Don’t you want to tell us? Pablito asked.
I deliberately said that my double had come out from the
top of my head three times. I gave them an account of what
had happened.
They did not seem in the least surprised and took my ac-
count as a matter of course. Pablito became delighted with his
own speculations that dona Soledad might not recover and
might eventually die. He wanted to know if I had struck Lidia
as well. Nestor made an imperative gesture for him to be quiet
and Pablito meekly stopped in the middle of a sentence.
I’m sorry. Maestro, Nestor said, but that was not your
double.
But everyone said that it was my double.
I know for a fact that you misunderstood la Gorda, be-
cause as Benigno and I were walking to Genaro’s house, la
Gorda overtook us on the road and told us that you and
Pablito were here in this house. She called you the Nagual. Do
you know why?
I laughed and said that I believed it was due to her notion
that I had gotten most of the Nagual’s luminosity.
One of us here is a fool! Benigno said in a booming voice
without opening his eyes.
The sound of his voice was so outlandish that I jumped
away from him. His thoroughly unexpected statement, plus
my reaction to it, made all of them laugh. Benigno opened one
eye and looked at me for an instant and then buried his face
in his arms.
Do you know why we called Juan Matus the Nagual?
Nestor asked me.
I said that I had always thought that that was their nice way
of calling don Juan a sorcerer.
Benigno laughed so loudly that the sound of his laughter
drowned out everybody else’s. He seemed to be enjoying him-
self immensely. He rested his head on my shoulder as if it were
a heavy object he could no longer support.
The reason we called him the Nagual, Nestor went on,
is because he was split in two. In other words, any time he
needed to, he could get into another track that we don’t have
ourselves; something would come out of him, something that
was not a double but a horrendous, menacing shape that
looked like him but was twice his size. We call that shape the
nagual and anybody who has it is, of course, the Nagual.
The Nagual told us that all of us can have that shape com-
ing out of our heads if we wanted to, but chances are that
none of us would want to. Genaro didn’t want it, so I think
we don’t want it, either. So it appears that you’re the one
who’s stuck with it.
They cackled and yelled as if they were corraling a herd of
cattle. Benigno put his arms around my shoulders without
opening his eyes and laughed until tears were rolling down his
cheeks.
Why do you say that I am stuck with it? I asked Nestor.
It takes too much energy, he said, too much work. I
don’t know how you can still be standing.
The Nagual and Genaro split you once in the eucalyptus
grove. They took you there because eucalyptuses are your
trees. I was there myself and I witnessed when they split you
and pulled your nagual out. They pulled you apart by the ears
until they had split your luminosity and you were not an egg
anymore, but two long chunks of luminosity. Then they put
you together again, but any sorcerer that sees can tell that
there is a huge gap in the middle.
What’s the advantage of being split?
You have one car that hears everything and one eye that
sees everything and you will always be able to go an extra mile
in a moment of need. That splitting is also the reason why
they told us that you are the Maestro.
They tried to split Pablito but it looks like it failed. He’s
too pampered and has always indulged like a bastard. That’s
why he’s so screwed up now.
What’s a double then?
A double is the other, the body that one gets in dreaming.
It looks exactly like oneself.
Do all of you have a double?
Nestor scrutinized me with a look of surprise.
Hey, Pablito, tell the Maestro about our doubles, he said
laughing.
Pablito reached across the table and shook Benigno.
You tell him, Benigno, he said. Better yet, show it to
him.
Benigno stood up, opened his eyes as wide as he could and
looked at the roof, then he pulled down his pants and showed
me his penis.
The Genaros went wild with laughter.
Did you really mean it when you asked that, Maestro?
Nestor asked me with a nervous expression.
I assured him that I was deadly serious in my desire to know
anything related to their knowledge. I went into a long eluci-
dation of how don Juan had kept me outside of their realm
for reasons I could not fathom, thus preventing me from
knowing more about them.
Think of this, I said. I didn’t know until three days ago
that those four girls were the Nagual’s apprentices, or that
Benigno was don Genaro’s apprentice.
Benigno opened his eyes.
Think of this yourself, he said. I didn’t know until now
that you were so stupid.
He closed his eyes again and all of them laughed insanely. I
had no choice but to join them.
We were just teasing you. Maestro, Nestor said in way of
an apology. We thought that you were teasing us, rubbing it
in. The Nagual told us that you see. If you do, you can tell
that we are a sorry lot. We don’t have the body of dreaming.
None of us has a double.
In a very serious and earnest manner Nestor said that some-
thing had come in between them and their desire to have a
double. I understood him as saying that a sort of barrier had
been created since don Juan and don Genaro had left. He
thought that it might be the result of Pablito flubbing his task.
Pablito added that since the Nagual and Genaro had gone,
something seemed to be chasing them, and even Benigno, who
was living in the southernmost tip of Mexico at that time, had
to return. Only when the three of them were together did
they feel at ease.
What do you think it is? I asked Nestor.
There is something out there in that immensity that’s pull-
ing us, he replied. Pablito thinks it’s his fault for antagon-
izing those women.
Pablito turned to me. There was an intense glare in his eyes.
They’ve put a curse on me. Maestro, he said. I know
that the cause of all our trouble is me. I wanted to disappear
from these parts after my fight with Lidia, and a few months
later I took off for Veracruz. I was actually very happy there
with a girl I wanted to marry. I got a job and was doing fine
until one day I came home and found that those four mannish
freaks, like beasts of prey, had tracked me down by my scent.
They were in my house tormenting my woman. That bitch
Rosa put her ugly hand on my woman’s belly and made her
shit in the bed, just like that. Their leader. Two Hundred and
Twenty Buttocks, told me that they had walked across the
continent looking for me. She just grabbed me by the belt and
pulled me out. They pushed me to the bus depot to bring me
here. I got madder than the devil but I was no match for Two
Hundred and Twenty Buttocks. She put me on the bus. But
on our way here I ran away. I ran through bushes and over
hills until my feet got so swollen that I couldn’t get my shoes
off. I nearly died. I was ill for nine months. If the Witness
hadn’t found me, I would have died.
I didn’t find him, Nestor said to me. La Gorda found
him. She took me to where he was and between the two of us
we carried him to the bus and brought him here. He was de-
lirious and we had to pay an extra fare so that the bus driver
would let him stay on the bus.
In a most dramatic tone Pablito said that he had not changed
his mind; he still wanted to die.
But why? I asked him.
Benigno answered for him in a booming, guttural voice.
Because his pecker doesn’t work, he said.
The sound of his voice was so extraordinary that for an
instant I had the impression that he was talking inside a cavern.
It was at once frightening and incongruous. I laughed almost
out of control.
Nestor said that Pablito had attempted to fulfill his task of
establishing sexual relations with the women, in accordance