to lie down again. Drops of perspiration slid into my eyes and burned them until I yelled with pain.
After a while I regained a measure of stability and stood up. In the dark twilight, the scene was very clear. I took a couple of steps. A distinct sound of many human voices came to me. They seemed to be talking loudly. I followed the sound; I walked for about fifty yards and came to a sudden stop. I had reached a dead end. The place where I stood was a corral formed by enormous boulders. I could distinguish another row, and then another, and another, until they merged into the sheer mountain. From among them came the most exquisite music. It was a fluid, uninterrupted, eerie flow of sounds.
At the foot of one boulder I saw a man sitting on the ground, his face turned almost in profile. I approached him until I was perhaps ten feet away; then he turned his head and looked at me. I stopped — his eyes were the water I had just seen! They had the same enormous volume, the sparkling of gold and black. His head was pointed like a strawberry; his skin was green, dotted with innumerable warts. Except for the pointed shape, his head was exactly like the surface of the peyote plant. I stood in front of him, staring; I couldn't take my eyes away from him. I felt he was deliberately pressing on my chest with the weight of his eyes. I was choking. I lost my balance and fell to the ground. His eyes turned away. I heard him talking to me. At first his voice was like the soft rustle of a light breeze. Then I heard it as music — as a melody of voices — and I 'knew' it was saying, 'What do you want?'
I knelt before him and talked about my life, then wept. He looked at me again. I felt his eyes pulling me away, and I thought that moment would be the moment of my death. He signalled me to come closer. I vacillated for an instant before I took a step forward. As I came closer he turned his eyes away from me and showed me the back of his hand. The melody said, 'Look!' There was a round hole in the middle of his hand. 'Look!' said the melody again. I looked into the hole and I saw myself. I was very old and feeble and was running stooped over, with bright sparks flying all around me. Then three of the sparks hit me, two in the head and one in the left shoulder. My figure, in the hole, stood up for a moment until it was fully vertical, and then disappeared together with the hole.
Mescalito turned his eyes to me again. They were so close to me that I 'heard' them ramble softly with that peculiar sound I had heard many times that night. They became peaceful by degrees until they were like a quiet pond rippled by gold and black flashes.
He turned his eyes away once more and hopped like a cricket for perhaps fifty yards. He hopped again and again, and was gone.
The next thing I remember is that I began to walk. Very rationally I tried to recognize landmarks, such as mountains in the distance, in order to orient myself. I had been obsessed by cardinal points throughout the whole experience, and I believed that north had to be to my left. I walked in that direction for quite a while before I realized that it was daytime, and that I was no longer using my 'night vision'. I remembered I had a watch and looked at the time. It was eight o'clock.
It was about ten o'clock when I got to the ledge where I had been the night before. Don Juan was lying on the ground asleep.
'Where have you been?' he asked.
I sat down to catch my breath.
After a long silence he asked, 'Did you see him?'
I began to narrate to him the sequence of my experiences from the beginning, but he interrupted me saying that all that mattered was whether I had seen him or not. He asked how close to me Mescalito was. I told him I had nearly touched him.
That part of my story interested him. He listened attentively to every detail without comment, interrupting only to ask questions about the form of the entity I had seen, its disposition, and other details about it. It was about noon when don Juan seemed to have had enough of my story. He stood up and strapped a canvas bag to my chest; he told me to walk behind him and said he was going to cut Mescalito loose and I had to receive him in my hands and place him inside the bag gently.
We drank some water and started to walk. When we reached the edge of the valley he seemed to hesitate for a moment before deciding which direction to take. Once he had made his choice we walked in a straight line.
Every time we came to a peyote plant, he squatted in front of it and very gently cut off the top with his short, serrated knife. He made an incision level with the ground, and, sprinkled the 'wound', as he called it, with pure sulphur powder which he carried in a leather sack. He held the fresh button in his left hand and spread the powder with his right hand. Then he stood up and handed me the button, which I received with both hands, as he had prescribed, and placed inside the bag. 'Stand erect and don't let the bag touch the ground or the bushes or anything else,' he said repeatedly, as though he thought I would forget.
We collected sixty-five buttons. When the bag was completely filled, he put it on my back and strapped a new one to my chest.
By the time we had crossed the plateau we had two full sacks, containing one hundred and ten peyote buttons. The bags were so heavy and bulky that I could hardly walk under their weight and volume.
Don Juan whispered to me that the bags were heavy because Mescalito wanted to return to the ground. He said it was the sadness of leaving his abode which made Mescalito heavy; my real chore was not to let the bags touch the ground, because if I did Mescalito would never allow me to take him again.
At one particular moment the pressure of the straps on my shoulders became unbearable. Something was exerting tremendous force in order to pull me down. I felt very apprehensive. I noticed that I had started to walk faster, almost at a ran; I was in a way trotting behind don Juan.
Suddenly the weight on my back and chest diminished. The load became spongy and light. I ran freely to catch up with don Juan, who was ahead of me. I told him I did not feel the weight any longer. He explained that we had already left Mescalito's abode.
'I think Mescalito has almost accepted you,' don Juan said.
'Why do you say he has almost accepted me, don Juan?'
'He did not kill you, or even harm you. He gave you a good fright, but not a really bad one. If he had not accepted you at all, he would have appeared to you as monstrous and full of wrath. Some people have learned the meaning of horror upon encountering him and not being accepted by him.'
'If he is so terrible, why didn't you tell me about it before you took me to the field?'
'You do not have the courage to seek him deliberately. I thought it would be better if you did not know.'
'But I might have died, don Juan!'
'Yes, you might have. But I was certain it was going to be all right for you. He played with you once. He did not harm you. I thought he would also have compassion for you this time.'
I asked him if he really thought Mescalito had had compassion for me. The experience had been terrifying; I felt that I had nearly died of fright.
He said Mescalito had been most kind to me; he had shown me a scene that was an answer to a question. Don Juan said Mescalito had given me a lesson. I asked him what the lesson was and what it meant. He said it would he impossible to answer that question because I had been too afraid to know exactly what I asked Mescalito.
Don Juan probed my memory as to what I had said to Mescalito before he showed me the scene on his hand. But I could not remember. All I remembered was my falling on my knees and 'confessing my sins' to him.
Don Juan seemed uninterested in talking about it any more. I asked him, 'Can you teach me the words to the songs you chanted?'
'No, I can't. Those words are my own, the words the protector himself taught me. The songs are my songs. I can't tell you what they are.'
'Why can't you tell me, don Juan?'
'Because these songs are a link between the protector and myself. I am sure some day he will teach you your own songs. Wait until then; and never, absolutely never, copy or ask about the songs that belong to another man.'
'What was the name you called out? Can you tell me that, don Juan?'
