gate in the fence. The wind pushed me and made me twirl. I
tried to go back to the house, but it was useless. I couldn’t
break the force of the wind. It pushed me over the hills and
off the road and I ended up in a deep hole, a hole like a tomb.
The wind kept me there for days and days, until I had decided
to change and accept my fate without recrimination. Then the
wind stopped and the Nagual found me and took me back to
the house. He told me that my task was to give what I didn’t
have, love and affection, and that I had to take care of the
sisters, Lidia and Josefina, better than if they were myself. I
understood then what the Nagual had been saying to me for
years. My life had been over a long time ago. He had offered
me a new life and that life had to be completely new. I
couldn’t bring to that new life my ugly old ways. That first
night he found me, the moths had pointed me out to him; I
had no business rebelling against my fate.
I began my change by taking care of Lidia and Josefina
better than I took care of myself. I did everything the Nagual
told me, and one night in this very gully in this very cave I
found my completeness. I had fallen asleep right here where
I am now and then a noise woke me up. I looked up and saw
myself as I had once been, thin, young, fresh. It was my spirit
that was coming back to me. At first it didn’t want to come
closer because I still looked pretty awful. But then it couldn’t
help itself and came to me. I knew right then, and all at once,
what the Nagual had struggled for years to tell me. He had
said that when one has a child that child takes the edge of our
spirit. For a woman to have a girl means the end of that edge.
To have had two as I did meant the end of me. The best of my
strength and my illusions went to those girls. They stole
my edge, the Nagual said, in the same way I had stolen it
from my parents. That’s our fate. A boy steals the biggest
part of his edge from his father, a girl from her mother. The
Nagual said that people who have had children could tell, if
they aren’t as stubborn as you, that something is missing in
them. Some craziness, some nervousness, some power that they
had before is gone. They used to have it, but where is it now?
The Nagual said that it is in the little child running around the
house, full of energy, full of illusions. In other words, com-
plete. He said that if we watch children we can tell that they
are daring, they move in leaps. If we watch their parents we
can see that they are cautious and timid. They don’t leap any-
more. The Nagual told me we explain that by saying that the
parents are grown-ups and have responsibilities. But that’s not
true. The truth of the matter is that they have lost their edge.
I asked la Gorda what the Nagual would have said if I had
told him that I knew parents with much more spirit and edge
than their children.
She laughed, covering her face in a gesture of sham embar-
rassment.
You can ask me, she said giggling. You want to hear
what I think?
Of course I want to hear it.
Those people don’t have more spirit, they merely had a lot
of vigor to begin with and have trained their children to be
obedient and meek. They have frightened their children all
their lives, that’s all.
I described to her the case of a man I knew, a father of four,
who at the age of fifty-three changed his life completely. That
entailed leaving his wife and his executive job in a large corpo-
ration after more than twenty-five years of building a career
and a family. He chucked it all very daringly and went to live
on an island in the Pacific.
You mean he went there all by himself? la Gorda asked
with a tone of surprise.
She had destroyed my argument. I had to admit that the
man had gone there with his twenty-three-year-old bride.
Who no doubt is complete, la Gorda added.
I had to agree with her again.
An empty man uses the completeness of a woman all the
time, she went on. A complete woman is dangerous in her
completeness, more so than a man. She is unreliable, moody,
nervous, but also capable of great changes. Women like that
can pick themselves up and go anywhere. They’ll do nothing
there, but that’s because they had nothing going to begin with.
Empty people, on the other hand, can’t jump like that any-
more, but they’re more reliable. The Nagual said that empty
people are like worms that look around before moving a bit
and then they back up and then they move a little bit more
again. Complete people always jump, somersault and almost
always land on their heads, but it doesn’t matter to them.
The Nagual said that to enter into the other world one has
to be complete. To be a sorcerer one has to have all of one’s
luminosity: no holes, no patches and all the edge of the spirit.
So a sorcerer who is empty has to regain completeness. Man or
woman, they must be complete to enter into that world out
there, that eternity where the Nagual and Genaro are now
waiting for us.
She stopped talking and stared at me for a long moment.
There was barely enough light to write.
But how did you regain your completeness? I asked.
She jumped at the sound of my voice. I repeated my ques-
tion. She stared up at the roof of the cave before answering me.
I had to refuse those two girls, she said. The Nagual once
told you how to do that but you didn’t want to hear it. His
point was that one has to steal that edge back. He said that we
got it the hard way by stealing it and that we must recover it
the same way, the hard way.
He guided me to do that, and the first thing he made me do
was to refuse my love for those two children. I had to do that
in dreaming. Little by little I learned not to like them, but the
Nagual said that that was useless, one has to learn not to care
and not not to like. Whenever those girls meant nothing to me
I had to see them again, lay my eyes and my hands on them. I
had to pat them gently on the head and let my left side snatch
the edge out of them.
What happened to them?
Nothing. They never felt a thing. They went home and
are now like two grown-up persons. Empty like most people
around them. They don’t like the company of children because
they have no use for them. I would say that they are better off.
I took the craziness out of them. They didn’t need it, while I
did. I didn’t know what I was doing when I gave it to them.
Besides, they still retain the edge they stole from their father.
The Nagual was right: no one noticed the loss, but I did
notice my gain. As I looked out of this cave I saw all my
illusions lined up like a row of soldiers. The world was bright
and new. The heaviness of my body and my spirit had been
lifted off and I was truly a new being.
Do you know how you took your edge from your chil-
dren?
They are not my children! I have never had any. Look at
me.
She crawled out of the cave, lifted her skirt and showed me
her naked body. The first thing I noticed was how slender and
muscular she was.
She urged me to come closer and examine her. Her body
was so lean and firm that I had to conclude she could not
possibly have had children. She put her right leg on a high
rock and showed me her vagina. Her drive to prove her
change was so intense that I had to laugh to bridge my ner-
vousness. I said that I was not a doctor and therefore I could
not tell, but that I was sure she must be right.
Of course I’m right, she said as she crawled back into the
cave. Nothing has ever come out of this womb.
After a moment’s pause she answered my question, which I
had already forgotten under the onslaught of her display.