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gifts: a shawl, a dress, a comb and other
things. That made me feel terrible. I was ashamed because I thought that he was
a man looking for a woman. The Nagual had young girls, what would he want
with an old woman like me? At first I didn't want to wear or even
consider looking at his gifts, but Pablito prevailed on me and I
began to wear them. I also began to be even more afraid of him and didn't want
to be alone with him. I knew that he was a devilish man. I knew
what he had done to his woman."
    I felt compelled to interrupt her. I told her that I had never known of
a woman in don Juan's life.
    "You know who I mean," she said.
    "Believe me, dona Soledad, I don't."
    "Don't give me that. You know that I'm talking about la
Gorda."
    The only "la Gorda" I knew of was Pablito's sister, an
enormously fat girl nicknamed Gorda, Fatso. I had had the feeling,
although no one ever talked about it, that she was not really dona Soledad 's
daughter. I did not want to press her for any more information. I suddenly
remembered that the fat girl had disappeared from the house and nobody could or
dared to tell me what had happened to her.
    "One day I was alone in the front of the house," dona Soledad went on. "I was combing my hair in the sun with the comb that the Nagual had
given me; I didn't realize that he had arrived and was
standing behind me. All of a sudden I felt his hands grabbing me by the chin. I
heard him say very softly that I shouldn't move because my neck
might break. He twisted my head to the left. Not all
the way but a bit. I became very frightened and screamed and tried to wriggle
out of his grip, but he held my head firmly for a long, long
time.
    "When he let go of my chin, I fainted. I don't remember what
happened then. When I woke up I was lying on the ground, right here
where I'm sitting now. The Nagual was gone. I was so ashamed that I
didn't want to see anyone, especially la Gorda. For a long time I even thought
that the Nagual had never twisted my neck and I had had a nightmare."
    She stopped. I waited for an explanation of what had happened. She
seemed distracted, pensive perhaps.
    "What exactly happened, dona Soledad?" I asked, incapable of
containing myself. "Did he do something to you?"
    "Yes. He twisted my neck in order to change the direction of my
eyes," she said and laughed loudly at my look of surprise.
    "I mean, did he. . . ?"
    "Yes. He changed my direction," she went on, oblivious to my
probes. "He did that to you and to all the others."
    "That's true. He did that to me. But why do you think he did
that?"
    "He had to. That is the most important thing to do."
    She was referring to a peculiar act that don Juan had deemed absolutely
necessary. I had never talked about it with anyone. In fact, I
had almost forgotten about it. At the beginning of my apprenticeship,
he once built two small fires in the mountains of northern Mexico. They were perhaps twenty feet apart. He made me stand another twenty feet away from
them, holding my body, especially my head, in a most relaxed and
natural position. He then made me face one fire, and coming from behind me, he
twisted my neck to the left, and aligned my eyes, but not my shoulders, with
the other fire. He held my head in that position for hours, until the fire was extinguished.
The new direction was the southeast, or rather he had aligned the second fire
in a southeasterly direction. I had understood the whole
affair as one of don Juan's inscrutable peculiarities,
one of his nonsensical rites.
    "The Nagual said that all of us throughout our lives develop one
direction to look," she went on. "That becomes the direction of the eyes of
the spirit. Through the years that direction becomes
overused, and weak and unpleasant, and since we are bound to that particular
direction we become weak and unpleasant ourselves. The day the Nagual twisted
my neck and held it until I fainted
out of fear, he gave me a new direction."
    "What direction did he give you?"
    "Why do you ask