rounding bushes and placed them on the rock floor like a mat.
She motioned me to enter. I had always let don Juan enter
first as a sign of respect. I wanted to do the same with her, but
she declined. She said I was the Nagual. I crawled into the
cave the same way she had crawled into my car. I laughed at
my inconsistency. I had never been able to treat my car as a
cave.
She coaxed me to relax and make myself comfortable.
The reason the Nagual could not reveal all his designs to
you was because you’re incomplete, la Gorda said all of a
sudden. You still are, but now after your bouts with Soledad
and the sisters, you are stronger than before.
What’s the meaning of being incomplete? Everyone has
told me that you’re the only one who can explain that, I said.
It’s a very simple matter, she said. A complete person is
one who has never had children.
She paused as if she were allowing me time to write down
what she had said. I looked up from my notes. She was staring
at me, judging the effect of her words.
I know that the Nagual told you exactly what I’ve just
said, she continued. You didn’t pay any attention to him and
you probably haven’t paid any attention to me, either.
I read my notes out loud and repeated what she had said.
She giggled.
The Nagual said that an incomplete person is one who has
had children, she said as if dictating to me.
She scrutinized me, apparently waiting for a question or a
comment. I had none.
Now I’ve told you everything about being complete and
incomplete, she said. And I’ve told you just like the Nagual
told me. It didn’t mean anything to me at that time, and it
doesn’t mean anything to you now.
I had to laugh at the way she patterned herself after don
Juan.
An incomplete person has a hole in the stomach, she went
on. A sorcerer can see it as plainly as you can see my head.
When the hole is on the left side of one’s stomach, the child
who created that hole is of the same sex. If it is on the right
side, the child is of the opposite sex. The hole on the left side
is black, the one on the right is dark brown.
Can you see that hole in anyone who has had children?
Sure. There are two ways of seeing it. A sorcerer may see
it in dreaming or by looking directly at a person. A sorcerer
who sees has no problems in viewing the luminous being to
find out if there is a hole in the luminosity of the body. But
even if the sorcerer doesn’t know how to see, he can look and
actually distinguish the darkness of the hole through the
clothing.
She stopped talking. I urged her to go on.
The Nagual told me that you write and then you don’t
remember what you wrote, she said with a tone of accusation.
I became entangled in words trying to defend myself.
Nonetheless, what she had said was the truth. Don Juan’s
words always had had a double effect on me: once when I
heard for the first time whatever he had said, and then when I
read at home whatever I had written down and had forgotten
about.
Talking to la Gorda, however, was intrinsically different.
Don Juan’s apprentices were not in any way as engulfing as he
was. Their revelations, although extraordinary, were only
missing pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. The unusual character of
those pieces was that with them the picture did not become
clearer but that it became more and more complex.
You had a brown hole in the right side of your stomach,
she continued. That means that a woman emptied you. You
made a female child.
The Nagual said that I had a huge black hole myself, be-
cause I made two women. I never saw the hole, but I’ve seen
other people with holes like mine.
You said that I had a hole; don’t I have it anymore?
No. It’s been patched. The Nagual helped you to patch it.
Without his help you would be more empty than you are
now.
What kind of patch is it?
A patch in your luminosity. There is no other way of
saying it. The Nagual said that a sorcerer like himself can fill
up the hole anytime. But that that filling is only a patch with-
out luminosity. Anyone who sees or does dreaming can tell
that it looks like a lead patch on the yellow luminosity of the
rest of the body.
The Nagual patched you and me and Soledad. But then he
left it up to us to put back the shine, the luminosity.
How did he patch us?
He’s a sorcerer, he put things in our bodies. He replaced
us. We are no longer the same. The patch is what he put there
himself.
But how did he put those things there and what were
they?
What he put in our bodies was his own luminosity and he
used his hand to do that. He simply reached into our bodies
and left his fibers there. He did the same with all of his six
children and also with Soledad. All of them are the same. Ex-
cept Soledad; she’s something else.
La Gorda seemed unwilling to go on. She vacillated and al-
most began to stutter.
What is dona Soledad? I insisted.
It’s very hard to tell, she said after considerable coaxing.
She is the same as you and me, and yet she’s different. She has
the same luminosity, but she’s not together with us. She goes
in the opposite direction. Right now she’s more like you. Both
of you have patches that look like lead. Mine is gone and I’m
again a complete, luminous egg. That is the reason I said that
you and I will be exactly the same someday when you become
complete again. Right now what makes us almost the same is
the Nagual’s luminosity and the fact that both of us are going
in the same direction and that we both were empty.
What does a complete person look like to a sorcerer? I
asked.
Like a luminous egg made out of fibers, she said. All the
fibers are complete; they look like strings, taut strings. It looks
as if the strings have been tightened like a drum is tightened.
On an empty person, on the other hand, the fibers are
crumpled up at the edges of the hole. When they have had
many children, the fibers don’t look like fibers anymore. Those
people look like two chunks of luminosity, separated by black-
ness. It is an awesome sight. The Nagual made me see them
one day when we were in a park in the city.
Why do you think the Nagual never told me about all
this?
He told you everything, but you never understood him
correctly. As soon as he realized that you were not under-
standing what he was saying, he was compelled to change the
subject. Your emptiness prevented you from understanding.
The Nagual said that it was perfectly natural for you not to
understand. Once a person becomes incomplete he’s actually
empty like a gourd that has been hollowed out. It didn’t mat-
ter to you how many times he told you that you were empty;
it didn’t matter that he even explained it to you. You never
knew what he meant, or worse yet, you didn’t want to know.
La Gorda was treading on dangerous ground. I tried to head
her off with another question, but she rebuffed me.
You love a little boy and you don’t want to understand
what the Nagual meant, she said accusingly. The Nagual
told me that you have a daughter you’ve never seen, and that
you love that little boy. One took your edge, the other pinned
you down. You have welded them together.
I had to stop writing. I crawled out of the cave and stood
up. I began to walk down the steep incline to the floor of the
gully. La Gorda followed me. She asked me if I was upset by
her directness. I did not want to lie.
What do you think? I asked.
You’re fuming! she exclaimed and giggled with an aban-
don that I had witnessed only in don Juan and don Genaro.
She seemed about to lose her balance and grabbed my left
arm. In order to help her get down to the floor of the gully, I
lifted her up by her waist. I thought that she could not have
weighed more than a hundred pounds. She puckered her lips
the way don Genaro used to and said that her weight was a
hundred and fifteen. We both laughed at once. It was a mo-