“You go on, Santita. It's the right thing for you to do. I'll wait for you …”

He would gladly sacrifice himself! Let her go to the places that her sovereign beauty could carry her! Let her enjoy the good things in life, things he could not offer her even remotely! Let her get everything that money could buy from someone else. But when, disenchanted at last, Santa asked for love, he'd be ready, and that would be his ultimate triumph, to wrap her in the love that had been swelling and swelling for so long inside his poor body. Hipólito confidently believed in Santa's prophecy of the day before, in the postponed consummation that she had promised him. Yes, it was their destiny! Someday, necessity would throw them together, yoking them side by side to pull the heavy load of their shared misfortune. Yes, that promised “someday” would come! It would. And then Santa would make it up to him, after suffering with other men and realizing that her true happiness, lay in her being at his side. That day would dawn someday. Hipólito, with his blind eyes, could see it far away, on the chimerical horizon that we scan for the arrival of things we long for. On that day, he and Santa would walk together holding hands down a wide, wide road, lit by the sun, clear of thistles and clouds, without perils or iniquities, their respective sufferings combined into one. And they would confide in each other, as if in prayer, all their sorrows, all they had been through in their long journey through sin. They would reveal to each other the wounds made by life's roughness, the wounds that so horrify the Pharisees of this earth, and calm their aches reciprocally with chaste and solemn kisses. Yes, that day would come, and upon its advent their former cares would disappear, their spirits would heal, and their tears would evaporate. Someday they would be together in love. It was their infallible destiny, and it was merciful, because everyone, everything loves, even the most miserable beings, even tiny particles like atoms. The world only exists because of love. We are born because our parents loved each other, and then we live in order to love, and ultimately we die because the earth loves the mud we are made of, needs it, and reclaims it …

Hipólito said all this to Santa deliriously as he played “Welcome” and the other melodies he'd composed for her.

Yes, that day would dawn with beautiful colors, the sun would ascend in a golden haze, and finally it would set in an opal, evening sky. What would it matter that his body was deformed or that hers had withered under a thousand lascivious hands? Love would straighten his body, cleanse hers, and redeem them both. Together their souls would enter the Promised Land, without remembrance of the past, leaving their flesh behind, now worthless, cast away to be consumed by wild beasts …