During a break between classes, I love to sit at the front window of Café Carcamanes to study. The table is just wide enough to hold my notebooks, dictionary, and cappuccino, and it is at just the right angle at 10 in the morning to receive a warm slant of light. Outside the window, the dry purple petals from a tall jacaranda tree are scattered like pieces of cut ribbon across the tiny stone plaza.
Of course, even this peaceful rincón, so perfect for sitting alone with one's thoughts, also holds a history, another dramatic legend of Guanajuato. The brothers Carcamanes, so the legend goes, arrived in Guanajuato from Europe more than 150 years ago. One day, they were both found murdered in their house, and the people thought they had been killed by robbers. But, in fact, they had fallen passionately in love with the same woman, who frivolously played with them both, and when the brothers discovered their torrid love triangle, they killed each other, and their lover, in a fury.
But today the peaceful quiet is only disturbed by a man calling out "agua ciel" in a baritone voice as he walks the street selling jugs of water.
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