Fernando stammered out excuses for the untimeliness of his arrival. But the other man was guiding him into a room that seemed enormous because of the height of the roof, the thickness of the walls and the scantiness of the furniture; in the middle of all that space, a brazier was burning.

“This is a very fortunate coincidence, ingeniero. I knew you were passing through here and I meant to invite you to spend a few days with us.”

“Thank you very much, Don Leonardo; I wouldn’t have wanted to trouble you, but night fell and we got lost; instead of going to San Juan Chamula, where we were headed, we ended up here, I’m not sure how.”

“A fortunate coincidence that gives me the opportunity to take care of you and serve you. Leave your poncho over there, anywhere. Please make yourself comfortable. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and give orders for your room and your dinner to be prepared.”

Leonardo went directly to the kitchen. The assistant was there, having a cup of coffee by the fire.

“What kind of time is this to arrive, Rubén? I’d almost given up on you.”

“We had to go around and around in circles. Our blessed engineer is mistrustful and finds his way with some device he takes out of his pocket. But in the darkness and the rain, he got confused.”

Leonardo seemed to accept this and handed the young man some coins. Then, turning toward the servants whose faces could hardly be seen among the smoke and shadows, he said a few phrases in Tzotzil that made them spring into action. When he left, he was followed by a mestiza girl of uncertain age, one of those women who are worn down not by time but by hard work and deprivation.

“The bedroom is ready now,” she whispered.

She had done her very best: flowers on the table, fresh pine needles on the floor, filtered water in a glass jug.

“Good,” Leonardo said curtly. “Now make sure they don’t see you. It would be best for you to sleep at the home of the administrator or one of the vaqueros.”

The woman bowed with the docility of a whipped dog that doesn’t understand the mechanism of its punishments and fears them. Nevertheless, she hadn’t stopped smiling. Her smile, in which numerous and unnecessary gold teeth gleamed, had an involuntary, sinister quality. She covered her head with a faded shawl and ran into the darkness.

The dinner was abundant: chicken broth and baked chicken, beans, plantains, eggs. Fernando had to refuse some of the dishes, against Leonardo’s insistence. He was done in. He told his host he would be grateful if dinner could be brief and he could be taken to his room quickly.