Perhaps it was her stepfather’s words that first aroused Idolina’s doubts about the authenticity of her sufferings. To dispel them, she forced herself to feel worse and to show it. She couldn’t rest until all those around her (marks of worry and sleeplessness mercilessly imprinted on their faces) were vying with each other to please and serve her.

In the beginning, the girl had wanted to avenge the betrayal, as she called her mother’s second marriage. Her spite drove her to make terrible resolutions—flight, suicide—and despair would have given her the incentive to carry them out. But her father’s death taught her a great deal about the speed and ease with which the living, the absent, forget, console themselves, change, substitute. She understood that her complaints were a better way of prolonging the torture she was inflicting on Isabel. Her first attack had had spectacular results: the couple’s union was ruptured. Of course they were still living under the same roof. But they were no longer bound by their former complicity.

After that, Idolina’s attacks no longer succeeded in giving rise to such paroxysms of anguish. Repetition lessened their effect until they descended to the level of everyday events. Bit by bit, the mother allowed others to take charge of caring for the sick girl. She satisfied her scruples by offering higher salaries than any other patrona in Ciudad Real. But, unaccustomed to receiving such handsome remuneration, servants were suspicious of the job and quick to resign from it on the pretext that it was too much work (when in fact they were afraid of a possible contagion).

Isabel then remembered an Indian woman, Teresa Entzín López, who had suckled Idolina from the first week after her birth. She had her sent from the ranch.

From whom could she expect greater abnegation? And Teresa went beyond what was expected of her. She stayed awake all night and didn’t allow herself an instant’s rest during the day. When the crises ended and Idolina’s condition stabilized, Teresa was her inseparable companion.

She surprised everyone by the tenacity with which she began learning Spanish. And she, who was so awkward at making herself understood even in Tzotzil, her own language, mastered the foreign one with a certain fluency. She entertained the sick girl with recollections of the events of her youth, the traditions, superstitions and legends of her race. But she never told her why she abandoned that race to live among Caxláns. Nor was Idolina interested in knowing why. She wanted only to be distracted.

But too many idle hours remained. The two of them, mistress and servant, invented futile pastimes that did not succeed in absorbing them. Weaving was cast aside because it was too monotonous, embroidery was too fatiguing and the rest was useless. Tedium. Tedium. Tedium. Even the nana’s stories were losing their savor.