She was right. And together with Fabián and Esteban, Santa went home and made up some sort of story about being lost in the Pedregal, being really frightened, calling for help …

“Who were you talking to?” asked Fabián darkly.

“I was talking to myself. Who else would I be talking to on the bridge? You didn't see that I ran your way as soon as I recognized you?”

They say that nobody slept a wink that night in the little white house. Fabián kept lighting cigarettes, and Esteban got up around midnight, going first to the corner where they kept the shotgun, then outside for a few minutes, but the brothers did not speak, although each knew that the other was awake for the same reason. Agustina, as if she sensed that some evil magic was about to wilt the treasured lily of her old age, touched her daughter softly with the pretext of pulling up the blanket or arranging the pillow. And Santa, trying to control her heart, which occasionally pounded as if it had grown instantly so large that it hardly fit in her lovesick bosom, lay very still indeed, and pressed her legs together so that her mother would not somehow sense her shameful and incurable wound …

Marcelino failed to materialize as promised the next day, and nothing was heard from him for the next week. Santa made the drastic decision to go in person and confront him with his abandonment of her. Although the harmony of her family had recently become clouded, nothing impeded her from going to San Angel with the pretext of attending the famous Fiesta de las Flores held there annually.

Without paying the slightest attention to the crowd in the town square, in which, besides the temporary bull ring that carpenters were erecting by order of the town council, she encountered a profusion of tents scattered everywhere in the style typical of country fairs, offering the chance to try one's luck at a roulette wheel (or other similarly edifying diversions), to sample various delicacies, or to drink pulque in the open air, Santa headed straight for the old Carmelite convent, crossed its spacious enclosed atrium, and before entering the church proper, looked in the direction of the police barracks that now occupied the former cloister. She did not see Marcelino. A sentry dressed in fatigues stood guard inside a crumbling brick structure, and Santa could see through the wide windows with worm-eaten wooden bars into a space that had formerly been a semi-gothic walkway but whose vaulted ceilings now sheltered a military check point with ten carbines reclining in a rack on the wall.

Standing in the church door, Santa vacillated; she had no intention of praying, so why go into the sanctuary? She blushed, tried to conceal it, and approached the sentry.

“Excuse me, could I talk with Second Lieutenant Beltrán, please?”

“Corporal!” called the sentry by way of reply, winking at Santa.

Blushing redder than before, Santa had to repeat her request to the corporal, a good-humored little man who first played dumb in order to prolong the conversation and then identified himself as the best friend and great uncle of Beltrán, whom he was prepared to represent in the matter at hand.