Given such diverse elements and being, as it was on that day, very close to twelve noon, the street was fully in motion, fully alive. The summer sun of late August drenched everything, extracting flashes from the gleaming rails and a slight haze of evaporation from the gutter damp from the rain of the previous day. The streetcars, pulled by mules with jangling bells around their necks, their drivers perpetually sounding the raucous warning horns, glided by with muffled stridence, painted bright yellow or green depending on the class of service, packed with passengers whose hats and heads could barely be glimpsed bent over some newspaper, turned toward their seat mates, or distractedly contemplating the passing buildings.

The stone cutter's shop, the copper works, and La Giralda alternately emitted the chink chink of chisels on marble or granite, the rhythm of hammer blows falling on copper pots and pans, or the thump of butchers' meat axes cleaving flesh. Street vendors passed, calling out the nature of their merchandise, or stopped in the middle of the stream of people and animals, turning to look in all directions, their hands at their mouths to direct their voices. Pedestrians contorted slightly this way and that to avoid bumping into the street vendors or each other. From the open windows of the school, rumors of children's voices occasionally came floating in chorus on the air; they chanted, “a, b, c, d, e, f, g …”

Because the door did not open for a long time, Santa eventually turned to look at the street scene. But when the Cathedral bells loudly struck twelve, the French dry cleaner's steam whistle thrust its anguishing shrillness into the air in a straight, white column of steam, and the workers there and in the other shops lighted cigarettes with rough hands, tucked their filthy blue shirts into their pants, and began to pour onto the sidewalk and obstruct it, shouting their vulgar goodbyes to each other or, with arms around each other's shoulders, heading up the street to the Corner of the Magi. Crowds of schoolboys joined them on the sidewalk, shoving each other, knocking off each other's caps, and raising Cain, their books and slates tumbling, their ink-stained fingers wiping away momentary tears, each impish face soon recovering its mask of mischievous high spirits. Urgently, Santa turned and redoubled her pounding on the door knocker.

“What the devil is the big hurry?” came the answer, finally. “Doña Pepa, the manager? Yes, she's here, but she's still asleep.”

“Fine, I'll wait,” said Santa, quite relieved to have escaped the curious looks from the street. “I'll wait for her here in the stairwell.”

And she sat right down on the second step of the stone stairs that curved up in a half spiral beginning a few feet from the door. The woman who had opened the door, softening at the sight of Santa's beauty, first smiled a somewhat simian smile and then subjected her to a knowing interrogation. Did she intend to stay here, in this house? Where had she been previously?