Let me think, I said.

But they had no time at all and started to talk about other things and when they
went off I was left alone again with Lupe, and I thought of taking her to the movies, but since they
had the money and I forgot to asked them for some I couldnt invite her out as I intended, so we had
to settle for walking around Santa Teresa and going on a bit of window-shopping in downtown and
then going back to the hotel and watching TV in a room by the reception. There we came across two
old ladies who after staring at us for a while asked us if we were married. Lupe said we were. I had no
choice but to play along. Although all that time I was thinking about the question that Belano or Lima
had asked me, whether Horace had lived in Octavious time, and thought he had, at first I would have
said yes, but I also had the hunch that Horace was not very fond of Octavious, and Lupe was talking
to the old ladies, in fact a very gossip old ladies, and I dont know why I kept on thinking of Octavious
and Horace and listening to my left ear the soap opera on TV and with my right ear to the Lupe and
the old ladies chatter, and suddenly my memory went plopf, like a smooth wall that breaks down, and
I saw Horace fighting against Octavious and in favor of Brutus and Cassius, that Caesar had been
murdered and they wanted to restore the Republic, shit, it wouldnt have been so weird if I had
consumed acid, I saw a twenty-four year old Horace in Philippi, just a bit older than Belano and Lima
were, only seven years older than me, and the bastard of Horace, staring into the distance and turned
around, without warning, and looked at me! Hey, Garcia Madero, he said in Latin, although I was
damn good at Latin, Im Horace, born in Venusia in 66 B.C., son of a freed slave, the most loving
father anyone could ever desire, enlisted as a tribune under Brutus army, willing to go into war, the
war of Philippi, that we will be defeated, but in the one that destiny encourages me to fight, the war
of Philippi, where the fate of some men is at risk.
NATALY POVEDA
DIANA AGUILAR