It was about four o'clock in the afternoon and the downtown streets were packed with vehicles and pedestrians, the pavement still wet from the sprinkling of water wagons provided by the city government in hopes of controlling the dust. Commercial employees hustled back and forth, drenched in the rays of the declining sun that angled down over the tops of high buildings into Revillagigedo, Independencia, and Tarasquillo Streets, in the direction that Santa was going.

Without thinking about what she was doing, she entered the pastry shop next door to the hotel, where the employees were clean, pretty, and friendly, and wore light-colored aprons:

“What do you want, señora?”

What did she want? She wanted to be just like them, or at least, the way that she imagined them to be: decent girls who worked long hours, lived at home, and loved their faithful boyfriends … Blushing, she bought candy because she thought she should buy something, and nothing else occurred to her, and, carrying the package, waited for an avalanche of streetcars to pass before going down Espíritu Santo and Santa Clara Streets to the church of the latter name.

Out front was a maimed beggar who extended his hand and Santa gave him a whole silver peso, put the shawl over her head, and walked up to the door, excited by the beggar's marvelous incantations:

“May Our Holy Mother of Guadalupe reward you, niña! Praised be the power of the divine sacraments!”

She set foot in the great doorway of the temple just as its bells peeled and the organ thundered a formidable hymn with something not quite human in its sober, imposing melody. Feeling overcome, Santa looked for a pretext to delay her entrance and went back to speak to the beggar, who was hurriedly about to leave in the belief that Santa had given him an entire peso by mistake.

“Wait, wait,” Santa told him, “take this, too. It's candy.” And she handed him the package.

Then, with a submissive air, her head bowed, her eyes half closed, making a supreme effort, she entered the church and ensconced herself in a corner between a confessional and the carpeted platform in front of a lateral altar. She would have liked to enter on her knees and had not done so only in order not to attract attention, so she kneeled now, in her hiding place, flustered by her emotions and the bells that the acolytes kept ringing and ringing, feeling annihilated, above all, by the organ that poured forth grave, trembling, sustained notes with otherworldly accents that reverberated in the nave and dome, producing in Santa both hopes of celestial pardon and fears of divine punishment. Either way, the very severity and majesty of the music made her feel miserable and unfortunate, feeble, tiny and alone.

The sensation made her want to pray even more.

“Prayer was made for us,” she thought, “the miserable ones who were not able to resist temptation and have more need of mercy.” She opened her eyes wide to look at the crucifix on the principal altar and listened with delight to the organ that seemed, now, to repeat the promise of mercy and pardon.