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Natalia threw herself into her mother’s arms, crying on and on with a quiet sobbing. She’d bottled it up for many days, until we got back to Zenzontla today and she saw her mother and began feeling like she needed consolation.

But during those days when we had so many difficult things to do—when we had to bury Tanilo in a grave at Talpa without anyone to help us, when she and I, just the two of us alone, joined forces and began to dig the grave, pulling out the clods of earth with our hands, hurrying to hide Tanilo in the grave so he wouldn’t keep on scaring people with his smell so full of death—then she didn’t cry.

Not afterward either, on the way back, when we were traveling at night without getting any rest, groping our way as if asleep and trudging along the steps that seemed like blows on Tanilo’s grave. At that time Natalia seemed to have hardened and steeled her heart so she wouldn’t feel it boiling inside her. Not a single tear did she shed.

She came here, near her mother, to cry, just to upset her, so she’d know she was suffering, upsetting all the rest of us besides. I felt that weeping of hers inside me too as if she was wringing out the cloth of our sins.

Because what happened is that Natalia and I killed Tanilo Santos between the two of us. We got him to go with us to Talpa so he’d die. And he died. We knew he couldn’t stand all that traveling; but just the same, we pushed him along between us, thinking we’d finished him off forever. That’s what we did.

The idea of going to Talpa came from my brother Tanilo. It was his idea before anyone else’s. For years he’d been asking us to take him. For years. From the day when he woke up with some purple blisters scattered about on his arms and legs. And later on the blisters became wounds that didn’t bleed—just a yellow gummy thing like thick distilled water came out of them. From that time I remember very well he told us how afraid he was that there was no cure for him any more. That’s why he wanted to go see the Virgin of Talpa, so she’d cure him with her look. Although he knew Talpa was far away and we’d have to walk a lot under the sun in the daytime and in the cold March nights, he wanted to go anyway. The blessed Virgin would give him the cure to get rid of that stuff that never dried up. She knew how to do that, by washing them, making everything fresh and new like a recently rained-on field. Once he was there before Her, his troubles would be over; nothing would hurt him then or hurt him ever again.

That’s what he thought.

And that’s what Natalia and I latched on to so we could take him. I had to go with Tanilo because he was my brother. Natalia would have to go too, of course, because she was his wife. She had to help him, taking him by the arm, bearing his weight on her shoulders on the trip there and perhaps on the way back, while he dragged along on his hope.

I already knew what Natalia was feeling inside. I knew something about her. I knew, for example, that her round legs, firm and hot like stones in the noonday sun, had been alone for a long time. I knew that. We’d been together many times, but always Tanilo’s shadow separated us; we felt that his scabby hands got between us and took Natalia away so she’d go on taking care of him. And that’s the way it’d be as long as he was alive.

I know now that Natalia is sorry for what happened. And I am too; but that won’t save us from feeling guilty or give us any peace ever again. It won’t make us feel any better to know that Tanilo would’ve died anyway because his time was coming, and that it hadn’t done any good to go to Talpa, so far away, for it’s almost sure he would’ve died just as well here as there, maybe a little afterward, because of all he suffered on the road, and the blood he lost besides, and the anger and everything—all those things together were what killed him off quicker. What’s bad about it is that Natalia and I pushed him when he didn’t want to go on anymore, when he felt it was useless to go on and he asked us to take him back. We jerked him up from the ground so he’d keep on walking, telling him we couldn’t go back now.

“Talpa is closer now than Zenzontla.” That’s what we told him. But Talpa was still far away then, many days away.

We wanted him to die. It’s no exaggeration to say that’s what we wanted before we left Zenzontla and each night that we spent on the road to Talpa. It’s something we can’t understand now, but it was what we wanted. I remember very well.

I remember those nights very well. First we had some light from a wood fire.

Afterward we’d let the fire die down, then Natalia and I would search out the shadows to hide from the light of the sky, taking shelter in the loneliness of the countryside, away from Tanilo’s eyes, and we disappeared into the night. And that loneliness pushed us toward each other, thrusting Natalia’s body into my arms, giving her a release. She felt as if she was resting; she forgot many things and then she’d go to sleep with her body feeling a great relief.

It always happened that the ground on which we slept was hot. And Natalia’s flesh, the flesh of my brother Tanilo’s wife, immediately became hot with the heat of the earth. Then those two heats burned together and made one wake up from one’s dreams. Then my hands groped for her; they ran over her red-hot body, first lightly, but then they tightened on her as if they wanted to squeeze her blood out. This happened again and again, night after night, until dawn came and the cold wind put out the fire of our bodies. That’s what Natalia and did along the roadside to Talpa when we took Tanilo so the Virgin would relieve his suffering.

Now it’s all over. Even from the pain of living Tanilo found relief. He won’t talk any more about how hard it was for him to keep on living, with his body poisoned like it was, full of rotting water inside that came out in each crack of his legs or arms. Wounds this big, that opened up slow, real slow, and then let out bubbles of stinking air that had us all scared.

But now that he’s dead things are different. Now Natalia weeps for him, maybe so he’ll see, from where he is, how full of remorse her soul is. She says she’s seen Tanilo’s face these last days. It was the only part of him that she cared about—Tanilo’s face, always wet with the sweat which the effort to bear his pain left him in. She felt it approaching her mouth, hiding in her hair, begging her, in a voice she could scarcely hear, to help him. She says he told her that he was finally cured, that he no longer had any pain. “Now I can be with you, Natalia.

Help me to be with you,” she says he said to her.

We’d just left Talpa, just left him buried there deep down in that ditch we dug to bury him.

Since then Natalia has forgotten about me. I know how her eyes used to shine like pools lit up by the moon. But suddenly they faded, that look of hers was wiped away as if it’d been stamped into the earth. And she didn’t seem to see anything any more. All that existed for her was her Tanilo, whom she’d taken care of while he was alive and had buried when his time came to die.

It took us twenty days to get to the main road to Talpa. Up to then the three of us had been alone. At that point people coming from all over began to join us, people like us who turned onto that wide road, like the current of a river, making us fall behind, pushed from all sides as if we were tied to them by threads of dust. Because from the ground a white dust rose up with the swarm of people like corn fuzz that swirled up high and then came down again; all the feet scuffing against it made it rise again, so that dust was above and below us all the time. And above this land was the empty sky, without any clouds, just the dust, and the dust didn’t give any shade.

We had to wait until night-time to rest from the sun and that white light from the road.

Then the days began to get longer. We’d left Zenzontla about the middle of February, and now that we were in the first part of March it got light very early.

We hardly got our eyes closed at night when the sun woke us up again, the same sun that’d gone down just a little while ago.

I’d never felt life so slow and violent as when we were trudging along with so many people, just like we were a swarm of worms all balled together under the sun, wriggling through the cloud of dust that closed us all in on the same path and had us corralled. Our eyes followed the dust cloud and struck the dust as if stumbling against something they could not pass through. And the sky was always gray, like a heavy gray spot crushing us all from above. Only at times, when we crossed a river, did the dust clear up a bit. We’d plunge our feverish and blackened heads into the green water, and for a moment a blue smoke, like the steam that comes out of your mouth when it’s cold, would come from all of us.

But a little while afterward we’d disappear again, mixed in with the dust, sheltering each other from the sun, from that heat of the sun we all had to endure.

Eventually night will come. That’s what we thought about. Night will come and we’ll get some rest. Now we have to get through the day, get through it somehow to escape from the heat and the sun. Then we’ll stop—afterward.

What we’ve got to do now is keep plugging right along behind so many others just like us and in front of many others. That’s what we have to do. We’ll really only rest well when we’re dead.

That’s what Natalia and I thought about, and maybe Tanilo too, when we were walking along the main road to Talpa among the procession, wanting to be the first to reach the Virgin, before she ran out of miracles.

But Tanilo began to get worse. The time came when he didn’t want to go any farther. The flesh on his feet had burst open and begun to bleed. We took care of him until he got better. But, he’d decided not to go any farther.

“I’ll sit here for a day or two and then I’ll go back to Zenzontla.” That’s what he said to us.

But Natalia and I didn’t want him to. Something inside us wouldn’t let us feel any pity for Tanilo. We wanted to get to Talpa with him, for at that point he still had life left in him. That’s why Natalia encouraged him while she rubbed his feet with alcohol so the swelling would go down. She told him that only the Virgin of Talpa would cure him. She was the only one who could make him well forever. She and no one else. There were lots of other Virgins, but none like the Virgin of Talpa. That’s what Natalia told him.

Then Tanilo began to cry, and his tears made streaks down his sweaty face, and he cursed himself for having been bad. Natalia wiped away the streaky tears with her shawl, and between us we lifted him off the ground so he’d walk on a little further before night fell.

So, dragging him along was how we got to Talpa with him.

The last few days we started getting tired too. Natalia and I felt that our bodies were being bent double. It was as if something was holding us and placing a heavy load on top of us. Tanilo fell down more often and we had to pick him up and sometimes carry him on our backs. Maybe that’s why we felt the way we did, with our bodies slack and with no desire to keep on walking. But the people who were going along by us made us walk faster.

At night that frantic world calmed down. Scattered everywhere the bonfires shone, and around the fire the pilgrims said their rosaries, with their arms crossed, gazing toward the sky in the direction of Talpa. And you could hear how the wind picked up and carried that noise, mixing it together until it was all one roaring sound. A little bit afterward everything would get quiet. About midnight you could hear someone singing far away. Then you closed your eyes and waited for the dawn to come without getting any sleep.

We entered Talpa singing the hymn praising Our Lord.

We’d left around the middle of February and we got to Talpa the last days of March, when a lot of people were already on their way back. All because Tanilo took it into his head to do penance. As soon as he saw himself surrounded by men wearing cactus leaves hanging down like scapularies, he decided to do something like that too. He tied his feet together with his shirt sleeves so his steps became more desperate. Then he wanted to wear a crown of thorns. A little later he bandaged his eyes, and still later, during the last part of the way, he knelt on the ground and shuffled along on his knees with his hands crossed behind him; so that thing that was my brother Tanilo Santos reached Talpa, that thing so covered with plasters and dried streaks of blood that it left in the air a sour smell like a dead animal when he passed by.

When we least expected it we saw him there among the dancers. We hardly realized it and there he was with a long rattle in his hand, stomping hard on the ground with his bare bruised feet. He seemed to be in a fury, as if he was shaking out all the anger he’d been carrying inside him for such a long time, or making a last effort to try to live a little longer.

Maybe when he saw the dances he remembered going every year to Tolimán during the novena of Our Lord and dancing all night long until his bones limbered up without getting tired. Maybe that’s what he remembered and he wanted to get back the strength he used to have.

Natalia and I saw him like that for a moment. Right afterward we saw him raise his arms and slump to the ground with the rattle still sounding in his bloodspecked hands. We dragged him out so he wouldn’t be tromped on by the dancers, away from the fury of those feet that slipped on stones and leaped about stomping the earth without knowing that something had fallen among them.

Holding him up between us as if he was crippled, we went into the church with him. Natalia had him kneel down next to her before that little golden figure of the Virgin of Talpa. And Tanilo started to pray and let a huge tear fall, from way down inside him, snuffing out the candle Natalia had placed in his hands. But he didn’t realize this; the light from so many lit candles kept him from realizing what was happening right there. He went on praying with his candle snuffed out. Shouting his prayers so he could hear himself praying.

But it didn’t do him any good. He died just the same.

“… from our hearts filled with pain we all send her the same plea. Many laments mixed with hope. Her tenderness is not deaf to laments nor tears, for She suffers with us. She knows how to take away that stain and to leave the heart soft and pure to receive her mercy and charity. Our Virgin, our mother, who wants to know nothing of our sins, who blames herself for our sins, who wanted to bear us in her arms so life wouldn’t hurt us, is right here by us, relieving our tiredness and the sicknesses of our souls and our bodies filled with thorns, wounded and supplicant. She knows that each day our faith is greater because it is made up of sacrifices …”

That’s what the priest said from up in the pulpit. And after he quit talking the people started praying all at once with a noise just like a lot of wasps frightened by smoke.

But Tanilo no longer heard what the priest was saying. He’d become still, with his head resting on his knees. And when Natalia moved him so he’d get up he was already dead.

Outside you could hear the noise of the dancing, the drums and the horn-pipes, the ringing of bells. That’s when I got sad. To see so many living things, to see the Virgin there, right in front of us with a smile on her face, and to see Tanilo on the other hand as if he was in the way. It made me sad.

But we took him there so he’d die, and that’s what I can’t forget.

Now the two of us are in Zenzontla. We’ve come back without him. And Natalia’s mother hasn’t asked me anything, what I did with my brother Tanilo, or anything. Natalia started crying on her shoulder and poured out the whole story to her.

I’m beginning to feel as if we hadn’t reached any place; that we’re only here in passing, just to rest, and that then we’ll keep on traveling. I don’t know where to, but we’ll have to go on, because here we’re very close to our guilt and the memory of Tanilo.

Maybe until we begin to be afraid of each other. Not saying anything to each other since we left Talpa may mean that. Maybe Tanilo’s body is too close to us, the way it was stretched out on the rolled petate, filled inside and out with a swarm of blue flies that buzzed like a big snore coming from his mouth, that mouth we couldn’t shut in spite of everything we did and that seemed to want to go on breathing without finding any breath. That Tanilo, who didn’t feel pain any more but who looked like he was still in pain with his hands and feet twisted and his eyes wide open like he was looking at his own death. And here and there all his wounds dripping a yellow water, full of that smell that spread everywhere and that you could taste in your mouth, like it was a thick and bitter honey melting into your blood with each mouthful of air you took.

I guess that’s what we remember here most often—that Tanilo we buried in the Talpa graveyard, that Tanilo Natalia and I threw earth and stones on so the wild animals wouldn’t come dig him up.