“I just wanted to teach you a little lesson, I swear, and if you can't stand me, I'll let you go and pay you anyway, okay? I've got a lot of money here, and it's all for you if you sleep with me tonight. What do you say?”

“Okay,” murmured Santa, intimidated by the look that Elvira gave her before leaving the room.

“Another round, then, on me! Great balls of fire!” roared the governor, and to Santa: “From now on you give the orders. You're the queen, baby!”

Even the piano player benefited with a gift of ten pesos that for him were like ten thousand, and for which he gladly would have played for a whole week.

Champagne flowed and spirits rose higher than perhaps they ought to have risen. The party became vulgar, an orgy of obscene words and gestures, shrieking laughter, and bestial propositions. The desertions began as couples went upstairs without the slightest effort to dissimulate their intent.

“We're off. To bed, children!”

As they climbed the stairs one could hear kisses, drunken stuttering and stumbling, the squeals of women being tickled. With Santa at his side, the governor downed glass after glass, and from time to time he rested his grave, taciturn, grey-haired head on Santa's shoulder.

“What do you want me to give you when you die?” he asked suddenly.

Santa shrugged her shoulders, not knowing how to respond to such a gloomy and unexpected question; she was somewhat shaken, deep down, by the words that drew the attention of everyone who heard them, including Pepa and the piano player. The governor himself, on the verge of passing out, seemed taken aback by what he had said. The four of them fell silent, as if thinking that death might be close by, just waiting to grab anyone who spoke its name.

“Don't answer him,” offered Pepa, finally. “He doesn't know what he's saying.”

“Have some masses said for my soul,” said Santa to the governor, and to Pepa: “What else?”

With visible effort, as if noting a serious matter, the governor wrote down Santa's request and ordered more to drink:

“I'm the one who's dying now … of thirst! More drinks over here!”

The drinks that were served at that point finished off the governor, who spilled half of his and fell asleep. Santa breathed a little easier. Though slightly dizzy, she thought that she was safe. Could she go to bed alone?

The benevolent Pepa corrected her error in confidential tones that even extended to the piano player:

“No, hija, the general sleeps with you. Don't you think that's right, Hipo? But fortunately, he's unlikely to bother you, in the condition he's in.”

The two women and a servant awakened the old man and helped him upstairs to the room that now belonged to Santa, who carried her temporary lover's hat, coat, and umbrella, as she had seen others do. The piano player, whose young guide was curled up asleep by the door, took his leave of Pepa for the evening.