Do Rosa or Josefina envy la Gorda?
No, they don’t. All of us have accepted our fates. The
Nagual said that power comes only after we accept our fate
without recriminations. I used to complain a lot and feel
terrible because I liked the Nagual. I thought I was a woman.
But he showed me that I was not. He showed me that I was a
warrior. My life had ended before I met him. This body that
you see here is new. The same thing happened to all of us. Per-
haps you were not like us, but to us the Nagual was a new life.
When he told us that he was going to leave, because he had
to do other things, we thought we would die. But look at us
now. We’re alive, and do you know why? Because the Nagual
showed us that we were himself. He’s here with us. He’ll al-
ways be here. We are his body and his spirit.
Do all four of you feel the same way?
We are not four. We are one. That is our fate. We have to
carry each other. And you are the same. All of us are the same.
Even Soledad is the same, although she goes in a different
direction.
And Pablito, Nestor and Benigno? Where do they fit?
We don’t know. We don’t like them. Especially Pablito.
He’s a coward. He has not accepted his fate and wants to
wriggle out of it. He even wants to chuck his chances as a sor-
cerer and live an ordinary life. That’ll be great for Soledad.
But the Nagual gave us orders to help him. We arc getting
tired of helping him, though. Maybe one of these days la
Gorda will push him out of the way forever.
Can she do that?
Can she do that! Of course she can. She’s got more of the
Nagual than the rest of us. Perhaps even more than you.
Why do you think the Nagual never told me that you
were his apprentices?
Because you’re empty.
Did he say that I was empty?
Everyone knows you’re empty. It is written on your
body.
How can you tell that?
There is a hole in the middle.
In the middle of my body? Where?
She very gently touched a spot on the right side of my
stomach. She drew a circle with her finger as if she were fol-
lowing the edges of an invisible hole four or five inches in
diameter.
Are you empty yourself, Lidia?
Are you kidding? I am complete. Can’t you see?
Her answers to my questions were taking a turn that I had
not expected. I did not want to antagonize her with my ignor-
ance. I shook my head affirmatively.
Why do you think I have a hole here that makes me
empty? I asked after deliberating what the most innocent
question would be.
She did not answer. She turned her back to me and com-
plained that the light of the lantern bothered her eyes. I in-
sisted on a response. She faced me defiantly.
I don’t want to talk to you anymore, she said. You are
stupid. Not even Pablito is that stupid and he’s the worst.
I did not want to end up in another blind alley by pretend-
ing that I knew what she was talking about, so I asked her
again what caused my emptiness. I coaxed her to talk, giving
her ample assurances that don Juan had never explained that
topic to me. He had said time and time again that I was empty
and I understood him the way any Western man would under-
stand that statement. I thought he meant that I was somehow
void of determination, will, purpose or even intelligence. He
had never spoken to me about a hole in my body.
There is a hole there on the right side, she said matter-of-
factly. A hole that a woman made when she emptied you.
Would you know who the woman is?
Only you can tell that. The Nagual said that men, most of
the time, cannot tell who had emptied them. Women are more
fortunate; they know for a fact who emptied them.
Are your sisters empty, like me?
Don’t be stupid. How can they be empty?
Dona Soledad said that she was empty. Does she look like
me?
No. The hole in her stomach was enormous. It was on both
sides, which meant that a man and a woman emptied her.
What did dona Soledad do with a man and a woman?
She gave her completeness to them.
I vacillated for a moment before asking the next question. I
wanted to assess all the implications of her statement.
La Gorda was even worse than Soledad, Lidia went on.
Two women emptied her. The hole in her stomach was like
a cavern. But now she has closed it. She is complete again.
Tell me about those two women.
I just can’t tell you anything more, she said in a most im-
perative tone. Only la Gorda can speak to you about this
matter. Wait until she comes.
Why only la Gorda?
Because she knows everything.
Is she the only one who knows everything?
The Witness knows as much, maybe even more, but he is
Genaro himself and that makes him very difficult to handle.
We don’t like him.
Why don’t you like him?
Those three bums are awful. They are crazy like Genaro.
Well, they are Genaro himself. They are always fighting us
because they were afraid of the Nagual and now they are tak-
ing their revenge on us. That’s what la Gorda says anyway.
And what makes la Gorda say that?
The Nagual told her things he didn’t tell the rest of us. She
sees. The Nagual said that you also see. Josefina, Rosa and I
don’t see, and yet all five of us are the same. We are the same.
The phrase we are the same, which dona Soledad had used
the night before, brought on an avalanche of thoughts and
fears. I put my writing pad away. I looked around. I was in a
strange world lying in a strange bed in between two young
women I did not know. And yet I felt at ease there. My body
experienced abandon and indifference. I trusted them.
Are you going to sleep here? I asked.
Where else?
How about your own room?
We can’t leave you alone. We feel the same way you do;
you are a stranger, except that we are bound to help you. La
Gorda said that no matter how stupid you are, we have to look
after you. She said we have to sleep in the same bed with you
as if you were the Nagual himself.
Lidia turned off the lantern. I remained sitting with my back
against the wall. I closed my eyes to think and I fell asleep in-
stantly.
Lidia, Rosa and I had been sitting on a flat area just outside
the front door for nearly two hours, since eight o’clock in the
morning. I had tried to steer them into a conversation but they
had refused to talk. They seemed to be very relaxed, almost
asleep. Their mood of abandonment was not contagious, how-
ever. Sitting there in that forced silence had put me into a
mood of my own. Their house sat on top of a small hill; the
front door faced the east. From where I sat I could see almost
the entire narrow valley that ran from east to west. I could not
see the town but I could see the green areas of cultivated fields
on the floor of the valley. On the other side and flanking the
valley in every direction, there were gigantic, round, eroded
hills. There were no high mountains in the vicinity of the
valley, only those enormous, eroded, round hills, the sight of
which created in me the most intense feeling of oppression. I
had the sensation that those hills were about to transport me
to another time.
Lidia spoke to me all of a sudden and her voice disrupted my
reverie. She pulled my sleeve.
Here comes Josefina, she said.
I looked at the winding trail that led from the valley to the
house. I saw a woman walking slowly up the trail, perhaps
fifty yards away. I noticed immediately the remarkable dif-
ference in age between Lidia and Rosa and the approaching
woman. I looked at her again. I would never have thought
Josefina to be that old. Judging by her slow gait and the pos-
ture of her body, she seemed to be a woman in her midfifties.
She was thin, wore a long, dark skirt and was carrying a load
of firewood on her back. She had a bundle tied around her
waist; it looked as though she had a bundled-up child riding on
her left hip. She seemed to be breast-feeding it as she walked.