubt that I should volunteer any information at all. In my effort to figure out what to do and not blunder, I ended up talking nonsense. Lidia cut me off. In a dry tone she said that I should not concern myself with dona Soledad’s health because they had already taken steps to help her. That statement forced me to ask her if she knew what dona Soledad’s trouble was.
“You’ve taken her soul,” she said accusingly.
My first reaction was to defend myself. I began to talk vehemently but ended up contradicting myself. They stared at me. I was making no sense at all. I tried again to say the same thing in a different way. My fatigue was so intense that I could hardly organize my thoughts. Finally I gave up.
“Where are Pablito and Nestor?” I asked after a long pause.
“They’ll be here shortly,” Lidia said briskly.
“Were you with them?” I asked.
“No! ” she exclaimed, and stared at me.
“We never go together,” Rosa explained. “Those bums are different from us.”
Lidia made an imperative gesture with her foot to shut her up. She seemed to be the one who gave the orders. Catching the movement of her feet brought to my awareness a most peculiar facet of my relationship with don Juan. In the countless times that we had roamed together, he had succeeded in teaching me, without really trying, a system of covert communication through some coded movements of the feet. I watched Lidia give Rosa the sign for horrible, a sign given when anything that happens to be in sight of the signers is unpleasant or dangerous. In this case me. I laughed. I remembered that don Juan had given me that sign when I first met don Genaro.
I pretended not to be aware of what was going on in order to find out if I could decode all their signs.
Rosa made the sign that she wanted to step on me. Lidia answered with an imperative sign for no.
According to don Juan, Lidia was very talented. As far as he was concerned she was more sensitive and alert than Pablito and Nestor and myself. I had always been incapable of making friends with her. She was aloof, and very cutting. She had enormous, black, shifty eyes that never looked straight at anyone, high cheekbones and a chiseled nose, which was a bit flat and broad at the bridge. I remembered her having red, sore eyelids and everyone taunting her on account of that. The redness of her eyelids had disappeared but she continued to rub her eyes and blink a great deal. During my years of association with don Juan and don Genaro I had seen Lidia the most, and yet we had probably never exchanged more than a dozen words with each other. Pablito regarded her as a most dangerous being. I always thought she was just extremely shy.
Rosa, on the other hand, was very boisterous. I thought she was the youngest. Her eyes were very frank and shiny. She was never shifty, but very bad-tempered. I had talked with Rosa more than anyone else. She was friendly, very bold and very funny.
“Where are the others?” I asked Rosa. “Aren’t they going to come out?”
“They will be out shortly,” Lidia answered.
I could tell from their expressions that friendliness was not what they had in mind. Judging from their foot messages they were as dangerous as dona Soledad, and yet as I sat there looking at them it occurred to me that they were gorgeously beautiful. I had the warmest feelings for them. In fact, the more they stared into my eyes the more intense that feeling became. At one moment it was sheer passion that I felt for them. They were so alluring that I could have sat there for hours just looking at them, but a sobering thought made me stand up. I was not going to repeat my bungling of the night before. I decided that the best defense was to put my cards on the table. In a firm tone I told them that don Juan had set up some sort of trial for me using dona Soledad, or vice versa. Chances were that he had also set them up in the same fashion, and we were going to be pitted against one another in some sort of battle that could result in injury to some of us. I appealed to their sense of warriorship. If they were the truthful heirs of don Juan, they had to be impeccable with me, reveal their designs and not behave like ordinary, greedy human beings.
I turned to Rosa and asked her the reason for wishing to step on me. She was taken aback for an instant and then she became angry. Her eyes flared with rage; her small mouth contracted.
Lidia, in a very coherent manner, said that I had nothing to fear from them, and that Rosa was angry with me because I had hurt dona Soledad. Her feelings were purely a personal reaction.
I said then that it was time I left. I stood up. Lidia made a gesture to stop me. She seemed scared or deeply concerned. She began to protest, when a noise coming from outside the door distracted me. The two girls jumped to my side. Something heavy was leaning or pushing against the door. I noticed then that the girls had secured it with the heavy iron bar. I had a feeling of disgust. The whole affair was going to be repeated again and I was sick and tired of it all.
The girls glanced at each other, then looked at me and then looked at each other again.
I heard the whining and heavy breathing of a large animal outside the house. It might have been the dog. Exhaustion blinded me at that point. I rushed to the door, removed the heavy iron bar and started to open it. Lidia threw herself against the door and shut it again.
“The Nagual was right,” she said, out of breath. “You think and think. You’re dumber than I thought.”
She pulled me back to the table. I rehearsed, in my mind, the best way to tell them, once and for all, that I had had enough. Rosa sat next to me, touching me; I could feel her leg nervously rubbing against mine. Lidia was standing facing me, looking at me fixedly. Her burning black eyes seemed to be saying something I could not understand.
I began to speak but I did not finish. I had a sudden and most profound awareness. My body was aware of a greenish light, a fluorescence outside the house. I did not see or hear anything. I was simply aware of the light as if I were suddenly falling asleep and my thoughts were turning into images that were superimposed on the world of everyday life. The light was moving at a great speed. I could sense it with my stomach. I followed it, or rather I focused my attention on it for an instant as it moved around. A great clarity of mind ensued from focusing my attention on the light. I knew then that in that house, in the presence of those people, it was wrong and dangerous to behave as an innocent bystander.
“Aren’t you afraid?” Rosa asked, pointing to the door.
Her voice disrupted my concentration.
I admitted that whatever was there was scaring me at a very deep level, enough to make me die of fright. I wanted to say more, but right then I had a surge of wrath and I wanted to see and talk with dona Soledad. I did not trust her. I went directly to her room. She was not there. I began to call her, bellowing her name. The house had one more room. I pushed the door open and rushed inside. There was no one in there. My anger increased in the same proportion as my fear.