CATALINA WENT EARLY to bathe in the stream; she washed her hair with amolé root until it was squeaking with cleanliness; she rubbed it with fragrant brilliantine and braided it. Back in her house, she unfolded the woolen rebozo she kept for fiesta days; she held up the necklace of old coins—made of silver with a solid clank to it—that she stored at the bottom of a trunk, and with those two things she adorned herself.

Pedro González Winiktón was waiting for her at the door of the hut. He was wearing a new straw hat bedecked with a torrent of colored ribbons, along with a new chamois sash; in his right hand, he wielded the staff of authority.

They walked among the groups of Chamulas, giving rise to various comments: “There goes the judge with Catalina, both of them turned out in their best. Where are they taking that demijohn of aguardiente?”

“May the morning bring light to your field, Martoma Rosendo Gómez Oso.”

In contrast to the light outside—the light goes naked in Chiapas and at noon its nakedness is like a sword’s—the hut’s shadowy interior was doubly impenetrable. Several minutes went by before the new arrivals were able to give some configuration to the shadows. Rosendo was curled up next to the fire, drowsing. His wife, on her knees, was turning the spindle which grew greater with wool at every rotation. The children—grubby, uttered, fretful—were crawling around on the dirt floor. One of them, the youngest, swollen and deformed by the rags he was wrapped in, was sleeping in a hammock (or was it only a net bag?) suspended from the roof’s crosspieces.