He slept without feeling the hardness of the bed or the thinness of the blankets. He was awakened very early by the jabbering of the chickens and the bellowing of animals in the corral. Distant, insistent and obsessive, the sound of the rain could also be heard.

“You can’t be thinking of leaving today,” Leonardo told him when he saw him dressed for the road.

“I have appointments in Ciudad Real,” Fernando responded.

“I wish it were possible to go in all this mud! But you’re running the risk of getting stuck. What do you think, Rubén, my friend?”

The assistant exaggerated the dangers of the journey. But Fernando wasn’t listening. Why had Cifuentes used the familiar “tú” when he addressed Rubén? How had such an intimacy sprung up between them, given the inequality in their age and social standing?

“The bad weather doesn’t look as if it will last. By tomorrow morning it will have cleared up.”

Leonardo and Rubén were obviously right. How ridiculous to suspect that there was some agreement between them to keep Fernando in San José Chiuptik!

At breakfast, leftovers from the night before were served. On a ranch, luxury consists in abundance, not delicacy or variety.

“Please forgive me for not taking very good care of you, ingeniero. Where there are no women, a man has to adjust to a certain amount of discomfort.”

Leonardo had touched on a topic that made him eloquent and voluble in his resentment. The women of Ciudad Real, he complained, don’t think they are sullying themselves by marrying a rancher. On the contrary: the ranchers have more solid capital and a more noble ancestry than the merchants. But when it comes to going with the husband and living on the ranch, then the thing becomes more difficult. The family raises its voice to the skies. What humiliation! What scandal! The parents didn’t spend all that money educating their daughters (piano, embroidery and fine pastry-making) only to see them holed up on the mountain. And for their part, the daughters weep and make sure they’re always pregnant or nursing so no one will dare ask them to do anything that goes against their whims.

“And a man can’t sacrifice his interests to be tied to his wife’s skirts. She wants her comforts, too, and you can’t just shovel money out of the ground. So we come to die ranch alone.”

“There must be some men who are unwilling to resign themselves to that.”

Leonardo smiled as if to himself.

“If you don’t want to resign yourself, you make your own arrangements.”

Fernando did not encourage further confidences. The rancher had to keep speaking in general terms.