For Domingo she had, at times, a trace of a smile, a blink of understanding. The ilol turned an anxious, expectant face toward the boy. Undoubtedly she wanted to speak, but her throat would not allow anything but incoherent sounds, aborted sobs, to pass through it. Domingo buried himself in her lap, blocking his ears so as not to hear the inhuman efforts Catalina was making to break her silence.

Strength returned little by little to the ilol’s worn-out body and with it suffering. She could find no comfortable position and her desires were never understood. Catalina was suffocating in that hut thick with smoke; she wanted to go out to the field, yes, to the light. She no longer felt guilty, she felt betrayed. She needed to defy those who followed and then abandoned her. She was not afraid of being questioned; she was boiling inside with impassioned replies, harsh arguments. But she wore herself out in imaginary combats and the slightest real effort exhausted her. She lay in a corner of the hut, watching the others come and go, envying their freedom and their health.

One day Catalina perceived a palpitation, a sense of something imminent in the empty air around her. With panicky speed she stood up; she was going to ask for help but there was no one there. She was alone. With her eyes closed and a trickle of anguish on her forehead she dropped back onto the straw mattress.

Over the hill, horsemen were riding toward Tzajal-hemel. Without grace, without gallantry, stirred by sordid cruelty and invested with destructive power, the police had been sent by the authorities of Ciudad Real to seize all those responsible for the idolatrous cult, for secret associations and attempts at insurrection.

Xaw Ramírez Paciencia’s reports gave the police precise names and exact locations. But who, advancing with the momentum of punishment, stops to verify such things? Who can tell the difference between a guilty Indian and an innocent Indian? Who listens to allegations made in a confused, rapid language that nobody has ever thought it worthwhile to understand?

The police fell on the village, avid as birds of prey. The men were absent, in the cornfields, on the mountain, and the women ran in disorderly flight, carrying small children in their arms, trying to save a suckling lamb, a newly fired clay utensil, a half-woven woolen cloth.

In her helplessness, Catalina heard the scurrying and shouting, the clatter of the horses’ hooves, the shrill cackling, the agonized squealing of the pigs. Brutal guffaws mingled with the weak rasping breaths of the dying, and the weeping of children followed the clamor of smashed furniture, broken pots, ripped fabric.