As we approached the eucalyptuses, I saw don Genaro sitting on a tree stump. He waved his hand; smiling. We joined him.
There was a flock of crows in the trees. They were cawing as if something were frightening them. Don Genaro said that we had to remain motionless and quiet until the crows had calmed down.
Don Juan leaned his back against a tree and signaled me to do the same on a tree next to him a few feet away to his left. We were both facing don Genaro, who was three or four yards in front of us.
With a subtle movement of his eyes, don Juan gave me a cue to rearrange my feet. He was standing firmly with his feet slightly apart; touching the tree trunk only with the upper part of his shoulder blades and with the very back of his head. His arms hung at his sides.
We stood like that for perhaps an hour. I kept a close vigil on both of them, especially on don Juan. At a given moment he slid gently-down the tree trunk and sat down, still keeping the same areas of his body in contact with the tree. His knees were raised and he rested his arms on them. I imitated his movements. My legs had become extremely tired and the change of position made me feel quite comfortable.
The crows had stopped cawing by degrees until there was not a single sound in the field. The silence was more unnerving to me than the noise of the crows.
Don Juan spoke to me in a quiet tone. He said that the twilight was my best hour. He looked at the sky. It must have been after six.
It had been an overcast day and I had had no way of checking the position of the sun. I heard the distant cries of geese and perhaps turkeys. But in the field with eucalyptus trees there was no noise. There had been no whistling of birds or sounds of large insects for a long time.
The bodies of don Juan and don Genaro had been in perfect immobility, as far as I could judge, except for a few seconds when they shifted their weight in order to rest.
After don Juan and I had slid to the ground, don Genaro made a sudden motion. He lifted his feet up and squatted on the stump. He then turned forty-five degrees, and I was looking at his left profile. I stared at don Juan in search of a clue. He jutted his chin,It was a command to look at don Genaro.
A monstrous agitation began to overtake me. I was incapable of containing myself. My bowels were loose. I could absolutely feel what Pablito must have felt when he saw don Juan's sombrero. I experienced such intestinal distress that I had to get up and run to the bushes. I heard them howling with laughter.
I did not dare to return to where they were. I hesitated for a while. I figured that the spell must have been broken by my sudden outburst. I did not have to ponder for too long. I don Juan and don Genaro came over to where I was. They flanked [* flanked- located at the sides] me and we walked to another field. We stopped at the very center of it, and I recognized that we had been there in the morning.
Don Juan spoke to me. He told me that I had to be fluid and silent and should stop my internal dialogue. I listened attentively. Don Genaro must have been aware that all my concentration was focused on don Juan's admonitions, and he used that moment to do what he had done in the morning. He again let out his maddening scream.
He caught me unaware but not unprepared. I almost immediately recuperated my balance by breathing. The jolt was terrifying, yet it did not have a prolonged effect on me, and I was capable of following don Genaro's movements with my eyes.
I saw him leap to a low branch on a tree. As I followed his course for a distance of eighty to ninety feet, my eyes experienced an extravagant distortion. It was not that he leaped by means of the spring action of his muscles. He rather glided through the air catapulted in part by his formidable yell, and pulled by some vague lines emanating from the tree. It was as if the tree had sipped him through its lines.
Don Genaro stayed perched on the low branch for a moment. His left profile was turned to me. He began to perform a series of strange movements. His head wobbled, his body shivered. He hid his head various times in between his knees. The more he moved and fretted the more difficult it was for me to focus my eyes on his body. He seemed to be dissolving.
I blinked desperately and then I shifted my line of vision by twisting my head to the right and to the left as don Juan had taught me. From my left perspective I saw don Genaro's body as I had never seen it before. It was as if he had put on a disguise. He had a furry suit on. The hair was the color of a Siamese cat; light buff-brown with touches of dark chocolate brown on the legs and the back. It had a long thick tail. Don Genaro's costume made him look like a furry brown long-legged crocodile sitting on a branch. I could not see his head or his features.
I straightened my head to a normal position. The vision of don Genaro in disguise remained unchanged.
Don Genaro's arms shivered. He stood up on the branch, sort of stooped over, and leaped towards the ground. The branch was perhaps fifteen to twenty feet high. As far as I could judge, it was an ordinary leap of a man wearing a costume. I saw don Genaro's body almost touching the ground and then the thick tail of his costume vibrated, and instead of landing he took off as if powered with a silent jet engine. He went over the trees and then glided almost to the ground. He did that over and over. At times he would hold on to a branch and swing around a tree, or curl like an eel between branches. And then he would glide and circle around us, or flap his arms as he touched the very tops of the trees with his stomach.
Don Genaro's cavorting filled me with awe. My eyes followed him, and two or three times I clearly perceived that he was using some brilliant lines, as if they were pulleys, to glide from one place to another. Then he went over the tops of the trees towards the south and disappeared behind them. I tried to anticipate the place where he would appear again, but he did not show up at all.
I noticed then that I was lying on my back, and yet I had not been aware of a change in perspective. I had thought all along that I was looking at don Genaro from a standing position.
Don Juan helped me to sit up and then I saw don Genaro walking towards us with a nonchalant air. He smiled coyly and asked me if I had liked his flying. I attempted to say something but I was speechless.
Don Genaro exchanged a strange look with don Juan and adopted a squat position again. He leaned over and whispered something in my left ear. I heard him say, "Why don't you come and fly with me?" He repeated it five or six times.
Don Juan came towards me and whispered in my right ear, "Don't talk. Just follow Genaro."
Don Genaro made me squat and whispered to me again. I heard him with crystal clear precision. He repeated the statement perhaps ten times. He said, "Trust the nagual. The nagual will take you."
Then don Juan whispered in my right ear another statement. He said, "Change your feelings."
I could hear both of them talking to me at once, but I could also hear them individually. Every one of don Genaro's statements had to do with the general context of gliding through the air. The statements that he repeated dozens of times seemed to be those that became engraved in my memory. Don Juan's words, on the other hand, had to do with specific commands, which he repeated countless times.
The effect of that dual whispering was most extraordinary. It was as if the sound of their individual words were splitting me in half. Finally the abyss between my two ears was so wide that I lost all sense of unity. There was something that was undoubtedly me, but it was not solid. It was rather like a glowing fog; a dark yellow mist that had feelings.
Don Juan told me that he was going to mold me for flying. The sensation I had then was that the words were like pliers that twisted and molded my 'feelings'.
Don Genaro's words were an invitation to follow him. I felt I wanted to, but I could not. The split was so great that I was incapacitated. [* incapacitated- lacking in, or deprived of, strength or power] Then I heard the same short statements repeated endlessly by both of them; things like "Look at that magnificent flying shape." "Leap, leap." "Your legs will reach the treetops." "The eucalyptuses are like green dots." "The worms are lights."
Something in me must have ceased at a given moment; perhaps my awareness of being talked to. I sensed that don Genaro was still with me, yet from the point of view of my perception I could only distinguish an enormous mass of the most extraordinary lights. At times their glare diminished and at times the lights became intense. I was also experiencing movement. The effect was like being pulled by a vacuum that never let me stop. Whenever my motion seemed to diminish and I could actually focus my awareness on the lights, the vacuum would pull me away again.
At one moment, between being pulled back and forth, I experienced the ultimate confusion. The world around me, whatever it was, was coming and going at the same time; thus the vacuumlike effect. I could see two separate worlds; one that was going away from me, and the other that was coming closer to me. I did not realize this as one ordinarily would. That is, I did not become aware of it as something that had thus far been unrevealed. I rather had two realizations without the unifying conclusion.
After that my perceptions became dull. They either lacked precision, or they were too many and I had no way of sorting them. The next batch of discernible apperceptions [* apperceptions- processes whereby perceived qualities of an object are related to past experience] were a series of sounds that happened at the end of a long tubelike formation. The tube was myself, and the sounds were don Juan and don Genaro again talking to me through each of my ears.
The more they talked the shorter the tube became until the sounds were in a range I recognized. That is to say, the sounds of don Juan and don Genaro's words reached my normal range of perception. The sounds were first recognizable as noises, then as words yelled, and finally as words whispered in my ears.
I next noticed things of the familiar world. I was apparently lying face down. I could distinguish: clumps of dirt, small rocks, dried leaves; and then I became aware of the field of eucalyptus trees.
Don Juan and don Genaro were standing by me. It was still light. I felt that I had to get into the water in order to consolidate myself. I walked to the river, took off my clothes, and stayed in the cold water long enough to restore my perceptual balance.
Don Genaro left as soon as we arrived at his house. He casually patted me on the shoulder as he was leaving. I jumped away in a reflex reaction. I thought that his touch was going to be painful. To my amazement it was simply a gentle pat on the shoulder.
Don Juan and don Genaro laughed like two kids celebrating a prank.
"Don't be so jumpy," don Genaro said. "The nagual is not after you all the time."
He smacked his lips as though disapproving my overreaction, and with an air of candor and comradeship he extended his arms. I embraced him. He patted my back in a most friendly warm gesture.
"You must be concerned with the nagual only at certain moments," he said. "The rest of the time you and I are like all the other people on this earth."
He faced don Juan and smiled at him.
"Isn't it so, Juancho?" he asked, emphasizing the word Juancho; a funny nickname for Juan.
"That's so, Gerancho," don Juan answered, making up the word Gerancho.
They both had an explosion of laughter.
"I must warn you," don Juan said to me, "you have to exert the most demanding vigil to be sure when a man is a nagual and when a man is simply a man. You may die if you come into direct physical contact with the nagual"
Don Juan turned to don Genaro and with a beaming smile asked, "Isn't it so, Gerancho?"
"That's so, absolutely so, Juancho," don Genaro replied, and both of them laughed.
Their childlike mirth was very moving to me. The events of the day had been exhausting and I was very emotional. A wave of self-pity engulfed me. I was about to weep as I kept on repeating to myself that whatever they had done to me was irreversible and most likely injurious. Don Juan seemed to be reading my thoughts and shook his head in a gesture of disbelief. He chuckled. I made an effort to stop my internal dialogue, and my self-pity vanished.
"Genaro is very warm," don Juan commented when don Genaro had left. "The design of power was that you found a gentle benefactor."
I did not know what to say. The idea that don Genaro was my benefactor intrigued me no end. I wanted don Juan to tell me more about it. He did not seem inclined to talk. He looked at the sky and at the top of the dark silhouette of some trees at the side of the house. He sat down with his back against a thick forked pole planted almost in front of the door, and told me to sit next to him to his left.
I sat by him. He pulled me closer by the arm until I was touching him. He said that that time of the night was dangerous for me; especially on that occasion. In a very calm voice he gave me a set of instructions: We were not to move from the spot until he saw fit to do so; we were to keep on talking on an even keel without long interruptions; and I had to breathe and blink as if I were facing the 'nagual'.
"Is the nagual around here?" I asked.
"Of course," he said and chuckled.
I practically huddled against don Juan. He began to talk and actually solicited any kind of question from me. He even handed me my notebook and pencil as if I could write in the darkness. His contention was that I needed to be as calm and normal as possible, and there could be no better way of fortifying my 'tonal' than through taking notes. He put the whole matter on a very compelling level. He said that if taking notes was my predilection, then I should be able to do it in complete darkness. There was a tone of challenge in his voice when he said that I could turn the taking of notes into a warrior's task in which case the darkness would be no obstacle.
Somehow, he must have convinced me for I managed to scribble down parts of our conversation. The main topic was don Genaro as my benefactor. I was curious to know when don Genaro had become my benefactor and don Juan coaxed me to remember a supposedly extraordinary event that had happened the day I had met don Genaro, and which served as a proper omen. I could not recollect anything of the sort. I began to recount the experience, As far as I could remember, it was a most unobtrusive and casual meeting which took place in the spring of 1968. Don Juan stopped me.
"If you're dumb enough not to remember," he said, "we'd better leave it that way. A warrior follows the dictums of power. You will remember it when it becomes necessary."
Don Juan said that having a benefactor was a most difficult matter. He used as an example the case of his own apprentice Eligio who had been with him for many years. He said that Eligio had been unable to find a benefactor. I asked him if Eligio would eventually find one. He answered that there was no way of predicting the quirks of power.
He reminded me that once, years before, we had found a group of young Indians roaming around the desert in northern Mexico. He said that he 'saw' that none of them had a benefactor, and that the general surroundings and the mood of the moment were just right for him to give them a hand by showing them the 'nagual'. He was talking about one night when four young men sat by a fire while don Juan put on what I thought to be a spectacular show in which he apparently appeared to each of us in a different guise.
"Those guys knew a great deal," he said. "You were the only greenhorn among them."
"What happened to them afterwards?" I asked.
"Some of them found a benefactor," he replied.
Don Juan said that it was the duty of a benefactor to deliver his ward to power, and that the benefactor imparted to the neophyte [* neophyte- a new participant in some activity] his personal touch as much if not more so than the teacher.
During a short pause in our talk I heard a strange rasping noise at the hack of the house. Don Juan held me down. I had almost stood up as a reaction to it. Before the noise happened, our conversation had been a matter of course for me.
But when the pause occurred and there was a moment of silence, the strange noise popped through it. At that instant I had the certainty that our conversation was an extraordinary event. I had the sensation that the sound of don Juan's words and mine were like a sheet that broke, and that the rasping sound had been deliberately prowling; waiting for a chance to break through.
Don Juan commanded me to sit tight and not to pay attention to the surroundings. The rasping noise reminded me of the sound of a gopher clawing on hard dry ground. The moment I had thought of the simile [* simile- a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds] I also had a visual image of a rodent like the one don Juan had showed me on his palm. It was as if I were falling asleep and my thoughts were turning into visions or dreams.
I began the breathing exercise, and held my stomach with my clasped hands. Don Juan kept on talking, but I was not listening to him. My attention was on the soft rustle of a snake-like thing slithering over small dry leaves. I had a moment of panic and physical revulsion at the thought of a snake crawling on me. I involuntarily put my feet under don Juan's legs, and breathed and blinked frantically.
I heard the noise so close that it seemed to be only a couple of feet away. My panic mounted. Don Juan calmly said that the only way to fend off the 'nagual' was to remain unaltered. He ordered me to stretch my legs and not to focus my attention on the noise. He imperatively demanded that I write or ask questions, and make an effort not to succumb.
After a great struggle I asked him if don Genaro was making the noise. He said that it was the 'nagual' and that I should not mix them. Genaro was the name of the 'tonal'. He then said something else, but I could not understand him. Something was circling around the house and I could not concentrate on our conversation. He commanded me to make a supreme effort. At one moment I found that I was babbling idiocies about my being unworthy. I had a jolt of fear and snapped into a state of great lucidity. Don Juan told me then that it was all right to listen. But there were no sounds.
"The nagual is gone," don Juan said and stood up and went inside.
He lit don Genaro's kerosene lantern and made some food. We ate in silence. I asked him if the 'nagual' was coming back.
"No," he said with a serious expression. "It was just testing you. At this time of night just after the twilight, you should always involve yourself in something. Anything would do. It is only for a short period- an hour perhaps- but in your case a most deadly hour.
"Tonight the nagual tried to make you stumble, but you were strong enough to ward off its assault. On another occasion you succumbed to it and I had to pour water over your body. This time you did fine."
I remarked that the word 'assault' made the event sound very dangerous.
"Made it sound dangerous? That's a weird way of putting it," he said. "I'm not trying to scare you. The actions of the nagual are deadly. I've already told you that, and it is not that Genaro tries to hurt you;. On the contrary, his concern for you is impeccable. But if you don't have enough power to parry the nagual's onslaught, you're dead regardless of my help or Genaro's concern."
After we finished eating, don Juan sat next to me and looked over my shoulder at my notes. I commented that it would probably take me years to assort [* assort- arrange or order by classes or categories] everything that had happened to me during that day. I knew that I had been flooded with perceptions I could not ever hope to understand.
"If you cannot understand, you're in great shape," he said. "It is when you think you understand that you're in a mess. That's from the point of view of a sorcerer, of course. From the point of view of an average man, if you fail to understand you're sinking. In your case I would say that an average man would think that you are disassociated or you're beginning to become disassociated."
I laughed at his choice of words. I knew that he was throwing the concept of disassociation back at me. I had mentioned it to him sometime back in connection with my fears. I assured him that this time I was not going to ask anything about what I had been through.
"I've never put a ban on talking," he said. "We can talk about the nagual to your heart's content as long as you don't try to explain it. If you remember correctly, I said that the nagual is only for witnessing. So, we can talk about what we witnessed and about how we witnessed it.
"You want to take on the explanation of how it is all possible, though, and that is an abomination. [* abomination- an action that arouses disgust] You want to explain the nagual with the tonal. That is stupid especially in your case since you can no longer hide behind your ignorance. You know very well that we make sense in talking only because we stay within certain boundaries, and those boundaries are not applicable to the nagual"
I attempted to clarify the issue. It was not only that I wanted to explain everything from a rational point of view, but my need to explain stemmed from my necessity to maintain order throughout the tremendous onslaughts of chaotic stimuli and perceptions I had had.
Don Juan's comment was that I was trying to defend a point I did not agree with.
"You know damn well that you're indulging." he said. "To maintain order means to be a perfect tonal, and to be a perfect tonal means to be aware of everything that takes place on the island of the tonal. But you're not. So your argument about maintaining order has no truth in it. You only use it to win an argument."
I did not know what to say. Don Juan sort of consoled me by saying that it took a gigantic struggle to clean the island of the 'tonal'. Then he asked me to recount all I had perceived in my second session with the 'nagual'. When I had finished he said that what I had witnessed as a furry crocodile was the epitome of don Genaro's sense of humor.
"It's a pity that you're still so heavy," he said. "You always get hooked by bewilderment and miss Genaro's real art."
"Were you aware of his appearance, don Juan?"
"No. The show was only for you."
"What did you see?"
"Today all I could see was the movement of the nagual, gliding through the trees and whirling around us. Anyone who sees can witness that."
"What about someone who doesn't see?"
"He would witness nothing; just the trees being blown by a wild wind perhaps. We interpret any unknown expression of the nagual as something we know. In this case the nagual might be interpreted as a breeze shaking the leaves, or even as some strange light; perhaps a lightning bug of unusual size.
If a man who doesn't see is pressed, he would say that he thought he saw something but could not remember what. This is only natural. The man would be talking sense. After all, his eyes would have judged nothing extraordinary. Being the eyes of the tonal they have to be limited to the tonal's world, and in that world there is nothing staggeringly new; nothing which the eyes cannot apprehend and the tonal cannot explain."
I asked him about the uncharted perceptions that resulted from their whispering in my ears.
"That was the best part of the whole event," he said. "The rest could be dispensed with, but that was the crown of the day. The rule calls for the benefactor and the teacher to make that final trimming; the most difficult of all acts. Both the teacher and the benefactor must be impeccable warriors to even attempt the feat of splitting a man. You don't know this because it still is beyond your realm, but power had been lenient with you again. Genaro is the most impeccable warrior there is."
"Why is the splitting of a man a great feat?"
"Because it is dangerous. You may have died like a little bug. Or worse yet, we may have never been able to put you back together and you would have remained on that plateau of feeling."
"Why was it necessary to do it to me, don Juan?"
"There is a certain time when the nagual has to whisper in the ear of the apprentice and split him,"
"What does that mean, don Juan?"
"In order to be an average tonal a man must have unity. His whole being must belong to the island of the tonal. Without that unity the man would go berserk. A sorcerer, however, has to break that unity, but without endangering his being. A sorcerer's goal is to last. That is, he doesn't take unnecessary risks. Therefore he spends years sweeping his island until a moment when he could, in a manner of speaking, sneak off it. Splitting a man in two is the gate for such an escape.
"The splitting, which is the most dangerous thing you've ever gone through, was smooth and simple. The nagual was masterful in guiding you. Believe me, only an impeccable warrior can do that. I felt very good for you."
Don Juan put his hand on my shoulder and I had a gigantic urge to weep.
"Am I arriving at a point when you won't see me any more?" I asked.
He laughed and shook his head.
"You indulge like a son of a bitch," he said. "We all do that though. We have different ways: that's all. Sometimes I indulge too. My way is to feel that I have pampered you and made you weak. I know that Genaro has the same feeling about Pablito. He pampers him like a child. But that is the way power set it up to be. Genaro gives Pablito everything he's capable of giving and one cannot wish he would do something else. One cannot criticize a warrior for doing his impeccable best."
He was quiet for a moment. I was too nervous to sit in silence.
"What do you think was happening to me when I felt like I was being sucked by a vacuum?" I asked.
"You were gliding," he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Through the air?"
"No. For the nagual there is no land, or air, or water. At this point you yourself can agree with that. Twice you were in that limbo and you were only at the door of the nagual. You've told me that everything you encountered was uncharted. So the nagual glides, or flies, or does whatever it may do in nagual's time, and that has nothing to do with tonal's time. The two things don't jibe."
As don Juan spoke I felt a tremor in my body. My jaw dropped and my mouth opened involuntarily. My ears unplugged, and I could hear a barely perceptible tingle or vibration. While I was describing my sensations to don Juan I noticed that when I talked it sounded as if someone else were talking. It was a complex sensation that amounted to my hearing what I was going to say before I said it.
My left ear was a source of extraordinary sensations. I felt that it was more powerful and more accurate than my right ear. There was something in it that had not been there before. When I turned around to face don Juan, who was to my right, I became aware that I had a range of clear auditory perception around that ear. It was a physical space, a range within which I could hear everything with incredible fidelity. By turning my head around I could scan the surroundings with my ear.
"The whispering of the nagual did that to you," don Juan said when I described my sensorial experience. "It'll come at times and then vanish. Don't be afraid of it or of any unusual sensation that you may have from now on. But above all, don't indulge and become obsessed with those sensations. I know you will succeed. The time for your splitting was right. Power fixed all that. Now everything depends on you. If you are powerful enough you will sustain the great shock of being split. But if you're incapable of holding on, you will perish. You will begin to wither away; lose weight, become pale, absent-minded, irritable, quiet."
"Perhaps if you would have told me years ago," I said, "what you and don Genaro were doing, I would have enough..."
He raised his hand and did not let me finish.
"That's a meaningless statement," he said. "You once told me that if it wouldn't be for the fact that you're stubborn and given to rational explanations you would be a sorcerer by now. But to be a sorcerer in your case means that you have to overcome stubbornness and the need for rational explanations which stand in your way. What's more, those shortcomings are your road to power. You can't say that power would flow to you if your life would be different.
"Genaro and I have to act the same way you do; within certain limits. Power sets up those limits and a warrior is, let's say, a prisoner of power; a prisoner who has one free choice; the choice to act either like an impeccable warrior, or to act like an ass. In the final analysis, perhaps the warrior is not a prisoner but a slave of power because that choice is no longer a choice for him. Genaro cannot act in any other way but impeccably. To act like an ass would drain him and cause his demise.
"The reason why you're afraid of Genaro is because he has to use the avenue of fright to shrink your tonal. Your body knows that- although your reason may not- and thus your body wants to run away every time Genaro is around."
I mentioned that I was curious to know if don Genaro deliberately set out to scare me. He said that the 'nagual' did strange things; things which were not foreseeable. He gave me, as an example, what had happened between us in the morning when he prevented my turning to my left to look at don Genaro in the tree. He said that he was aware of what his 'nagual' had done although he had no way of knowing about it ahead of time. His explanation of the whole affair was that my sudden movement to the left was a step towards my death, which my 'tonal' was deliberately taking as a suicidal plunge. That movement stirred his 'nagual' and the result was that some part of him fell on top of me.
I made an involuntary gesture of perplexity.
"Your reason is telling you again that you're immortal," he said.
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"An immortal being has all the time in the world for doubts and bewilderment and fears. A warrior, on the other hand, cannot cling to the meanings made under the tonal's order because he knows for a fact that the totality of himself has but a little time on this earth."
I wanted to make a serious point. My fears and doubts and bewilderment were not on a conscious level; and no matter how hard I tried to control them, every time I was confronted with don Juan and don Genaro I felt helpless.
"A warrior cannot be helpless," he said. "or bewildered or frightened; not under any circumstances. For a warrior there is time only for his impeccability; everything else drains his power. Impeccability replenishes it."
"We're back again to my old question, don Juan. What's impeccability?"
"Yes, we're back again to your old question, and consequently we're back again to my old answer. Impeccability is to do your best in whatever you're engaged in."
"But don Juan, my point is that I'm always under the impression I'm doing my best and obviously I'm not."
"It's not as complicated as you make it appear. The key to all these matters of impeccability is the sense of having or not having time. As a rule of thumb, when you feel and act like an immortal being that has all the time in the world, you are not impeccable. At those times you should turn, look around, and then you will realize that your feeling of having time is an idiocy. There are no survivors on this earth!"