Doña Mercedes interrupted her work, but not before ordering the mule driver to hurry up putting away the lengths of fabric that had protected them from the sun. She put her hands on her hips and gave César her answer.

“Good business! We’ve run out of merchandise. Ay, if all my clients were like these Chamulitas, a different cock would crow for me.”

One of the trunks was still wide open. It was overflowing with objects. Cesar’s gaze met Doña Mercedes’s above it. Without changing her expression, she clarified, “Some things aren’t in demand. But the salt. . . . I don’t have a grain left. I’ll have to go back to Ciudad Real for a few more loads.”

Doña Mercedes closed the trunk.

“Can I take any messages for you? I’ll be back here tomorrow, at the latest. I’ll make time to pay a visit to little Julia,” she added, looking meekly at Ulloa.

“Don’t bother. We’ll be on our way back to Ciudad Real very soon, too.”

“Good, then. Well, he who says many goodbyes doesn’t really want to go. Remember, so you won’t have to trouble yourselves, there’s food in the kitchen. It only needs warming up.”

The mule driver brought the mules. Doña Mercedes mounted one of them and urged it forward with an energetic lash of the whip. Fernando and César watched her leave without finding words to express their unease.

XXXI

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MEETING could not be arranged until nightfall. The principal men unwillingly abandoned the ceremonies in which they were playing an active part or the unceremonious huddles in which they were getting drunk. The false security of alcohol, the strength they felt in the number of those who had congregated, the time that had passed (empty of the events they had feared) reduced their worry and alarm to a remote and meaningless reality. What was Jobel but something these men could smash with their fists? And they clenched those fists with rage and obstinacy and unsheathed their machetes which flashed for an instant like bolts of lightning, and for an instant the air vibrated with danger.

The whole valley of Chamula was resounding with music. The accordion, panting and uneven like a drunken man’s breathing; the harps, with their delicate strings that were invisible in the distance and the darkness. The rhythm of feet, shod in sandals of thick, crudely tanned leather. Everywhere at once—beginning, continuing, reaching its end—was the Bolonchón, the dance of the tiger and the snake, the metamorphoses of the god who is suddenly recognizable in an animal the eyes are accustomed to seeing. The animal that presides over births, accompanies and sustains life, strips death of its horror. The Bolonchón, continuous, ever the same, endless.