“If you’re so sure of that, I don’t understand why you come to speak to me.”

“Since my arrival in Ciudad Real, I’ve been receiving letters again.”

“Writing! The mania of lonely women.”

“This time they make reference to a very serious mauer which I must confirm. Because it has to do with the man who, sooner or later, will be my successor.”

“Leonardo Cifuentes?”

“They say that from the beginning he has been playing a dirty game. They say he was in league with Fernando Ulloa through a woman known as La Alazana.”

“That woman no longer lives in Ciudad Real.”

“Could you swear to that, Monseñor? The letters say she never left the city. That Leonardo faked her journey and arranged for a hiding place where he is keeping her shut away. That he ordered Ulloa killed so he could be with her.”

There was a pause. A long pause. Charged with unspoken words.

“Before you go, señor Gobernador, I must beg you to close the curtains. I cannot bear the light.”

“I’m not leaving without an answer, Monseñor.”

“Why do you suppose I can give you an answer? What do you want me to answer? That it isn’t true? I don’t know. That it isn’t possible? Everything is possible.”

“How did the person who made the accusation know about it?”

“When someone is alone, fundamentally alone, and for a very long time, they can guess other people’s intentions even before those intentions have taken shape in actions; they can feel other people’s deliria and give a name and a form to the creatures others dream of unknowingly.”

Don Alfonso’s hands were hanging limply from the edges of the platform. He was pale and his breathing was labored.

“That girl has always been alone.”

The governor bent toward the bishop, anxious not to miss even the slightest inflection of his voice.

“What girl?”

“The one who writes.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“It’s someone who has as much trust in priests as you do. And I’m not going to let her down. Because it is enough already with Manuel Mandujano . . . and so many others.”

The governor rose to his feet and began closing the curtains.

“Go in peace, hijo mío. Let the dead bury their dead.”

The governor groped his way out. At his back, he heard the deep sigh of someone who is at rest.

“Ah, at last! Darkness again!”

XXXIX

CHAPTER XXXIX

JOBEL RISES UP once more, walled by injustice, a city that can only be entered through the portal designated for the herds.

The valley of Chamula—once a place of mists and brooks—is now dense with smoke. What once was village, sown field, town is now smoke. Smoke: scorched earth, tainted air, ruin and annihilation.