It was a sunny morning when Venancio Medina arrived at the country estate, in a wagon lent to him by the owner of the general store, loaded up with a battered trunk, an armoire without a mirror, four bundles of clothing, a little white dog with wiry fur, his wife, and two daughters. They had directed him to the small white house with two rooms where he and his family were going to live. From the very first moment, Venancio Medina had scrutinized the veranda of the big house, where the owners sat on half-moon-shaped chairs made of old carriage wheels. There were half a dozen kids; the family was actually several families together, and Venancio thought at first that most of them were visitors.

The family, stalled in progressive stages of slumber, seemed to come to life when they saw Venancio Medina step down from the wagon carrying his youngest daughter in his arms. More than a little girl, she looked like a tiny monkey dressed in red. Part of the immobile family was suddenly in motion, running to see the little girl. Venancio Medina felt on his arm the soaking wet skirts of his daughter, who had just peed, but he couldn’t keep her from the hands that carried her into the dining room of their house, where they placed her on the table like a dessert, surrounding her and musing over her unintelligible cries. Medina watched from the doorway, riveted, and his daughter’s name fluttered around the house, like the name of the curly-haired dog in his own house.

More than ten years had passed since then. Venancio had come to the ranch as a caretaker, but his multiple roles ranged from dining room server, when all the servants abandoned the house, to gardener when the gardener went missing. It was later on that he definitively chose to be the coach driver. He was obviously meant to be a coach driver, with his big mustache and the unmistakable click of his tongue against his palate, which made any horse trot over the thickest mud. The kids, sitting in the driver’s seat, tried to imitate that splendid magical sound that helped the whip get the horses’ haunches moving.

Meanwhile, Venancio’s wife looked after the house; it was she who did the work of both of them, always grumbling and slapping her daughters, always overwhelmed with work, with her head ready to retreat into her body like a turtle as soon as anyone approached.

Her two daughters grew up as lazy and languorous as hothouse flowers. The other kids always called them to come and play in the garden just at the moment when their mother was chasing after them with a broom to get them to sweep. And Libia and Cándida would run off giggling to play in the trees, where among clouds of mosquitos the surprising secrets of that family of boys and girls of all ages and all sexes awaited them. They had become indispensable. If Libia and Cándida weren’t around, there weren’t enough trees to play Four Corners; if Libia and Cándida weren’t there, there weren’t enough cops to play Cops and Robbers; if Libia and Cándida weren’t there, there weren’t enough fair ladies to play London Bridge Is Falling Down. And after playing all day, they made a game of escaping the siesta in sleepy rooms. They felt delicious pleasures pulling them away from their parents. Seated on benches in a meditative pose, they witnessed how the childrens’ deadly hatred divided them into flocks of insults shouted from one end of the woods to the other. (At times, there weren’t enough names of animals with which to insult one another, and they had to resort to the dictionary.)