“Don't touch me, please! I'm dying! … But don't tell the old lady, because she'll run me out, and I don't have anywhere to go …”

Some of them, like infernal, rutting goats, forced themselves on her nonetheless, in the belief that she was faking it. A few paid her for nothing and even recommended this or that remedy. Most simply called out, from right in her room, asking for a replacement:

“Hey, what's-your-name, send another girl, because this one's no good!”

The old lady tolerated this for about a month, and at the end of that time, she fired Santa, using the same imperious tone as when she had admitted the girl:

“Pull yourself together, because tomorrow you're out of here. Forget what you owe me for the shawl …”

Nothing could make matters worse than they already were for Santa, so she simply assented to each of the old woman's three peremptory admonitions:

“Okay … okay … okay, I'll be out tomorrow … You bet I will!” she added, without knowing why.

That afternoon the pain was so powerful and unrelenting that she did not drink a drop. She sweated profusely, her eyes sunken deeply in their sockets, the circles underneath them so dark that she appeared to have been severely beaten. She was getting really sick, really sick … Rolling around in the bed she looked helplessly in all directions. Something was moving, the train, the ship, whatever it was … was moving, for sure … taking her away …

At dusk, she felt a little better, not much, but enough to do something. She would send for Hipólito, and Hipólito would come, right away, generous and loving, to get her out of there, help her have a good death, and above all, forgive her. She asked the administrator for one more coin to pay a messenger:

“The gentleman who will be coming to get me will pay you back,” she asserted confidently, and in the face of the old woman's obvious incredulity, she added: “And if nobody comes, what's the difference?”

Her message to Hipólito was brief and to the point, like a telegram announcing a funeral:

“Go to such-and-such a house on such-and-such a street and tell a blind man who plays the piano there that Santa—pay attention—Santa is dying and wants to see him. That's it. And he should come back with you. Now go!”

If the old woman, her girls, and the clients of the house had been the least bit impressionable, they would have been amazed at what happened shortly thereafter, when a horrible, ill-dressed blind man and his ragged, barefoot little guide appeared at the brothel in a rental coach and went straight inside:

“Santa! … Santita! … Where are you?”

And hearing Santa respond, the blind man went into her cubicle, and there was the quiet sound of crying.

“Hipo,” said Santa softly to the piano player who devoutly touched and smelled and kissed her. “They've tossed me out of here, out of here! Nobody wants anything to do with me anymore. It's all over. I'm dying!”