It had been some time since Catalina had stopped blaming herself for Pedro’s indifference. It was true that she was barren and he was well within his rights if he wanted to repudiate her. But he never did. Why was she losing him now that they had a son? Because Domingo was hers; he did not belong to Marcela Gómez Oso or Lorenzo Díaz Puiljá. What did they know, poor things, about the gift that had been entrusted to them? Between the girl’s inexperience and the man’s imbecility they would have ended up letting Domingo die. Catalina was the one who saved the baby, snatching it from Marcela’s lap.

Marcela, a bad mother, did not even have milk to nurse him with. The ewes that had just given birth, the she-goats, had to be milked in order to feed the little one.

Catalina knew secrets for preparing herbal infusions and potions, and that lore alone had freed the little boy, time after time, from the clutches of disease and fever.

Domingo grew up in the folds of Catalina’s skirts; he learned to walk holding Catalina’s hand. Marcela only watched from afar, indifferent. And Lorenzo, from farther still, laughed without understanding anything; he laughed by himself, stupidly, when there was no reason to.

Pedro loved the little boy and sheltered him in the shade of his years. When the boy was old enough, Pedro took him along to the mountain, to the cornfield. He explained the names of things to him, the habits of the animals, the properties and behavior of plants. The father spoke, glad to pass on what he had been storing up over time. The son listened attentively, respectfully. And when the day and the work were over, the two of them went back to the hut even closer, even better friends.

In front of women, composure must be maintained. They are not meant to hear manly things. In their mouths, everything turns to chatter and babbling. They must be taught by example to be serious.

Catalina knew this and approved of it. The boy (he was still a boy, barely ten years old) was already demanding the treatment a man is accorded. Containing herself, the ilol approached Domingo to serve rather than coddle him. Her hands abandoned their caresses, her lips their tender names. But Catalina’s renunciations, this distance, was the soil in which the boy’s manhood was germinating. He was going to be a man like Pedro, cautious, severe, held in high esteem by others. That was what he was being prepared for, and it was good. But when Pedro began to frequent the Caxláns, who were always there now, and when he was imprudent enough to converse with Fernando and César in front of Domingo, Catalina felt a painful jolt, as when a female tapir sniffs a danger to her babies in the wind.