The Power of Silence (28 page)

Don Juan
looked at me fixedly and recommended that I lie face down on top of a round
boulder with my arms and legs spread like a frog.

I lay there
for about ten minutes, thoroughly relaxed, almost asleep, until I was jolted
out of my slumber by a soft, sustained hissing growl. I raised my head, looked
up, and my hair stood on end. A gigantic, dark jaguar was squatting on a
boulder, scarcely ten feet from me, right above where don Juan was sitting. The
jaguar, its fangs showing, was glaring straight at me. He seemed ready to jump
on me, "Don't move!" don Juan ordered me softly. "And don't look
at his eyes. Stare at his nose and don't blink. Your life depends on your
stare."

I did what
he told me. The jaguar and I stared at each other for a moment until don Juan
broke the standoff by hurling his hat, like a frisbee, at the jaguar's head.
The jaguar jumped back to avoid being hit, and don Juan let out a loud,
prolonged, and piercing whistle. He then yelled at the top of his voice and
clapped his hands two or three times. It sounded like muffled gunshots.

Don Juan
signaled me to come down from the boulder and join him. The two of us yelled
and clapped our hands until he decided we had scared the jaguar away.

My body was
shaking, yet I was not frightened. I told don Juan that what had caused me the
greatest fear had not been the cat's sudden growl or his stare, but the
certainty that the jaguar had been staring at me long before I had heard him
and lifted my head.

Don Juan
did not say a word about the experience. He was deep in thought. When I began
to ask him if he had seen the jaguar before I had, he made an imperious gesture
to quiet me. He gave me the impression he was ill at ease or even confused.

After a
moment's silence, don Juan signaled me to start walking. He took the lead. We
walked away from the rocks, zigzagging at a fast pace through the bush.

After about
half an hour we reached a clearing in the chaparral where we stopped to rest
for a moment. We had not said a single word and I was eager to know what don
Juan was thinking.

"Why
are we walking in this pattern?" I asked. "Wouldn't it be better to
make a beeline out of here, and fast?"

"No!"
he said emphatically. "It wouldn't be any good. That one is a male jaguar.
He's hungry and he's going to come after us."

"All
the more reason to get out of here fast," I insisted.

"It's
not so easy," he said. "That jaguar is not encumbered by reason.
He'll know exactly what to do to get us. And, as sure as I am talking to you,
he'll read our thoughts."

"What
do you mean, the jaguar reading our thoughts?" I asked.

"That
is no metaphorical statement," he said. "I mean what I say. Big
animals like that have the capacity to read thoughts. And I don't mean guess. I
mean that they know everything directly."

"What
can we do then?" I asked, truly alarmed.

"We ought
to become less rational and try to win the battle by making it impossible for
the jaguar to read us," he replied.

"How
would being less rational help us?" I asked.

"Reason
makes us choose what seems sound to the mind," he said. "For
instance, your reason already told you to run as fast as you can in a straight
line. What your reason failed to consider is that we would have had to run
about six miles before reaching the safety of your car. And the jaguar will
outrun us. He'll cut in front of us and be waiting in the most appropriate
place to jump us.

"A
better but less rational choice is to zigzag."

"How
do you know that it's better, don Juan?" I asked.

"I
know it because my connection to the spirit is very clear," he replied.
"That is to say, my assemblage point is at the place of silent knowledge.
From there I can discern that this is a hungry jaguar, but not one that has
already eaten humans. And he's baffled by our actions. If we zigzag now, the
jaguar will have to make an effort to anticipate us."

"Are
there any other choices beside zigzagging?" I asked.

"There
are only rational choices," he said. "And we don't have all the
equipment we need to back up rational choices. For example, we can head for the
high ground, but we would need a gun to hold it.

"We
must match the jaguar's choices. Those choices are dictated by silent
knowledge. We must do what silent knowledge tells us, regardless of how
unreasonable it may seem."

He began
his zigzagging trot. I followed him very closely, but I had no confidence that
running like that would save us. I was having a delayed panic reaction. The
thought of the dark, looming shape of the enormous cat obsessed me.

The desert
chaparral consisted of tall, ragged bushes spaced four or five feet apart. The
limited rainfall in the high desert did not allow the growth of plants with
thick foliage or of dense underbrush. Yet the visual effect of the chaparral
was of thickness and impenetrable growth.

Don Juan
moved with extraordinary nimbleness and I followed as best as I could. He
suggested that I watch where I stepped and make less noise. He said that the
sound of branches cracking under my weight was a dead giveaway.

I
deliberately tried to step in don Juan's tracks to avoid breaking dry branches.
We zigzagged about a hundred yards in this manner before I caught sight of the
jaguar's enormous dark mass no more than thirty feet behind me.

I yelled at
the top of my voice. Without stopping, don Juan turned around quickly enough to
see the big cat move out of sight. Don Juan let out another piercing whistle
and kept clapping his hands, imitating the sound of muffled gunshots.

In a very
low voice he said that cats did not like to go uphill and so we were going to
cross, at top speed, the wide and deep ravine a few yards to my right.

He gave a
signal to go and we thrashed through the bushes as fast as we could. We slid
down one side of the ravine, reached the bottom, and rushed up the other side.
From there we had a clear view of the slope, the bottom of the ravine, and the
level ground where we had been. Don Juan whispered that the jaguar was
following our scent, and that if we were lucky we would see him running to the
bottom of the ravine, close to our tracks.

Gazing
fixedly at the ravine below us, I waited anxiously to catch a glimpse of the
animal. But I did not see him. I was beginning to think the jaguar might have
run away when I heard the frightening growling of the big cat in the chaparral
just behind us. I had the chilling realization that don Juan had been right. To
get to where he was, the jaguar must have read our thoughts and crossed the
ravine before we had.

Without
uttering a single word, don Juan began running at a formidable speed. I
followed and we zigzagged for quite a while. I was totally out of breath when
we stopped to rest.

The fear of
being chased by the jaguar had not, however, prevented me from admiring don
Juan's superb physical prowess. He had run as if he were a young man. I began
to tell him that he had reminded me of someone in my childhood who had impressed
me deeply with his running ability, but he signaled me to stop talking. He
listened attentively and so did I.

I heard a
soft rustling in the underbrush, right ahead of us. And then the black
silhouette of the jaguar was visible for an instant at a spot in the chaparral
perhaps fifty yards from us.

Don Juan
shrugged his shoulders and pointed in the direction of the animal.

"It
looks like we're not going to shake him off," he said with a tone of
resignation. "Let's walk calmly, as if we were taking a nice stroll in the
park, and you tell me the story of your childhood. This is the right time and
the right setting for it. A jaguar is after us with a ravenous appetite, and
you are reminiscing about your past: the perfect not-doing for being chased by
a jaguar."

He laughed
loudly. But when I told him I had completely lost interest in telling the
story, he doubled up with laughter.

"You
are punishing me now for not wanting to listen to you, aren't you?" he
asked.

And I, of
course, began to defend myself. I told him his accusation was definitely
absurd. I really had lost the thread of the story.

"If a
sorcerer doesn't have self-importance, he doesn't give a rat's ass about having
lost the thread of a story," he said with a malicious shine in his eyes.
"Since you don't have any self-importance left, you should tell your story
now. Tell it to the spirit, to the jaguar, and to me, as if you hadn't lost the
thread at all."

I wanted to
tell him that I did not feel like complying with his wishes, because the story
was too stupid and the setting was overwhelming. I wanted to pick the
appropriate setting for it, some other time, as he himself did with his
stories.

Before I
voiced my opinions, he answered me.

"Both
the jaguar and I can read thoughts," he said, smiling. "If I choose
the proper setting and time for my sorcery stories, it's because they are for
teaching and I want to get the maximum effect from them."

He signaled
me to start walking. We walked calmly, side by side. I said I had admired his
running and his stamina, and that a bit of self-importance was at the core of
my admiration, because I considered myself a good runner.

Then I told
him the story from my childhood I had remembered when I saw him running so
well.

I told him
I had played soccer as a boy and had run extremely well. In fact, I was so
agile and fast that I felt I could commit any prank with impunity because I
would be able to outrun anyone chasing me, especially the old policemen who
patrolled the streets of my hometown on foot. If I broke a street light or
something of the sort, all I had to do was to take off running and I was safe.

But one
day, unbeknownst to me, the old policemen were replaced by a new police corps
with military training. The disastrous moment came when I broke a window in a
Store and ran, confident that my speed was my safeguard. A young policeman took
off after me. I ran as I had never run before, but it was to no avail. The
officer, who was a crack center forward on the police soccer team, had more
speed and stamina than my ten-year-old body could manage. He caught me and
kicked me all the way back to the store with the broken window. Very artfully
he named off all his kicks, as if he were training on a soccer field. He did
not hurt me, he only scared me spitless, yet my intense humiliation was
tempered by a ten-year-old's admiration for his prowess and his talent as a
soccer player.

I told don
Juan that I had felt the same with him that day. He was able to outrun me in
spite of our age difference and my old proclivity for speedy getaways.

I also told
him that for years I had been having a recurrent dream in which I ran so well
that the young policeman was no longer able to overtake me.

"Your
story is more important than I thought," don Juan commented. "I
thought it was going to be a story about your mama spanking you."

The way he
emphasized his words made his statement very funny and very mocking. He added
that at certain times it was the spirit, and not our reason, which decided on
our stories. This was one of those times. The spirit had triggered this
particular story in my mind, doubtlessly because the story was concerned with
my indestructible self-importance. He said that the torch of anger and
humiliation had burned in me for years, and my feelings of failure and
dejection were still intact.

"A
psychologist would have a field day with your story and its present
context," he went on. "In your mind, I must be identified with the
young policeman who shattered your notion of invincibility."

Now that he
mentioned it, I had to admit that that had been my feeling, although I would
not consciously have thought of it, much less voiced it.

We walked
in silence. I was so touched by his analogy that I completely forgot the jaguar
stalking us, until a wild growl reminded me of our situation.

Don Juan
directed me to jump up and down on the long, low branches of the shrubs and
break off a couple of them to make a sort of long broom. He did the same. As we
ran, we used them to raise a cloud of dust, stirring and kicking the dry, sandy
dirt.

"That
ought to worry the jaguar," he said when we stopped again to catch our
breath. "We have only a few hours of daylight left. At night the jaguar is
unbeatable, so we had better start running straight toward those rocky
hills."

He pointed
to some hills in the distance, perhaps half a mile south.

"We've
got to go east," I said. "Those hills are too far south. If we go
that way, we'll never get to my car."

"We
won't get to your car today, anyway," he said calmly. "And perhaps
not tomorrow either. Who is to say we'll ever get back to it?"

I felt a
pang of fear, and then a strange peace took possession of me. I told don Juan
that if death was going to take me in that desert chaparral I hoped it would be
painless.