Ever since she was small, Idolina had loved to hear horror stories; she demanded them when the late afternoon shadows were transforming familiar objects into phantasmagorical beings and when every sound was a mysterious warning. She witnessed with a shiver of terrified pleasure the metamorphoses of the yalamba-qu’et, which drops its bones along the path as it goes; the evil mischief of the xuch ni’ which sticks out its nose during the commemorations of San Andrés. And the wiles of the most terrible of them all, the ijc’al, a tiny black man who spirits away those he finds alone in the dark. If they are men he decapitates them and uses their heads as pillars in his house; if they are women he forces himself on them and after the months of their pregnancy they give birth to monsters.

But this time, despite the storyteller’s best efforts, Idolina was not captured by the tale. At several points she gave signs of distraction, and finally turned her face violently toward the wall, a gesture of impatience those who took care of her knew very well. Her profile, sharpened by sickness, was distorted when reflected on the wall by the ghostly light of the candles.

The storyteller, an Indian woman with a submissive demeanor, dressed in the fashion of the women of Chamula (the coarse wool fabric that still smells of sheep), seemed not to understand the disgust and irritation Idolina’s movement expressed. In a monotone, she repeated the last phrase: “And walking through the night the ijc’al appeared to them.”

Idolina covered her ears. Her forehead was furrowed. Tears she didn’t try to hold back brimmed in her eyes.

“Be quiet, nana. I don’t want any more stories.”

“Niña,” the woman began a timid reproach. But her tone only exasperated the sick girl.

“I don’t want any more! You’re torturing me!”

The nana withdrew from the bedside and went to huddle in a corner of the room. Idolina didn’t take her eyes off of her, and when she was certain that the nana had decided to remain there and in that stance she said querulously, “Why did you leave me by myself?”

The Indian woman was about to stand up and return to her< place next to her mistress. But she stopped when she had risen to her knees. “Everything bores you. You’re very chinaj.”

The sick girl sat up, supporting herself with her right elbow on the pillows; she passed the back of her free hand over her forehead as if to erase her look of ill humor. Her lips barely curved in a conciliatory simper.

“Come here.”

The Indian woman shook her head.

“You won’t come, nana?”