Hipólito installed himself on a chair by the head of Santa's bed after putting a pillow on the floor for Jenaro, who had almost fallen asleep on his feet. Santa had mechanically swallowed the potion and continued drowsing.

“Santita,” whispered Hipólito, “do you know I'm here. Do you know it's me?”

“Yes, Hipo. I know it's you. But it's hard to talk … I think I'm going to die, Hipo …”

The piano player spent some very dark hours by the bed of his beloved, while the day dawned for everyone else. For him, dawn never came. Ignorant and blind, all he had with which to counter Santa's fate was his aching, obligatory resignation to it, so he crossed his arms and entertained a host of heart-rending possibilities.

What did Santa have? It had to be something serious, really serious, because minor illnesses do not attack with such sudden intensity, and especially not with such a high fever. How long would she be like this? Would she get better, and if she did, would she suffer permanent harm? He simply could not imagine that she might die. No, no, she couldn't die … of that he was certain, though without basing his certainty on any firm evidence. But even if Santa was not going to die, the unanswered, unanswerable questions that kept repeating behind his unseeing eyes were enough to devastate and terrify him. Stirred to the very core of his being, he appealed to prayer, the supreme last resort, but prayer, somehow, was not available. Random fragments of it rambled through the wrinkles of his heart, through the gray hair of his soul, but only broken, faded, inefficacious phrases reached his lips, the remains of the magic formulas that he had memorized and that had brought him peace as a child, when he had babbled them with indestructible faith, first at his mother's side, and later, in memory of her. His disorderly life of a piano player in a brothel had separated him from spiritual exercises that he believed himself unworthy to practice, and now the old prayers would not answer his call. They were no longer his friends, no longer a soothing balm for his anguish. Let him try to reconcile them! He felt paralyzed by insignificance, suspecting that he and Santa—and even the strongest and healthiest of people—were mere ants, diminutive, defenseless insects that could be crushed instantly and for trivial reasons by a shoe they were never aware existed. We are born, live, and die without understanding any of these three mysteries, and yet with what vain airs, how continually, and how knowingly we speak of birth, life, and death!

Then Santa began to prattle in the delirium of her fever, creating tragic, swirling reconstructions of her childhood and youth, confusing dates, people, and events: el Jarameño in her family's little white house in Chimalistac; Rubio, a dashing young second lieutenant of the municipal guard, trying to seduce her at Elvira's house; Santa herself, married to her brothers' co-worker from the Contreras textile mill, the fellow who played the guitar and sighed for her when they were both so young; Jenaro, transformed into her son; and Hipólito, divided somehow into the two brothers who had repudiated and scorned her: