"I understand you know a great deal about plants, sir," I said to the old Indian in front of me.
A friend of mine had just put us in contact and left the room, and we had introduced ourselves to each other. The old man had told me that his name was Juan Matus.
"Did your friend tell you that?' he asked casually.
"Yes, he did."
"I pick plants, or rather, they let me pick them," he said softly.
We were in the waiting room of a bus depot in Arizona. I asked him in very formal Spanish if he would allow me to question him. I said, "Would the gentleman [caballero] permit me to ask some questions?"
'Caballero', which is derived from the word 'caballo', horse, originally meant horseman or a nobleman on horseback.
He looked at me inquisitively.
"I'm a horseman without a horse," he said with a big smile and then he added, "I've told you that my name is Juan Matus."
I liked his smile. I thought that, obviously, he was a man that could appreciate directness, and I decided to boldly tackle him with a request.
I told him I was interested in collecting and studying medicinal plants. I said that my special interest was the uses of the hallucinogenic cactus, peyote, which I had studied at length at the university in Los Angeles.
I thought that my presentation was very serious. I was very contained, and sounded perfectly credible to myself.
The old man shook his head slowly, and I, encouraged by his silence, added that it would no doubt be profitable for us to get together and talk about peyote.
It was at that moment that he lifted his head and looked me squarely in the eyes. It was a formidable look, yet it was not menacing or awesome in any way. It was a look that went through me. I became tongue-tied at once and could not continue with the harangues [* harangue- a loud bombastic declamation expressed with strong emotion] about myself.
That was the end of our meeting. Yet he left me on a note of hope. He said that perhaps I could visit him at his house someday.
It would be difficult to assess the impact of don Juan's look if my inventory of experience is not somehow brought to bear on the uniqueness of that event.
When I began to study anthropology, and thus met don Juan, I was already an expert in 'getting around'. I had left my home years before; and that meant, in my evaluation, that I was capable of taking care of myself. Whenever I was rebuffed, I could usually: cajole my way in, make concessions, argue, get angry, or if nothing succeeded, I would whine or complain.
In other words, there was always something I knew I could do under the circumstances. Never in my life had any human being stopped my momentum so swiftly and so definitely as don Juan did that afternoon. But it was not only a matter of being silenced. There had been times when I had been unable to say a word to my opponent because of some inherent respect I felt for him, but still my anger or frustration was manifested in my thoughts. Don Juan's look, however, numbed me to the point that I could not think coherently.
I became thoroughly intrigued with that stupendous look and decided to search for him.
I prepared myself for six months after that first meeting. I read up on the uses of peyote among the American Indians, especially about the peyote cult of the Indians of the Plains. I became acquainted with every work available, and when I felt I was ready I went back to Arizona.
Saturday, 1960 December 17
I found don Juan's house after making long and taxing inquiries among the local Indians. It was early afternoon when I arrived and parked in front of it. I saw him sitting on a wooden milk crate. He seemed to recognize me, and greeted me as I got out of my car.
We exchanged social courtesies for a while, and then in plain terms, I confessed that I had been very devious with him the first time we had met. I said I had boasted that I knew a great deal about peyote, when in reality, I knew nothing about it. He stared at me. His eyes were very kind.
I told him that for six months I had been reading to prepare myself for our meeting; and that this time I really knew a great deal more.
He laughed. Obviously there was something in my statement which was funny to him. He was laughing at me and I felt a bit confused and offended.
He apparently noticed my discomfort; and assured me that, although I had had good intentions, there was really no way to prepare myself for our meeting.
I wondered if it would have been proper to ask whether that statement had any hidden meaning, but I did not; yet he seemed to be attuned to my feelings and proceeded to explain what he had meant.
He said that my endeavours reminded him of a story about some people a certain king had persecuted and killed once upon a time.
He said that, in the story, the persecuted people were indistinguishable from their persecutors except that they insisted on pronouncing certain words in a peculiar manner proper only to them. That flaw, of course, was the giveaway.
The king posted roadblocks at critical points where an official would ask every man passing by to pronounce a key word. Those who could pronounce it the way the king pronounced it would live, but those who could not were immediately put to death.
The point of the story was that one day a young man decided to prepare himself for passing the roadblock by learning to pronounce the test-word just as the king liked it.
Don Juan said, with a broad smile, that in fact it took the young man 'six months' to master such a pronunciation. And then came the day of the great test. The young man very confidently came upon the roadblock and waited for the official to ask him to pronounce the word.
At that point don Juan very dramatically stopped his recounting and looked at me. His pause was very studied and seemed a bit corny to me, but I played along.
I had heard the theme of the story before. It had to do with Jews in Germany and the way one could tell who was a Jew by the way they pronounced certain words. I also knew the punch line. The young man was going to get caught because the official had forgotten the key word and asked him to pronounce another word which was very similar, but which the young man had not learned to say correctly.
Don Juan seemed to be waiting for me to ask what happened, so I did.
"What happened to him?" I asked, trying to sound naive and interested in the story.
"The young man, who was truly foxy," he said, "realized that the official had forgotten the key word, and before the man could say anything else the young man confessed that he had prepared himself for six months."
Don Juan made another pause, and looked at me with a mischievous glint in his eyes. This time he had turned the tables on me. The young man's confession was a new element and I no longer knew how the story would end.
"Well, what happened then?" I asked, truly interested.
"The young man was killed instantly, of course," he said and broke into a roaring laughter.
I liked very much the way he had entrapped my interest; and above all I liked the way he had linked that story to my own case. In fact, he seemed to have constructed it to fit me. He was making fun of me in a very subtle and artistic manner. I laughed with him.
Afterwards, I told him that no matter how stupid I sounded, I was really interested in learning something about plants.
"I like to walk a great deal," he said.
I thought he was deliberately changing the topic of conversation to avoid answering me. I did not want to antagonize him with my insistence. He asked me if I wanted to go with him on a short hike in the desert. I eagerly told him that I would love to walk in the desert.
"This is no picnic," he said in a tone of warning.
I told him that I wanted very seriously to work with him. I said that I needed information, any kind of information, on the uses of medicinal herbs, and that I was willing to pay him for his time and effort.
"You'll be working for me," I said. "And I'll pay you wages."
"How much would you pay me?" he asked.
I detected a note of greed in his voice.
"Whatever you think is appropriate," I said.
"Pay me for my time... with your time," he said.
I thought he was a most peculiar fellow. I told him I did not understand what he meant. He replied that there was nothing to say about plants, thus to take my money would be unthinkable for him.
He looked at me piercingly.
"What are you doing in your pocket?" he asked, frowning. "Are you playing with your whanger?"
He was referring to my taking notes on a minute pad inside the enormous pockets of my windbreaker.
When I told him what I was doing he laughed heartily.
I said that I did not want to disturb him by writing in front of him.
"If you want to write, write," he said. "You don't disturb me."
We hiked in the surrounding desert until it was almost dark. He did not show me any plants, nor did he talk about them at all. We stopped for a moment to rest by some large bushes.
"Plants are very peculiar things," he said without looking at me." They are alive and they feel."
At the very moment he made that statement a strong gust of wind shook the desert chaparral around us. The bushes made a rattling noise.
"Do you hear that?" he asked me, putting his right hand to his ear as if he were aiding his hearing. "The leaves and the wind are agreeing with me."
I laughed. The friend who had put us in contact had already told me to watch out because the old man was very eccentric. I thought the 'agreement with the leaves' was one of his eccentricities.
We walked for a while longer, but he still did not show me any plants; nor did he pick any of them. He simply breezed through the bushes touching them gently. Then he came to a halt, and sat down on a rock. He told me to rest and look around.
I insisted on talking. Once more I let him know that I wanted very much to learn about plants, especially peyote. I pleaded with him to become my informant in exchange for some sort of monetary reward.
"You don't have to pay me," he said. "You can ask me anything you want. I will tell you what I know and then I will tell you what to do with it."
He asked me if I agreed with the arrangement. I was delighted. Then he added a cryptic statement: "Perhaps there is nothing to learn about plants, because there is nothing to say about them."
I did not understand what he had said or what he had meant by it.
"What did you say?" I asked.
He repeated the statement three times; and then the whole area was shaken by the roar of an Air Force jet flying low.
"There! The world has just agreed with me," he said, putting his left hand to his ear.
I found him very amusing. His laughter was contagious.
"Are you from Arizona, don Juan?" I asked, in an effort to keep the conversation centred around his being my informant. He looked at me and nodded affirmatively. His eyes seemed to be tired. I could see the white underneath his pupils. "Were you born in this locality?"
He nodded his head again without answering me. It seemed to be an affirmative gesture, but it also seemed to be the nervous headshake of a person who is thinking.
"And where are you from yourself?" he asked.
"I come from South America," I said.
"That's a big place. Do you come from all of it?"
His eyes were piercing again as he looked at me.
I began to explain the circumstances of my birth, but he interrupted me.
"We are alike in this respect," he said. "I live here now but I'm really a Yaqui from Sonora."
"Is that so! I myself come from-"
He did not let me finish.
"I know, I know," he said. "You are who you are, from wherever you are, as I am a Yaqui from Sonora."
His eyes were very shiny and his laughter was strangely unsettling. He made me feel as if he had caught me in a lie. I experienced a peculiar sensation of guilt. I had the feeling he knew something that I did not know, or that I did not want to tell.
My strange embarrassment grew. He must have noticed it, for he stood up, and asked me if I wanted to go eat in a restaurant in town.
Walking back to his home, and then driving into town made me feel better; but I was not quite relaxed. I somehow felt threatened, although I could not pinpoint the reason.
I wanted to buy him some beer in the restaurant. He said that he never drank, not even beer. I laughed to myself: I did not believe him. The friend who had put us in contact had told me that "the old man was plastered out of his mind most of the time". I really did not mind if he was lying to me about not drinking. I liked him. There was something very soothing about his person.
I must have had a look of doubt on my face, for he then went on to explain that he used to drink in his youth, but that one day he simply dropped it.
"People hardly ever realize that we can cut anything from our lives, any time, just like that." He snapped his fingers.
"Do you think that one can stop smoking or drinking that easily?" I asked.
"Sure!" he said with great conviction. "Smoking and drinking are nothing. Nothing at all if we want to drop them."
At that very moment the water that was boiling in the coffee percolator made a loud perking sound.
"Hear that!" don Juan exclaimed with a shine in his eyes. "The boiling water agrees with me."
Then he added after a pause, "A man can get agreements from everything around him."
At that crucial instant the coffee percolator made a truly obscene gurgling sound.
He looked at the percolator and softly said, "Thank you," nodded his head, and then broke into a roaring laughter.
I was taken aback. His laughter was a bit too loud, but I was genuinely amused by it all.
My first real session with my 'informant' ended then. He said good-bye at the door of the restaurant. I told him I had to visit some friends and that I would like to see him again at the end of the following week.
"When will you be home?" I asked.
He scrutinized me.
"Whenever you come," he replied.
"I don't know exactly when I can come."
"Just come then and don't worry."
"What if you're not in?"
"I'll be there," he said, smiling, and walked away.
I ran after him and asked him if he would mind my bringing a camera with me to take pictures of him and his house.
"That's out of the question," he said with a frown.
"How about a tape recorder? Would you mind that?"
"I'm afraid there's no possibility of that either."
I became annoyed and began to fret. I said I saw no logical reason for his refusal.
Don Juan shook his head negatively.
"Forget it," he said forcefully. "And if you still want to see me, don't ever mention it again."
I staged a weak final complaint. I said that pictures and recordings were indispensable to my work. He said that there was only one thing which was indispensable for anything we did. He called it 'the spirit'.
"One can't do without the spirit," he said. "And you don't have it. Worry about that and not about pictures."
"What do you...?"
He interrupted me with a movement of his hand, and walked backwards a few steps. "Be sure to come back," he said softly, and waved good-bye.