She had watched him from the same hammock and in the same position in which I found her prostrated by the last lights of old age when I returned to this forgotten village, trying to put the broken mirror of memory back together from many scattered shards. (Chapter 1)

No one could understand such fatal coincidences. (Chapter 1)

No one even wondered whether Santiago had been warned, because it seemed impossible to all that he hadn’t. (Chapter 1)

Don’t bother yourself Luisa Santiaga,” he shouted as he went by. “They’ve already killed him. (Chapter 1)

She wasn’t the only one who thought so, nor was she the last to realize that Bayardo San Román was not a man to be known at first sight. (Chapter 2)

He [Bayardo] seemed more serious to me than his antics would have led one to believe, and with a hidden tension that was barely concealed by his excessive good... (Chapter 6)