“Señora,” called Eufrasia, rapping on the glass with her knuckles, “here's the new girl.” A thick voice answered from inside the room:

“Just push, hija. It's open …”

Eufrasia pushed, the door opened, and Santa, who could not see a thing in the darkness of the room, stepped through the door.

“Come closer, doll … Watch it! That's a table. But come closer, over there, to your right. That's it. Come to the bed …”

Santa could hardly see anything, but she found the bed by following the instructions and moving with extreme care. To her dismay, behind the voice of the strange woman she detected the snore of a man, a corpulent man, by the sound of his snores, which did not cease even when Santa's knees bumped into the bed.

“So you're the country girl,” inquired Pepa, raising her self up on pillows so clean and stiff with starch that they sounded almost brittle. “What's your name? No wait, I know, don't tell me. Elvira told us …”

“My name is Santa,” she said with the same slight mortification as earlier when she declared it to the coachman.

“That's it, that's it,” laughed Pepa, “that's pretty funny! Quite a name. It'll make money, too, I bet.”

The bedsprings squealed in time with her laughter, and the snores abruptly stopped. Pepa's spontaneous laughter did not bother Santa, who even smiled in the darkness, quite used to reactions of incredulity or astonishment when people first heard her name.

“Hey girl,” exclaimed Pepa, who had put her hand on Santa carelessly, “you're firm as a saint's effigy, a santa indeed!” Pepa's expert hands, the hands of a courtesan grown old plying her trade, lingered appreciatively on the body of the newcomer, who jerked defensively. Santa's face burned, and she felt like crying or lashing out at the woman who examined her so degradingly.

“What's going on?” asked the man lying next to Pepa.

“The new girl is here. Go back to sleep.”

“The new girl, the new girl.” He stretched and turned over, and Santa could distinctly hear him chuckle softly.

Pepa jumped out of bed and, with the sureness of someone moving through a familiar space, went in the darkness to unshutter a window. Light filled the room.

Ah, the grotesque figure of Pepa, in spite of the long nightgown that covered the imperfections created by a lifetime of vice! Her wilted flesh, exuberant in the places that men love to grab, hardly seemed to belong to her, so damaged and needful of replacement, so useless for the bitter, daily battles of a brothel. Whenever she stooped to pick up a stocking or lifted her bare arms to light a cigarette or plunged her head and neck into the wash basin, her enormous old drinker's gut and her bulky, flaccid breasts of a Galician peasant oscillated disgustingly, with something bestial in the oscillations. Without the slightest hint of modesty, she did her personal morning routine, chatting loquaciously with Santa who replied, now and again, with monosyllables. Pepa liked her, of course, as did everyone in the face of Santa's provocative beauty, a beauty made all the more provocative by the obvious and sincere sweetness that her semi-virginal, nineteen-year-old body seemed to exude.