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still loudly touting all the many victories of the federation, 2 then why had a paymaster recently arrived from Guadalajara spreading the rumor that Huerta’s friends and family were abandoning the capital and heading toward the ports on their way to Europe, even though Huerta kept shouting and yelling, ‘I’ll make peace, no matter the cost.’ So the revolutionaries, or the bandits, or whatever one wished to call them—they were going to topple the government. Tomorrow belonged to them, and the only choice, the only choice really, was to join them.
    â€œNo, this time I have not made a mistake,” Luis Cervantes said to himself, almost out loud.
    â€œWhat’re ya sayin’?” Camila asked. “I was startin’ to think that a cat had gotten your tongue.”
    Luis Cervantes frowned and looked angrily at the girl, a kind of homely female monkey with bronze-colored skin, ivory teeth, and broad, flat feet.
    â€œListen, curro , ya must know how to tell stories, don’t ya now?”
    Cervantes made a rude gesture and left without answering her.
    Enthralled, she continued looking at him until his silhouette disappeared down the path by the river.
    She was so distracted that she nearly jumped, startled, when she heard the voice of her neighbor, the one-eyed María Antonia, who was as always snooping from her hut. María Antonia had shouted at her:
    â€œHey, you! Give ’im some love powder. Maybe then he might fall for ya.”
    â€œNah. You might, but not me.”
    "You bet I’d like to! But, phooey! Those curros make me sick.”

IX
    â€œSeñora Remigia, won’t you lend me some eggs, my chicken woke up all lazy. I have some señores back there who want breakfast.”
    The neighbor opened her eyes wide, trying to adjust her sight as she passed from the bright sunlight into the shadows of the small hut, made darker still by the dense smoke rising from the fire. After a few brief moments she could make out the outlines of the objects in the room more distinctly, and she saw the stretcher of the wounded man in a corner, with the man’s head close to the dilapidated, greasy posts of the wall.
    She crouched down next to Señora Remigia, glanced furtively toward where Demetrio was resting, and asked in a hushed voice:
    â€œHow’s this man doing? More comfortable, ya say? Tha’s good. Look at ’im, he’s so young. But he still looks so pale and ghastly. Ah! So the bullet wound won’t heal, huh? Listen, Señora Remigia, shouldn’t we do some kinda healin’ ourselves?”
    Señora Remigia, naked from the waist up, stretches her lean, sinewy arms out over the handle of the metate, and presses it down and back and forth over her nixtamal, 1 grinding the corn over and over again.
    â€œWho knows if they’ll like that any,” she answers without interrupting her tough task, nearly out of breath. “They have their own doctor, ya know.”
    â€œSeñora Remigia.” Another neighbor comes in, bending her bony body down to pass through the door. “Do ya have a few leaves of laurel ya could give me to prepare an infusion for María Antonia? She woke up with the colic.”
    And since this request was merely a pretext to come in and gossip, she turns her eyes toward the corner where the wounded man is lying, and inquires about his health, winking.
    Señora Remigia lowers her eyes to indicate that Demetrio is sleeping.
    â€œWell, so you’re here too, Señora Pachita, I hadn’t seen ya.”
    â€œGood mornin’ and God bless you, ’ñora Fortunata. And how’s your family this mornin’?”
    â€œWell, María Antonia has got her the ‘curse.’ And, as always, she’s got the colic.” 2
    She squats down and crouches right next to Señora Pachita.
    â€œI don’t have any laurel leaves, dear,” Señora Remigia replies, stopping her grinding for