“Well, her hair,” began Jenaro, quite serious now, looking for images that he could convey with his poor vocabulary of the street, images that his blind master would be able to comprehend, “her hair is the color that you see, who can't see anything … black, I mean. The color I see if I cover my eyes with my hand,” which he did has he spoke. “Yeah, yeah, that's it. And when she washes her hair, every weekday, it hangs at least … how much? I don't know, way lower than her waist, and there's so much of it, don Hipólito, that it covers her whole back and keeps coming around in front, and she has to be pushing it back with her hands all the time, but the darned stuff won't stay there, and it covers her ears and piles up on her shoulders and tickles her neck … and the breeze blows into her eyes and her lips or tangles it up and annoys her, and she shakes her head … and wow, patrón, then it really looks like the black silk cloaks that the rich ladies wear to the theater, you know, the ones they carefully gather when they get out of their coaches to protect them from the dirty air of the street, and that look like pools of ink when they wear them under the electric lights …”

“That's what her hair is like?” burst out Hipólito, who had been lost in thought. “And her face? What does her face look like? I bet you can't explain …”

“You think I can't? Look, patrón, her face … is very pretty when she's not smiling, a little bit like the virgins and saints in church … no wait, don Hipólito, you haven't seen those, either. When she's not smiling … when she's not smiling … aw, crap, I can't … okay, when she's not smiling imagine that her face feels like a peach, and smells that good, and has that delicate, delicate fuzz on it, that just touching it makes your mouth water. Now are you understanding? And when she laughs these big dimples the size of lentils appear in her chin and both cheeks. And the light that comes out of her eyes is exactly like sunlight … okay, not that strong and not quite so much, God I'm dumb, but like sunlight, a lot like it, because it just makes you feel good. Even me, little and beat up and all, and I don't even go in the parlor … the light from her eyes reaches me out in my corner, and in my corner it cheers me up, and then even the cold drafts of night air that always make me tremble on the floor at night … they don't matter because the light keeps me warm, and I close my eyes and hold onto it so that it will go in deep … and I curl up with my head between my knees and I sleep so nice until you finish playing the piano and wake me up with your cane …”