“Let us hope there will also be a Caterina,” said Ramón
“But will you go on with it—your Quetzalcoatl?”
“How can I leave off? It’s my métier now. Why don’t you join us? Why don’t you help me?”
“How?”
“You will see. Soon you will hear the drums again. Soon the first day of Quetzalcoatl will come. You will see. Then Cipriano will appear—in the red sarape—and Huitzilopochtli will share the Mexican Olympus with Quetzalcoatl. Then I want a goddess.”
“But will Don Cipriano be the god Huitzilopochtli?” she asked, taken aback.
“First Man of Huitzilopochtli, as I am First Man of Quetzalcoatl.”
“Will you?” said Kate to Cipriano. “That horrible Huitzilopochtli?”
“Yes, Señora!” said Cipriano, with a subtle smile of hauteur, the secret savage coming into his own.
“Not the old Huitzilopochtli—but the new,” said Ramón. “And then there must come a goddess; wife or virgin, there must come a goddess. Why not you, as the First Woman of—say Itzpapalotl, just for the sound of the name?”