“I love you, I … I'm going to take you with me … Because you can't die. You can't!”

And he paid what she owed and took her with him.

The disbelieving inhabitants of the brothel followed them out into the street.

The blind man put Santa into the coach and climbed in after her. Jenaro climbed up beside the driver, almost like a liveried servant. The evening twilight completed the spell, and Cinderella's coach pulled away from the curb in triumph.

Ten

The bells were ringing ten o'clock at night when the coach stopped at the house where Hipólito lived, so the large iron-bound street door of the subdivided old structure was already closed. That pleased the piano player, because it would spare him the curiosity of other residents, who would go crazy if they saw him taking a woman to his room.

On the other hand, the Arbeu Theater, which stood right across the street from Hipólito's house, was totally lit up, all its batteries of exterior lighting ablaze, its doors wide open, the spectators pouring into the street for a breath of fresh air during the intermission. The theater's illumination stretched across the street, bounced against the façades of the houses opposite, and glinted on their windows. One heard talking and laughter, and one saw matches flare up and go out, identifying groups of smokers, the red tips of whose cigarettes made small circles in the air as they gestured in conversation. Along the edge of the sidewalk in front of the theater stood a row of tables piled high with sweets, pastries, and bread with sardines, each table identically lit with a candle inside a paper screen to keep the wind from extinguishing it, each table guarded by a vendor alert to defend his wares from the circling urchins, emperors of the crowded pavement, whose specialty was reselling tickets and snatching an occasional bite to eat without paying for it. Parked coaches lined the curb to each side of the theater's doors; their waiting drivers, having put out the coach lights for economy's sake, stood around conversing in bunches to pass the time. Many of the horses were dozing, their necks stretched out, their heads sometimes resting on the gear that harnessed them to the coach, sometimes sinking gradually with each breath that the animal exhaled, as if the distance between its head and the cobblestones indicated how deeply it slept.

Jenaro leapt like a monkey from his place beside the driver, opened the door of the coach, and asked for orders:

“Should I go get supper?”

Hipólito first paid the driver of the rental coach, then fished in his pants pocket for the big key and opened the street door of the house. Jenaro in the lead, guiding his master, and his master holding on to Santa, the three of them entered the tiled courtyard of the silent, enormous old house. Everything was dark, save a few glimmers of pallid light that emerged timidly from underneath and around the closed doors on all sides and a few curtained windows on the upper stories. The only sounds in the courtyard were the soft, monorhythmic blubbering of the fountain and, here and there, from behind doors and windows, the distant voices of restless children and of their mothers singing them lullabies. In a shadowy corner, attached to two walls of the building, a softly swaying clothesline gave a sinister impression, its shirts and pants dangling like dismembered bodies or outstretched like startled ghosts about to take flight.