Domingo understood suddenly that somehow he had become the thing he had always feared most: a mad dog. He wanted to help the others in the task of extermination: he twisted, trying to break the cords, and yelled to excite his executioners. The wound began to bleed again but this time the loss of blood brought no relief or weakness.

This time Domingo does not faint. He will be the victim, but also the witness of his own execution.

The nails that are going to pierce his hands and feet are large and rusty because they have been stored away for a long time. As they penetrate the flesh, they pulverize the bones, burst open the arteries, scrape the tendons.

Domingo moans, he no longer knows why. If someone were to ask him if he was suffering he would be unable to answer. Suffering is a word that has a certain dimension and a predetermined weight, all it takes is a voice to speak it. Domingo has gone beyond all voices, all dimensions.

He is dying. But it is not him or his body that will disintegrate. It is the world. He opens his eyes and a kind of vertigo rushes over him. Figures draw close, blur, merge. Proportions change. It isn’t only that his perceptions are wobbling. The Cross to which Domingo has been nailed is moving. The religious officials carry it to the center of the altar and there it is planted and raised. Every vibration of the wood is painfully prolonged into Domingo’s flesh and tears the last howls from his throat, cuts the last ties.

The blood is still flowing, but not in a gush or a torrent. It drips. Every drop is caught below by the sacramental madrinas’ fine handkerchiefs, which are stained red. The blood that runs down the wood is licked by the mayordomos, the sacristan, Catalina.

Those who are farthest from the Cross can see all of it. The distance hides the details that make the crucified boy ugly. He hangs inert now; his end lacks the beauty or serenity of statues. Against all other wills and even against his own, Domingo’s body refuses to die. His rebellion takes the form of grotesque contractions of the muscles, a movement of cowardice, confusion, repulsion.

After the consummation a leaden silence drops over the crowd. Even the crying of a newborn is quickly stifled by the mother’s breast; even the drunkard’s incoherent mutter trails off. In this silence, prophecy is gestating. Because what has happened means nothing if words do not give it form.

But who will speak? Xaw stammers and does not succeed in understanding the deep meaning of things. The functionaries, the mayordomos and the madrinas, are good only for servile tasks, spiritual beasts of burden who do not know what they carry. The ilol alone remains, and hopeful, yearning eyes turn toward her.