“My partner Genaro and I had great designs. He said that I should have my own shop, because with the money that we were going to make with his formula, I could afford anything. I bought a shop and my partner paid for it. So I went wild. I knew that my partner was for real and I began to work mak-ing his green stuff.”
I had the strange conviction at that point that don Genaro must have used psychotropic plants in making his concoction. I reasoned that he must have tricked Pablito into ingesting it in order to assure his compliance.
“Did he give you power plants, Pablito?” I asked.
“Sure,” he replied. “He gave me his green stuff. I ate tons of it.”
He described and imitated how don Juan would sit by the front door of don Genaro’s house in a state of profound lethargy and then spring to life as soon as his lips touched the concoction. Pablito said that in view of such a transformation he was forced to try it himself.
“What was in that formula?” I asked.
“Green leaves,” he replied. “Any green leaves he could get a hold of. That was the kind of devil Genaro was. He used to talk about his formula and make me laugh until I was as high as a kite. God, I really loved those days.”
I laughed out of nervousness. Pablito shook his head from side to side and cleared his throat two or three times. He seemed to be struggling not to weep.
“As I’ve already said. Maestro,” he went on, “I was driven by greed. I secretly planned to dump my partner once I had learned how to make the green stuff myself. Genaro must have always known the designs I had in those days, and just before he left he hugged me and told me that it was time to fulfill my wish; it was time to dump my partner, for I had already learned to make the green stuff.”
Pablito stood up. His eyes were filled with tears.
“That son of a gun Genaro,” he said softly. “That rotten devil. I truly loved him, and if I weren’t the coward I am, I would be making his green stuff today.”
I didn’t want to write anymore. To dispel my sadness I told Pablito that we should go look for Nestor.
I was arranging my notebooks in order to leave when the front door was flung open with a loud bang. Pablito and I jumped up involuntarily and quickly turned to look. Nestor was standing at the door. I ran to him. We met in the middle of the front room. He sort of leaped on me and shook me by the shoulders. He looked taller and stronger than the last time I had seen him. His long, lean body had acquired an almost feline smoothness. Somehow, the person facing me, peering at me, was not the Nestor I had known. I remembered him as a very shy man who was embarrassed to smile because of crooked teeth, a man who was entrusted to Pablito for his care. The Nestor who was looking at me was a mixture of don Juan and don Genaro. He was wiry and agile like don Genaro, but had the mesmeric command that don Juan had. I wanted to indulge in being perplexed, but all I could do was laugh with him. He patted me on the back. He took off his hat. Only then did I realize that Pablito did not have one. I also noticed that Nestor was much darker, and more rugged. Next to him Pablito looked almost frail. Both of them wore American Levi’s, heavy jackets and crepe-soled shoes.
Nestor’s presence in the house lightened up the oppressive mood instantly. I asked him to join us in the kitchen.
“You came right in time,” Pablito said to Nestor with an enormous smile as we sat down. “The Maestro and I were weeping here, remembering the Toltec devils.”
“Were yon really crying. Maestro?” Nestor asked with a malicious grin on his face.
“You bet he was,” Pablito replied.
A very soft cracking noise at the front door made Pablito and Nestor stop talking. If I had been by myself I would not have noticed or heard anything. Pablito and Nestor stood up; I did the same. We looked at the front door; it was being opened in a most careful manner. I thought that perhaps la Gorda had returned and was quietly opening the door so as not to disturb us. When the door was finally opened wide enough to allow one person to go through, Benigno came in as if he were sneaking into a dark room. His eyes were shut and he was walking on the tips of his toes. He reminded me of a kid sneaking into a movie theater through an unlocked exit door in order to see a matinee, not daring to make any noise and at the same time not capable of seeing a thing in the dark.
Everybody was quietly looking at Benigno. He opened one eye just enough to peek out of it and orient himself and then he tiptoed across the front room to the kitchen. He stood by the table for a moment with his eyes closed. Pablito and Nestor sat down and signaled me to do the same. Benigno then slid next to me on the bench. He gently shoved my shoulder with his head; it was a light tap in order for me to move over to make room for him on the bench; then he sat down comfortably with his eyes still closed.
He was dressed in Levi’s like Pablito and Nestor. His face had filled out a bit since the last time I had seen him, years be-fore, and his hairline was different, but I could not tell how. He had a lighter complexion than I remembered, very small teeth, full lips, high cheekbones, a small nose and big ears. He had always seemed to me like a child whose features had not matured.
Pablito and Nestor, who had interrupted what they were saying to watch Benigno’s entrance, resumed talking as soon as he sat down as though nothing had happened.
“Sure, he was crying with me,” Pablito said.
“He’s not a crybaby like you,” Nestor said to Pablito.
Then he turned to me and embraced me.
“I’m so glad you’re alive,” he said. “We’ve just talked to la Gorda and she said that you were the Nagual, but she didn’t tell us how you survived. How did you survive, Maestro?”
At that point I had a strange choice. I could have followed my rational path, as I had always done, and said that I did not have the vaguest idea, and I would have been truthful at that. Or I could have said that my double had extricated me from the grip of those women. I was measuring in my mind the possible effect of each alternative when I was distracted by Benigno. He opened one eye a little bit and looked at me and then giggled and buried his head in his arms.
“Benigno, don’t you want to talk to me?” I asked.
He shook his head negatively.
I felt self-conscious with him next to me and decided to ask what was the matter with him.
“What’s he doing?” I asked Nestor in a low voice.
Nestor rubbed Benigno’s head and shook him. Benigno opened his eyes and then closed them again.
“He’s that way, you know,” Nestor said to me. “He’s extremely shy. He’ll open his eyes sooner or later. Don’t pay any attention to him. If he gets bored he’ll go to sleep.”
Benigno shook his head affirmatively without opening his eyes.
“Well, how did you get out?” Nestor insisted.
“Don’t you want to tell us?” Pablito asked.
I deliberately said that my double had come out from the top of my head three times. I gave them an account of what had happened.
They did not seem in the least surprised and took my account as a matter of course. Pablito became delighted with his own speculations that dona Soledad might not recover and might eventually die. He wanted to know if I had struck Lidia as well. Nestor made an imperative gesture for him to be quiet and Pablito meekly stopped in the middle of a sentence.
“I’m sorry. Maestro,” Nestor said, “but that was not your double.”
“But everyone said that it was my double.”
“I know for a fact that you misunderstood la Gorda, because as Benigno and I were walking to Genaro’s house, la Gorda overtook us on the road and told us that you and Pablito were here in this house. She called you the Nagual. Do you know why?”
I laughed and said that I believed it was due to her notion that I had gotten most of the Nagual’s luminosity.