I went out the back door and walked around to the front. Not even the dog was in sight. I banged on the front door furiously. Lidia opened it. I entered. I yelled at her to tell me where everybody was. She lowered her eyes and did not answer. She wanted to close the door but I would not let her. She quickly walked away and went into the other room.
I sat down again at the table. Rosa had not moved. She seemed to be frozen on the spot.
“We are the same,” she said suddenly. “The Nagual told us that.”
“Tell me, then, what was prowling around the house?” I asked.
“The ally,” she said.
“Where is it now?”
“It is still here. It won’t go. The moment you’re weak it’ll squash you. But we’re not the ones who can tell you anything.”
“Who can tell me, then?”
“La Gorda!” Rosa exclaimed, opening her eyes as wide as she could. “She’s the one. She knows everything.”
Rosa asked me if she could close the door, just to be on the safe side. Without waiting for an answer she inched her way to the door and slammed it shut.
“There is nothing we can do except wait until everyone is here,” she said.
Lidia came back into the room with a package, an object wrapped up in a piece of dark yellow cloth. She seemed very relaxed. I noticed that she had a most commandeering touch. Somehow she imparted her mood to Rosa and myself.
“Do you know what I have here?” she asked me.
I did not have the vaguest idea. She began to unwrap it in a very deliberate manner, taking her time. Then she stopped and looked at me. She seemed to vacillate. She grinned as if she were too shy to show what was in the bundle.
“This package was left by the Nagual for you,” she muttered, “but I think we’d better wait for la Gorda.”
I insisted that she unwrap it. She gave me a ferocious look and took the package out of the room without saying another word.
I enjoyed Lidia’s game. She had performed something quite in line with don Juan’s teachings. She had given me a demonstration of how to get the best use out of an average situation. By bringing the package to me and pretending that she was going to open it, after disclosing that don Juan had left it for me, she had indeed created a mystery that was almost unbearable. She knew that I had to stay if I wanted to find out the contents of that package. I could think of a number of things that might be in that bundle. Perhaps it was the pipe don Juan used when handling psychotropic mushrooms. He had intimated that the pipe would be given to me for safekeeping. Or it might have been his knife, or his leather pouch, or even his sorcery power objects. On the other hand, it might have been merely a ploy on Lidia’s part; don Juan was too sophisticated, too abstract to leave me an heirloom.
I told Rosa that I was dead on my feet and weak from hun-ger. My idea was to drive to the city, rest for a couple of days and then come back to see Pablito and Nestor. I said that by then I might even get to meet the other two girls.
Lidia returned then and Rosa told her of my intention to leave.
“The Nagual gave us orders to attend to you as if you were himself,” Lidia said. “We are all the Nagual himself, but you are even more so, for some reason that no one understands.”
Both of them talked to me at once and guaranteed in various ways that no one was going to attempt anything against me as dona Soledad had. Both of them had such a fierce look of honesty in their eyes that my body was overwhelmed. I trusted them.
“You must stay until la Gorda comes back,” Lidia said.
“The Nagual said that you should sleep in his bed,” Rosa added.
I began to pace the floor in the throes of a weird dilemma. On the one hand, I wanted to stay and rest; I felt physically at ease and happy in their presence, something I had not felt the day before with dona Soledad. My reasonable side, on the other hand, had not relaxed at all. At that level, I was as frightened as I had been all along. I had had moments of blind despair and had taken bold actions, but after the momentum of those actions had ceased, I had felt as vulnerable as ever.
I engaged in some soul-searching analysis as I paced the room almost frantically. The two girls remained quiet, looking at me anxiously. Then all of a sudden the riddle was solved; I knew that something in me was just pretending to be afraid. I had become accustomed to reacting that way in don Juan’s presence. Throughout the years of our association I had relied heavily on him to furnish me with convenient pacifiers for my fright. My dependency on him had given me solace and security. But it was no longer tenable. Don Juan was gone. His apprentices did not have his patience, or his sophistication, or his sheer command. With them my need to seek solace was plain stupidity.
The girls led me to the other room. The window faced the southeast, and so did the bed, which was a thick mat, like a mattress. A two-foot-long, bulky piece of maguey stalk had been carved so that the porous tissue served as a pillow, or a neckrest. In the middle part of it there was a gentle dip. The surface of the maguey was very smooth. It appeared to have been hand rubbed. I tried the bed and the pillow. The comfort and bodily satisfaction I experienced were unusual. Lying on don Juan’s bed I felt secure and fulfilled. An unequaled peace swept through my body. I had had a similar feeling once before when don Juan had made a bed for me on top of a hill in the desert in northern Mexico. I fell asleep.
I woke up in the early evening. Lidia and Rosa were nearly on top of me, sound asleep. I stayed motionless for one or two seconds, then both of them woke up at once.
Lidia yawned and said that they had had to sleep next to me in order to protect me and make me rest. I was famished. Lidia sent Rosa to the kitchen to make us some food. In the meantime she lit all the lanterns in the house. When the food was ready we sat down at the table. I felt as if I had known them or been with them all my life. We ate in silence.
When Rosa was clearing the table I asked Lidia if all of them slept in the Nagual’s bed; it was the only other bed in the house besides dona Soledad’s. Lidia said, in a matter-of- fact tone, that they had moved out of that house years before to a place of their own in the same vicinity, and that Pablito had also moved when they did and lived with Nestor and Benigno.
“But what’s happened to you people? I thought that you were all together,” I said.
“Not anymore,” Lidia replied. “Since the Nagual left we have had separate tasks. The Nagual joined us and the Nagual took us apart.”
“And where’s the Nagual now?” I asked in the most casual tone I could affect.
Both of them looked at me and then glanced at each other.
“Oh, we don’t know,” Lidia said. “He and Genaro left.”
She seemed to be telling the truth, but I insisted once more that they tell me what they knew.
“We really don’t know anything,” Lidia snapped at me, obviously flustered by my questions. “They moved to another area. You have to ask that question of la Gorda. She has something to tell you. She knew yesterday that you had come and we rushed all night to get here. We were afraid that you were dead. The Nagual told us that you are the only one we should help and trust. He said that you are himself.”
She covered her face and giggled and then added as an afterthought, “But that’s hard to believe.”
“We don’t know you,” Rosa said. “That’s the trouble. The four of us feel the same way. We were afraid that you were dead and then when we saw you, we got mad at you for not being dead. Soledad is like our mother; maybe more than that.”
They exchanged conspiratorial looks with each other. I immediately interpreted that as a sign of trouble. They were up to no good. Lidia noticed my sudden distrust, which must have been written all over my face. She reacted with a series of assertions about their desire to help me. I really had no reason to doubt their sincerity. If they had wanted to hurt me they could have done so while I was asleep. She sounded so earnest that I felt petty. I decided to distribute the gifts I had brought for them. I told them that there were unimportant trinkets in the packages and that they could choose any one they liked. Lidia said that they would prefer it if I assigned the gifts myself. In a very polite tone she added that they would be grateful if I would also cure Soledad.