But those woman are. . . anyone. They take over for each other and no one notices the absence or the replacement. However, there are others, the privileged ones, who have access to the central room, to Catalina’s intimacies. They help her with even her most trivial necessities. They do not allow the ilol to trouble herself with the slightest effort. They dress her and adorn her for her public appearances, they rid her of importunate or foolish people, they watch over her repose.

Outside, everything is commented on with envy and admiration. Xaw cannot go on listening and leaves abruptly. On his way back to Chamula, he thinks that his people, the people he taught, have gone mad.

“It is the devil,” he mutters. “The pukuj has taken control of them.”

He is afraid of what will happen next. Even if no one listens to his warnings, Xaw has the habit of feeling responsible for the tribe. Something must be done to bring them back to themselves, to make them come out of the bad dream.

Compassion gives away to anger in Xaw’s soul. They have usurped his position. And who? A crowd of upstarts who know nothing about ritual or doctrine. Unscrupulous imposters.

But their crime would not go unpunished. Xaw would appeal to a higher authority. Padre Manuel would be informed of everything and he would put things back in their proper places. Those makeshift prophets would soon find out it was not so easy to dispense with Xaw Ramírez Paciencia.

XIX

CHAPTER XIX

PADRE MANUEL WAS BORED. The futility of his stay in San Juan had never been as evident to him as in the past weeks. Elbows leaning on the pine table he used as a writing desk, he listened to the monotonous and forever recurring fall of the rain.

His sister Benita entered the room.

“I brought you a cup of coffee, in hopes it would do you some good.”

The priest smiled and made a sign of gratitude. Why would he vent his ill-humor, his discord, his powerlessness on this helpless woman? The spark of sympathy Benita surprised in her brother’s eyes encouraged her to stay. She was so anxious for one minute of conversation, companionship!

“I don’t know what’s happening to everyone. . . .”

She spoke in haste, without choosing the words or the subject. She didn’t know how long she would have and it was not a thing to waste.

“It’s the bad weather,” Padre Manuel interrupted. “We’ll get used to it.”

“Haven’t you noticed Xaw? He used to stay quietly in the atrium of the church, sunning himself, picking off his lice. Now he wanders through the house all in a muddle, like a ghost, and he never calms down anywhere. Sometimes he’s lost in the clouds and if someone comes up behind him he jumps as if he had seen visions.”