A moment later Lidia, Rosa and Josefina joined us. Lidia sat to my right, Josefina sat next to her, while Rosa sat next to la Gorda. All of them were resting their backs against the poles. I was in the middle of the row.
It was a clear day. The sun was just above the distant range of mountains. They started moving their heads in perfect synchronization. I joined them and had the feeling that I too had synchronized my motion with theirs. They kept it up for about a minute and then stopped.
All of them wore hats and used the brims to protect their faces from the sunlight when they were not bathing their eyes in it. La Gorda had given me my old hat to wear.
We sat there for about half an hour. In that time we repeated the exercise countless times. I intended to make a mark on my pad for each time but la Gorda very casually pushed my pad out of reach.
Lidia suddenly stood up, mumbling something unintelligible. La Gorda leaned over to me and whispered that the Genaros were coming up the road. I strained to look but there was no one in sight. Rosa and Josefina also stood up and then went with Lidia inside the house.
I told la Gorda that I could not see anyone approaching. She replied that the Genaros had been visible at one point on the road and added that she had dreaded the moment when all of us would have to get together, but that she was confident that I could handle the situation. She advised me to be extra careful with Josefina and Pablito because they had no control over themselves. She said that the most sensible thing for me to do would be to take the Genaros away after an hour or so.
I kept looking at the road. There was no sign of anyone approaching.
“Are you sure they’re coming?” I asked.
She said that she had not seen them but that Lidia had. The Genaros had been visible just for Lidia because she had been gazing at the same time she had been bathing her eyes. I was not sure what la Gorda had meant and asked her to explain.
“We are gazers,” she said. “Just like yourself. We are all the same. There is no need to deny that you’re a gazer. The Nagual told us about your great feats of gazing.”
“My great feats of gazing! What are you talking about, Gorda?”
She contracted her mouth and appeared to be on the verge of being irritated by my question; she seemed to catch herself. She smiled and gave me a gentle shove.
At that moment she had a sudden flutter in her body. She stared blankly past me, then she shook her head vigorously. She said that she had just “seen” that the Genaros were not coming after all; it was too early for them. They were going to wait for a while before they made their appearance. She smiled as if she were delighted with the delay.
“It’s too early for us to have them here anyway,” she said. “And they feel the same way about us.”
“Where are they now?” I asked.
“They must be sitting beside the road somewhere,” she replied. “Benigno had no doubt gazed at the house as they were walking and saw us sitting here and that’s why they have decided to wait. That’s perfect. That will give us time.”
“You scare me, Gorda. Time for what?”
“You have to round up your second attention today, just for us four.”
“How can I do that?”
“I don’t know. You are very mysterious to us. The Nagual has done scores of things to you with his power plants, but you can’t claim that as knowledge. That is what I’ve been trying to tell you. Only if you have mastery over your second attention can you perform with it; otherwise you’ll always stay fixed halfway between the two, as you are now. Everything that has happened to you since you arrived has been directed to force that attention to spin. I’ve been giving you instructions little by little, just as the Nagual told me to do. Since you took another path, you don’t know the things that we know, just like we don’t know anything about ‘power plants. Soledad knows a bit more, because the Nagual took her to his homeland. Nestor knows about medicinal plants, but none of us has been taught the way you were. We don’t need your knowledge yet. But someday when we are ready you are the one who will know what to do to give us a boost with power plants. I am the only one who knows where the Nagual’s pipe is hidden, waiting for that day.
“The Nagual’s command is that you have to change your path and go with us. That means that you have to do dreaming with us and stalking with the Genaros. You can’t afford any longer to be where you are, on the awesome side of your second attention. Another jolt of your nagual coming out of you could kill you. The Nagual told me that human beings are frail creatures composed of many layers of luminosity. When you see them, they seem to have fibers, but those fibers are really layers, like an onion. Jolts of any kind separate those layers and can even cause human beings to die.”
She stood up and led me back to the kitchen. We sat down facing each other. Lidia, Rosa and Josefina were busy in the yard. I could not see them but I could hear them talking and laughing.
“The Nagual said that we die because our layers become separated,” la Gorda said. “Jolts are always separating them but they get together again. Sometimes, though, the jolt is so great that the layers get loose and can’t get back together anymore.”
“Have you ever seen the layers, Gorda?”
“Sure. I sou a man dying in the street. The Nagual told me that you also found a man dying, but you didn’t see his death. The Nagual made me see the dying man’s layers. They were like the peels of an onion. When human beings are healthy they are like luminous eggs, but if they are injured they begin to peel, like an onion.
“The Nagual told me that your second attention was so strong sometimes that it pushed all the way out. He and Genaro had to hold your layers together; otherwise you would’ve died. That’s why he figured that you might have enough energy to get your nagual out of you twice. He meant that you could hold your layers together by yourself twice. You did it more times than that and now you are finished; you have no more energy to hold your layers together in case of another jolt. The Nagual has entrusted me to take care of everyone; in your case, I have to help you to tighten your layers. The Nagual said that death pushes the layers apart. He explained to me that the center of our luminosity, which is the attention of the nagual, is always pushing out, and that’s what loosens the layers. So it’s easy for death to come in between them and push them completely apart. Sorcerers have to do their best to keep their own layers closed. That’s why the Nagual taught us dreaming. Dreaming tightens the layers. When sorcerers learn dreaming they tie together their two attentions and there is no more need for that center to push out.”
“Do you mean that sorcerers do not die?”
“That is right. Sorcerers do not die.”
“Do you mean that none of us is going to die?”
“I didn’t mean us. We are nothing. We are freaks, neither here nor there. I meant sorcerers. The Nagual and Genaro are sorcerers. Their two attentions are so tightly together that perhaps they’ll never die.”
“Did the Nagual say that, Gorda?”
“Yes. He and Genaro both told me that. Not too long be-fore they left, the Nagual explained to us the power of attention. I never knew about the tonal and the nagual until then.”
La Gorda recounted the way don Juan had instructed them about that crucial tonal-nagual dichotomy. She said that one day the Nagual had all of them gather together in order to take them for a long hike to a desolate, rocky valley in the mountains. He made a large, heavy bundle with all kinds of items; he even put Pablito’s radio in it. He then gave the bundle to Josefina to carry and put a heavy table on Pablito’s shoulders and they all started hiking. He made all of them take turns carrying the bundle and the table as they hiked nearly forty miles to that high, desolate place. When they arrived there, the Nagual made Pablito set the table in the very center of the valley. Then he asked Josefina to arrange the contents of the bundle on the table. When the table was filled, he explained to them the difference between the tonal and the nagual, in the same terms he had explained it to me in a restau-rant in Mexico City, except that in their case his example was infinitely more graphic.