She went down rigidly, more disposed to refuse than to offer anything, experiencing an unconquerable physical revulsion. Standing in the doorway of the illuminated salon, she saw the customers still wearing their hats and joking around with her colleagues, who not only consented to their foul language and their rude, lascivious caresses, but actually provoked them on purpose and asked for them to continue, in a greed-inspired effort to enflame the beasts.

A great peal of thunder, announcing the rain that just then blanketed the city, rattled everything, and turning her face to the street door only a step away, Santa lifted her skirt and strode toward it, guided by an instinctive desire to escape, to run as far as she had strength to run, to run wherever the danger that seemed so imminent could not reach her. But just as she reached the door the skies released a furious deluge that lashed walls, windows, and pavement with huge raindrops that landed with a sharp, metallic splatter, exploding with the force of their trajectory. Santa looked at the street, down the middle of which the shower unfurled like a high, thick curtain of gauze blowing at an angle. The wind shook the electric street lamps, their rays magically interweaving with the silver threads of water that disappeared ultimately into dark, noisy puddles on the pavement.

Against that dreamlike backdrop and in the sudden, stark brilliance of a bolt of lightning, one among many that cracked the sky, Santa saw a small boy leading a man by the hand, neither of them protected from the storm by an umbrella or coat, both of them leaning toward the house, heading in that direction. At first, she couldn't believe it. How could they be coming there? Yet the couple continued approaching, the man furious when his cane and the little boy together failed to keep him from stepping in a pothole, the kid impassive despite the rain that fell from the clouds to drench his back and the rain of insults and swear words showered upon him by the blind man he served.

Santa had to step aside so that the two apparent vagabonds could enter, and she hardly replied to their hello, too worried about getting her clothes wet if they came close. She was expecting to hear Pepa scold the new arrivals, but instead, the blind man calmly let go of the boy and moved ahead with only his cane to guide him, ragged and dripping wet, but smiling, hat in hand, and looking sightlessly around with the horrid whitish eyes of a bronze statue without patina. He stepped right into the salon, where Pepa and the other women greeted him warmly and addressed him familiarly as tú.

“Hello, Hipo, did you get wet? You're soaking, man! Go shake that water off outside or you'll ruin the furniture, and then come play.”

Come play? Santa watched amazed as the blind man they called Hipo felt his way to the interior courtyard where he did, in fact, brush the water off his clothing and afterward dry his hands with his handkerchief. Next, she saw him go straight to the piano, open it, and begin to play. Forgetting all about escape, she too entered the salon and leaned her elbow on the top of the piano to contemplate this prodigy, a blind man who played the piano so well.