midnight
Along with poverty , discord , tears , and finally the flying fist entered Tenet 's house . Rosario joined the neighbors on the beach and began to dirty her hands on the slimy fish baskets . Falling from her high estate as heiress and lady she became a fish-woman , one of the poorest and hardest-working followers of that soul-killing trade . She was up now every morning shortly after midnight , waiting on the shore with her feet in the puddles , drawing a frayed and threadbare shawl about her shivering body , when the storms blew . All the way to Valencia she would go on foot carrying that back-breaking load of fish , and it would be dark again by the time she got home , faint with hunger and fatigue , but happy withal because her lord and master could still live the life of a gentleman without any humiliations to translate into swear-words and beatings . That Tonet might pass his night in the café , swapping stories with engineers from the steamers or skippers from the fishing boats , she would , many a time in the Fishmarket in town , stifle the hunger that gripped her at sight of the cups of steaming chocolate and the breaded chops her companions were busy with at the tables in their stalls . The important thing was to keep her idol appeased , an idol so quick to wrath , so prone to curse the rotten marriage he had made .