The Santiagos’ two sons grew up in the vortex of these conflicts. Caralampio (who, with his father’s money, had bought the right to use the more elegant name César), was attached to Don Timoteo and refused to judge the conduct to which he owed his own well-being. But despite his effort to understand his father he never reached the point of admiring him. He couldn’t keep from seeing that the ex-butcher would never deserve to play a leading role in the social life of Comitán, and that people of good breeding were right to make fun of his ignorance and lack of manners. As the song says, the tree that grows twisted never straightens its branch. Even less so in old age. The scions of that tree, César felt certain, would be polished, would learn how to conduct themselves, would no longer allow their rustic origins to show. He himself, for example, had an alert mind and a normal capacity for acquiring knowledge. It wouldn’t be impossible for him to learn, educate himself, and frequent the best people, untainted. As for his younger brother, Límbano. . . .

He was a sickly boy, and during his childhood he monopolized the small amount of coddling that a mother overly absorbed in procuring a means of subsistence and assuring a future for the family could give. But that coddling was the source of such satisfaction that Límbano fed from the breast for a number of years that had never before been equalled in all the annals of Comitán. At an age when one is beginning to retain one’s memories for life, Límbano was forced to abandon this oh-so-pleasant habit by Don Timoteo’s brutal punishments and César’s relentless sneers. However, this separation from the mother was only exterior. The umbilical cord that attached him to Doña Serafina remained intact and through it he continued to feed on his mother’s words, feelings and convictions.