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caviar wholesale, in a deep dish with a soup spoon, and, Eat, you bastards, I tell them, gorge yourselves on Russian caviar and enjoy, since in your fancy houses all you get is five little eggs on a piece of toast the size of a coin.

    DON’T BE SCARED, Bichito darling, the girl Agustina says to the smaller boy she’s holding close, this ceremony is to keep you safe and make you better. Like what happened to Achilles, Tina?, the boy asks, already half recovered from his panic, Yes, Bichi Bichito, like when Achilles the Wrathful, and he interrupts her to complain, I like it better when we say Achilles, he who is covered in golden down, All right, when Achilles, he of the golden down, is bathed in the waters of the Styx to make him invincible, I like it more when we say in the waters of the Infernal River, It’s the same thing, Bichito, it means the same thing, what’s important is to remember that since they’re holding him by the ankle, that part of him is still vulnerable and they can hurt him there, No, Tina, they can’t, because later, when he’s big, Achilles the Wrathful returns to the Infernal River to dip his weak foot in and from then on his entire body is protected.
    The problem is that their father is always after Bichi, he has it in for him because he’s the youngest, not like Joaco, Joaco is my other brother, the oldest of us three, and my father never hits him or tells him he’s done anything wrong, even when they call home from the Boys School to say that he lit a fire in the toolroom or did bad things to the caretaker’s dog, and when their father finds out he orders Joaco into his study and then scolds him, but halfheartedly, as if he’d like to praise him instead and make him see that deep down he likes his oldest son to be badly behaved, to be known as an ace soccer player, and to get good grades, So long as you’re at the top of your class, they’ll let you get away with things sometimes, says Carlos Vicente Londoño to his oldest son, Joaquín Londoño, who unfortunately doesn’t have the same name as his father but is just like him in spirit, and Joaco looks him boldly in the eye, Of the three of us, says Agustina, my brother Joaco is the only one who’s never scared, because Joaco knows that my father’s yellow eyes, his bushy eyebrows that come together in the middle, his big nose, and the peculiar way his index finger stretches longer than his middle finger are all traits they share, which is why father and son smile secretly, even when the vice-principal of the Boys School calls to say that Joaco will be put on probation because he’s been drinking beer at break, but Joaco and my father smile because they know that the two of them are essentially the same, one generation after the next, studying at the same boys’ school, getting drunk at the same parties, maybe even starting fires in the same place or tormenting the same old dog, the guard dog that hasn’t died yet and won’t die because its fate is to be there still when Joaco’s son, Joaco’s father’s grandson, is born and grows big enough to extend the miserable dog’s long agony over three generations. Listen Bichi, my pale-skinned little darling, we can’t blame my father for liking Joaco better, because after all you and I perform ceremonies that we shouldn’t, do you understand?, we commit sins and my father wants to help us be better, that’s what fathers are for.
    My father wanted his firstborn son to be named after him, Carlos Vicente Londoño, but because he was busy with work, he didn’t make it to the christening in time, or at least that’s what my mother says, and she’s probably right because my father was never one of those people who arrive when you expect them to, so since he wasn’t there, instead of giving the baby his father’s name, his godparents named him after the Virgin Mary’s father, that is, Joaquín, maybe thinking that he’d be better protected that way on his journey through this vale