She said that I had to hear her out, and that she was willing to ride with me until she had told me everything the Nagual had entrusted her to tell me.
“I’m going to Mexico City,” I said.
“I’ll ride with you to Los Angeles if necessary,” she said, and I knew that she meant it.
“All right,” I said just to test her, “get in the car.”
She vacillated for an instant, then she stood silently and faced her house. She put her clasped hands just below her navel. She turned and faced the valley and did the same movement with her hands.
I knew what she was doing. She was saying good-bye to her house and to those awesome round hills that surrounded it.
Don Juan had taught me that good-bye gesture years be-fore. He had stressed that it was an extremely powerful gesture, and that a warrior had to use it sparingly. I had had very few occasions to perform it myself.
The good-bye movement la Gorda was executing was a variant of the one don Juan had taught me. He had said that the hands were clasped as in prayer, either gently or with great speed, even producing a clapping sound. Done either way, the purpose of clasping the hands was to imprison the feeling that the warrior did not wish to leave behind. As soon as the hands had closed in and captured that feeling, they were taken with great force to the middle of the chest, at the level of the heart. There the feeling became a dagger and the warrior stabbed himself with it, as if holding the dagger with both hands.
Don Juan had told me that a warrior said good-bye in that fashion only when he had reason to feel he might not come back.
La Gorda’s good-bye enthralled me.
“Are you saying good-bye?” I asked out of curiosity.
“Yes,” she said dryly.
“Don’t you put your hands to your chest?” I asked.
“Men do that. Women have wombs. They store their feelings there.”
“Aren’t you suppose to say good-bye like that only when you’re not coming back?” I asked.
“Chances are I may not come back,” she replied. “I’m going with you.”
I had an attack of unwarranted sadness, unwarranted in the sense that I did not know that woman at all. I had only doubts and suspicions about her. But as I peered into her clear eyes I had a sense of ultimate kinship with her. I mellowed. My anger had disappeared and given way to a strange sadness. I looked around, and I knew that those mysterious, enormous, round hills were ripping me apart.
“Those hills over there are alive,” she said, reading my thoughts.
I turned to her and told her that both the place and the women had affected me at a very deep level, a level I could not ordinarily conceive. I did not know which was more devastating, the place or the women. The women’s onslaughts had been direct and terrifying, but the effect of those hills was a constant, nagging apprehension, a desire to flee from them. When I told that to la Gorda she said that I was correct in assessing the effect of that place, that the Nagual had left them there because of that effect, and that I should not blame any-one for what had happened, because the Nagual himself had given those women orders to try to do away with me.
“Did he give orders like that to you too?” I asked.
“No, not to me. I’m different than they are,” she said. “They are sisters. They are the same, exactly the same. Just like Pablito, Nestor and Benigno are the same. Only you and I can be exactly the same. We are not now because you’re still incomplete. But someday we will be the same, exactly the same.”
“I’ve been told that you’re the only one who knows where the Nagual and Genaro are now,” I said.
She peered at me for a moment and shook her head affirmatively.
“That’s right,” she said. “I know where they are. The Nagual told me to take you there if I can.”
I told her to stop beating around the bush and to reveal their exact whereabouts to me immediately. My demand seemed to plunge her into chaos. She apologized and reassured me that later on, when we were on our way, she would disclose everything to me. She begged me not to ask her about them anymore because she had strict orders not to mention anything until the right moment.
Lidia and Josefina came to the door and stared at me. I hurriedly got in the car. La Gorda got in after me, and as she did I could not help observing that she had entered the car as she would have entered a tunnel. She sort of crawled in. Don Juan used to do that. I jokingly said once, after I had seen him do it scores of times, that it was more functional to get in the way I did. I thought that perhaps his lack of familiarity with automobiles was responsible for his strange way of entering. He explained then that the car was a cave and that caves had to be entered in that fashion if we were going to use them. There was an inherent spirit to caves, whether they were natural or man-made, and that that spirit had to be approached with respect. Crawling was the only way of showing that respect.
I was wondering whether or not to ask la Gorda if don Juan had instructed her about such details, but she spoke first. She said that the Nagual had given her specific instructions about what to do in case I would survive the attacks of dona Soledad and the three girls. Then she casually added that be-fore I headed for Mexico City we had to go to a specific place in the mountains where don Juan and I used to go, and that there she would reveal all the information the Nagual had never disclosed to me.
I had a moment of indecision, and then something in me which was not my reason made me head for the mountains. We drove in complete silence. I attempted at various oppor-tune moments to start up a conversation, but she turned me down every time with a strong shake of her head. Finally she seemed to have gotten tired of my trying and said forcefully that what she had to say required a place of power and until we were in one we had to abstain from draining ourselves with useless talk.
After a long drive and an exhausting hike away from the road, we finally reached our destination. It was late afternoon. We were in a deep canyon. The bottom of it was already dark, while the sun was still shining on the top of the mountains above it. We walked until we came to a small cave a few feet up the north side of the canyon, which ran from east to west. I used to spend a great deal of time there with don Juan.
Before we entered the cave, la Gorda carefully swept the floor with branches, the way don Juan used to, in order to clear the ticks and parasites from the rocks. Then she cut a large heap of small branches with soft leaves from the surrounding bushes and placed them on the rock floor like a mat.
She motioned me to enter. I had always let don Juan enter first as a sign of respect. I wanted to do the same with her, but she declined. She said I was the Nagual. I crawled into the cave the same way she had crawled into my car. I laughed at my inconsistency. I had never been able to treat my car as a cave.
She coaxed me to relax and make myself comfortable.
“The reason the Nagual could not reveal all his designs to you was because you’re incomplete,” la Gorda said all of a sudden. “You still are, but now after your bouts with Soledad and the sisters, you are stronger than before.”
“What’s the meaning of being incomplete? Everyone has told me that you’re the only one who can explain that,” I said.
“It’s a very simple matter,” she said. “A complete person is one who has never had children.”
She paused as if she were allowing me time to write down what she had said. I looked up from my notes. She was staring at me, judging the effect of her words.
“I know that the Nagual told you exactly what I’ve just said,” she continued. “You didn’t pay any attention to him and you probably haven’t paid any attention to me, either.”
I read my notes out loud and repeated what she had said. She giggled.
“The Nagual said that an incomplete person is one who has had children,” she said as if dictating to me.