“I’m not angry, Pablito!” I exclaimed.
“That’s what your reason says, but not your body,” he said. “Your body is angry. Your reason, however, finds no reason to feel anger toward me, so you’re caught in a cross fire. The least I can do for you is to untangle this. Your body is angry because it knows that I am not impeccable and that only an impeccable warrior can help you. Your body is angry because it feels that I am wasting myself. It knew all that the minute I walked through that door.”
I did not know what to say. I felt a flood of post-fact realiza-tions. Perhaps he was right in saying that my body knew all that. At any rate, his directness in confronting me with my feelings had blunted the edge of my frustration. I began to wonder if Pablito was not just playing a game with me. I told him that being so direct and bold he could not possibly be as weak as he pictured himself to be.
“My weakness is that I’m made to have longings,” he said almost in a whisper. “I’m even to the point where I long for my life as an ordinary man. Can you believe that?”
“You can’t be serious, Pablito! ” I exclaimed.
“I am,” he replied. “I long for the grand privilege of walking the face of the earth as an ordinary man, without this awesome burden.”
I found his stand simply preposterous and caught myself exclaiming over and over that he could not possibly be serious. Pablito looked at me and sighed. I was overtaken by a sudden apprehension. He seemed to be on the verge of tears. My apprehension gave way to an intense feeling of empathy. Neither of us could help each other.
La Gorda came back to the kitchen at that moment. Pablito seemed to experience an instantaneous revitalization. He jumped to his feet and stomped on the floor.
“What the hell do you want?” he yelled in a shrill, nervous voice. “Why are you snooping around?”
La Gorda addressed me as if he did not exist. She politely said that she was going to Soledad’s house.
“What the hell do we care where you go?” he yelled. “You can go to hell for that matter.”
He stomped on the floor like a spoiled child while la Gorda stood there laughing.
“Let’s get out of this house. Maestro,” he said loudly.
His sudden shift from sadness to anger fascinated me. I became engrossed in watching him. One of the features that I had always admired was his nimbleness; even when he stomped his feet his movements had grace.
He suddenly reached across the table and nearly snatched my writing pad away from me. He grabbed it with the thumb and index finger of his left hand. I had to hold onto it with both hands, using all my strength. There was such an extraordinary force in his pull that if he had really wanted to take it he could have easily jerked it away from my grip. He let go, and as he retrieved his hand I saw a fleeting image of an extension to it. It happened so fast that I could have explained it as a visual distortion on my part, a product of the jolt of hav-ing to stand up halfway, drawn by the force of his pull. But I had learned by then that I could neither behave with those people in my accustomed manner, nor could I explain anything in my accustomed manner, so I did not even try.
“What’s that in your hand, Pablito?” I asked.
He recoiled in surprise and hid his hand behind his back. He had a blank expression and mumbled that he wanted us to leave that house because he was becoming dizzy.
La Gorda began to laugh loudly and said that Pablito was as good a deceiver as Josefina, maybe even better, and that if I pressed him to tell me what was in his hand he would faint and Nestor would have to tend to him for months.
Pablito began to choke. His face became almost purple. La Gorda told him in a nonchalant tone to cut out the acting because he had no audience; she was leaving and I did not have much patience. She then turned to me and told me in a most commanding tone to stay there and not go to the Genaros’ house.
“Why in the hell not?” Pablito yelled and jumped in front of her as if trying to stop her from leaving. “What gall! Telling the Maestro what to do! “
“We had a bout with the allies in your house last night,” la Gorda said to Pablito matter-of-factly. “The Nagual and I are still weak from that. If I were you, Pablito, I would put my attention to work. Things have changed. Everything has changed since he came.”
La Gorda left through the front door. I became aware then that indeed she looked very tired. Her shoes seemed too tight, or perhaps she was so weak that her feet dragged a little bit. She seemed small and frail.
I thought that I must have looked as tired. Since there were no mirrors in their house, I had the urge to go outside and look at myself in the side mirror of my car. I perhaps would have done it but Pablito thwarted me. He asked me in the most earnest tone not to believe a word of what she had said about his being a deceiver. I told him not to worry about that.
“You don’t like la Gorda at all, do you?” I asked.
“You can say that again,” he replied with a fierce look. “You know better than anyone alive the kind of monsters those women are. The Nagual told us that one day you were going to come here just to fall into their trap. He begged us to be on the alert and warn you about their designs. The Nagual said that you had one out of four chances: If out power was high we could bring you here ourselves and warn you and save you; if our power was low we ourselves would arrive here just in time to see your corpse; the third chance was to find you either the slave to the witch Soledad or the slave of those disgusting, mannish women; the fourth chance and the faintest one of all was to find you alive and well.
“The Nagual told us that in case you survived, you would then be the Nagual and we should trust you because only you could help us.”
“I’ll do anything for you, Pablito. You know that.”
“Not just for me. I’m not alone. The Witness and Benigno are with me. We are together and you have to help all of us.”
“Of course, Pablito. That goes without saying.”
“People around here have never bothered us. Our problems are with those ugly, mannish freaks. We don’t know what to do with them. The Nagual gave us orders to stay around them no matter what. He gave me a personal task but I’ve failed at it. I was very happy before. You remember. Now I can’t seem to manage my life anymore.”
“What happened, Pablito?”
“Those witches drove me from my house. They took over and pushed me out like trash. I now live in Genaro’s house with Nestor and Benigno. We even have to cook our own meals. The Nagual knew that this might happen and gave la Gorda the task of mediating between us and those three bitches. But la Gorda is still what the Nagual used to call her, Two Hundred and Twenty Buttocks. That was her nickname for years and years, because she tipped the scales at two hundred and twenty pounds.”
Pablito chuckled at his recollection of la Gorda.
“She was the fattest, smelliest slob you’d ever want to see,” he went on. “Today she’s half her real size, but she’s still the same fat, slow woman up there in her head, and she can’t do a thing for us. But you’re here now. Maestro, and our worries are over. Now we are four against four.”
I wanted to interject a comment but he stopped me.
“Let me finish what I have to say before that witch comes back to throw me out,” he said as he nervously looked at the door.
“I know that they have told you that the five of you are the same because you are the Nagual’s children. That’s a lie! You’re also like us, the Genaros, because Genaro also helped to make your luminosity. You’re one of us too. See what I mean? So, don’t you believe what they tell you. You also be-long to us. The witches don’t know that the Nagual told us everything. They think that they are the only ones who know. It took two Toltecs to make us. We are the children of both. Those witches. ..”