“No, that's too early, Jenaro … even seven o'clock is too early …”

Santa hurriedly drained her ration of brandy, because her pain was beginning and she needed to lie down. But it was not too bad yet, and she watched with a smile as Jenaro cleared the table, putting the best of the uneaten food on his own plate, for he had not yet eaten. He lowered Jaws gently to the floor, and then, with his dinner held high in one hand, the boy raised the other to his mouth like an imaginary bugle and walked out of the room blowing the call to mess. Jaws trundled quickly after him, his little head oscillating from side to side and his little breast inflating and deflating with each step. After Jenaro disappeared and his bugle call faded, Santa was surprised to hear his voice continue speaking with undiminished enthusiasm.

“Who is Jenaro talking to?” she asked Hipólito.

“With Jaws,” explained the piano player, well acquainted with the habits of his guide, “and with the mice and spiders in the cupboard. He's giving them their dinner.”

A little while after that, Jenaro was quiet, asleep, no doubt, and his animals, too, as Santa made a mighty effort to overcome the pangs of pain that soon took hold of her and shook her, under the sheets, like a ragdoll. She bit on a fold of bedclothes to muffle her involuntary groans so that Hipólito would not hear them, and with all her heart she desired that they give her at least a brief truce now, even if only to throttle her even worse later. She wanted, above all, to be able to give herself to Hipólito, to give him pleasure with her body at least once, to let him possess what nobody wanted anymore, nobody but him, who desired it like nothing else on this earth, and who deserved it more—oh, so much more—than the thousands who had bruised it with their clumsy caresses and their revolting, despotic lechery! But as Hipólito, for his part, undressed with the excruciating slowness of someone who wants to prolong a sublime moment of anticipation, both to savor that moment as long as possible, and because he cannot quite believe that the anxiously awaited consummation of his desires is really at hand, about to be converted from dream to positive fact, and not about to vanish into thin air—just then Santa's pain swarmed through her body like asps and vipers, curling around muscles and nerves, biting, ripping, and tearing at her body most where she wanted them least. Santa chewed harder on the bedclothes, racked by the unbelievable intensity of the pain and by the growing awareness that she could not—that she physically could not—reward the immense love of the blind man who now moved toward the bed with the reverent attitude of a person entering a church, his head bowed in supplication, his arms outstretched eagerly to begin, with the very tips of his fingers, the communion he had dreamed about for so long, with the woman whom he idolized so passionately, and who, time and time again, had seemed lost to him forever.