The Active Side of Infinity (23 page)

Putting an enormous emphasis on his words, he said that what we call the
senses
in organisms
is nothing but degrees of awareness.
He maintained that if we accept that the senses are the
dark
sea
of awareness,
we have to admit that the interpretation that the
senses make of sensory data is
also the
dark sea of awareness.
He
explained at length that to face the world around us in the
terms
that we do is the result of the interpretation system of mankind with which
every human being is equipped. He also said that every organism in existence
has to have an interpretation
system that permits it to function in
its surroundings.

"The sorcerers who came after the apocalyptic upheavals I told you
about," he continued,
"saw
that at the moment of death, the
dark
sea of awareness
sucked in, so to speak, through the
assemblage
point,
the awareness of living creatures. They also
saw
that the
dark
sea of awareness
had a moment's, let's say, hesitation
when it was faced with sorcerers who had done a recounting
of their lives.
Unbeknownst to them, some had done it so thoroughly that the
dark sea of
awareness
took their awareness in the form of their life experiences, but didn't
touch their life
force. Sorcerers had
found out a gigantic truth about the forces of the universe: The
dark sea of
awareness
wants only our life experiences, not our life
force."

The premises of don Juan's elucidation were incomprehensible to me. Or
perhaps it would be
more accurate to say that I was vaguely and yet
deeply cognizant of how functional the premises
of his
explanation were.

"Sorcerers believe," don Juan went on, "that as we
recapitulate
our lives, all the debris, as I
told you, comes to the surface.
We realize our inconsistencies, our repetitions, but something in
us
puts up a tremendous resistance to
recapitulating.
Sorcerers say that
the road is free only after
a gigantic upheaval, after the
appearance on our screen of the memory of an event that shakes our
foundations
with its terrifying clarity of detail. It's the event that drags us to the
actual moment
that we lived it. Sorcerers call that event the
usher,
because from then on every event we touch on
is relived,
not merely remembered.

"Walking is always something that precipitates memories," don
Juan went on. "The sorcerers
of ancient Mexico believed that everything we live we store as a sensation on the backs of the legs.
They considered the backs of the legs to be the warehouse of man's personal
history. So,
let's go for a walk in the hills now." We walked
until it was almost dark.

"I think I have made you walk long enough," don Juan said
when we were back at his house,
"to have you ready to begin this
sorcerers' maneuver of finding an
usher:
an event in your life that
you
will remember with such clarity that it will serve as a spotlight to illuminate
everything else
in your
recapitulation
with the same, or
comparable, clarity. Do what sorcerers call
recapitulating
pieces of a puzzle.
Something will lead you to remember the
event that will serve as your
usher."
He left me alone, giving me
one last warning. "Give it your best shot," he said.
"Do
your best." 1 was extremely silent for a moment, perhaps due to the
silence around me. I
experienced, then, a vibration, a sort
of jolt in my chest. 1 had difficulty breathing, but suddenly
something
opened up in my chest that allowed me to take a deep breath, and a total view
of a
forgotten event of my childhood burst into my memory, as
if it had been held captive and was suddenly released.

I was at my grandfather's studio, where he had a billiard table, and I
was playing billiards with
him. 1 was almost nine years old then. My grandfather was
quite a skillful player, and
compulsively he
had taught me every play he knew until I was good enough to have a serious
match with him. We spent endless hours playing billiards. I became so
proficient at it that one
day I
defeated him. From that day on, he was incapable of winning. Many a time I
deliberately threw the game, just to be nice to
him, but he knew it and would become furious
with me. Once, he got so upset that he hit me on the top of the head
with the cue.

To my grandfather's chagrin and delight, by the time I was nine years
old, I could make carom
after carom without stopping. He
became so frustrated and impatient in a game with me once that he threw down
his cue and told me to play by myself. My compulsive nature made it possible
for
me to compete with myself and work the same play on and
on until I got it perfectly.

One day, a man notorious in town for his gambling connections, the
owner of a billiards house, came to visit my grandfather. They were talking and
playing billiards as I happened to
enter the room. I instantly
tried to retreat, but my grandfather grabbed me and pulled me in.

"This is my grandson," he said to the man.

"Very pleased to meet you," the man said. He looked at me
sternly, and then extended his
hand, which was the size of the head of
a normal person.

I was horrified. His enormous burst of laughter told me that he was
cognizant of my
discomfort. He told me that his name was Falelo
Quiroga, and I mumbled my name.

He was very tall, and extremely well dressed. He was wearing a
double-breasted blue
pinstriped suit with beautifully
tapered trousers. He must have been in his early fifties then, but
he
was trim and fit except for a slight bulge in his midsection. He wasn't fat; he
seemed to
cultivate the look of a man who is well fed and is not in
need of anything. Most of the people in my hometown were gaunt. They were
people who labored hard to earn a living and had no time
for
niceties. Falelo Quiroga appeared to be the opposite. His whole demeanor was
that of a man who had time only for niceties.

He was pleasant-looking. He had a bland, well-shaven face with kind blue
eyes. He had the
air and the confidence of a doctor. People in my
town used to say that he was capable of putting
anyone at
ease, and that he should have been a priest, a lawyer, or a doctor instead of a
gambler.
They also used to say that he made more money gambling
than all the doctors and lawyers in
town put together made by
working.

His hair was black, and carefully combed. It was obviously thinning
considerably. He tried to
hide his receding hairline by combing
his hair over his forehead. He had a square jaw and an
absolutely winning smile. He had
big, white teeth, which were well cared for, the ultimate
novelty in an area where tooth decay was
monumental. Two other remarkable features of Falelo
Quiroga, for me, were his enormous feet and his
handmade, black patent-leather shoes. I was
fascinated by the fact that his shoes didn't squeak at all as he walked
back and forth in the room. I
was
accustomed to hearing my grandfather's approach by the squeak of the soles of
his shoes.

"My grandson plays billiards very well," my grandfather said
nonchalantly to Falelo Quiroga.
"Why don't I give him my cue and
let him play with you while I watch?""

"This child plays billiards?" the big man asked my grandfather
with a laugh.

"Oh, he does," my grandfather assured him. "Of course,
not as well as you do, Falelo. Why don't you try him? And to make it
interesting for you, so you won't be patronizing my grandson,
let's
bet a little money. What do you say if we bet this much?"

He put a thick wad of crumpled-up bills on the table and smiled at
Falelo Quiroga, shaking his
head from side to side as if daring the
big man to take his bet.

"My oh my, that much, eh?" Falelo Quiroga said, looking at me
questioningly. He opened his
wallet then and pulled out some neatly
folded bills. This, for me, was another surprising detail.
My
grandfather's habit was to carry his money in every one of his pockets, all
crumpled up. When he needed to pay for something, he had to straighten out the
bills in order to count them.

Falelo Quiroga didn't say it, but I knew that he felt like a highway
robber. He smiled at my
grandfather and, obviously out of
respect for him, he put his money on the table. My grandfather,
acting
as the arbiter, set the game at a certain number of caroms and flipped a coin
to see who
would start first. Falelo Quiroga won.

"You better give it all you have, without holding back," my
grandfather urged him. "Don't
have any qualms about
demolishing this twerp and winning my money!"

Falelo Quiroga, following my grandfather's advice, played as hard as he
was able, but at one
point he missed one carom by a hair. I took
the cue. I thought I was going to faint, but seeing my
grandfather's
glee-he was jumping up and down-calmed me, and besides, it irked me to see
Falelo
Quiroga about to split his sides laughing when he saw the
way I held the cue. I couldn't lean over
the table, as
billiards is normally played, because of my height. But my grandfather, with
painstaking patience and
determination, had taught me an alternative way of playing. By
extending my arm all the way back, I held the cue
nearly above my shoulders, to the side.

"What does he do when he has to reach the middle of the
table?" Falelo Quiroga asked,
laughing.

"He hangs on the edge of the table," my grandfather said
matter-of-factly. "It's permissible,
you know."

My grandfather came to me and whispered through clenched teeth that if I
tried to be polite
and lose he was going to break all the cues on my
head. I knew he didn't mean it; this was just his
way of
expressing his confidence in me.

I won easily. My grandfather was delighted beyond description, but strangely
enough, so was
Falelo Quiroga. He laughed as he went around the
pool table, slapping its edges. My grandfather
praised me to
the skies. He revealed to Quiroga my best score, and joked that I had excelled
because
he had found the way to lure me to practice: coffee with Danish pastries.

"You don't say, you don't say!" Quiroga kept repeating. He
said good-bye; my grandfather
picked up the bet money, and the
incident was forgotten. My grandfather promised to take me to
a
restaurant and buy me
the best meal in town, but he never
did. He was very stingy; he was known to be a lavish
spender only
with women.

Two days later, two enormous men affiliated with Falelo Quiroga came to
me at the time that I got out from school and was leaving.

"Falelo Quiroga wants to see you," one of them said in a
guttural tone. "He wants you to go to
his place and
have some coffee and Danish pastries with him."

If he hadn't said coffee and Danish pastries, I probably would have run
away from them. I remembered then that my grandfather had told Falelo Quiroga
that I would sell my soul for coffee and Danish pastries. I gladly went with
them. However, I couldn't walk as fast as they did, so one of them, the one
whose name was Guillermo Falcon, picked me up and cradled me in his huge arms.
He laughed through crooked teeth.

"You better enjoy the ride, kid," he said. His breath was
terrible. "Have you ever been carried
by anyone?
Judging by the way you wriggle, never!" He giggled grotesquely.

Fortunately, Falelo Quiroga's place was not too far from the school.
Mr. Falcon deposited me
on a couch in an office. Falelo Quiroga
was there, sitting behind a huge desk. He stood up and
shook hands
with me. He immediately had some coffee and delicious pastries brought to me,
and
the two of us sat there chatting amiably about my
grandfather's chicken farm. He asked me if I
would like to
have more pastries, and I said that I wouldn't mind if I did. He laughed, and
he
himself brought me a whole tray of unbelievably delicious
pastries from the next room.

After I had veritably gorged myself, he politely asked me if I would
consider coming to his
billiards place in the wee hours of
the night to play a couple of friendly games with some people
of
his choice. He casually mentioned that a considerable amount of money was going
to be involved. He openly expressed his trust in my skill, and added that he
was going to pay me, for
my time and my effort, a percentage of
the winning money. He further stated that he knew the
mentality of my
family; they would have found it improper that he give me money, even though it
was pay. So he promised to put the money in the bank in a special account for
me, or more
practical yet, he would cover any purchase that I made in
any of the stores in town, or the food I
consumed in
any restaurant in town.