There was more incredulity (the incredulity of someone who was obeyed even in the most insignificant of her whims) than} admonishment in the question. Idolina saw the uncertainty that had come over her servant’s mind. The nana’s breathing was laboured. But she did not obey.

“Look how your heart leaps under the blouse. Blood is falling I from it.”

“Niña,” the woman answered at last, “you have behaved very badly to me. I will not go to you.”

“All right,” Idolina acknowledged unconcernedly. “Then I’ll go myself.”

The statement was enough to make the Indian woman run, tangling herself up in the folds of her tzec, to restrain her patrona. But she didn’t manage to keep Idolina from throwing back the sheets that covered her and sitting up at the edge of the bed. Her naked legs, excessively white and thin, hung down without touching the floor.

“Niña, you’re going to freeze to death, por Dios.”

But the girl laughed at the Indian woman’s fears and with a quick movement pushed aside the blankets meant to protect her from a chill that was not banished even by the brazier burning peacefully in a corner.

The nana let her arms fall along her body in the inertia of powerlessness. In front of her the bedclothes were piled up in shapeless heaps that took on grotesque proportions in the dancing shadows.

Hanging on to one of the bedposts, Idolina stood up, sinking her feet into the carpet. She was waiting for a look of forgiveness on the Indian woman’s face. To hurry it, she took the tip of her braid and pretended to kiss it.

The nana did not try to evade this caress. She said, in affectionate mockery, “Try that on someone who does not know you like I do.”

“And who made me this way?” the girl shot back. “You brought me up, so you’re the one who brought me up badly.”

There was between the two of them the kind of dialogue that can only be established between a mistress and a servant as the result of a lengthy dependency on the one hand and a tender loyalty on the other. Their relationship was a constant play of reciprocal concessions and impositions whose mechanism had been perfected by an exclusive intimacy.

“Good. We’re calming down.”

The nana had gathered together the bedclothes and put them back in place. After fluffing up the pillows, she said, “Now you can lie down.”

But Idolina wasn’t listening to her. Still leaning against the bedpost, she was trying to catch the bustling sounds from outside.

“The marimba band has just come in.”

The woman took advantage of Idolina’s distraction to push her until she was sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“I’ve never seen a party,” the girl reflected gravely.

“When you are good and healthy, mi niña. Then.”