“Your sister has died. I'm sorry. You can look at her, if you want …”

And the clock, sounding above the funereal hush, continued to gnaw—firm, deliberate, tireless, and almost human. Santa represented one more down, but there were many more to go, and so on it went:

“Tick … tock … tick … tock … tick … tock!”

There are some states of consciousness that cannot be described, and Hipólito's, during the coming days, was one such. Sometimes it bordered on madness; other times, it calmed him to wail and cry; other times, he seemed to descend into imbecility. But he made good use of his lucid moments, calling on the well-placed acquaintances that he had acquired during his many years of playing piano in brothels characterized by a certain egalitarian intimacy and frequented by men of authority in the government of the Federal District and in various ministries and offices. He went to them now for the special permissions that he needed: permission to hold a wake over Santa's body in his apartment, which would not normally be allowed, and permission to bury her according to her last request, in the cemetery of her village, near her mother.

Aside from them, he told no one about the mournful event, least of all Elvira and her girls, the only ones who might actually have attended. Suffering, love, and death had together purified Santa, according to the blind man's judgment. He believed that inviting the impure to her humble burial would be like inviting strangers, and he refused to do so. Only he had any say over Santa's remains. They belonged to him alone, and he hid them even from the curiosity of his neighbors who wanted to see the body and be at the wake to accompany the widower and orphan, which is what Hipólito and Jenaro seemed to them to be.

“Very kind … thank you, but no, no …”

Hipólito and Jenaro shut themselves in the apartment to watch over the deceased with flowers and candles, just the two of them, or rather, the three of them, because Jaws participated, too, not flying to sit on Hipólito's shoulder as he normally did, nor pecking at Jenaro in pursuit of crumbs and leftovers. Probably the sputtering and light of so many candles kept him awake, because he did not tuck his head under his wing all night, but rather, sat on the table cooing and never seeming to take his beady little eyes off Santa.

And there in the cemetery of Chimalistac, the village of Santa's honorable birth and upbringing, there Hipólito and Jenaro buried her: in the pretty little ruined cemetery that is always open and always peaceful, with its softly crumbling adobe walls where lizards scamper and warm themselves in the sun, where ants and bees live and labor, and where cows enter to graze and moo, shaded by ancient trees with leafy branches in which the resident warblers give stupendous concerts at morning and evening. The rain and grass gradually obliterate the names of the disappeared and the dates of their disappearances, and the boys of the village play among the heliotropes and bellflowers that sprout profusely and lovingly interlace among the graves. From there, one can hear the murmur of water spilling over the bigger of the village's two mill dams into the river, after flowing quietly through the orchard of the old Carmelite convent, as if the water sprites were singing their faint, sweet ballad to comfort the dead in their eternal slumber.