Julia returned to the main room, picked up a book and settled down on the sofa. When Cifuentes came in, she could raise her head in genuine surprise, as if interrupted by chance.

Leonardo paid no attention to these details. He was after his own pleasure and he demanded it straightforwardly. Boastful of his prowess, he was glad to be spared any feeling of gratitude.

In their conversations afterwards, Leonardo showed off: carefully adjusted memories of former adventures, explanations of his current plans, business, politics. For added bite he would throw in a few insulting references to her husband, Fernando. “Do you know what he’s up to now? He’s preaching to the Chamulas. That they’re equal to the Ladinos, that they’ll own the land they work on. As if Indians could understand what he’s telling them.”

Julia was silent. The tone of his voice, his coarse words always made her tense. Occasionally she attempted a smile but only succeeded in producing an ill-timed grimace. To free herself from subjugation to this man, Julia could only try to ignore his presence, erase him from her imagination and her mind. She closed her eyes, lost herself in absurd thoughts, hypnotic repetitions: “Pablito nailed a nail, a nail did Pablito nail; one, two, three, four, one hundred; Jesus Christ my Saviour and the one true God . . . when there are oranges, oranges, when there are lemons, lemons.”

Julia was growing drowsy. But she started back to consciousness when she heard Fernando’s name. What was it about? Of course, the Indians. “Don’t even mention them to me! The Indians! I hate them all. Foul, miserable brutes. You can’t walk in the streets of Ciudad Real without tripping over a drunken Indian, being bashed over the head by the load some Indian is carrying around like a blind man, or else slipping on the pieces of rind they leave everywhere.”

Leonardo laughed, pleased by the spirited description. Now that he thought about it, he had felt the same disgust for the same reasons. But never in a thousand years would he have been able to say it the way La Alazana had said it. She was funny. And to possess this sense of humor that he didn’t understand, that disturbed him, Leonardo rolled onto Julia, imposing the roundness of his flesh on her, filling that mouth with the only language the two of them shared: the language of pleasure.

Julia resisted until her opponent’s desire was at its utmost. Then she yielded, unleashing her instincts little by little until she gave herself over entirely.

It calmed her down, at least! And when she was alone again she gazed at her surroundings as if everything were new and she were beholding it in amazement. Events still succeeded each other with the monotony of their ordinary rhythm, the foundations of the world were intact, the catastrophe had not happened.