“I don't have change. You can pay me some other time when you need me. I'm at the cabstand with a red flag at 317 San Juan de Letrán. Just tell me your name.”

“My name is Santa. No, but go ahead and charge me. I don't know if I'll be staying here. Keep the whole peso,” she added as an afterthought, anxious to get away.

And without waiting for a reply she set off quickly, looking at the ground, her body half hidden by the shawl that barely clung to her shoulders, as if she were embarrassed to be seen in that place at that time of day, with so much light and so many people who surely observed her and knew where she was going. So, hardly noticing the anemic, unkempt little garden to her right or the unsanitary-looking eatery to her left, she walked straight ahead to the closed door and knocked on it. She did get a vague impression of patchy grass, stunted bushes, a few tree trunks. She did get a whiff of food and cheap liquor, a rumor of men's conversation and laughter. She even sensed, without daring to stop or turn her head, that several men had gathered in a doorway to stare brazenly and make loud, mocking comments about her. Agitated, she vented her feelings repeatedly on the door knocker, giving it three hard knocks each time.

The truth is that nobody, aside from some loiterers in the cheap restaurant, paid any attention to her because, although it is the domain of prostitutes and their clients by night, by day this neighborhood is as honest and hard-working as any other in the city. It has many small industries: workshops producing gravestones and Italian copper work, a French dry cleaner's shop with a big sign and an enormous brick chimney in the courtyard, a charcoal seller's shop always covered with a fine black dust that attaches itself stubbornly to pedestrians, making them snort, dust themselves with their handkerchiefs, and pick up the pace as they pass by. On one corner stands a modern and neatly painted butcher shop, La Giralda, with three open doors, smooth artificial stone flooring, and a counter of marble and iron, the ceiling supported by quite narrow pillars to maximize ventilation. La Giralda's large scales sparkle with cleanliness, and from its range of heavy meat hooks hang huge, headless, beef carcasses split down the middle to display their dirty white ribcages and the revolting, bloody redness of their fresh, recently killed flesh. The butcher shop attracts clouds of unquiet, voracious flies and one or two stray dogs with rough fur who lie heavily on the sidewalk without quarreling with one another, dozing or nosing after fleas with an intent gaze and erect ears, patiently awaiting scraps. On the opposite corner, advertised by its traditional banners, stands a pulque shop, its walls painted with primitive murals, a small tin roof over each of its doors: The Corner of the Magi, trusty dispensary of the famous Santa Clara and peerless San Antonio Ometusco brews. In addition to the garden, with its small circular fountain, its primitive fountainhead forever welling over without ever running out of water despite the furious assault of the water-carriers and of the neighbors who carelessly spill more than they ought to, so that the edges of the fountain and its surroundings are always soaked—in addition to that garden, the block can boast no fewer than three electric streetlights and as many as five houses with fine fronts, three or four stories tall, with whitewashed balconies and plaster cornices. The pavement is of compressed-cement blocks, traversed by streetcar rails. And on the other side of the garden that helps hide the brothels there is a public school.