During the day, on the other hand, the place looks fairly deserted, with only a customer or two determined to eat the food that Tivoli employees serve reluctantly, at that hour, in dining rooms smelling of alcohol spilled on the floor, tobacco smoke that still clings to the walls and ceiling, and the faint scent of perfume that wafts by, informing us that a woman has been there, or who knows how many women or with whom. The perfume is, in fact, barely perceptible. The electric bulb that hangs from the ceiling sways very slightly because of the incessant comings and goings of so many flies that have made it their temporary home. The walls are covered with wall paper, scratched, wrinkled, or dirty here and there. The stained tables and the wobbly chairs maintain a strict silence about what, exactly, happened there last night or what will surely happen tonight. The whole establishment seems to be sleeping off the effects of its orgiastic exertions.

The sliding doors of the private dining rooms seem to yawn, as does the dance floor and the wide cantina. In the courtyard, the garden yawns with its sad, withered blooms, its flowerbeds trampled and muddied as if a herd of cattle had passed over them on its way to drink from the small fountain in the center. More than a fountain, the tiny dribble of water seems like a flood of tears provoked by deep, hopeless grief, and in the suspiciously-colored pool at its base float empty bottles, the butts of cigarettes and cigars, and occasionally, a lock of hair, a torn up photograph, or a comb hurled there by the anonymous hands of someone tormented by jealousy and hoping, by means of a sterile fit of spite, to achieve forgetfulness.

The morning passes slowly, heavily, and the afternoon, much the same. As sunset approaches, shadows begin to sneak into the garden like burglars who slip down from the tops of the enclosing walls, clustering initially in the corners so as not to be seen, and then, reinforced by many more shadows that come constantly slipping down the walls, advance together into the flower beds. There, they climb into the few, unhealthy-looking trees of the courtyard or bathe in the dirty water of the fountain before entering the restaurant and bar with a triumphant, menacing air, until suddenly, a lightning-like flash shatters them and sweeps them back into the corners in a large, black, shapeless heap. Their nemesis is the electric lighting: a powerful arc lamp hanging over the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, as if hovering on air, a profusion of electric bulbs in the cantina and the dining rooms, bulbs whose restless, luminous rays pursue their dark enemy determinedly out of every door and window into the night.