“Am I the one who has to find a place for all of you, Gorda?”
“If you were an impeccable warrior you would do just that. But you’re not an impeccable warrior, and neither are we. But still we will have to do our best to meet our new challenge.”
I felt an oppressive sense of doom. I have never been one to thrive on responsibilities. I thought that the commitment to guide them was a crushing burden that I could not handle.
“Maybe we don’t have to do anything,” I said.
“Yes. That’s right,” she said, and laughed. “Why don’t you tell yourself that over and over until you feel safe? The Nagual told you time and time again that the only freedom warriors have is to behave impeccably.”
She told me how the Nagual had insisted that all of them understand that not only was impeccability freedom but it was the only way to scare away the human form.
I narrated to her the way don Juan made me understand what was meant by impeccability. He and I were hiking one day through a very steep ravine when a huge boulder got loose from its matrix on the rock wall and came down with a formidable force and landed on the floor of the canyon, twenty or thirty yards from where we were standing. The size of the boulder made its fall a very impressive event. Don Juan seized the opportunity to create a dramatic lesson. He said that the force that rules our destinies is outside of ourselves and has nothing to do with our acts or volition. Sometimes that force would make us stop walking on our way and bend over to tie our shoelaces, as I had just done. And by making us stop, that force makes us gain a precious moment. If we had kept on walking, that enormous boulder would have most certainly crushed us to death. Some other day, however, in another ravine the same outside deciding force would make us stop again to bend over and tie our shoelaces while another boulder would get loose precisely above where we are standing. By making us stop, that force would have made us lose a precious moment. That time if we had kept on walking, we would have saved ourselves. Don Juan said that in view of my total lack of control over the forces which decide my destiny, my only possible freedom in that ravine consisted in my tying my shoelaces impeccably.
La Gorda seemed to be moved by my account. For an instant she held my face in her hands from across the table.
“Impeccability for me is to tell you, at the right time, what the Nagual told me to tell you,” she said. “But power has to time perfectly what I have to reveal to yon, or it won’t have any effect.”
She paused in a dramatic fashion. Her delay was very studied but terribly effective with me.
“What is it?” I asked desperately.
She did not answer. She took me by the arm and led me to the area just outside the front door. She made me sit on the hard-packed ground with my back against a thick pole about one and a half feet high that looked like a tree stump which had been planted in the ground almost against the wall of the house. There was a row of five such poles planted about two feet apart. I had meant to ask la Gorda what their function was. My first impression had been that a former owner of the house had tied animals to them. My conjecture seemed incongruous, however, because the area just outside the front door was a kind of roofed porch.
I told la Gorda my supposition as she sat down next to me to my left, with her back against another pole. She laughed and said that the poles were indeed used for tying animals of sorts, but not by a former owner, and that she had nearly broken her back digging the holes for them.
“What do you use them for?” I asked.
“Let’s say that we tie ourselves to them,” she replied. “And this brings me to the next thing the Nagual asked me to tell you. He said that because you were empty he had to gather your second attention, your attention of the nagual, in a way different than ours. We gathered that attention through dreaming and you did it with his power plants. The Nagual said that his power plants gathered the menacing side of your second attention in one clump, and that’s the shape that came out of your head. He said that that’s what happens to sorcerers when they are given power plants. If they don’t die, the power plants spin their second attention into that awful shape that comes out of their heads.
“Now we’re coming to what he wanted you to do. He said that you must change directions now and begin gathering your second attention in another way, more like us. You can’t keep on the path of knowledge unless you balance your second attention. So far, that attention of yours has been riding on the Nagual’s power, but now you are alone. That’s what he wanted me to tell you.”
“How do I balance my second attention?”
“You have to do dreaming the way we do it. Dreaming is the only way to gather the second attention without injuring it, without making it menacing and awesome. Your second attention is fixed on the awful side of the world; ours is on the beauty of it. You have to change sides and come with us. That’s what you chose last night when you decided to go with us.”
“Could that shape come out of me at any time?”
“No. The Nagual said that it won’t come out again until you’re as old as he is. Your nagual has already come out as many times as was needed. The Nagual and Genaro have seen to that. They used to tease it out of you. The Nagual told me that sometimes you were a hair away from dying because your second attention is very indulging. He said that once you even scared him; your nagual attacked him and he had to sing to it to calm it down. But the worst thing happened to you in Mexico City; there he pushed you one day and you went into an office and in that office you went through the crack between the worlds. He intended only to dispel your attention of the tonal; you were worried sick over some stupid thing. But when he shoved you, your whole tonal shrunk and your entire being went through the crack. He had a hellish time finding you. He told me that for a moment he thought you had gone farther than he could reach. But then he saw you roaming around aimlessly and he brought you back. He told me that you went through the crack around ten in the morning. So, on that day, ten in the morning became your new time.”
“My new time for what?”
“For everything. If you remain a man you will die around that time. If you become a sorcerer you will leave this world around that time.
“Eligio also went on a different path, a path none of us knew about. We met him just before he left. Eligio was a most marvelous dreamer. He was so good that the Nagual and Genaro used to take him through the crack and he had the power to withstand it, as if it were nothing. He didn’t even pant. The Nagual and Genaro gave him a final boost with power plants. He had the control and the power to handle that boost. And that’s what sent him to wherever he is.”
“The Genaros told me that Eligio jumped with Benigno. Is that true?”
“Sure. By the time Eligio had to jump, his second attention had already been in that other world. The Nagual said that yours had also been there, but that for you it was a nightmare because you had no control. He said that his power plants had made you lopsided; they had made you cut through your attention of the tonal and had put you directly in the realm of your second attention, but without any mastery over that attention. The Nagual didn’t give power plants to Eligio until the very last.”
“Do you think that my second attention has been injured, Gorda?”
“The Nagual never said that. He thought you were dangerously crazy, but that has nothing to do with power plants. He said that both of your attentions are unmanageable. If you could conquer them you’d be a great warrior.”
I wanted her to tell me more on the subject. She put her hand on my writing pad and said that we had a terribly busy day ahead of us and we needed to store energy in order to withstand it. We had, therefore, to energize ourselves with the sunlight. She said that the circumstances required that we take the sunlight with the left eye. She began to move her head slowly from side to side as she glanced directly into the sun through her half-closed eyes.