Leonardo was enraged. Was this the treatment he deserved? Carelessness might seem natural in some women, but not in Julia who keeps her house like a mirror, like a silver cup. If you ask her where the last bit of birdseed for the canary is, she knows. But she doesn’t know what happens to gifts from the man she loves. Well, she must not love him very much if she appreciates his attentions so little! Of course, that’s if she didn’t lose the shawl on purpose.

La Alazana enveloped herself in a disdainful silence. To be criticized like this, to have the money Leonardo spent on gifts for her thrown in her face, it was too much! Because it wasn’t jealousy. No, it was pure, flouted avarice that was causing all this commotion. The rancher’s actions demonstrated very clearly what kind of family he came from, what kind of manners he had. Julia decided to put him in his place. Until he asked for her forgiveness, until he forgot about the accursed shawl, she wouldn’t see him again.

Their quarrel lasted a few days. During that time Leonardo began to feel an anguished restlessness. He would find himself walking toward Julia’s house out of habit, ready to take out his key and go in. And he had to control himself, endure it.

“You miss your sweetheart,” Doña Mercedes observed. “And she’s probably missing you, too, poor little thing.”

“Hah! She’s probably dancing around her house with joy at having gotten rid of me.”

He said it to be contradicted, so that Doña Mercedes’s comforting words would make his painful suspicions disappear. But her reasons seemed weak, her arguments easy to refute. The situation had to end.

Doña Mercedes was the emissary of peace. It required a great deal of effort to convince Julia. She was presented with a new shawl, richer and more beautiful than the one that had been lost. Adorned with this prize, Julia celebrated the triumph of her domination of Cifuentes’ will.

XVIII

CHAPTER XVIII

THE VILLAGE OF Tzajal-hemel had been transformed into a shrine, the destination of pilgrims from throughout the region of Chamula.

To the farthest reaches where Tzotzil is spoken the news traveled: the ancient gods have come back to life!

This, then, was the moment everyone had waited for. The elderly, their eyes clouded by age, were grateful to have lived long enough to see their waiting come to an end; the men in the prime of life welcomed the marvelous news with joy and reverence; the women, astonished, understood nothing except that their burden of suffering was to be lightened; the children moved easily in the atmosphere of miracle.