For a few hours of a few nights a year, they inherited their kingdom, so to speak, at carnival balls, as if these were dances in their honor, in honor of the timeless scourge without antidote, the perennial temptation of the flesh, the devouring, avenging she-wolves who howl with pain and howl with pleasure. These dances are like ancient rites to Pan, the terrifying horned god with a goat's cloven hooves, whose name brought us the word panic, and who played the flute for dancing nymphs. Carnival balls likewise belong to the nymphs, who reign supreme there, and only there, where men never belittled them and even the police do not harass them. Men who have attended such events well know who rules over these ephemeral kingdoms, a wine glass for her scepter, magnificent semi-nudity for her mantle, and a halo for her crown. Supreme vice, like supreme virtue, creates a kind of an aureola around the semblances of both cloistered virgin mystics pallid from prayer and aging courtesans withered from a life of coupling. And the courtiers who wait on these blasphemous queens? The men they actually accept without charge on these occasions? Young men who have not yet learned good behavior. Grown men who have forgotten all about it. The fathers of daughters who dream innocent dreams in the chaste bedrooms of perfect homes. The husbands of wives who lie awake in those homes thinking black thoughts, obliged to embrace adulterous disappointment in their abandoned marriage beds.

Santa allowed herself to be persuaded and went to the dance in a dark, all-concealing hood and cloak, with a silk and velvet mask. It was nearly two o'clock in the morning when the gang from Elvira's house entered the Arbeu Theater, where the dance was held, an already ugly structure that transformation into a cheap dance hall had made even uglier. Of the half dozen women, four had escorts, and the other two were Santa and a tubercular colleague who dressed as a witch because her sickly thinness suited the disguise. Jenaro and Hipólito brought up the rear, the latter having insisted on accompanying the group because he and Jenaro were domiciled across the street from the Arbeu. A childish pretext, obviously, because what the piano player wanted was to be wherever Santa was, to take care of her, blind and all. He had exhorted Jenaro to exceptional vigilance:

“If you see that pigtailed bastard, take me close to him and don't take your eyes off him. Not for an instant! And if, God forbid, he tries to do something to Santa, push me on top of him, hard, and run get a policeman. Okay? I'll make sure he doesn't go anywhere in the meantime!”

Each couple bought its own tickets to get in, which is to say, the girls paid for themselves and for their consorts. Santa paid for herself and for the tubercular witch, and Hipólito temporarily disappeared in an attempt to avoid paying altogether, but finally decided to buy a ticket for himself, at least, refusing to pay anything for his young guide, however.