I ran up a slope in front of don Genaro's house, and saw don Juan and don Genaro sitting on a cleared area by the door. They smiled at me. There was such warmth and innocence in their smiles that my body experienced a state of immediate alarm. I automatically slowed down to a walk. I greeted them.
"How are you?" don Genaro asked me in such an affected tone that we all laughed.
"He's in very good shape," don Juan interjected before I could answer.
"I can see that," don Genaro retorted. "Look at that double chin! And look at those chunks of bacon fat on the jowls!"
Don Juan held his stomach as he laughed.
"Your face is round," don Genaro went on. "What have you been doing? Eating?"
Don Juan jokingly assured him that my life style required that I eat a great deal. In a most friendly way they teased me about my life, and then don Juan asked me to sit down between them. The sun had already set behind the huge range of mountains to the west.
"Where's your famous notebook?" don Genaro asked me, and when I got it out of my pocket he yelled, "Yippee!" and took it from my hands.
Obviously he had observed me with great care and knew my mannerisms to perfection. He held the notebook with both hands and played with it nervously, as if he did not know what to do with it.
Twice he seemed to be on the verge of throwing it away but appeared to contain himself. Then he held it against his knees and pretended to write feverishly in it the way I do.
Don Juan laughed so hard that he was about to choke.
"What did you do after I left you?" don Juan asked after they had quieted down.
"I went to the market on Thursday," I said.
"What were you doing there? Retracing your steps?" he retorted.
Don Genaro fell backwards and with his lips made the dry sound of a head hitting the ground. He looked at me askance [* askance- (used especially of glances) directed to one side with, or as if, with doubt or suspicion or envy] and winked.
"I had to do it," I said. "And I found out that on weekdays there are no stands that sell coins and secondhand books."
Both of them laughed. Then don Juan said that asking questions was not going to reveal anything new.
"What really took place, don Juan?" I asked.
"Believe me, there is no way of knowing that," he said dryly. "In those matters you and I are on equal ground. My advantage over you at this moment is that I know how to get to the nagual and you don't. But once I have gotten there I have no more advantage and no more knowledge than you."
"Did I really land in the market, don Juan?" I asked.
"Of course. I've told you, the nagual is at the warrior's command. Isn't it so, Genaro?"
"Right!" don Genaro exclaimed in a booming voice and stood up in one single motion. It was as though his voice had pulled him from a lying position to a perfectly vertical one.
Don Juan was practically rolling on the ground laughing. Don Genaro, with a nonchalant air, took a comical bow and said good-by.
"Genaro will see you tomorrow morning," don Juan said. "Now you must sit here in total silence."
We did not say another word. After hours of silence I fell asleep.
I looked at my watch. It was almost six in the morning. Don Juan examined the solid mass of heavy white clouds over the eastern horizon and concluded that it was going to be an overcast day. Don Genaro sniffed the air and added that it was also going to be hot and windless.
"How far are we going?" I asked.
"To those eucalyptus trees over there," don Genaro replied, pointing to what seemed to be a grove of trees about a mile away.
When we reached the trees I realized that it was not a grove. The eucalyptus had been planted in straight lines in order to mark the boundaries of fields cultivated with different crops. We walked along the edge of a corn field along a line of enormous trees- thin and straight- over a hundred feet high, and arrived at an empty field.
I figured that the crop must have just been harvested. There were only the dried stalks and leaves of some plants I did not recognize. I bent over to pick up a leaf but don Genaro stopped me. He held my arm with great force. I recoiled in pain, and then I noticed that he had only placed his fingers gently on my arm.
He was definitely aware of what he had done and of what I was experiencing. He swiftly lifted his fingers off my arm and then again placed them gently on it. He repeated it once more and laughed like a delighted child when I winced. Then he turned his profile to me. His aquiline nose made him look like a bird; a bird with strange long white teeth.
In a soft voice don Juan told me not to touch anything. I asked him if he knew what kind of crop had been cultivated there. He seemed to be about to tell me, but don Genaro interceded and said that it was a field of worms.
Don Juan looked at me fixedly, without cracking a smile. Don Genaro's meaningless answer appeared to be a joke. I waited for a cue to start laughing, but they just stared at me.
"A field of gorgeous worms," don Genaro said. "Yes, what was grown here was the most delightful worms you've ever seen."
He turned to don Juan. They looked at each other for an instant.
"Isn't it so?" don Genaro asked don Juan.
"Absolutely true," don Juan said, and turning to me he added in a soft voice, "Genaro holds the baton today. Only he can tell what's what, so do exactly as he says."
The idea that don Genaro had the control filled me with terror. I turned to don Juan to tell him about it, but before I had time to voice my words don Genaro let out a long formidable scream; a yell so loud and frightening that I felt the back of my neck swell and my hair flowing out as if a wind were blowing it.
I had an instant of complete disassociation and would have remained glued to the spot had it not been for don Juan, who, with incredible speed and control, turned my body around so my eyes could witness an inconceivable feat.
Don Genaro was standing horizontally, about one hundred feet above the ground on the trunk of a eucalyptus tree which was perhaps fifty yards away. That is he was standing with his legs three feet apart perpendicular to the tree. It was as if he had hooks on his shoes, and with them was capable of defying gravity. His arms were crossed over his chest and his back was turned to me.
I stared at him. I did not want to blink for fear of losing sight of him. I made a quick judgment and concluded that if I could maintain him within my field of vision I might detect a clue, a movement, a gesture, or anything that would help me understand what was taking place.
I felt don Juan's head next to my right ear, and I heard him whisper that any attempt to explain was useless and idiotic. I heard him repeat, "Push your belly down; down."
It was a technique he had taught me years before to use in moments of great danger, fear, or stress. It consisted of pushing the diaphragm down while taking four sharp gasps of air through the mouth followed by four deep inhalations and exhalations through the nose.
He had explained that the gasps of air had to be felt as jolts in the middle part of the body, and that keeping the hands tightly clasped covering the navel gave strength to the midsection, and helped to control the gasps and the deep inhalations; which had to be held for a count of eight as one pressed the diaphragm down. The exhalations were done twice through the nose and twice through the mouth in a slow or accelerated fashion depending on one's preference.
I automatically obeyed don Juan. I did not dare, however, to take my eyes away from don Genaro. As I kept on breathing, my body relaxed and I was aware that don Juan was twisting my legs. Apparently when he had turned me around, my right foot had caught in a clump of dirt and my leg was uncomfortably bent. When he straightened me out, I realized that the shock of seeing don Genaro standing on the trunk of a tree had made me oblivious to my discomfort.
Don Juan whispered in my ear that I should not stare at don Genaro. I heard him say, "Blink. Blink."
For a moment I felt reluctant. Don Juan commanded me again. I was convinced that the whole affair was somehow linked to me as the onlooker, and, if I as the sole witness of don Genaro's deed had stopped looking at him, he would have fallen to the ground; or perhaps the whole scene would have vanished.
After an excruciatingly long period of immobility, don Genaro swiveled on his heels, forty-five degrees to his right, and began to walk up the trunk. His body shivered. I saw him take one small step after another until he had taken eight. He even circumvented a branch. Then, with his arms still crossed over his chest, he sat down on the trunk with his back to me. His legs dangled as if he were sitting on a chair, as if gravity had no effect on him.
He then sort of walked on his seat, downwards. He reached a branch that was parallel to his body and leaned on it with his left arm and his head for a few seconds. He seemed to be leaning more for dramatic effect than for support. He then kept on moving on his seat inching his way from the trunk onto the branch until he had changed his position and was sitting as one might normally sit on a branch.
Don Juan giggled. I had a horrible taste in my mouth. I wanted to turn round and face don Juan who was slightly behind me to my right, but I did not dare miss any of don Genaro's actions.
He dangled his feet for a while, then crossed them and swung them gently, and finally he slipped upwards back onto the trunk.
Don Juan took my head gently in both hands and twisted my neck to the left until my line of vision was parallel to the tree rather than perpendicular to it. Looking at don Genaro from that angle he did not appear to be defying gravity. He was simply sitting on the trunk of a tree. I noticed then that if I stared and did not blink, the background became vague and diffuse, and the clarity of don Genaro's body became more intense. His shape became dominant as if nothing else existed.
Don Genaro swiftly slid downward back onto the branch. He sat dangling his feet like on a trapeze. Looking at him from a twisted perspective made both positions, especially sitting on the tree trunk, seem feasible.
Don Juan shifted my head to the right until it was resting on my shoulder. Don Genaro's position on the branch seemed perfectly normal, but when he moved onto the trunk again I could not make the necessary perceptual adjustment and I saw him as if he were upside down with his head towards the ground.
Don Genaro moved back and forth various times, and don Juan shifted my head from side to side every time don Genaro moved. The result of their manipulations was that I completely lost track of my normal perspective, and without it don Genaro's actions were not as awesome.
Don Genaro remained on the branch for a long time. Don Juan straightened my neck and whispered that don Genaro was about to descend. I heard him whisper in an imperative tone, "Press down. Down."
I was in the middle of a fast exhalation when don Genaro's body seemed to be transfixed by some sort of tension. It glowed, became lax, swung backwards, and hung by the knees for a moment. His legs seemed to be so flaccid [* flaccid- lacking in strength] that they could not stay bent, and he fell to the ground.
At the moment he began his downward fall, I also had the sensation of falling through endless space. My whole body experienced a painful and at the same time extremely pleasurable anguish; an anguish of such intensity and duration that my legs could no longer support the weight of my body and I fell down on the soft dirt. I could barely move my arms to buffer my fall. I was breathing so heavily that the soft dirt got into my nostrils and made them itch. I tried to get up. My muscles seemed to have lost their strength.
Don Juan and don Genaro came and stood over me. I heard their voices as if they were quite a distance from me, and yet I felt them pulling me. They must have lifted me up, each holding one of my arms and one of my legs, and carried me over a short distance. I was perfectly aware of the uncomfortable position of my neck and head which hung limp. My eyes were open. I could see the ground and tufts of weeds passing under me.
Finally I had a cold seizure. Water entered into my mouth and nose and made me cough. My arms and legs moved frantically. I began to swim but the water was not deep enough and I found myself standing up in the shallow river where they had dumped me.
Don Juan and don Genaro laughed themselves silly. Don Juan rolled up his pants and came over closer to me. He looked me in the eye and said that I was not complete yet and pushed me gently back into the water. My body did not offer any resistance. I did not want to be dunked again, but there was no way of connecting my volition to my muscles and I crumbled backwards. The coldness was even more intense. I quickly jumped up and scurried out on the opposite bank by mistake.
Don Juan and don Genaro yelled and whistled, and threw rocks into the bushes ahead of me as though they were corralling a steer that was running astray. I crossed back over the river and sat on a rock next to them. Don Genaro handed me my clothes, and then I noticed that I was naked although I could not remember when or how I got my clothes off. I was dripping wet and did not want to put them on right away. Don Juan turned to don Genaro and in a booming tone said, "For heaven's sake, give the man a towel!" It took me a couple of seconds to realize the absurdity.
I felt very good. In fact I was so happy that I did not want to talk. I had the certainty, however, that if I showed my euphoria they would have dumped me into the water again.
Don Genaro watched me. His eyes had the glint of a wild animal's. They pierced through me.
"Good for you," don Juan said to me all of a sudden. "You're contained now, but down by the eucalyptus trees you indulged like a son of a bitch."
I wanted to laugh hysterically. Don Juan's words seemed so utterly funny that I had to make a supreme effort to contain myself. And then some part of me flashed a command. An uncontrollable itching in the midsection of my body made me take off my clothes and plunge back into the water. I stayed in the river for about five minutes. The coldness restored my sense of sobriety. When I got out I was myself again.
"Good show," don Juan said, tapping me on the shoulder.
They led me back to the eucalyptus trees. As we walked don Juan explained that my 'tonal' had been dangerously vulnerable, and that the incongruity of don Genaro's acts seemed to be too much for it. He said that they had decided not to tamper with it any more and go back to don Genaro's house, but the fact that I knew I had to plunge myself into the river again had changed everything. He did not say, however, what they intended to do.
We stood in the middle of the field, on the same spot we had been before. Don Juan was to my right and don Genaro to my left. They both stood with their muscles tensed, in a state of alertness. They maintained that tenseness for about ten minutes. I shifted my eyes from one to the other. I thought that don Juan would cue me on what to do.
I was right. At one moment he relaxed his body and kicked some hard clumps of dirt. Without looking at me, he said, "I think we'd better go." I automatically reasoned that don Genaro must have had the intention of giving me another demonstration of the 'nagual', but had decided not to. I felt relieved. I waited another moment for a final confirmation. Don Genaro also eased off and then both of them took one step forward. I knew then that we were through there. But at the very instant I loosened up, don Genaro again let out his incredible yell.
I began to breathe frantically. I looked around. Don Genaro had disappeared. Don Juan was standing in front of me. His body convulsed with laughter. He turned to me.
"I'm sorry," he said in a whisper. "There's no other way."
I wanted to ask about don Genaro, but I felt that if I did not keep on breathing and pressing down on my diaphragm I would die. Don Juan pointed with his chin to a place behind me. Without moving my feet I began to turn my head over my left shoulder. But before I could see what he was pointing at, don Juan jumped and stopped me. The force of his leap and the speed with which he grabbed me made me lose my balance.
As I fell on my back I had the sensation that my startled reaction had been to grab on to don Juan and consequently I dragged him with me to the ground. But when I looked up, the impressions of my tactile and visual senses were in total disaccord. I saw don Juan standing over me laughing while my body felt the unmistakable weight and pressure of another body on top of me; almost pinning me down.
Don Juan extended his hand and helped me get up. My bodily sensation was that he was lifting two bodies. He smiled knowingly and whispered that one should never turn to one's left when facing the 'nagual'. He said that the 'nagual' was deadly, and there was no need to make the risks more dangerous than they already were.
He then gently turned me around and made me face an enormous eucalyptus tree. It was perhaps the oldest tree around. Its trunk was nearly twice as thick as any of the others. He pointed with his eyes to the top. Don Genaro was perched on a branch. He was facing me. I could see his eyes like two huge mirrors reflecting light. I did not want to look but don Juan insisted that I should not move my eyes away. In a very forceful whisper he ordered me to blink, and not to succumb to fright or indulgence.
I noticed that if I blinked steadily don Genaro's eyes were not so awesome. It was only when I stared that the glare of his eyes became maddening.
He squatted on the branch for a long time. Then without moving his body at all he jumped to the ground and landed in the same squatting position a couple of yards from where I was. I witnessed the complete sequence of his jump, and I knew that I had perceived more than my eyes had allowed me to catch.
Don Genaro had not really jumped. Something had pushed him as if from behind and had made him glide on a parabolic course. The branch where he had been perched was possibly a hundred feet high, and the tree was located about a hundred and fifty feet away from me. Thus his body had to trace a parabola to land where it did.
But the force needed to cover that distance was not the product of don Genaro's muscles. His body was 'blown' away from the branch to the ground. At one point I was able to see the soles of his shoes and his rear as his body described the parabola. Then he landed gently although his weight crumbled the hard clumps of dried dirt and even raised a bit of dust.
Don Juan giggled behind me. Don Genaro stood up as if nothing had happened, and tugged the sleeve of my shirt to give me a signal that we were leaving.
No one spoke on the way to don Genaro's house. I felt lucid [* lucid- having a clear mind] and composed. A couple of times don Juan stopped and examined my eyes by staring into them. He seemed satisfied. As soon as we arrived, don Genaro went behind the house. It was still early in the morning. Don Juan sat on the floor by the door and pointed to a place for me to sit. I was exhausted. I lay down and went out like a light.
I woke up when don Juan shook me. I tried to look at the time. My watch was missing. Don Juan pulled it from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. It was around 1:00 p.m. I looked up and our eyes met.
"No. There's no explanation," he said, turning away from me. "The nagual is only for witnessing."
I went around the house looking for don Genaro. He was not there. I came back to the front. Don Juan had made me something to eat. After I had finished eating he began to talk.
"When one is dealing with the nagual, one should never look into it directly," he said. "You were peering at it this morning, and therefore you were sapped. The only way to look at the nagual is as if it were a common affair. One must blink in order to break the fixation. Our eyes are the eyes of the tonal; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that our eyes have been trained by the tonal. Therefore the tonal claims them.
"One of the sources of your bafflement and discomfort is that your tonal doesn't let go of your eyes. The day it does your nagual will have won a great battle. Your obsession or, better yet, everyone's obsession is to arrange the world according to the tonal's rules. So every time we are confronted with the nagual, we go out of our way to make our eyes stiff and intransigent. [* intransigent- not capable of being affected by pleas, persuasion, requests, or reason] I must appeal to the part of your tonal which understands this dilemma and you must make an effort to free your eyes.
The point is to convince the tonal that there are other worlds that can pass in front of the same windows. The nagual showed you that this morning. So let your eyes be free. Let them be true windows. The eyes can be the windows to peer into boredom or to peek into that infinity."
Don Juan made a sweeping arc with his left arm to point all around us. There was a glint in his eyes, and his smile was at once frightening and disarming.
"How can I do that?" I asked.
"I say that it is a very simple matter. Perhaps I say it is simple because I've been doing it for so long. All you have to do is to set up your intent as a customs house. Whenever you are in the world of the tonal, you should be an impeccable tonal; no time for irrational crap. But whenever you are in the world of the nagual, you should also be impeccable; no time for rational crap. For the warrior, intent is the gate in between. It closes completely behind him when he goes either way.
"Another thing one should do when facing the nagual is to shift the line of the eyes from time to time in order to break the spell of the nagual. Changing the position of the eyes always eases the burden of the tonal. This morning I noticed that you were extremely vulnerable and I changed the position of your head.
"If you are in a pinch like that you should be able to shift by yourself. This shifting should be done only as a relief, though, not as another way of palisading [* palisading- surround with a wall in order to fortify] yourself to safeguard the order of the tonal. My bet would be that you would strive to use this technique to hide the rationality of your tonal behind it, and thus believe that you're saving it from extinction. The flaw of your reasoning is that nobody wants or seeks the extinction of the tonal's rationality. That fear is ill founded.
"There is nothing else I can tell you except that you must follow every movement that Genaro makes without draining yourself. You are testing now whether or not your tonal is crammed with nonessentials. If there are too many unnecessary items on your island, you won't be able to sustain the encounter with the 'nagual'."
"What would happen to me?"
"You may die. No one is capable of surviving a deliberate encounter with the nagual without a long training. It takes years to prepare the tonal for such an encounter. Ordinarily if an average man comes face to face with the nagual, the shock would be so great that he would die.
"The goal of a warrior's training then is not to teach him to hex or to charm, but to prepare his tonal not to crap out. A most difficult accomplishment. A warrior must be taught to be impeccable and thoroughly empty before he could even conceive witnessing the nagual.
"In your case, for instance, you have to stop calculating. What you were doing this morning was absurd. You call it explaining. I call it a sterile and boring insistence of the tonal to have everything under its control. Whenever it doesn't succeed, there is a moment of bafflement and then the tonal opens itself to death. What a prick! It would rather kill itself than relinquish control. And yet there is very little we can do to change that condition."
"How did you change it yourself, don Juan?"
"The island of the tonal has to be swept clean and maintained clean. That's the only alternative that a warrior has. A clean island offers no resistance. It is as if there were nothing there."
He went around the house and sat down on a big smooth rock. From there one could look into a deep ravine. He signaled me to sit down next to him.
"Can you tell me, don Juan, what else we are going to do today?" I asked.
"We aren't going to do anything. That is, you and I will only be the witnesses. Your benefactor is Genaro."
I thought I had misunderstood him in my eagerness to take notes. At the beginning stages of my apprenticeship, don Juan himself had introduced the term 'benefactor'. My impression had always been that he himself was my benefactor.
Don Juan had stopped talking and was staring at me. I made a quick assessment and my conclusion was that he must have meant that don Genaro was something like the star performer on that occasion. Don Juan giggled as if he were reading my thoughts.
"Genaro is your benefactor," he repeated.
"But you are, aren't you?" I asked in a frantic tone.
"I'm the one who helped you sweep the island of the tonal," he said. "Genaro has two apprentices, Pablito and Nestor. He is helping them sweep the island, but I will show them the nagual. I will be their benefactor. Genaro is only their teacher. In these matters one can either talk or act. One cannot do both with the same person. One either takes the island of the tonal or one takes the nagual. In your case my duty has been to work with your tonal."
As don Juan spoke I had an attack of terror so intense that I was about to get ill. I had the feeling that he was going to leave me with don Genaro and that was a most dreadful scheme to me.
Don Juan laughed and laughed as I voiced my fears.
"The same thing happens to Pablito," he said. "The moment he sets eyes on me he gets ill. The other day he walked into the house when Genaro was gone. I was alone there and I had left my sombrero by the door. Pablito saw it and his tonal became so frightened that he actually shit in his pants."
I could easily understand and project into Pablito's feelings. When I considered the matter carefully, I had to admit that don Juan was terrifying. I had learned, however, to feel comfortable with him. I experienced with him a familiarity born out of our long association.
"I'm not going to leave you with Genaro," he said, still laughing. "I'm the one who takes care of your tonal. Without it you're dead."
"Has every apprentice a teacher and a benefactor?" I asked to ease my turmoil.
"No, not every apprentice. But some do."
"Why do some of them have both a teacher and a benefactor?"
"When an ordinary man is ready, power provides him with a teacher and he becomes an apprentice. When the apprentice is ready, power provides him with a benefactor and he becomes a sorcerer."
"What makes a man ready, so that power can provide him with a teacher?"
"No one knows that. We are only men. Some of us are men who have learned to see and use the nagual, but nothing that we may have gained in the course of our lives can reveal to us the designs of power. Thus not every apprentice has a benefactor. Power decides that."
I asked him if he himself had had a teacher and a benefactor, and for the first time in thirteen years he freely talked about them. He said that both his teacher and his benefactor were from central Mexico. I had always considered that information about don Juan to be of value for my anthropological research, but somehow at the moment of his revelation it did not matter.
Don Juan glanced at me. I though it was a look of concern. He then abruptly changed the subject and asked me to recount every detail of what I had experienced in the morning.
"A sudden fright always shrinks the tonal" he said as a comment on my description of how I felt when don Genaro screamed. "The problem here is not to let the tonal shrink itself out of the picture. A grave issue for a warrior is to know exactly when to allow his tonal to shrink and when to stop it. This is a great art. A warrior must struggle like a demon to shrink his tonal; and yet at the very moment the tonal shrinks, the warrior must reverse all that struggle to immediately halt that shrinking."
"But by doing that isn't he reverting back to what he already was?" I asked.
"No. After the tonal shrinks, the warrior is closing the gate from the other side. As long as his tonal is unchallenged and his eyes are tuned only for the tonal's world, the warrior is on the safe side of the fence. He's on familiar ground and knows all the rules.
But when his tonal shrinks he is on the windy side, and that opening must be shut tight immediately; or he would be swept away. And this is not just a way of talking. Beyond the gate of the tonal's eyes the wind rages. I mean a real wind. No metaphor. A wind that can blow one's life away. In fact, that is the wind that blows all living things on this earth. Years ago I acquainted you with that wind. You took it as a joke though."
He was referring to a time when he had taken me to the mountains and explained certain properties of the wind. I had never thought it was a joke however.
"It's not important whether you took it seriously or not," he said after listening to my protests. "As a rule the tonal must defend itself at any cost every time it is threatened. So it is of no real consequence how the tonal reacts in order to accomplish its defense. The only important matter is that the tonal of a warrior must become acquainted with other alternatives.
"What a teacher aims for, in this case, is the total weight of those possibilities. It is the weight of those new possibilities which helps to shrink the tonal. By the same token, it is the same weight which helps stop the tonal from shrinking out of the picture."
He signaled me to proceed with my narrative of the events of the morning, and he interrupted me when I came to the part where don Genaro slid back and forth from the tree trunk to the branch.
"The nagual can perform extraordinary things;" he said. "things that do not seem possible; things that are unthinkable for the tonal. But the extraordinary thing is that the performer has no way of knowing how those things happen. In other words, Genaro doesn't know how he does those things. He only knows that he does them. The secret of a sorcerer is that he knows how to get to the nagual, but once he gets there, your guess is as good as his as to what takes place."
"But what does one feel while doing those things?"
"One feels like one is doing something."
"Would don Genaro feel like he's walking up the trunk of a tree?"
Don Juan looked at me for a moment, then he turned his head away.
"No," he said in a forceful whisper. "Not in the way you mean it."
He did not say anything else. I was practically holding my breath waiting for his explanation. Finally I had to ask, "But what does he feel?"
"I can't say, not because it is a personal matter, but because there is no way of describing it."
"Come on," I coaxed him. "There is nothing that one can't explain or elucidate with words. I believe that even if it's not possible to describe something directly one can allude to it; beat around the bush."
Don Juan laughed. His laughter was friendly and kind. And yet there was a touch of mockery and sheer mischievoiisness in it.
"I have to change the subject," he said. "Suffice it to say that the nagual was aimed at you this morning. Whatever Genaro did was a mixture of you and him. His nagual was tempered by your tonal."
I insisted on probing and asked him, "When you're showing the nagual to Pablito, what do you feel?"
"I can't explain that," he said in a soft voice. "And not because I don't want to, but simply because I can't. My tonal stops there."
I did not want to press him any further. We remained silent for a while, then he began to talk again
"Let's say that a warrior learns to tune his will, to direct it to a pinpoint; to focus it wherever he wants. It is as if his will, which comes from the midsection of his body, is one single luminous fiber; a fiber that he can direct at any conceivable place. That fiber is the road to the nagual; or I could also say that the warrior sinks into the nagual through that single fiber.
"Once he has sunk, the expression of the nagual is a matter of his personal temperament. If the warrior is funny, the nagual is funny. If the warrior is morbid, the nagual is morbid. If the warrior is mean, the nagual is mean.
"Genaro always cracks me up because he's one of the most delightful creatures alive. I never know what he's going to come up with. That to me is the ultimate essence of sorcery. Genaro is such a fluid warrior that the slightest focusing of his will makes his nagual act in incredible ways."
"Did you yourself observe what don Genaro was doing in the trees?" I asked.
"No. I just knew because I saw that the nagual was in the trees. The rest of the show was for you alone."
"Do you mean, don Juan, that like the time when you pushed me and I ended up in the market, you were not with me?"
"It was something like that. When one meets the nagual face to face, one always has to be alone. I was around only to protect your tonal. That is my charge." [* charge- a person committed to your care]
Don Juan said that my 'tonal' was nearly blasted to pieces when don Genaro descended from the tree; not so much because of any inherent quality of danger in the 'nagual', but because my 'tonal' indulged in its bewilderment. He said that one of the aims of the warrior's training was to cut the bewilderment of the 'tonal' until the warrior was so fluid that he could admit everything without admitting anything.
When I described don Genaro's leap up to the tree and his leap down from it, don Juan said that the yell of a warrior was one of the most important issues of sorcery, and that don Genaro was capable of focusing on his yell; using it as a vehicle.
"You are right," he said. "Genaro was pulled partly by his yell and partly by the tree. That was true seeing on your part. That was a true picture of the nagual. Genaro's will was focused on the yell and his personal touch made the tree pull the nagual. The lines went both ways from Genaro to the tree and from the tree to Genaro.
"What you should have seen when Genaro jumped from the tree was that he was focusing on a spot in front of you and then the tree pushed him. But it only seemed to be a push. In essence it was more like being released by the tree. The tree released the nagual and the nagual came back to the world of the tonal on the spot he focused on.
"The second time that Genaro came down from the tree your tonal was not so bewildered. You were not indulging so hard and therefore you were not as sapped as you were the first time."
Around four in the afternoon don Juan stopped our conversation.
"We are going back to the eucalyptus trees," he said. "The nagual is waiting for us there."
"Aren't we risking being seen by people?" I asked.
"No. The nagual will keep everything suspended," he said.