That night just before midnight Jorge came to our room and asked me to turn off the light and pretend that I was asleep. There was a chance, he said, that he might be able to bring Elena to the room, as Raúl had gone to bed. If I was awake it might embarrass her, he said. I thought that you preferred the other one, I said. Ssh, he put his finger to his lips. I had slept during the day and I was not tired enough to sleep again. I lay there in the dark listening to the footfalls and other sounds in the street and the ringing of the cathedral bells every fifteen minutes. I was almost asleep when they arrived in the room. They did not turn on the light. I moved around in the bed as though I had been slightly disturbed in my sleep and then I lay still. I was facing the other bed. Jorge locked the door. I could hear them whispering. Then there was silence. I wondered what they were doing. I could not look. Then they moved across the room and lay on the bed where I could make out their shape.

Slowly, they began to take off their clothes between bouts of kissing. They lay on the bed and did not move for a long time; then I heard Jorge whisper something. He reached out to the bedside table, and I realized that he was putting on a condom. Then I heard her gasp and hold her breath as he entered her. I was sure then it would be over soon, as his thrusts became harder until the bed began to hit against the wall. He and Elena had to move toward the center of the bed. I could hear her moaning and I presumed she must be having an orgasm. I could not believe that Jorge was still fucking her. He behaved as though he were going to do this all night. When he finally came I felt that I should sit up in the bed and applaud him, but I lay there instead and closed my eyes, and soon I fell asleep, and when I woke it was still dark, but Jorge was alone in the bed.

When I found the used condom in the wastepaper basket in the morning, I told him he had better get rid of it before the landlady saw it. He smiled and said that it had been worth flying all the way over from Argentina for. When we went for breakfast I noticed Raúl and the priest watching us darkly as we approached. The girls were still in bed. We sat and read the papers with them, and afterward we went off walking around the city and did not come back until after six o’clock. I wished that we were moving to another pensión or another city. I would have liked to go to Madrid or Seville. But I knew that Jorge was happy, and I thought I knew what was on his mind. He would sleep with Elena again if he had to, but what he really wanted to do now was sleep with María José.