It would perhaps have been more charitable to allow the Indian to eat by himself and as he liked. But that would deprive Padre Manuel of his only opportunity to speak slowly and at length with Xaw, which was at mealtime. Over the table, casually, the priest reviewed the catechism. He was shocked, first of all by the extraordinary limitations of his pupil’s vocabulary. The simplest and most ordinary Spanish words had to be repeated four or five times and explained with abundant examples. And when the explanation had ended, no one remembered what the initial word was any more.

Manuel made an effort to pick up the thread, trying in vain to find in his student a trace, however slight, of comprehending attention, of interest. Xaw’s face remained impassive at the most vehement proofs of the existence of God and his incarnation in the person of Christ, or of the Church’s faithfulness to the revealed truths. The only commentary he allowed himself was an occasional coarse interjection, an uncontainable belch, a brazen yawn, a resolute spit. These reactions made Padre Manuel rigid with fury; when at last he decided to forbid them, the sacristan received the order grudgingly, bitterly. The new arrival had not understood that in the Tzotzil’s unpolished mind, the interjection, the belch, the yawn and the spit were the most courteous demonstrations of deference he could offer to the speaker.

Padre Manuel had to modify—and how often!—his methods of teaching the catechism. Not because Xaw’s individual case mattered to him any more, or because what produced good results with him could later be applied to the others, but out of a blind obstinacy that had forgotten its objective.

First, the priest had to give up his intensity. Facial expressions, changes in the register of his voice, any superfluity whatsoever distracted Xaw, taking his mind off the matter at hand and making him stare at the speaker as if he were an actor. No vehemence, then. Simplicity. But simplicity, after a while, becomes monotony. And how simple can you be with someone who doesn’t speak your language?

Padre Manuel noted how sympathy, benevolence and tolerance were diminishing within him until they were entirely used up. Every clumsy move Xaw made irritated him as if it had been done deliberately. Brute of an Indian, he repeated to himself, Indian beast, miserable Indian. And to think that there’s someone who wants to consider you a person! He should end up here so he can beat his head against the wall like me!

Putting his scruples aside, Padre Manuel reprimanded his student with excessive harshness; he was not averse to the idea of corporal punishment, which kept suggesting itself.