The mayordomos, interpreters of the divine will, are wise. They thrust where the pain is deepest, where the scream is crouched. But they do not allow the scream to echo through the church. They drown it out with their weeping, their lamentations. Their own voices, in a furious pack, pursue the cracked voice of agony. In every corner they find it and annihilate it.

The first rush of blood (from the side, as in all crucifixions) blinds Catalina. Yet she tries to brush away the mist that clouds her vision and to wipe the face of agony, as with the shroud of Veronica, to leave it clean and clear.

With the first rush of blood, the impetus that was making Domingo pitch upward, that was keeping him at the sharp peak of pain, rushes away and he breathes a moment of respite. With blood, it becomes possible to escape far from this sweat, this ceaseless nausea, the intolerable expectation of the blow about which nothing is known except that it must come.

Far, far. The nightmare will vanish, the horror will disappear. With a smile of tranquility, Domingo loses consciousness.

Catalina watches him, pained. Has he given in so quickly, with so little resistance? His martyrdom will not satiate the hunger of the gods. His death will not suffice to redeem the tribe!

What are the mayordomos doing? Are they distracted from their ritual duties by endless mutual bows? And the madrinas? Are they trying to veil the spectacle with smoke from the censers? Only one person remains attentive to the order that must be maintained: the sacristan, who squeezes a bitter liquid onto Domingo’s mouth.

Domingo feels the pain of the wound, multiplied. He resists instinctively, but does not ask himself how or why what is happening began to happen. He is a child, but his childhood has not been sheltered from the sight of the unequal fight between beings. From the moment of his birth he has been marked by the indelible cipher of the only law that governs the world: the law of force. Shaking, he has watched the coyotes’ nocturnal assaults on the henhouses, he has seen the sparrow hawk fall on its prey, rapid and sure as an arrow; he has defended himself from the attackers on the outskirts of Jobel; and during the celebration of the holy days, he has witnessed the fistfights of rivals. He has seen without horror how the heavy-soled sandal of the winner kicks the face of the beaten man again and again until it is disfigured.

But nothing was equal to the misfortune that had been unleashed on him. Nothing. Not even the moment when the whole tribe raised stakes, machetes and luks to finish off a mad dog. Or a brujo.