drained my power. La Gorda affirmed that the little sisters
were very clever and had planned to drain me of power; to
that effect they had kept on insisting that I cure Soledad. As
soon as Rosa realized that I had also cured her, she thought that
I had weakened myself beyond repair. All they had to do was
to wait for Josefina in order to finish me off.
The little sisters didn’t know that when you cured Rosa
and Soledad you also replenished yourself, la Gorda said, and
laughed as if it were a joke. That was why you had enough
energy to get your double out a third time when the little
sisters tried to take your luminosity.
I told her about the vision I had had of dona Soledad hud-
dled against the wall of her room, and how I had merged that
vision with my tactile sense and ended up feeling a viscous
substance on her forehead.
That was true seeing, la Gorda said. You saw Soledad in
her room although she was with me around Genaro’s place,
and then you saw your nagual on her forehead.
I felt compelled at that point to recount to her the details of
my whole experience, especially the realization I had had that
I was actually curing dona Soledad and Rosa by touching the
viscous substance, which I felt was part of me.
To see that thing on Rosa’s hand was also true seeing, she
said. And you were absolutely right, that substance was your-
self. It came out of your body and it was your nagual. By
touching it, you pulled it back.
La Gorda told me then, as though she were unveiling a
mystery, that the Nagual had commanded her not to disclose
the fact that since all of us had the same luminosity, if my
nagual touched one of them, I would not get weakened, as
would ordinarily be the case if my nagual touched an average
man.
If your nagual touches us, she said, giving me a gentle slap
on the head, your luminosity stays on the surface. You can
pick it up again and nothing is lost.
I told her that the content of her explanation was impossible
for me to believe. She shrugged her shoulders as if saying that
that was not any of her concern. I asked her then about her
usage of the word nagual. I said that don Juan had explained
the nagual to me as being the indescribable principle, the
source of everything.
Sure, she said smiling. I know what he meant. The na-
gual is in everything.
I pointed out to her, a bit scornfully, that one could also say
the opposite, that the tonal is in everything. She carefully ex-
plained that there was no opposition, that my statement was
correct, the tonal was also in everything. She said that the
tonal which is in everything could be easily apprehended by
our senses, while the nagual which is in everything manifested
itself only to the eye of the sorcerer. She added that we could
stumble upon the most outlandish sights of the tonal and be
scared of them, or awed by them, or be indifferent to them,
because all of us could view those sights. A sight of the nagual,
on the other hand, needed the specialized senses of a sorcerer in
order to be seen at all. And yet, both the tonal and the nagual
were present in everything at all times. It was appropriate,
therefore, for a sorcerer to say that looking consisted in
viewing the tonal which is in everything, and seeing, on the
other hand, consisted in viewing the nagual which also is in
everything. Accordingly, if a warrior observed the world as
a human being, he was looking, but if he observed it as a sor-
cerer, he was seeing, and what he was seeing had to be
properly called the nagual.
She then reiterated the reason, which Nestor had given me
earlier, for calling don Juan the Nagual and confirmed that I
was also the Nagual because of the shape that came out of my
head.
I wanted to know why they had called the shape that had
come out of my head the double. She said that they had
thought they were sharing a private joke with me. They
had always called that shape the double, because it was twice
the size of the person who had it.
Nestor told me that that shape was not such a good thing
to have, I said.
It’s neither good nor bad, she said. You have it and that
makes you the Nagual. That’s all. One of us eight had to be
the Nagual and you’re the one. It might have been Pablito or
me or anyone.
Tell me now, what is the art of stalking? I asked.
The Nagual was a stalker, she said, and peered at me.
You must know that. He taught you to stalk from the be-
ginning.
It occurred to me that what she was referring to was what
don Juan had called the hunter. He had certainly taught me
to be a hunter. I told her that don Juan had shown me how to
hunt and make traps. Her usage of the term stalker, however,
was more accurate.
A hunter just hunts, she said. A stalker stalks anything,
including himself.
How does he do that?
An impeccable stalker can turn anything into prey. The
Nagual told me that we can even stalk our own weaknesses.
I stopped writing and tried to remember if don Juan had
ever presented me with such a novel possibility: to stalk my
weaknesses. I could not recall him ever putting it in those
terms.
How can one stalk one’s weaknesses, Gorda?
The same way you stalk prey. You figure out your rou-
tines until you know all the doing of your weaknesses and
then you come upon them and pick them up like rabbits inside
a cage.
Don Juan had taught me the same thing about routines, but
in the vein of a general principle that hunters must be aware
of. Her understanding and application of it, however, were
more pragmatic than mine.
Don Juan had said that any habit was, in essence, a doing,
and that a doing needed all its parts in order to function. If
some parts were missing, a doing was disassembled. By doing,
he meant any coherent and meaningful series of actions. In
other words, a habit needed all its component actions in order
to be a live activity.
La Gorda then described how she had stalked her own
weakness of eating excessively. She said that the Nagual had
suggested she first tackle the biggest part of that habit, which
was connected with her laundry work; she ate whatever her
customers fed her as she went from house to house delivering
her wash. She expected the Nagual to tell her what to do, but
he only laughed and made fun of her, saying that as soon as he
would mention something for her to do, she would fight not
to do it. He said that that was the way human beings are; they
love to be told what to do, but they love even more to fight
and not do what they are told, and thus they get entangled in
hating the one who told them in the first place.
For many years she could not think of anything to do to
stalk her weakness. One day, however, she got so sick and
tired of being fat that she refused to eat for twenty-three days.
That was the initial action that broke her fixation. She then
had the idea of stuffing her mouth with a sponge to make her
customers believe that she had an infected tooth and could not
eat. The subterfuge worked not only with her customers, who
stopped giving her food, but with her as well, as she had the
feeling of eating as she chewed on the sponge. La Gorda
laughed when she told me how she had walked around with
a sponge stuffed in her mouth for years until her habit of eat-
ing excessively had been broken.
Was that all you needed to stop your habit? I asked.
No. I also had to learn how to eat like a warrior.
And how does a warrior eat?
A warrior eats quietly, and slowly, and very little at a time.
I used to talk while I ate, and I ate very fast, and I ate lots and
lots of food at one sitting. The Nagual told me that a warrior
eats four mouthfuls of food at one time. A while later he eats
another four mouthfuls and so on.
A warrior also walks miles and miles every day. My eating
weakness never let me walk. I broke it by eating four mouth-
fuls every hour and by walking. Sometimes I walked all day
and all night. That was the way I lost the fat on my buttocks.