Ce village est plein d’échos.

Ce village est plein d’échos is the phrase Damiana Cisneros of Media Luna uses to describe Comala as a place where sound persists after ordinary life has fallen silent. Its echoes are not merely atmospheric: they carry fragments of vanished gatherings and recognizable voices, making the deserted village seem inhabited by what is absent.

The Phrase and Its Image

Damiana speaks the phrase while walking through the village with Juan Preciado. She imagines sounds shut away in the hollows of walls or beneath stones, yet seemingly following anyone who walks. What can be heard includes cracks, laughter worn down by age and repetition, and voices that sound used up from having served too long. She also imagines that one day these noises will finally cease. The image holds two possibilities together: the echoes seem trapped in the village, but their persistence is not necessarily permanent.

A Celebration Heard After It Ends

Damiana recalls hearing the racket of a celebration for many nights at Media Luna. Once she went closer to watch the dancing, only to find what is there now: nobody and streets as deserted as they are in the present. The remembered festivity therefore survives as sound without a visible gathering. When the noise eventually stopped, Damiana was not surprised; she remarks that joy, too, grows tired. The echoes do not restore the celebration. They make its disappearance audible.

Traces and Recognizable Voices

Repeating that the village is full of echoes, Damiana says that barking dogs no longer frightens or concerns her. On windy days, leaves blow through a place where, as Juan can see, there are no trees. Their presence points back to trees that once existed, leaving a physical trace of a landscape that has changed.

More unsettling than these remnants, Damiana says, are voices that seem to come from cracks yet remain clear enough to recognize. Only moments before, while going to fetch Juan, she encountered a funeral procession and stopped to say a Pater. As she prayed, a woman separated herself from the others and asked Damiana to pray for her. The woman loosened her shawl, and Damiana recognized her sister Sixtina. The episode gives the phrase its sharpest meaning: in Comala, an echo can be not just an indistinct remnant but a familiar voice making contact across an otherwise empty street.