On the other hand, with the feminine instinct that rarely fails to indicate who are potential friends here on earth, Santa got closer and closer to Hipólito. It was an odd sort of affection, more than just sympathy, much less than love. His appearance made her suffer: his twitching eyebrows, his horrid whitish eyes of a bronze statue without patina, sightless eyes that one would say appeared to see, eyes that seemed to look particularly at Santa, to stare at her with astounding fixity, as if trying in that way to accomplish the miraculous recovery of his vision or record forever the features of the woman that he knew to be so young and beautiful. Santa felt repulsed, and yet, she still stood and sat close to him, trying to avert her own eyes in order not to see those monstrous orbs that gazed at her in supplication, all the more mournfully because they could not see her. As for conversing with the blind man, that she did very happily, even submitting to his experience, old libertine that he was, certain complex or intractable problems that she faced as a novice prostitute.

Thus began their good, mutual friendship, with Santa consulting and Hipo advising her from his substantial fund of dubious knowledge. Santa's activities left her little free time, but what she had was normally dedicated to chatting with the piano player. In a low voice when he was not playing the piano, and in a louder voice when he was, she asked him questions, answered his, and listened attentively to his wise counsel and his timid admonishments. Their conversations were always discontinuous because Santa was perpetually in demand, because Hipo had to play the piano for hours at a time, and because nosy people often approached them, interrupting their colloquy, making them disguise it in meaningless chatter. When they found themselves alone again, they would simply take up where they had left off, the way friends do. Santa felt sorry for her mentor, who did not seem to suffer as much as his circumstances suggested, and the mentor felt fleeting shudders of delight when his new companion came a little too close or leaned her shapely arms on his back after passing around his rumpled and dirty hat to collect monetary contributions from the clientele of the house. The girls joked that old Hipo could keep up with the best, that he was an unrepentant satyr from way back, and they pulled his leg mercilessly:

“Oooh, nasty boy, so now you're sweet on Santa?”

“On all of you … so tasty! I could eat all of you up in a single bite, ahhhh!” And he made a fantastically frightful face with his mouth wide open, as he had done for them a million times, provoking laughter, swearing, and delighted cries of horror from the prostitutes.

One night, when business was slow and the girls were lying around on the sofas, playing solitaire, or dosing in the corners and generally waiting to get “off work,” Pepa knitting a scarf for her Diego in the manner of any respectable matron, and Hipólito and Santa at the piano, as usual—the two began for the first time to tell each other their stories.