“Did you say that without the operation the patient will die soon for sure?”

“For sure and soon, yes.”

“When do want to operate?” asked the blind man, making his decision without further discussion of costs. “I'll pay in advance.”

“Day after tomorrow, in the morning,” answered the doctor after glancing at his schedule. “Tomorrow I'll have her admitted, and she'll spend the night in the hospital.”

“Can I watch the operation?”

“Hmmm … if you insist … and if you promise not to move or make a sound.”

“What is the operation called?” Hipólito asked his final question, contorted with grief.

“A hysterectomy.”

The strange and sinister-sounding name was the last straw. It had a terrible, dangerous, inhumane ring, and he accepted it with the passive resignation of someone accustomed to absorbing the evils that had washed over him incessantly for a lifetime.

“What did he know! Nothing! Nothing but how to paw a piano keyboard to stay alive. So if the doctor said that without the hystect … or whatever the devil it was … Santa would die—his Santa!—there was only one thing to do: the operation, as soon as possible, with all its risks and dangers, that could not be more intractable, after all, than certain death.

Hypnotized by the proximity of death, Hipólito was not fully aware of the doctor's departure, even when the fellow shook his hand. He saw death courting Santa, sleeping with her, superceding him, the person who had waited patiently until everyone else had had his fill, everyone else before him, who finally rescued her and adored her from her thorn-bloodied feet to her hair crowned with dew and roses, with scorn and infamy. And just as the pack of slathering, howling machos turned away from her and descended instead on her prostituted replacements that come from everywhere, like an endless herd of cattle to feed the insatiable slaughterhouses, the brothels of the great urban centers—just as he stooped to lift her up, cancer came to close forever the door that had been open to everyone but him, and behind the cancer was Death, who would take Santa away from him and possess and enjoy her itself, charm by charm, bone by bone. He couldn't fight against death the way he had fought against his earlier competitors, with his only weapon: patience.

So, had the new girl's debut been a big success, and was she the new queen of the night? So much the better! He had contemplated her initial triumph in the confidence that darker days lay ahead. Was he a perfect monster of ugliness and she a portent of beauty who gradually acquired refined, if decadent, tastes? No matter! He would be there on the day of her ultimate disillusionment, when the refined, elegant clubmen spurned her, and she would love him ugliness and all. He had gotten worried, though, when Santa became el Jarameño's mistress—now that was a close call! But after that, he again felt sure that Santa would eventually be his, and so he took a lover's cruel delight in each step of the decline that brought her closer to him. Let her tumble and scrape herself up, sure. Let an illness sap her beauty or a cut on her cheek disfigure her in some jealous rage! Let her suffer the disdain and derision of everyone else, so that she would finally, finally remember him … Hipólito. Finally call him. Finally love him.