“Don't make me throw you out!” declared the sacristan, who knew that he was in a position of strength.

“Let me stay a little while longer, please,” begged Santa. “I'm praying for my mother who has died and asking God to forgive me …”

“Oh, sure, your mother, I'll bet! Are you going, or should I call a policeman right now?”

The threat intimidated Santa. The police? No, no. The police were her terror and the terror of all girls like her.

“I'll go,” she sighed. “You're right. Women like me shouldn't be in places like this … I'll go …”

Without crossing herself or putting the shawl back over her head, from which it had slipped, and followed by the sacristan who looked at her with feigned outrage, Santa walked out of the church and went to stand beside one of the columns in the atrium.

“No, not here, either,” decreed the officious sacristan. “Out of here! Out in the street!”

Mute and obedient, Santa stepped into the street, where her stunned attitude attracted stares from passersby unaware of what had happened.

She alone knew why they had thrown her out, she alone. She was a harlot, a harlot who had lost her mother, now doubly and irredeemably an orphan.

Five

Like others of the guild to which it belonged, Elvira's house permitted illegal liberties that always redounded in the long run (when not immediately) to the detriment of the clients. For example, the house sold its alcoholic beverages at exaggerated prices, and the medical inspection that the girls were required to undergo each week at the municipal hospital did not occur there at all, but rather, in the comfort and tranquility of the brothel, where it was entrusted to the hands of very well paid private physicians who sometimes turned a blind eye to what they saw, or should have seen. Other examples abounded.

Santa, who had become Elvira's favorite because of the fat profits that she produced for the house, hardly came out of her room during the first few days after losing her mother and being thrown out of church, so she was permitted to skip her weekly examination, and the trusted doctor failed to write the word “healthy” beside her name in the official register. But after a week she reappeared in the parlor, slightly sullen, aggressive, and absent-minded, but apparently, in view of the abandon with which she surrendered herself to men and liquor, now resigned to her sad career and determined to drain the bittersweet cup to the dregs.

“Santita, slow down,” Hipólito said to her. “If you trip and fall, it's going to hurt you a lot.”

“If I fall, you say? If I fall …? How much further could I fall, Hipo?”

“Don't be mad at me, Santita. Go ahead, then. I'm sure Pepa's thrilled!”

Santa did go ahead, in a sort of crescendo, never lacking opportunities or invitations. It seemed that suddenly, and in obedience to determining impulses from within, she began to lose the goodness that she had retained during the first months of her fall from grace, certain delicate attitudes and preferences, a reluctance to do certain things, that now died and descended into the depths of her desperation and disenchantment amid the stink of decomposing purity, dreams, and ideals. There was nothing to do but bury these items, because they were dead, and, condemned to be a provider of pleasure, she could not carry them around or hide them in her body brimming with life. She explained it to Hipólito, who now merited her entire confidence: