Her voice had been rising up the scale until it became shrill. She did not want them to believe what she was saying; she did not want to lower her daughter in their esteem. Catalina remained unfazed.

“The man has agreed.”

“Who is the man?”

“My brother. Lorenzo Díaz Puiljá.”

Felipa heard the answer, unbelieving. Then she erupted into a spasm of laughter that was painful, aggressive and uncontrollable.

“Why do you laugh?” Catalina asked severely.

The laugh, now inaudible, froze on her face. Covering it with both hands, Felipa, in her weakness, answered, “I do not know.”

But she knew. She knew that Lorenzo Díaz Puiljá was an imbecile and that Catalina, to get him off her hands when their parents died, had arranged for him to marry. It did not matter to her that she had to pay an excessive dowry. She had married him off. But a few weeks later the newlywed bride fled to take refuge with her own people and the family had to return the gifts. Catalina would not resign herself to the situation and brought a lawsuit.

The girl had to appear before the judges. She declared that Lorenzo “did not know how to make use of her in the night.” The judges agreed to annul the marriage. From that date, Lorenzo had lived alone in the village of Tzajal-hemel.

“My brother is a good man.”

Cautiously, trying not to provoke Catalina’s wrath, Felipa risked an objection.

“They say . . . they say Lorenzo is a little touched.”

“It was unfortunate. A great pukuj carried him off when he was a boy. He was in the cornfield. The great pukuj flew far away with him, to another village. Many people saw him flying. Many of our elders whose mouths, cannot contain a lie. Lorenzo was found cast down on the mountainside. He never recovered his spirit; he never remembered how to speak.”

The efforts of the brujos to cure him were in vain. The boy grew like a tree deformed by a twisted trunk.

“I do not want my daughter to marry badly, Catalina Díaz Puiljá. Therefore I tell you that if she is to be your brother’s wife, I will ask for five fat sheep, three demijohns of liquor and a large measure of corn.”

“My brother will not give you those things.”

“Why?”

“Because your daughter is not worth them.”

“How much will he give, then?”

“Nothing.”

Felipa turned her eyes toward her husband to force him to intervene in this transaction from which they would extract no gain. A man’s voice is always heard with greater respect. But the martoma was slumped against the wall snoring, his mouth wide open.

“Is this a good thing your wife is proposing to me, Pedro González Winiktón?”