She sobbed uncontrollably as she tried to speak to me. Lidia and Rosa appeared to be so caught up in her drama that they were making the same gestures with their mouths.
“For heaven’s sake, do something!” Rosa exclaimed in a pleading voice.
I experienced an unbearable anxiety. Josefina stood up and embraced me, or rather clung to me in a frenzy and pushed me away from the table. At that instant Lidia and Rosa, with astounding agility, speed and control, grabbed me by the shoulders with both hands and at the same time hooked the heels of my feet with their feet. The weight of Josefina’s body and her embrace, plus the speed of Lidia’s and Rosa’s maneuver, rendered me helpless. They all moved at once, and before I knew what was happening, they had laid me on the floor with Josefina on top of me. I felt her heart pounding. She held on to me with great force; the sound of her heart reverberated in my ears. I felt it pounding in my own chest. I tried to push her away but she held on fast. Rosa and Lidia had me pinned down on the floor with their weight on my arms and legs. Rosa cackled insanely and began nibbling on my side. Her small, sharp teeth chattered as her jaws snapped open and shut with nervous spasms.
All at once I had a monstrous sensation of pain, physical revulsion and terror. I lost my breath. My eyes could not focus. I knew that I was passing out. I heard then the dry, cracking sound of a pipe breaking at the base of my neck and felt the ticklish sensation on top of my head, running like a shiver through my entire body. The next thing I knew I was looking at them from the other side of the kitchen. The three girls were staring at me while they lay on the floor.
“What are you people doing?” I heard someone say in a loud, harsh, commanding voice.
I then had an inconceivable feeling. I felt Josefina let go of me and stand up. I was lying on the floor, and yet I was also standing a distance away from them, looking at a woman I had never seen before. She was by the door. She walked toward me and stopped six or seven feet away. She stared at me for a moment. I knew immediately that she was la Gorda. She demanded to know what was going on.
“We were just playing a little joke on him,” Josefina said clearing her throat. “I was pretending to be mute.”
The three girls huddled up close together and began to laugh. La Gorda remained impassive, looking at me.
They had tricked me! I found my stupidity and gullibility so outrageous that I had a fit of hysterical laughter, which was almost out of control. My body shivered.
I knew that Josefina had not just been playing, as she had claimed. The three of them had meant business. I had actually felt Josefina’s body as a force that, in fact, was getting inside my own body. Rosa’s nibbling on my side, which undoubtedly was a ruse to distract my attention, coincided with the sensation I had had that Josefina’s heart was pounding inside my chest.
I heard la Gorda urging me to calm down.
I had a nervous flutter in my midsection and then a quiet, calm anger swept over me. I loathed them. I had had enough of them. I would have picked up my jacket and writing pad and walked out of the house had it not been that I was not quite myself yet. I was somewhat dizzy and my senses were definitely out of line. I had had the sensation that when I had first looked at the girls from across the kitchen, I was actually viewing them from a position above my eye level, from a place close to the ceiling. But something even more disconcerting was that I had actually perceived that the ticklish sensation on top of my head was what scooped me from Josefina’s embrace. It was not as if something came out from the top of my head; something actually did come out from the top of my head.
A few years before, don Juan and don Genaro had manoeuvred my perception and I had had an impossible double sensation: I felt that don Juan had fallen on top of me and pinned me to the ground, while at the same time I felt I was still standing up. I was actually in both places at once. In sorcerers’ terms I could say that my body had stored the memory of that double perception and seemed to have repeated it. There were, however, two new things that had been added to my bodily memory this time. One was that the ticklish sensation I had become so aware of during the course of my confrontations with those women was the vehicle to arriving at that double perception; and the other was that the sound at the base of my neck let loose something in me that was capable of coming out of the top of my head.
After a minute or two I definitely felt that I was coming down from near the ceiling until I was standing on the floor. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to seeing at my normal eye level.
As I looked at the four women I felt naked and vulnerable. I then had an instant of disassociation, or lack of perceptual continuity. It was as if I had shut my eyes, and some force suddenly had made me twirl a couple of times. When I opened my eyes the girls were staring at me with their mouths open. But somehow I was myself again.
3
La Gorda
The first thing I noticed about la Gorda was her eyes: very dark and calm. She seemed to be examining me from head to toe. Her eyes scanned my body the same way don Juan’s used to. In fact, her eyes had the same calmness and force. I knew why she was the best. The thought that came to my mind was that don Juan must have left her his eyes.
She was slightly taller than the other three girls. She had a lean, dark body and a superb back. I noticed the graceful line of her broad shoulders when she half turned her upper body to face the three girls.
She gave them an unintelligible command and the three of them sat down on a bench, right behind her. She was actually shielding them from me with her body.
She turned to face me again. Her expression was one of ut-most seriousness, but without a trace of gloom or heaviness. She did not smile and yet she was friendly. She had very pleasant features: a nicely shaped face, neither round nor angular; a small mouth with thin lips; a broad nose; high cheekbones; and long, jet-black hair.
I could not help noticing her beautiful, muscular hands which she kept clasped in front of her, over her umbilical region. The backs of her hands were turned to me. I could see her muscles being contracted rhythmically as she clasped her palms.
She was wearing a long, faded orange cotton dress with long sleeves and a brown shawl. There was something terribly calming and final about her. I felt the presence of don Juan. My body relaxed.
“Sit down, sit down,” she said to me in a coaxing tone.
I walked back to the table. She pointed out a place for me to sit, but I remained standing.
She smiled for the first time and her eyes became softer and shinier. She was not as pretty as Josefina, and yet she was the most beautiful of all of them.
We were quiet for a moment. In terms of an explanation she said that they had done their best in the years since the Nagual left, and that because of their dedication they had be-come accustomed to the task that he had left for them to perform.
I did not quite understand what she was talking about, but as she spoke I felt more than ever the presence of don Juan. It was not that she was copying his manners, or the inflection of his voice. She had an inner control that made her act the way don Juan did. Their similarity was from the inside out.
I told her that I had come because I needed Pablito’s and Nestor’s help. I said that I was rather slow or even stupid in understanding the ways of sorcerers, but that I was sincere, and yet all of them had treated me with malice and deceit-fulness.
She began to apologize but I did not let her finish. I picked up my things and went out the front door. She ran after me. She was not preventing me from leaving but rather she was talking very fast, as if she needed to say all she could before I drove away.