The Fountains of Silence: A Novel

Rafa and Fuga travel to a neighboring farm so that Fuga can practice his matador skills, training secretly in a breeder’s pasture with bulls, even though it’s illegal. Rafa reminds Fuga that the “world we seek entrance to, it is a world of men with fat cigars, expensive automobiles, and relationships over many generations” (146). Indeed, most matadors are wealthy and upper class, and come from a long line of matadors. Rafa and Fuga, however, believe that courage and skill are more important than ancestry. “If a matador is truly talented, the blood running through his veins is not judged. It is protected” (146).

Puri takes time to play with the older children who have less chance of being adopted. She overhears Sister Hortensia talking to a couple; the woman is pregnant, and Puri hears the husband say that his wife has grown tired of wearing a pillow over her stomach. He demands a newborn rather than Clover, who is too large, and reminds Sister Hortensia that they’re paying a significant amount of money to adopt. Puri, however, is not alarmed; the nun told her that some women feel ashamed that they cannot conceive, so they fake a pregnancy and then adopt.