The Fountains of Silence: A Novel

Rafa takes Daniel’s picture of Fuga to work and shows it to the men who have been mocking Fuga’s ambitions, and forcing them to acknowledge that “it is often hunger and desperation that drives a torero onto the sand” (223). Fuga plans to get noticed by performing in amateur, village-level capeas, or bullfights. Rafa asks his coworkers to support Fuga and reveals Fuga’s torero name: El Huérfano, the orphan. 

The men applaud Rafa’s rousing speech, but Rafa’s supervisor expresses concern over Rafa’s decision to be part of Fuga’s cuadrilla, the team assisting Fuga in the bull ring. Rafa insists that he both wants to and has promised to; just as Fuga helped him when they were young, Rafa plans to help Fuga now.

Puri states that she wishes the orphanage could do more for the older children, and Sister Hortensia responds that most of these children are “children of degenerates” and “[i]t is better to have no parents than the wrong parents” (225). She reassures Puri, however, that she and the others “are grateful for [Puri’s] tender heart” and her desire for the orphans “to have an opportunity” (226). 

Sister Hortensia sends Puri on another errand in the file room, where Puri reads more letters that date back nearly 20 years.