While the jewels had lasted, their gradual sale had produced enough money to sustain the situation. With money, she could bribe the Sanitation Agents who never left her alone anymore, who stuck to her like burrs, impatient as grave diggers, sensing that this bird was sick and not long for this world. A bit of money allowed her to keep her legitimate pride and resist, or at least, protest against the inhumane demands of the madams and change houses, or even rent her own place for a short time. When the jewels were gone, she sold her costly dresses and other things that she had not previously deemed to be of great value, the hats and wraps and accessories of which she once possessed dozens. But no more. Incredible how everything just vanished! And as her former elegance diminished, her illness worsened and, increasingly, the word got out. Even the cheap brothels did not want her now. The more her former colleagues said about her, the worse her plight. The clients of the houses began to warn one another about Santa. They never considered trying to help their former idol and simply counseled each other to shun her. She was a danger, a threat. One of them proposed denouncing her to the authorities in order to get her out of circulation and control the infallible and imminent contagion.

Perfectly aware that she was sinking, Santa only continued to sink. To lessen the pain, she frankly embraced her last faithful lover, the bottle. Alcohol could at least dull her consciousness of what was happening and, with its viscous embrace, offer her illusions so seductive that she filled her glass repeatedly to keep them in view. And in the leaden sleep from which one awakens pounded to a pulp, the alcohol carried her back to her village, Chimalistac, to her little white house with its chickens and orange trees, to the lap of her mother, and to the esteem and affection of her two honorable brothers. Waking in the dungeons of reality made her weep, but soon enough she began again to sip the poison and laugh a hoarse, lugubrious, alcoholic laugh that her comrades in arms respected with quiet commiseration without quite understanding.

During all of this, Hipólito suffered more, if possible, than did Santa herself. At the beginning of her precipitous decline, which is to say, from the moment when la Tosca turned Santa away, Hipólito could smell the disaster that his blind eyes could not see, and he even predicted it using a thousand euphemisms when he talked to her. His long, grim experience gave him full knowledge of what would happen in the brothels to a girl stigmatized by disease, and he well knew what Santa could expect if she did not leave the city immediately to live somewhere else while the storm blew over.

“Take a rest, Santita. Rest will do you good, and you've got to do something to erase the impression that people have gotten from your breakup with Rubio and from the way that la Tosca treated you. If you need money, don't worry, I've got some, and it's all yours … Above all, you need to get treatment, starting tomorrow, starting today if possible. We don't really know what is causing that pain. You think you don't have a man who wants to give you his name and take you out of this blasted business? Well, if you're not embarrassed by it, take my name. It's free, and you won't owe me anything.”