Romulus's selective amnesia regarding Remo's death

Rómulo’s selective amnesia is confined to Remo, his twin brother, whose death he cannot remember. The novel sets this absence against Rómulo’s continuing awareness of other people, making the lost brother—not the world around him—the defining limit of his recollection.

The Shape of the Amnesia

Rómulo has lacunar amnesia regarding Remo, who was crushed to death. The account does not describe him as wholly unaware or unable to follow other people: he knows how they move, speak, and behave. His condition is therefore presented through a marked contrast between a blank connected to his twin and an otherwise active attention to those around him.

Awareness of Others

The distinction becomes clearer beside the patients in the ward known as the Cage. Other residents of the hospital’s central building and park communicate with one another, even when a particular delusion or difficulty shapes their behavior. The Cage’s inhabitants, by contrast, do not recognize other people as existing. Rómulo is set apart from them: despite his memory gap about Remo, he remains attentive to people beyond that loss.

Connection to Remo’s Death

Rómulo’s amnesia also sits beside the novel’s reconstruction of the murder. Alice explains that Remo’s killer jumped on him, crushing his thorax and rupturing his entrails; the same method was used to kill Raimundo García del Olmo’s father. The revelation identifies José Sáez García as the killer and connects Remo’s death to the older crime. Rómulo’s missing memory is thus not a general inability to understand the other patients, but a specific absence around the event at the center of his bond with Remo.