Poor Santa! How often she later recalled every detail of that gratifying day! One could say that her casual encounter with the student had been analogous to a match that we light in the darkness. It flares up briefly, and though it sheds little light, its illumination is infinitely precious. Because, from that day onward, Santa's decline became a freefall—rapid, implacable, something that, once begun, no one and nothing could slow or stop. Only one thing happened even faster than her fall: the progression of her disease. The pain that had been, at first, infrequent though sharp, became regular, racking, pregnant with dreadful implications. Santa attributed the pain to syphilis, the nemesis of all prostitutes, the scourge that terrifies them and that almost always gets them sooner or later. To combat it, she adopted the standard procedure of the profession: absolute secrecy, which, when the pangs become terrible, requires superhuman endurance to maintain. The tears come in silence, the women laugh uproariously so not to howl, they squirm in agony when alone, and in public they suffer the torture of a tightly laced corset. The rough embraces of the customers become like tongs that rip the flesh of holy martyrs.

In addition to absolute secrecy, the profession seeks the application of folk remedies, the herbs that may cure or may kill, powders and ointments with unintelligible names, sold in semi-clandestine circumstances by soothsaying old women who live in remote, horrid dwellings on the outskirts of the city, where the streets give way desolate, open country. The old women also sell talismans, foretell the future, and cast spells: “Get the blood of a rooster, the fur of a black cat, the eye of a deer, the skeleton of a lizard. Put a container of water in the light of the waning moon. Burn incense and kiss a baby's bottom.” They deal in magical instructions, diabolical incantations, portentous mysticism, heretical sacrilege—things that further sicken the spirit without alleviating the flesh. Santa did it all, and the disease persisted, unstoppable, insidious, ever progressing, steadily undermining her organism with cruel, incurable torment, like a punishment sent from above as retribution for the most obdurate sins. Miraculous remedies and drugs could do nothing against the advancing illness, as the pain spread to various regions of her body, lacerating, ulcerating, gnawing away like a small, invisible animal impossible to trap. Unbearable crises immersed Santa in a true hell of pain, only to recede, leaving her face, her color, and the lines of her body unaltered. She did notice that she felt physically worse and worse each time she finished providing pleasure to the men who bought it from her, but she refused to consider herself wounded and out of combat. Instead, she exercised prodigious feats of pretense, endurance, and dissimulation.

Another thing, her jewels. How carelessly the gorgeous temptress had kept the jewelry given her by her rich lovers, accumulating a considerable quantity of precious gems that she had enjoyed spilling out of her hand, on occasion, to watch them tumble, glittering, into the plush interior of her carved jewelry box. Her jewelry—like her health and her rich protectors—now disappeared quickly and quietly into the hands of Spanish pawn brokers or, more directly, into the clutches of the women who often scout for them in brothels, paying merely a seventh or an eighth of the true value. In the blink of an eye, Santa's expressive eyes, still large, velvety, and bright in spite of all the tears, still defended by her silky, curled eyelashes, were the only jewels that remained to her. She looked away for barely a moment, it seemed, and the coffer stood empty. How was it possible?