This time I had no other recourse but to brace myself for accepting, on its face value, that I had flown. I wanted to indulge in doubts and began to wonder about the possibilities of the four girls carrying me to that hill. I laughed loudly, incapable of containing an obscure delight. I was having a relapse of my old malady. My reason, which had been blocked off temporarily, was beginning to take hold of me again. I wanted to defend it. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say, in light of the outlandish acts I had witnessed and performed since my arrival, that my reason was defending itself, independently of the more complex whole that seemed to be the “me” I did not know. I was witnessing, almost in the fashion of an interested observer, how my reason struggled to find suitable rationales, while another, much larger portion of me could not have cared less about explaining anything.
La Gorda made the three girls line up. She then pulled me to her side. All of them folded their arms behind their backs. La Gorda made me do the same. She stretched my arms as far back as they would go and then made me bend them and grab each forearm as tightly as possible as close to the elbows as I could. That created a great muscular pressure at the articulations of my shoulders. She pushed my trunk forward until I was almost stooping. Then she made a peculiar birdcall. That was a signal. Lidia started walking. In the darkness her movements reminded me of an ice skater. She walked swiftly and silently and in a few minutes she disappeared from my view.
La Gorda made two more birdcalls, one after the other, and Rosa and Josefina took off in the same manner Lidia had. La Gorda told me to follow close to her. She made one more birdcall and we both started walking.
I was surprised at the ease with which I walked. My entire balance was centered in my legs. The fact that I had my arms behind my back, instead of hindering my movements, aided me in maintaining a strange equilibrium. But above all what surprised me the most was the quietness of my steps.
When we reached the road we began to walk normally. We passed two men going in the opposite direction. La Gorda greeted them and they answered back. When we arrived at the house we found the little sisters standing by the door, not daring to go in. La Gorda told them that although I could not control the allies I could either call them or tell them to leave, and that the allies would not bother us any longer. The girls believed her, something I myself could not do in that instance.
We went inside. In a very quiet and efficient manner all of them undressed, drenched themselves with cold water and put on a fresh change of clothes. I did the same. I put on the old clothes I used to keep in don Juan’s house, which la Gorda brought to me in a box.
All of us were in high spirits. I asked la Gorda to explain to me what we had done.
“We’ll talk about that later,” she said in a firm tone.
I remembered then that the packages I had for them were still in the car. I thought that while la Gorda was cooking some food for us it would be a good opportunity to distribute them. I went out and got them and brought them into the house. I placed them on the table. Lidia asked me if I had already assigned the gifts as she had suggested. I said that I wanted them to pick one they liked. She declined. She said that no doubt I had something special for Pablito and Nestor and a bunch of trinkets for them, which I would throw on the table with the intention that they fight over them.
“Besides, you didn’t bring anything for Benigno,” Lidia said as she came to my side and looked at me with mock seriousness. “You can’t hurt the Genaros’ feelings by giving two gifts for three.”
They all laughed. I felt embarrassed. She was absolutely right in everything that she had said.
“You are careless, that’s why I’ve never liked you,” Lidia said to me, changing her smile into a frown. “You have never greeted me with affection or respect. Every time we saw each other you only pretended to be happy to see me.”
She imitated my obviously contrived effusive greeting, a greeting I must have given her countless times in the past.
“Why didn’t you ever ask me what I was doing here?” Lidia asked me.
I stopped writing to consider her point. It had never occurred to me to ask her anything. I told her that I had no excuse. La Gorda interceded and said that the reason that I had never said more than two words to either Lidia or Rosa each time I saw them was because I was accustomed to talking only to women that I was enamored of, in one way or another. La Gorda added that the Nagual had told them that if I would ask them anything directly they were supposed to answer my questions, but as long as I did not ask, they were not supposed to mention anything.
Rosa said that she did not like me because I was always laughing and trying to be funny. Josefina added that since I had never seen her, she disliked me just for fun, for the hell of it.
“I want you to know that I don’t accept you as the Nagual,” Lidia said to me. “You’re too dumb. You know nothing. I know more than you do. How can I respect you?”
Lidia added that as far as she was concerned I could go back where I came from or go jump in a lake for that matter.
Rosa and Josefina did not say a word. Judging by the serious and mean expressions on their faces, however, they seemed to agree with Lidia.
“How can this man lead us?” Lidia asked la Gorda. “He’s not a true nagual. He’s a man. He’s going to make us into idiots like himself.”
As she was talking I could see the mean expressions on Rosa’s and Josefina’s faces getting even harder.
La Gorda intervened and explained to them what she had “seen” earlier about me. She added that since she had recommended to me not to get entangled in their webs, she was recommending the same thing to them, not to get entangled in mine.
After Lidia’s initial display of genuine and well-founded animosity, I was flabbergasted to see how easily she acquiesced to la Gorda’s remarks. She smiled at me. She even came and sat next to me.
“You’re really like us, eh?” she asked in a tone of bewilderment.
I did not know what to say. I was afraid of blundering.
Lidia was obviously the leader of the little sisters. The mo-ment she smiled at me the other two seemed to be infused instantly with the same mood.
La Gorda told them not to mind my pencil and paper and my asking questions and that in return I would not be flustered when they became involved in doing what they loved the most, to indulge in themselves.
The three of them sat close to me. La Gorda walked over to the table, got the packages and took them out to my car. I asked Lidia to forgive me for my inexcusable blunderings of the past and asked all of them to tell me how they had become don Juan’s apprentices. In order to make them feel at ease I gave them an account of how I had met don Juan. Their accounts were the same as what dona Soledad had already told me.
Lidia said that all of them had been free to leave don Juan’s world but their choice had been to stay. She, in particular, being the first apprentice, was given an opportunity to go away. After the Nagual and Genaro had cured her, the Nagual had pointed to the door and told her that if she did not go through it then, the door would close her in and would never open again.
“My fate was sealed when that door closed,” Lidia said to me. “Just like what happened to you. The Nagual told me that after he had put a patch on you, you had a chance to leave but you didn’t want to take it.”
I remembered that particular decision more vividly than anything else. I recounted to them how don Juan had tricked me into believing that a sorceress was after him, and then he gave me the choice of either leaving for good or staying to help him wage a war against his attacker. It turned out that his alleged attacker was one of his confederates. By confronting her, on what I thought was don Juan’s behalf, I turned her against me and she became what he called my “worthy opponent.”