In the pause that followed, a name one of the two women did not dare pronounce was throbbing.

“Marcela is well,” Catalina said.

Through the alcoholic mist that enveloped him, softening the crash of outside elements against his reverie, the martoma heard the name. He gave a start as if he had been pricked with the point of a needle. The balloon of his greatness was deflated. Because, tell me this, is it correct that the daughter of the mayordomo of Santa Rosa be estranged from her family, left in the power of strangers like an orphan, like a poor girl whose family cannot feed her? Obviously it is not correct. It is an anomaly only Felipa’s weakness of spirit could have allowed to happen. But the anomaly must end this very day. He cleared his throat so the force of his demands would emerge intact. But it was not he who spoke, it was the drunkenness.

“My little girl, my Xmel, since she left blood falls in my heart!” He hiccuped, moaned. Tears, slow, heavy and ignoble, flooded his cheeks and were lost among the limp strands of his moustache.

Pedro was irritated by the immodesty of this emotion. No one had the right to make such a display of what tormented him. Was he himself not forced to hide it? Drily he interrupted the martoma. “Marcela is the person we came here to speak of.”

Catalina choked back an exclamation of disappointment. She was enjoying the state of tense expectation and anxious doubt she had created in Felipa.

“You want to give her back?”

What did the question conceal? An unconfessed hope? An egotistical and self-interested fear?

“No. We have found a husband for her.”

A mayordomo cannot allow a common functionary—a civil functionary at that—to appropriate his fatherly prerogatives and seek a destiny for his daughter. No one but Rosendo may choose Marcela’s husband. He wanted to reply, to argue. But his vague, insubstantial gesture fell into the void. By now his muscles were obeying the drunkenness, not his will.

“How much will he pay for her?”

Winiktón was ashamed that a mother would ask the price before anything else. She wants to sell her like an animal, he thought. But after all, Pedro was not invested with any right to criticize the emotions of others. Was he not more cowardly, more despicable than anyone?

“He will pay what is just.”

Felipa regretted the question, in which her avarice had betrayed itself. She resorted automatically to the customary formulas.

“That daughter of mine is a very idle girl. You have not yet taken full measure of her.”

A mocking smile played on the ilol’s lips.

“She does not know how to weave,” Felipa insisted. “She does not know how to grind posol; she lets the beans go bad.”