Petaca stretched over 1,580,000 acres: sugarcane fields, corn land, wheat land, cattle country, hills, valleys, rivers, lava beds, half a volcano, a lagoon, a pre-Columbian pyramid, villages with their gardens and orchards. The main house was thirty miles from Colima, the capital of the state. Peasants of the neighboring haciendas had dubbed Petaca the "Hacienda of the Clarín." Their ironical name referred to Raul's father, not the mockingbirds in the grove behind the residence. He had made many a man "sing." The nickname, said with a ttck of the tongue, conveyed their condemnation. Fernando Medina, the Clarín, lay in bed, propped on pillows. His bed faced a tall grilled window, its wooden shutters flung back. As he lay against his pillows, one hand twitched nervously. He was seventy-nine, white-headed, ashen and scrawny, part Coro, part Spanish. Bowled over by a stroke, he still had a patriarchal air. His eyes could still explode. The white eyebrows, though thin, arched imperially. Decaying and absent teeth had crumpled his mouth; only when he was angry could it regain its forcefulness; at all other times it mocked the man. Don Fernando had been rebellious. As a young fellow, he had quarreled with his father over a trivial matter and shot and killed him. This was the venom of his life. No law had punished Fernando. As he lay against his pillow, his hand trembling, he coughed and moaned. He hated inactivity; he hated being alone; he hated his room; lifting a small copper bell from the bed table, he clanged it erratically. As his hand quivered more violently, he plunged it under the sheet and pinned it down. "Did you ring, Don Fernando?" "Of course I rang. Bring me a cigarette and light it, Chavela." "But Dr. Velasco asked me not to ... you..." "Get a cigarette and be quick about it! Don't tell me what Dr. Velasco said, and don't run to him with your prattles." "Sí, Don Fernando," she said, cringing a little. As he waited for the cigarette (she had to go to the kitchen for a light), he eyed the grilled window. The bronze bars had a chunk of landscape wedged between them: a strap of corn land with giant chirimoya trees beyond. The chirimoyas had green limbs, and their mat of branches formed an umbrella cap of foliage. Don Fernando's sight was weak and branches did not exist for him. The umbrella seemed to float in mid-air. The effect annoyed him. He clanged his bell. Chavela, a fat Tarascan peasant in her twenties, hurried back, a cigarette in one hand and a charcoal ember in the other. Pincher-wise she gripped the glowing ember between splints of wood, tongs she had improvised. "Light my cigarette, you fool, before the charcoal falls on the bed! Did you have to bring it here? Don't you ever think for yourself?"