The thing is, I don't know if these stories he was telling were mine, or his, or someone else's. You spend your life among words, listening, making sense out of what you say and out of what you imagine other people are saying to you, believing that something in particular happened like this or that, as a result of this or that, with these or those consequences. But it's never so simple, is it?
I think Manguel's inability to pay attention comes from too much reading. All that fantasy, all that invention - it has to end up softening a person's brain. I must have been barely twenty-five at that time, and Manguel was under thirty, but I felt a thousand times more experienced, more real than him. I used to listen to him and think to myself: at his age, and still playing with toy soldiers.
I don't know if you agree with me, Terradillos, but there is something magical about train journeys. Boarding a train at the start of a new life (or what Bevilacqua imagined to be a new life) must have felt like an epic moment for the boy. He noticed every detail, as if they were already passing into history: the cherry-coloured upholstery, the long-haired guard, a group of boys playing guitar.
All Men Are Liars | 
