Every morning, without fail, Leonardo received anonymous letters in which the charges against him were enumerated, insults were repeated, and his plots were guessed at. In the letter’s unsigned folds, a hatred was battling to find its way out, a hatred accumulated over inert years; like a snail shell inhabited by the wind, it was now alive, moving, resonating.

Julia rubbed her hands together impatiently. She came and went through the room, she moved objects around on the dressing table.

“Calm down; you’re going to make me nervous. When do your visitors arrive?”

“Since I no longer have anything to offer them, my visitors always give one reason or another for not coming.”

“That’s natural.”

“And is it also natural that the servants have invaded the house with droves of their relatives, all loaded down with their belongings, who eat everything they find in their paths?”

“Throw them out.”

Yes, it was so easy to solve other people’s problems. Throw out the servants! And who would do the household chores? Julia was incapable of sweeping the enormous courtyards or of cooking anything on the coal stove. Or of being alone.

She waited for Leonardo’s reaction. It wasn’t impatient, or concerned, or even curious. Almost smiling, he started to get dressed.

“You’re afraid, too, aren’t you? Now you can really call yourself a Coleta.”

Julia took his face between her hands, anxious.

“Is it true that the Indians have us under siege? And that we haven’t done anything to defend ourselves?”

Leonardo pulled away roughly.

“You believe what the papers say, too.”

Julia hadn’t wanted to read them again after they published the fact that the idols that Xaw Ramírez Paciencia brought to Ciudad Real were wrapped in a shawl from Guatemala dût many witnesses could identify as belonging to her. From that to accusing her of being an accomplice or an instigator was a step many people took. The editorials clamored for a thorough investigation of the matter.

“Let whoever falls fall,” they said. And Julia refused to read them, though she couldn’t disobey Leonardo’s order to buy them. He spent a large part of their meetings on those papers, which were now lying scattered and crumpled around the bed.

“Before, there was only one, remember? Now every day new ones spring up, like mushrooms after a cloudburst. We were used to ¡Plus Ultra! Not that it had anything important to say. On the contrary. Social notes, weather forecasts, tips for curing distemper. A measured but firm denunciation of the Ayuntamiento for allowing the streets to flood or to be used as garbage cans. Now you can’t turn a page any more without reading some prophet who’s tearing his hair and lamenting the calamities that are going to befall us. And that’s only when you aren’t faced, instead, with the generous bearer of the most efficient and rapid solutions to our problems.”