The sound of voices chattering in the parlor, arguing, remembering. The sound of laughter that bursts out in the galleries, whispers of complicity. The sound of orders the servants hurry to carry out.

The sound of footsteps. Slow, when the person walking by is important and is being awaited and is received with jubilation. The diligent steps of the person who wants to curry favor and doesn’t want to lose his turn. The light steps of young girls.

Idolina wants to recognize among the voices, among the footsteps, her mother’s. Not to call out to her (from her remote confinement no one would hear her) but to feel betrayed.

Does Isabel attend the gatherings Leonardo holds? Does she do the honors as lady of die house? Does she share in the triumph? Is she proud of the homages he is paid?

Sometimes Idolina thinks she can make out her voice among those of strangers. But then she doubts, at an inflection she doesn’t recognize, a new tone. The person speaking is a secure and satisfied woman. A happy woman.

Idolina drowns out the echoes by burying her head in the pillows. She shuts her eyes to make the world disappear once and for all.

And suddenly the sound is gone. The house is left unvisited, without guests, without a master. Idolina refuses to find out what has happened. Whether Leonardo and Isabel left. Whether they are going somewhere together, and where. Whether they will come back.

The sound is gone. Idolina hears nothing any more but her own delirium. What an uproar of battle! Cannon and rifles fire, the slingshot responds, the taut bow whistles. The one who hurls himself on his enemy screams; the one who collapses moans. The one who is dying moans. And the one who dies dies without a lament.

The sound is gone. There’s nothing left but the insomniac throbbing of the crickets. Crickets in the garden, the courtyard, the back courtyard. Close, domestic, identifiable. And those out in the country. Between all of them they raise, little by little, a wall that will keep out the thing that lies waiting for the tiniest crack of silence to steal through. The thing that is feared by those who are sleepless, those who walk through the night, those who are lonely, children. That thing. The voice of the dead.

Suddenly the wall caves in. And the mouths suffocated with earth speak.