“I feel like I'm forced to do everything I do, like I'm a big rock and somebody stronger than me gives me a kick from the top of a high slope, and down I come crashing and nobody can stop me, and I bounce and bounce and a piece gets knocked off, and God knows what I'll be like when I get to the bottom, if I ever get there.

“Do you know why I think about rocks rolling down hills? Because I did that a lot when I was a little girl, in the Pedregal. I felt sorry for the rocks as I watched them go down the hill, smashing into bigger rocks and sharp outcroppings that spun them and split them but didn't stop their fall, bouncing on and on, through leaves and branches and over roots that didn't stop them either, getting smaller and smaller, becoming almost invisible, and I'd grab on to something solid and look and look and try to see them hit bottom, and then I'd lose sight of them and only hear the muffled blows continuing until … well, until I couldn't hear anything more …

“And I think about rocks because that's what people think we are, rocks without feelings or anything. You've got to be made of rock to do this job and bear all the insults and scorn that come with it. You saw what happened to me in the church!”

“Excuse me, Santita, but I already told you that wasn't right. How awful! If people didn't look down so much on your profession, I'd tell you to go complain. A sacristan can't throw you out of church just like that! Gosh, not even a bishop …” declared Hipólito, not very sure of where he was going. “But the church thing doesn't mean that you have to commit suicide the way that you're doing … because, Santita, listen to me, this life may be terrible and bitter and all that, but there's nothing else for it. Look at me, blind and everything, and I don't give up. Don't be so reckless,” he added, starting to get upset and walking to the piano so that she wouldn't perceive it, “because who knows if your fate isn't to make some man happy, some man who needs you in order to be happy.”

Santa's expression revealed little because, although she did understand the poor musician's discreet allusion to himself, she understood also that she did not love him, not at all. Oh, she did like him and pity him and feel grateful to him, but without anything like carnal interest. Physically, he almost repulsed her with those iris-less eyes of a bronze statue without patina.

Rubio, on the other hand, the man who had offered to make her his mistress in her own house, did appeal to her, and greatly. For him, although she did not realize it, Santa felt the fascination that people of plebeian origin naturally experience upon finding themselves on an equal basis with a social superior, the sort whom common folk regard with respect, and even awe, however unfounded—a liege lord who occasionally descends, because of a lifetime of vice, to the level of his vassal. In such cases, little remains of the previous lordship or vassalage, only the eternal desire that regenerates the world, that eventually pushes the two into each other's arms, obliging them to forget age and social distance. Rubio, moved by secret marital frustrations that related, not to matters of honor, but rather, to the temperament of his wife (upon whose fortune he depended totally, according to testimony rendered by other Sport Club members under Santa's intelligent questioning) had grown fond of Santa, but he did not really love her. He stubbornly persisted in his proposal to her because of insistent masculine habits of the flesh.