The sounds of the girl’s running feet and Doña Mercedes’ shouts rebounded off the walls and were multiplied in a babel of innumerable echoes.

Drawn by the noise, a woman pulled back a curtain covering a window. She was Isabel Zebadúa, wife of Leonardo Cifuentes. For an instant her face was visible behind the glass, a face lined by suffering, gnawed by anxiety, stamped with disdain.

She saw the terrified Indian girl, the furious procuress, and understood immediately. It wasn’t the first time she had witnessed this scene.

She couldn’t keep herself from making a movement of disgust. Quickly she left the window, crossed the room, opened a door. Her pupils dilated as she peered into the darkness. Amorphous objects gradually took shape: a wardrobe, some chairs. At the far end of the room, a narrow bed.

Arms stretched out in front of her, Isabel crossed the room like a sleepwalker. She stopped beside the bed, whispering, “Idolina.”

There was no response. She knelt on the rug, Her fingers dug into the sheets.

“Idolina, wake up. Fistful of bitter, bitter myrrh. Little bird legs that don’t know how to walk, wake up. When will I see the sun? How much longer until daylight comes back to me? Child of my sorrows, hummingbird, scrawny legs that can’t walk, wake up.”

The incoherent litany, softened with diminutives, tender, urgent, despairing, shattered into sobs.

Idolina made no move to betray the fact that she was awake. She kept herself rigid, her back turned as if she were fleeing, her eyes obstinately staring at the wall.

III

CHAPTER III

MARCELA CAME TO a stop, panting. She had run until she felt her heart breaking open inside her. It was impossible to run any more. She took a few steps forward, tottering as if she were about to fall over. She sat down on the edge of the sidewalk, pressed the tips of her fingers against her eyelids and breathed deeply, fearfully.

The whole city with all of its noises was buzzing around her, tormenting her. A door hammered by a gust of wind, the slow mournful ringing of church bells, the resounding crack of a whip against a horse’s haunch, a beggar’s irritating persistence. And the insults raging out of the gold-inlaid mouth of a prostitute.

Doña Mercedes, the buzzing repeated, Doña Mercedes Solórzano. And Marcela pursued the name, syllable by syllable, letter by letter, as if by grasping it she would enter into possession of all that is prized most highly: night, sleep, death.