Manuel and Esteban are identical twins that no one can tell apart. They even have their own language.

It seems to everyone that they have an almost supernatural connection.

Thornton Wilder, today on the Classic Tales Podcast.

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And now the Bridge of San Luis Ray, part 2 of 3 by Thornton Wilder.

Part 3 Esteban

One morning, twin boys were discovered in the Foundlings Basket before the door of the Convent of Santa Maria Rosa de las Rosas.

Names were found for them almost before the arrival of the wet nurse, but the names were not as useful to them as our names are to most of us.

For no one ever succeeded in telling the boys apart. There is no way of knowing who their parents were, but Lemian gossips, noticing as the boys grew older, how straight they held themselves and how silent and sombre they were, declared them to be Castilian and laid them in turn at all sorts of crested doorways.

The person in the world who came nearest to being their guardian was the Abyss of the Convent.

In the late afternoon, she would call them into her office, send for some cakes from the kitchen, and tell them stories about the Sid and Judas Maccabillas and the 26 misfortunes of Harlequin.

She grew to love them so that she would catch herself gazing deep into their black and frowning eyes, looking for those traits that would appear when they grew to be men.

While that ugliness, all that soullessness that made hideous the world she worked in.

They grew up about the Convent until they were a little past the age when their presence began to be a slight distraction to the dedicated sisters.

From then they became vaguely attached to all the sacristies in town.

They trimmed all the cloister hedges, they polished every possible crucifix, they passed a damp cloth once a year over most of the ecclesiastical ceilings.

All Lima knew them well.

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