“Dad, those two children sleeping in the garbage cans look like me,” said Pedro, pointing at the little ones huddled together on an old mattress on the sidewalk. Eduardo Fernández stopped and followed his five-year-old son’s point. Two children, seemingly the same age, slept tightly together among garbage bags, dirty, dressed in rags, their bare feet bruised and injured.
The bus driver felt a pang of sympathy when he saw them, but he still tried to take Pedro’s hand and lead him to the car. He had just picked him up from the private school he attended, and, like every Friday afternoon, they were heading home through the city center. It was a route Eduardo usually avoided, always preferring the wealthier neighborhoods. But traffic jams and accidents on the main avenue had forced them to cross this poorer, run-down area.
The narrow alleyways were filled with homeless people, street vendors, and children playing among the piles of garbage heaped on the sidewalks. Yet, with surprising strength and speed, the boy broke free and dashed toward the children, completely ignoring his father’s protests. Eduardo followed him, worried not only by his reaction to so much misery so close up, but also about the dangers the neighborhood posed. The police reported robberies, drug trafficking, and violence.
Their expensive clothes and the gold watches on their wrists made them easy targets. Pedro knelt beside the filthy mattress and studied the faces of the two boys, who slept soundly, exhausted from life on the streets. One had light brown hair, wavy and tousled despite the dust, just like his father’s; the other was dark-haired, with faint darker shadows at the corners of his eyes. But both had features very similar to his own: the same arched, expressive eyebrows, the same delicate oval face, right down to the small indentation above his upper lip that Pedro had inherited from his deceased mother.
Eduardo approached slowly, his composure hardening, before transforming into something resembling pain. There was something profoundly disturbing about this resemblance, something far beyond mere coincidence. It was as if he were seeing three versions of the same creature at different moments in its life. « Pedro, we’re leaving right now. We can’t stay here, » Eduardo said, trying to lift him firmly by the shoulder, yet his eyes never left the sleeping children, unable to tear his gaze away from this impossible vision.
“They look a lot like me, Dad. Look at their eyes,” Pedro insisted, just as one of the little ones slowly stirred and wearily opened his eyelids. Into the still-sleepy child’s eyes appeared two green eyes identical to Pedro’s, not only in color, but also in their almost identical shape, the intensity of their gaze, and that natural sparkle that Eduardo knew so well. The boy, surprised to see strangers so close, quickly woke his brother with clumsy but gentle pats on the shoulder.
The two sprang to their feet, clutching each other, trembling—not just from the cold, but from an instinctive fear. Eduardo noticed they had the same curls as Pedro, in different shades, the same posture, the same way of moving, even the same breathing when they were nervous. “Please don’t hurt us,” said the fair-haired boy, instinctively stepping in front of his younger brother in a protective gesture that Eduardo immediately recognized with a shudder.
It was exactly like when Pedro protected his younger classmates at school when a bully harassed them: the same defensive movement, the same courageous stance despite the obvious fear. The man felt his legs tremble violently and had to lean against a brick wall to keep from falling. The resemblance between the three boys was striking, terrifying, impossible to attribute to chance. Every gesture, every expression, every movement was identical. The dark-haired boy’s eyes widened, and Eduardo nearly fainted.
It was Pedro’s piercing green eyes, but there was something even more unsettling: the expression where curiosity and caution mingled, the peculiar way his brows creased when confusion or fear overcame them, even the slight shiver that ran through him when he was afraid. Everything was exactly like what Eduardo observed in his son every day. The three of them were the same height, the same slender build, and together they gave the impression of perfect reflections in a shattered mirror. Eduardo leaned back against the wall more tightly, as if the world were tilting around him.
“What’s your name?” asked Pedro with the innocence of a five-year-old, sitting on the dirty sidewalk, barely caring about soiling his school uniform. “I’m Lucas,” replied the fair-haired boy, relaxing as he realized that this boy his own age posed no threat, unlike the adults who usually chased them away from public places. “And this is Mateo, my little brother,” he added, gesturing affectionately toward the dark-haired boy beside him. Eduardo felt the world spin faster, as if the ground were giving way beneath his feet.
These were the same names he and Patricia had chosen for any other children if the complicated pregnancy had resulted in triplets; names written on a scrap of paper carefully stored in the bedside table drawer, discussed during long sleepless nights, names he had never mentioned to Pedro or anyone after his death.
Patricia’s death. It was a murder of life, an absolute tragedy, a terrifying crime defying all logic. « They live here, on the street, » Pedro observed, slipping behind the children as if it were the most natural thing in the world, rubbing Lucas’s dirty hands with a familiarity that disturbed Eduardo even more.
“We don’t have a real home,” Mateo said in a weak, hoarse voice, probably from crying or begging. “The nanny who looked after us said she didn’t have any more money to help us and brought us here in the middle of the night. She said someone would show us how to get help.” Eduardo moved closer, slowly, desperately trying to piece together what he saw and heard without losing his composure. Not only did the three seem to be the same age and physically similar, but they shared the same automatic gestures, the same cognitive habits.
See more on the next page
Advertisement
