We were quiet for a long time.
"What was the final outcome of that experience, don Genaro?" I asked.
"Final outcome?"
"I mean, when and how did you finally reach Ixtlan?"
Both of them broke into laughter at once.
"So that's the final outcome for you," don Juan remarked. "Let's put it this way then. There was no final outcome to Genaro's journey. There will never be any final outcome. Genaro is still on his way to Ixtlan!"
Don Genaro glanced at me with peircing eyes and then turned his head to look into the distance, towards the south.
"I will never reach Ixtlan," he said.
His voice was firm but soft, almost a murmur.
"Yet in my feelings . . . in my feelings sometimes I think I'm just one step from reaching it. Yet I never will. In my journey I dont even find the familiar landmarks I used to know. Nothing is any longer the same."
Don Juan and don Genaro looked at each other. There was something so sad about their look.
"In my journey to Ixtlan I find only phantom travelers," he said softly.
I looked at don Juan. I had not understood what don Genaro had meant.
"Everyone Genaro finds on his way to Ixtlan is only an ephemeral being," don Juan explained. "Take you, for instance. You are a phantom. Your feelings and your eagerness are those of people. That's why he says that he encounters only phantom travelers on his journey to Ixtlan."
I suddenly realized that don Genaro's journey was a metaphor.
"Your journey is not real then," I said.
"It is real!" don Genaro interjected. "The travelers are not real."
He pointed to don Juan with a nod of his head and said emphatically, "This is the only one who is real. The world is real only when I am with this one."
Don Juan smiled.
- Journey to Ixtlan
