HTML EDITOR:
...As most people do, you associate sorcery with bizarre behavior, rituals, drugs, incantations."...
"True sorcery," Mr. Flores interjected, "does not allow for human interference."
END HTML EDITOR
Joe Cortez parked his van at the bottom of a hill.
He came around to open my door and with a gallant flair helped me alight from the car.
I felt relieved that we had finally stopped, although I couldn't imagine why: We were in the middle of nowhere.
We had been driving since early morning.
The day's heat, the flat desert, the merciless sun, and the dust of the road were but a vague memory as I breathed in the cold, heavy night air.
Agitated by the wind, the air swirled about us like something palpable, something alive.
There was no moon. And the stars, incredible in number and brilliance, only seemed to intensify our isolation. Under that uneasy splendor, the hills and the desert stretched all around us, nearly invisible, full of shadows and murmuring sounds.
I tried to orient myself by looking at the sky, but I didn't know how to identify the constellations.
"We're facing east," Joe Cortez whispered, as if I had spoken out loud; then patiently he tried to teach me the major constellations in the summer sky.
I could only remember the star Vega, because the name reminded me of a seventeenth-century Spanish writer, Lope de Vega.
While we sat in silence on the top of his van looking at the sky, my mind wandered through the events of our journey.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, while we were eating in a Japanese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, he had asked me, out of the blue, if I would accompany him to Sonora for a few days.
"I would love to go," I said impulsively. "The school term is over. I'm free. When do you plan to leave?"
"Tonight!" he said. "In fact, right after we finish our meal."
I laughed, certain that his invitation had been a joke. "I can't leave on such short notice," I pointed out. "What about tomorrow?"
"Tonight," he insisted softly, then held out his hand to clasp mine in a formal handshake.
Only when I saw the delight and mischief in his eyes did I realize that he wasn't saying good-bye but sealing an agreement.
"When decisions are made, they have to be acted upon immediately," he pronounced, leaving the words hanging in midair in front of me. Both of us stared at them as though we could indeed see their size and shape.
I nodded, hardly aware of having made the decision. The chance had been there, outside of me, ready, inevitable. I didn't have to do anything to bring it about.
Suddenly, with shattering vividness, I remembered my other trip to Sonora a year before.
My body stiffened with fear and shock as images- disconnected in their sequence- stirred deep within me.
The events of that odd trip had faded from my conscious mind so totally and absolutely that, only until a moment before, it was as if they had never taken place. But now the events were as clear in my mind as they were the day they happened.
Shivering not with cold but with an undefinable dread, I turned to face Joe Cortez; ready to tell him about that trip.
He was staring at me with an odd intensity: His eyes were like tunnels, deep and dark: They absorbed my dismay. But they also made the images of that trip recede.
Once the images had lost their impulse, all that was left in my mind was a trite, empty thought.
I believed at that instant, in my usual assertive manner, that I couldn't tell anything to Joe Cortez, because a true adventure always dictates its own course and the most memorable, exciting events in my life had always been those whose course I had not interfered with.
"What do you want me to call you? Joe Cortez or Carlos Castaneda?" I asked with nauseating feminine joviality.
His copper-colored face crinkled up in a smile. "I'm your childhood companion. Give me a name. I call you nibelunga."
I couldn't come up with a suitable name. I asked him, "Is there any order to your names?"
"Well," he mused, "Joe Cortez is a cook, a gardener, a handy-man; a solicitous and thoughtful man. Carlos Castaneda is a man from the academic world, but I don't think you have met him yet."
He looked at me fixedly and smiled: There was something childlike and intensely trusting about that smile.
I decided to call him Joe Cortez.
We spent the night- in separate rooms- in a motel in Yuma, Arizona.
After leaving Los Angeles, all through the long drive I had worried myself sick about the sleeping arrangements.
I had at moments feared he would pounce on me before we got to the motel.
After all, he was a strong young man, too self-confident and aggressive. I wouldn't have been so worried if he had been American or European. But because he was Latin, I simply knew what his assumptions were. Accepting his invitation to spend a few days with him meant that I was willing to share his bed.
His thoughtfulness and considerate behavior toward me throughout the long drive was a detail that fit perfectly with what I thought and expected of him: He was preparing the ground.
It was late when we got to the motel. He went to the manager's office to see about our rooms.
I stayed in the car, imagining scenario upon lurid scenario.
I had been so absorbed with my fantasies, I failed to notice his return from the office.
Hearing him dangle a set of keys before me, I jumped in my seat and dropped the brown paper sack I had been holding, unconsciously clutched against my breast. It contained all my toiletries, which we had bought on the way.
"I got you a room at the back of the motel," he said. "It's away from the highway."
He pointed to the door a few steps away from us and added, "I'll sleep in this one, close to the street. I'm used to sleeping through any kind of noise." He chuckled to himself. "These were the only two rooms they had left."
Disappointed, I took the key from his hand.
All my scenarios fell apart. I wasn't going to have the opportunity to refuse him. Not that I really wanted to do so. Yet my very soul clamored for a victory, no matter how small.
"I don't see why we have to rent two rooms," I said with studied casualness.
My hand was shaking as I retrieved the toiletries on the floor and stuffed them into the paper sack.
What I had said next sounded incredible to me, yet I couldn't stop myself. "The traffic won't let you rest, and you need your sleep as much as I do."
I didn't for a moment believe that anyone could sleep through the noise coming from the highway.
Without looking at him, I got out of the car, and then I heard myself propose, "We could sleep in the same room- in two beds, that is."
I stood there for a moment, numbed and appalled. Never before had I done such a thing, nor had I had such a schizoid reaction.
I was saying things that I didn't mean. Or did I mean them but didn't know what I felt?
His mirth put an end to my confusion. He laughed so hard people turned on the light in one of the rooms and yelled at us to shut up.
"Stay in the same room and have you take advantage of me in the middle of the night," he said in between waves of hilarity. "Right after my shower. No way!"
I blushed so intensely my ears were burning. I wanted to die of shame.
This was not one of my scenarios.
I went back inside the car and slammed the door. "Take me to the Greyhound bus," I hissed at him with suppressed wrath. "Why in the hell did I come with you? I should have my head examined!"
Still laughing, he opened the door and gently pulled me out. "Let's sleep not only in the same room but in the same bed."
He looked at me sheepishly. "Please, let me make love to you!" he pleaded as if he really meant it.
Aghast, I tore myself loose from his hold and yelled, "Not in your fucking life!"
"There," he said. "This is such a fierce refusal that I dare not insist."
He reached for my hand and kissed it. "You have refused me and put me in my place. No more problems. You're vindicated."
I turned away from him, ready to weep.
My chagrin was not due to his unwillingness to spend the night with me- had he expected to do so, I truly wouldn't have known what to do- but to the fact that he knew me even better than I knew myself.
I had refused to give credence to what I thought was his way of flattering himself. He was able to see through me. Suddenly, it frightened me.
He moved closer and hugged me. It was a sweet, simple embrace.
As had happened before, my turmoil vanished completely, as though it had never existed.
I hugged him back and said yet the most incredible thing, "This is the most exciting adventure of my life."
I immediately wanted to retract my statement. The words that had escaped were not mine. I didn't even know what I meant. This was not the most exciting adventure of my life. I had taken many exciting trips. I had been around the world.
My irritation reached its peak when he kissed me goodnight, swiftly and softly, as one kisses a child, and I liked it against my will. I had no will.
He pushed me down the corridor toward my room.
Cursing myself, I sat down on my bed and wept in frustration, in anger and self-pity.
Since as far back in life as I could remember, I had always had my way. I was accustomed to it. To be confused and not know what I wanted was a brand-new sensation for me and a most unwelcome one.
I slept restlessly with my clothes on until he banged on the door, early in the morning, to wake me up.
We drove all day, meandering along out-of-the-way roads.
As he had told me, Joe Cortez was indeed a solicitous man. Throughout the long drive, he was the kindest, the most considerate and entertaining companion one could wish for. He pampered me with food and songs and stories. He had an astonishingly deep yet clear baritone voice.
And he knew all my favorite songs. Corny love songs from every South American country, all their national anthems, old ballads, and even nursery rhymes.
His stories made me laugh until my abdominal muscles hurt. As a storyteller, he kept me enraptured with every turn of his tale.
He seemed to be a born mimic. His uncanny imitation of every conceivable South American accent- including the distinctive Portuguese of Brazil- was more than mimicry, it was magic.
"We'd better climb down from the car's roof." Joe Cortez's voice broke into my reveries. "It gets cold at night in the desert."
"It's a tough environment," I said, wishing we would get back into the van and drive off.
Ill at ease, I watched him retrieve some bags from the car. He had bought all kinds of presents for the people we were going to visit.
"Why did you park here in the middle of nowhere?"
"You ask the dumbest questions, nibelunga," he replied. "I parked here because it is here where our car journey ends."
"Have we arrived at our mysterious destination that you can't talk about?" I asked in a sarcastic tone.
The only thing that had marred the enchanting drive had been his refusal to tell me where exactly we were going.
In a matter of milliseconds, I became so angry with him that I was ready to punch him in the nose.
The thought that my sudden irritability was simply the result of a long, exhausting day, brought me a needed sense of relief.
"I'm getting nasty now, but I don't mean to," I said in a jovial tone that sounded phony even to me.
My voice was so strained it revealed just how much it cost me to hold back my temper. It worried me that I could get mad at him so easily and so quickly.
"You really don't know how to converse," he said with a big smile. "You only know how to coerce."
"Oh! I see, Joe Cortez has left. Are you going to start insulting me again, Carlos Castaneda?"
He chortled gaily at my remark, which by then wasn't meant to be funny. "This place is not in the middle of nowhere," he said. The city of Arizpe is nearby."
"And the U.S. border is to the north," I recited. "And Chihuahua to the east. And Los Angeles is somewhere northwest of here."
He shook his head disparagingly and took the lead.
Silently, we walked through the chaparral, which I could feel more than see, along a winding narrow trail.
The path grew wider as we approached a vast clearing fenced in by short mesquite trees.
The silhouettes of two houses could be discerned in the darkness. The bigger of the two had lights inside. The small dark house stood some distance away.
We walked up to the large house. Pale moths fluttered in the light slanting through the windowpanes.
"I have to warn you that the people you're going to meet are a bit strange," he said in a whisper. "Don't say anything. Let me do the talking."
"I always say whatever I please," I asserted. "And I don't like to be told how to behave.
"I'm not a child. Besides, my social manners are impeccable. I can assure you that I won't embarrass you."
"Get off your high horse, goddamn it!" he hissed in a tightly controlled voice.
"Don't treat me like I am your wife, Carlos Castaneda," I yelled at the top of my voice, pronouncing his last name the way I felt it ought to be pronounced: with a tilde on the n, which I knew he much disliked.
But he didn't get angry: It made him laugh as he so often did when I expected him to explode with wrath.
He never does, I thought, and sighed despondently.
He had the most extraordinary equanimity. Nothing ever seemed to ruffle him or cause him to lose his temper. Even when he shouted, it somehow always sounded phony.
Just as he was about to knock, the door opened.
A thin man formed a black shadow in the rectangle of light. With an impatient gesture of his arm, he bade us in.
We entered a plant-filled vestibule. Swiftly, as though afraid to show his face, the man moved ahead of us and, without a word of greeting, opened an inner door with rattly glass panes.
We followed him along a dark corridor and across an inside patio, where a young man sitting on a rush chair was playing a guitar and singing in a soft, grief-stricken voice.
He paused the instant he noticed us. He didn't return my greeting and resumed his playing as we turned a corner and went down another equally dark corridor.
"Why is everyone so impolite?" I whispered into Joe Cortez's ear. "Are you sure this is the right house?"
He chuckled softly. "I've told you, they are eccentric," he nurmured.
"Are you sure you know these people?" I insisted.
"What kind of a question is that?" he snapped in a quiet yet nenacing tone. "Of course I know them."
We had reached a lighted doorway. His pupils gleamed. "Are we going to stay here overnight?" I asked uneasily.
"I've no idea," he whispered in my ear and then kissed my cheek. "And please, don't ask any more questions. I'm trying my best to accomplish a nearly impossible maneuver."
"What maneuver is that?" I whispered back.
A sudden realization made me feel anxious and uncomfortable but also excited. The word maneuver had been the clue.
Seemingly aware of my innermost feelings, he shifted the bags he was carrying into one arm and gently took my hand and kissed it- his touch sent pleasurable shivers throughout my body- and led me across the threshold.
We entered a large, dimly lit, sparsely furnished living room.
It was not what I expected a provincial Mexican living room to look like. The walls and the low ceiling were immaculately white: There wasn't a picture or a wall decoration to mar that whiteness.
Against the wall opposite the door stood a large couch.
On it sat three elderly, elegantly dressed women. I couldn't quite see their faces, but in the dim light they looked peculiarly alike- without actually resembling one another- and vaguely familiar.
I was so baffled by this I barely noticed the two people sitting on the spacious armchairs nearby.
In my eagerness to reach the three women, I took an involuntary giant leap. I had failed to notice that the room had a split-level brick floor. As I steadied myself, I noticed the beautiful oriental rug and the woman sitting in one of the armchairs.
"Delia Flores!" I exclaimed. "My God! I can't believe this!"
I touched her, for I needed to make sure she was not a figment of my imagination.
"What is going on?" I asked instead of greeting her.
At that same instant I realized that the women on the couch were the same women I had met the previous year at the healer's house.
I stood gaping, frozen, my mind dazed with shock.
A quick, faint smile twitched the corners of their mouths as they turned toward the white-haired old man sitting in the other armchair.
"Mariano Aureliano." My voice was but a soft, shaky whisper.
All the energy was gone from me.
I turned to face Joe Cortez and in that same feeble voice accused him of tricking me.
I wanted to scream at him, insult him, do him bodily harm, but I had no strength left in me, not even to lift my arm.
I barely realized that, like me, he stood rooted to the floor, his face ashen with shock and bewilderment.
Mariano Aureliano rose from his chair and moved toward me, arms extended to embrace me. "How happy I am to see you again."
His voice was soft and his eyes shone brightly with excitement and joy.
He lifted me off the ground in a bear's hug.
My body was limp. I had no strength- or desire- to reciprocate his warm embrace. I could not say a word.
He put me down, and went over to greet Joe Cortez with that same effusive warmth.
Delia Flores and her friends came over to where I stood.
One by one they embraced me and whispered something in my ear.
I felt comforted by their affectionate touches and by their soft voices, but I didn't understand a thing they said. My mind wasn't there with me.
I could feel and hear but I couldn't make sense of what I felt and heard.
Mariano Aureliano gazed at me and said in a clear voice that pierced the fog of my mind, "You haven't been tricked. I told you from the beginning that I would blow you to him."
"So you're..." I shook my head, unable to finish my sentence as it finally dawned on me that Mariano Aureliano was the man Joe Cortez had told me so much about: Juan Matus, the sorcerer who had changed the course of his life.
I opened my mouth to say something but shut it again.
I had the sensation of being cut loose from my own body.
My mind couldn't accommodate any further astonishment; and then I saw Mr. Flores emerge from the shadows. Upon realizing that he was the man who had let us in, I simply passed out.
When I regained consciousness, I was lying on the couch.
I felt extraordinarily well rested and free of anxiety. Wondering how long I had been out, I sat up and lifted my arm to look at my wristwatch.
"You have been out for exactly two minutes and twenty seconds," Mr. Flores announced, studying his watchless wrist.
He was sitting on a leather ottoman near the couch. In a sitting position he appeared much taller than he did standing up, for his legs were short and his torso long.
"How terribly dramatic to swoon away," he said, coming to sit beside me on the couch:
"I'm truly sorry we have frightened you."
His yellow-amber eyes, shiny with laughter, belied the genuinely concerned tone of his voice. "And I do apologize for not greeting you at the door."
His face reflected a bemusement bordering on fascination as he pulled my braid. "With your hair hidden under the hat and with that heavy leather jacket I thought you were a boy."
I stood up and had to hold on to the couch.
I was still a bit dizzy. Uncertainly, I looked around me.
The women were no longer in the room, and neither was Joe Cortez.
Mariano Aureliano was sitting in one of the armchairs, staring fixedly ahead of him. Perhaps he was asleep with his eyes open.
"When I first saw the two of you holding hands," Mr. Flores went on, "I was afraid that Charlie Spider had turned queer."
He said the whole sentence in English. He pronounced his words beautifully and precisely and with genuine relish.
"Charlie Spider?" I laughed at the name and at his formal English pronunciation. "Who is he?"
"Don't you know?" he asked, his eyes wide with genuine puzzlement.
"No, I don't. Should I know?"
He scratched his head, perplexed by my denial, then asked, "With whom have you been holding hands?"
"Carlos held my hand as we stepped into this room."
"There you are," Mr. Flores said, gazing at me with rapt approval, as if I had resolved a particularly difficult riddle.
Then seeing my still-mystified expression he added, "Carlos Castaneda is not only Joe Cortez, but he's also Charlie Spider."
"Charlie Spider," I mumbled softly. "That's a very catchy name."
Of all the three names, it was the one I liked best, no doubt because I was exceedingly fond of spiders. They didn't frighten me in the least, not even big, tropical spiders. The corners of my apartment were always spotted with spider webs. Whenever I cleaned, I could not bring myself to destroy those gauzy webs.
"Why does he call himself Charlie Spider?" I asked curiously.
"Different names for different situations." Mr. Flores recited the answer as if it were a slogan. "The one who should explain all this to you is Mariano Aureliano."
"Is Mr. Aureliano's name also Juan Matus?"
Mr. Flores nodded emphatically. "It most certainly is," he said, with a broad, gleeful smile. "He also has different names for different situations."
"How about yourself, Mr. Flores? Do you also have different names?"
"Flores is my only name. Genaro Flores." His tone was flirtatious.
He leaned toward me and in an insinuating whisper proposed, "You can call me Genarito."
I shook my head involuntarily.
There was something about him that scared me more than Mariano Aureliano did.
On a rational level, I couldn't decide what it was that made me feel this way.
Outwardly, Mr. Flores seemed much more approachable than the other man. He was childlike, playful, and easygoing. And yet, I didn't feel at ease with him.
"The reason I only have one name," Mr. Flores broke into my reveries, "is that I am not a nagual."
"And what is a nagual?"
"Ah, that's a terribly difficult thing to explain." He smiled disarmingly. "Only Mariano Aureliano or Isidore Baltazar can explain that."
"Who is Isidore Baltazar?"
"Isidore Baltazar is the new nagual."
"Don't tell me any more, please," I said fretfully.
Holding my hand to my forehead I sat down again on the couch. "You're confusing me, Mr. Flores, and I'm still kind of weak."
I looked at him pleadingly and asked, "Where is Carlos?"
"Charlie Spider is spinning some spiderish dream." Mr. Flores said the whole sentence in his extravagantly pronounced English then chuckled contentedly as though he were savoring a particularly clever joke.
He glanced gleefully at Mariano Aureliano- still staring fixedly at the wall- then back at me and back at his friend.
He must have sensed my growing apprehension, for he shrugged helplessly, held up his hands in a resigned gesture, and said, "Carlos, also known as Isidore Baltazar, went to visit..."
"He left?" My shriek made Mariano Aureliano turn to look at me.
I was more distraught at being left alone with the two old men than I was about learning that Carlos Castaneda was known by yet another name, and that he was the new nagual, whatever that meant.
Mariano Aureliano rose from his chair, bowed deeply, and, holding out his hand to help me up, said, "What could possibly be more delightful and rewarding for two old men than to guard you until you awoke from your dreams?"
His engaging smile and his old-fashioned courtesy were irresistible.
I relaxed instantly. "I can't think of anything more delightful," I cheerfully agreed and let him lead me to a brightly lit dining room across the corridor, to an oval-shaped mahogany table at the far end of the room.
Gallantly, he held out a chair for me, waited until I was comfortably seated, then said that it was not too late for supper and that he would go himself to the kitchen and bring me something delicious to eat.
My offer to help him was graciously rejected.
Mr. Flores, instead of walking to the table, cartwheeled across the room, calculating the distance with such precision he landed a few inches away from the table.
Grinning, he sat beside me. His face showed no trace of exertion: He wasn't even out of breath.
"In spite of your denial that you aren't an acrobat, I believe that you and your friends are part of some magic show," I said.
Mr. Flores sprang from his chair, his face crinkling with mischief. "You're absolutely right. We are part of some magic show!" he exclaimed, reaching for one of the two earthenware jugs standing on the long sideboard.
He poured me a cup of hot chocolate. "I make a meal of it by eating a piece of cheese with it." He cut me a slice of Manchego cheese.
Together they were superb.
I wanted seconds, but he didn't offer me any.
I thought that a cup- and it had only been half full- was not enough. I had always been partial to chocolate and could eat inordinate amounts of it without ill effects.
I was certain that if I concentrated on my desire to have more of it, he would be obliged to pour me another cup without my having to ask. I was able to do this as a child when I wanted something badly enough.
Greedily, I watched him remove two extra cups and two saucers from the tall china closet.
I noticed that between the crystal, the china, and the silverware on the shelves stood an odd assortment of prehispanic clay figurines and plastic prehistoric monsters.
"This is the witches' house," Mr. Flores said in a conspiratorial tone, as if to explain the incongruity of the decor in the china closet.
"Mariano Aureliano's wives?" I asked daringly.
He didn't answer but gestured for me to turn around. Mariano Aureliano was standing right behind me.
"The same ones," Mariano Aureliano said cheerfully, placing a porcelain tureen on the table. "The same witches who made this delicious oxtail soup."
With a silver ladle he served me a plateful and urged me to add to it a wedge of lime and a slice of avocado.
I did so, then devoured it all in a few gulps.
I ate several platefuls, until I felt physically satisfied, almost stuffed.
We sat around the table for a long time. The oxail soup had the most soothing effect on me.
I was at ease. Something that was usually very nasty in me had been turned off.
My whole being, body and spirit, was thankful that I didn't have to use up energy to defend myself.
Nodding his head, as though silently confirming each of my thoughts, Mariano Aureliano watched me with keen, amused eyes.
I was about to address him as Juan Matus, when he anticipated my intent and said, "I'm Juan Matus for Isidore Baltazar.
"For you, I am the nagual Mariano Aureliano."
Smiling, he leaned closer and whispered in a confidential tone, "The man who drove you here is the new nagual, the nagual Isidore Baltazar. That's the name you should use when you talk to him or about him.
"You're not quite asleep but not quite awake either," Mariano Aureliano went on explaining, "so you'll be able to understand and remember everything we say to you."
Seeing that I was about to interrupt him, he added sternly, "And tonight, you're not going to ask stupid questions."
It wasn't so much his tone, but a force, an edge to him that was chilling. It paralyzed my tongue; my head, however, of its own accord, made a nodding gesture of affirmation.
"You have to test her," Mr. Flores reminded his friend.
A definite wicked gleam appeared in Mr. Flores' eyes as he added, "Or better yet, let me test her myself."
Mariano Aureliano paused, a long, deliberate moment charged with ominous possibilities, and regarded me critically, as if my features would give him a clue to some important secret.
Mesmerized by his keen, piercing eyes, I didn't so much as blink.
He nodded thoughtfully, and Mr. Flores asked me in a deep, grave tone, "Are you in love with Isidore Baltazar?"
And I'll be damned if I didn't say yes in a mechanical, unanimated voice.
Mr. Flores moved closer, until our heads almost touched, and in a whisper that shook with suppressed laughter asked, "Are you really madly, madly in love with him?"
I said yes again, and both men burst into loud, elated guffaws.
The sound of their laughter, bouncing around the room like ping-pong balls, finally broke my trance-like state. I hooked onto the sound and pulled myself out of the spell.
"What in the name of hell is this," I shouted at the top of ny voice.
Startled, both men jumped out of their chairs.
They looked at me, then at each other, and burst out laughing again with ecstatic abandon.
The more eloquent my insults, the greater their mirth. There was something so infectious about their laughter, I couldn't help but giggle, too.
As soon as we had all calmed down, Mariano Aureliano and Mr. Flores bombarded me with questions.
They were particularly interested in how and when I first met Isidore Baltazar.
Every absurd little detail overjoyed them.
By the time I had gone over the events for the fourth and fifth time, I had either improved and enlarged my story with each telling, or I had remembered details I wouldn't have dreamed I could remember.
"Isidore Baltazar saw through you and through the whole thing," Mariano Aureliano judged when I finally finished with my various accounts. "But he doesn't see well enough yet.
"He couldn't even conceive that I had sent you to him."
He regarded me wickedly and corrected himself. "It wasn't really I who sent you to him. It was the spirit.
"The spirit chose me to do its bidding, though, and I blew you to him when you were most powerful, in the midst of your dreaming-awake."
He spoke lightly, almost listlessly: Only his eyes conveyed the urgency of his knowledge. "Perhaps your dreaming-awake power was the reason Isidore Baltazar didn't realize who you were, even though he was seeing; even though the spirit let him know the very first time he set eyes on you.
"A display of lights in the fog is the ultimate giveaway. How stupid of Isidore Baltazar not to see the obvious."
He chuckled softly, and I nodded in agreement, without knowing what I was agreeing to.
"That'll show you that to be a sorcerer is no big deal," he continued. "Isidore Baltazar is a sorcerer.
"To be a man of knowledge is something else. For that, sorcerers have to wait sometimes a lifetime."
"What's the difference?" I asked.
"A man of knowledge is a leader," he explained, his voice low, subtly mysterious:
"Sorcerers need leaders to lead us into and through the unknown.
"A leader is revealed through his actions.
"Leaders have no price tag on their heads, meaning that there is no way to buy them or bribe them or cajole them or mystify them."
He settled more comfortably in his chair and went on to say that all the people in his group had made it a point to study leaders throughout the ages in order to see if any of them fulfilled the requirements.
"Have you found any?"
"Some," he admitted. "Those we have found could have been naguals."
He pressed his finger against my lips and added, "Naguals are, then, natural leaders; men of tremendous energy who become sorcerers by adding one more track to their repertoire: the unknown.
"If those sorcerers succeed in becoming men of knowledge, then there is practically no limit to what they can do."
"Can women--" He didn't let me finish.
"Women, as you will learn someday, can do infinitely more complex things than that," he affirmed.
"Did Isidore Baltazar remind you of someone you met before?" Mr. Flores interrupted.
"Well," I began expansively, "I felt thoroughly at ease with him.
"I felt as if I had known him all my life. He reminded me of someone perhaps in my childhood; a forgotten childhood friend perhaps."
"So you really don't remember meeting him before?" Mr. Flores interjected.
"You mean at Esperanza's house?" I asked, wondering whether I had seen him at the healer's place and didn't recall it.
He shook his head disappointedly.
Then, apparently no longer interested in my response, he went on to ask if I had seen someone waving at us on our way to the house.
"No," I said. "I didn't seen anyone waving at us."
"Think hard," he insisted.
I told the two men that after Yuma, instead of going east to Nogales on Highway 8- the most logical route- Isidore Baltazar headed south into Mexico, then east through "El Gran Desierto," then north again into the United States through Sonoyta, to Ajo, Arizona, and back into Mexico to Caborca, where we had a most delicious lunch of beef tongue in a green chili sauce.
"After getting into the car with a full stomach, I hardly paid any attention to the road," I admitted. "I know we passed through Santa Ana, and then we headed north again to Cananea, and then south again. A veritable mess, if you ask me."
"Can't you remember seeing anyone on the road?" Mr. Flores insisted. "Anyone waving at you?"
I shut my eyes tightly in an effort to visualize anyone waving at us, but my memory of the trip was one of stories and songs and of physical exhaustion.
And then as I was about to open my eyes, the image of a man flashed before me.
I told them that I vaguely recalled there had been a young man in the outskirts of one of those towns who I thought was trying to catch a ride.
"He might have waved at us," I said. "But I'm not sure."
Both men chuckled like children trying hard not to give away a secret.
"Isidore Baltazar wasn't too sure of finding us," Mariano Aureliano remarked gleefully. "That's why he followed this outlandish route.
"He followed the sorcerers' path; the coyote trail."
"Why wouldn't he be sure of finding you?" I interrupted.
"He didn't know whether he would find us until he saw the young man waving at him," Mariano Aureliano explained. "That young man is a sentry from the other world.
"His waving was a sign it was all right to continue. Isidore Baltazar should have known then who you really were, but he is very much like you; extremely cautious: And when he's not cautious, he's extremely reckless."
He paused for a moment to let the words sink in then added meaningfully, "Moving between those two points is the surest way to miss the boat. Cautiousness blinds as surely as recklessness."
"I can't understand the logic of all this," I murmured wearily.
Mariano Aureliano elucidated, "Whenever Isidore Baltazar brings a guest, he has to heed the sentry's signal before he can continue on his journey."
"Once he brought a girl he was in love with." Mr. Flores chuckled, closing his eyes as if transported by his own memory of the girl:
"A tall, dark-haired girl. Strong girl. Big feet. Nice face.
"He drove all over Baja California, and the sentry never let him through."
"Do you mean he brings his girlfriends?" I asked with morbid curiosity. "How many has he brought?"
"Quite a few," Mr. Flores said candidly:
"He did that, of course, entirely on his own.
"Your case is different," he pointed out.
"You're not his girlfriend: You were just coming back.
"Isidore Baltazar nearly croaked when he found out he was so stupid to miss all the indications of the spirit. He was merely your chauffeur. We were waiting for you."
What would have happened if the sentry hadn't been there?"
What always occurs when Isidore Baltazar comes accompanied," Mariano Aureliano replied:
"He wouldn't have found us, because it's not up to him to choose whom to bring into the sorcerers' world."
His voice was enticingly soft as he added, "Only those the spirit has pointed out may knock on our door, after they have been ushered into it by one of us."
I was about to interrupt, then remembering his admonition that I wasn't to ask stupid questions, I quickly pressed my hand against my mouth.
Grinning appreciatively, Mariano Aureliano went on to say that in my case Delia had brought me into their world. "She's one of the two columns, so to speak, that make the door of our door.
"The other one is Clara. You'll meet her soon."
There was genuine admiration in his eyes and in his voice as he went on to say, "Delia crossed the border just to bring you home.
"The border is an actual fact, but sorcerers use it symbolically.
"You were on the other side and had to be brought here, to this side.
"Over on the other side is the daily world, here on this side is the world of sorcerers.
"Delia ushered you in smoothly; a real professional job. It was in impeccable maneuver that you will appreciate more and more as time passes."
Mariano Aureliano half-rose from his chair and reached for the porcelain compote on the sideboard.
He placed it in front of me. "Help yourself. They're delicious."
Enraptured, I gazed at the pulpy dry apricots on the hand-painted dish then tried one.
They were more than wonderful. I put three in my mouth.
Mr. Flores winked at me. "Go ahead," he urged me. "Put all of them in your mouth before we take the plate away."
I blushed and tried to apologize with a mouth full of apricots.
"Don't apologize!" Mariano Aureliano exclaimed. "Be yourself, but be yourself in control.
"If you want to finish the apricots, then finish them, and that should be all there is to it.
"What you should never do is finish them, and then feel sorry you did."
"Well, I'll finish them," I said. And that made them laugh.
"Do you know that you met Isidore Baltazar last year?" Mr. Flores said.
He was balancing so precariously on his tilted chair, I feared he would fall backwards and crash into the china closet.
A wicked glint of delight dawned in Mr. Flores' eyes as he began to hum a well-known ranchera song. Instead of the words that went with it, he made up a little ditty that told the story of Isidore Baltazar, a famous cook in Tucson: A cook who never lost his cool, not even when he was accused of putting dead cockroaches in the food.
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "The cook! The cook in the coffee shop was Isidore Baltazar! But that can't be true," I mumbled. "I don't think he would..." I stopped myself in midsentence.
I kept staring at Mariano Aureliano, hoping to discover something in his face, in that aquiline nose, in those piercing eyes.
I shook involuntarily, as if I were suddenly chilled. There was something savage in his cold eyes.
"Yes?" he prompted me. "You don't think he would...?" he urged me with a movement of his head to finish my sentence.
I was going to say, inanely, that I didn't think Isidore Baltazar could lie to me so despicably. I couldn't quite bring myself to say it, though.
Mariano Aureliano's eyes became even harder, but I was too upset; too sorry for myself to feel frightened.
"So, I was tricked after all," I finally blurted out, glowering at him. "Isidore Baltazar knew all along who I was. It's all a game."
"It's all a game," Mariano Aureliano readily agreed. "A marvelous game, though. The only game worth playing."
He paused as if to give me time to complain some more.
But before I had a chance to do so, he reminded me of the wig he had pulled over my hair.
"If you didn't recognize Isidore Baltazar- who wasn't disguised- what makes you think that he recognized you in your poodle outfit?"
Mariano Aureliano kept watching me. His eyes had lost their hardness: Now they were sad, weary.
"You weren't tricked. You weren't even enticed. Not that I wouldn't do so if I deemed it necessary," he noted in a light, soft tone:
"I told you what was what from the beginning.
"You have witnessed stupendous events; still you haven't noticed them.
"As most people do, you associate sorcery with bizarre behavior, rituals, drugs, incantations."
He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a mere whisper, then added that true sorcery was a most subtle and exquisite manipulation of perception.
"True sorcery," Mr. Flores interjected, "does not allow for human interference."
"But Mr. Aureliano claims that he blew me to Isidore Baltazar," I pointed out with immature impertinence. "Isn't that interfering?"
"I'm a nagual," Mariano Aureliano said simply. "I'm the nagual Mariano Aureliano, and the fact that I am the nagual enables me to manipulate perception."
I had paid close attention to his words, but I didn't have the vaguest idea what he meant by manipulating perception. Out of sheer nervousness, I reached for the last dry apricot on the plate.
"You're going to get sick," Mr. Flores said. "You're so tiny, and you're such a super pain in the... eye."
Mariano Aureliano came to stand behind me, then pressed my back in such a way it made me cough up the last apricot I had had in my mouth.