“Y pondré enemistad entre ti y la mujer…”

The expression “Y pondré enemistad entre ti y la mujer…” is a fragment from Genesis spoken by Gris Marsala as Lorenzo Quart stands before the Virgin of Tears. Its scriptural image of enmity between woman and serpent resonates with the statue’s own serpent beneath her foot, bringing the church’s devotional imagery into Quart and Gris’s encounter.

The Quotation in the Church

Quart has risen from his pew and walked to the main altar, where the Virgin of Tears stands among the praying figures of Macarena Bruner’s ancestors. In the dimness, the statue’s hands are open and empty, its face tilted upward; the twenty pearls of Captain Xaloc glimmer on its face, starry crown, and blue tunic. Beneath her bare foot, the serpent’s head is crushed against a crescent moon. Gris’s words, heard from behind Quart, name an enmity already rendered in the image before them.

Scriptural Conflict and the Church

Before approaching the altar, Quart has been thinking of Father Ferro’s parish church as a chosen position in a battle. The small, damaged, solitary church is Ferro’s “Torre Maldita,” a refuge from forces Quart imagines as wolves threatening the last faithful. The Genesis fragment makes that conflict more than a general metaphor: its opposition between woman and serpent echoes the Virgin’s victory over the serpent, while setting the sacred image within the passage’s wider atmosphere of struggle.

Gris and Quart

Gris quotes the verse from behind Quart, arriving so quietly in tennis shoes that he has not heard her enter. He remarks on her catlike steps, and she laughs. Quart notices the familiar braid at her nape and the three-centimeter pale scar on the inside of her right wrist, recalling her earlier visit to the bishop and the mirror broken by her fist. The verse thus occurs not as detached exposition but in a charged meeting shaped by their shared history and by the church’s precarious setting.