Hipólito, who rarely endured the entire repertoire, always left suddenly, without saying goodbye to Ravioli, whose assessment of the toreros' singing he basically shared. Together, they cheerfully and bitingly critiqued the singers:

“I'm from the land of opera, Hipo. This caterwauling isn't for me!”

“I've had it too—with the caterwauling and the caterwaulers, principally the caterwaulers. I'm out of here.”

Irate, waving his cane, he grasped the shoulder of Jenaro, who stood sleepily, shivering without a coat, his arms crossed against the cold wind of the early morning.

“Did Santita see us, Jenaro?” Hipólito asked the boy in the deserted street.

“She sure did, from the time we got there.”

“It would almost be better if she hadn't. What can she think of me?”

Jenaro fell silent, not understanding why Hipólito was so concerned about the opinion of a woman like Santa.

“Did the cat get your tongue?” insisted the blind man irritably. “I asked you what Santa must think of me.”

“Figure it out tomorrow. What do I know about it?” concluded Jenaro, risking the thump on the head that normally rewarded answers like that one.

And wrapped in silence, both of them, they traversed the dark streets to the one called San Felipe Neri where they lived in a house with an enormous old-fashioned entrance way, a house that was slowly sinking into the sidewalk because of its advanced age, with short, habitable spaces, “between floors,” in the colonial style, and balconies on the third story.

As Hipólito headed home, Santa began to look with greater favor on the singing toreros, who finally joined tables with Santa's young aristocrats and kept the party going long after the Tivoli employees locked the street door against the first hints of dawn and the curious gaze of early rising passersby. When the gathering began to dissolve, though, it happened quickly, as if the clubmen had suddenly become ashamed of their company or themselves. They broke and ran like an army suddenly convinced of its inevitable defeat. The toreros, on the other hand, took leave of their elegant new friends with the marked familiarity normal after an extended bout of drinking. Like the prostitutes, they were in no hurry, disorder and excess being their natural milieu. They said their goodbyes on the curb, their girls sleepily cloaked in men's jackets, reclining their heads on a strong shoulder from time to time, the toreros in knots, here and there, leaning against a storefront, disputing fine points of their art in thick accents close to each other's faces.

During more than one of these predawn farewells, Santa thought that she saw Hipólito—surely in a dream, though. It seemed as if he had been waiting for her to come out but, embarrassed to be caught doing something so silly, he hurried away into the shadows led by Jenaro, who trotted along, arms across his chest and trembling with cold, their silhouette etched in black against the pale gray light of dawn that sifted gently down on to the pavement. He could have saved himself the effort of fleeing! He was trying to hide his poorly clothed form, hoping to be taken for someone else, not suspecting that to be totally impossible for anyone with eyes, so much did he stand out with his guide boy and uncertain gait, his torso thrown back and his cane groping forward, his steps halting in spite of his obvious haste. Seeing him made Santa experience a deep commiseration that was not without touches of satisfaction and gratitude, and if, as often occurred during the predawn farewells, el Jarameño repeated once again his continual question: