The only thing that she really wanted, her purity, her honor, the totally clean conscience of an immaculate virgin, trusting and gullible, who knows nothing of sin and is pitilessly sacrificed just because she loves … that was gone, gone forever, and it wasn't coming back. Was it so far away? … Neither near, nor far, but rather somewhere for which there are no words, somewhere invisible, where death is, for example. That was it, death, which she had just escaped—never near, because it might be far, but never far, because it might be near. The idea intrigued her. What she wanted was there.

Santa abandoned herself, mind and body, to what she supposed to be forces beyond her control, and finding herself back in the brothel, she breathed easier and wrapped herself in ignominy as if wrapping herself in cashmere and silk. She would not try to change; she would continue being bad. Her plan, since she could not resist being bad, was to use evil as a weapon, willy nilly. So it is, always, with forces that are beyond control, such as the river by which she had grown up in Chimalistac, she reasoned. When it flowed gently, it was a blessing, and when in flood, it tore up tree trunks, drowned livestock, and ruined fields without caring one whit if people cursed and shook their fists or cried and begged it to stop. What were their threats or entreaties to the river? Nothing! She would behave the same way. With her caresses she would calm the men who thirsted for her body, calm all who wanted it. There was enough for everybody. And if she happened to deceive and cause grief, what of it? They could kill her or let her be, nothing in between!

Convinced of her own perversion, dizzy at having gazed into a moral abyss, Santa twisted her face in the dark and sat bolt upright in bed. It was not her fault. It was not! Let them inspect every moment of her girlhood, let them dig through the rubble in her heart if they could bear it, the rubble of innocent castles in the sky that had crashed silently to earth in a world of pain. But they wouldn't take the trouble to dig, would they? They'd be happy enough rubbing and kissing her breasts, without wondering whether the heart that beat underneath were happy or unhappy. And if all they wanted was her body, that's all she'd give them, until they couldn't take any more, or until they'd made her sick, as normally occurred, as had occurred with various of her predecessors at Elvira's house, as would occur with those who came after her. Who cared about her heart, anyway? Not her! She'd almost forgotten about it. Maybe she should look for it and dedicate it to el Jarameño!

No, what had happened was enough. As long as she loved the torero—because without any question she had loved him—she had been faithful. But that afternoon, she had wanted the inventor, and so what? For that he's going to kill her? … Again she felt the pure, physical pleasure of having escaped a near brush with death, and she ran her hands over her lovely body automatically, as if needing confirmation that it was still intact.