With her left hand she followed the contour of an invisible line that seemed to run vertically in front of her at arm’s length.
“During that time a woman, if she wants to, can let go of the images of the world,” la Gorda went on. “That’s the crack between the worlds, and as the Nagual said, it is right in front of all of us women.
“The reason the Nagual believes women are better sorcerers than men is because they always have the crack in front of them, while a man has to make it.
“Well, it was during my periods that I learned in dreaming to fly with the lines of the world. I learned to make sparks with my body to entice the lines and then I learned to grab them. And that’s all I have learned in dreaming so far.”
I laughed and told her that I had nothing to show for my years of “dreaming.”
“You’ve learned how to call the allies in dreaming,” she said with great assurance.
I told her that don Juan had taught me to make those sounds. She did not seem to believe me.
“The allies must come to you, then, because they’re seeking his luminosity,” she said, “the luminosity he left with you. He told me that every sorcerer has only so much luminosity to give away. So he parcels it out to all his children in accordance with an order that comes to him from somewhere out there in that vastness. In your case he even gave you his own call.”
She clicked her tongue and winked at me.
“If you don’t believe me,” she went on, “why don’t you make the sound the Nagual taught you and see if the allies come to you?”
I felt reluctant to do it. Not because I believed that my sound would bring anything, but because I did not want to humor her.
She waited for a moment, and when she was sure I was not going to try, she put her hand to her mouth and imitated my tapping sound to perfection. She played it for five or six minutes, stopping only to breathe.
“See what I mean?” she asked smiling. “The allies don’t give a fig about my calling, no matter how close it is to yours. Now try it yourself.”
I tried. After a few seconds I heard the call being answered. La Gorda jumped to her feet. I had the clear impression that she was more surprised than I was. She hurriedly made me stop, turned off the lantern and gathered up my notes.
She was about to open the front door, but she stopped short; a most frightening sound came from just outside the door. It sounded to me like a growl. It was so horrendous and ominous that it made us both jump back, away from the door. My physical alarm was so intense that I would have fled if I had had a place to go.
Something heavy was leaning against the door; it made the door creak. I looked at la Gorda. She seemed to be even more alarmed. She was still standing with her arm outstretched as if to open the door. Her mouth was open. She seemed to have been frozen in midaction.
The door was about to be sprung open any moment. There were no bangs on it, just a terrifying pressure, not only on the door but all around the house.
La Gorda stood up and told me to embrace her quickly from behind, locking my hands around her waist over her belly button. She performed then a strange movement with her hands. It was as though she were flipping a towel while holding it at the level of her eyes. She did it four times. Then she made another strange movement. She placed her hands at the middle of her chest with the palms up, one above the other without touching. Her elbows were straight out to her sides. She clasped her hands as if she had suddenly grabbed two un-seen bars. She slowly turned her hands over until the palms were facing down and then she made a most beautiful, exertive movement, a movement that seemed to engage every muscle in her body. It was as though she were opening a heavy sliding door that offered a great resistance. Her body shivered with the exertion. Her arms moved slowly, as if opening a very, very heavy door, until they were fully extended laterally.
I had the clear impression that as soon as she opened that door a wind rushed through. That wind pulled us and we actually went through the wall. Or rather, the walls of the house went through us, or perhaps all three, la Gorda, the house and myself, went through the door she had opened. All of a sudden I was out in an open field. I could see the dark shapes of the surrounding mountains and trees. I was no longer holding onto la Gorda’s waist. A noise above me made me look up, and I saw her hovering perhaps ten feet above me like the black shape of a giant kite. I felt a terrible itch in my belly button and then la Gorda plummeted down to the ground at top speed, but instead of crashing she came to a soft, total halt.
At the moment that la Gorda landed, the itch in my umbilical region turned into a horribly exhausting nervous pain. It was as if her landing were pulling my insides out. I screamed in pain at the top of my voice.
Then la Gorda was standing next to me, desperately out of breath. I was sitting down. We were again in the room of don Genaro’s house where we had been.
La Gorda seemed unable to catch her breath. She was drenched in perspiration.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she muttered.
It was a short drive to the little sisters’ house. None of them was around. La Gorda lit a lantern and led me directly to the open-air kitchen in back. There she undressed herself and asked me to bathe her like a horse, by throwing water on her body. I took a small tub full of water and proceeded to pour it gently on her, but she wanted me to drench her.
She explained that a contact with the allies, like the one we had, produced a most injurious perspiration that had to be washed off immediately. She made me take off my clothes and then drenched me in ice-cold water. Then she handed me a clean piece of cloth and we dried ourselves as we walked back into the house. She sat on the big bed in the front room after hanging the lantern on the wall above it. Her knees were up and I could see every part of her body. I hugged her naked body, and it was then that I realized what dona Soledad had meant when she said that la Gorda was the Nagual’s woman. She was formless like don Juan. I could not possibly think of her as a woman.
I started to put on my clothes. She took them away from me. She said that before I could wear them again I had to sun them. She gave me a blanket to put over my shoulders and got another one for herself.
“That attack of the allies was truly scary,” she said as we sat down on the bed. “We were really lucky that we could get out of their grip. I had no idea why the Nagual told me to go to Genaro’s with you. Now I know. That house is where the allies are the strongest. They missed us by the skin of our teeth. We were lucky that I knew how to get out.”
“How did you do it, Gorda?”
“I really don’t know,” she said. “I simply did it. My body knew how, I suppose, but when I want to think how I did it, I can’t.
“This was a great test for both of us. Until tonight I didn’t know that I could open the eye, but look what I did. I actually opened the eye, just as the Nagual said I could. I’ve never been able to do it until you came along. I’ve tried but it never worked. This time the fear of those allies made me just grab the eye the way the Nagual told me to, by shaking it four times in its four directions. He said that I should shake it as I shake a bed sheet, and then I should open it as a door, by holding it right at the middle. The rest was very easy. Once the door was opened I felt a strong wind pulling me instead of blowing me away. The trouble, the Nagual said, is to return. You have to be very strong to do that. The Nagual and Ge-naro and Eligio could go in and out of that eye like nothing. For them the eye was not even an eye; they said it was an orange light, like the sun. And so were the Nagual and Genaro an orange light when they flew. I’m still very low on the scale; the Nagual said that when I do my flying I spread out and look like a pile of cow dung in the sky. I have no light. That’s why the return is so dreadful for me. Tonight you helped me and pulled me back twice. The reason I showed you my flying tonight was because the Nagual gave me orders to let you see it no matter how difficult or crummy it is. With my flying I was supposed to be helping you, the same way you were supposed to be helping me when you showed me your double. I saw your whole maneuver from the door. You were so busy feeling sorry for Josefina that your body didn’t notice my presence. I saw how your double came out from the top of your head. It wriggled out like a worm. I saw a shiver that began in your feet and went through your body and then your double came out. It was like you, but very shiny. It was like the Nagual himself. That’s why the sisters were petrified. I knew they thought that it was the Nagual himself. But I couldn’t see all of it. I missed the sound because I have no attention for it.”