She was surprised at the strength with which she succumbed, the power of her weakness. Immodestly, she raised her eyes to observe the strong features of the stranger. She couldn't avoid a clash with his green eyes. He was not good-looking, certainly not handsome. But the olive skin of his face, which lent his entire body the same linear, sinuous energy as his thick lips and the prominent nerves in his temples, promised something desirable to the touch, because unknown. Under the table, he stretched out his foot until he touched the tip of her feminine slipper. The girl lowered her eyelids, looked at her father out of the corner of her eye, and moved her foot back. The perfect host smiled with his usual benevolence, running his fingers over his glass.
The entrance of the old Indian maid with the rice broke the silence, and Don Gamaliel observed that the dry season was ending a bit late this year. Fortunately, the clouds had begun to gather over the mountains, and the harvest would be good-not as good as last year, but good. It was odd, he said, how this old house was always damp, a dampness that stained the shadowed corners and nurtured the fern and the bright colors in the patio. It was, perhaps, a good omen for a family that grew and prospered thanks to the fruit of the land: established in the valley of Puebla-he was eating the rice, gathering it on his fork with precise movements-since the beginning of the nineteenth century and stronger, true enough, than all the absurd vicissitudes of a country incapable of tranquillity, enamored of convulsion.
"Sometimes I think the absence of blood and death throws us into despair. It's as if we feel alive only when we're surrounded by destruction and executions," the old man went on in his cordial voice. "But we shall go on, go on forever, because we have learned to survive, always…"
He picked up his guest's glass and filled it with full-bodied wine.
"But there is a price to be paid for surviving," said the guest dryly.
"It's always possible to negotiate the most convenient price…"
As he filled his daughter's glass, Don Gamaliel caressed her hand. "It's the finesse with which the negotiations are carried out that matters most. There is no need to frighten anyone, no need to wound sensitive souls…Honor should be kept intact."
He felt again for the girl's foot. This time she did not pull her foot back. She raised her glass and stared at the unknown guest without blushing.
"It's important to know how to make distinctions," murmured the old man as he wiped his lips with his napkin. "For example, business is one thing, and religion is something completely different."
"See him there so nice and pious, taking Communion every day with his little girl? Well, that same man stole everything he has from the priests, back when Juárez auctioned off Church property and anybody with a little cash could buy huge tracts of land…"
He had spent six days in Puebla before visiting Don Gamaliel Bernal's house. President Carranza had disbanded the troops, and it was then he remembered his conversation with Gonzalo Bernal in Perales and set out on the road to Puebla: a matter of pure instinct, but also the confidence which says that knowing a name, an address, a city in the shattered, chaotic world left by the Revolution is to know a lot. The irony that he should be the one returning to Puebla and not the executed Bernal amused him. It was in a way a masquerade, a sleight-of-hand, a joke that could be played with the greatest seriousness; but it was also proof of being alive, of a capacity to survive and strengthen one's own destiny at the expense of others. When he reached Puebla, when, from the Cholula road, he could make out, scattered over the valley, the red-and-yellow mushrooms that were the church domes, he was entering doubled, with Gonzalo Bernal's life added to his own, with the destiny of the dead man added onto his, as if Bernal in dying had delegated the possibilities of his unfulfilled life to him. Perhaps the death of others prolongs our life, he thought. But he hadn't come to Puebla to think.
"This year he hasn't even been able to buy seed. His debts have been piling up since last year, when the peasants went in for rebelling and planted the fallow land. They told him that if he didn't give them the land that wasn't being planted, they wouldn't work the land that was. And out of sheer pride he refused, so he was left with no harvest. Before, the Rural Guard would have put the rebels in their place, but now…well, another day has dawned.
"And not only that. Even the people who owe him money are getting out of hand. They don't want to pay him another cent. They say that with all the interest he's already charged them they've paid more than enough. See now, Colonel? They all believe things are going to change.
"Ah, but the old man is as stubborn as ever, won't give an inch. He'd rather die than give up whatever it is someone owes him."
He lost the last round of dice and shrugged. He gestured to the bartender for drinks all round, and they all thanked him.
"Who owes money to this Don Gamaliel, then?"
"Well…It would be easier to tell you who doesn't, I think."
"Is he friendly with anyone around here? Is there someone he's close to?"
"Sure. Father Páez, right around the corner."
"But didn't he buy all the Church land?"
"Sure…but the Father grants eternal salvation to Don Gamaliel and Don Gamaliel grants salvation on earth to the Father."
The sun blinded them as they stepped into the street.
"Blood will tell, they say. And that gal's sure got good blood."
"Who is that woman?"
"Can't you guess, Colonel? That's our hero's little girl."
Staring at the toes of her shoes, she walked along the old streets laid out like a chessboard. When he could no longer hear the echo of her heels on the paving stones and his steps had raised a could of dry, gray dust, he looked toward the walls of the ancient fortress-temple and the almond-shaped stones in its battlements. He crossed the wide esplanade and entered the silent nave. Once again, the footsteps echoed. He walked toward the altar.
The priest was rotund, his skin lifeless; only his coal-black eyes, set deep in his inflamed cheekbones, glowed with life. As soon as he saw the unknown man walking the length of the nave-and he spied on him, hidden behind a large screen, in ancient times a choir for the nuns, who later fled Mexico City, during the liberal Republic-the priest recognized in his movements the unconsciously martial air of a man accustomed to being on guard, accustomed to command and to attack. It was not just the ever so slight deformity of the horseman's lower legs; it was a certain nervous strength in his fist that came from daily contact with pistol and bridle. Even though the man was merely walking with his fist clenched, this was enough for Páez to recognize in him a disturbing power. Up in the nuns' secret place, he concluded that such a man was not there for devotional purposes. He lifted the hem of his cassock and slowly walked down the spiral staircase that led to the abandoned convent. Hem held high, shoulders raised until they almost reached his ears, body black and face white and bloodless, eyes penetrating, he descended with careful steps. The stairs urgently needed repair; his predecessor had stumbled in 1910, with fatal consequences. But Remigio Páez, looking like a puffed-up bat, could pierce all the dark corners of the black, humid, frightening cube. The darkness and the danger aroused all his senses and made him reflect: a military man in his church, dressed in civilian clothes, with no company or escort? Such a sight was too strange to pass unnoticed. He had, of course, foreseen it. The battles, the violence, the sacrilege, all of it would pass (he thought about the order, given barely two years before, that did away with all the chasubles and all the sacred vessels), and the Church, everlasting, built to endure eternally, would come to an understanding with the powers of the earthly city. A military man in civilian clothes…with no escort…