As she looked for the answer to that question, the parade of machos, the rain of money and caresses, continued, and somehow her health withstood it marvelously. Santa became even more beautiful. Like diabolic magic turned to a perverse purpose, far from making her haggard, her late-night excesses added a sultry pallor, a mysterious allure to the formerly innocent face of a country girl. What she did lose—and unfortunately, very quickly, indeed, she lost it all—was a moral sense of what her beauty meant. So quickly did she slip into synch with her degrading new environment, that she presumably had something in her blood, some infection of ancient lasciviousness inherited from some great grandfather, manifesting itself anew, full blown, in her present behavior. Her speedy adaptation clearly shows that this girl was not born to be good, not unless she had someone to keep her on the straight and narrow path, someone to lend a hand when she stumbled. At the moments—and these were rarer every day—when waves of remorse came over her and saddened her, she gave herself brief pep talks about making a change, but no matter how much she looked around, like a drowning person asking for help, all she found were people who shrugged their shoulders or who tried to drown her faster in order to rid themselves of the temptation and torment incited by her too-beautiful body. And so the remorse faded, as did the fragmentary recollections of her catechism, her childhood, and her mother, and Santa fell victim to her bad instincts, indolently abandoning herself to what she now considered to be her fate. Where would such a life end? In the hospital and the cemetery, of course, the last port of call in every life's voyage, whether virtuous or sinful. But between now and then, she reckoned that she had at least a decade of health and beauty—qualities that she fully appreciated, having bathed them, shown them, and sold them so assiduously. This is the way that she behaved, at any rate, but deep down inside, while she considered herself as guilty as could be, she was counting on the opportunity to make last minute amends on her death bed and gain some forgiveness from Him whose laws she so egregiously violated, He whose name she refused to pronounce even when she was alone, because of her superstitious fear.

“Isn't it true, Hipo, that girls like us shouldn't say it?” she asked the piano player on an occasion when one of the women of the house, awash in tears because of the terrible affliction that she experienced, incessantly invoked the holy name.

“Well now, Santita, listen. That's hard to figure. You've got María Magdalena to think about …”

“María who?”

Hipólito was unable to make a further display of erudition because some inebriated customers interrupted the consultation. However, nothing would have changed Santa's mind, and she remained determined never to mention the holy name so as not to profane it with her impure lips.