It was not that Catalina refused to answer. It was that she could not grasp either the meaning or the intention of the questions. What relation could exist between her delirium, her desperate love for Pedro, her yearning for motherhood thwarted by Domingo, her return to childhood, her discovery at the cave, her enshrinement as a priestess, her people’s fervor, and these words by which she was being designated? Catalina found no way out but denial. No, she had not received advice from anyone. No, she had not planned an uprising. No, she had no accomplices to give away. No, no, no.

Catalina answered in a very low voice, without raising her eyelids; she felt a lurching darkness growing within her, ravenous fissures yawning open, an endless cry echoing.

The defense lawyer remained negligently at the margin of the cross-examination. None of the professionals of Ciudad Real had wanted to put his orthodoxy in question or endanger himself or his future by taking on a case he knew in advance was lost. So the usual method was followed: the judge had to appeal to the public defender to take the case, and he did not miss an opportunity to show everyone how much it repelled him to carry out an assignment in which justice so obviously was not on his side.

The session concluded for the day, and resumed the following morning. Attendance was smaller the next day since curiosity had diminished from the moment the outcome was no longer in any doubt. The conviction was already a fact. The only thing that remained to be determined was the severity of the sentence.

Things had reached this point when a group of Chamulas led by Pedro González Winiktón came down from the mountain.

The people of Ciudad Real stopped to look at them with a tremor of dismay. The new arrivals were very numerous and perhaps for that reason they walked through the street looking not furtive but secure and, at certain moments, even defiant.

As everyone expected, they went to the house of Fernando Ulloa to ask him for advice and help.

XXI

CHAPTER XXI

WHILE HE WAITED for Virgilio Tovar to appear, Fernando Ulloa passed the time looking over the office he had been shown into.

If the room was a reflection of its owner’s character, there were reasons for discouragement. The nakedness of the walls was hostile, the height of the ceiling disproportionate. The furniture was severe, uncomfortable. And the windows obstructed the light with heavy curtains.

Tovar’s arrival was preceded by a quick sound of footsteps, an energetic clearing of the throat, the click of the latch. A man of medium stature, nervous and alert, came in. A man conscious of his own importance, though he did not appear to have abandoned himself to the delights of that sensation.