Explore "Nietzsche on his Balcony" by Carlos Fuentes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Leo and Dante usually spoke when they came across each other in Zacarías's ramshackle old house. But seldom for long. They were aware that each was taking a very different path in politics, but that, in the end, they were citizens of the same polis. They were brothers. They had a disabled father shut away-hidden, Dante would say-in the attic by Leo and guarded by two Nazarenes. They had a distant mother, a French aristocrat-Madame Mà¨re, Charlotte-likewise shut away in a castle in Dordogne that, were it not missing a wall, would be a real fortress. Three wings and the open field.
The brothers came across each other and exchanged banalities, each one acutely aware of how much kept them apart. This was a rare time for them to sit together for breakfast that one of the Nazarenes placed for them-English-style-on the table so that each could serve himself whenever he liked.