shadow of a doubt.
I noticed a flutter of nervousness in her body when I told
her the details of my mood that day.
What would’ve happened if you had found me? I asked.
Everything would’ve been changed, she replied. For me
to find you would’ve meant that I had enough power to move
forward. That’s why I took the little sisters with me. All of
us, you, me and the little sisters, would’ve gone away together
that day.
Where to, Gorda?
Who knows? If I had the power to find you I would’ve
also had the power to know that. It’s your turn now. Perhaps
you will have enough power now to know where we should
go. Do you see what I mean?
I had an attack of profound sadness at that point. I felt more
acutely than ever the despair of my human frailty and tempo-
rariness. Don Juan had always maintained that the only de-
terrent to our despair was the awareness of our death, the key
to the sorcerer’s scheme of things. His idea was that the a
ware-
ness of our death was the only thing that could give us the
strength to withstand the duress and pain of our lives and our
fears of the unknown. But what he could never tell me was
how to bring that awareness to the foreground. He had in-
sisted, every time I had asked him, that my volition alone was
the deciding factor; in other words, I had to make up my mind
to bring that awareness to bear witness to my acts. I thought
I had done so. But confronted with la Gorda’s determination
to find me and go away with me, I realized that if she had
found me in the city that day I would never have returned to
my home, never again would I have seen those I held dear.
I had not been prepared for that. I had braced myself for
dying, but not for disappearing for the rest of my life in full
awareness, without anger or disappointment, leaving behind
the best of my feelings.
I was almost embarrassed to tell la Gorda that I was not a
warrior worthy of having the kind of power that must be
needed to perform an act of that nature: to leave for good and
to know where to go and what to do.
We are human creatures, she said. Who knows what’s
waiting for us or what kind of power we may have?
I told her that my sadness in leaving like that was too great.
The changes that sorcerers went through were too drastic and
too final. I recounted to her what Pablito had told me about
his unbearable sadness at having lost his mother.
The human form feeds itself on those feelings, she said
dryly. I pitied myself and my little children for years. I
couldn’t understand how the Nagual could be so cruel to ask
me to do what I did: to leave my children, to destroy them
and to forget them.
She said that it took her years to understand that the Nagual
also had had to choose to leave the human form. He was not
being cruel. He simply did not have any more human feelings.
To him everything was equal. He had accepted his fate. The
problem with Pablito, and myself for that matter, was that
neither of us had accepted our fate. La Gorda said, in a scorn-
ful way, that Pablito wept when he remembered his mother,
his Manuelita, especially when he had to cook his own food.
She urged me to remember Pablito’s mother as she was: an
old, stupid woman who knew nothing else but to be Pablito’s
servant. She said that the reason all of them thought he was
a coward was because he could not be happy that his servant
Manuelita had become the witch Soledad, who could kill him
like she would step on a bug.
La Gorda stood up dramatically and leaned over the table
until her forehead was almost touching mine.
The Nagual said that Pablito’s good fortune was extraordi-
nary, she said. Mother and son fighting for the same thing.
If he weren’t the coward he is, he would accept his fate and
oppose Soledad like a warrior, without fear or hatred. In the
end the best would win and take all. If Soledad is the winner,
Pablito should be happy with his fate and wish her well. But
only a real warrior can feel that kind of happiness.
How does dona Soledad feel about all this?
She doesn’t indulge in her feelings, la Gorda replied and
sat down again. She has accepted her fate more readily than
any one of us. Before the Nagual helped her she was worse
off than myself. At least I was young; she was an old cow, fat
and tired, begging for her death to come. Now death will
have to fight to claim her.
The time element in dona Soledad’s transformation was a
detail that had puzzled me. I told la Gorda that I remembered
having seen dona Soledad no more than two years before and
she was the same old lady I had always known. La Gorda said
that the last time I had been in Soledad’s house, under the im-
pression that it was still Pablito’s house, the Nagual had set
them up to act as if everything were the same. Dona Sole-
dad greeted me, as she always did, from the kitchen, and I
really did not face her. Lidia, Rosa, Pablito and Nestor played
their roles to perfection in order to keep me from finding out
about their true activities.
Why would the Nagual go to all that trouble, Gorda?
He was saving you for something that’s not clear yet. He
kept you away from every one of us deliberately. He and
Genaro told me never to show my face when you were
around.
Did they tell Josefina the same thing?
Yes. She’s crazy and can’t help herself. She wanted to play
her pranks on you. She used to follow you around and you
never knew it. One night when the Nagual had taken you to
the mountains, she nearly pushed you down a ravine in the
darkness. The Nagual found her in the nick of time. She
doesn’t do those things out of meanness, but because she en-
joys being that way. That’s her human form. She’ll be that
way until she loses it. I’ve told you that all six of them are a
bit off. You must be aware of that so as not to be caught in
their webs. If you do get caught, don’t get angry. They can’t
help themselves.
She was silent for a while. I caught the almost imperceptible
sign of a flutter in her body. Her eyes seemed to get out of
focus and her mouth dropped as if the muscles of her jaw had
given in. I became engrossed in watching her. She shook her
head two or three times.
I’ve just seen something, she said. You’re just like the
little sisters and the Genaros.
She began to laugh quietly. I did not say anything. I wanted
her to explain herself without my meddling.
Everybody gets angry with you because it hasn’t dawned
on them yet that you’re no different than they are, she went
on. They see you as the Nagual and they don’t understand
that you indulge in your ways just like they do in theirs.
She said that Pablito whined and complained and played at
being a weakling. Benigno played the shy one, the one who
could not even open his eyes. Nestor played to be the wise
one, the one who knows everything. Lidia played the tough
woman who could crush anyone with a look. Josefina was the
crazy one who could not be trusted. Rosa was the bad-tem-
pered girl who ate the mosquitoes that bit her. And I was the
fool that came from Los Angeles with a pad of paper and lots
of wrong questions. And all of us loved to be the way we
were.
I was once a fat, smelly woman, she went on after a
pause. I didn’t mind being kicked around like a dog as long
as I was not alone. That was my form.
I will have to tell everybody what I have seen about you
so they won’t feel offended by your acts.
I did not know what to say. I felt that she was undeniably
right. The important issue for me was not so much her ac-
curateness but the fact that I had witnessed her arriving at her
unquestionable conclusion.
How did you see all that? I asked.
It just came to me, she replied.
How did it come to you?
I felt the feeling of seeing coming to the top of my head,
and then I knew what I’ve just told you.
I insisted that she describe to me every detail of the feeling