El Jarameño pulls and pulls with wild anger, but it takes him how long to free the knife … a minute? A century? In the process, he knocks over the candles and the framed image of the virgin, and the glass in the frame shatters with a crash. El Jarameño obeys his gypsy superstitions, drops the knife, picks up the image, and brushes it off. He says to his mistress hoarsely, without looking at her:

“The virgin in heaven has saved you. She's the only one who could … Now, get out! Get out, and don't let me see or hear you! Get out! Because if you don't …”

Seven

Straight as the flight of an arrow, without a hint of hesitation or vacillation, like a swallow that returns to the dusty eaves of a roof where its nest has awaited, empty, resisting the rain and frost during the season of the bird's absence, Santa directed her fugitive steps to Elvira's house. She did not reflect that she had abundant access to other resources that were safer and, above all, more respectable. She did not remember the projects that she had imagined a few months before, when the death of her mother had so shaken her spirit and offered, if she could abjure a life of prostitution, the promise of resurrection for her body and soul. She thought of none of that.

Pursued by the terrible look of el Jarameño, a look pregnant with homicide, that had made her think her time had come, she fled from the Guipuzcoana Boarding House, humiliated, trembling, her lovely head hanging, her eyes on the ground, her heart intimidated and beating irregularly, now with great haste, as if she were escaping from jail, now very slowly, as if she were attempting, in her panic, to make herself invisible. She knew that doña Nicasia and all the other denizens of the Guipuzcoana were watching her from doors and windows, immobile and aloof, indicating that they all knew of her filthy behavior and all condemned it. She lifted her skirt in order not to trip, and not feeling safe with even one foot in the Guipuzcoana, she took a few steps away from the broad entrance of the building onto the busy sidewalk, hoping that she would not attract too much attention there in her house dress, without a hat or coat. Fortunately, it was getting dark and because it was Sunday, few stores had lit their show windows. Shadows had begun to gather in the downtown streets, resting here and there on the cobblestones, nosing their way into open doors, hanging down the sides of tall buildings, catching on balconies, splitting on signs and other protrusions, like a very old curtain that the wind has whipped to tatters. Santa found a pool of shadow on the sidewalk and stayed in it until she was able to hail an empty rental coach and direct it to the well-known brothel.

“Hop right in, my patrona,” said the coachman, lighting the lamps as he listened to the address. “Okay, I know where, Elvira's house.”