“Do all four of you feel the same way?”
“We are not four. We are one. That is our fate. We have to carry each other. And you are the same. All of us are the same. Even Soledad is the same, although she goes in a different direction.”
“And Pablito, Nestor and Benigno? Where do they fit?”
“We don’t know. We don’t like them. Especially Pablito. He’s a coward. He has not accepted his fate and wants to wriggle out of it. He even wants to chuck his chances as a sorcerer and live an ordinary life. That’ll be great for Soledad. But the Nagual gave us orders to help him. We arc getting tired of helping him, though. Maybe one of these days la Gorda will push him out of the way forever.”
“Can she do that?”
“Can she do that! Of course she can. She’s got more of the Nagual than the rest of us. Perhaps even more than you.”
“Why do you think the Nagual never told me that you were his apprentices?”
“Because you’re empty.”
“Did he say that I was empty?”
“Everyone knows you’re empty. It is written on your body.”
“How can you tell that?”
“There is a hole in the middle.”
“In the middle of my body? Where?”
She very gently touched a spot on the right side of my stomach. She drew a circle with her finger as if she were following the edges of an invisible hole four or five inches in diameter.
“Are you empty yourself, Lidia?”
“Are you kidding? I am complete. Can’t you see?”
Her answers to my questions were taking a turn that I had not expected. I did not want to antagonize her with my ignorance. I shook my head affirmatively.
“Why do you think I have a hole here that makes me empty?” I asked after deliberating what the most innocent question would be.
She did not answer. She turned her back to me and complained that the light of the lantern bothered her eyes. I insisted on a response. She faced me defiantly.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” she said. “You are stupid. Not even Pablito is that stupid and he’s the worst.”
I did not want to end up in another blind alley by pretending that I knew what she was talking about, so I asked her again what caused my emptiness. I coaxed her to talk, giving her ample assurances that don Juan had never explained that topic to me. He had said time and time again that I was empty and I understood him the way any Western man would understand that statement. I thought he meant that I was somehow void of determination, will, purpose or even intelligence. He had never spoken to me about a hole in my body.
“There is a hole there on the right side,” she said matter-of- factly. “A hole that a woman made when she emptied you.”
“Would you know who the woman is?”
“Only you can tell that. The Nagual said that men, most of the time, cannot tell who had emptied them. Women are more fortunate; they know for a fact who emptied them.”
“Are your sisters empty, like me?”
“Don’t be stupid. How can they be empty?”
“Dona Soledad said that she was empty. Does she look like me?”
“No. The hole in her stomach was enormous. It was on both sides, which meant that a man and a woman emptied her.”
“What did dona Soledad do with a man and a woman?”
“She gave her completeness to them.”
I vacillated for a moment before asking the next question. I wanted to assess all the implications of her statement.
“La Gorda was even worse than Soledad,” Lidia went on. “Two women emptied her. The hole in her stomach was like a cavern. But now she has closed it. She is complete again.”
“Tell me about those two women.”
“I just can’t tell you anything more,” she said in a most imperative tone. “Only la Gorda can speak to you about this matter. Wait until she comes.”
“Why only la Gorda?”
“Because she knows everything.”
“Is she the only one who knows everything?”
“The Witness knows as much, maybe even more, but he is Genaro himself and that makes him very difficult to handle. We don’t like him.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
“Those three bums are awful. They are crazy like Genaro. Well, they are Genaro himself. They are always fighting us because they were afraid of the Nagual and now they are tak-ing their revenge on us. That’s what la Gorda says anyway.”
“And what makes la Gorda say that?”
“The Nagual told her things he didn’t tell the rest of us. She sees. The Nagual said that you also see. Josefina, Rosa and I don’t see, and yet all five of us are the same. We are the same.”
The phrase “we are the same,” which dona Soledad had used the night before, brought on an avalanche of thoughts and fears. I put my writing pad away. I looked around. I was in a strange world lying in a strange bed in between two young women I did not know. And yet I felt at ease there. My body experienced abandon and indifference. I trusted them.
“Are you going to sleep here?” I asked.
“Where else?”
“How about your own room?”
“We can’t leave you alone. We feel the same way you do; you are a stranger, except that we are bound to help you. La Gorda said that no matter how stupid you are, we have to look after you. She said we have to sleep in the same bed with you as if you were the Nagual himself.”
Lidia turned off the lantern. I remained sitting with my back against the wall. I closed my eyes to think and I fell asleep instantly.
Lidia, Rosa and I had been sitting on a flat area just outside the front door for nearly two hours, since eight o’clock in the morning. I had tried to steer them into a conversation but they had refused to talk. They seemed to be very relaxed, almost asleep. Their mood of abandonment was not contagious, however. Sitting there in that forced silence had put me into a mood of my own. Their house sat on top of a small hill; the front door faced the east. From where I sat I could see almost the entire narrow valley that ran from east to west. I could not see the town but I could see the green areas of cultivated fields on the floor of the valley. On the other side and flanking the valley in every direction, there were gigantic, round, eroded hills. There were no high mountains in the vicinity of the valley, only those enormous, eroded, round hills, the sight of which created in me the most intense feeling of oppression. I had the sensation that those hills were about to transport me to another time.
Lidia spoke to me all of a sudden and her voice disrupted my reverie. She pulled my sleeve.
“Here comes Josefina,” she said.
I looked at the winding trail that led from the valley to the house. I saw a woman walking slowly up the trail, perhaps fifty yards away. I noticed immediately the remarkable difference in age between Lidia and Rosa and the approaching woman. I looked at her again. I would never have thought Josefina to be that old. Judging by her slow gait and the pos-ture of her body, she seemed to be a woman in her midfifties. She was thin, wore a long, dark skirt and was carrying a load of firewood on her back. She had a bundle tied around her waist; it looked as though she had a bundled-up child riding on her left hip. She seemed to be breast-feeding it as she walked. Her steps were almost feeble. She could barely make the last steep slope before reaching the house. When she finally stood in front of us, a few yards away, she was panting so heavily that I attempted to help her sit down. She made a gesture that seemed to say that she was all right.
I heard Lidia and Rosa giggling. I did not look at them because my total attention had been taken by assault. The woman in front of me was absolutely the most disgusting, foul creature I had ever seen. She untied the bundle of firewood and dropped it on the floor with a loud clatter. I jumped involuntarily, due in part to the loud noise and in part to the fact that the woman nearly fell on my lap, pulled by the weight of the wood.
She looked at me for an instant and then lowered her eyes, seemingly embarrassed by her clumsiness. She straightened her back and sighed with apparent relief. Obviously, the load had been too great for her old body.