Don Adolfo did not understand such ingratitude. He was astonished, because he had believed that the Indians would rush to take advantage of the opportunity he was offering them to better their living conditions. But he was not a man to lose sight of his goals and so he told the capataz to punish with severity those who disobeyed his orders. After that, the classes were attended by distracted students, unable to remain still in front of a sheet of paper, clumsily clutching the pencil, rebelling against the teacher’s instructions, wary of the punishment that could suddenly befall them.

There were those among them who made an effort to comply with this new duty. Pedro González Winiktón did so with the seriousness he had once brought to his position as judge. Quickly, to complement this habit, a real interest in the teacher’s lessons sprang up inside him, an interest that did not dim when the class was over.

Pedro stayed awake, his eyes fixed on his San Miguel primer, pondering the signs that were slowly penetrating his understanding. What pride he took in presenting himself before the others the next day with the lesson learned! What a feeling it was to discover the names of objects and speak them and write them and thus take possession of the world! What amazement when he heard “the paper that talks” for the first time!

Don Adolfo, kept abreast of this process by the teacher’s reports, retired Winiktón from the heaviest work to keep him at his side as a footman. Pedro accompanied the patrón on his rides across the finca and his trips to Tapachula. He became familiar with the city and entered doors that otherwise would have remained permanently closed to an Indian. From the entryways, from the kitchens, from the courtyards where he waited for his master, he came to know the houses of the rich; he learned the uneven paving stones of the municipal buildings and glimpsed the great rooms of the clubhouses. He would have liked to go nearer and listen to the gentlemen chatting, now that he understood their language.

But even if Winiktón had been standing closer to the regular get-together of Don Adolfo and his friends, it would have been difficult for him to follow the thread of their conversation, so rapidly and tumultuously were they all commenting on the great event: the arrival of the president of the Republic in Tapachula.

“We’ll have to throw the house out the window for his reception.”

“They say he’s no lover of luxuries.”

“What about our position? We can’t do less than everybody else. In Huixtla they set up triumphal arches from the train station to the Palacio.”

“And what do you hear about the highlands?”

“There it’s done out of fear. They have the agrarian reform on their backs and the ranches are being redistributed on the president’s orders. . . .”