For yeas we couldn’t talk about anything else. Our daily conduct, dominated then by so many linear habits, had suddenly begun to spin around a single common anxiety. The cocks of dawn would catch us trying to give order to the chain of many chance events that had made absurdity possible, and it was obvious that we weren’t doing it from an urge to clear up mysteries but because none of us could go on living without an exact knowledge of the place and mission assigned to us by fate.

Many never got to know. Cristo Bedoya, who went on to become a surgeon of renown, never managed to explain to himself why he gave in to the impulse to spend two hours at his grandparent’s house until bishop came instead of going to rest at his parent’s, who had been waiting for him since dawn to warn him. But most of those who could have done something to prevent the crime and still didn’t do it consoled themselves with the pretext that affairs of honour are sacred monopolies with access only for those part of the drama. “Honour is love”, I heard my mother say.