César thinks back to a particular period of his childhood when he was a six-year-old boy. His family just moved to a bigger city, hoping that they would be happier there. However, the problems started immediately. Little César anticipated that a day would be special, for he was about to try his first ice cream and his father was there with him. As soon as he made a lick, César understood that he hated the taste. It was bitter, almost sickening.
That situation resulted in a quarrel. Trying to prove his point, the father snatched the ice cream and took a bite. The revolting taste didn’t make the father accept his defeat. On the contrary, he was determined to do something about it, so he went to the shop where he bought it and started a fight with the shop assistant. The last thing that César saw was his father’s hands on the other man’s throat.
The ice cream cone that César ate proved to be poisoned. A wave of cyanide contamination was killing people across the country. The next several weeks were difficult ones. César’s father was imprisoned, thus César’s mother had to do both work and look after the sick child. The illness and high temperature turned César’s life in a series of terrible and never-ending nightmares. He managed to survive, but the illness left a great impact on him. He had been easily impressed before, but that quality of his became only stronger after that.
Everything mattered to him, even the smallest details; there were days when he couldn’t stop thinking, his thoughts transformed into dreams when he went to a bed. His fantasies became his new reality. Poverty, his father’s imprisonment, and his mother’s conflict with his school teacher that made him an outcast were less important that the world of dreams. It seemed that adults who surrounded César had troubles understanding that their difficulties or misfortunes had nothing to do with César.
They forgot that he was just a child. The shop assistant’s wife decided to avenge her husband and César was the most obvious choice for her to direct her anger at. The woman kidnapped the boy and threw him into a barrel with ice cream. That had been his biggest horror since their terrible visit to the ice cream shop.
