Up to that point her assertions had been coherent to me, but I could not conceive don Juan saying those things about me.
We went inside the house. I wanted to sit down on the bench, where Pablito and I usually sat. She stopped me.
“This is not the place for you and me,” she said. “Let’s go to my room.”
“I’d rather sit here,” I said firmly. “I know this spot and I feel comfortable on it.”
She clicked her lips in disapproval. She acted like a disappointed child. She contracted her upper lip until it looked like the flat beak of a duck.
“There is something terribly wrong here,” I said. “I think I am going to leave if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
She became very flustered and argued that her trouble was not knowing how to talk to me. I confronted her with her un-mistakable transformation and demanded that she tell me what had happened. I had to know how such a change had come about.
“If I tell you, will you stay?” she asked in a child’s voice.
“I’ll have to.”
“In that case I’ll tell you everything. But it has to be in my room.”
I had a moment of panic. I made a supreme effort to calm myself and we walked into her room. She lived in the back, where Pablito had built a bedroom for her. I had once been in the room while it was being built and also after it was finished, just before she moved in. The room looked as empty as I had seen it before, except that there was a bed in the very center of it and two unobtrusive chests of drawers by the door. The whitewash of the walls had faded into a very soothing yellowish white. The wood of the ceiling had also weathered. Looking at the smooth, clean walls I had the impression they were scrubbed daily with a sponge. The room looked more like a monastic cell, very frugal and ascetic. There were no ornaments of any sort. The windows had thick, removable wood panels reinforced with an iron bar. There were no chairs or anything to sit on.
Dona Soledad took my writing pad away from me, held it to her bosom and then sat down on her bed, which was made up of two thick mattresses with no box springs. She indicated that I should sit down next to her.
“You and I are the same,” she said as she handed me my notebook.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You and I are the same,” she repeated without looking at me.
I could not figure out what she meant. She stared at me, as if waiting for a response.
“Just what is that supposed to mean, dona Soledad?” I asked.
My question seemed to baffle her. Obviously she expected me to know what she meant. She laughed at first, but then, when I insisted that I did not understand, she got angry. She sat up straight and accused me of being dishonest with her. Her eyes flared with rage; her mouth contracted in a very ugly gesture of wrath that made her look extremely old.
I honestly was at a loss and felt that no matter what I said it would be wrong. She also seemed to be in the same predicament. Her mouth moved to say something but her lips only quivered. At last she muttered that it was not impeccable to act the way I did at such a serious moment. She turned her back to me.
“Look at me, dona Soledad!” I said forcefully. “I’m not mystifying you in any sense. You must know something that I know nothing about.”
“You talk too much,” she snapped angrily. “The Nagual told me never to let you talk. You twist everything.”
She jumped to her feet and stomped on the floor, like a spoiled child. I became aware at that moment that the room had a different floor. I remembered it to be a dirt floor, made from the dark soil of the area. The new floor was reddish pink. I momentarily put off a confrontation with her and walked around the room. I could not imagine how I could have missed noticing the floor when I first entered. It was magnificent. At first I thought that it was red clay that had been laid like cement, when it was soft and moist, but then I saw that there were no cracks in it. Clay would have dried, curled up, cracked, and clumps would have formed. I bent down and gently ran my fingers over it. It was as hard as bricks. The clay had been fired. I became aware then that the floor was made of very large flat slabs of clay put together over a bed of soft clay that served as a matrix. The slabs made a most intricate and fascinating design, but a thoroughly unobtrusive one, unless one paid deliberate attention to it. The skill with which the slabs had been placed in position indicated to me a very well-conceived plan. I wanted to know how such big slabs had been fired without being warped. I turned around to ask dona Soledad. I quickly desisted. She would not have known what I was talking about. I paced over the floor again. The clay was a bit rough, almost like sandstone. It made a perfect slide-proof surface.
“Did Pablito put down this floor?” I asked.
She did not answer.
“It’s a superb piece of work,” I said. “You should be very proud of him.”
I had no doubt that Pablito had done it. No one else could have had the imagination and the capacity to conceive of it. I figured that he must have made it during the time I had been away. But on second thought I realized that I had never entered dona Soledad’s room since it had been built, six or seven years before.
“Pablito! Pablito! Bah!” she exclaimed in an angry, raspy voice. “What makes you think he’s the only one who can make things?”
We exchanged a long, sustained look, and all of a sudden I knew that it was she who had made the floor, and that don Juan had put her up to it.
We stood quietly, looking at each other for some time. I felt it would have been thoroughly superfluous to ask if I was correct.
“I made it myself,” she finally said in a dry tone. “The Nagual told me how.”
Her statements made me feel euphoric. I practically lifted her up in an embrace. I twirled her around. All I could think to do was to bombard her with questions. I wanted to know how she had made the slabs, what the designs represented, where she got the clay. But she did not share my exhilaration. She remained quiet and impassive, looking at me askance from time to time.
I paced on the floor again. The bed had been placed at the very epicenter of some converging lines. The clay slabs had been cut in sharp angles to create converging motifs that seemed to radiate out from under the bed.
“I have no words to tell you how impressed I am,” I said.
“Words! Who needs words?” she said cuttingly.
I had a flash of insight. My reason had been betraying me. There was only one possible way of explaining her magnificent metamorphosis; don Juan must have made her his apprentice. How else could an old woman like dona Soledad turn into such a weird, powerful being? That should have been obvious to me from the moment I laid eyes on her, but my set of expectations about her had not included that possibility.
I deduced that whatever don Juan had done to her must have taken place during the two years I had not seen her, although two years seemed hardly any time at all for such a superb alteration.
“I think I know now what happened to you,” I said in a casual and cheerful tone. “Something has cleared up in my mind right now.”
“Oh, is that so?” she said, thoroughly uninterested.
“The Nagual is teaching you to be a sorceress, isn’t that true?”
She glared at me defiantly. I felt that I had said the worst possible thing. There was an expression of true contempt on her face. She was not going to tell me anything.
“What a bastard you are!” she exclaimed suddenly, shaking with rage.
I thought that her anger was unjustified. I sat down on one end of the bed while she nervously tapped on the floor with her heel. Then she sat down on the other end, without looking at me.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked in a firm and intimidating tone.
“I told you already! ” she said in a yell. “You and I are the same.”
I asked her to explain her meaning and not to assume for one instant that I knew anything. Those statements angered her even more. She stood up abruptly and dropped her skirt to the ground.